Triforce! - Triforce! #72: Podcast: Battle Royale

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

Triforce! Episode 72! The guys are looking for the next big gaming craze!   Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Triforce podcast with me, Lewis, Pyrrhaflax and Sips. So this is coming to you from the morning after England got knocked out of the World Cup in great Croat style. Pyrrha, did you watch the game? Of course. What was your feeling? Like, you know, this isn't going out for a week, but you know, we'll have had time to mend by then. I'm not as heartbroken as I thought I would be.

If we'd gone out to Colombia, I would have been gutted because I feel like they were very dirty and I feel like we did at least try to play football. Very, very proud of how we did. I think we did a lot better than people thought we would, a lot better i thought we'd do um and croatia to be honest with you played some really nice football when they started like first half we were all over them they looked all at sea second half they absolutely rallied and they did well and this is it this is a lesson the croatia players were saying modric said that the british press need to learn to treat their

opponents with more respect because they read all the crap that people were saying about how they're tired they're not very good yeah and lover and is their defender and all the rest of it and you know manzini looks like a teenage boy dressed up as a witch did he read that too i didn't but i could imagine it and all that stuff and they read that and they thought fuck these guys we're going to beat them and honestly bizarrely hubris coming out of the england camp normally it's oh my god we're going to go out in the group stage this time we got to the semi-final over overreaching really i mean we did a lot better than people thought we would got a very nice draw i mean i was looking at the croatia game and i was thinking geez well you know we actually might do this but we scored too early

needed to score about 60 minutes knock the wind of them, and take some more of those blooming chances. We had two or three chances in the first half we should have taken at least two. So I mean, I'm annoyed it could have gone either way, but I think that the result was fair. Croatia played better in the second half. Think of all the chances they had. They had loads of chances. And I mean, the thing is, I also, as I was watching us struggle in the second half an extra time, I was thinking, Jesus Christ, France would absolutely tear us apart. So I'm kind of glad we went out to Croatia because I've got a lot of respect for them. Right.

You think it would have been more embarrassing if we struggled through? I would rather go out in extra time to a team like Croatia than to lose in the final like 4-0 to France which I think it probably would have been pretty desperate the lads were looking pretty scared at the end there Karl Walker I mean it was the second goal was just a bad trip he had tried to foul the guy instead of going up for the header because he's a little guy needed to win that header and I just think all in all Harry Kane kind of disappeared Lingard kind of disappeared it was just too much for them they just weren't quite up to the task. It wasn't like we bottled it.

They're just not quite good enough. But maybe in a few years we will be. Who knows? Yeah, there you go. I mean, I started off on this podcast a few weeks ago being very mocking of football. But it seems that there's just been this very high spirits lately. A couple of weeks of sunshine in England. And, you know, we had our 10 year anniversary this week

put out some really fun videos and had a really fun time doing some old school stuff like it just feels like the football it was all and it's even even sort of with the calm down it just felt like a really high spirited. It was great for morale yeah the morale of the country was high. Yeah it was exciting everybody was

everybody was like on board after they got through the group stage. Everybody's like, oh, maybe, you know, they'll do okay. And they did. They got to the semifinals. Pretty nice. I guess that Europe is in 2020. So we have two years. So we've got, yeah, we've got two years for the next Euros. I can't remember where it is. Yeah. And then we've got Qatar, which will be a complete disaster. Four years. Yeah.

Even if we keep this team together, they're a complete disaster. Four years, yeah, Qatar. Even if we keep this team together, they're going to be playing on the surface of the sun. So normally England can fall back and blame the fact that all the conditions were tough, you know. And that's kind of what we've done whenever we've had to play somewhere that isn't Croydon, you know. It's like, well, it's just tough, you know, climb.

Leave in England, if it's like well it's just tough you know climb leave in England if it's like one degree warmer we panic so going somewhere where it's like 40 degrees yeah it's gonna be insane so yeah I'm not sure how it's gonna be I doubt this the stadiums are gonna be even vaguely air conditioned well no apparently they're gonna they were trying to or something but it's gonna be boiling you're gonna have to train in that heat as well it's madness absolute madness the corruption of FIFA strikes yet again I mean most of them

are used to playing football through the winter season you know kicking around on snow sometimes if it was raining and cold England would be favourites guaranteed

our lads don't give a hoot but it never is it's always beautiful and sunny maybe if we did it in Australia though right in summer

because that's the southern hemisphere or South Africa or Brazil hang on a second surely although brazil's just hot way around right when was when was the world cup in south africa was 2009 no it's always on an even numbered year but um i think 2010 2008 might have been 2008 it was the 98 world cup was in france 2002 god shall i look it up for us yeah because i remember i remember watching 2010 yeah when uh because i was on a trip i was on a trip to um to canada at the time i didn't have kids so we were we were free agents we we could do stuff it was great i remember watching it when it was in south africa and they had those fucking i don't know what instrument they were they were like horns or something and they were they were so fucking loud it was crazy every game it was so obnoxiously

loud but it was so funny as well so in 2002 it was in south korea and japan that was where south korea had their crazy run to the semi-final but the referees gave them every break they could because they want to try fifa have always wanted to try and boost the presence of football in Asia because it's such a big market. And I know that South Korea played their hearts out as one of the hosts and they were fantastic to watch. I think I've told this story before. I was working in New Malden during the 2002 World Cup and that's the heart of the South Korean population in Europe. So if you go to New Malden High Street, which is not far from Kingston upon Thames, you'll just see Korean restaurants and Korean travel agents

and Korean supermarkets and a ridiculous number of Korean people. It's literally like a sort of mini Seoul. But anyway, that was a decent World Cup. Then it was 2006, it was in Germany. And then it was South Africa in 2010. Brazil was 2014. And obviously it was Russia this year.

But it hasn't been us since 1966. I do think we're due a hosting, but the issue now is that they're expanding the World Cup to include twice as many teams as it has now. So it'll run for basically forever. And they're going to have to have it in multiple countries. So as I understand it, one of the potential hosts- I think after Qatar, it's North America, isn't it? Well, I think that's what they're pitching. I think they're saying, but hosts I think after Qatar it's North America isn't it? well I think that's what

they're pitching I think they're saying but it's not just going to be North America it's going to be like North America, Canada and Mexico or something crazy like that that's right

are all going to host it at the same time so it's going to be bonkers everyone's going to need to take like a six hour plane ride to get to any of the fucking yeah there is that but I think their plan is

to make sure that if you're in group whatever you're in this part of the country you don't have to travel fucking miles. Well, fuck it. While they're there, why don't they just do a road trip across the U.S.? We're playing in Seattle on Thursday, and our next game is in Florida on Sunday.

