Triforce! - The Steam Audit | Triforce #334

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Triforce! Episode 334! Pyrion returns from Hamburg with more TI tales, we ask the question "Do Valve know what they're doing?" (yes), Lewis wants to understand Friendshop games and we go through our top 10 most played steam games! Go to http://expressvpn.com/triforce today and get an extra 3 months free on a 1-year package! Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickax Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Triforce Maybe the best one, maybe the best podcast out there. Oh, I thought you meant this was going to be the best episode we'd ever. If only people would listen to it and give it a chance, you know? If only, it's a hot new thing. I was going to say, to our four listeners, thank you so much for persisting.

And honestly, you know, we'll try and make the show as good as possible. Yes. For the three people, one of them just left. I just heard. We got exciting new ideas to change things up, you know, freshen things. Yeah, yeah.

Stretching. I'm stretching. So you're back from Hamburg. You had a lovely burglie time in Hamburg. It did. It was the international, or TI, as it's known, my 12th. Were you turned around for it? Did you like the city in the end? I know you were like thinking, it's going to be shit.

Did I say that? A little bit. You're like not particularly interested. International. Yeah. So I thought that it was going to be like the, I think I said it was going to be like the Coventry of Germany in that it would be ugly as hell. No, as usual in Europe they've done, they've actually made an effort.

And Hamburg is beautiful. And I really loved it. They laid on a good show. They did. They really, they lied on a nice city for us. That's good. It was genuinely, hamburg's really pretty. We were right by the lake.

I think it's called De Alster. I could be wrong. Let me look it up. And it's just, I went for a bike around the lake with a couple of friends. And I was like, you know, this is really, really pretty. You smelled some flowers. I did. You know what I did.

It's called the Al-Auls. Alstah, Altenaster. I don't know. Either way, it's a fucking lake. And it's nice. Nice. And you go around, you go all these lovely Bruke, which is a bridge, all the way around it, different Bruke. And there's like parks and stuff. 6 p.m. every day the Germans come out and row their little boats around and everything. And it is, it is a proper lake in that it's not like the sea doesn't flow into it. You know what I mean? It's it does in a way, but it's not directly connected. Because there is a river that you, you can, that does go to the sea. Hamburg is, you know, is a port. I didn't realize that. It's a deep cut, the elbow, goes all the way through,

it's a big river, and then it comes to Hamburg and just sort of stopped dead. It's pretty impressive. Nice. Yeah, it has this huge docklands area, doesn't it? Yeah, it does.

Very big. The Airbus Flukplatz Hamburg Finconverde, airport, which is right on the dock. I beg your button. And the Flukeffenhafen, Hamburg, which is the other airport. That's just to the north. You're okay.

I'm speaking, I'm Spreckensy Deutsch, That's how it sounds. They've got two airports. That's greedy. Yeah. The Airbus Flochplatz Hamburg-Venker to the west. And the Frogghafen Hamburg-Furtl, which is to the north, just south of Wagonhorn. God, they must have like 20 train stations or something.

Oh, they love it. You know what I didn't get a chance to do? I didn't get a chance to go to a miniature funderland, which is why I really wanted to go. But I just didn't get a chance. It's weird that what I ended up. You should have made a chance. You should have created a chance. Okay.

I'll just, next time. am I go there, I'll tell them. Look, I can't work today. There is a miniature wonderland calling to me. Yeah, I just say, I can't work today. I got the shits and then go to miniature wonderland. Ha. We spotted you leaving the hotel and going to miniature wonderland. Care to explain? Yeah, they've got a explanation needed. Yeah, they got a toilet there. They got a toilet there. They don't have. Yeah, it's a really comfortable toilet for my explosive, unstoppable diarrhea that day. Yeah. Yeah. I heard it was really good. That was like the place to go with a little model.

I know. My mates went and they said, first of all, it was packed and it's open until like midnight or something. It's open all day. Imagine you had like really bad diarrhea and you ran to miniature Wonderland and you open the bathroom door and all the toilets were miniature as well, like thimble-sized toilets. No! No!

I really got to go! I don't have a miniature poop. It's for normal-sized. fucking miniature Where's normal-sized Wonderland? Hurry! Actually, the miniature size your idol is fine.

Jesus. It's perfect. It's the perfect year. My tiny penis family, it's like the three bears. This year I know is too big. Met quite a few tiny penis havers in the international

proper. Very nice. Some German tiny penis havers who's riddled up to. me and said, I have a tiny penis. And I was like, a good tug. That is great to hear. Yeah.

So maybe we got some more fans then. Maybe we can, maybe we can, uh, we're expanding a little. That's why it was so busy because all the tiny penis have us were. Miniature of all the land because I said, I might go. Do you ever stop them and be like, what's your favorite episode? Who's your favorite member of the cast? No, I, because I know that it would be, it would not be me, which would be kind of a come down. I'll be like, oh, get out.

You're almost said. You thought it would be. You almost said a name there. I did. Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Is it? It's you. It's you.

Come on. I thought you were going to say Lewis for sure there. No, no one's favorite. I've accepted this. I also have accepted this. But it's just like someone runs up and is excited to see you and I say, who's the favorite member? Who's your favorite member of the trifles?

I'm like, well, he's not here. I'm sorry. And then they look at me and they're immediately disappointed. The thing is, if I went to a Dota thing, everybody, be like, where's flax? No, they would still be saying, where's sips? No, God, they would not. Nobody wants to hear.

You know, where's sips? As if he's like, my keeper. As it's when he'll keep. I'm not going to get it. Like, I have commands on my Twitch channel that's for both of you, that I do not know where you are. Like, I do not have control over you. You can take a, you can make a pretty safe guess.

I'm in one of like maybe three places at any given time. Right. I'd say probably 95% of the time I'm in my garage and then the other two places are in my actual house or at center parks I don't go anywhere else

or milk yeah quite a tiny penis habits they were very very happy that's lovely any shout outs that is nice shout out to well let me think

there was one I've forgotten shout out to you know who you are oh that works I think that's a good catch all really. Yeah, that way they'll think, oh, I think that was me he was talking about. You bet it is. You know what you said. What a great person you are. There you go. That guy slash go. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So you're home now. Are you happy to be home and have an arrest

and not being required for too many things? Very happy to be home. It's a busy, it's a busy two weeks, isn't it? It is. Yeah. Well, any event really is. But I guess Ti, especially if you're doing hosting and stuff like that, it must be. So I was doing an interview. So I did, I got there before everyone else. I came out a day earlier and we had to do Media Day interviews where we prepare all these questions for each player and for each team and then we sort of do a series of interviews with them, film some other content pieces that they edit up and everything.

And then I'm doing coach interviews and exit interviews and stuff like that. So the series is done and we get one of the coaches or one of the players and we're like, oh, that was a tough series or you guys made that look easy. Do you think you blah, blah, blah, blah. Control, you know, what's the meta, et cetera, et cetera. So those are kind of just fill a bits where you get to hear from the players and the coaches. And then we have, there's three days in the middle, but everybody gets off. But I don't have those days off.

I still had to do Media Day stuff on several of those days. So that was a bit sort of like, everyone else says, hey, we're going to go to miniature Wonderland and have fun. And I'd be like, I can't. I've got to work today. So, you know, there's a bit more work on the off days. And then on the main arena days, I only did exit interviews. So when you get knocked out of the tournament, you see my face. I'm the Grim Reaper of Dota at the International.

I saw you do an interview with a very lively guy. South American lad? Yes. King Jumbles, yeah. That's the one. His speech was something else. Yes. I claimed no credit for it.

