The Ringer-Verse - 'GTA' Leaks, Copycat Clones, and How to Get Back Into Gaming | Button Mash

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Ben and Matt James deliver their hands-on impressions of failing to play FromSoftware's 'The Duskbloods' during a disastrous network test, then react to recent news: fresh 'Grand Theft Auto VI' leaks, another live-service snafu for Sony in 'Horizon Hunters Gathering,' Dave Bautista's selection as a recast Kratos in Prime Video's 'God of War,' Disney's decision to double down on 'Kingdom Hearts,' and a sequel funded by a mysterious, rich patron. After that, Ben brings on prolific reporter Nicole Carpenter to talk about an epidemic of game cloning, the moral and legal lines between inspiration and imitation, and how the industry's copycat problem pertains to Steam sensation 'Meccha Chameleon,' Roblox smashes 'Grow a Garden' and 'Steal a Brainrot,' and 'Palworld.' Lastly, Ben brings on writer (and doctor) Rany Jazayerli to explain what it's like to give up gaming for decades before finally returning to the fold. (00:00) Intro (00:13) Duskbloods with Matt James (10:11) News and More! (48:31) Nicole Carpenter Joins (82:31) Rany Jazayerli Joins Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Matt James, Nicole Carpenter, Rany Jazayerli Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Bloodsworn Lindberg, senior editor for the Ringer and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed host here on Button Mesh, joined by my fellow creature of the night, Ringer Deputy Art Lead, Matt, Zork, James. Good morning, Matt. Good morning. Bloodsworn is a little bit of a tongue twister. It is. It is. It is.

In between a bunch of words, isn't it? It is. And what a morning it's been for both of us. move over midnight boys. We're the 3 a.m. boys. We were among the lucky invitees to the closed network test for From Software's next game,

switch to exclusive the Dusk Bloods. And fortunately, you and I are nocturnal, much like the vampiric characters in the cast of the Dusk Bloods, including Zork and other Bloodsworn. So we settled in for the first session at 3 a.m. Pacific, 6 a.m. Eastern, this morning to play the game and bring you our rapid reactions to what we saw.

So, Matt, we spent a solid couple hours with the dusk blood shortly before we hopped on the mic. What are your impressions so far? The menu screen looks good. Agreed. Yeah, I was pretty impressed by the title screen. That classic imposing from soft font, the orchestral theme, which I don't know about you, I looped over and over and over again. Yeah, I just, I couldn't get enough. And so instantly, I was sold.

And it was like, you know what? This is giving me that old from soft feeling. I hardly even need to see the rest of the game. Yeah. Very readable fonts so far. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Correct size, you know, they won't need to patch the fonts to make them more legible.

So that's always a good sign. I play docked and handheld also. Uh-huh. How did it run for you? It's just smooth. Real smooth. Yeah. No frame rate issues.

No, none. Yeah. And, you know, I thought it was kind of a compelling meta commentary because you expect a FromSoft game to be notoriously challenging. And usually the deal is that you get into the game before you get stuck and it completely kicks your ass. And so how do they raise the bar? Where do they go from there?

Now, I think the new innovation is that you can't get into the game at all. And that's really the ultimate challenge, I think, is even being able to boot up the dusk bloods. And, you know, I've struggled with Eldon Ring or Night Rain at times, but I don't know that I have ever faced a stiffer challenge than the dusk bloods presented to us here. As you may have gleaned from this bit we've been doing, we did not get to play the dusk bloods today, nor did anyone else. everyone was locked out and we woke up or stayed up for nothing. So we did indeed get to see the title screen and we got to hear the theme song. And then we got to press A repeatedly to try to access the server and fail just as many times. So that has been the sum total of our Dusk Bloods experience.

And I'm so glad that we pulled an all-nighter so that we could bring you this incredible content today. We did it. You know, I wasn't even super looking forward to playing this anyway. Well, even more magnanimous of you to stay up all night, which, you know, you do to some extent anyway, but not quite like this. Not quite like this, no. Your Friday is ruined right now. Thank you from software. But we tried, you know.

This is our button mesh guarantee that we will be there on the scene attempting to play. new and exciting releases. And you know, they have, they have, there are a bunch of other sessions scheduled. And as of now, we don't know if that schedule is still holding, or if they're going to put out a new schedule. There's a chance that by the time the listeners are hearing this, there have been some successful network tests.

I hope so, you know. I mean, I guess you could call this. And everyone else. This is a successful test. I've definitely put the closed in the closed. network test. It doesn't work. Yeah. So successful test. That is, I mean, it's the purpose of

of a test is to find out what you still need to work on, right? And what's going wrong? And clearly everything, crucially, accessing the game at all, is a pretty important step. So, yes, hopefully they will rectify that mistake. And we and

others will be able to play the Dust Bloods sometime soon and report back when we have. And really, you haven't lived until you've gotten up at an ungodly hour for a from soft playtest that is mired by malfunctions because it's a right of passage. I mean, this happened with Eldon Ring Night Rain as well, something very similar with the first playtest, and clearly they did not learn their lesson from that. And maybe it was a different mistake this time that prevented people from playing.

But nonetheless, we will be there when we are able to play. And I was reading a Hiditaka Miyazaki interview with IGN, where he was. He said, the Dusk Bloods is a game I want to see exist. And I feel much the same. I also want to see it exist at some point, especially when I'm trying to play it in the middle of the night. And, you know, it does support duos. So I was looking forward to playing with you, which would have been a bit different from our last co-op experience in Big Walk, which was, you know, a little less violent, a little less parrying in Big Walk, which was nice because there's parrying in every other game these days. There sure is.

Nightring didn't support duos initially, and so at least they have learned from that. And, you know, even though we didn't get to play the Dustbloods, some people did. There was a round of previews published this week, which lifted the little bit on the game because it had been a cipher. We had known almost nothing about it.

We still don't know exactly when it is coming out, and, you know, maybe from software doesn't either because they have to figure out how to actually enable us to access the game before they put it out there for real and make people pay for it. It's funny, in the previews, Miyazaki was talking about how Nintendo had helped from software

make the game a little more accessible, a little more legible. Maybe there's a bit more handholding. There might be a more in-depth tutorial. Just help onboard people a bit. Sadly, all of that went to waste on Friday because we couldn't access the server. But some people did get some hands-on time

and publish their impressions and just sort of pulled back the curtain on what this game actually is, which is, I suppose, why you were a little less height going in? Can you describe your understanding of this game? It's pretty inscrutable, which is why I was looking forward to actually getting my hands on it. Yeah, so apparently there are kind of four phases to every game. And at the end of phases, some of the players are eliminated based on score.

and then in the very last phase, I know it is entirely PVP player versus player. So that's something I specifically didn't want to see out of a Frontsoft game. You want to turn on your teammates at the end and have them turn on you. Yeah, just there, apparently you can quadruple jump in this game. And I just, I'm just imagining the last round of every, match being people just jumping four times in the air. A little bit of Smash Brothers meets Eldon Ring kind of vibe, maybe.

I don't know. I'm sure, look, they know what they're doing, and there absolutely will be people who this is everything they've been waiting for and wanting. But that's not me. I just, I appreciate that they're experimenting and pushing the envelope with some of their multiplayer ideas. Clearly.

Perhaps a bit too far. Perhaps a bit too far when you start getting, you know, comparisons to like Highguard in the way that like the phases of this game work. I just would love some single player from Soft. Me too. I know we'll get that again someday. Yes. And they did reiterate in these interviews that they are not forsaking single player forever, that they're working on that as well. But yeah, back-to-back multiplayer experiences.

And obviously a lot of people really loved Night Rain. And there's a contingent out there. I like it way more than I thought I would. Yeah. Yeah, there's a learning curve, as there always is. But, you know, why not do both? But as long as they continue to do both and keep serving the single-player audience out there and avoiding high-guard comps, hopefully, when this game is actually out,

I think it'll last a little longer and be a bit more successful than that. But I like the quadruple jump. That's really something. That's like the classic onion spoof of Gillette. Fuck everything. We're doing five blades. Fuck everything. We're doing four jumps.

Why not? We're doubling the double jump. I like it. All right. Well, this is one of the more hotly anticipated games of presumably the next few months. And obviously kind of a coup for Nintendo and the Switch to get a FromSoft game, which hopefully will run well and run it all at some point. And of course, Eldon Ring is coming to Switch 2 and seemingly is running a bit better.

these days. So baby steps. Anyway, we will have more on the Dusk Bloods at some point. But great pleasure going through that wee hours experience with you, even though we did not get to play. And much like a Dusk Bloods round, or so we have heard, this podcast will kind of have four phases. We just did our first phase of bantering about... Do we have to fight each other at the end? I mean, maybe. Maybe we do. But we just completed our first phase of bantering, about not playing the Dusk Bloods. And now we will do some news. And later on this episode,

I actually have a couple of excellent interviews for everyone. I will be talking to the great gaming reporter, Nicole Carpenter, about gaming clones and how every time you have a successful game, suddenly it spawns shameless imitators that rise up the ranks. And this is just endemic in Roblox, in Fortnite, in Steam. team. It's supercharged and exacerbated by AI and vibe coding. We will get into all of that and whether

there is any solution. And then, finally, I will be bringing on a good friend of mine and sports writer and occasional ringer contributor and also Dr. Randy Jazerly to talk about his decades long lull in gaming. He was a big gamer as a kid. He lost touch with his hobby and his passion for years and years, and now he has come back to us, and he has become a gamer again. And we all sometimes struggle with maintaining our connection to this hobby for various reasons, such as playtests at three in the morning that don't work. And so I think this will be instructive to hear how he came back to gaming and what it was like for him to just go right into the deep end after not having played games since like the 816-bit era to be plunged into today's gaming and his

impressions of all of that. So fun conversations, but before we get to that, just a quick round of news here, maybe we can rely on CyberLeak to send us some footage from the Duskbloods. That might be the only look that you and I get at it. CyberLeak is the main character of the week in gaming, we have had some GTA 6 leaks. Not for the first time, but for the first time in four years or so. We're days away from the official Netflix and then YouTube unveiling of, well, we don't know exactly what, but presumably gameplay of Grand Theft Auto 6 finally, which we will be covering here on button mesh.

But cyber leak, a mysterious hacker slash leaker, has gotten ahead of Take 2 and Rock star and Netflix and all of the above and has been drip feeding little snippets of what appears to be authentic footage of Grand Theft Auto 6 day by day week by week here. So we've learned some things from this footage and I wonder what your your takeaways are both about any specific things that you spotted here or just about this practice of leaking clips of highly anticipated games and what the actual effect of that can be. Well, I did manage to steer clear of any actual footage. I didn't want to spoil myself. I didn't, you know, want to...

It's not out of a principled stand to oppose cyber leaks leaking. Yeah, they don't seem all that cool. I don't know. You're not secretly cyber leak, are you? I'm not. No, I would totally tell you, though. I absolutely would tell you. I absolutely would tell you. Yeah, off-air, maybe just for legal reasons. But, yeah, CyberLeak, whoever they are, seems to have some kind of conflicted motivations here. There was a cringy kind of manifesto. Very, very cringy. Yes, about how this is, you know, a shot across the bow of publishers,

and it is a strike against over-monetizing games and live service and no physical releases and such. you know, some of those causes I'm somewhat sympathetic to, but not necessarily. Most of the causes, yeah. Yes, the steps that CyberLeaks has taken here. And also, it does kind of detract from the purity of CyberLeaks stance that they slapped their meme coin watermarks over all of the footage, which, you know, why are you actually doing this? Is it for clout?