Let's drive, boys. Let's go. Let's see what's there. I'm kind of disappointed it's in the U.S. again because it was there in 1994. Oh, was it? Yeah, it was. So I know they're trying to you know obviously it's good for the game in uh in america but um it was they already had it in usa 94 uh why do they have to have it again it's just a little a little

frustrating man i don't think i watched the world cup in 94 i think i was like balls deep in all of the North American sports at that age, like hockey and basketball and American football and baseball. You know, the greats. All of them. The bowling. The big greats, yeah. The bowling. My son yesterday said, because he's like, when's the World Cup going to be done? I said, Sunday's the last game.

It's on Sunday. He's like, well, what's next then? Because he's like, when's the World Cup going to be done? I said, Sunday's the last game. It's on Sunday. He's like, well, what's next then? Because he's been excited. He's been watching the matches and stuff, and he loves the tournament format. He loves knowing on certain days what to look forward to, and he's like, Dad, can we watch bowling after the World Cup? I said, well, I don't know if they televise bowling, really.

I've never seen it. It's always on, but yeah. And he was like, is there a World Cup for bowling? Well, no, I'm sure there's like something for bowling. I don't know if it's like the World Cup though. Like I'm not sure that bowling's popular enough to sort of be on primetime TV. There actually is.

There actually is a bowling World Cup. It's called the Kwebika AMF Bowling World Cup. Holy shit. Well, there you go. I'll have to let him know. He'll be thrilled.

He loves bowling. But the thing is, with a World Cup, it's like America's... Didn't they have a baseball World Cup or something? Or have they stopped that now?

Like, hardly anyone joins apart from... It's a little bit like rugby when you have the Rugby World Cup and it's just like Wales anyone joins apart from, it's a little bit like rugby when you have the Rugby World Cup and it's just like Wales, Scotland, England,

New Zealand. I mean, there's enough international rugby teams. The problem with baseball is that it's super American centric and it's only really bled out to like Japan.

I think Japan have a baseball league. Yeah. And maybe like a couple of other Asian countries, possibly. Like there's, there's Canadian baseball teams too but it's very big in japan it's very big in korea it's the north american influence yeah so i mean if there was like a an international baseball tournament there is an international baseball tournament okay so and and it's literally just japan korea

the u.s and canada i guess no no you're forgetting you're forgetting how many players in the play baseball in the major league baseball come from central and south america oh of course yeah yeah i guess crazy yeah i'm just thinking of like actual teams and leagues and stuff but yeah no that makes sense yeah it's the same with um the olympics? With hockey. Like you have all the... The guys coming over from... Yeah, of course. And the NHL is just filled with like Finnish, Russian, like all sorts of European, Eastern

European players. So you've got Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, you know, Venezuela. These are countries that produce baseball players. Oh, fuck. I mean, the last time I watched baseball was probably when I was like eight years old. So like I'm a little bit out of touch. But pardon my ignorance,

I didn't realize that there was like an international baseball scene. Oh, yeah. My interest in that is probably up there with the Bowling World Cup as well. I mean, is this a chance for people to just sort of see the fantasy league dream team put together? World Cup as well so I mean is this a chance like for people to just sort of see the sort of the fantasy league dream team put together you know of the best American players playing alongside each other in a kind of show match format almost where they they're really strong or is it something

which actually is like challenged because I would I would think that sometimes you're actually weaker when you put together a disparate team of random people who all play for different clubs or, you know. Yeah. Sometimes like... They got to just do a lot of training and stuff together. Like Iceland have a great football team despite the fact that they're a tiny fucking country with like 100,000 people

and they all like quit their day jobs as a butcher or whatever and they go back to it straight after. Yeah. And it's like, but because they play together and they're like good, they know each other pretty well like they actually have a strength that the teams who who who play you know for completely disparate clubs all over the world don't necessarily have you know is that is that a thing pflex or am i talking bollocks slap me down pflex say it again i was still reading about the baseball classic i apologize i thought don't worry i mean

it's you've got into a Wikipedia wormhole. I'm sorry. I literally got lost in Wikipedia. I was reading about the baseball classic. It's so easy to do. You just find something interesting and you keep going. I can't. You know what?

I was sort of vaguely listening and I can't even remember what the question was. I was asking you if teams are like international teams are worse because like some of them like England come from loads of those different clubs as opposed to iceland to actually play together regularly oh okay all right so we'll we'll cut in here for my answer good question lewis luckily i have an answer so if you think about real madrid or manu or chelsea or barcelona or whoever you want to think of they they, they obviously, if they need a left back,

they don't need to restrict themselves to just left backs from wherever they can go and get one. They can say, who's the best left back in the world and they can go and get it. So obviously we can't do that, but the, the, the, there are differences.

So number one, people are playing for their country, which is a big motivator. And I think that if you look at the passion and the dedication and and everything from the players in the world cup none of them are treating it like one more game because it's a knockout tournament like you you if you're in the group stage you can't afford to lose a game really you have to at least draw and preferably win all your games so everybody goes for it in league football i mean you're all playing away from home essentially

apart from the host nation so it's not like the old away team home team that you get in league football so yeah there is definitely there are definitely differences i think that the world cup if you look at the standard i mean yes teams can indeed go out and buy whoever they want but if you're a country that produces a lot of really good players like france the team that france put out i don't think any team any club side in the world could actually afford that team i see so you've got to think of it that way like if you look at the brazil team when they were amazing if you look at the france team right now and they are very strong that isn't that's the team's value on the open market is insane absolutely insane like paulogba alone is worth over 100 million euros,

and he's just one of their guys. And then they've got Kylian Mbappe, who's worth a fortune. They've got Griezmann, who's worth a fortune. And their defenders are all worth a fortune. Their goalie is worth... Like, it's just... It's mad how expensive that team is. So, if you're a country that produces

a shitload of amazing players, I mean, the Croatia team is worth a fortune. Honestly, half their team plays for top clubs. So, you know, I think it's one of those things where obviously if you're stuck with, like England, sometimes you have to shoehorn players in. We would if we could go out and buy a midfielder like Modric or something like that, but we can't.

