The Ringer-Verse - January Gems and Horror Adaptations (With Markiplier!) | Button Mash

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Who says the year is starting slowly? In Patch Notes, Ben and Matt break down the release of hot-button free-to-play shooter 'Highguard,' the latest signs of decline at Ubisoft, and highlights from Microsoft's Xbox Developer Direct. Then they go on a Side Quest to discuss Matt's panic purchase of a gaming PC before reaching their Main Quest: spoiler-free recommendations for four indie gems from January (their Game of the Young Year, 'Cairn,' plus 'Mio: Memories in Orbit,' 'TR-49,' and 'Perfect Tides: Station to Station'). After that, they play Mash or Pass with new big-screen adaptation 'Return to Silent Hill.' Finally, Ben brings on gaming YouTube legend Markiplier to discuss his horror adaptation: the self-financed film ‘Iron Lung.’ Email us at [e-mail]! Patch Notes: ‘Highguard' launch, Ubisoft restructuring and Xbox (4:06) Side Quest: Matt James is a PC gamer! (22:08) Main Quest: January Gems (26:32) 'Cairn' (28:53) 'Mio: Memories in Orbit' (40:45) 'TR-49' (43:53) Perfect Tides: ’Station to Station' (45:41)Mash or Pass: 'Return to Silent Hill' (49:03) The Markiplier Interview (01:02:31) Host: Ben LindberghGuest: Matt James and MarkiplierProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executive is on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again?

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And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Hello and welcome into the ringerverse,

your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor for the ringer and ringleader of Butt Match back with you for a departure from our regularly scheduled fallout recaps. Only one of those left. This time, we're talking about a couple of other games. game adaptations, but also some actual games. You know, those interactive things the movies and TV shows are adapted from. Later on this episode, I will be joined by one of the great gaming adjacent YouTubers, Mark, Markiplier, Fishbach, to talk about his movie adaptation of the 2022

horror game Iron Lung, which is in theaters, a surprisingly large number of theaters now. But before I bring in the guy with 38 million YouTube subscribers, I'm joined by a man who has, to my knowledge, Zero. YouTube subscribers. Ringer, deputy art lead, Matt, Matt, Blyer, James. I could probably get a few, you know, if I tried. I'd probably get, like, yeah, I start a channel. Have you YouTubeed in your life? Do you have a hidden channel I don't know about?

Yeah. It's not talking about that. Oh, wow. Okay. I could get 10 subscribers, Ben, okay? Do you have some edge-lord behavior in your deep? No, no, nothing like Steve. Nothing like Steve Alman in the call.

His toxic language in the called duty lobby. Well, that's good to know. Yeah. I was just wondering if there might be some secret YouTubeing in your past, like how Timothy Shalamee had a channel where he showed off his modded and customized Xbox 360 controllers. Yeah, it was called Modded Controller 360. Actually, you can't look it up. I was going to say look it up, but you can't because it's been removed, sadly.

But it was about 15 years ago. I remember. Yeah, that's the thing because other people have reposted it. You can find it. But evidently, Josh Safdi told him to tap into his controller hustling spirit to play Marty Supreme. So it was always in him. That glimmer of stardom expressed via video games. So Timothy, same.

Same Ben-Bin-Mash. Yes. Timothy, come on button-mash. We'll talk about controllers. We have so much in common. Yeah. We won't talk about controllers today because we have so much else to discuss. And we have some segments today, which we're going to experiment.

Nothing's really changing about the show. the actual content. We're still going to be talking about the things we would usually talk about. But as the ghoul says on Fallout, never underestimate the power of brand recognition. So we're just going to name the things that we are talking about, as suggested by super producer, Devin Rulado. So we're going to lead off with some news items. And then we'll talk about some new games with a brief departure, a brief diversion into a personal story about gaming that you care to share. And then we'll get to our main conversation, which will be about some January gems, some indies that have come out in a slow month for gaming that we have played

and enjoyed. And then finally, we will play MASH or Pass and we will rate return to Silent Hill, the new movie that is based on Silent Hill, too. We'll get to that. So very, very telling tone there. I don't want to spoil whether we will Mash or Pass there. I want to preserve some suspense. But let's lead off with our patch notes. This is some quick hit news items that we've been tracking. And we've got to start with the game of the moment, High Guard. Not to be confused with High Garden, seat of house Tyrell. This is High Guard, the game, which is from Wild Light Entertainment. It's a new studio that is composed largely, though not entirely, of veterans of apex legends and Titanfall from respawn. This game is an online, free-to-play,

PVP hero, raid shooter, throw in some other genres and buzzwords and they probably apply. And this was, of course,

the game that came to everyone's attention because it was the closer at the Game of Wars quite controversially. And now, more than a month

later, it is out after radio silence in the interim for PS5, Xbox, and Windows. And boy, people have opinions about High Guard,

Matt. What have you? This furor that has been caused by the launch of this game. Wow. Well, it's been an interesting week. You know, Jeff Keeley, the main guy of the Game Awards there who stuck a limb out there to put High Guard in the closing spot

has seemingly been dealing with a lot of internet reactions specifically directed at him this week. Shortly before the game was released, I believe he posted online saying, I will begin accepting your apologies in 48 hours when High Guard drops. And it dropped. And there weren't that many people apologizing. No.

Yeah, it's been divisive to say the least. It peaked at about 100,000 players on Steam. So it obviously generated some interest. Yes, the publicity works. Yeah. Did it backfire? This is a test of the contention that all news is good news. There's no such thing as bad PR.

Because according to the high, High Guard dev. So it was just utter silence for six weeks or so after that big reveal at TGA. And everyone was wondering, because of the backlash to that trailer, are they putting this thing on ice? Are they delaying it? Are they changing it? No, they came out with it as scheduled January 26th and didn't change anything really significant. They have since said, because they've done a round press, that their plan all along was just a sort of shadow drop it, just to launch it quietly, like Apex was launched. And then Jeff Keeley, came along and said, hey, I like your game. How would you like to close the game awards?

And so they said, oh, sure, that seems like good exposure. And now the question is, was it good exposure? We have heard of High Guard because of that, probably. That's a big part of why it came to everyone's attention. But that immediately put the onus on the game because people were expecting something else in that slot, in that big, here's the showstopper, here's what you've been waiting for for three hours. And then it was High Guard. which seemed to cause some live service fatigue. Oh, yeah, big time. And I get how you don't turn that slot down, right?

Yeah. But at the same time, I feel like this would have been much better served closer to their original plan and not even releasing, but perhaps releasing into a closed beta where they could have gotten a lot of community and player feedback and without expectations, I think there would be a lot more of a glass-half-full approach from people who maybe weren't fully satisfied with the game, pitching in feedback to hopefully get it to a better place because what's happened instead is it's launched,

and there are a lot of criticisms that I think are very valid outside of the hype machine with this game that could have been avoided if this were not a full release. These are things that could be ironed out before they're ready to say this is the game. Yeah. I'm sort of sick of the mob and the pitchforks that come for any. Because there are people who are reveling in this game's reaction or reception and want it to fail just because they sort of see it as an avatar of not another hero shooter, not another free-to-play live service game.

I get it. I feel that fatigue, too. It's not my jam exactly. And yet I don't want to rush to judge it. on a thing just because of when and where its trailer happened to debut. And I actually thought when we did our Game Awards reaction pod, I said, look, this was kind of maybe miscast where it was in the show. But the game itself looks pretty intriguing to me.

And it's coming from people who obviously have the pedigree. They've made some great games. I like the idea of just riding around and shooting it. It was like, you know, yeah, sort of a Concord-esque, is this actually going to carve out its own corner? or will just be more of the same. But people are just coming for this thing, really all out of step with how good the game is.

I understand that there are performance problems. There are some issues, but people are just eager to dance on the grave. Yeah, and there's been a lot of issues that people have had with it from performance to the size of the maps, to the amounts of time that you're waiting, to the fact that you have to sort of time

your hits of your axe to break the crystals that turn into currents. There's a lot of stages to each match. Yeah, and it's three on three with giant battlefield size maps or the size people wish battlefield maps were now. So, yeah, there are some kinks to iron out here, right? But it's not a flaming mess. It's not just completely terrible or broken or garbage. And it just seemed like everyone was waiting, thirsting.

to feast on High Guard. It seems like just a mix of a lot of well-worn territory into one hodge-podge that doesn't quite gel in its current form. I think people have a really, they have a strong reaction to games that feel like maybe some elements of it were conceived to emulate very well-worn paths that other games have taken, you know? You can't just kind of put out a game that visually has the art style of many other games that came before it with elements that are barred from many different other games unless you slap a Marvel license on it, of course. Shots at rivals.

Otherwise, people really react negatively to feeling like the creative direction of something was motivated by the successes of other games before it. Yeah. I'm saying is give games a chance, don't prejudge based on what you see in a trailer or when that trailer is revealed. You know, it's not predatory. It's just maybe it's not original enough. Maybe it doesn't stand out enough to seduce people away from the live service free to play online games that they already play. That's a tough thing for anyone. It's very tough.