Is it to say something? and dissuade publishers from doing something, or is it to advertise your crappy meme coin? Maybe it's a bit of all of the above. Yeah, the whole thing just kind of feels like whoever this is, they haven't left their basement to see sunlight in a long, long time. Not that there's anything wrong with that. An extremely online person.

Yes, and they probably should keep a low profile because I imagine that they are a wanted person. at this stage. So, yeah, so you have not actually seen the footage. I didn't look at things. I didn't hear that there might be gas for the cars. Yeah, so that's one of the interesting takeaways here. And honestly, there aren't really spoilers.

And that's one of the interesting things. And I wrote about this, below those many years ago, four years ago, when there was the initial hack and footage leaked, that this is simultaneously huge news, right? I mean, it's the biggest news in gaming that. the biggest game, finally we have seen something of it in this illicit manner. And because it has been kept so close to the vest, and we have still, I mean, even though pre-orders have already been placed, we haven't actually really seen gameplay, official gameplay footage, except from leakers. And so that seems like enormous news. And yet, ultimately, it may not have much of

an effect because as long as the game itself doesn't leak, which of course is a real risk and happens all the time now, or plot details aren't spoiled. And so far, CyberLeak, for whatever reason, has refrained from showing narrative and giving away the story here. As long as those things, yeah, I know, everything in moderation, right? CyberLeak will leak some footage, but not any footage. CyberLeak has some standards. So as long as those things don't happen, the actual import, not that I'm condoning it, and I'm sure that plenty of people at Rockstar and Take 2 are pretty pissed about this, not just because it derails their grand unveiling, but because we don't actually know

when this footage is from. It doesn't seem to be an ancient build, but it may not be a current build. In fact, it is probably not a current build, just based on the UI and everything. And so anyone who's making a game doesn't want people to see the in-progress game that is not fully polished. So that can be demoralizing as you talked to the Insomniac Debs about last week. On the other hand, nobody's not going to buy GTA6 because of this footage. It is possible that this might actually increase the hype, not that it was planned, but it might actually play into Rockstar's hands to some extent here. I mean, we're talking about it.

We're talking about it. We weren't going to talk about GTA 6. Yeah, and who would have ever heard of this little indie upstart called Grand Theft Auto 6, if not for these leaks, getting everyone's tongues wagging? So it is a strange phenomenon where it's simultaneously enormous news, and yet at least so far, sort of insignificant in a weird way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think everyone is just ready for the game to come out at this point.

You know, if there was a leak that was, I don't know, a year ago, that was this far along. I think it would be bigger news. But I think everyone's just kind of like, we have a date that we believe is going to happen. We're getting a trailer next week. Like, go away.

Yeah, yeah. And we will talk about that and what is actually shown next week. But I think that is the takeaway. Assuming we can conclude this is all legitimate, which, you know, Take 2 and Rockstar have been radio silent since this happened as we speak, but they have been aggressively issuing takedown notices, which makes one think that this is legit footage, at least from some point.

Doesn't mean it reflects what the game looks like today or will look like in November, but, and it's also sort of a sad state of affairs that this immediately, in sort of a preview of my conversation with Nicole, when GTA6 leaks come out, suddenly everyone is making AI ripoffs of the GTA six leaks so that it's, It's now quite difficult to actually tell what is the authentically leaked footage and what is just a copycat. And the way that you can tell is that the legitimate stuff has the meme coin stuff slapped on it. So I don't know what that says about today. But what seems to be the takeaway here based on what we can glean is that it looks like there are some less arcadey aspects to this.

You mentioned that it certainly seems as if maybe there is something. pertaining to the engine condition of the cars and that that will degrade, that you might have to fill up the fuel tanks and get gas, that there are upgrades for your stats. You know, you shoot a basketball into a hoop and you get plus two focus. And also there's storage in the cars, which had been reported on or speculated about before, that maybe you won't be able to just carry infinite weapons. You'll have to stash them somewhere, or you'll have to stash money and just carry small bills and amounts of cash on you. And also, there are hints maybe of a morality system, a sort of red dead style honor system, which I have mixed feelings about. And it's not just, you know,

any crime you commit triggers that. But the more egregious ones, right, when you're beating someone when they're down, not only do you have the six-star wanted system seemingly back, but there is some sort of paragon, you know, system here. So how do you feel about that? Because I'm kind of conflicted about how much RDR I want in my GTA. I feel I feel kind of good about it because what I don't want is another Grand Thief Auto that's the same Grand Theft Auto that I've played for decades of my life. Yeah. So there are two things I want out of the game.

I want a great narrative and I want some innovations or some different, you know, decisions made on this one. I wanted to feel like a new experience, and I'm happy if they are experimenting with some things that might change up the experience of it. And maybe a middle ground between the more realistic sim-style Red Dead and GTA, because I don't want to feel like I can't cause mayhem and havoc, but I kind of like the idea of there being some stakes, as long as that doesn't completely screw up the player's agency. the story that Rockstar is trying to tell here. So we'll see. Maybe it'll be a happy medium, a middle ground that kind of brings out the best of both franchises.

And, you know, the initial footage, I think a lot of people thought, well, this looks more or less like GTA. I don't know what we expected, but maybe it wasn't mind-blowing. And again, this might not be a current build. But the last bit of footage that was like was just a flyover, where Jason's just in a crop duster flying over Vice City with the radio playing. And that, I think, really got the GTA juices flowing. Not only did it look pretty impressive, but also it's odd because this is a game about auto, right?

And yet some of my happiest memories of GTA are flying, whether it's in a helicopter or a plane or a dodo back in the day. That's kind of the most, I don't know, charming, exhilarating way to traverse these cities, especially as the open worlds get bigger and more and more detailed. So I'm looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to actually getting an official release and official footage as opposed to relying on CyberLeak. So take it easy, CyberLeak for your sake and for everyone's. And we will talk much more GTA next time. So a bit of other news here that also pertains to an online game

that maybe had a private test that didn't go so great earlier this year, as reported by our pal Jason Shrier at Bloomberg. Looks like Sony's streak of live service losers may be extended because Horizon Hunters Gathering, the spinoff of the Horizon franchise, which we talked about briefly when it was announced earlier this year, looks like that is headed for at best an overhaul and at worst a scrap heap,

because it sounds like the people who played it back when it was tested didn't like it, bad feedback, and now they're trying to reboot the game and they have been for the past few months. They are perhaps stripping out the live service component and trying to salvage it and turn it into more of a traditional co-op multiplayer game with some sort of story mode. And as Jason wrote, and this sounds ominous, the game is not yet canceled, but the studio told staff in a meeting on Wednesday that they will have through December to impress executives with their next milestone. The people said, many of the developers on Horizon Hunter's gathering will be reassigned to a different project that will also be evaluated at the end of the year. So we've seen this play before. What do you think of yet another one that we can toss

onto the pile of attempted live service spinoffs that not going great for Sony and PlayStation? Yeah, it's not exactly surprising, is it? I mean, How many years deep are we into the general consensus being, we don't really want you to make live service games? And that general consensus was following several years of people suspecting that they didn't want live service games from Sony. I mean, this is so many years, so many years since they decided to pivot to live service games. And you just can't help but think of all of the great single-player or even multiplayer non-live-service games that could have been for this generation if the bigwigs at Sony hadn't decided to pivot to trying to make a lot of money.

And forcing all of these incredibly talented studios into making something that they didn't necessarily want to make. And it is a tragedy of sorts. It's not as if they farmed this out to some lower tier studio and said, here, do what you can with this. These are primo developers. These are companies like Noddy Dog and Insomniac and Gorilla that are trying and failing to adapt these single player properties into live service, which is just square peg round hole. It doesn't always transfer over. and there might not be much audience demand for this, and how many times have we seen it?

And I think we talked about this last time it came up, and I kept an open mind about Horizon Hunter's Gathering, but really I wanted Horizon 3, and it sounds like that's being worked on in some capacity, but has really been on the back burner, because this has been the focus. And so how many more years are we going to be waiting for the sequel to Horizon Forbidden West

because of this wild goose chase? It stinks, And it obviously stinks more for the developers who have been on that chase and might lose their jobs in some cases. But it's just an incredible streak because, I mean, we're talking Spider-Man, the Last of Us, God of War, Horizon, one after the other, attempts to make a live service pivot that have flopped. Completely flopped. Hopefully Sony has belatedly learned its lesson here. and then talk about the studio closures, the layoffs, the sad straits that Bungy is in,

marathon, unfortunately, flatlining it looks like in terms of player count. Those players love it, though. Those very few. Those core people will, you have to rip the uniform off their back. But yeah, it is really kind of depressing. And just I hope that the good that comes out of this, assuming that this game isn't salvaged is that

Sony says never again which at least publicly it has maintained hey we still think there's some juice that's worth the squeeze here but I think the industry as a whole has learned this lesson it just takes a long time and it's a pretty painful one. It takes a long time to learn

yeah yes and I mean with game cycles game dev cycles being what they are you try to chase a trend and you're not going to hit it because it's it's going to be out of style before you can get there. I'm surprised, the one trend you can chase, I think, that I am surprised I haven't seen like major studios do is,

I think you could have a low-budget, lo-fi friend-slop game, like put out by major publishers using their IP, and you have like zero financial risk. it's a popular genre and the development time on that could be pretty fast. I'm surprised I haven't seen them chasing that trend at least.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, you had like Lego Horizon Adventures which I guess is sort of spiritually just hey, let's dial this down a bit and make it more kid-friendly and everything but not exactly. Friend Slop, as you're saying. So yeah, maybe that'll be the next move

and everyone tries to jump on that trend and three years from now will be complaining about how everything got friends lopified, but at least it won't be quite as costly and won't take quite as long to realize what's working and what's not. Speaking of God of War, we have a news item about that franchise as well. Well, we know that there's a Cretus game coming that has been announced in addition to God of War Laofé coming next year. However, we also have some news about the God of War adaptation for Prime Video, which is, as has been rumored for some time, Cretos has been recast.

Ryan Hurst out, Dave Battista, in. So Drax himself will be putting the body paint back on to play Cretos. And of course, this comes in the wake of Ryan Hurst, suffering a serious biceps injury that sidelined him and caused him to be recast, which is a bummer for him personally, as well as for the production, because they had already shot four full episodes. And now they are essentially starting, over from scratch with Batista.

So what do you think of this casting? How, if it all, does it change your outlook for this series? That's really rough. It's really rough to have to go through that. You know, you're so deep into production. But, I mean, Dave Batista's got a pretty high approval rating. I don't know anyone who's like, oh, I hate that guy. Yeah.

Right. The friend seems pretty pleased with the replacement. And, you know, I'm looking forward. to it. Again, I have my doubts about them being able to pull this series off in a live action form. But go ahead, try. You know, Dave Batisse is fun. I'll watch him on screen anytime. I don't know. Yeah. And Kratos is different from Drax. I mean, they have some aspects in common, but Kratos is, you know, a little less happy go lucky, a guy. But I have a high opinion of Batista. as acting, and so I think he could handle this.

I know that he had significantly slimmed down, and so people are wondering, will he have to bulk up super fast to become Cretus? But I think maybe he had put some weight back on for the Highlander movie, so maybe he is Cretus ready. Pretty slow, yeah. Yeah, and I guess, unlike in Highlander, there can be only one does not apply to Cretus and his casting.