So we're kind of stuck with what we've got. But you've then got the motivator of you're playing for England so everybody goes out and gives it their best yeah yeah it's it's it's a good it's a good thing anyway let's move on from football we can talk about football forever we love it but what else is there in this cruel world I don't know oh man I'm trying to think what I've been doing honestly I've just been watching the World Cup I've watched a few movies um lately I watched Logan Lucky um I don't know why I saw the trailer for it and I thought it's like a heist caper movie it's a little bit oceans 11 um but set in the deep south that would have been my elevator pitch is like imagine oceans 11 but with a bunch of sort of hicks basically and sort

of like it's set around nascar instead of a and stuff. So it's basically Ocean's Eleven with hillbillies. Did you like it? Not really. And I'll tell you why. It's got a big cast with a lot of actors in. And the problem is it kind of wants to be funny, but it's not funny. And for some reason, they've got all these actors, and none of them are actually from the place that they're trying to do the accent for.

So their accents are all stupidly bad. Like, Daniel Craig's southern accent is not terrible, but he's English, so why have they got Daniel Craig in to play a guy from the deep south? I mean, we know how English he is. It's like, you can't see Daniel Craig covered screen without thinking, like, James Bond. It's like, whenever Matt Damon's in a movie

and just pops out of something, I'm like, for fuck's sake, what is Matt Damon doing in this movie? Do you know what I mean? I can't believe it. Matt fucking Damon! He just comes out of fucking cupboards in various movies. Isn't he just randomly on that fucking planet

in that space movie? I wasn't expecting Matt Damon. Their first thing should have been, holy shit, Matt Damon's on this planet. If only there was some intelligent life here. But instead, there's just Matt Damon. but no they had he was a scientist apparently i thought he was actually very good in interstellar oddly enough but yeah he's actually good at everything but he is right matthew mcconaughey was in uh was in excuse me sir the martian was a film

with pretty much just matt damon. Interstellar had Matt Damon. He was the scientist whose world they went to. Oh, shit, yeah. He was in the world with like a foot of water. The ice world, yeah. No, he was not. He was on the ice planet. Oh, my God.

You've seen the movie, I take it. I saw it, yeah. I saw it. We saw it when we were on a trip. I think I was super jet lagged. It's all hazy. Yeah, no, super jet lagged. It's all hazy. Yeah, it's a very long movie. Matt Damon was in that movie.

Yeah, he was. I'm trying to think of movies that Matt Damon isn't in now because he just seems to be in fucking everything. I feel like I've watched so many movies with him and he just keeps turning up in stuff. You know what? I was watching a porno the other day. Guess who fucking popped up?

Matt fucking Damon. Matt fucking Damon taking a cum shot in his face oh my god I think I watched that exact same one Matt Damon gets drenched in hot man juice hi I'm Matt Damon what are you doing

I'm covered in jizz oh man'm Matt Damon. Whoa! What are you doing? I'm covering it, Jiz! Oh, man. Fucking Matt Damon. Yeah, of course he was in Interstellar. You're right. Jesus. So anyway, he is not in Logan Lucky, all right?

But they've got Seth MacFarlane in there, who I don't really care for, I think. He's one of those guys who's extremely pleased with himself. And he's playing a British actor. He's got a British accent for some reason, and I just don't understand why it was terrible he's like you guys have got a going to be like it's like what is this this isn't an english accent this is shocking i think america americans find that funny though americans but they had an englishman in the film to put on a terrible british accent maybe they do they go oh yeah i could do a british accent. Maybe they do. They go, oh yeah, I can do a British accent. Mate,

I pull some pairs. Oh, I'm an Englishman. Oh, I like my cup of tea. Like, so what is that? Why do they have to cut the ends off

every single word? A cup of tea. It's cup of tea, you cunts. Yeah. And there was an Englishman in the bloody movie. Get him to do it.

And he can play the other lad. And then you had Adam Driver, you know, Kylo Ren, quite like him, good actor, playing a guy with one arm. And then had channing tatum playing a guy who was like

channing tatum he was basically playing channing tatum himself he could be the new matt damon he definitely tends to play channing tatum but they they sort of set up this heist and it's it's unbelievably elaborate and complicated but everything we've been led to believe about these guys is that they're a couple of thickos. Like, they've never amounted to anything. They've fucked up everything their whole life. And then they plot the heist of the century that fools everybody.

It's like, come on. Like, where is this coming from? That sounds like an Adam Sandler movie. Is Adam Sandler in that movie? Sadly not. Oh, man. It's got his name written all over it. But it wasn't funny.

It wasn't really very exciting. It was, oh, God, it was overly long. and yeah i just i just didn't really get it had this really long scene where this his daughter sings at a beauty pageant she sings uh take me uh country roads uh by john denver and um which which by the way is a song that every fucker's using now it's in the new fallout trailer yeah it's everywhere i remember a few years ago i came down to bristol for the uh karaoke night yeah and i sang country roads and turps was teasing me that it was a song that nobody knew what and i thought i bet every fucker knows this song now like it's very big it's a famous song it feels like it's been popularized a little bit more recently especially in gaming because it's all out everybody's like like everybody nobody in the room

seemed to know it was like a mystery and i thought god i've really chosen the wrong song here it's kind of no one knows what this is but now every fucking person knows it it's like if there's like a five minute scene in this movie where his daughter sings that and it's just like what what is this for this is stupid it was boring boring crap maybe i recommend it you know what this this this movie chat has reminded me that I haven't seen Solo yet. I still have not seen that movie. Did you see it, Lewis? I haven't seen Solo either, no.

Really? It was actually, I actually really enjoyed it. I actually really enjoyed it. I would recommend it. It was, some people had problems with it. I don't know what, but I really thought it was really good. He was good. I could wait.

The action was good. The supporting cast was good. And it covered a side of the Star wars universe that hasn't been covered before it felt kind of gritty and um you know you you root in for him the way he meets chewy is good and the you know lando's good and it's it's really good i've really enjoyed it i recommend i feel like i have this back a lot of movies though that i didn't i just missed at the cinema that i know are decent and then i can can put them on to hold my attention when I'm either sick or on a plane or something like that. I feel like it's nice to have them in the bank.