Yeah, but judge the game on its own merits. I'm not saying it's a great game and it's got growing pains, you know. But it's not horrible. Yeah, it's not horrible. I don't think it's bad. I just, I know that, and again, I'm not the target audience for this kind of thing anyway. And then the fact that it got me to even, you know, try a multiplayer online hero shooter is, you know, that's something. I don't normally do that.

And I stepped into it. And I felt that I have no desire to do this. Which suggests that there was some value to the buzz at least. that it built that you wanted to try it because the conversation was going on. So, yeah, the way it was rolled out was both a blessing and a curse clearly. And it was saddled with a lot of expectations.

And yes, being horrible is not enough, as Concord showed. But it is, you know, I'm not dunking on high guard. I hope that high guard eventually gets good. So it's just interesting to think about the difference between like a free-to-play game and a game that costs $40. And what the fall off looks, looks like for those games, right?

Because I think Concord obviously failed spectacularly because they couldn't get people in the door as a game that costs money to get into. Whereas, you know, High Guard being completely free to try, it gets you 100,000 people. I'm sure Concord would have gotten probably similar numbers if it had been free to play at the jump. But the one downside to having a free to play game is that people have no hesitation to hop out of something that they have no financial investment. Yes, there's no

investment. There's no sunk cost. It's just try it, didn't have to buy it. Okay, our next note concerns Ubisoft and the latest signs of the Ubipocalypse. Ubisoft has announced the details of its restructuring, which will organize development of its games into five so-called creative houses dedicated to different types of games. They are also closing some studios. They're mandating in office work for folks who were working remotely, and they're delaying or canceling quite a few games, including the cancellation of the forever in development, but no longer, evidently, Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time. And man, I thought after Silk Song and Metroid Prime 4 finally came out last year, we were in a new world where games that we've been waiting for

forever would eventually make it. But no, not Prince of Persia Sands of Time. This is the first game, I think highlighted in our pod earlier this month about games to look forward to our games we were hyped about. So close. Already canceled. Didn't take long. So, yeah. The sad thing, it was almost done.

It was evidently almost at the finish line and they pulled the plug. So crazy. And even crazier is that there's apparently beyond good and evil too is not one of the games that was outright canceled, which is if you don't know, a game that had. has been in development for. I honestly don't know how long. Two decades. Yeah.

So that was surprising that that one didn't get the ax. And to axe a project so close to release that people are getting excited for, man, Ubisoft just continues to be an absolute mess. Yeah. It's sad to see. It is. Yeah. And it feels like just a slow death spiral, just a slow circling of the,

the drain. I hope that's not the case. They've cut headcount. They still employ many, many thousands of developers in studios across the world. So if Ubisoft does go under at some point, that would be pretty devastating to the industry. And it's stock price, it's share price. If you own Ubisoft, my condolences, you know, they say you can't get anything for a dollar anymore. You can now buy a share of Ubisoft for a dollar. So there's that at least, though I don't know what that will be worth. But it is sad to see. You know, they still make games that we play and enjoy. But they're just, they're kind of doubling down on open world, live service, AI, of course,

which it seems like a lot of that sort of samey trend chasing is maybe what got them into this mess in the first place. So the reorganizing, you know, maybe that's just staving off the inevitable. But that can make sense to have different creative houses inside of one giant publisher and developer. You know, Nintendo's done that for decades. That can work to focus people on certain types of games, but it's hard to see it as anything other than just sort of a reshuffling of the actual productive, profitable franchises into certain places with 10-cent investment. And it just seems like at some point there's going to be either an acquisition or maybe the founding family that's been in control all this time will finally be forced out. Just something more significant has to change probably than this to reverse the trend. Yeah, and whenever you do a full return to office, that's a soft layoff wave essentially.

Right, yeah. Because you know that a certain percentage of your employees are going to say, I can't do that, I won't do that. And all of a sudden, their salary is not on your books anymore. And that is very annoying and tragic when companies decide to do that. And also another thing is when you have an entire UBESOP working in the same building together, right, you could argue that I think the upper management is probably arguing that, okay, we can all be on the same page this way. But I think what's going to end up happening is that the projects that are worth the most money to them, obviously, are going to be able to quickly pull talent off of other potentially more risky or creative projects just to make. make sure that, you know, the dollar is most attended to. I think that's something you might see now that some of these groups of developers

don't have their kind of distance from the mothership. But we'll see. That's all speculation. I feel sorry for anyone on that Ubisoft ship. I'm sure the morale is not tip-top over there. No. Yeah. As long as it's not one of the many UByshaft ship games that has gone down.

in flames. And by the way, Black Flag, Assassin's Creed 4, that remake, still unannounced, still unofficial, but also seems to have maybe been delayed here. But as long as it doesn't go down with the ship like Skull and Bones did, but that's how they got here. I guess the upside the silver lining would be maybe concentrating development in certain places that have specialty and expertise in a certain kind of gaming could be good. You know, something like Prince of Persia the Lost Crown, which didn't sell super well, but we have. absolutely loved. Maybe that's an example of a more focused development process, paying dividends and having more of a personal stamp on a game as opposed to the games that they've made that

just 12 different studios around the world contribute to. And then maybe just the idiosyncrasies get sanded down and they just start to seem sort of generic. So we will monitor the situation. Our final note is related to Xbox. So Xbox hardware revenue down by 32% in the final quarter of last year. Nobody is buying Xboxes, except in the sense that every streaming device is ostensibly an Xbox, or so Microsoft would like you to think. However, Xbox games aren't going away, and we did just get a sneak peek at some of the upcoming big ones at the Xbox Developer Direct, where Fable was shown, Forza Horizon 6 was shown, along with an online multiplayer pottery party brawler, definitely a genre that has existed before from Double Fine, and

Beast of Reincarnation, a game from Pokemon Maker, Game Freak. So what do you think of what we saw anything catch your eye? Yeah, I mean, to a degree, everything caught my eye. Obviously, you know, Forza Horizon is probably the biggest layup of a recurring game that Xbox has in the tank. Those games are always fun, and the setting of Japan really seems like it's going to be a fun setting for that game. They don't have to change that formula much at all for that to be a great success. Just taking the previous game and throwing in Japan is probably enough for most people

to consider that a worthwhile game to play. So I'm looking at that being their biggest success of the year. But Fable impressed as well. I think tonally that that game continues to feel unique and special and we'll just have to wait to see how that gameplay actually ends up being kiln from double fine i probably i mean let's let's be honest the most appealing thing about that to me was the fact that it's from double fine which is the same thing i said about their last year last year yes which i felt underwhelmed by um so i'm hoping for more i just loved Schaefer and I love Double Fine and I'm rooting for them at every opportunity.

Hopefully, Kieln is a lot of fun. I will give it a try. Hopefully it will stick longer than High Guard as for me. Yeah. And then is it beast? Beasts. Only one beast. One beast.

The sequel might be the single of reincarnation. Large beast that you're walking around a beast of reincarnation. That looked intriguing as well. You know, it's just weird to see such a great. graphical fidelity coming out of a team that makes Pokemon games. It's just jarring. I know. Yeah, happy for them that they get to do something different, at least part of the time,

because there's a ton of Pokemon coming this year, too. But yes, they're branching out a bit. They're spreading their wings. The gameplay seems interesting. Do you think? Yeah, I think so. And I've resolved to just be a big Forza Horizon guy now. I'm just, that's one of my resolutions for 2026.

So May 19th is Wednesday. Sports is coming. It's a very easy resolution. Yes, we'll see. I like driving games, but not always racing games, but this has intrigued me. So this is the one I hope that will finally click for me. And Fable, I was worried, would slip past this year. And it still could, of course, but they seem to be doubling down on fall.

And, man, it's been a long time since I had a chance to play any new Fable. So excited. Okay. So as we segue to our main question, Just a brief digression here, our side quest, which is sort of a shorter personal testimonial story. And I guess it's related to some news because Intel just announced that it's prioritizing data centers instead of processors for consumers. So ride that AI bubble, baby.

Prices are going to go up. Just the latest indication the demand for chips is outstripping supply. And so you have chosen this moment to get a gaming PC. which seems like a strange time, except that I guess you're banking on it becoming an even worse time to do that. So you're just kind of cutting your losses. Yeah. Yeah.

I've been reading the headlines. I've been listening to some people online. And I got scared because I, you know, I have been sitting around patiently waiting for news of this next Xbox machine that could potentially be a PC. And it just seems like everyone, is pivoting their business. All of all of the technology makers

of RAM and processors are saying, hey, consumers, we don't care about you anymore because we decided that we can make more money selling and developing our products for AI data centers. And as a result, costs are going way up.

Yep, the percentage of RAM being manufactured that's going directly to AI data centers, I think it's somewhere near 40%. If I read correct, I got scared because I can see the trend of a lot of the gaming world moving to PC. We don't know when there's going to be a PS6. We don't know what's going out with this Xbox. And I picked this moment, which is not a great moment, but maybe in a few months it will look

like a better moment than it will be. I don't know. I found a deal. I shot my shot. And now directly behind this laptop is a large gaming PC, which I haven't had a desktop PC in roughly 25 years. Yeah. What's your rig?