So, you know, you'd think, though, that having four episodes in the can, why not just wait until Hearst is ready to go next year? But I guess there's time pressure, not just to get the thing out, but also you have a child actor playing Atreus, right, who's aging before our eyes. So maybe you want to get that on film. And, you know, hopefully Dave Batista can take care of his biceps because the man's 57 years old, you know, which is a little old even for old Cretos, I guess. This series is probably only a two or three season affair, I would assume.

So it's not like he's signing up for years and years to come. And maybe he's age-appropriate for current Kratos. But if this is physically demanding, I fear for him as well. But hopefully they have improved the stunt process when it comes to our lead here. And, yeah, I don't know that I was exactly thirsting for a God of War adaptation because these games are so story-heavy as it is that I feel like I have seen it to some extent, even if it's different. But in Ronald D. Moore, I trust generally. Guys got a great track record, and he's handling this. And Prime Video, I think, earned some trust with its fallout adaptation. So, yeah, I'm willing to give it a shot. And Batista

seems like a solid replacement. I had no idea. He was 57. He is. Yeah. We need to talk about him in the same breath as Paul Rudd, who is also 57. It's true. Yeah. And, you know, he's long wanted to be Marcus Phoenix. He has expressed that desire, too. So I don't know, maybe he has aged out of Marcus Phoenix. Perhaps not. But at least he gets to live his video game adaptation dreams. So happy for Dave. One other item here. So we're talking about a lot of Sony franchises. And by the way, I guess the good news when it comes to Sony Live Service stuff, Hell Divers is on PlayStation Plus now. So the lone success, at least, is more widely accessible. But let's talk about another series that you will be able to play on your PlayStation and also other platforms. Kingdom Hearts. We just got a deluge of Kingdom Hearts news, not only a new trailer and some additional details about Kingdom Hearts 4 and a release date, late 2027, which I know take it with a salt seller because we're talking about Kingdom Hearts. but they really did double down and commit to late 2027, we will see.

And maybe there's some pressure for them to hit that date because Disney also announced an anime adaptation. There will be an animated TV series of Kingdom Hearts. So after a long silence pertaining to this franchise, suddenly Disney seems to be all in on the Kingdom Hearts train, which has kind of been the forgotten IP for Disney. So how do you feel about the new provenance of Kingdom Hearts? Oh, I'm happy for Kingdom Hearts fans, for sure. And I'm happy for Square Enix, man. They're going to have the last FF7 remake and Kingdom Hearts 4 in the same year.

Yeah. That's pretty amazing. And there's another Final Fantasy 14 expansion, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something else. Final Fantasy in a couple months, another new Final Fantasy. Residence, I believe. Yeah, I personally never found my way into Kingdom Hearts, but I was looking at getting into it recently with all the Kingdom Hearts news coming out. And I was basically looking around for like a guide of like, okay, where do I start? What's essential?

What's not essential? And oh my God. The convoluted nature of what you need to play and get through. They're talking like obscure mobile games and like... Some of which you can't actually access anymore, much like the Dusk Bloods. And titles of games that are just intensely confusing. And I am just kind of shocked that like the Disney collaboration with Square Enix has somehow turned into the most perplexing story throughout all of Square Enix's history

of perplexing stories. I do intend to try to play through, at least some of the essential Kingdom Heart stuff, to try and get up to speed. I have, you know, a year and a half, probably. That won't be enough, but Godspeed to you. Probably not. Yeah.

The people are really excited, and it's good to see. Yeah, and the fact that it was on center stage at D23, this is this is kind of a glow-up for the franchise. I'm always in favor of more Pixar integration here, and along with the announcement of Cocoa 2, that coincides with a playable world in Kingdom Hearts 4. There's also going to be a Sora crossover in Fortnite. So suddenly, Kingdom Hearts, which is, you know,

kind of a progenitor of the IP postmodern crossover era, is now getting crossovered itself. And of course, Kingdom Hearts has been, in the news for sort of sad reasons as well because of the passing of Hayden Paneteer, the original actor who voiced Kyrie, RIP. So, yeah, suddenly it's been full court press, Kingdom Hearts. And I'm excited for the series, also sort of wary because of the completely impenetrable lore of Kingdom Hearts, which, much as I enjoy the series, I cannot even pretend to tell you what it is about

beyond the first game or two. So if they totally lean into that and the convoluted, inscrutable lore of this world, then I don't know if this series will be for me, but... I don't know how you can't. Yeah. And will they be releasing an Avengers' Doomsday length list of homework

that you have to do before you watch the Kingdom Hearts TV series? Will this be completely impenetrable to anyone who hasn't played every game? Or will they sort of start fresh? and reset and make it more accessible, which is, I hope, although that might disappoint the diehards. It seems like it's on a level where, like, if you were just an alien who came to Earth and you tried to hop into Marvel movies right now

without having seen the past 40 or however many there have been, it kind of feels like we're approaching that with Kingdom Hearts and how deep the lore goes. But I was excited to see, you know, Coco in there. I love Coco. That's great. I just, to me, as an... outsider to the whole thing. I did some digging and like, because my first concern was like, does this, is there a way

that this like artfully fits in with the narrative of Kingdom Hearts Ford, like just kind of dropping everything into these movies and then kind of playing through the movies? Isn't there like more of a story to tell where maybe you have your own story and you integrate parts of these stories. I read that in Kingdom Hearts 3 with the frozen stuff, it was a little bit felt like a little bit forced

in there. And so I do worry that they're just going to kind of throw these movies in there at the expense of some of the plot just because that's kind of Disney's agenda. So I hope that that's not

the case. I mean, I don't want it to be Disney Dreamlight Valley. We already have Disney Dreamlight Valley, which, by the way, super easy to get into. Not a lot of lore that you need to know ahead of time, although it helps. Yeah. Yeah, I like that vision. I don't know if it will be shared, but there are so many animated adaptations of video games that I think a lot of people just aren't even aware of, some of which are very good and successful, obviously. And you know, you have some really well-received ones and classics. And then you have some that are kind of lackluster. And then you have some that are good, but because of the ceiling of

animation, just don't really break through. I mean, do people know that there's a Golden Axe series coming to Paramount Plus next month? Who knew? Not many. Hot IP, Golden Axe. And cyberpunk edge runners, which is pretty acclaimed, is coming back on Netflix in October. So, this will have a lot of company, and I will certainly be watching it, and maybe we will talk about it here on Butt-Mash. And maybe it'll be the new arcane, or maybe it'll be more forgettable. But either way, I like that more life is being breathed into this franchise, and hopefully they can keep it coming. Because I am looking forward to playing my first kingdom hearts during my dad era, because I think this would be a good one to play. with my daughter's loan, given that she's familiar with some of these properties.

Except to make her play Kingdom Hearts 1, Kingdom Hearts 2, 3, all of the mobile games. Yeah, and she was not yet born when Kingdom Hearts 3 came out. So this will be a new and hopefully fun experience for both of us. And speaking of much-desired sequels, our last little news item here. So also reported last week by our pal Jason Schreier at Bloomberg is that Ron Gilbert, point-and-click legend, narrative game, Monkeys Island, et cetera,

all the classic LucasArts games. He is making a sequel to a well-received, but lesser-known game of his from 2017, and he's funding it in an interesting way. So the sequel to Thimbleweed Park, Thimbleweed Park 2, will be funded by an anonymous donor. I mean, not anonymous to Ron Gilli,

Ron Gilbert knows who it is. But the name has not been announced, but it is apparently a rich person who really likes Ron Gilbert games, which is relatable, and has enough disposable income to fund one of those games single-handedly, which is not so relatable. And this is the way that that's working, because evidently Ron Gilbert, you know, he's worked with various publishers and including Disney, for that matter, and has found that the arrangements are not always to his liking. And so he's trying this essentially, you know, going back to some kind of like patron of the arts at court sort of arrangement where we have a very rich person who's just like, I want a sequel to this game.

So here's a lot of money and you can make me whole at some point, but I'm not necessarily looking to get rich off this. Mostly I just want to fund your creativity and play the game. And so this is making me wonder, if you got mega rich, which sequel would you green light? And let's stipulate that, you know, you've already solved hunger and homelessness and global warming, you know, the important stuff. You have your priorities straight.

Yeah. Exactly, right. And you have a little leftover. And you're thinking, why don't I throw some cash this Autour's way because I really want to play this sequel that's never going to get the green light otherwise? And it's not a Wu-Tang Martin Schreli. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin situation.

This is not just one copy for you. The whole world gets to play. And you can't say Half-Life 3. Not that you would have, but I don't think funding is necessarily the impediment to that game getting made. So anything come to mind? What would be your thimbleweed park, too, when Matt makes it big? I said two that popped up right away. One being Grim Fandango.

Yes. One of my favorite adventure games of all times. of all time. And the other being one that I think you might want to see as well, I'd like to see as Skies of Arcadia as equal. Oh my goodness, you're pandering to me, you're preaching to the choir. This is wonderful.

You saved me the trouble of saying the same thing, which I was going to do pretty predictably. I'd settle for just a remake that I could play on current consoles and maybe had a fewer random encounters. That would suffice. But a sequel would be wonderful, too. I was thinking maybe, I mean, how about a Titanfall 3 still holding out hope one of these days that could happen?

I don't know. I don't know if Titanfall is on the minds of the new owners of EA at the moment. No, perhaps not. But given the news that Warren Specter is retiring or probably retiring, one of the architects of the immersive sim, and, you know, that genre has kind of fallen on harder times, although some former collaborators of Spectres have started their own studio called Black Pony that they're hoping to breathe some life into the immersive sim and Harvey Smith, who also worked on Deus X and other great games is part of the Black Pony immersive venture. Warren Spector, in his retirement announcement, said that there are maybe three games that he'd still really like to make. but he has resigned himself to never being able to make. So maybe I go to Warren.

I mean, he hasn't had a hit for a while, and he had his Mickey Disney phase as well. But DeusX, can we bring back DeusX? It's been a decade since Mankind Divided, and the original is one of my favorite games of all time. I feel like a cyberpunk kind of ate its lunch, and that was kind of gone. Yeah, that's, yeah.

Or can we get a Cotor 3 maybe? or, you know, kick some cash Ubisoft's way to finally get that Beyond Good and Evil sequel done, which I'm sure is coming along nicely. I don't know if anybody even wants that anymore. No. Does anyone, is anyone still alive who played that game when it came out? Just me. We are, but we're old.

Or give me a Star Wars Republic Commando sequel, you know? We're going to be talking about a Clone Wars era Star Wars game next week. But that one, that set a high bar. That is one of my favorite Star Wars games that sadly never got. a sequel. We could do Corona Trigger 2 also, you know, if you felt like it. Okay. Eternal Darkness, Sanities Requiem 2.

While we're rebooting early 2000s favorites of mine. Because you love horror games so much. I love that one, weirdly, which speaks to its quality. So, yeah, let us know right in at Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com. You suddenly, your ship comes in. You get a windfall. And who are you splashing some cash on? who are you lavishing your riches on

to get a game that otherwise would probably never be made. You know, it'd be great. It's Roblox 2, where the graphics are good. So, like, kids can learn to, like, appreciate art and aesthetics. Spoken, like, the deputy art lead of the ringer.

Yeah. Minecraft, but less blocky. That's the pitch, I guess. Well, that's an excellent segue into our next segment, which will concern some of those games. and Matt, you will be back next week. We've got multiple button meshes slated for next week, and we're in the end game now,

because, I mean, we're in the thick of it. We are playing a lot of stuff we can't talk about. Yeah, we are knee-deep in some promising games that we are very much looking forward to podcasting about. And next week, we will have an instant reaction to the non-Ciber leak reveal of GTA6, followed by an episode devoted to Star Wars Zero Company, which we have already previewed and will be reviewing next time.