I can think, okay, I'm feeling like shit. I'm going to lie in bed today and watch this movie and it'll get me through the next three hours. Have you seen anything lately? No, I haven't really. I've been working on some 10 year anniversary stuff. Oh yeah.

This thing, been prepping stuff. It's been a bit intense. But I've also, this weekend I played Battle Brothers finally, right? Because you recommended Battle Brothers to Steam a long time ago. Sammy recommended it. But I also met the guy who made it, the dev at GDC. And we had a long chat about games. And I was like, oh yeah, I bought this game and I loaded it up once and I thought it was awful so you know I didn't actually say that but that's pretty pretty

much what I thought um and so this weekend I loaded it up and I was like right I'm gonna learn to play Battle Brothers and I kind of regret the time spent learning to play it it was like it's like the learning curve is is pretty steep but then once you've got it, the game is just fucking rock hard. Oh, God. So, I've actually put 74 hours into Battle Brothers. So, yeah. This weekend, I've put 41 in it. Yeah. Wow.

It's one of those games. Like, I play it when I'm away a lot because I can run it on my laptop real easy. And because it's turn-based, I can step away from it. I can just save or whatever. That's the nice thing. Yeah, because I was, like,

pottering around, doing other stuff, painting. But it is insanely hard it's a real grind but there are so few games like this is what i don't understand about all these if you look at steam you look it's so many platformers which are just like pixel art platformers like well there's a there's a billion of those there's a billion anime choose your own adventure books as far as i can tell which i still get recommended but apparently soon you'll be able to tag them off and say don't show me anything with the word fucking anime in it please that'll be it yeah but what if you miss out on that one gem i will accept that gem loss i will accept that someone told me persona 5 is amazing it's got too much anime and i can't even look at it

so i will happily untick that box and say do not show me this shit it's got too much anime and i can't even look at it so i will happily untick that box and say do not show me this shit it's hard with games because you kind of know what games you like to play and you know what genres you like to play and you get like especially when you create content or you stream or whatever you get a lot of people recommending their favorite games yeah but it's like well you obviously like games that are completely different to the ones that I like. And he's like, well, I think it'd be funny to watch you play it. Yeah, well, I don't want to spend my time playing a game that I'm not going to like or that I have no interest in. Right?

I don't want to play everything. I want to play games I want to play. It's like movies. There's enough movies, there's enough sports, there's enough games that there's something for everyone. Right? Just because you like games doesn't mean you'll go to every single game. I mean, in your case, Sips, you do actually weirdly like a lot of the iPad games

and casual games and weird stuff too. I mean, you actually have, I think, a broader range than most people. Absolutely. You're a farmer. Someone was telling me when I was streaming last night, we've actually been talking about you quite a bit. why because all i get fucking asked is hey where's sips or does it do you know when sips is streaming where's did anyone watch sips today and i actually said can you shut the fuck up about sips sips is great go watch sips's stream but don't come to

my chat when he's not streaming to talk about how great sips is it's like crying i'm trying to fucking play dead okay hitler geez what nobody's allowed to have fun like outside of the realm of you that's right on my stream that's the rule no i guarantee you no one talks about me on your stream at all oh they do no they fucking not if it's positive exactly where's that come from that's all they probably think but so i was i was um i was playing rainbow six siege um which another game that was wrecked because i play a lot counter-strike so people you should play you should play remember six siege it's very funny very intense here it's really good a lot of people are are praising it saying that it's incredibly hard it's very good

it's incredibly hard because when you get shot it it's not like you can't strafe fight anybody. If they shoot you first, you're dead. It's pretty much that's it. But it's all the little gadgets you've got and positioning. You've got to learn the maps. It's very sneaky. You can blast through walls and stuff. You can time it just right

so you flashbang into a room and you pour in. The entry kind of tactics and the defense tactics are very cool. It is fun. It has an existing community like Dota, though. So diving in is kind of... You're getting into a very well-established group of people who kind of know their own game very well.

And they know the maps. And I think a lot of people don't play a huge variety of games. They play the game that they really enjoy because it's really calming to do that sometimes, just to be able to come home and say, I'm not going to think about anything. I'm just going to play this game I like for a variety of games. They play the game that they really enjoy because it's really calming to do that sometimes, just to be able to come home and say, I'm not going to think about anything. I'm just going to play this game for a couple of hours. And they get into that game and they play it,

whether it's Overwatch or Hearthstone or Dota or whatever. Sometimes in the evening, I'm just like, fuck it, I'll have a game of Hearthstone and I do the Tambrul or a quest or some dumb thing or I get a deck list off something. I haven't played Hearthstone in months. I haven't even touched it. Well, I quit at Christmas.

They just announced a new expansion too, didn't they? I know. Did you see? They did the weirdest trailer, the weirdest Hearthstone trailer of all time. So Hearthstone, we met, well, you guys met the animation team, right? And they have a certain amount of time where they can work on each project.

And some things like the Overwatch trailers take months and months and are really hardcore whereas some of them the hearthstone ones are like quick and stop motiony and slow and and you can tell they've made the trailer but then the hearthstone team were like yeah we're gonna just make eight more minutes of weird shit where we make these not quite jokes in a kind of lab and it's the developers and it's it's weird it's a 10 minute long hearthstone trailer that's super weird. And I would advise you to just skip forward like 30 seconds, watch the pre-made 30 seconds animated trailer,

and then just don't watch the rest. Okay. All right, great. I go through, I'm a very sort of like phase-y gamer, right? Like I pick something up and I play it to death and then I move on sort of thing so i'm sure i'll gravitate back towards hearthstone at some point maybe but for now it's just like i'm

just not interested in it at all like i know well exactly like but i've been playing a bunch of um magic the gathering the online arena i've been playing a bunch of other card games i've been playing a bunch of i've been trying to play different like board game every week right as well like uh yeah you and ben have been playing a shit load of games yeah so I'm keen to do I'm keen to kind of just try something new a week like making that a thing

like just trying to experience a different game every week in terms of like a board game because I've really enjoyed some of those like when we went to ParadoxCon we played the City Skylines board game and stuff like this and we played there's all sorts of those stuff when we went to paradox com we played the city skylines board game and stuff like this and we played and there's all sorts of interesting stuff honestly like as many board games as games come out yeah board games are real popular now it's weird because i thought they would die on their ass because of online gaming and especially tabletop simulator

well if you've got a board game they could just make it in that but people like the social aspect it's nice I think a lot of the board games that people have played in the past have been ported to like tablet and stuff because it's easy enough to do that you know like the rules and stuff are I guess easy to code you know they can make a nice