You have a transparent case? You got some LEDs on there? It's very hard. Water cooled? It's very hard to get a good gaming PC that doesn't look like I have an energy drink addiction. Yeah. And I did not pass that test. Oh, no.

it's got a whole bunch of LEDs which I've learned to reel in. Yeah, it's been an experience. You know, we're going to talk about Karen a little bit later. We were blessed with some review codes for Karen. And you had a Steam code for me. And I said, okay, let me see if this will run on my handheld gaming PC. And I could not get quite to 20 frames for second on that.

Yeah. And now I'm good. Nice. It's funny because Karen, you wouldn't think of Karen as a real resource hog, exactly, but that was the one that pushed you. Well, maybe, yeah. But congrats, I'm happy for you. Just in time for High Guard.

That's what this is all about. I just had to make sure my machine could run a high guard. To upgrade your rig for High Guards. That's right. Yeah. I'm sure most people did that in the past month, just to make sure. Just in case Jeff Keely's word could be trusted. Yeah, well, that was the thing.

That's, you know, in Keely, we trust, right? Is he going to hand over that Primo slot to a game that's garbage? He certainly seemed to think it was good, you know? There was no pay for play. He denied that he had any financial stake in High Guard success. It was purely for love of the game, his loss, at least, not everyone else's. So I'm happy for you. Okay game.

Yeah, you're well equipped now. You can just, you can handle anything the gaming world throws at you. And I'm still waiting for my Steam machine. Not that that's going to be top of the line gaming PC. And who knows when it will arrive and what it will come. cost given everything we just talked about. But hoping that the steam machine can make that manageable for me. And everyone's kind of counting on the steam frame, the VR headset from Valve to revive

the flagging fortunes of VR now that Facebook meta has really downsized its VR business and closed some VR studios. So there's a lot riding on Valve. And there's still a lot. We don't know about that. But that'll be the subject of a future patch note, I'm sure. We've gotten to our main quest, our main topic here. And here's the idea.

This is January, dumpuary, as some people call it. And it's not a high time. It's a high guard time. But it's not a high time for gaming releases in general. But that doesn't mean that there aren't some indie gems. So we wanted to talk about some January gems that have come along here. And, you know, the big name, the AAAs, they'll be back. We'll talk Resident Evil next month.

We'll talk Mario tennis. Like there will be big brands and franchises. But this month gave us a chance to dive in. into some hidden gems, our hidden January gems. So we have four games that we just want to quickly shout out and we'll just rapid fire go through them and provide recommendations, almost a mini ringerverse recommend segment within button mesh.

And the first game is the one you just named Karen, which is out this week for PS5 and Windows, developed and published by the French studio Game Bakers. No yellow paint in this one, Matt, but this is a climbing game, A true climbing simulator. And you know that I've been pretty excited for Karen, which was originally scheduled for release last year.

You love to aid a couple months. Yeah, you know, could have been delayed a couple more months, maybe to polish some aspects of it. But I really like this game. I really, really like it. And I know that I was hyped and maybe I fell for my own hype, but it's kind of exactly what I wanted it to be. It's a climbing game. And I'm just sort of a sucker for climbing games.

It's not endless climber sort of steam games, but we talked back in 2023 about Jusant, which was another indie, a French indie, no less. That was more of a platformer than a true climbing sort of simulator. You know, there was no fall damage. There was paint, you know, it was kind of clearly indicated where you should go. It was about exploration.

I really liked the game. But this game, Karen, just totally scratched the it. that I had to have more of an authentic climbing experience because this is not only a climbing simulator, it's also sort of a survival game and a puzzle game and an exploration game. So I love it. I had some frustrations, which I will mention,

but I want to hear how you felt. I feel like Karen is a very special game. I absolutely loved it. I think there are some important. perfections in it. I think it is frustrating at times. I think it couldn't be as good as it is if it weren't frustrating at times. Yeah. It's the end of January here, and it's been a thin month. So let me just say that this right now is my game of the year, Ben. Me too. Yeah. Leader in the Clubhouse, Cair, Game of the year at the end of January, 2026. I love the climbing mechanics of this.

I did not tire at all of that. And in Cairn, the sort of way it works is you can control one of your four limbs at a time and you're obviously moving them about the mountain and some holds that you can have are going to be stronger than others. And if you have kind of weak holds on maybe three or four of your limbs, then you might start to shake a little bit and have to, get a better hold. There's just a lot of great mechanics

that I didn't get sick of in my entire playthrough. And more importantly, since beating this game, I've thought about it every day because it's not just about the mechanics. This game has a really compelling, I guess it's a message. Maybe it's a question of like,

what does it take to be the best? What kind of person can be the absolute best? What is the cost of being the absolute best? What does the cost in our personal lives? What is the cost to ourselves to those around us? I found so much to love and care. I will not ever forget this game. Yeah.

But we can talk about some of the things that maybe are not tip-top in it, if you like. Yeah. Because it is not the same way. It's not, but I'm glad that we both felt that it was special. Yeah. And it's special because, right, the climbing mechanics, they can be frustrating,

but that's probably by design to something. Because climbing can be frustrating. I know that. My wife is more of a climber than I am. And to the extent that we climb, we climb indoors. But this is a far, far greater, more accomplished climber. But it felt sort of similar in the sense that sometimes your grip just gives out. Sometimes there's not a great hold. And there are times where it can be kind of clunky, where it crosses from sort of, well, this should be. be hard to it's getting in the way of what I want to do exactly. You know, I didn't mean to move that leg there or that arm there because it's tough, unless you're doing some kind of motion capture VR sort of situation, it's tough to control fine movements like this in a game, you know, just like individual appendages. And I'm always intrigued by that. I remember like when the NHL games, you know, incorporated, oh, I can actually move the stick

and I can just, you know, use the joystick. instead of just doing a one-timer or just pressing a button. But it is the more you try to map that onto how it would work in real life, the more complex it is, the harder it is to sort of simulate. And so by default, and there are ways that you can change accessibility options to make it more forgiving. But basically, you know, each of Ava, the playable protagonists, her limbs moves in a sort of sequence.

And then if you want to take control and move one of them individually, you can do that. But it's more of a mechanical process usually, but you are pointing each hand and each foot trying to find some crevice, some crack, some hold. And so you're just, you're hyper aware of the environment,

which is so cool, you know? Yeah. The controls are kind of like, what if there were two more limbs to add to baby steps? Yes. It's like that. Yeah. But you have to like,

you're reading the rock wall, the way that she is. Like it is very immersive. You just, you feel like you're in her shoes and you're, you know, putting the chalk on your hands.

And it is very, so one nice thing about it, it's kind of Breath of the Wildlike in that you can climb anywhere. You can just, you know, go up to the wall and see if you can find a good route there. I actually avoided really looking at maps

or anything or any recommended routes. I just kind of wanted to find my own way. And sometimes you get up there and you realize you sort of screwed yourself and there was probably an, easier way to do this. And it's a little non-linear. There are different ways you can go, and I've considered maybe replaying it at some point

to just take a different path up the mountain. Absolutely. There is a real freedom to just being able to explore, find various secrets and hidden caves, and you feel a great liberation about, oh, I can do this, I can go there, even as sometimes you plummet to your death and you have to replay the lengthy sections because you were too careless. But it's just, it's so rewarding when it works. You know, like if there's a really tough area

that you don't even know if it's climable and then you manage to do it, you just, you feel like a regular Alex Honnold, you know? Yeah, what time for this game to come out? Yeah, free-soluering L-CAP. I mean, you do have ropes and pittance, or at least you should if you're careful. But it's so cool.

It's just, it's a singular experience. Yeah, and a few sort of, tips for anyone who is going to play this real quick. You mentioned exploration, Ben. This game, the rewards for exploring this game are significant. I found some items through exploring off the beaten path that were massive, massive helps to my game. Also, in terms of the climbing mechanic and sometimes getting confused about which limb that you're currently controlling based on where the camera is, that can happen, there's an

option in the game that will let, that will sort of highlight whichever active limb you're controlling. And you'll be able to see that through the body of the protagonist. I would encourage everyone to turn that on. The legs obviously are always very apparent. Sometimes where the camera is, you can get confused as to which hand you're controlling. So I would definitely turn that on in the settings. Yeah, I just can't wait for people to play this. I think it's so special. How was the performance on PS5, though. It's an issue. So it was not just your underpowered previous PC that was causing problems.

On PS5, there were certainly frame rate slowdowns. And it's not that big a deal because it's not really a quick Twitch game. You're just proceeding slowly up this mountain. But when you sort of pan around and get the panoramic view and take in the scenery, which is beautiful. And it's got this sort of cell shaded design and the higher you go, the more you can see, but when you can see more of the world, there's a lot of slowdown.