It was just, I just asked one question. He just went for it. He was amazing. He went crazy. Yeah, it was good. Got the whole crowd hyped up. Nice. Sometimes the ex-e interviews go like that where it's just gold,

and sometimes you have to have like seven questions prepared. And it's tough because you don't want to ask the same question every time because that's kind of hack. And you don't want to ask anything too different because they don't really want to do the interview. Most of them, they're the older guys that know what's up. They're very professional. They'll be like, hey, it's my job. I'm the captain or as part of being a professional is you're just going to do these interviews. It's good for the team brand and your personal brand, et cetera, et cetera. Some of them don't get it and are like pissed off and just say yes, no, don't know. And it's like, fucking come on. Just give me something. So those guys,

you need to have like seven or eight questions, because when they just say, I don't know, you can't say, oh, tell me more, you know, you just have to accept that. They don't want to answer that question and go to the next question and hope that that's a good one. And if you don't have those questions ready, well, let's do a practice of a bad interview. Okay. All right. So I'll do, I'll do Sips, you can be the good interview.

And Lulu, you can be the bad interview. Right. Sure. So Sips, you've just been knocked out of T.I. Yeah. You know what the gig is. You know the job here that I do the exit interviews and you've spoken to me before

and I'm just going to ask the standard questions and you're like, hey, I'm going to be professional about this and I'll give decent answers. Not too long, not too short. You're the stream. Just imagine. Look, some of these guys are actually, you know, understand how it works to talk shit for 60.

What media looks like and everything else. And they might have watched other sports. So I'll come up, you know, hand up your hand on. Just know when you don't think about it. Okay, I'm in. Ready? Okay. Put my hand on your shoulder. There's the crowd. They give a cheer. The camera cuts to us. Sips, really, really devastated to see you guys go out of this stage of the tournament.

You guys are such fan favorites. You just talked to me about what went wrong in that series. Oh, you know, we practiced. We went through all the drills and we practiced like we always do. And, you know, just today we turned up and it just wasn't enough. Everybody gave 110%. But, you know, we just needed to give 111%. We just weren't there. You know, it just wasn't happening for us. but I just want to thank God and my family and I want to also thank my high school teacher, all of them, and all of my primary school teachers. And I think all the other guys on the team probably want to thank all those people as well. You know, we turned up, we tried our best.

Just wasn't our day. It just wasn't our day. Just wasn't your day. But certainly when it comes to the opposition, these guys are some team. Do you think they can go all the way? Yeah, absolutely. You know, we just had a bad day. You know, we did all the training and we thanked all the right people.

and we've done all the stuff that we need to do, but it just wasn't our day. And, you know, hopefully it's the day, it is the day, the Dolmio day for Team X, whoever they are. They definitely have what it takes to take the whole thing home. Fantastic. That's very sporting of you. Final words, could you just,

maybe you have anything you want to say to the fans that have supported you all year and be cheering for you guys here in the stadium? Yeah, I know you can't see it, but I'm arranging my hands into a heart shape. for all you guys and I'm also doing kissy face

and I'm holding two fingers up not offensively more like peacefully to everybody and you know just stay tuned watch this space next year we'll be back

and we'll be better than ever and it will be our day fantastic tips I'll let you get back to your team thank you so much back to the panel that's ideal

yeah amazing that's the perfect exit interview in many ways just positive word salad just a generic salad of positivity. I know exactly what you mean.

It means nothing. Boring. You'd be amazed. We're going to be back next year and we're going to be back better than the crowd starts going, like that. I can't learn for next year. Yeah, fucking next year. Let's just go fucking home now. Let's skip the year. Skip the year. Let's go.

Let's go. It's like that. Next year. Sure. And then the panel go, wow, great words from Sips there. And you know, blah, blah. What do you think about what he said? They'll be like, oh, so it's like, it's just seamless. So then you get the interviews that are horrible. Okay, so I'll do an example of one where I haven't prepared any questions other than the like one. And I assume that you're going to talk a lot and you don't.

And this is my can't sleep at night nightmare interview and Lewis is going to be the bad guy. Okay, Lulu? Sure. All right. Lewis, oh my goodness, what a series came so close. What went wrong in that final game? You looked like you guys had it. Oh, I look at the translator.

Oh, so you're assuming that you can't speak English, and then that is what makes it a nightmare. Yeah, that is another level. That is another nightmare level on top of the nightmare. Right, that's going to make it too difficult. All right. So pretend that you do speak English. The translator speaks all of it to me. And I go, oh, and then she sort of looks at you and sort of shrugs, you know.

Oh, I see. Okay. So you just shrugging. That's the first. That's the first one. All right. And then I haven't prepared any other questions. And now the interviewee is looking at me. The translator is looking at me. The whole crowd is there waiting for me to come up with the next question in response to, right? It's very hard if you haven't got the prepared. Very, very hard. Like that's the worst. I wave at the crowd as well. I'm happy. You don't wave at the crowd. You don't wave at the crowd ever. Like you don't give anything to the crowd. Like I'll ask you, is there anything you want to say to the fans? And you'll say, thanks. Or I'll say, uh, yeah. You know, this, your opponents here are pretty good team, aren't they? They looked hard to play against.

What makes them so hard to play against? They're good. Oh. They cheated. They're just good. All right, thanks. And then the producer might be saying, just fucking end this. You know, in my ear, we'll just say, just throw back to panel.

But then it's like, well, thanks for your great words there from so-and-so and throw-back to panel. Or they'll challenge the question and they'll be like, what do you mean? You're like, come on, mate. Like, you know, you know exactly what I mean. Just, just some of them are out there like it's a contest of wills. Is, is it, I noticed some of it is because they are edge lord sometimes or whatever. I honestly think some of them are just awkward.

Like, it's socially, dota players and nerds in general. We're all nerds in that building. Sometimes they're like, you ask a question. And, I mean, I know, if I asked my eldest a question that had an obvious answer, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't get a good response. I would get, well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? It's like, yes, but maybe just don't say that. Because now you've fucking killed the entire vibe.

Just go along with it and just say, say what you're meant to say. I think if you've never watched any other sport or listen to any other exit interviews, you see it. People tend to see it as an actual interview. When it's not, it's really just giving you guys a chance to show your face on your way out the door and to say some positive shit and to let people know, hey, this isn't the end of the world. That's the job of the exit interview. And sometimes it feels like it's not like that.

It's a tricky job. It is a tricky job, but I don't mind doing it. I would hate to do that. That's why I would never sign up to do something like that. It would be terrible at it as well. It's horrible. I'm not good at any of that kind of stuff. It's the least fun job in Dota, genuinely.

I think when people do it well, though, and they come across really professional, it's impressive. You know, like, I think some people are able to do it very well. But that's not me. I know this of myself. I know I would not be good in a situation like that. I think I would get bored, too. I would not really like to do that job, you know? I do remember, I think whenever I tell these things,

I feel like I've either told this story before or whatever, it's unusual. I remember when I was a kid, I was interviewed on the phone for a local radio show or maybe, I don't know, some BBC Essex or something like that. I don't know, because I'd won this young science writer award back in the day, right? And I was so awkward and nervous about it that I've vividly remembered. I remember them asking me a question on the phone and me like pausing, almost like pausing

in panic, like freezing, and then like having this big delay, awkward delay before I answer and I remember doing this whole interview on the phone really awkwardly and it going like terribly and just waiting for them to sort of use my interview on the radio. Of course they never did. They ever used any of it because it must have been exactly that experience. where they were like, look at, this is awkward, it's terrible. You know, I guess that, like, these days, they could easily have cut the pauses and tidied it up and got something out of it, right?