And who knows what else. And then the week after that, my goodness, we've got Anamusha, we've got orbitals, we've got maybe the blood of Don Walker, depending on when we get access to that thing. Another vampire game, because we didn't get enough of the dusk floods. Unfortunately, we didn't get our vampire fix from that one. So really, there is not a slow week. between now and November when GTA hits,

and ButtMesh will be coming to you weekly and sometimes multiple times a week. So I will be talking to you a lot, and I am looking forward to it. Thank you very much, Matt. Thanks for having me. Exciting times ahead. Indeed.

And also dispiriting dystopian times, in some respects, which I will talk to Nicole Carpenter about in just a moment when we get into game cloning and where the line lies between imitation and inspiration and how this all applies to Powell World, grow a garden and steal

a brain rot, metcha chameleon, and more. And yes, it's apparently Mechah, not Mecca. It's not a mech game. Back with Nicole in just a sec. Well, I'm joined now by one of the best gaming reporters out there. And by there, I mean pretty much every publication that covers

video games. You may have seen her byline at Aftermath, Kotaku, 404 Media, Mothership, Game developer, game file, The New York Times. Yes, I'm listing the New York Times last. Sorry, New York Times. And in the past, Polygon, I'm probably leaving out an outlet or three, but we have only so much time in this segment.

And now, in this segment, she is making her ringer debut. So Nicole Carpenter, I am happy to add button mesh to the very long list of places you've appeared. I am so happy to be here. I was going to make a joke about how you're so prolific that it's almost as a if you yourself have been cloned somehow. And then I remembered that that actually kind of did happen. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it did. You wrote for Afterbath in January about how you had discovered another Nicole Carpenter, a seemingly fictitious, possibly AI-created Nicole Carpenter with bylines at some syndicated content mill. So not only have you reported on cloning and copying, I guess you have also sort of experienced it. Yes, I have been cloned myself. How's the other Nicole doing these days? Have you seen or heard from her? She's seemingly disappeared.

Yeah, interesting. She hasn't come back. Suspicious. She really went underground once you started asking questions about her identity. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence. Anyway. Yes. The internet is going great, guys.

So good. AI is making it so much better. Speaking of which, we will get into that as it pertains to gaming. So let's talk about Metscha Chameleon. Maybe we can start there. And for those who have not seen it somehow have not played it, it's a friend sloppy take on pre-existing prop hunt modes in other games, essentially hide and seek.

But you can paint yourself and blend into environments. That's where the chameleon comes from. And chameleon mania has subsided somewhat. But this is a budget price game, and it has sold more than 20 million copies since June. So take us through. Maybe we can just use this as kind of a case study because it applies to a lot of viral steam sensations. But a game comes along like this, goes mega viral.

What happens after that when it comes to spoofs and clones and imitators and just people trying to capitalize on that popularity? Oh, yes, for sure. Well, Magic Chameleon became super popular really fast. And I think it is because it is an idea itself that is something people are familiar with, with prop hunt. And with, like you said, hide and seek, like, it's a very, it's a game we all know. And so the premise of painting yourself into the walls or wherever you're hiding is like a little bit, it's like novel enough that it makes it into something new. And so when you see a game like this that becomes so wildly popular, so like on the level of like among us or peak, it is instantly something that becomes the, the target of developers on Roblox, developers, on mobile platforms that are looking for something

quick and popular. You can even find them on console platforms as well, something that is easily repeatable, super popular. And when I say easily repeatable, I mean like in, you know, it's not easy to make these games, but like to make the original games, but like you could. and get these ideas down with like, you know, you could get the base thing pretty easy and it's just not going to work as well. But to some people, that doesn't matter. Yeah. And they're just looking to be profiteers and turn a quick buck on this basically. For sure. Yeah. And even the player too.

Right. Yeah. It's free on Roblox. Yeah. And that's enough for some folks. And they're trying to confuse people often. It's not just, hey, did you like this game? Maybe you want to play something similar, but they're actually trying to replicate it when it comes to keywords, listings, art, title sometimes. You know, it's just slight variations. So, okay, as you mentioned, I mean, you know, imitation, sincerest form of flattery, right? Everything is standing on the shoulders of giants and building on predecessors, including something like Metchicameleon itself. As you said, it's not an entirely original concept. And so many things aren't, right? We wouldn't have Fortnite Battle Royale without PubG or so many other things in Fortnite that are just sort of

absorbed, right? So where is the line or the distinction then between, okay, we're using this as inspiration and we're riffing, we're iterating, as opposed to what you're talking about, just outright kind of copying or cloning? Right. I think it depends on several, it depends on the way you're looking at it. If you're looking at it through like the lens of copyright production, that is, I think, something that's like a little bit harder legally because you can't copyright ideas, but you can copyright, like, assets in a game. So when a developer goes after another developer for this sort of copying, the strongest kind of like accusation they can make for one of the strongest is that they're stealing their assets to make something that is like exactly the same.

And not even really about the idea. So like they're with the metacomeli. games on Roblox, unless they are taking assets directly from Magic Chameleon, they probably don't have a super, super strong legal case there because of the ideas around copyrighting ideas. But obviously, like morally and when people are looking at this, they see this. And people who do know that of the original game, they know this is a clone. And I think that morally people are super excited. to play something that is ripping off another thing, like, so blatantly, because it feels like a scam,

and sometimes it is. Yeah, it's sort of the justice potter steward. I know it when I see it sort of thing. I don't know whether that legally holds up here, but we do kind of understand the distinction. And, you know, it's good that there aren't such onerous copyright protections or patent protections, I guess, and there's a distinction there. But, you know, when there are certain mechanics or systems that are patented, and then they go away and we don't get to play them anymore, like the nemesis system, right, which people really liked in the old Lord of the Rings games, and then that gets patented, and then no one else can do that thing. And when that company's not even really using it, that's a bummer. Or I think one of the other famous examples was Namco patented mini

games on loading screens, right? And so we couldn't have, that's why we can't have nice things sometimes, too. And so you want to protect creativity and originality. and enable people to profit for those things. But you also want to encourage people to learn from those things and apply them into other games that then become mashups and maybe even improve upon the original formula. So it's a really hard thing to handle. But when I read, you're reporting on this for Kotaku about Metchimilian

or 404 media about game cloning, something seems wrong here. Something seems unjust because these are people who are not really bringing much or anything to the table themselves. They're just sort of riding the trends and trying to basically make money on just riding the

coattails of some other popular success. For sure, the majority of these are if we're talking about Roblox, I think that the draw there for people is like it's free and so the developers can monetize it with the in-game sorts of

micro-transactions. But for mobile, the real draw, I think, for these sorts of developers who are making these clones games, is that they can easily confuse people. Because these games aren't always available on mobile or on console, if they go searching on the app store for Metchicameleon, metric chameleon's not going to come up, but something very, very similar will, and that it makes it really, really easy to trick someone into buying something

that isn't the actual product. So let's go back to last year. You did a lot of reporting. on other games that became supremely popular in Roblox and then sort of metastasized from there, namely, steal a brain rot and grow a garden, which peaked at around 25 million concurrent players, just an all-time high for any game. I'm looking at how many are playing.com right now, which is showing real-time player accounts in Steam, Fortnite, and Roblox.

Steal BrainRot is number seven on the Roblox leaderboard, even now. with more than 200,000 people playing as we speak. And that's not counting the almost 200,000 people playing steal an egg, which I'm sure is completely different. And then looking at the Fortnite leaderboard right now, you have Go Up for Brain Rots is number five on the list. And you have Steel the Brain Rot, which I believe is actually licensed in that case, but still a variant. and there are other brain rot variations here. So take me through this whole saga because there was just the same sort of rush, this gold rush to capitalize on the success of these games,

and then some legal battles flying back and forth as people were trying to carve out their territory within Roblox or Fortnite or both. Yeah, you see a lot of these sorts of lawsuits between Roblox creators with this sort of thing and capitalizing on these similar ideas. And a lot of them don't make headlines because they are smaller games in comparison to steal a brain rot. But they still make millions, like hundreds of thousands of dollars, which blows my mind often. But the thing with the stealing, this is going to be so hard to follow because the names are so liberal. Stealing, steal the brain rot.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the stealing, what do you ask? I think steel a brain rot That's the original The original Yes And steel

The brain rot is officially licensed Stealing brain rot is not Stealing brain rot is the one that is The you know the one that was involving this lawsuit that you're talking about And the thing that they are looking at is what the lawyer said is like the protectable expressions. So again, this is not about the idea of the game, but because, like, the artwork, the mechanics, the brain routes that you steal, these are all super similar in a way that infringes on their copyrights. That's the argument there. And it's hard because, like,

again, the copyright and patent systems, like, it feels so hard to really define, like, what's where the idea starts and like the protectable expressions begin, you know? So this lawsuit, I'm not exactly sure where it went. I haven't checked up on it a little bit, but it seems like one of those that is kind of hard. Yeah. That will be hard to fight because, you know, if you go to, again, like you were just on the Roblox page,

like there are so many of these games that have the steal the blank, steal the egg, like steal the leaves, steal the, I don't know, seal the knives, steal chickens. There's so many of them. And I think it's very, very hard for these companies to police that. Yeah. And with these creator economies, with their own ecosystems, right, which have been incredibly profitable and huge amounts of revenue,

but then it's sort of a Wild West in terms of what's allowable. And, I mean, do Fortnite to Epic Roblox, do they have? Have policies explicitly saying you can't do this? Are they attempting to police this behavior? Yeah, they do have policies that you can't, you know, upload a game that is a copy. The mobile app stores have that policy as well. It's seemingly these games still get through. You know, all of these places or most of these places have like, you know, a system that you have to apply through.

And regardless of the rules, they're still getting through. They do get taken down, though. You know, with regarding to like scam games, sometimes these get taken down very quickly. There was a game that was originally what they call an obi. So it's like an obstacle course on the mobile store. They wiped their, you know, branding presence there and changed it all to Tomidachi Life, the game that recently came out on Nintendo Switch. And so something as blatantly as that gets taken down super quick because a person buys the game.

they see it's not Tomidashi life, and then they, you know, flag it to Google or whoever. And so that sort of thing does get taken down quite quickly. But these steal the blank, things don't really, you know, it's a little bit more nebulous. Yeah. And you wonder how much incentive those companies have to crack down on this because they make money, right? If people spend money on these clone games, then they get a cut of it. And so unless they are legally, liable, and there are some successful lawsuits that is making them pay for that, then if people are going after the creators, well, it's, you know, no skin off our teeth, maybe, potentially, or they're just so inundated with these games that it's actually tough to tell, or it's tough

to tell the games that are inspired by from the games that are actually just shamelessly copying. So it is really tough, and I know Roblox obviously is a huge business, and they made some changes to their algorithm recently. Obviously, their long-standing concerns about the safety of children on that platform and whether Roblox has done enough to ensure that. And they also made some changes to their algorithm

recently to de-emphasize some of these just kind of sugar rush viral hits and go for more evergreen games that might lead to more player satisfaction long term. And Wall Street didn't like that. They want more virality. They want more money, make the numbers

go up forever. So even if they try to do something responsible, then there's like this conflict of, boy, I mean, we need to satisfy our shareholders and investors and just expand forever, which is how we end up in this sort of situation. And all of this, of course, is supercharged by generative AI. So you've written a lot about that. And it's one thing to do kind of a quicky cash in, slap something together. if you actually have to program that yourself, at least there's a little bit of a barrier to entry, no matter how shoddy that build is. But if you can vibe code it,

then suddenly anyone can do it, and suddenly you're just buried, right? So take us through what you wrote for 404 recently and just what you've learned about how AI has just made all of this so much worse. Yeah, the thing that people will see most regularly, I think, is using generative AI to create the assets that you see on whatever marketplace. So like the images, whatever, you know, the screenshots they show. So that's super common.