There's a lot of stuttering even on PS5. And that does. That's not ideal. It's not, no. And that sort of takes away from just the natural wonder of it all. Yeah, exactly. Those beautiful vistas that are supposed to move you to your core. But doesn't really impair the gameplay experience at all,

which is the redeeming thing. And you do just, you feel a real sense of accomplishment when you climb this thing. You feel one with the mountain, Mount Cammy. And you learn as you go up, there's this sort of environmental storytelling where, you know, always getting messages on her climb bot. You've got a little buddy with you, sort of like a Jedi game. And she largely ignores them and resents them. But you kind of learn about her history and her relationships and why is she like this?

And yeah, what sacrifices has she had to make in her personal life to become this accomplished climber? And much like Trussat and learn about the departed mountain community, the people who lived on this mountain. and you find all of these abandoned areas, and it's so intriguing. So there are performance issues. Even on PC, by the way. Even on PC, okay. You know, I have my new gaming PC here,

as we've talked about, and I was able to get 60 frames for second, but I noticed that my GPU was at like 100% in this game. That shouldn't be happening. Hopefully there will be patches on the way. There's also, it gets more challenging as you get higher, but there's no real progression in the gameplay exactly. Like, you get more proficient, but a little at the end. Yeah, but it's not as if you're, there's no, you know, skill tree or something like that.

So it is sort of, it's repetitive gameplay, but, but in a very sort of satisfying way where you develop this mastery. Yeah, you do feel like you get better at it. You do. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And not because, like, your stats go up. but just like you get better.

Like you get more skilled at climbing and mapping a route and puzzling out which way to go. There are occasional frustrations. Now, you know, I often have issues with like crafting and having to micromanage. And so you think that I wouldn't like that. Oh, I got it. Okay. I got a bivouac and I have to manage my pittance so I can not fall and I have to cook. And I have to, you know, apply chalk to my hands and I have to tape up my hands because they're getting bloody and all these things.

but I really, I sort of sank into the zen of that and just really embraced it. I think there were the right number of those things. Yes, the only frustration. It did feel manageable, even though, you know, you did have to check in on all of these things all the time. And if there were a few more of those systems, it would have felt like too much.

I think they dialed that in well. The only frustration, there's no stamina bar. Another kind of cool thing is that you just have to watch and listen to Ava to see when she's about to fall in. There are various indications, but not just like a meter, a grip meter or anything. But there are indications of how hungry she is, how thirsty she is, right? And so you do have to kind of refill these bars.

And there were some sections of the game where I kind of got stuck because there just, there wasn't water for a while. And I just, I couldn't, maybe this is a skill issue. Maybe I should have planned ahead better. But just like I exhausted my resources and I just, I had nothing to drink. And she kept passing out because, you know, when her water runs out, She's just like passing out and falling. Same.

Same. Yeah, that was fresh. It felt like not perfectly sort of, you know, spaced out, I guess. There were some sections where I was running into issues, not because I was failing as a climber, but because resources were so scarce. So occasional frustrations like that, but they really want you to plan ahead in the game.

And not just in resource management, but in the route that you take on the mountain. They want you to stand there and look up at the mountain in detail and sort of plot your way before you get on that on that mountain and start climbing. And as you said, there were multiple instances in your play-through where you would start climbing and you get to a spot and be like, oh, there's not really a good way to go from here. And that feels the same in some of the resource management as well, which is a nice parallel I've found. Well, incredible game.

Lived up to my expectations. I implore people to play it. It's maybe 15, 20 hours, so it's a substantial experience, but doesn't overstay. It's welcome. You got to get Cairn. And we'll go quicker through these next three because only you have played them thus far. But sell me on Mio, Memories in Orbit, which is another French indie. The French Indies coming up big this month.

It's a Metrogenia. It was released last week for all platforms. Mio. Tell me, Matt, about Mio. Mio's cool. You're a robot on some sort of abandoned. station filled with other robots. Some of them are malfunctioning.

Whoever created all of this is long gone. And the whole place is in disrepair, and you're kind of walking around trying to restore it. And I found that it is quite a good Metroidvania. It's a bit on the challenging side. It's not quite a, you know, hollow night, Silk Song level of difficulty.

But the boss fights do require you to learn the moves of the bosses and figure out how to avoid those attacks. I think there's a good level of customization in here. And there are a few things about it that are annoying. There's occasionally some runbacks in there, which feels insane after playing through Silk Song. Nothing as egregious as in Silk Song, obviously. But there are some nice little details to it,

like the fact that you don't take damage from a boss by touching it, I think is just really fair. Most of my response to this game is just a trauma response to Siltsong. I don't know if you've noticed that already. It's got a beautiful art style. The music is incredible. I'm really enjoying it. I'm taking my time with it.

I think I'm about 14 hours into it, and I do intend to keep playing it as a fan of Metroidvania's. I think it's a recommend to people who enjoy the genre. It might be a pass for people who don't typically, you know, enjoy that kind of thing. Yeah, that was the only thing that made it a tougher sell for me, and I'd like to play it at some point, is just that it feels like there are so many Metroidvanias, and there are so many that are good and some that are truly great. And so it's just how many Metroidvania's do I have space for in my life? Absolutely. So soon after Silk Song, sort of a similar aesthetic, it absolutely looks beautiful.

and I'm sure that there is a ton to recommend it and that I would enjoy it. But is it sufficiently set apart and separate from every other Metroidvania that is also quite good that I have played recently, that I feel like I have to play it. That's the thing. It's, you know, cairn feels like the kind of thing that you can't get anywhere else. There aren't a lot of cairn likes out there. Maybe there will be now that everyone has heard the buzz on button mash. But there are many meo likes, silksong likes. So it's just a crowded space.

It is. And I don't know yet if I would recommend this more or less than last year's Ender Magnolia Bloom in the Mist, which is another sort of post-apocalyptic metroivania that I really loved from last year that I think is underrated. And there's a lot of strange parallels between the two. But I will finish Mia and we'll report back at some point. Okay. Well, we are staying across the pond, but going to the other side of the channel now for a UK indie. This is from a company called Inkel that made 80 days and overboard.

This is a steam game called TR49. Tell me about TR49. TR 49 is also very cool. You wake up in a basement of some sort with a very antiquated looking computer and you are tasked with saving the world. This is a game for a very specific type of person. this is a deduction game I would say you spend a lot of time first of all figuring out how the computer works what you're doing there takes a long time to learn what that is and you're going through all of these

periodicals and books and stuff that were fed into this machine and I don't want to sort of spoil where this story goes because it's very much a sort of the less you know the better kind of thing but if you're into puzzle games, games of deduction, sitting down and figuring out how some things work. This was a really fun game. I wouldn't put it quite on the same level as the root trees are dead or the seance at Blake Manor.

Yeah, another genre that's been booming lately. Yeah, I do think that this is well worth the time, again, for anyone who's into that particular genre. I think the narrative is also a very prescient for our dystopian existence lately. Are there papers please vibes here?

Yes, there are, Ben. The interface, yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I sense this much. Okay. And our final indie pick-to-click this month

is Perfect Tide, Station the Station. This is an American indie, a point-and-click adventure. It's for Windows and Mac, and it was developed and published by the Indy Studio 3Bs. The sequel to 2022's, perfect tides.

So tell me about station to station. I am about eight hours into this game, and I think it is fantastic. I think it is incredibly well written. This is a very biographical game that takes place in New York City, around 2001 or three or something, somewhere around there. Finally, New York is represented in media. I just, I never see my city in any movies or shows. or games time. Finally.

A little New York tidbit there is, I found a Doctors is more ad billboard within the game. Authentic. Google it if you're not a native New Yorker. Yeah, this game follows a young woman who is a freshman in college.

She's living off campus and struggling to kind of find people to connect with as an off-campus student. And she, it's a writer. And she is really, ready to get going with her creative career and just flailing for connection and inspiration and tutelage and all the while navigating

the things you navigate as someone moving into adulthood. And it's so incredibly thoughtfully written. You just know that this is a lived experience because the way that relationships are, are conveyed between people is so genuine. I can't wait to finish this. I can't wait to play more of it. I'm having just a wonderful time with it.

It's got a nice pixel art style. That's pretty charming. And you just kind of make sure you write your papers on time and try not to ruin your relationship with your mother. And it's very relatable for anyone who says it's too relatable. especially if you've grown up with creative aspirations, you'll definitely find something here. Yeah.

Am I going to feel personally attacked by this game or just seen by this game? You know, a little of both, I think. Yeah, which is part of the experience. Sure. Yeah. Again, not for everyone, but I think you'll know if this game is for you. And if it is, it's very much for you.

So it's really something to check out, I think. Okay. Well, it just goes to show this is the month when, oh, there are no good games. And yet there are because there are so many thousands of games that come out every year that even if you don't have huge headliners, if you dig a little deeper, there's always a ton of quality there. You can always find something new and great to play, let alone all the old stuff in your pile of shame that you've never gotten to, which is another thing that people try to dig away it in January. you can climb that mountain like we climbed Mount Cammy in Cairn.

Yeah. I played Pickman for. Oh, yeah. Good for you. I'm happy. Get on board to the Pickman crew. Yeah. I just got a press release in my inbox as we were recording about a new high guard patch.