UI and they play against people online and I feel like people are getting into them through there and then thinking, hang on, I would like to actually sit in a room with five other people or whatever and play this and like have a couple of beers or whatever. And it's probably almost revived the like the board game market, I guess. It really, yeah, it really has. I also think a lot of game design now is a lot smarter and cleverer than it used to be

because a lot of games for a very long time, and older people remember this, Avalon Hill made a shitload of strategy board games, and I don't know if they

still do. I guess they probably still do, but they were just hexes, units, and a fight. And that is something you can easily replicate on a computer, and

it's flashier, and it does a lot of the maths for you and stuff like that. But if you think about something, do you remember, Lewis, when we played that Battlestar Galactica game? Oh, my God. That would only exist. It is a great game, but that would only exist as a social game because it's almost got elements of mafia in it. And I think those things really rely on so much improved by all sitting around a table as opposed to playing online even on discord so i

think a lot of game designers have realized that if they're gonna continue making board games and i hope they do that making them social making them fun making them a game you can play yeah with a beer and stuff like that is good rather than just saying this is just a tactical grind i always think that when we make youtube videos we have to try and make things that people can't necessarily do themselves right and that that therefore does well because if you're just playing through a single player game everyone's they can play that through in their own time or they've seen it someone else play it or they it's kind of like you're you're relying on that to be the driving force behind your your play whereas if you're playing a sandbox game or like a game

that involves creating your own stories or relies on the people there, like Trouble in Terrorist Town, we're not so heavily reliant on the story and things. We create our own stories. It's more reliant on the people and it's unique as a result. I mean, Trouble in Terrorist Town is a great example because it has been evolved as we've played it over as a kind of mafia game. Someone's bad bad you have

to find out who but but like you said like that just works so much better in person when you can see them yeah yeah in real life and like you know you can but in some ways it's like easier in person because you can read them more if you're like you've got more clues right yeah um and then as you learn these people you learn their sort of mannerisms and stuff it's like why like regular guys who play poker together will know you know when each other are bluffing you know because they've spent so much time you know together and stuff and we can kind of we've sort of learned things like that in ttt but i think like as you know sips like the best things to stream are the things which are driven by you being unique and creative right rather than a game that necessarily just plays you.

I mean, it's half and half. I think you're putting too much stock into how many people are watching every minute of the video as well. I think with a lot of this stuff, it's on in the background while people are doing other stuff. Oh, you're totally right.

Single player stuff. For Twitch, it's so drop in, drop out. Yeah, you're playing a single player game. Somebody might be playing the game as well and not paying any attention to you. But you're just on in the background chatting away. Exactly. I use Twitch the same way. Like, you know, there's certain streamers that I'll just put on in the background while I'm playing something.

And it's almost like, you know, somebody's keeping you calm. It's like putting the TV on when you're home alone. You know, like it just feels like there's more life in the room somehow because the TV is on. Because also sometimes you don't want to watch something that you have to pay super attention to. Like for example, we're like, you know,

I'll be doing stuff in the office and when you're streaming Skyrim, I'd drop in and I'd be like, oh, okay, he's on day 16. That doesn't matter to me. You know, I don't need to go back to day one. You know, I don't want to watch all 26 hours so far. And I'm like, oh, okay, he's on day 16. That doesn't matter to me. I don't need to go back to day one. I don't want to watch all 26 hours so far. And I'm like, oh, yeah, he's around here.

I'm sure I did a quest around here somewhere, but I didn't see this bit. And then some bits will interest me. Some bits will be like, oh, yeah, I wonder how he handles this thing that's coming up. And then you get distracted by something else in the office. And it's good. It's positive stuff.

It doesn't have to be like that. No, it doesn't have to be ultra ultra like engaging and stuff i think it can just be on in the background and you know like i i think that's i think that's fine that's the way that i use it like i'd expect people to use the same way sort of thing yeah unless i'm missing something or i'm just old and dumb or something i don't't know. Oh, I remember what I was going to say. I was going to talk about Battle Brothers. Oh, yeah. Just the one point I wanted to make is that Battle Brothers was very popular for what it was. It was a very simple game,

and for some reason the devs ditched it, the devs you spoke to. After they did this little update, they were like, we're finished. People were like, you can't be finished. There's so much more here that you can do, and you need to do this, and we want to see that. And they were like, no, we're done. There's

not going to be any paid DLC. There's not going to be anything. We're not going to open up mod support. We are finished with this game, which was a weird decision to me because there are hardly any games like Battle Brothers out there. There really are. Tactical, turn-based combat where you build a group of guys up. It's like Jagged Alliance was like that. Laser Squad going way back. Julian Golub made that in the 80s and 90s. And there really have not been many games. I mean, XCOM is a very flashy version of Laser Squad, which was made like for the Spectrum and the Commodore 64 and the Amstrad and stuff. And it's taken it to the whole new level. But Battle Brothers was a different experience. It was hex based. It was much slower. And, you know, you had to build up the gear for your guys. It was a real grind. And there was anbased, it was much slower, and you had to build up

the gear for your guys. It was a real grind. And there was an audience for that, and I just don't understand why we don't have more games like that. I don't know why. Like, Battle Brothers

was made by a very small studio, and it looks great, I love it, but it's just, there's not enough to it. I just wish there was more. Well, exactly. And I just think,

why aren't there more games like that? Well, more games are coming out. I think off the back of XCOM, you see and things like steamspy allowed studios to say hey what games are really doing well what games to sell me is what games the gamers want and are not being made and you still the same thing with the royales right like yeah you know battle royales going from strength to strength to strength and are now the biggest thing right but also people are aware that x-com and x-com 2 sold a lot of copies and and there's there's a couple of i mean phoenix points coming out this year and

that looks like a good good x-com it looks like x-com it does but that's my point is i want a modern day shooter no one's made a sequel to jagged alliance 2 why they did some arsehole sequels came out that were just dreadful but i just want a game with with mercenaries killing other mercenaries modern day weaponry you grind it you get your gear you know you build bases that kind of shit that's what i want that's what i want i can't get it exactly i feel like this should be and i do know the reason why um battle brothers i've got a good idea of the reason why battle brothers stopped development but i can't talk about it so okay fair enough they're working on a battle royale game right battle brothers royale oh man holy shit royale well they've got to like fucking do

something there's a battle royale tycoon coming out soon it's like a management game you create your own battle arena and and you know i mean i feel like any trend needs to be having been made into a tycoon. Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's an eSports manager tycoon, right? Game Dev Tycoon was fantastic. It's a great game. Great game. eSports manager.