Like that, you know, you probably see it on maybe almost every game that's like on. Yeah. I can't say that. Yeah, I read some research recently. Evidently it's up to about a third of newly released games on Steam have some sort of AI disclosure and climbing quickly. Yeah, yeah. But then the second part of this is people.

who are using AI to, you know, recreate games or, and I talked to one developer, Freya, Homer, who created a Tetris-like game. You know, it has Tetris, it's like Tetris and it rotates. It was a really interesting idea and it really hit with a lot of people on social media. So it went like kind of viral and, you know, people wanted it. She, or, uh, it was a, what was it? It was like a prototype. So it was not a release game. Maybe it would become in the future. But anyways, it was just sharing the prototype.

Quickly, people started vibe cloning it. Or, yeah, vibe coding it to create a clone of it. Same. Fib coding. Five cloning. There we go. You coined a new term. Right, right.

One person even replied and said, you know, I can make this in an hour or whatever. And they made it very quickly. And it went online and it was like just like a bad clone. And so that is one sort of thing. Those sorts of, on that particular instance, like these people weren't really making money off of this. Their versions were not good, so they didn't have the same sort of like hype that the original had. But then there are these kind of like scam-esque companies that are putting out massive amounts of games, copying the popular games again and releasing them on console and mobile. And these are studios like, there's one called Midnight Works.

They're based in Moldova. And that's the one that I focused on in the story. I spoke to some developers there. And because this studio kind of has been, people are talking about them on Reddit, developers are talking about them. They have been realized as a studio that is creating scam games because like you look and you see the types of games they're making.

They're like this sort of simulation, like the card shop simulator, supermarket simulator. There's some horror. maybe they even have a mecha chameleon coming soon. I'm not sure though. But they take those sort of viral games and run with it. But they're actually, according to some of the developers I spoke with, are using AI to help them with the code to do that. And so it's like a bigger part of their process. And their whole thing is make it fast. Like you have to make it when that hype is happening. So use of AI helps them, you know, meet that sort of internal deadline that they have. Because

if you make it too late, like the viral moment has passed. Yeah. And it all sort of, it's self-reinforcing and it feeds on itself. And, you know, Fortnite and Roblox are competitors. And Tim Sweeney of Epic has had some harsh words for Roblox at times and talked about it growing and eating gaming. But now you have a Roblox crossover coming to Fortnite and maybe they have realized some way that they could collaborate to their mutual benefit. And you have these clones that are then distributed across both of these ecosystems. And I was reading in the newsletter, Stat Significant, recently the most mentioned topics in YouTube trending videos over the past couple weeks.

This was about a month ago. But Metch a chameleon was number one of any topic in the world. And Roblox was number two. And Minecraft was number three. So video games popular on YouTube. Who knew? But, yeah, I mean, these things, they go viral so quickly. and you can really just turn a quick buck without much effort.

And I know that there have been some efforts on the part of the publishers and the people who operate these stores. I mean, first of all, you have just more legitimate games coming out every year, right? But also this shovelware slop, that is also expanding seemingly exponentially. And Sony has made some efforts to delist things and kind of call some of this slap from the PlayStation store and Nintendo, I know, has tried to at least de-emphasize some of those listings on the e-shop, but it's just how do you keep up, right? I guess there's no way to kind of cut it off at the source. Yeah, and it keeps happening because it works for some of these developers. You only need, like,

a couple of these games to reach that, like, whatever number they're looking for. And it works, they're able to sustain their selves in that way, themselves in that way. But yeah, keeping up with it, like Nintendo has done a little bit with the way they display stuff on the e-shop.

So I don't know if the problem is necessarily better from the, is it on the e-shop or not standpoint? Like, yeah, it's still on the e-shop. But Nintendo changed the way that things are displayed. So like things that are on sale for like a dollar, a lot of people buy that. And so it was being shown in like the,

you know, top games or something. And so they changed that. And it is better. Like the shop does look better and seems to be pushing up like legitimate games. But they're still there. Yeah. And yeah, as you alluded to, it's just because the vibe cloning is so low effort and low expense, then you can just be a volume shooter. Basically, you can just keep putting this crap on the stores essentially. And if you make some money on one of them, then it probably justifies the 10 of them that no one ever heard of or bought. So yeah, yeah, go ahead. If you, you know, part of that too is like with the generative AI, you can sell a version of the game that it doesn't exist. You know, you can use that to, you know, show something that is not the game because really all you have to do is get the person to buy it. If it's like a dollar or two, they might not try to refund it.

And like that's part of it. So speaking of Nintendo, let's talk about Pal World for a second. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. So PALWorld is having yet another moment, and it just got its 1.0 release fairly recently, which led to another wave of popularity. There's going to be an MMO that is coming out sometime soon, an online PAL World spin-off. And we talked about this when it first came out and everyone was wondering, what is this thing?

And, you know, people were wondering, is this AI, right? and is this cloning and is this copying? And we were all wondering, of course, notoriously litigious Nintendo and the Pokemon company, are they going to try to crack down? Are they going to send cease and desist? Is this Pokemon with guns concept too close to original Pokemon? And Powell World and PocketPair obviously have survived and thrived. And as we speak, looking at the Steam leaderboard,

Powell World is the number four game in concurrent player count. Take us through this whole saga because ultimately Nintendo did put up something of a fight, but seemingly too little effect. Yeah, yeah, the thing with this, that Nintendo filed this patent lawsuit in Japan. And that was against, you know, several of the features that Powell had. One of them was throwing the Pokeball. And, you know, there was another one. Yeah, the Poggyball idea is very funny. and the riding, the writing of creatures.

And these did have an impact in that Power World did change the game. They did kind of adjust the way that the throwing of the PAL wall, I think it's called, PALSphere maybe. They did change the way that that worked. And they did change the way that the player rides their Pokemon. They have like a glider. hang on to their Pokemon anymore. So what did happen is that it did change Powerb a little bit. I don't know if that is satisfying to Nintendo and the Pokemon company. My guess is no. But yeah, this is still ongoing. I am not sure where it's out right now. It's hard to follow because it's in Japan. But the big part of this is that like it did work in some ways because Pal World did have to change the game. I don't know how far they're going to get past that. Yeah. It didn't. shut the game down. It obviously has not decreased its popularity or profitability at any

level. And yeah, it is called a PALSphere, which is legally distinct from a Pokeball. It's not an illegal gray area at all. So Nintendo, it seems like, did maybe overreach a little bit with its patents, because I recall reading maybe in your reporting, that the patent people actually got slightly sassy when they rejected these applications because it was like, Okay. And, you know, you don't want, again, you don't want creativity to be suppressed. Like if Nintendo had come along and invented Jumpman Mario and said, okay, jumping is our thing now. You can't jump in any other video games. Well, that would be a bummer. I quite enjoy jumping. So we want that to be preserved. But also, I think when a lot of people saw Power World, they were like, well, it's pretty clear what this is. Right. And it's definitely distinct. And it's original. Like, this is absolutely not the same. same as this just shameless shovelware cloning that we're talking about here. But it is, it seemed at the time to be a little too close for comfort, right? And so what is your read on

what the industry has learned from Nintendo's pretty impotent attempts to do anything about Powell World or, you know, is there any guidance like future developers can say, okay, as long as we kind of follow in the footsteps of PAL world, we're in the clear here. You know, I think that it comes down to the size of a studio, too. It's like, who are these big studios going to go after? If a game gets as big as PAL world, perhaps Nintendo would go there, which, like, is a risk because you don't know, you know, you don't know, maybe your game will blow it. Maybe PALWorld would have just, like, passed and nothing would have happened. And then that these lawsuits wouldn't happen.

But I think that game developers that I've spoken to about this, it sucks. People don't want to see a company like Nintendo trying to clamp down on, like, gameplay mechanics that one kind of existed a little bit before Pokemon. And two, like, have influenced the game industry in major, major ways. Like, that sucks. That sucks to see. And, like, I think it's scary for some.

some developers who have created games that use some of these mechanics in, you know, even in new or different ways, because like these sorts of games are very popular because they're inspired by Pokemon. And like that, that's just like, that's a part of the industry. Like, it's something that has all this influence and it kind of scares some developers. Yeah. So I do want consumer-friendly conditions and developer-friendly conditions, but also just putting myself in the shoes of someone who makes a game and puts a lot of labor and sweat into that, even if it's not some work of staggering genius, if you actually do breakthrough, which is so hard to do just because, you know, there are so many games and so much competition and people are playing the same five games year in and year out,

you know, not to mention vertical video and all the other things that are competing for entertainment time, you finally break through and have that success and you're the unicorn. And then suddenly you see everyone just swooping in to just, you know, be the barnacles on your back, basically, and just try to leach some sort of nourishment from your work, that would piss me off. So I don't know what the recourse is and how you sort of formulate regulations and how you even keep up with the pile of slop. But it does seem like some sort of reform, some sort of protection is in order here. Yeah, for sure. because like you said, like the copies are a,

the copies feel like a huge step away from a game that is inspired by a mechanic, like that is moving something forward in a newer novel way, like Mecha Chameleon. Like I don't think someone would say that Mechameleon is a copy of Hide and Seek, or maybe they would, but not like an egregious copy of hide and seek so much that it must be punished for it. Yeah. Because it does add this thing that is not. new that is novel and that pushes like this prop hunt as genre forward whereas like a game that

is mechicameleon paint and seek on roblox is an exact copy of that and i feel like that might be that's the line for a lot of people is like how far how far across the line have you gone but i think it becomes complex too because i don't know if this is just it's a lot and there's a lot there's a lot Yeah. And the concept of hide and seek goes back, at least to ancient Greece. So I think we're in the clear here. We're in the public domain. So to sum up all your reporting on this in various venues, is your sense that everyone is just sort of shrugging or throwing up their hands and saying this is an insuperable problem? Or it's impossible to predict anything in video games or elsewhere. But would you guess that given that this trend is not really going to subside, if, anything, it will probably only accelerate. Do you think that there is, whether it's self-policing, you know, some of these platforms or industry, just businesses, you know, affiliations, or the government,

or will someone come in here and do something in a lasting way to try to prevent this from spiraling further out of control? Or if we do this segment again, a decade down the road, will we still be limiting the same state of affairs. Yeah, you said this before, but the platforms aren't incentivized to really do anything. They're profiting from these viral hits that are copies. So I don't necessarily see a platform doing something unless it started hurting their bottom line. But I do think that there is an element of self-policing going on in the video game industry and the development communities.