Oh, really? Improved. Crashes reduced 90%. Better performance control, toggle options, optimization updates. They've heard our concerns somehow, even though we haven't yet published this podcast. So that's customer service for you. All right. Our last little segment here, before we get to our guest,

we're going to play MASH or Pass. We're going to tell you whether we recommend something or not, because we just recommended all of the games that we just talked about. But this is going to be reserved for something that might be a bit of a tougher time to tell. We will actually rate it. And that is Return to Silent Hill, which is also in theaters now. This is an adaptation of Silent Hill 2, the classic game. It's directed by Christophans, who directed the first Silent Hill movie 20 years ago.

And this is the first new Silent Hill movie since 2012's Silent Hill Revelation. So this is part of the Silent Sons that we have already discussed. We got the 2024 Silent Hill 2 remake, which was very well received. Last year's Silent Hill F, which was very well received. There's a Silent Hill one remake and a new game called Townfall on the way. This movie, Return to Silent Hill, not quite. quite as widely well received, but we have watched it,

and we are here to provide our verdict. And you're a big fan of Silent Hill and of Silent Hill, too, the source material for this film. So what did you like? What did you dislike? I thought visually, it was fairly faithful

to the Silent Hill world. And most of the other things I didn't like, I would say. Okay. How did you feel? about a bit. Yeah, I'm not as much of a Silent Hill head as you, a Silent Hill paramed head, I guess. But I'm with you on at least some of the visuals being pretty impressive. There are definitely some moments that kind of look CGI-wise like we're back in the 2000s, but for the most part, I thought

they did nail the look of the game quite faithfully with a lot of the iconic creatures and monsters. They are just as disturbing on the screen here. And not all CGI, some of it is like actors, you know, playing creepy creatures and dancers. And I appreciate that. And, you know, there's a lot of ashes falling through the sky. There's a lot of fog. So it's aesthetically speaking, sufficiently silent-hilled-like. And it is a fairly faithful adaptation in some respects, at least of a lot of the big beats of the game,

a lot of the set pieces and sequences. Like, if you played Silent Hill and you watch this movie, you will constantly be thinking, oh, there's that, there's that part. Oh, we're going here. It's good for people who want that, who want to point at the screen, like the DiCaprio meme and be like, oh, that part. Plenty of opportunities to point at the screen here. Yeah, but that's not always a good thing.

And here it's often not a good thing either because it's both too faithful at times. and then also kind of incoherent also. It's like maybe worst of both worlds. Somehow they managed to make it a very faithful adaptation that is also very confusing. Not that the game isn't also confusing and leaves a lot open to interpretation and what's real and what's a dream and all of that.

Some of that is almost spelled out too explicitly in this game. And yet it still has that sort of fever-dream-like sense of what is happening. Who is this? character, you know, it's very faithful, but also under explained because just by necessity, you're compressing a longer game into a shorter movie. And so you're constantly jumping around to where did this character come from? What, Maria, Mary, who is this? Towards the back of the movie when everything has to kind of come together. Yeah, the pacing. It's like speed running

Silent Hill, too, sort of. Yes, it feels it feels like you're watching a Silent Hill play through on on YouTube at like 2x speed or something. Yeah. It's because I just don't think that I love Silent Hill too. The story is fantastic. I don't think that it's a good thing to adapt because I think to really have the story hit, you have to kind of sit in it for extended periods and be kind of fed bit by bit little pieces and kind of ruminate on what's going on.

and I think that tonally, Silent Hill 2 story feels more believable in a video game setting than a movie. I feel like hitting it tonally in a movie, you'd have to be like David Lynch. You'd have to be just like a master of what you're doing to hit that kind of right tone that is like a bit like campy but also. the surreal nature of it too it's a fine target to hit tonally and it just doesn't

really achieve that and I don't particularly think that a lot of the performances in the movie are helping that I think that the performances in the Silent Hill to remake that was recently released

are by and large better than the performances in this film. And one of the actors is actually the same, and she does a great job. Yeah. The cast, it's almost like, I don't know if it's the cast or the director. You know, was there some instruction to them to act as if they were in a 2001

Japanese survival horror video game? I don't know because there's just, Jeremy Irvine plays James. and, you know, partly it's the script. There's just a lot of wondering around saying, what is happening and how did this? And Mary and calling Mary's name and just... But see, now it sounds like you're describing the video game. I know, I know.

Like, that's what happens in the video game, too. But it works in that context. This is just, I feel like it's just a really specific example of like, you can't adapt every video game. Some of them just don't... It's like adapting a... superhero, right? Like, you can have a great superhero comic, you can have a great superhero game. There's something about when you put them on the screen and you're looking at Batman's suit and

you're like, no, that's not right. And it doesn't feel right. You know, it's like, it's sort of similar to that like superhero not translating to film thing. It's just very hard. I don't know exactly why these pieces don't all come together, but they kind of definitely don't. And the Some of the characters are kind of gloat. Like the character of Eddie is one of my favorite things about Silent Hill, too, and he's sort of just like a brief cameo here. And I thought that his story in the game really kind of helped illuminate who the main character actually is. And maybe he's not that great guy.

And, yeah, just to cut that out entirely. Of course, there's no room for his whole story to be in there because even without him, it still feels like rushed, right? This maybe would have been a better short series on TV than it would have been a movie. Perhaps. Yeah, I don't know. It's such an oppressive atmosphere, which does work in the game,

but the game has some respites, just like puzzle solving, exploration. Here it's just so frenetic and nonstop, and you're just leaping from one creature, creature encounter to the next and ping ponging back and forth. And it's just, yeah, it's too much for me and also not enough in some respects. And they do add some stuff to the game, some backstory. There are a lot of flashbacks to James and Mary's relationship, which is not really, you know, that's subtext and here you're, it's spelled out, it's text, it's explicit.

And I guess that could have worked. Yeah, it could have. If we believe their relationship. ship, that's the thing. Yeah, there's a whole different way those scenes are shot, you know, not in the post, just haunting Silent Hill, but everything's bright and sunny and it just looks like something out of a soap wrapper or something, and the chemistry is not very convincing, and it just comes down to the dialogue and a lot of the portrayals really falling flat. So, yeah, yeah. There's just things that aren't adaptable in this, like the, you know,

there's a character that you encounter in the game that you look at her and you're like, that kind of looks like the wife character, right? Am I tripping? And then in the movie, it's like, well, that's the same actor. So you very clearly know that that's the same actor looking different. So you're like, that doesn't really work in the movie form, does it? Because in the game, there's like this amount of doubt in your brain. It's like, is it supposed to be?

or is that you know right Hannah Hannah Emily Anderson plays Mary but also plays Maria and Angela and moth Mary a lot of moths in this game but you know even more moths than you might expect they really like the moth effects but yeah there's

some creepy creature stuff that is actually pretty impressively gory and disturbing but everything else is disturbing for the wrong reasons usually so it's a pass it's a strong pass I think from us and also most other critics.

I don't know if I had to rate this thing on a 10-point scale, I guess I'd go four maybe just like because of some of the visuals and just the clear affection for the source material, if maybe some ineptitude in translating that. Or maybe just a bad idea to even try. Just, you know, let the thing be what it was. Yeah, some amount of those two things for sure. I think if you are a Silent Hill fan,

and you were thinking about watching this, you've probably already seen it. So I don't know if there's anyone to really recommend this to out there. If you haven't seen it and you are a big Silent Hill fan, you know, I think it's not a total skip. You might get a kick out of seeing some of these things translated to a movie. But, you know, just expectations.

Keep them low. Yeah, yeah. If you want to return to Silent Hill, just return to the Silent Hill 2 remake. That's probably a better bet. Yes. But there is another horror movie that is also a game adaptation that is newly released, and it is Iron Lung. And Iron Lung's source material much more obscure. This is a 22 indie.

It's about an hour-long game. It's you're in a submarine, in an ocean of blood, and you're just confined, and you can't really see. out except via kind of Game Boy Camera Resolution-esque snapshots of your surroundings. And you're just sort of trying to unravel the mystery of this world. And a lot of it is left unspecified and open to interpretation. The movie is a lot like that too. And so it's really interesting. It's sort of this fascinating production. Markiplier just self-financed it. He's the star. He kind of just did it all. Now it's more than a two-hour movie. And you're in this confining. space with one character almost all the time. So it does take some endurance, certainly. It's

like moon, maybe that Sam Rockwell sci-fi movie, but you're under the ocean instead of on the moon. But there's not a lot of changes. The ocean of blood. And sometimes there's a lot of blood in the submarine too, which we will talk about with Markiplier in just a second. But what's really fascinating, I think, is how he got this made. Because it was clearly a passion project for him and a labor of love. And just through leveraging his audience, he has managed to just brute force it into theaters because you would have thought this would be

maybe a limited release or it's straight to streaming or just throw it on YouTube or something. Instead, this thing is coming out in more than 3,000 theaters this weekend in the U.S. and Canada, and then another thousand theaters or so overseas. And the pre-sales have been pretty strong too. And so the projections are pointing to a $9 to $10 million opening, which, you know, if that's not enormous numbers, but for a fairly

low-budget independently financed thing that's not based on a game that most people have ever heard of and doesn't have a lot of variety in the scenery and does not clearly spell out its story either, it's pretty impressive. So that's why I wanted to talk to Mark Plyer and we get into what made him want to make this thing, why he thought this would be well suited for a game adaptation and how he got it done, how he got it out there. So I will be back in just a moment with Markiplier, Mattiplier. Thanks very much for joining. Of course.