But I think back then, you know, 1995, it wasn't as snappy and, you know, sort of quick, was it to play these things out? I was just glad it wasn't live, really, because, you know, the cringe. But I don't know, like, I could see nervous people. struggling with that kind of thing being dropped on them all of a sudden. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. And the same thing,

but the pressure, I guess, of playing in a big tournament. It's, again, doing it live is very different to doing it in your pants. It must be exhausted when they're done as well, they like, fuck it, we'll do it live. It must be so tired after coming out of a...

They are, yeah. That's a very different part of the pro seat of playing those tournaments. It is a complete different experience to playing it at home and, you have to overcome that. The other thing is, is we tend to forget how much

these games mean to the players. And I know that sounds silly because they've dedicated their lives to it. But there's an idea that this is like that TI has diminished because the prize pool is not what it once was. What was the prize pool this year? It was like $2.3 million,

two and a half million, something like that. Oh, wow. Gosh, yeah, it has come down a lot because it was like $30 million one year. Ti-I-10, it was $40 million. I know. And then they stopped doing the battle pass and it went down.

We have spoken about it. It doesn't matter. But yeah, you'll run. It's like, there's this idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's this idea that it's not worth it anymore. So they think that, you know, the idea is out of the money is not what it was. Players probably don't care as much.

They really fucking do. It's still a $2 million tournament. Yeah. And people really need to care about it. But more than that, your name gets inscribed onto the ages. And if you've been playing this game for your entire life, which these players all have, your name being alongside the legends that you grew up watching is a massive deal. The fact that you are forever known as a T.

winner, which is a select group of people who've played this game, is a big thing. You are a legend. You get a TI ring. You get everything. Like, you are a part of Dota history. And all of these guys that are really passionate about the game, absolutely love it. Who is that guy, the team secret guy? Is it puppy?

Yeah. Who's never won it, but like... He won it. Oh, did he win it? You won TI1, yes. Oh. And then he came second at TI3 and second at, ooh, was a Ti-11?

What Tim was he with when they won it in TI-1? Was that Navi? Navi. Yeah. Oh. So we... I thought he'd never won it. I thought that's why everyone was like, I can't believe he's never won it. Like everybody just assumed that he's won it like a couple of times sort of thing.

So he's won it once and comes second three times. He came second in 2012 to IG, the Chinese powerhouse. Then they lost at Alliance, TI3, which is probably most people's first big sort of Dota Awakening, if you like, that was the big one. Certainly for me, a lot of other people, that was the one that was really genuinely just just an amazing moment because the games were good and the popularity of Dota had started to come up because more people had access to the game. It was massive.

T.I.3 was massive. The prize bullet, T.I.3, it was my first T.I.3 was $2.8 million. The next year, it was $10.9 million. And it went up every single year from that. then on, 2021, it went all the way up to 40 million when it was in Bucharest. That was the COVID T.I. When we lost a year and then we went to Bucharest, it was meant to be Stockholm, and they had to move to Bucharest because the Swedish government collapsed and they couldn't, nobody, there was a very strange scenario. And I mean, obviously the whole point of it was that it

felt artificially inflated that price will buy the audience buying what was effectively the best set of cosmetics, you know, and God, that battle pass used to be. this thing that got everyone back into Dota, spend huge amounts of money on it. You know, you would spend, basically, you're buying cosmetics. You're not really caring about contributing it to the tournament,

but it did feel like Valve looked at that and said, this much money should be going to us instead of the tournament. Let's instead sell cosmetics in a different way and to keep it. And I don't know, that's my cynical side doing it, but it definitely felt like it was this thing that they had no reason to change.

other than their own desire to bring the profits over to themselves instead of the prize bill, right? Am I crazy? No, so there's a few things. The thing is that year the prize pool was $40 million. That's 25% of whatever the Battle Pass raised. So they made $120. Okay? So they made $120 million off the Battle Pass, and $40 million went into the prize pool.

Right. So that's an insane amount of money. That is an insane amount of money. Are they still doing that? Val passes and stuff? Like, are they still doing the Atlas and all that? No. Valve are not stupid.

They're not naive. They're not your best friend. They hire psychologists to understand how to best extract money from their audience. They are very, very smart. They're the smartest people in the world at this. And that's literally what they do. I will just say, whilst I'm sure that's true, and I mean, I've known enough of them and worked long-side enough of them to sort of get some idea of how they think about these things.

very data-driven, very data-driven. I honestly think that this was a manpower problem more than anything else. Because it's not like Dota. I can't see how else it's making $120 million from one thing, like the Battle Plus. I just don't understand where that extra money is meant to be coming from. If they're supposedly saying, well, it doesn't matter, we'll make more money from X. Because I don't know what that X is that I'm meant to be spending the money on. It was such a strange decision to cancel something that was making so much money.

money and was such a big community event. But it was just a manpower thing. Yeah, because the thing is, you could make more if those people did something else. I think that's more likely to be that the answer is, well, wouldn't you be better off just putting these 10 people that we had to have working on this thing on some other project that's going to make more money? That's probably the decision. When we visited Valve a couple of years ago, we were shocked at how few people actually work

there. It's like for the stuff that they do is a small company. It's very small. It's 400 people. You're right. Yeah. But I mean, Steam alone, you would think that there'd be thousands of people. Right.

Not just Steam. They have big games too, like big live service games. Like, it seems crazy that there's only 400 people worth. Yeah, exactly. You're right. It is, Sips is right. And I think somehow, Valve is both incredibly genius and incredibly naive. And I think that, you know, maybe that is there, was their reason for doing it.

doing it. Pflax, like, oh, this is just too much work. And, but, but, but too much work to what put together 10 cosmetics, you know, and, you know, organize a little bit of, they had all the player cards and the, and they had like the, uh, the book and, and everything. I think it was quite a bit of work. They'd done it. They'd established they knew what the work was. I don't understand. So they did do last year was the crownfall update, which was a year long event that had loads more to it than the battle pass has ever had. I see. And I'm pretty sure. And you that makes more money over the course of the year than the battle pass. No, no, I don't think it makes more money. I don't think it makes more money because I don't see how it

could. Like the amount of money that people were putting into the battle pass was enormous. But I wonder if from our perspective, it was a lot of whales putting in huge amounts of money, whereas something like Crownfall, which cost, I can't remember what it cost. Let's say it cost 25 quip. And that was a bunch of quests and items and cool stuff for your whole year. Maybe way more people bought that, uh, that would traditionally hardly put any money in to the battle pass. I don't know. We have to assume that Valve knows what they're doing.

Yeah, of course, that's the thing. But this year, there was no Crownfall. This is the right, this is the right call. So, but the thing is, the Crownfall had nothing to do with TI. Stop the Battle Pass. Right. Would have, would have been kicked out of Valve, do you know what I mean? Well, yeah.

That's sort of how, I mean, unless they're high enough rank to survive the purges. Right, but the Crownfall had nothing to do with TI, and they were able to release it whenever they wanted. And I believe that one of the things they said at the time was, we don't want to be tied to TI as in, oh, that's our big thing this year. We want to be able to take a year and just fucking work on this thing. We don't want to have to think, shit, we need to do a battle pass. So if that was the explanation that they gave, if that's true, then apparently Dota making money is not that bigger deal, because they've given up making as much money from the battle pass. So it's a very weird situation

And for a lot of Dota fans, they don't understand Because Valve is not a communicative company Like they never have been They're very secretive and things come out And that's it And by not communicating They really avoid the public Getting into trouble

Like if you never say anything to anyone They can't question what you say Like they literally just zip it And they don't say anything And they release stuff and that's it And when they do speak They're very very careful It's very carefully worded

and it's still kind of mysterious, and you just have to try and figure it out. They're a very enigmatic company, and as a fan of their games, and specifically of Dota, and people whose career kind of hangs off that game, it can be frustrating at times, and it can be mystifying. And I don't know why the Battle Pass was stopped other than what they told us, which is they didn't want to have to spend their whole year working on this thing for TI. They wanted to do other stuff as well. So we got Crownfall.