Like in the case of Freya Homer's Tetris, like the rotating Tetris game, when these people came in and were posting these vibe-coded things, like the response to that wasn't like, oh, cool, I can play this. It was like, wow, no, we don't want this. Like, that's awful. Why would you even come here and post that? Like, it was almost entirely negative response to that sort of thing. People don't want that. And so perhaps that sort of self-policing will prevent the kind of egregious cloning that happened in that case. Maybe not prevent it, but maybe some folks will think twice about it. But I don't necessarily see like the government stepping in either. I think that the way this was going forward is like

the platforms need to start caring a little bit about this sort of thing for something to like actually change there. Yeah. Well, it's a dire state of affairs when we're looking to companies to police themselves or to the U.S. Congress, for that matter, neither of those impossible solutions inspires a whole lot of confidence in me right now. And, I mean, speaking of Congress and Roblox, there was a bipartisan letter sent last week to Roblox from Dick Durbin and Josh Holly. This was about child sexual abuse on Roblox specifically, not about game clones, but often these industry entities will take some steps to self-police or at least try to look like they are when they are worried about getting called onto the carpet in Congress and getting

grilled at some sort of hearing. And we've seen that sort of thing when it comes to, say, loot boxes, right, and some regulation around that. So maybe, maybe that's the way this will go under some administration in some bright future that may or may not come to pass. And until then, I guess you will have plenty to report on. Unfortunately, yes. Tremendous content for you and tremendous content for Buttonmash. I'm so glad that we could finally have you on. You are by far my favorite Nicole Carpenter.

Thank you. We have not and will not have the imaginary Nicole Carpenter on the podcast as far as I'm concerned. I do really appreciate that. Is there anywhere that people can find all of your work in one place? because that's a tall order because you're writing in so many places at such a pace that sometimes I'm wondering, what did Nicole write lately?

And I just sort of scan every possible place you might have written something. Is there any central clearinghouse or where would you recommend that people find you or follow you or your work? Gosh, I think probably like social media like blue skies where I will post some of it.

It's like Nicole Carpenter. It's like nicoat, blue sky, dot whatever that is. Yeah. And so, yeah, if you just search Nicole Carpenter on there, I perhaps will come up, but you have to make sure that it's real Nicole Carpenter and not AI Nicole Carpenter. Right, exactly. That is a very important distinction. Yes, yes, yes, yes. All right. Well, I'm not sure she's not blue skies. Yeah, no, not that I've seen. Well, I'm so glad that this bleak situation gave us a chance to chat.

Thank you again, Nicole. It was so great to talk to you. Well, imagine how much of the preceding segment would have been gobbledy good to you if you had not played video games for decades. That segment was sort of about how bad things have gotten, so let's devote this next segment to how good games have gotten. I'll be joined in just a moment by Human Time Capsule, Rani Jazeerley, to talk about how he got into games, had a whole other life and lost touch with gaming, and then recently got back into gaming to catch up on what he'd missed. Well, last week, a 40th anniversary remake of the classic 1986 strategy game, Defender of the Crown, came out on all platforms. It's called Defender of the Crown Legend Returns.

But Defender of the Crown is not the only legend who has recently returned to gaming. So has my next guest, Rani Jazeerle. Rani is a medical doctor, an occasional contributor to the ringer, and one of the founders of baseball prospectus. And for those in the audience who do not know ball, BP has been one of the most respected, influential, analytically oriented baseball publications for the past 30 years. So if you're wondering why MLB starting pitchers don't go deep into games anymore, well, it's Rani's fault. I mean, not entirely, but maybe a little bit.

Another thing that's partially Rani's fault is my media career because I started out at baseball prospectus. So without Ranny, there might not be a BP. Without BP, there might not be a Ben Lindberg writer and podcaster. Without Ben Lindberg, writer and podcaster, there wouldn't be a button mash. So Ranny, welcome to the show that in a roundabout, butterfly effect way you kind of created. Well, thank you so much for having me on. This is a very distinct honor for me.

I feel like I'm one of the very few people who has talked to you on like basically every podcast format that you've done. We've talked baseball and effective wild. We've talked about science fiction on the universe, and now we're talking video games on Buttonmash. So I continue to follow you around wherever you. And I am as pleasantly surprised as you are, that this particular conversation came about because you are now a button mash guest,

but you have been a button mash listener, which pleases me not only because I respect you in your work, but because of what it signifies about your connection or reconnection with gaming. And a lot of our listeners know the story of Rip Van Winkle, the Washington Irving character who had a little too much to drink one time in the Catskills, slept it off for 20 years and missed the Revolutionary War, we are here today to discuss a similar saga. It's the tale of Rani Van Winkle, a budding gamer who over-embibed on baseball stats

figuratively slept on gaming for 20 or maybe more like 30 years and missed the console wars. So like Rip, Rani reawakened in an unfamiliar, bewildering world. But I am pleased to report that Rani, the prodigal gamer, has recently returned to the fold and become a gamer again after his extended hiatus. And I hope that his gaming odyssey will be relatable for anyone who has struggled at times to maintain their ties to this demanding time intensive hobby because who hasn't. So Randy, take us back to the beginning, the early love affair with gaming when you and the original Defender of the Crown were young. How did you get into gaming?

So that was a bit of an exaggeration, but honestly, not by much. So, you know, I mean, we have to, I think gaming more than almost any other hobby, I think the age of the hobbyist is extremely relevant to their life experience in a hobby. So just to set that straight, I'm 51 years old. It was born in 1975, which in many ways was an ideal time to grow up as a gamer, because, you know, when I was a kid, the way I was a baby, certainly, the personal computer didn't even exist. And to see, you know, I got to see the full development of that. So my first memories of playing video games, like I think everybody in suburban America in 1982 or so, we had an Atari 2,600.

But even before that, we had the Magnavox. I think it might have had another name. I can't even remember what type of console it was, but an extremely primitive video game player, but a home video game player. You play Pong, which everyone knows Pong, right? So you go Pong, you move to the Atari 2,600. You know, we played, you know, the good games like Pitfall and Kaboom.

We played the bad games like E.T. And then in December of 1982 for Christmas, we're a Muslim, we don't celebrate Christmas, but I was happy to make an exception because my dad got me. my first computer, the Apple 2E, state of the art, and he thought he was getting it so that I could learn

to be, you know, proficient with software and programming. I saw it as an invitation to play video games to my heart's content. So for most of the 1980s, that computer and I and video games were all very tightly linked. And so, you know,

we'll get into the more recent history. It is funny how little I know of the gaming industry in the 21st century until the last couple of years. Given that in the 1980s, I was playing everything. I mean, people know the classics, you know, Ultima, the ultimate RPG, things like King's Quest, which were, you know, which were huge at the time. But I'm talking about games that even, I think if you're not a Gen Xer, you may have never heard of no matter how intense your game experience is. Load Runner, Apple Panic, Starblazer. These were extremely popular games that no one remembers. And the other thing that I find I'm using getting back into gaming now is how many games series there are today that have come.

There have been multiple iterations of where I played the very first one and haven't played sex. We did our NES 40th anniversary draft not long ago. A lot of those franchises date back to then. Metroid, Castlevania, Legend of Zelda, all these games are turning 40. Yep, we got that. We had the Nintendo when it came out.

We had the SNES when it came out. But, you know, even like, for instance, Prince of Persia. Like, I know, you know, and the original Prince of Persia bears no resemblance to what Prince of Persian looks like today, but the original Prince of Persia we played,

the original escape from Castle was in time. The original was, I mean, it wasn't a horror game, but when a Nazi SS-E would burst onto the screen in like incredibly low-res pixelation. It was as scary as any horror movie you could be. You could watch as an 8-year-old, certainly.

So, you know, I played those games, and then there have been seven or eight iterations since that I haven't played any of them. But anyway, throughout the 1980s, that was, yeah, that was my life, playing every video game. And, you know, we even talked about the sports games. And, of course, that was where my life would go to. But, like, every iteration from SSI football to Earl Weaver baseball, My brother and I just played just about everything that was on the market.

And things have con full circle. They're now maybe making a movie out of Pong. Who knew that that was such rich narrative IP, we will see? So you're on track, seemingly, to have a lifelong love of games. Fast forward 30 years, and you're a non-gaming, successful dermatologist and father of four. Where did it all go wrong, Rani? you know the funny thing of course i could ease very easily blame that though i could i could link those two things and then and you know make the claim that oh you know medical school and and and uh residency

and and fatherhood and uh being being a husband for i have one daughter was the reason but so yeah i have four but honestly i can't really i can't really blame them because um what what happened was i think i just substituted one gaming hobby for it another. I started college in 1991, and I had been living overseas for a few years prior to I did middle school and high school overseas. So coming back to America and living in a major league city, I was living in Baltimore, just blocks away from the old Memorial Stadium. And I was able to go to a baseball, major league baseball game, six blocks from my, for my, for my dorm, I just, you know, re-ignited my love for baseball.

And I just became such a enormous sports fan, above and beyond where I had been living overseas, where it's very difficult to. In fact, certainly back in the 80s, we didn't have internet, we didn't have satellite TV. So, you know, reading two-day-old news reports in like four newspapers was not exactly the best way to be a sports fan. So I found stratomatic baseball, which is, there is a video game. game version, but ultimately is a dice and cards-based game. And, you know, pretty soon I was starting my own leagues on campus.

And basically all my free time was going to either watching sports, mostly baseball, playing, you know, simulation baseball. And then eventually, not long after that, writing about baseball on the internet, originally on the bulletin boards of the time before the World Wide Web really was active. and then eventually on the web through, as you mentioned, baseball prospectus. And I remember this seminal moment in my, I think it was my sophomore year in 1993. I was leaving my dorm room to go play stratomatic with some friends. And as I'm leaving, a bunch of people in the college dorm

were sitting around a table playing a game. It looked kind of like Dungeons and Dragons, which I'd also played a ton of in the 80s, but with cards and, And it stimulated my interest. I went over and talked to them. And they're like, yeah, we're playing this brand new game. It's from Europe.

It's a huge sensation over there. It's called Magic to Gathering. And I'm like, well, that still looks interesting, but I'm going to play baseball now. And I almost feel like it was a fork in the road moment for me where my life could have gone in a very different direction. You know, I could have been hardcore sort of gamer slash fantasy slash RPG guy or I could be a sports guy. just didn't have the time for both. And I chose sports. And I can't say it was a bad decision.

I had a very, I could do occasionally have a lovely career as a sports writer. But it definitely like sort of sealed off a whole generation of console and PC gaming for me for the next quarter century. You could have been gathering along with everyone else and you rejected the magic. And in your years, wondering in the wilderness, the gaming wilderness, did you keep tabs on what was? going on? What caused you to feel the most fomo, whether it was games or consoles or technological innovations? Did you ever think about dipping back in or did it just become sort of a self-fulfilling and self-sustaining prophecy where the longer you were away, you know, video killed the radio star, Stratt killed Rani the gamer? And did you think about getting back into it or could you

not? What made you saddest to have forsaken this hobby? Well, I definitely kept tabs on what was going on in large part because my younger brother or Kant, who's just a year younger than me, he kind of, he went the path of the video game. He stayed loyal and true to his video game roots. And so, you know, I would, it would be a rare time. I could have seen where he wasn't playing some, you know, whether it was, I guess, Starcraft in the 90s. on the role of Warcraft later or command and conquer

the whole range of real-time strategy. And I didn't abandon video games entirely because before I really made that conversion, I had gotten into civilization, which I think the dirty little secret civilization, in my mind,

civilization isn't actually a video game. It's a board game that's just so complicated you need a computer to play it. Like, if the Borg invented civilization would be a board game, game to them. But I played, you know, over the last, you know, over the next 25 years, I've played probably more hours of civilization, the various iterations of it than anything else.

I played Age of Empires too, which I think, you know, everybody probably did at some point. So there was some, still some gaming in my lifetime throughout most of the 90s. I think the last game I really played was probably Half-Life, where I played start to finish, and then I had like essentially a 20-year hiatus. But I was always aware of what was going on in large part because, you know, my brother would still talk to me about video games and I'd still seen interest. And I still had interest. I just didn't have the time. Yeah.