What's the next tycoon? Well, the next big one that's coming out is Two Point Hospital, which is like, you remember Theme Hospital? Yeah. Oh. It's a modern day theme hospital so that's there's no release date but it's it's it's being worked on there's like footage of it from e3 and stuff so that's like probably for like management tycoon games that's the next like big one before that was jurassic world evolution no i meant like what's the next trend oh what's the next genre That's gonna warrant

Oh god who knows I mean do you remember It was horror games For a while It was just all Fucking horror games And then Now it's just

It seems to be all Battle royale games Yeah it's cause Fortnite is just So fucking huge You know a game is big When the Daily Mail Has an article

About This mom is distraught Because her Ten year old son is addicted to fortnight he thinks about it all the time he doesn't want to go outside anymore he just wants to play fortnight all the damn time and there's like this huge fucking like article about it with a big picture of this this mom looking like really mad while a kid is playing fortnite and stuff and it's it feels like fortnite is is almost becoming like the the next minecraft yeah

it's huge somehow well it already was though like we knew i we knew this was gonna happen pub g was bigger pub g has still more players on steam than anything else the battle royale aspect is what's catapulted yeah nobody cared about the pve stuff oh oh no no no but i mean as soon as like as soon as it started on that uptrend yeah you know about what it was at gdc you know when i after i came out from there i told you about you know just just a massive fortnight stand full of kids where it was like the crash in the middle of gdc where you know everyone just dumped their kids off and there's just huge huge monitors people just standing around the corridors watching people play fortnight it was the point battle royale it was

they just did it better you know and fair enough like you know it's done done amazing but it's definitely like it's pushed that age it's because i was talking to people at minecraft about it and they were like yeah yeah it's definitely just pushed squeezed that age group of minecraft players even further younger you know skewed them even younger yeah I guess yeah because I mean like my like like my son knows about it because some some of the kids in his class I guess their older brothers played or maybe they even played I don't know but they you know there's like a lot of cosmetic stuff in Fortnite right there's like a lot of cosmetic stuff in Fortnite, right? There's like a lot of dances and like costumes and shit. My kids do the dances from Fortnite.

So, yeah. So does mine now. He comes home and he doesn't even, he's never even played the game. And he's like doing this dance. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm doing this Fortnite dance. Oh, okay. Great.

Thanks. Thanks for making me feel really old. Why is it even called Fortnite? can anyone explain that to me fortnight um because it was originally like about building a fort and defending it from zombies yeah yeah it's like the pve stuff was like a a cartoony zombie invasion that you had to but i mean it's it's still got all of that fort building in it and that's like a big part of the mechanics of the game right and that's what puts me off about the game personally i i don't want that in exactly but there's a if you don't like it there's like realm royale is is like the alternative which is

almost playable um without the uh book fort building stuff and that's what shin's playing at the moment and um it's like there's loads of other royales isles. There's like the Cuisine Royal, the dumb one, but they're all like PUBG, you know? And that's the, if you want that type of experience. I like PUBG. I like the setting. I like the graphics and stuff. It was a little bit gritty

and it felt like a bit hardcore and stuff. And I don't know. I like PUBG. Fortnite, I can't imagine I'd ever get into. It's okay. I played it for a few weeks. Like every night on stream, after Dota, we'd do Fortnite. It was all right.

It's fine. I mean, it was the same with PUBG. Like after a while, I just felt it was samey and not in a good way. It was like land, get loot, fight, die or win. It was very simple. It was fun. Like when we were playing it and we had like, you know, like consistent squads of people that we played with and stuff.

It was really fun. But again, you just sort of gravitate out of stuff right like you lose a little a little tiny bit of interest or something else comes along that you want to play instead and it's not that i dislike the game it harkens back to exactly the same thing i said earlier in this podcast about overwatch and whatever it's your game dota whatever you know if you've played it and you like it and it's casual and you enjoy that you know you, you pressing, pressing dive and you're in for between 10 minute and 20 minute experience, then great. You know, it's, it allows you to, to, to say, right, I'm going to play this game for 20 minutes. It's, it's, and, and it's exciting and it's exciting to get good at it and to learn things about it and to play with your friends. And you know, it's,

I mean, Planet Coaster, for example, i can just dive in and play for 20 minutes and like detail like uh one ninth of a wall and uh i feel like god i was watching you like rotate a fence the other day my mate said you were spending 20 minutes on a flower yeah it's that it's a it's a it's a roller coaster tycoon game where you make a theme park um i can't remember the last time emotions that's for sure. I can't remember the last time I built a ride in that game. I'm just completely uninterested in the rides and the mechanics of the game.

I just want to make buildings and flower beds and stuff. I think you're looking for The Sims there. But you used to play The Sims, right? I played The Sims, yeah. The last time I played The sims i had um this a gigantic woman who uh kidnapped all of the neighbors and locked them in her basement and she had like so so she would lure them over and lock them in the basement but she had stairs that she could go down with like viewing windows and stuff. And they had like no toilet. They were all miserable and stuff.

Oh, fuck. It was great. And out front, it had this beautiful fence. Yeah, the outside of the house looked fucking glorious. It was immaculate. Yeah, but no, the tools in Planet Coaster for creating assets, buildings and stuff like that are phenomenal like it's so much fun they just had a new um like a new pack recently with like all vintage stuff so like like zoltan the fortune teller and like claw machines and shit like that all like the old victorian pier

amusements sort of stuff so it added a whole bunch of other dumb assets that I can add to buildings and stuff. It's great. I love it. Was it your playing Jurassic World Evolution that pulled you back into Planet Coaster? Because aren't they made by the same studio? Yeah, no, I think... What prompted me to play Planet Coaster?