We had Crownfall last year. It was great, but there isn't an equivalent this year, and I don't know if there's going to be one next year. year. We didn't get a new hero this year. What are they working on? So you just don't know. And they'll also say things like, now we're going to do a patch every two weeks and that's the way we're going to do it going forward. And then you get that for a month and then they move on to something else. So the nature of working at Valve, which is, hey, it's all very cool, guys, we can do what we like, means that there is a genuine lack of direction and lack of

people saying, uh-uh, we promise we do that, we've got to do it. That's part of our philosophy. They just sort of opt out of that and say, ah, we just decided we can't be asked. So it's like having a really smart roommate who never does the dishes. That's kind of what Valve is like. And they're just like, I don't believe in doing the dishes. I 100% agree. And sometimes there's a really good decision behind that, right? And sometimes there isn't. Yeah, but that's the thing you'd never know. You would never know. Yeah. That's a really, that's the perfect analogy for Valve, honestly. You know, they, you think, why aren't they doing these things or why are they doing this

like customer service stuff so badly or why are they like this? And it's just part of the structure, the odd arcane structure they've constructed around their company. It's tough as a fan. And it wouldn't work if they didn't make so much fucking money. Yeah, from Steam. Like that's the other thing is, how often does someone just say, well, look, wouldn't you be better off just working on Steam, you know, or fixing this?

theme problem? And the answer is almost certainly, yes, absolutely. So it's a tough one. It is a tough one. Hey, what are you going to do? Yeah. Well, I mean, we are blessed to have Steam. It's a great resource. I mean, look at things like the fucking mobile phone store, you know, trying to buy a game on your phone or play a game on your phone. Because the stores are so bad has kind of, I think, damaged the industry on those platforms. How often do I play games on my phone compared to what I might do if the stores were actually more conducive, right? So few games end up even releasing on mobile. Obviously, when they do, they have to be balatrous size, you know,

to make a dent and for people to go, oh, you know, you can play it to game on your phone. It's like, look at the platform. It's insane, really, how underutilized it is to a generation of people. I mean, kids, sure, they're playing Fortnite on their phone. Maybe, I don't know, fuck, who knows, or Minecraft on their phone. Maybe, God, look, who knows? PubG.

They're playing PubG on their phone. PubG mobile. They're playing Roblox on their phone. Pubgy Mobile, biggest Eastport in the world, exactly. And I think that is a symptom of a poor platform, a poorly run platform, a platform run by a desire for more profit. And it's not that Steam is a desire for more profit, but it certainly does seem to, or used to, and hopefully it won't change too much in the wrong way. Steam is definitely more responsive to if a game is like going blowing up or going a bit,

viral or, you know, they, they will almost highlight it more. You know, I think some of Steam's algorithmic showing off what's, what's happening, you know, you'll see it like on, people will post on like R slash game dev and how they released their game. It did nothing. They really upset. And then suddenly it got like, you know, 100, 100 purchases out of nowhere sort thing. And then Steam suddenly decided that that had pushed it over a limit. And then Steam promoted it a little bit on the platform, and then that got on a lot of thousand sales type thing, you know, and it was this, it's this kind of, there's all these hidden visibility metrics that go on on Steam and you have to kind of get that snowball effects, right, going to sort of take

advantage of it. And in a sense, that can help indie games as much as it helps AAA games. It's not like you're paying Steam to be on the front page. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make sure. If Steam decides to do a full page advert for your game, you're just lucky or you're a big game or someone at Steam is excited about your game or someone at Steam thinks your game's good. They do do that thing where it's like Indie Fest or RTS. So they sort of have this grouping, this category, where they're like, this is an indie game,

or this is a game that will help push remote play, or this is a game that is an RTS game and we want to promote those. So sometimes you'll get bundled in with that where you just get suddenly uplifted to this category alongside all these big games, and I assume that helps. I use Discovery Q. I don't know how many other people use it.

I use a Discovery Q a lot on Steam because it's a way of finding games that it thinks I'll like, but that it's not going to put on the front page. And I just tick through that. A lot of them are absolute shit. But sometimes I'll find it on like, oh, wow, I've never even heard of this game, and I'll buy it. And it's really cool. There's a game called Nowhere Profit that I really like, which is like a sort of mini,

Magic the Gathering style card game, roguelike thing. And I've got hundreds of hours on that. I really like it. It's a nice chill game. There's lots of little secret things to unlock. You would never have heard of that game. I've never seen it promoted. I've never met people who've ever played the game.

And I found that on Discovery Q, a bunch of games like that. So, Steam a lot of the time, knows that it, I think, like you said, they know what they're doing. They promote stuff that they know are going to do really well. They're very data-driven. I think that's the thing people don't understand about Valvers. They are very, very data-driven. For example, one of the things I heard a while back was that player numbers during the TI Grand Final in Dota don't really diminish. an awful lot of people

would just play the game and don't care about the pro scene. From their perspective, that's true. But I will also say this, there are a lot of people that I meet that only watch and don't play. And that's not a metric that Valve have access to. So sometimes being very data-driven

from one data source is incredibly bad because the TI finals across all the streams got millions and millions and millions of viewers. And the game doesn't get millions and millions of viewers. It gets about,

I think it's about 700, 800,000, current is pretty standard at the moment, which is great. The game's in a good place. I'm very happy with that. That's big. Yeah. It's like one of the top. It's got to be the top. Top three, top four, something like that. So from their perspective, that data is great. They're like, wow, we've got this many players. And when they look at how many people are playing when the grand finals are on, in their mind, this doesn't really seem to matter. But what they're not seeing is the people who just watch. Because from their perspective, there's no value to that. Like, they don't get anything from people who just watch and don't play because they're never going to spend a penny

on it. So it's almost like data they're not interested in. But from the perspective of people working on it and broadcasters, that's very interesting data. So it's kind of weird how the focus is dependent on like, you know, what angle you're coming at this from. Their perspective is who's likely to spend money in Dota. It's not going to be someone who never plays it. So do we really care? So it's kind of interesting when we think of TIE as being the biggest thing all year for Dota. And it is if you're a fan and you watch it, but for a lot of people they play it. They really don't watch it. They don't care. They'd rather be playing. Before we continue, going online with that ExpressVPN is like forgetting to mute yourself

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extra months for free. ExpressVPN.com slash Triforce. Joe. Well, we talk about, we don't know we try and talk about games too much, but I want to shout at a game I played this week that I enjoyed. It had a really bad release because people accused it of using AI, and I think they had used AI in the development process where they'd done some translations with it, and it was like placeholder translations had slipped in or whatever, and I think they got like real bad PR for it, and it kind of got panned.

I'm glad, by the way, that people don't like games that have wank AI. them keep it up folks keep it up tell me about it but i think in this case i think it hurt the game quite a lot when actually it's quite a game that i'm quite enjoyed right um i think that a i has its usage and but it shouldn't be in final products ideally um it's just yeah if you look who knows anyway we've talked about that a million times it's called the altars uh and i wanted to shout out because it's such a weird idea for game basically i meant to play that But I never got around to it. That's the one where you have like an army of clones, right?