Can't wait for this interview. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows Winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech. seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer.

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am I leaving out of any job descriptions here? We might run out of time if we keep listing any things you did for this film. I don't think so. And you could narrow it down to a few if you want. You did some of your own stunts, I know. I did. I did have a stunt double, man. One of those is in the movie. The rest are me. Yes. And you suffered some injuries for your trouble, which we will perhaps get to. So tell me a little bit about the origin story here. The fun thing is that people can go to your YouTube channel and watch your first play through of Iron Lung. At one point did it dawn on you. This might make a good movie. And also, So maybe I should make that movie.

You know, I think if I had to go back three years ago, seems so long ago now. I don't even remember what I was doing. My entire life has been in the lung for so long now. But I think when I was playing it, I think pretty much right away, maybe about halfway through the game, I thought that it might make a good movie. It was just such a different experience. I played tons of horror games, tons of many horror games of varying levels of quality. It's your brand.

Yeah. I didn't know that actually David Zemanci, I had played a game of his eight years. prior to that, like one of his earliest or maybe his first indie games that he put out there. So it was like weirdly familiar. I've like the style of it. I've seen a lot of those retro horror games, but this one had a unique sense to it. It was such a

contained experience. It had so much of this atmospheric feel to it. There wasn't, there was a few jump scares, a few bumps here and there. But I was like, you know, this is actually a really interesting concept. So I think a few months later I had chewed around the idea more. It was one of those things

where I sort of reached out pretty soon after because I knew that I wanted to make a feature after in space with Markiplier. That was a logical procession. And I think that a lot of my fans expected it and in a career like trajectory kind of thing. If I were to ever plan that way, it'd be like, yeah, that seems like the next step to maybe level up my skills and maybe be taken a bit more seriously. Because there's always that YouTube stigma, even if I'm doing YouTube originals, even if it was nominated for an Emmy, it's like it still doesn't always have that.

It's not real kind of thing. Are you hoping to bridge that gap now that YouTube is the most popular streaming service in general, right? And a lot of people just watch it on their living room TV as they would watch anything else. That YouTube stigma that you're referring to there, are you hoping just to avoid that for yourself? Or are you hoping to break that down in some larger way? I think it's probably a combination. I'm very proud of being from YouTube. I think a lot of people should be.

And I think a lot of filmmakers should not be ashamed of posting their first short film on YouTube. It's a great platform to get eyes on it and build an audience. It's not easy to do because things get lost. Millions of videos get uploaded every day or whatever the statistic is. But it's still one of the few platforms that has the capacity for more people to see your art on an elevated level. It is really, really difficult to put your short film on, say, TikTok or reels or any kind of short form content. And Vimeo is apparently going through some trouble now. So a lot of filmmakers I know use Vimeo just as a show reel kind of thing.

But YouTube has the quality, the built-in audience. And if you can get over those hurdles, it can be a legitimate thing. So I want to bridge that gap there. Then again, from a entering into this filmmaker's fear of making movies, I do want to break down the stigma, but not in a way to show traditional media. Like, yeah, you're doing it all wrong. And us YouTubers know how to do it. It's like, no, there's a huge pool of talent that you can pull from.

And a lot of people with a lot of creative ideas that maybe you should listen to because the landscape is changing, the technology is changing. There's a lot of ways that people are going to be making stories that will rival the quality that you can see. And I'm not even talking about AI. I'm talking about literally the tools and the power of computing nowadays is so much more advanced than it was that you can do cinema quality effects in Blender. There was a Blender movie, the Cab movie that was released like a year or

two ago that was rendered an Evian Blender and it won awards and it was really, really celebrated. So I think that looking at the internet as a whole, not just YouTube as a source for these creators to push from is important. And if I can help in any way, that's what I want to do. I ramble a lot of my answer to wait. Tell me to shut up if I ever go on too long. You play Iron Lung and it takes place in this confined space, the titular Iron Lung. It's sort of lo-fi. It's a short experience. These aspects of it might not necessarily. necessarily scream cinematic, but you seem to see it that way. Why did you think it would translate to this medium and what difficulties did you anticipate? I thought it could if it was done right.

That's everything, right? You can have an idea and an ambition for something, but if it's not executed properly, it's never going to transcend that cinematic feel to it. So I leaned a lot on the artistic ability of the other people in the crew. I knew and I trusted that. When I was going into it, I did know that it was going to be very difficult to have a single location be cinematic. It's been done before. But when you have this stepping out of reality of, I'm in a rusting submarine in the bottom of an ocean, you both get a little forgiveness and you have to earn a lot of forgiveness from the unreality of the situation. So kind of grounding everything was an important thing to do. I wanted an art team and they've like Iman and Travis were the people that were in

charge of making the set come to life. And they did an incredible job because working with the DP Phil, we both knew that we wanted to shoot every single inch of this sub because we needed every angle possible and we needed to define those cinematic angles. So we did a lot of macro stuff. We did probe lenses. We were putting the camera in corners that we'd never even thought it could fit in. We were stripping down the whole thing so that we could get that angle. And it was it was difficult because there was a few parts of the sub that you could remove and shoot through. But that was very rare because of the time it took to do that. And because if you did that, you couldn't move it at all when it was happening.

And most of the time, the sub is moving and it's on a big motion control rig. So all these little elements kind of combined to make that feel cinematic, especially the motion rig at the bottom. That motion and the movement of it was kind of essential to marrying everything together. You had the set. It was beautifully made. You had the cameras with beautiful lenses, and you had a DEP that had the skill to find those spots. And then you had this entire motion control rig that could make everything come to life and really put you in that space and earn all that forgiveness to get to that moment.

Did you watch other movies in that same vein buried 127 hours, et cetera, others that take place in a confined claustrophobic space, maybe primarily revolving around one character, one actor for tips? I probably should have. I know of those movies. I know of 127 hours. I know of buried. I've seen clips of buried and I didn't watch them because I have this weird thing where it's like I love movies. Don't be wrong. But I have this horrible thing where it's like I hate starting a new movie.

I've watched Ratatooie more times than I can count just because it's my favorite movie and I'll watch again. I can't even say I have good taste of movies. I'll watch how like Jim carries the Grinch over and over again at Christmas, even though I know it's Not a great movie, but I love that movie so much. Holiday classic. Yeah, I know I should, and I don't give myself a lot of time to enjoy enough movies as an art form. So I will say, I probably should have, but I know of them, and I kind of had an idea of what they were doing with them. I did watch them behind the scenes of those movies.

And did you always see this as a starring vehicle for Market Plyer? Was there ever a point where you thought, I'll fund this, I'll produce this, I'll cast someone else, or did you always see it as something you wanted to star in? I thought about possibly casting someone else. I knew that I could do it because with YouTube, I've done that for all my other projects. I've been in lead. And I think there has to be some, it's not ego, right?

Because I don't really like acting all that much. I'll do it and I feel like I'm good at it, but I like so much more the other parts of putting the story together. But also I knew what I wrote was so brutal to this character that I kind of didn't want anyone else to suffer through what I had to suffer. And a lot of my fans are going to hear that and be like, oh, he's a masochist and he really wants to put himself through it. But if this was going to be kind of like earning my place,

like a trial by fire of me entering this art form, I wanted to see myself rise to that challenge. I wanted to be able to put forward the performance necessary to earn this spot as an actor. And I wanted to do it so that if I, go into any other projects. I'm working with actors, which I've obviously worked with actors before. I want to know that process intimately and the suffering that can go into it and the struggles that can go into it so that I can better communicate as a director to actors in the future, how to get through these scenes and approach them and the perspectives needed to get there.

I think that there is a great value in knowing enough about the other departments and how they work as a director that you can communicate in their language. Like I know a lot of VFX now. I'm not as skilled as the VFX team that worked on this, but I have learned a lot through it so that I can know when I'm asking them something impossible, right? And as a director with an actor, how can I know when I'm asking something impossible

or that I shouldn't expect if I've never been through that myself or I don't know the limits of my own ability? So I can't expect more or I can't see more. I feel like as a director, you're a leader, and a leader has to be able to see where someone's potential can take them and not that I'm good at that, but that's my philosophy of it. And I can only get there by experiencing it myself. So that's part of the reason I wanted to do that if this was going to be a vehicle for me doing things in the future.

A literal vehicle. Speaking of stigmas, has the fact that the stigma surrounding video game adaptations has subsided in recent years. What with the financial hits, also the critical successes, did that play a part in giving you the confidence that you could do this? Maybe. maybe it's kind of something that's like subconsciously there was more you know Five Nights of Freddy's had a lot of success and the Minecraft movie and Super Mario Brothers

and all those things. So those are also just such huge IPs that naturally they have this large fan base. A little bit bigger built-in fan base than Iron Lung perhaps. I think that for better or for worse a lot of video games have turned more cinematic and more movie like than maybe they were in the past. So I feel like the gap was already closing, the bridge between the art forms was shrinking the stories being told.