So what brought you back? And I'm so happy to have you back. I feel like I should be chanting one of us, one of us. But what ultimately was it kids growing up giving you more time? Was it just games getting so good? Was it my podcasting about video games just persuaded you to come back to this world? What was the impetus? I mean, it was all of that for sure.

You know, my daughters, you know, they all had their kind of their video game phase. And, you know, we definitely had, you know, I've probably played more Mario Kart E than any other game still in the 21st century. So there was some of that, the joy of video games. games when they were younger, but they've kind of, I feel like they've all moved away. And I'm not, I certainly wouldn't try to push that on them. I mean, video games are a consuming hobby. Kind of like being a baseball fan. I didn't push that on them either. You have to, you have to be committed to it. So, and, but as they've gotten older and as my practice, my medical practice sort of developed and I've had a little bit more free time and the kids are a little bit more

independent, I found a way to start getting back in. And certainly I've seen over the years, there have been moments seeing just the development of technology, hardware software all coming together. There have been those seminal moments where I would see my brother or see a video of like a new game and just be like, oh my God, this is such a step four. I remember the first time, I mean, there have been several moments, but I remember the first time I think I was, I think it was on the end 64 the Super Mario 64 and the first kind of like

3D movement a real 3D movement in a game and that just blew me away the first time I saw NFL 2K on the Sega Dreamcast

it was like the first real 11 on 11 you could replay you could watch instant replay from any angle the first time my brother showed me oblivion

the the Bethesda game, which was an RPG, and the graphics on that, and like you could see individual blades of grass on the ground. The first time I saw, I remember GTA5, he had just gotten like an HD monitor set this at 2013.

And, you know, watching from a distance, the cityscape, you would almost think it was television. Like, there have been those moments where I'm just like, man,

I'm really missing out, like a lot more than I thought I was. So there were all those moments along the years. I think what finally was the impetus, I actually, strangely enough, was the invention of the steam deck. Okay. Because I finally had,

I'd been telling my brother for years. I'm like, you know, I just had like a portable, like, you know, do they have a game boy for PC, for, you know, PC gaming?

And he's like, no, no, they're not. But, you know, then he would, he'd sent me a link or whatever to,

you know, this is coming out. And it was almost like, I'll put my money more, my, you know, my mouth is moment where I've been talking about, well,

if I could just take it to work and just like put it, pick it up between patients and put it down, I'd start playing. And so the SteamGate came out, and I got the first one, and I downloaded a couple games, and yeah, it was fun.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. Games are good. It was great. And the thing, I mean, yeah, it's a small screen, and maybe the resolution thought they're great, but I mean, like, when you haven't played, you know,

a real, like, AAA game, when I was playing, they didn't have AAA for one thing. But the real, you know, real game in 20, 25 years, you know, even a game that was five or 10 years old

or didn't necessarily, you know, was it meant to be played on a small screen? Still looked great to me. So like my standards, one of the great things about getting back into game me now is my, my bar is still like every game. Yeah, right.

I was thinking about that. I mean, it's a big leap from the Commodore 64 to the N64 to where we are today. And you must have sort of this almost childlike wonder now, just dipping back into game. because if you've been a gamer continuously all that time, then you're jaded, you're cynical, you've seen it all. There are diminishing returns now with each console generation

where it's not the same as going from 8-bit to 64-bit or 2D to 3D or SD to HD. Now, okay, the loading times are faster and there are various quality of life improvements and it's maybe a little bit prettier, but it's harder to distinguish now between a game from, say, the 2010s and the 2020, versus a game from the 80s to the 90s or the 90s to the 2000s. But you, it's just knock me over with a feather.

I missed all these wonderful innovations. Everything is a marvelous, miraculous playground. You're just frolicking around. And, you know, if someone else is complaining about frame rates or something, you're like, well, compared to the 80s, this is a whole new world. You have to understand. Games that have voices is something. I'm still, you know, not 100% used to it. Like, they did not invent the, you know, the sound card on a PC or a console that could handle actual human voices speaking intelligent conversation until like maybe the early to mid-90s.

Around the time I got out of gaming is around the time where you could actually have voices. So that is still something I appreciate. And certainly, you know, one of the nice things about getting back into gaming now is like having, missed this whole generation, I can, I can like be really, really picky about what games I do play. Because like, I don't have to just like, okay, what's coming out this week? That's great. Like, you know, there are games from 15, 20 years ago that are fantastic.

And maybe like you said, maybe the resolution is it quite what it is today. But I feel like, I mentioned those seminal moments of like technology advances. The last one I really felt was with that GTA5 because it's not that game. aren't getting better, but that dramatic improvement, I feel like games were already so good 10, 15 years ago in terms of their graphics. And the problem, of course, now with the Unkney Valley is that, like, everything except the actual,

you know, human figures, I feel like, were already there. But, so I'm playing a game from 10 years ago. I'm fine with that. I'm playing right now. I think I'm playing Spider-Man remastered from, I think, 2018. So it's like, it's not, it's eight years old. But I'm like, this is absolutely gorgeous. Like, swing, you know, my web around New York City and, you know, it's open world. It looks fabulous. So honestly, the biggest adjustment for me is just getting used to like open world gaming and just how big the games are.

That's, I mean, a good thing, but honestly, I don't have, I mean, that, I still don't have like unlimited amounts of time. So like, my, my goal, I open a game, I'm like, okay, how quickly can I get, start to finish? forget the side quest. Let me just stick to the main quest because as soon as I finish this game, there's 100 more on my list. I've got Red Dead Redemption 2 sitting on it took advantage to some sales on Steam.

I've got Cyberpunk 27. I've got these games. I haven't even touched yet. So even if like, you know, the rampococalypse goes nuclear and like they don't come out with any new video games for the next five years. I think I'm going to be.

Yeah, so do you feel more pressure to catch up and your pile of shame is mountainous because you didn't play games for decades or do you feel a freedom from that? Do you feel liberated from that pressure because, well, I'll never catch up. I missed decades. So now I can just kind of curate my experience

and I can graze and I can hit some of the highlights and just take a leisurely tour. Yeah, no, definitely the latter. I mean, the former, the feeling of shame was that part of the difficulty getting back in. It's just like, the mountain is just too large to climb. And I finally just had to adjust my way of thinking. I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to hit the highlights. And that's my point. I can just be like, if this game isn't like absolutely

in my wheelhouse or really quick, you know, on on ButtMash a few months ago, you guys have talked about the game mixtape. And the one thing I heard from, took from that evaluation, oh, it's like a three-hour game. So I'm like, well then, okay, let me try. this out. And I'm like, and I enjoyed it. It was stayed with him. But that's perfect. Because I could actually that's a game I can cross off. Yes. So there is still that element of like the list is so long that anything I can just

cross off quickly. I'm going to go after. But I, I'm, my focus now is just like, I'm just playing the absolute best games and, you know, that I highly doubt that I will. I mean, if I get to the point, maybe when I'm retired in the hopefully not too distant future, where I've got

more time. Maybe, maybe I actually I'm all caught up, but I highly doubt I'm never going to get them. Yes, it is difficult to do. And I guess it's maybe giving you a skewed sense of how good games are because you are playing the greatest hits of the last 30 years. Maybe you don't have to play anything that's less than universally beloved. So from your perspective, wow, every game is incredible. So. And every game is cheap.

Well, that's true, too. That is the advantage. Yes. I mean, you guys have talked about, like, you know, I know there's concern, you know, GT6 is going to be, I think, what, $80 or $100 or the... And yet, look, I'm not... I don't want to poo-poo the cost of that, but, like, I'm pretty sure when Ultima 5 came out, which is still one of my all-time great

game-made experience, I believe it was $49.9. And you can throw that into an inflation calendar. We're talking about close to $200 for a game that, you know, was as expensive as anything we had seen at the time, but it's probably a 30- or 40-hour gig. So people, you know, even $80, the fact that games are... base games now are still $49.99 many times. AAA games, maybe $69.99. 30 years later, like, I know, I think because we're so used to the computer hardware,

like being the one industry in the entire world, that's subject to deflation with Moore's law. And, like, you know, there's more power on my cell phone than, you know, the entire Apollo space program or whatever. And, you know, the cost of hardware constantly getting cheaper. But, like, probably the cost of gaming is. relative to just about any other hobby is incredibly expensive. So I can pick up any game and if I like it, great enough not, I'm not going to throw a good time after bad. I'll move on to the next game that I can buy for 20 bucks

because it's five years old. Back in my day, we had to walk uphill both ways to the store to get the game that in inflation adjusted dollars, Ultima 5, March 1988, if it was 4999. It's only 14328 this month. But yes, I see what you're saying. But also, it is a really time-intensive hobby and an expensive hobby relative to some others, even if the bang for the buck is pretty good. There's still a high barrier to entry.

And so you wouldn't hear someone who loves movies say, yeah, I haven't watched a movie in 20 years, you know? That probably wouldn't happen. Maybe you get to the theater a little less than you used to, but there are so many ways to consume movies. it maybe only takes two hours. You can just kind of casually be a movie viewer, if not a hardcore cinephile. Whereas gaming, you have to really make a concerted decision that I'm going to be a gamer now. I mean, of course, you can be more of a casual gamer. You can play mobile games.

You can just dip into gaming. But the kind of gaming that you are doing now and that you were doing back in the day, you really have to, it's a life decision, you know, because you can't really sample. for one thing, you have to get the hardware. You know, it's not like you could just say, I'll pull my old Apple 2E out of storage and I'll play the latest sub seven or whatever. You know, you have to decide,

I'm going to get a Steam deck. That's not cheap. You actually have to decide I'm going to get some use out of that. And then you got a gaming rig after that, right? So the Steam deck was your gateway and then tell us how this progressed. Yeah, so the Steam deck was definitely kind of a proof of concept that I'm like, yes, I think I'm ready for this. I think I can do more.

And so, yes, my brother was a great help. Instead of buying one off the shelf of gaming rate, he, you know, he knew all the components, which GPU, which whichever. I couldn't even tell you all the different parts. I just know that when we got it, it was not exactly state of the yard, but it was, I think I paid probably wrap. about $1,500. This was prior to the shelf, that would have been off the shelf. That would have been off the shelf.

It was about two years ago. So actually, it's a rare thing where it's like, gee, I'm not, I think, I think I might be playing on that rig for a while. And then throwing in a 42 inch OLED that completed the set. And yeah,

I mean, look, you know, game, the modern games are great on any format, but yeah, when you put that together, the problem, of course, now is I've got to put down the steam deck

because I'm just like, I can't go back to looking at a, seven-inch street. I'm sorry. I love it. It's great, but no. And so yeah, so that's the rig. And then the other modern amenity that was just completely foreign in the day was the ability to play it online with friends. So actually, probably the game I've played the most here since I got back into it was Baldoskeek 3 because I played in a campaign with friends. And as somebody who did also grow up playing Dungeons and Dragons and loved the game, but always struggled to find people to play with or find, you know, a campaign that had been well designed.

To me, that was that, that, that campaign was almost like the apotheosis of not just being a gamer, but also being a D&D enthusiast. It really had the best of both worlds. We probably put in, my computer, Steam says I put in about 160 hours. I think about a quarter of that was just like connectivity issues, trying to make sure everybody was online at the same time and waiting around. but an absolutely gorgeous game and then obviously open-ended the number of options are just bewildering

yes I am back in my day going up the old ways when I see the games today I'm sorry if there's any hobby in the world where somebody who you're not even that old I'm sorry I'm 51 I'm not 91 but somebody my age can be like you guys have no idea how good you have it today I think gaming qualifies there's just

is a quantum leap forward every 10 years. It's all right. Simple math. That is what wars law nuts. It just makes computers unrecognizable from each other. The other nice thing is if you're worried about the expenses associated with gaming, just wait 20 years and you can pick up those games cheap. So you can just play GTA6 in 2046 or something and it'll be budget priced by then.