And you have to go around and it's got like a bit of base management and like... That's right. So you're basically stranded on an alien plant like death stranding sort of style and you walk around outside. God, this looks crazy. Yeah. You're the only, you're the only person who survives this terrible accident, right? And you've got a cloning machine, but you don't know how to like fix the base or do research

or do mining and the various things, right? So you have to basically make clones of yourself, but give them a different life path. So like a crucial decision point in your life where you were like, should I leave my girlfriend or shall I stay with her or whatever, do you know, my mom's like, you know, living with her abusive husband, do I, you know, fight him or do I run away type thing? These are the choices that you make in your life. Right. And they led you down a different life path where you became a doctor or you became a security guard

or whatever, right? And so you clone yourself with these different personality traits. And it's you and a team of copies of you. And of course, you really don't get on with them. They are all like, because they're all kind of judging each other for like choices they made. Like how could you have, you know, left her, how could you have done this, you know, and stuff like this? And so, and also they're all dealing with the fact that they're clones sort of with a limited lifespan, you know, on a fucking horrible alien planet

kind of thing and I don't know it's just a really kind of a good nice experience I really enjoyed it gave me like Death Stranding vibes because of how kind of weird and wacky it was and sort of

surviving that you're doing and I I really just I really enjoyed it I played it for like 20 hours and it was just a great experience so that's my shout out for wait you finished it after 20 hours yeah yeah and that's kind of all I want out

these games a lot of the time right you know I think I've obviously played the Planet Crafter for like a hundred hours in the last few weeks. I played June Awakening and I was like, this is the most generic ass game ever. And I played boardlands four. Yeah, I played it last. I played a generic ass game. Borderlands four last night for a brand thing.

I kind of enjoyed it, actually. The combat stuff was pretty fun. If you like that kind of thing, it is, it is a borderlands game. It's more, it's borderlands of four, the four. Yeah. You know, it's another borderland game. Not much different to the other Borderlands games. I just say, I've played a bunch of these AAA games.

If this was the App Store, you know, and I was only being given Borderlands 4 at June Awakening, I'd be like, I have fucking eight games. I played a whole bunch of it's like, because I played the altars. It's like, actually, I've had a really good time in gaming this last week. Yeah, June Awakening, I like the progress is kind of nice when you get the Ornithopter and stuff. I think it was fine. It was, maybe I'll go back in. But, like, I don't know, I feel like it was just a bit fucking generic and boring and dull.

And like, oh, give me a break. I mean, is it because I'm supposed to be playing it with my mates? Probably. I think maybe that's it. That's it's board lands. There's this thing. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called friend slop.

Friends slop. Friend slop. Friend slop. It's games like Peak, which are only fun. Oh, like repo. If your friends are funny. Phasmophobia and all those. Yeah.

All these. They're basically not a good game unless you have funny friends to fuck around with in them. And I wonder where the borderlands for and June Awakening are the same. But I also feel like trying to play these games with your friends. We are out of sync, right? I want to play like June with my friend, but he's played 50 hours of it or even 10 hours of it. And he's out of sync with me. And he's like, where are you?

And he turns up in this fucking, you know, all this shit. And he's like, oh, I don't want to do the boring shit that you're doing. You know, I'm doing interesting shit over here. like, you can't join me and do it. Don't get me wrong. Like, you know, I can't, I should complain about, but I just find it so boring. I'm like, God, I'm hating it. And maybe it's not for me.

Maybe it's for someone else, younger people, maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's for the new generation coming through who haven't played it before and want to shoot a fucking dog, alien dog in the face, you know, for three hours. Giant, oh, it's a giant alien dog. I've been playing well I was playing No Man Sky

the new update for No Man Sky which is really good and then I moved on to Water Park Simulator which is bad See this is what I'm talking about I'm going to play that now I want to play that

Why? It's fine Honestly water park simulator is it's one of the better ones like it's all right I want to do me a favor I want you Lewis do you

do you do you Okay, Sips, you've got your Steam available as well. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. So I want you to go to your profile. Just click on, click on your profile. And on the right hand side, where it says games. 250 games. Right, I've got 701 games.

How many games you got? Oh, games. 918 games. Games. So click on that. Just click on games. And then you can sort by playtime. Sure.

Yes, right. Sorting by playtime. So I want you to give me your top 10 most played games by playtime. Right. You know, you know what mine are. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah. Right. Number one, Dota two. Of course. Two thousand one. Last played in 2022. Okay. Five, four, sorry, four thousand nine hundred and ninety eight hours last plate October second, twenty twenty four. Right. Flax, we know yours is Dota two as well with like 13,1172. That's crazy. That's too many. Okay. That's too many. Interesting though. Now, what is your second?

second most played game. Well, let's go in the same order we did. Sips, what's yours? Rimworld, 929 hours. Woof, nice. Woof, 929. That's less than my fifth most played game. Now, I've got two for work.

What's your second? Gary's Mod. Gary's Mod is my... Gary's Mod, and it's artificially inflated. I obviously do a lot of TTT, but also... It's a work game, Gary's Mod for me. But I leave it on often as well. I've been playing Gary's model enough since

but my Dota Time is all in-game I don't idle I'm never idle If I've loaded it up He's gaming He's just games So that's hours of like that That's games played That's a thousand hours a year

Because I've been playing it for 13 years I can't believe you played that much Dota 2's insane It's the best game ever made The best game ever made Right what's the second best game ever made then According to this football manager 2012 12. 1,900 hours.

Now, I know why I've got all that time in that. And it's because that was when I was a stay-at-home dad for both the kids when they were little. And I had it on a laptop. Man, my top 10 is actually so good. Okay, you ready for number three? Yeah. Yeah. Number three for me is satisfactory 666 hours.

Nice. Hellsake. Yeah. It's a hells sake. It might phrase it, but I might be. factorio and it's 1,600 hours. Nice. So twice as much as your satisfactory play time. And your third flax? Football manager, 2011. 1,000,000. Yeah, I thought it was these. Fourth game for me is oxygen not included, 575 hours. Okay. Again, you've streamed that a lot.

Yeah, and I played it a lot. 575. But those are like, those are rookie numbers. That's not a lot of hours for a game, really. But we'll come to my point at the end of this, which is a very clever point. My next three are, again, games that I've played a lot of for work. Wait, you're doing next three? This is just meant to be number four. Well, I've got Sid Myr's Civilization 5, Sid Myr's Civilization 6, and GTA 5. Right, okay, yeah. Those are all recording games.

These are, these are games that I've played a lot of with, like, not that I wouldn't have, but almost like I've had to organize them, though, right? I've had to organize to play them with friends. if I hadn't organized, if I hadn't had the work as a reason to play them, I don't think I would have put that many hours in, you know, whereas Factorio is almost entirely organic. Yeah, my number four is Counter-Strike, 1,235 hours in CF. Interesting. And then Football Manager 2024 with 1,000 hours.

Is that number five? Yeah, that's number five. Okay, listen to my number five is Fallout 4 with 541 hours. Wow, okay. But to be fair, most of that was spent just making. murder machines in, uh, in sanctuary. Big elaborate murder machines as automated as I can make them as well. Um, lots of fun making a murder machine. Yeah. A meat factory. Um, okay. My next is is hearts of iron with a thousand hours. Oh my God. A thousand hours in hearts of five four.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Six for me is that is farming sim 22, 430 hours of farming sim 22. Another one that I went crazy with and got a lot of mods and automated a lot of stuff and everything. It was very fun. Look, I'll just go through the rest of mine. After farming Sim 22, prison architect, 415 hours. Oh, yeah, you played so much of that. Planet Zoo, 403 hours. City skylines, 400 hours.