Like with God of War, it's an incredible story. I started playing the game. I never finished it, but I did watch it. I've watched all of the, like every cinematic strung together. There's videos, compilations you can find like there and you can see the story. And it's such a beautiful story. It was beautifully told. And I'm like, oh, that's great. Man, they don't need to make a show out of that. So it's already exists. And even though I know they are. And aren't they? They are. Yeah, they, I'm like, I'm like, all right, whatever. But with this in a video game, I thought of it so much less as a video game. I thought of it like, this is just a universe that fascinates me.

It is so bleak, it is so dreary. It's such a sandbox to work in. And with David Zemanke, the developer, I was working extremely closely with him during the entire writing process. He was on set every day. In post-production, I was talking to him all the time. I just was texting him yesterday because he was excited. We're all excited about it. Yeah, so it was less about being a game.

It was so much more about just where could this story go. Yeah, and one of the challenges in adapting a game to the screen, the big screen, often, is that you have to distill down a many hours-long experience into an hour or two, whereas in this case, Iron Lung, the movie is longer than Iron Lung the game, probably. Yes. So if anything you had to add and enrich and layer, so how did you have to add? approach that process in terms of deepening the lore while not sort of spoiling the mystery of the original game, which doesn't explain things. It was very much working with David. So I went to him

originally and I had all these questions and I was like, oh, he'll be able to provide answers to this. And I asked him like, question every question about the university. He was like, never really thought about it, man. So we had to figure it out, right? So we came up with ideas. I would come up with ideas. I would chuck to him and he would shoot them down. He would say like not quite what I was thinking and it was kind of like plotting the course. And usually when I came up with more horrible things, he would be like, yeah, that's great. Like the more horrible, the idea to some extent of the more he was into it. But I didn't do too much to actually add.

Like there's a few things that I've added. But most of it was added by him before the movie process got underway with what he called the lore update. There was a computer that he added into the submarine where you could type in commands and find out more about it. You found out about the other factions, about things about the submarine itself, the ocean. A few mysteries were revealed in there. And so it was then about incorporating, okay, so now you have factions, you have people, and now you have beliefs. Okay, what about expanding those beliefs? Where would these beliefs take these two factions?

Like they're both at the end of humanity. How would they approach that end? would they be fatalistic or deterministic about it? Where would this character sit in between? Is he straddling the line? Is he moving in a direction? Is he moving back towards one belief versus the other? Then you could start to play with those things.

And as we build that out, then it was like, okay, we've got to incorporate the landmark things of the game into this now expanding timeline. So you have the traditional things that happened in the game. And then it's like, okay, how can we enrich these moments? How can we give meaning to what is here and here and here? and then it was just building and building and building from there. So, yeah. Can you share anything about what it cost you to make this movie or what you put into the project as a whole?

It was a lot, but still qualifies as a low budget movie. So I think I'll say that as much. Okay. I've never really looked, I will say this, I've never really looked into these projects thinking I would ever make money from them. I didn't make money on any of the YouTube originals. None of the short films that I've made on my channel ever have been about making money if you compared to the cost of making it versus ad revenue or whatever,

it's miles away from me just playing games online and putting ads on those. But it's also never been about that. I wanted to spend like responsibly because it was my money. But also I'm like, you know, I always look at it as like an investment into my own ability and my fan. Like they give me their time. So I should be willing to spend money and not worry about it too much, even if it doesn't make money back because they deserve it because their time is,

the most valuable thing they have, but it still qualifies as a low budget. And you seem to have harnessed the fans' enthusiasm and your own enthusiasm for this project to, through sheer force of will, get it into theaters, many theaters seemingly. So tell me about both why you prioritize that, why it was so important to you to release it that way, and also how you went about doing it and what you learned about movie making and movie distribution. I learned a lot. We had offers from various companies early on, and I learned very quickly that sometimes those deals are not very good.

Because if I was not a YouTuber and I had to take those deals, then yeah, you have to take those deals. And the argument being there for the other side, they're taking on all the risk. And I can even kind of understand that. I am in a unique perspective. And I know that I would love for this be a template for all other independent filmmakers to follow. but I can't say that without the qualification that I have 38 million subscribers. And that is an advantage that cannot really be quantified sometimes. And when it comes to doing this, I knew that I had a fan base.

I've done a tour before where I've gone across the U.S., I've gone across Europe, I went to Australia. I knew I could sell out theaters, you know, show, play theaters, you know, like stage theaters, but I knew that it would translate the same. So I had a feeling I could fill at least 100, maybe 200 theaters for a week. I thought I could do that. And then constantly, I'm always surprised by my audience. I think that it's, I think that the kind of relationship that I've built with them has

given me all the opportunities that I could ever hope for in making things online. And I always want to try to respect that with what they give to me. Like I said before, their time they give to me. So if I don't give them something back that's even worth it, or if I don't invest my time into making something that I think will be worth for their time, then the exchange is unfair and it's already unfair. Like I get so many advantages from it

and I feel sometimes like really shitty about not being able to give back all the time, but I knew I could trust my fan base and I am glad that they think that they can trust me. And that's not always the case even with people who have huge audiences ostensibly. You look at people with enormous followings on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or wherever it is.

That doesn't always translate to more traditional media if they make a TV show or a movie or whatever it is. Sometimes you think, well, gosh, if just a fraction of those subscribers followed them over there, that would be a huge head. And what's the difference? It's this app instead of that app, but it doesn't always work. It seems to be thus far in your case, at least, going by the presale numbers and the word of mouth and the interest. So I don't know if that's just the sort of parisocial attachment to you specifically, but I wonder whether you've noticed that across the industry. with other creators who haven't always been able to parlay that existing audience into a new one.

Yeah, it's really tricky. And it's definitely, this is not going to make any movie executives or studio executives comfortable in that a lot of time those numbers aren't real. I'm not just saying in terms of bots, but it's like those, a lot of social media people, and I've even seen it in some articles where like, Markiplier is 70-something million total followers across all social media. And it's like, that's not the real number. You can't add them up because it's the same.

Yeah, it's duplicates, right? So it's the same people from the most subscribed thing. Mine's YouTube, 38 million. There's never going to be more than 38 million followers on any of those other platforms, even if you add them all up. And the other facet is a lot of people just, they follow people casually. They follow because this was a funny video. I want to see more of those funny videos.

I don't want to see anything else from that person ever, forever. I don't care. And they're valid. That's fine. Some people probably do that for me as well. And that's totally fine. I think that that's how people should consume the internet. They should curate the experience and try to get it in their way.

But because of the way that I've made my YouTube channel so much about me in a truly egotistical way, I've made it about my journey and my experiences and try to relate as personally as I can when it's one person talking to $38 million, I try to be as real as I can. and I try to showcase my struggles and my growth and my failures many times. And it's an impossible thing. It's super, it's hard to do. And it could walk the line where some people could call it parisocial. But I think what I've managed to do and what my fan base has managed to do is create something where they feel like I'm not going to trick them.

I'm not going to suddenly pull the rug out from under them. And I'm not going to betray that trust in the time that they've given me so that they can, the very least feel good to support me when I'm really trying to do something. And I think that's very human. And I think that a lot of people forget that besides the not real numbers, when there are followers that are really in love with a creator or they really enjoy what they make, they're real. They're real people and they have real passions.

Fandoms exist and fandoms are kind of the backbone of all of these things. And that's why the studio system sometimes amazes me because when you have an original idea that comes out of the studio. The entire marketing effort is just to build a fan base out of nothing from nothing when they've seen nothing. That's a crazy concept. And yet it was happening for years. And it still does happen occasionally. But I mean, you can see why sequels and things. Remakes always happen because of fan bases. It's all about the people. It's always been about the people. So, yeah. So as we speak here in Release Week, how is it shaping up in terms of projections, screens, international release strategy? How do you gauge whether this is a success?

beyond the creative success of just having made a movie. So, I mean, it's funny. I don't know. A lot of the numbers I hear are from other people making estimates because we didn't think that we would have this much success. So, of course, we didn't plan for any kind of metric tracking. We didn't plan for anything like that. I think that overall, it's wonderful for me,

always to see people's excitement for it. I'm on social media when they're talking about it. like just today the or i'm not sure when this will be released but just today when we're recording it the soundtrack got released so people get to enjoy the music of it and all of andrew hulschells work on the movie and and it's it's i i really really really enjoy watching people enjoy something it's it's it's so heartwarming to see that the efforts that i put in and all the crew have put in and all the people that've worked on the movies their hard work is being enjoyed you know And I'm not saying it's a perfect product.