I think I raged out of RimWorld and I just wanted to play something else. I feel like that's the right way to do RimWorld, though. You load it up, you go for a bit, and then you rage out. Yeah, you play, you get super frustrated, and then on to something else. Yeah, it's just a drop-in, drop-out. I wanted to finish RimWorld. I had it in my mind that we were going to have a colony

and build the spaceship and get off the planet, because I wanted to see if I could do it. Turns out that's really fucking hard uh because that game that game just has this tendency to just throw torrents of bullshit your way like you know it's not it never rains it pours in rim world right like i did i did get off the planet one time it's actually one of the few playthroughs i've done on youtube where i actually completed the playthrough and it was it was a pretty fucking amazing this was earlier on in Rimworld so it was a little simpler like there wasn't quite as much stuff going on but um we managed to build the spaceship but uh we couldn't all fit on it so

what we had to leave one guy behind but I mean I'm pretty sure when you we were attacked while we were about to take off it was nuts it was it was absolutely nuts um and i did like a narration for it it wasn't just a playthrough it was like a story and it was i don't know how i had the fucking energy to put a youtube thing like that together i would never bother doing that now it was crazy hard work it is it's a great game it is a really good game but i have such a love hate relationship with it like it's oh it's great i just i people are always saying we'll play rimworld but it's like it's such a grind and an effort oh you really gotta be in the mood for it holy crap you really have to be in a state where you you particularly hate yourself at the time

to put yourself through it sort of thing but it is in terms of emerging stories like you were saying lewis it's great it's it's the best i actually think it's the best because so much can happen it really reminds me of dwarf fortress because exactly if you read a lot of the like it's great it's it's the best i actually think it's the best because so much can happen it really reminds me of dwarf fortress because exactly if you read a lot of the like it's it's better to read about people's playthroughs of dwarf fortress because they add flavor so on something awful there were always threads about oh yeah those always made that game they were amazing and then you're like oh man like i played it a lot dwarf fortress but yeah Fortress, but you need to, it's like coding. If you take a break and then come back, you forget all the commands

and all what you're looking for and everything that happens. It's like looking into the Matrix and after a while you go beyond the ones. You really do. And you don't see a capital D. You shit yourself when you see a dragon. Do you know what I mean? It's like, yeah. I mean, it's classically in very, as a player,

I think it wouldn't be a very good stream game because you have to build up that level of imagination. Yeah, that's it. Whereas if you dropped in on that, you just think, what the fuck am I watching? Yeah, and it's awful to look at, too. It really takes a while to get used to the fact that you're looking at ASCII characters. I mean, games like that, though, RimWorld 2 and Hearts of Iron,

I feel like they make you respect some of the really nice things about the UI in games like Planet Coaster or Cities Skylines, and you're not constantly wrestling with the actual way to play the game. I mean, sure, in Cities you do sometimes have to wrestle with placing the roads and stuff and some of that and there's frustrating things that come about because of the way you do stuff. But those are the mechanics

rather than just the interface, right? It's like, yeah, the interface itself for Dwarf Fortress was so dense. And like you said, eventually you need to transcend the numbers and just see it for what it is. And at that point, the game has you and you're probably going to be there for about three years,

just Dwarf Fortressing it because you don't want to lose that feeling. But then your Dwarf Fortress gets destroyed by a flood or rogue lava or a dragon or you unlock the wrong cave and all these god-awful demons come out or something and some of the stories like as like we were saying on something awful when people used to post their sort of after action reports about their dwarf fortress game was

unbelievable it was like this is incredible yeah but um dwarf fortress and the other one was what is it space station 13 or space space 13 i'm playing that it was so terrible it's fucking terrible but it's one of those games where people can tell you stories of the time that they played and make it sound absolutely incredible you know like i welded a guy into a locker and then i fucking i i floated him you're just like, you can do that? That sounds amazing. Yeah. But actually getting to the point where you could do any of that and it's such a mess

and it's kind of hard to look at and stuff. But that's another classic something awful. Like, here's my experience playing this game and it just sounds so fucking good. But in classic Goon style, they made out like they were just playing it for fun and hop on and try it out but if you did and you were a noob they hated oh yeah and they treated you like shit and they screamed at you like if you're playing games with goons you have to be ready to hate the puppies and then do everything that you hate oh my god you have to

have such a thick skin as well like it's impossible to fucking like you know you feel like i'm gonna join a guild and make a bunch of friends and stuff. You join the guild and literally 20 people tell you to fuck off. Yeah, it's brutal. And then there's one guy complaining that you're probably retarded, so you shouldn't be there and stuff. And it's just like... But, man, I never felt so at home.

The most hostile people in the entire universe. Guys, you were advertising for members. You didn't say we had to be good. You said if you're shit, get in here. We get in here with shit. You're like, you were advertising for members. You didn't say we had to be good. You said if you're shit, get in here. We get in here with shit. You're like, you fucking suck. I loved how there was always like a process, right? And if you failed even one step of it,

it was likely that they just weren't going to let you into the guild. It's so brutal. You had to sign up on the forum, and then you had to post a very specific thread to say that you were interested in joining the guild. And then you had to PM a guy and hope that he wasn't in a bad mood at the time yeah and then it was just like all this all these hoops you had to jump through just to get into a guild oh so bad oh fuck i love something awful it's just so good it just adds like uh such a nice like uh like icing to the cake of gaming doesn't it it's just like i don't need

all this shit this game is hard enough already but i'm just gonna i'm just gonna go through the through the fucking tedium of joining a guild of like-minded people as well also they they tease you in with their stories of all the awesome stuff they've done like i played mountain blade with the goons for a while when it was like competitive right right? And you would have your faction and their faction, you'd meet in a field and everything. And the guys that ran it were just merciless. Like they were so horrible to be around, screaming at people, swearing at us.