And then my last two are Path of Exile 2, 400 hours and Path of Exile 400 hours. So, if honorable mentions, here's my point. Played up, 360 hours of play-up. And then Factorio, which I've been, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've played it as much as most, 332 hours. But I've been playing that again recently, too. So here's, here's my point. Is it when you're saying, oh, I've got to play that new power wash, uh, manager game or whatever. Yeah. If you look at the games that you play, a lot of your games are two or three hundred hours in, some game, and it's like, I feel like the way that your games library works and the kind of games that you play, it's like, you'll grab a game, you'll stream it for a week or two,

and then you never touch your game because there's some other similar kind of game has come along. It's either a building game or a sort of chore-based game, as like something like cleaning and stuff like that, whereas my games list, and I'd say it's pretty much just four or five titles played over and over and over again. I mean, Dota, obviously, football manager, Counterstrike, Heart Survime. I'm going to ignore Civ 5 because, again,

we did a lot of that for recording. And XCOM 2 is a game I played a shitload. But there are also games that I've played a lot of off-streams. Dolores, I don't stream very much. I've got 500 plus hours in that. A game called Ultimate General Civil War, which I've played a lot, 450 hours in that.

I feel like a lot of the... Your menu is much bigger of games that you play. I'm much more pissed off. with most games that I play, and I just play them for like 10 hours. I'm like, this fucking sucks. Like 10 minutes, in all honesty. I've got so many of my games. I've barely played an hour and abandoned.

Loads. Games of people say, like, oh my God, I can't really like that. I got loads of games at the bottom of my list here that have no time played. God, yeah. I've got half of my list is less than 10 minutes. Yeah. It's so bad. Whoa, whoa.

Whoa. But, well, I guess there's a difference, though, right? Between games that you have clearly come back to and come back to and come back to and games that you've had a good time, but are not meant to be played. Oh, why do I have Bus Simulator 21 next stop? No time played. When did this happen? Let's rectify that. How the hell did I never play that? But I mean, Starjoo Valley, I've got 45 minutes. Oh, man. That's one of the biggest games, right? It's a huge game, yeah. It's great. Forty five minutes. Victoria three, I managed an hour. Oh, Victoria three is up there for me, yeah. Peak, I managed one hour. They

are billions, one hour. Stalker 2, one hour. And I'm just like, I gave it an hour. I thought it was wank. I'm never coming back. Victoria 3. I've played, so many games. I've played more Victoria 3 than any other paradox game on my list. 312 hours of Victoria 3 I played. Right. Yeah. I would say half of that has spent asleep at my computer, though. It does make me fall asleep while I'm playing it. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, a bit of extra sleep. Crusader Kings 2, I've got only 261 hours in. Planet Coaster, 268 hours seems low as well. XCOM 2, 284 hours seems low also.

I feel like I've played so much of these games. But I guess, like, I guess hundreds of hours is kind of a lot too, right? This is fascinated to look at. Like, looking at my Sky Room, I've got hundreds and hundreds of hours in Skyrium. And yet I haven't played since 2014. Yeah. It's like very sort of strange. I got 200 hours in Hitman World of Assassination.

which is, again, I feel like I've played it so much, but only, only like... What is the most kind of... What is the most played game on there that you think you have played? You like a lot, and it's an unusual game. Like, so for me, there's a game which I've played for 300 hours called Terraformers. Right. Now, again, it's a small game. You might not have even heard of it.

It's like a kind of an indie board game. It's not like terraforming Mars, except actually fun. and single player. Is it like real time or is it like a term-based thing? It's term-based. You build a little Mars-based. You expand. You build little things.

It's for some reason, it just got its hooks to me and I completed everything in it. Wow. Or like all the achievements, all the most difficult settings. I just got into it for some. It doesn't even look like much. It's not a huge game. It's got a thousand reviews on Steam. You know, so it's sold enough to probably just enough to pay for its development.

Terraformers. Man, for some reason, I bought all the DLC. Like, you know. Wow, you just really went nuts on that one. I just, for some reason, I got into it in a major way and loved it. There's nothing on my list that is like, is there a game like that? To it's overly, I do. Okay, somehow, and I'm not sure, have you ever heard of Black Desert online?

Yeah. Yeah. I have to 300 hours of that game. What? I don't even know how. It's my account and hacked or something. Like, I don't even know. I can't even remember any of that time played in that game.

I don't know. 300 hours. I don't know what I even did in that game. I don't even know what you would do in that game. What is it like? What you do in it? There is like crafting and trading and stuff. But like after 300 hours, I couldn't have gotten into it that much.

That's, that's a Sips classic right there. Yeah. You've got to have that's crazy that you can't remember. That's quite a few hours. But when did you? I couldn't even tell you like how the game starts or anything. When did you last play it? Last played in 2020.

April 23, 2020. But imagine, imagine you'd paid for 300 hours of woodworking lessons or something like that, Germany. You would have had, you would have had something. I played 273 hours of Lostark. But to be fair, that was kind of cool. Like when it came, when the global version came out in 2022, I played it a whole bunch. It's like, it's a, it's like a big, another one of these Japanese, possibly now dead MMO.

Yeah, it was like, it's like a big, big Japanese or Korean MMO. Last updated yesterday. It's still going, it's a hundred, sorry, it's a big, it's a big whale game. It's a thousand reviews. Yeah, it's a, it's a big money syncing. Think about all the things I could have done if I hadn't spent a thousand hours. I was playing borderless gaming. Oh, yeah.

Gosh. One of my most played games is borderless gaming. I wonder what game that was for. They are billions as well. 234 hours of they are billions. What a great game. Have you ever played that? Isn't it weird?

Isn't it weird? I'm not trying to flex or anything. I'd never do that. But when you consider just how many hours you think, oh man, I played that game so much. I'm now looking at Dota 2, this 13,000 hours. That is genuinely a staggering number of hours to have in a game. Yeah, when you see it actually like on paper, it's nuts.

I don't know how many hours I've played World of Warcraft, but it must be similar to your Dota. I think that for me has got to be my all-time most big. I'm even going to play it again soon because the player housing stuff's coming out. It looks awesome. So I'm going to play wow again. If you guys, any devs out there, if you want Sips to play your game, you have to be able to clean something.

Just put like some dumb shit in it. It has to involve a factory. Or you can build a house and he will, he will come. I will. If you allow him to build it, he will come. Man, I was playing Borderlands 4 last night. And it was like, I walked by a place and it said fishing spot. I was instantly fishing.

I was there. I was like, I dropped everything. I was going to go kill someone. You can tell you're a fucking wow player, mate. I walk across that fishing spot as well. And I forgot about it instantly. There was a boss. There was a little mini boss on that island, right, with a fishing spot.

Oh, maybe. I don't know. Is that the one I'm thinking of? Too busy getting very exciting. See, I was looking for the fishing spot and I got killed by that boss and then I didn't go back there. Right. But I guess you were, you saw the vicious spot and you got distracted. You didn't find the boss because of that. It's fascinating.

Okay. What game do you regret playing as much as you did? Oh, great question. I genuinely don't think any because all of these games, all of these games that I've played for hours and hours and I don't think I would put that time in and regret it. There are games I regretted buying and just never played again. But I had fun playing all of these. I'm very all in.

Like, I'll play a game and if it grabs me, I will absolutely play the shit out of it. But if it doesn't, I would just, I will never persist and be like, it's okay. I'm just like, this isn't doing it. I'm done. Okay, I played 23 hours of Outriders in 2021 for some reason. Okay. What the hell is Outriders? Again, I don't know.

I don't know what this game is. I apparently pay it was like 23 and a half hours it was like it was like what's that fucking one that flop massively it's like concord or whatever I played that more than I played hell divers too and I actually enjoyed hell divers too

so I don't know what happened I don't know what's going on let me look God I can't oh Total War War Warhammer 2 what was that no that was fine oh I actually do know combat mission battle for Normandy

that oh I regret Oh, Dave of the Diver as well. Fuck that stupid game. I regret my time in Sid Myers Civilization 7. Yeah. I've not got long in it. I still regret those hours. I really fuck that game.