It's never going to be a perfect product. But I think that when you have everyone working as hard as they can on something, there could be something special for at least that one person for it to be their favorite thing. And I'm just so overjoyed for people being excited about it. I can't wait for people to see it. And it might be getting ahead of things, but have you thought beyond this if people pay their money and get their tickets and support this film? Are you hoping there are other doors that this opens for you,

creatively, whether it's Iron Lung 2, or it's just some other passion project of yours? I mean, I'm always thinking to the next project. I have that. That's kind of my detriment. Whenever I'm in the middle of another project, I'm always thinking of the next thing. And this one has been particularly

difficult because of the long time that I'm working on it. Yeah, I do hope that it opens some doors. I have gone through my YouTube career and even now my filmmaking career with full creative control. So that's the difficult thing is I know, that's almost an impossible ask when you're working with other studios.

It's for one person that is not the studio at full creative control. But I do think that I like this way of making things, even if I do have to always pay for it myself. And even if future projects don't make money, I wouldn't care either way. I just like making things. I so love making things. And some of your previous scripted projects,

which you alluded to earlier, are interactive, kind of choose your own adventure style via YouTube. Of course, Netflix has experimented with projects like that. Is that something that you'd like to see more of? Or now that you're going to the non-interactive world with Iron Lung, are there advantages to that that you now would have a hard time giving up? No, no, I think that there's opportunity to make all these things.

The cool thing about YouTube is that the standard of quality, at the very least, the standard of quality can be lower. So I don't have to hold myself to the standard of a cinematic experience, right? I can make an interactive. Even YouTube originals had it had some corners cut on them, even in the In Space with Mark Blair. There are some things that are clearly a little cheap here and there. But the story being told is what really matters and the experience, how people feel when

they're playing it. And that's something that on YouTube you can get away with a little bit easier. And I think even if I'm making things for movies or cinemas or, If I'm just doing things on YouTube, what I love is just making more things. So I want to be able to take the skills I learned to be able to make things more efficiently. And then I'll kind of pipeline everything that I've learned into several video projects on YouTube. And then I'll channel it all again into the next big thing so that I can concentrate and make something really cool. Some YouTubers who are in the gaming world have gone more in that direction and have become game publishers or created games themselves.

Is that an ambition for you as well? Not particularly. Weirdly enough, I think that lately, I haven't, man, I haven't played a game for fun in a long time. Last time was Elton Ring. I constantly say like I'm kind of a fake gamer at this point because I just don't really play games for fun anymore, which is not to say I don't like them, but I just have no ambition to make them because there's so many other talented people that are making it. And right now, more than ever, you're seeing all these cool indie games come out. I hope that that doesn't get stifled with, you know, technological changes.

and the fear of like AI taking over everything. I think that the tools are there for people to make things. And it's just about seeing people execute. And I know that I want to make a video first art form. Even if it's interactive, it's kind of a video game. So I guess a little bit there. But a true video game experience, it's not something that I've built my skills toward.

And it would be a pretty hard shift for me to suddenly be like, I wouldn't be able to be directly involved in doing most of the cobbling together. I don't know programming. But with filmmaking, I love editing, and editing is probably my favorite part of the whole process playing it all together. So that's where my skill is. And I'm old enough now that I don't think I can shift gears too quickly. Yeah, I wondered about the indie aspect of things because that's been a lot of your channel's appeal and your mission statement sort of shine light on these overlooked indies. And they're always going to be overlooked indies just because there are more and more of them every year.

But as a whole, the spotlight is being shined, I think, on indie. certainly more than it was a decade-plus ago when you started your channel and rose to prominence. So do you feel like on some level, my work here is done, mission accomplished? I mean, I wouldn't say that. I think there's always work more to do. And how far be it for me to take all the credit for those indies rising up? I think that it's just, you know, it's just fun. So as long as it's fun to see these discoveries, because every once in a while you find a game that's like Iron Lung that, you know, I'm not going to turn into a movie, but it's like it's something different.

It's something I've never seen before. And that appeal to me is more, I guess, my mission statement than some sort of nobility about it. Like, I must help all these indie things. It's like, at the end of the day, I'm just a guy doing things for fun most of the time. And because I want to. So I couldn't sit here and lie saying, like, I am a paragon of the indie game industry. And I am the champion. You did it.

I just enjoy seeing. Yeah. Last question. I know that you set a record or certainly set out to, set a record for fake blood used in a film production. You probably also shed some real blood, or at least incurred some real bruises during the making of this movie. And when people watch the film, as I have, they will not wonder where all the blood

went. It's there. You'll see it. I thought you used a lot of blood. Where did it go? No, you'll find out. But tell me a little bit about the quantities there, how you even determined what the record was and what injuries you sustained while making this movie.

Okay, so one thing, and I don't want to throw shade on, Evil Dead is the other record holder, right? There's no real quantifiable way that they've said they used 50,000 gallons. And again, not to be disparaging, but there is a quantifiable way that you can know how much blood you used, and they had their blood rain scene. And I've said before, like you've seen it and you know, it's pretty obvious that we have the record. It's kind of obvious. But what they've done, what I believe is they had, obviously, blood shower set up. They had a huge rig to spray blood all over the scene. And so the quantity that is in that space is not 50,000 gallons.

They used the flow rate and they probably calculated based on how much was actually shot, you know, how filmed or at least, you know, they start the pumps and, you know, it starts going after that. but with that, it's also kind of just red water, and I don't really count red water. Our blood is like this really thick, viscous, looks like blood material, and that was a very important thing to research, which was determining the right blood for that quantity, because cinema blood has a, and certain types of fake blood has a quality where if you get depth to it, it turns black, because light just goes through it and it gets lost. and scattered turns black at certain depth.

Certain movies where you've seen like big scenes where blood is filling the It movie had like the bathroom scene, but it's all black because of the depth of it. So with ocean arterial blood, it has to maintain that redness in this dark environment. So we had to tune the color very specifically to how we knew how dark it was going to be in there. And then, you know, with a little color correction, make it a little more red. And then it has to have that kind of opakness, not translucency. to look like blood because a lot of people don't realize that real blood is a lot brighter than you think it is especially arterial blood. And so we did tons and tons and tons of blood research.

But we know how the volume of those spaces. We know the volume of things that we filled. We know the various pools that we use. We use various things from like a kiddie pool sometimes to a outdoor swimming pool to a giant industrial dumpster that they had. welded together and sealed up and then filled so that we could literally sink things in them because that's the only way to do it safely. I wanted to sit in there and be like, just fill the whole thing. I can take it. But to do it more safely, you have to do a cross-section and then kind of sink it in there.

And that was difficult because you had to put enough weights on there to get it to sink down because, you know, obviously it's it is a wooden set for the most part. So we had trouble. It's floating. That was a big thing. So there was a lot that we dedicated basically the entire week to the last few minutes of the movie. And it's like we know how much we pumped. We know the volume of everything that we did.

We know how much we ordered. We know that that was concentrated. And so we diluted it. So I calculated based on the volumes, the flow rate of the pump, how long it was on for every take that we can verifiably film. And I haven't gone through and done those calculations just yet. but we did rough estimates and it's around 80,000 gallons is the total actual blood that we filmably provably used. Well, I appreciate your dedication to the accurate depiction and quantification of vast amounts

of blood. And I hope your own wounds have healed because I know your back took a blow at some point. Your eyes maybe got a little bit too full of blood. The funny thing about that is the truth of the eye blood. thing is it wasn't the blood itself because the blood was actually food safe. We guys, it's glycerin based with like, oh, it's glycerin or alcohol based. I can't remember. It probably not alcohol because I think it's glycerin based because I needed to be in it at a

quantity. And in reality, it's actually kind of good for you. Like, it's kind of a lotion. But I had like paint on the walls and makeup and everything around me. And so what would happen is that particular blood was like stripping the paint off the walls. I don't know how. I don't know why, but it was just clearing everything out of there. And it would cause that paint to mix in with the blood. And if I had my eyes open, that's what caused the issues. It's like, contaminating the blood itself. And that's just like, it just happened.

So there's really nothing to say about that. Well, it probably contributed to the effects, the deterioration of the interior, at least. And yeah, some people who are kind of wary of horror films, they'll say, is it bloody? Is there a lot of blood in it? Yeah, there is in this case. Although, you know, it's not always emanating from people. It's often just emanating from the submarine, from the walls, from the ocean. Yeah, it's funny at a certain quantity, it just becomes less gross and more like, oh, wow, that's a lot of good.

Yeah, I can be a bit squeamish, and I had a decent time with it. I handled it okay. Well, congrats, Mark, on getting this thing out there. and managing to put it in many theaters where people can see it. I know it was long in the making and also long in the making. And good luck with the launch. Well, thank you very much. And I really appreciate you taking the time.

All right. Thanks to Matt. Thanks to Mark. And thanks to producer Devin Milando. As always, thanks also to our June Narango Powell for his senior podcast management. Thanks to you, of course, the listener. And by the way, we would love to incorporate listener feedback, listener contributions into button mash much more this year.

I always plug the email address, ringerverse gaming at gmail.com, but don't be shy. Drop us a line or even send us a voice note. We could potentially play a question or response, but we'd love to do some mailbags, maybe work in a listener question each episode. If there's something you'd like to hear us talk about, please let us know ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. I'll be back on ringerverse recommends this weekend, and buttonash will return just like Silent Hill next Thursday, right in early, for our fallout finale breakdown.

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