So that's the life hack. I finished GTA5. I bought GTA5 for half off. whatever it was when it came out two years ago and, you know, thoroughly enjoyed the mayhem. Yeah. Don't be a prisoner of the moment. You get great discounts that way. So maybe it's good that you've given up the steam deck sort of because I'm imagining you just getting so hooked that you're, you know, doing a skin cancer screening and sneaking the steam deck under the table at the same time.

But was there a particular game? What was your first purchase on the steam deck or what was the game that you devoted the most time to? So actually, the game I devoted the most time to on the Steam deck was Hogwarts Legacy, which I actually was, I really enjoyed that. And it was a game that, for a variety of reasons, I think, opinions were very split on. But I was looking forward to just a way to kind of get into game in a sort of familiar context, having read all the Harry Potter books, I just felt like I would understand what's going on. It's a well-designed game.

the game controls are fairly easy to pick up and your combat moves layer on top of each other is you get more experience. It's incredibly open world. You can walk, you know, explore every nook and cranny of Hogwarts. It tickled a lot of different parts of my

you know, my brain in terms of the hobbies and the things that I like to do. And having, you know, I think I put in like 70, 75 hours on that game. And, you know, mostly a work between patients over the course of maybe a year.

And after having finished that game, that's when I was like, okay, well, if I, this wasn't even a game that was like, you know, game of the year candidate necessarily. So since then, that's when I decided, okay, I'm ready for more challenges. Play GTA, play Baldur's Gate. I really enjoyed the Indiana Jones and the great circle when it came out. As somebody who played the original Indiana Jones in the last crusade in 1989, which was a fantastic game in its era. And I think I found it on one of the retro websites, you know, a year or two ago.

I'm like, oh, let me play this again. And I got about five minutes in. I'm like, oh, yeah, I can't go back to this. These controls are inscrutable. The resolution is terrible. Like, the sound is eight bit. Like, no, I'm not doing this any longer. I'm going to stay in the longer.

Along those lines. So is there any gaming convention that you have now become familiar with? What was the hardest to adopt were you like? like, oh, we've got two joysticks now. We've got multiple thumbsticks. I don't know if you're playing on game pads or not or controllers. But was there anything that wasn't just wondrous and, wow, look at what they've come up with? But more of, oh, this is actually tough for me to get on board with.

Or even where has gaming gone wrong? I wish it were more like it was back in the day. And there are too many bells and whistles or too much complexity or something along those lines. That's a really good question. No, the control is, I mean, you know, I go back to the era of the actual, like, Atari joystick, which was looking back, there had to have been a better way to control things back.

Looking back, so no, the current setup with multiple, you know, using both hands, multiple, you know, the pads and sticks at the same time, the triggers, the, you know, top and bottom buttons for your fingers, I this is this is a much much more preferable system um I honestly the biggest adjustment to me is like I said just how open world things are it's really you know

there's the the concept of the paradox of choice and like you know when you have a million choices of what cereal you're going to you want to buy like people are less happy than if they just have three because they're always convinced no matter what they end up choosing that they could have made a better choice and I feel a little bit of that when I go when I play an open world game because I'm just like

I could go here, I can go there, I could go anywhere and I don't have unlimited amounts of time, right? Like I have to make it. So there is some appeal to linear to linear gaming. You know, I'm not the first person to say this,

but I mean, one of the, certainly one of the more unique experiences playing game since I got back into it was playing the last of us. You know, because there's something to be said about just like narrative stories. storytelling and kind of almost like the interactive movie of just we're telling you a story in a different way from a movie or a television series but it's ultimately you're experiencing a story and you just get to game along the way and and you don't have to think too much about the

choices you just have to like kill the bad guys so so that's I think that is the thing I'm still getting getting used to in these games is just how to I focus myself to when I've got an open roll. And one of the choices I made is I'm just going to stick to the main plot. I'm not going to chase any side quest because I'll never get through it all. It's true. Sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination. You want to stop and smell the roses.

So for the young whippersnappers in the audience who were not around for the original defender of the crown. And I don't think I can call myself a young whippersnapper, but I was born a month or two after that game came out. So for these purposes, I suppose I qualify. tell me what that was like at the time and then also whether the legend's return was worth the wait. So it was a really good game. It's one of those games where you kind of secretly liked it and didn't realize that everyone else secretly liked it too.

It was kind of a progenitor of like the 4X game where you conquer territory and you know, you expand. And if you own a territory, you get resources from it that allow you to build an army for the next turn. So, you know, this is I think came out five years before civilization. But it was kind of the same model. You're in medieval England and you're a knight trying to restore the, you know, the crown to its rightful air, I.E.U. I think you can call on Robin Hood to help you a few times in the game. The original was a lot of fun and really enjoyed it. So when I heard this was coming out, I'm like, you know what, this is, it's going to be worth the nostalgia trip.

And so the new game, it comes in three modes. One is retro mode, which is literally the original game just ported to modern computers essentially identically. And I tried that for, again, about five minutes. And I realized, no, I can't do this because, I mean, if nothing else, just the fact that you're playing a game that was built for monitors, 17-inch monitors with like 200 by 144 resolution and playing that on an OLED screen, like each individual pixel is massive. It just doesn't look right. So they created a sort of just a classic mode, which is the game upgraded for the modern era.

And I had, you know, it was a great nostalgia trip for about two hours. And I finished the game and won the game. And then I'm like, you know, we've come a long way. Some things are best left in the past. Yeah, we've come a long way. And I mean, one of my biggest complaints with it, honestly, it was just they just remade the game. Like, or they just replicated the game, I guess I should say.

They didn't really remake it. I think it would have been a lot more fun. It actually not just said, okay, we're going to take a 1986 game, improve the graphics a little bit, make it run smoother and call it a day. Like actually, you know, taking advantage of 40 years of technology to actually make a bigger game, a game that has a lot more than just conquer territory. I mean, it's not even as resource. It's not even a resource management game like an age of empires. It's just gold. The only thing you can collect is gold and the only thing you can spend is gold.

So I thought that it just had a very quick half-life before my enjoyment. So if you are somebody who just wants to know what a game from the 1980s looks like, what it was like the game back then, I think it might be worth your 1999. If like me, you have received a personalized invitation from the AARP to join and actually remember the original game. It was fun to revisit for a couple of hours. but I actually I think it was almost too faithful to the original

there's also a third version which is like a rogue light where you're playing with cards and dice and that's I guess where they put by all the resources of like trying to create a new game

and I just don't know what the purpose of that was like this was a kind of an adventure game where you were supposed to be a knight running around and you know you have sword fights and you know supposed to rescue dambles and distress

I just don't see how you replicate the emotion of that by collecting cards and roll-in-face. So I do not, I cannot recommend this to anybody, but the devoted, the devoted fan, I guess. You are aging great, maybe even better than Defender of the Crown. The Legend returns. Has anyone accused you, by the way, of this being a midlife crisis of your getting back into gaming? I guess it would be one of the less destructive kinds, probably.

But has that accusation been lodged against you? I think I hear it every night for my wife, yes. But, you know, we're going to be empty nesters in about four years. So if she thinks I'm bad now, she's just wait, honey. And yes, as midlife crises goes, it was this or buy a Porsche. Yes. So I'm good with this. And again, I mean, like, the funny thing is, you know, as a kid, gaming was for kids, right?

And then now it's for everybody. I almost feel like the median age of, you know, they'll see these sometimes in surveys where, you know, they'll say the median age of a, you know, of a gamer today is, and it was always like my age, whatever my age was at that time, whether I was 13 or 39, now I'm probably aging out a little bit. But the point is like, you know, growing up, you didn't see adults playing games.

Even now, you probably don't see guys, you don't see people in the assisted living facilities playing a lot of video games. I think there was a brief moment with the, with the Wii, where they would have, like, you'd have people, you know, 80-year-olds playing wee bowling or whatever. But I absolutely, you know, some guys are going to be golfing when they're in their 70s and 80s. As long as my thumbs are still working, I think I'll be indoors doing my... They've got a lot of golf games so you can do it that way.

So to sum up then, what have you learned from this experience? Because I hope that some people could take something away from this, because I think we've all had our times where we've fallen off at least a little bit, maybe not for decades or to the extent that you did. But, you know, you have some sort of life change, a new job, you go to school, you stop school, your friend group sort of dissociates, whatever happens. And, you know, even when I was between hosting video game podcast between achievement oriented and button mash, I didn't play as many games. I didn't love gaming any less. I just had a harder time fitting it into my life when it wasn't my job, or at least part of my job. So for those who maybe have experienced

some of the same, you know, I'm getting older, this just doesn't fit into my life the way that it once did. What's your advice for fitting gaming into a busy life? So, well, I mean, obviously, it's never too late to come back. Like, the games will be there for you whenever you want. And I think also it's like, there is no one right way to game. There's, you know, the Ben Lindberg way, but there's also the range of the way. It's like just, you know, find one game you love and play to your heart's content if, you know,

if it's a replayable or just pick the highlights like I am or, you know, if you're only into horror, I don't know why you would be, but if you're only into horrid, just play horror. Like the sheer variety. And I talk about like the open world aspect of the games. Part of the problem is the open world aspect of like my Steam account. You know, as a kid, we were, you know,

quite limited in the number of games. we could play. Like, you would go every week to your local game store and hope there would be a new title. And now it's just, you know, every week there's like dozens, hundreds. How many, how many we've released last year? Like, 17,000 games on Steam, something crazy like that. Like, that's part of the issue. It's just like there is a game out there for everyone. And there are lots of them. So I guess just you can, you can be picky. You can be thought picky. You can do whatever you want. But games are They're not going anywhere, they're only getting bigger. And even if you're not a gamer now, one day you probably will be.

I hope so. It's never too late to start or to get back into it. I feel like I've just never left, never land, really, because my interests and hobbies are the same as they were when I was 11 or whatever. And I just kept doing them, which I don't know what that says about me and my arrested adolescence. But here we are. But it's... Well, the dirty little secret, Ben, is. I think I'm the same way.

It's just that I did, like you said, I did walk away, but I couldn't, I couldn't walk away forever. It was still, it's still a part of me. And I, and I, and I, I'm not sure whether this is the dark side or the light side, but whichever it is, I'm glad that you have come back to it. And I hope it sticks this time. And it seems like gaming has its hooks in you. And from now to the grave, you'll be a gamer, I hope. I think I will be. Thank you, Rani.

Great talking to you. Okay. If you were stuck in the waiting room while Rani was. talking to me, Dr. Gizzerli will see you now. And I will see you out of this episode because we have come to the end of a gem-packed pod. But there is so much to stay tuned for. Take 2 is issuing subpoenas and calling out the tanks in search of cyber leak that wanted levels up to six stars. But so is the wanted level for Grand Theft Auto 6. We'll be back next week to talk about the official extended look. And it'll be back-to-back buttonashes because shortly after that,

we will return to talk Star Wars Zero Company. And then the real onslaught starts. You can contact us at Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com. Thanks as always for listening. Thanks to Steve Allman for producing this podcast and to our junior ramble pal for his senior podcast management. Cyberbutton Mash. We'll be back next week.