Jesus Christ. I don't know. There's a lot of games that I don't enjoy, clearly, but I've ended up playing a lot of. But there's also a lot of games that I've really, really enjoyed. And I haven't got that many. I was like, I guess the Anno games are probably underrepresented on my list, given how much I love Anna. What was the last time an ANO game came out?

Isn't there a new one coming out soon? Yeah. I mean, they're fine. Years ago, right? ANO 1850 or whatever. You know what it's going to be. It's going to be the tedium of trying to get some fucking throughput from Island X to Island Y where you need to assemble all these things to keep some prick happy who's like,

oh, I don't have any rum. It's just that, but in different times. And it's just after a while, you're like, oh, God, we're going to need to build another this or another that. I think it's because there are some of the games that I, for example, Satisfactory. I don't actually own it on Steam. I've got it on Epic back in the day. See, I probably have more time in Satisfactory because I did play a ton of it when it was on

Epic, but now I have it on Steam as well. But I've never switched over and I've played lots of games coming to Steam. Did you hear? Yeah. But you've got to buy it again. Yeah. Of course you do. It's course they're cubs.

Yeah. So can I just say, by the way, I've got 12 hours in Sid Mya Civilization 7. I want those hours back. You want them all back? I want them all back because that game I'll send them to you in a box. Sucks and I don't think it'll ever be saved. Right.

I've played, look, all that I've played every SIV, every single SIV game. I've played a decent amount. It has gotten less and less over the years. I'm happy to admit that. I really liked Sip 4 back in the day. Siv 5, when that was finished, I really liked that. Siv 6 was all right, you know, I didn't play it as much, but I did play a decent amount, liked it.

Siv 7 was so bad. that I don't think I will ever return to that game. I don't know how they managed to fuck it as bad as they did. I also want the 30 hours back from civilization beyond earth. Give me those back as well. Right. Listen, I got a couple here for you that, okay, I got a game on here called Winning Putt, Golf Online, Total Played.

Hell yeah. One minute. Hell yeah. I didn't even think I got to see the game. Like, one minute is like you, like you are so annoyed by the menu that you quit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. I also have Sidmeyer's civilization beyond Earth.

One minute. What is that game? That is correct. That is correct. What is it? Wingspan. I only played two minutes of that, apparently. LA noir, two minutes.

I don't think I'd get it to work. Oh. The total war games I'm not a fan of. Total War Medieval 2, definitive edition, four minutes played. And also Total War Rome 2, Emperor Edition, three minutes played. Three minutes. I guess it just didn't get past the menu for those ones. Sometimes you know what it's like where you've got too much choice though, right?

And you're like, what shall I play today? And you go down your list and you light something up and you're like, oh, actually, I don't want it. I somehow played wasted pizza in the jingle jam for seven minutes, which is longer than a lot of other games on my list. Seven minutes of wasted pizza. That sounds like something you did with Hap Films or something. No, I think I played it with you actually. Oh, really? I think me and you played it.

Or maybe it was Hap Films. Disco, Disco Elysium, 14 minutes. That's going to anger a lot of people. 14 minutes was what I gave that game before I tapped out. You thought it was too edgy. No, I think I was. I feel like I'm fairly ashamed of this one. I've got a game on here called Shower with Your Dad Simulator, 2015.

Do you still shower with your dad, question mark? And I played that game for 13 minutes. Yeah. That's how long I played Xenonauts, too, for before deciding it was one. I hated that. I really hated that. Yeah. Really. There's a lot of games in here that people will be like, I can't believe you didn't play.

Let me see. What have we got here? Oh, here we go. Baseball 97, 20 minutes. Stalker, 21 minutes. I got one that's going to piss everybody off. The binding of Isaac, 18 minutes. Yeah, I didn't. I don't even have that.

Really? I don't even have that game. They do. I don't understand why. And that Cult of the Lamb never got interested in it. I didn't even get it. 90 hours in Isaac. I enjoyed Cult of the Lamb.

I played it like a little bit. I've got like 20 hours in Colts of the Land as well. Isaac, I never got into. Visera cleanup detail, 29 minutes. Oh, I played a bunch of that. Me and Lewis played a bunch of that, actually. That's an old jingle jam. We used to play and when we used to record like double dragon stuff,

we used to play it a bit as well, I think. Play shit like that. Yeah, like these sort of idly, like, do it in the background games. Like big, I mean, that one is like a massive timeaster game. I kind of like it, though. I like clean-up games. Oh, sorry about filling this podcast up with just random guff. Hey, we've got to do it occasionally.

You know, we're all gamers. I'll get fewer emails about this. I'll get fewer emails about this. So, yeah, crack on. We talked about games. If you have something you want to email the podcast about, premium flags at gmail.com, keep them coming. Do you want some lose news before we go?

Yeah, fuck it. News me up, baby. Yeah, news me up, Lou. So, a woman, I'll start with, I start with the gaming news. Japan's National Library says that it's not going to be preserving switch to game key cards, right? So obviously the libraries, they have to have something, all new publications, right? They have to, it requires every new book that's published. You have to get a copy to the library. And you'll know this period because there'll be a company, could be a burdega in the National Library.

No way. There will be. No, there won't be because it wasn't officially published, was it? I think it was. I think we had to send one. They won't put it in there. They'll burn it. Too woke.

Apparently, switch to game key cards are not eligible. Good. They're not books. What the fuck? This is not something... By that token, why don't you announce that my bus ticket isn't going to get in there? My fucking train ticket isn't going to get... I know.

When I took a trip to Bristol on the train last year, no one's preserved that in a library? But also, does it mean that? they have been preserving previous generations and other game cards. Fucking hope not. That's dumb. They've got like a whole box full of like every game card that ever released. It'd be kind of cool to have a collection. Anyway, woman whose diarrhea was such a, was such a biohazard that it canceled an entire flight. There's a Netflix documentary about a cruise where there was like a lot of

overflowing diarrhea as well. I think it's actually called poop crews or something. I think that is a great. If it's the one I'm thinking of, that's a really good one. It was a fun little document. Yeah, they're like quarantine a boat and they can't get off and everybody is just shitting everywhere. Like everybody's sick and shitting all over the place.

But they're stuck. The engines go. Yeah, that's right. And they're drifting in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Of America actually. Sorry, the Gulf of America. Thank you. They're drifting in the Gulf of America.

And so the tugboat. from either side are like, oh, it's pretty far. So they won't tone one way or the other. I love it. You should have read. You should have done the commentary on that documentary. So basically what this story is, a woman, American woman, was on a plane, okay? And she had norovirus, which obviously makes you very vomiting and shitty.

She's in a batch. So she wasn't feeling great when she took off at Newark, but decided to risk it and board the plane, despite feeling. a deep, deep disturbance. So after takeoff, she had to rush to the bathroom despite the seatbelt on sign and to prevent the worst from happening in front of hundreds of fellow passengers. So for the next 20 minutes, I have more diarrhea than any human should have in their life. But the nightmare didn't end there.

She was vomiting in real trouble. They seasoned flight crew who have seen it all allowed her to stay in there. the bathroom for the entire flight. She was told to brace for impact while staying in the toilet during landing. Brace. Brace for impact. Yeah. Brace for impact.

Yeah, because you're not supposed to be in the toilet when the plane is landing. Yeah, but if you don't do the brace thing, you're meant to be fastened in, you're meant to be buckled up in your street. Yeah, of course. Because that will save you. Finally landed. She was helped out in a wheelchair before a hazmat team was brought in. to deal with the mess.

There go. Oh, my God. And the next flight was canceled. Oh, hey, sorry. I need to shit again. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm shitting everywhere.

This stuff could, this is like, I always, whenever I hear news articles like this, I'm almost like you, you, you, you sometimes, it's like a Larry David, Kirby enthusiast of a title situation where he's seen something that almost could have happened in real life, right? Like this. And made it into an episode of a television show. he's like, oh my God, imagine, imagine how embarrassing it would be if I'd done this in this situation or, you know, it's almost like a realistic scenario that this poor woman has come up

with. And I can see it happen to lots of other people, like a bad toilet episode coming on when you just getting on a flight, you know, you know what it's like because you're at home and you're thinking, oh, I'm going to be fine. And it's like a two-hour trip to the airport and you're waiting at the airport for two hours. And by that time, you know, you're much worse than you were before. You don't want to cancel the fly, you know, and this whole process, you know, it wouldn't even that be that difficult if you had, I've got my kid with me and I haven't got anyone to look after them, so I have to, you know, I have to go through this. And it's this, oh, rigmarole, disaster. Anyway, crazy. Life on Mars, a sample collected by NASA's

perseverance rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Gisero Crater. Yeah. Could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Saw this. It's a groundbreaking bioseignature that's really exciting. Kind of boring when you see what it is. It's like a dot. And they're like, ooh, a dot. But the scientists know it's a thing, apparently.

But they don't even know. They're just like, yeah, it could be. It's kind of weird. This is the best evidence we've got of microbial life on Mars. Potential. Potential. Which is fun. It's not like they've got a bacteria that they're actually breeding.

Right. It's just a dot. It's a dot. Sophisticated malware called the Gay Femboy. Gay Femboy is attacking multiple industries around the globe. Right. It quietly, Gay Femboy quietly infiltrates systems in order to take them over from the inside. Just like real life.

Mount DDoS attacks. So it's quite a sophisticated... I say, go gay Femboys and piece of malware. Make computers fast. fabulous again. You go, go on. Be gay, do crimes. Yes. So that is a thing that's happening. Watch out for gay femme boy. Toothpaste that is usually containing fluoride is to be made with hair. No, not buying that. Thank you. Keratin, which is, keratin, which is usually a protein-founded hair skin and wool, and is used in reparative shampoos, can actually also help with teeth.

Gross. So in future... So the holes in my teeth will be fold with air? Keratin, yeah. In future, maybe your toothpaste will be containing keratin. There you go. It's good for your teeth, apparently, so that's the thing. Scientists have found out that they can get quantum particles and reverse the age of them.

So scientists can reverse the flow of time for certain particles, right? They can, you know, obviously we already know that particles can be in two places at once, one action on a particle and affect another one are very far away from it No, that's not what happens I'm pretty sure you're wrong on that one A particle can be in two places at once

That's not Are you talking about quantum entanglement? Yes That's not quite how it works Yes, it is No, it's not Science, science is crazy and it can now go backwards in time

I'm not reading any more of that way No, don't say A, I think you're talking out of your ass And B, I don't think I'm reading a news article I'm reading a news article From what website? From The Brighter Side. News.

Right, wank. Probably absolute wank. It's not exactly BBC, is it? Just for anyone wondering, quantum entanglement is not about, I'm pretty sure, and bear mind, I've read about this as much as I can, and spoken to my friend who's a physicist to try and answer this, but you don't like do something to one, and it affects the other. Because the idea there was that, oh, well, then we could communicate instantaneously across any distance.

That's not how it works. Like, you're not going to have instant internet because of quantum entanglement. The fact is that there's something to do with the spin of particles, that if it's undecided, when you figure out whether it's an upspin or a downspin, the other one will instantly assume that state at the same moment. But it doesn't mean that you can wiggle one and it wiggles the other, because that would be insane. I'm pretty sure.

Please email in if I'm wrong. I'd love an explanation on it. A brief one. If you're quantum physicist, please let us know some interesting stuff. I'm okay, sorry. He's joking on his own quantum bullshit. Finally, a man called Daniel Jackson noted that there was a strip of forest between Serbia and Croatia that he has decided to claim as a country.

And he's named it the country of Verdis. He says he's now the president. However, he is not allowed to go there because it's not its own by the. actual countries. Yeah. So he's... Well, apparently, he's created... It's disputed.

He's created his own country and he can't go there because it is actually somebody else's country. So he's tried to claim it. It's a very narrow strip of land. Right. I'm not saying it's like three feet wide, but relatively speaking, it's not a big bit of land. But I think it was, from what I remember in the article, when the sort of Yugoslavia and all that fell apart into all these smaller countries, there were some bits that they were

like, is that your bit or our bit? I'm pretty sure it's our bit. I'm pretty sure it's our bit. So it's kind of just left there in the middle of this limbo, this geographical limbo where no one is definitively claiming it. So these chances who turn up and go, well, and I'm claiming it, I don't think it's legal. Why didn't I think of this?

It is interesting. I know. Well, he's got like a cabinet. You can get a passport. It's all a load of guff. I don't know to what end they hope to do this. He's got a cabinet? See, not a kitchen cabinet.

No, I know, I know. Yeah, he's got people that work, like, you know, with him, like the Minister of Finance or whatever. He's got, like, a whole government being set up. That's crazy. It is quite funny. Well, of course, what's happened is every scumbag, chance a crypto brocunt in the world has jumped on board, and there's a crypto called Verdis coin or whatever, which isn't even affiliated with his country.

Some bros have made it, and they've made a donation to him to try and promote it. I mean, like, it's, and there's always these people who are like, I can get a new passport, I can be a lord, I can sell, I can have a domain name. Jimmy, I could sell that domain name dot, dot VE or whatever, do you know what I mean? And so, you know, imagine Dave, you know, the TV channel wanted a Dave, they'd have to get it through this. Do you mean, like, there's a whole, there's a whole scam system. I don't think they have that, that, by the way, that dot VE is probably Cape Verde or something. Right.

But, Jimmy, like, there's, there's a whole crap. of cunts that come around with this sort of thing. They would have to be recognized as a legitimate country. It's like a fun thing, but until it's not, right? Like, because you're fucking around with borders like sealand or whatever, that we talk about sealand all the time. We do. We never shut up about it.

Right? Which, you know, it's just, look, it's a fun little thing, but until it's not fun anymore and a police boat comes down and fucking arrest everyone. It comes like non-silent. You know what I mean? Like, that's what they're all. we're setting up for. So, fuck them.

I don't give a shit. Just, just stop. Stop it all. It's awful. Because there's no good people who get it. I think they're going to try, they're going to try to enter Eurovision. It's just ridiculous. I just want to know what's the scam.

When do they get the money? What's going on? Fuck them. It always ends up with some scam, right? Of course. They always end up with some thing. Nothing good happens anymore. To make money.

What was a good thing that happened recently? A big good thing. Um, name one. Nothing. There's no. I can't think of a single good thing. Yeah. There's loads.

There's loads. Not all of it is... This life on Mars shit, it ain't going to be shit. It ain't going to be shit. And they're going to scan the universe and they're never going to find life. And we're just alone and there's nothing and it's terrible. Nothing good will ever happen again. Listen, listen to me closely, listen.

Nothing good will ever happen ever again. The end. All right. We're going to go. Thank you, everyone. We love you. you're amazing and we'll see you all next time. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Hi, I'm Dan Marr, host of the conversions podcast where I invite the talented,

inventive and uncompromising minds behind some of your favorite and soon-to-be favorite indie games to talk about what they do best. On each episode, I invite two members of the indie community, many of whom will be meeting for the very first time to share their journeys, their formative experiences, their successes and failures, their advice for aspiring indie devs, and no doubt lots of unrelated waffle too. I mean, this is a podcast after all. If this sounds like your cup of gin,

then subscribe to the convergence podcast from wherever you choose to ethically source your podcasts.