What's going on? Can you guys chill out? Like it's a fucking video game, guys. Like from the threads you post, you're like, ha ha, we had so much fun the other night. I'm like, who? I didn't. I'm sure 90% of other people there didn't

have fun it was like boot camp it was horrendous and it was the same in Eve even worse in Eve my god they were bad oh god yeah Eve but then again like some that's an experience right that you fucking remember you remember going through that Eve boot camp

you know you remember like getting down and giving him 20 and like fucking I don't know doing that stupid shit such serious business though like the structure that they have is crazy it's like signing up for one of those fucking horror weekends or like a cross-country or a mud a mother a tough mother or something you know it's some dumb thing where you fucking well like get tortured for pay pay them them to put you through some shit. It's always some nerd. This is the other thing. When you find out about their life,

these guys play EVE 20 hours a day. They have no life. And because they have their little rank in whatever game it is, EVE especially, there were guys I remember, we had an offshoot corp. It was way more chilled out, and we didn't do any of that shit. We just had fun. And whenever we had an offshoot corp it was way more chilled out and we didn't do any of that shit we just had fun and whenever we had any mixings with guys that were like abnormal nerd

level like weirdos we'd always find out they'd left to go join goonflea because they wanted to be more serious and they were elevated to these extreme positions of power and it's like how is that guy in charge he was a complete arsehole he was so unpleasant eve is crazy eve is i i played it like like semi recently with goons i had fun like all like the guys were really nice and it was it was it was really it was really fun but it was definitely an experience as well like you have to be really hardcore to to to play that game for like a length of time i think there's a lot a lot you need to put into it and the way that the way that the like that the the corp is is structured it's it's an alliance right and there's like they have like people who are like set as like like diplomats and political

people and it's like it it's it's it's super super complex it's nuts it's unbelievable they have they have the state of the union address that they give where everybody has to get into team speak or ventrilo and listen to the court leaders tell them the state of things and what's happening there was spies so then they if you were spies you had to have an old account on sa and that was how you could apply you had to have an account that was older than a year and then after a while they said now it's going to be four years now it's going to be like a thousand years because they were so terrified of spies because people would get into the corp and spy for other corporations and look it was incredible the emergent gameplay was unbelievable but the day-to-day grind was un-fucking-believable just moving around sitting for hours waiting for a

fight to start and then the fight starts and you spend hours because it's a slideshow it was it was i cannot believe how much time i put into eve it was ridiculous oh yeah it it's it it's definitely um it's definitely an experience isn't it yeah i just i like again like like most things i just one one day i didn't play it and then something else got my i think it was they are billions that got my attention yeah god you played that a lot these are these are all games there are so many games you play that i'm just looking at i'm just like like i could oh they are billions is fantastic i think you'd actually like it dude i played it i can't make it past the first zombie i don't know i literally don't know what i'm doing wrong the moment the

game starts like two seconds in I'm dead that's it I'm terrible you gotta it takes a little while for it to like click and then it becomes fantastic it's really really

a good game I had the same problem with Frostpunk I just I can't get past yeah the first level fuck the first level

like you send out your scouts and all that I'm getting some guys and then that's it we're done that's it everybody starves the Londoners

or whatever they call turn up we're done and you never thought like oh maybe if i did this a little bit differently like i could people would give me advice in chat i'd try it just never worked could never make it click never made it click and it was just i just felt stressed i gotta say it sounds like your commitment levels are like rock bottom i just get stressed i get really stressed because i'm just like this is not fun i'm just living on the edge i hate that i'm done like i'm is not fun. I'm just living on the edge. I hate that. I'm done. Like, I'm literally done.

I thought both those games were fantastic. They're billions, especially. Holy crap. I must have played like 300 hours of that game. I'm not even joking. That's crazy. I beat every map on every difficulty except for the last map on the hardest, hardest difficulty. That's the only one I haven't done yet. That's really, really impressive. Fuck, it's so so hard it's such a tough game it's nuts you know what you know another game i was

surprised um to talk about that sort of you know genres if you like slay the spire have you guys played slay the spire yeah yeah yeah that's sold over a million copies that game wow which surprised me like that that's incredible um and i i i played it you know for we've put a decent number of hours until i finished it a bunch of times and i played the daily challenges and stuff like that but there are there are lots of card games out there like deck building kind of card games yeah most of them are cack like i'm just looking at something like slay the spire it's actually quite a simple game the deck building is nice you know the mechanics are very simple and i just think you know there must be a lot of games companies out there that just have no fucking idea what they're doing because there's so many games like slay the spire that

you look at them you just think this looks awful yeah i just don't understand like like with battle brothers i'm thinking there must be people out there making games like this but they're just not succeeding i mean what what do you think it is do you think they they start and they just run out of money or they start and they think actually i can't be bothered or they're yeah they're in their basic game design is bad it's probably like what you were saying about fortnite like games maybe they're just trying to make a game like that but they don't really give a shit they don't have any good ideas yeah i think it's a combination of everything it's probably i i get the feeling that a lot of um developers are are very aware of like the genre

that they're working on and what works and what doesn't. So you'll find like a game will be released and you'll play a couple of minutes of it and it'll be like, yeah, you know, this is kind of good. It flows really well or whatever. And then all of a sudden you'll just get this jarring sort of like, why did they put this in? Like, it looks like they put this in because it's popular or you know another game did it really well but they haven't done it as well sort of thing and then those things just start cascading and just creating

i guess a bad experience and then there's you know like gaming culture there's reviews there's lots of like um your friends suggesting it and stuff and you know i guess a couple people play it they don't like it so they say it shits and then everybody just assumes it shits and then nobody like i can't i can't count the amount of games that i just haven't played off the back of a bad recommendation you know somebody said it's not too fun so i've just said oh fuck i heard it's not fun i'm not gonna even bother trying it and like who knows maybe i'd like it or whatever but that's just the way it, I heard it's not fun. I'm not going to even bother trying it. And who knows? Maybe I'd like it or whatever, but that's just the way it works.

I think it's just a combination of all of those factors, and then those games just don't do well. When you play a game that's really, really, really good, even quite a simple one, even games that are frustrating and annoying, for some reason, games like Battle Brothers and like Slay the Spire, I don't play games like that very often, like Slay spire i don't really play them but it really grabbed me

and i played it a shitload i just i just don't know what it is there's something about the spire just had a cool it was like a sort of progressive deck building like hearthstone had something similar more recently with like the monster hunter thing and the um what was the other one the dungeon run but it's like you start off with a couple of cards and then you know you you beat a level or you beat a boss or an encounter and then you get another card and you just sort of build your deck as you go um but it's little things like it's quick like playing cards on slay the spire bam bam bam you play them oh yeah yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The UI and everything is really nice. A lot of games, I think, like Lewis was saying, the UI for Dwarf Fortress,

that'll put a lot of people off. A lot of other games, you look at them, the UI is just bad. Yeah, and some games are just needlessly complicated as well. And that's a huge barrier for people too. You know, like Hearthstone and Blizzard games in general work so well because for people just playing the game for the first time, they're simple. You can accomplish things and it feels good and they're simple to play. But they just become harder and harder to get better at and master as you delve into them.

I think Blizzard are really good at doing that. And there's a lot of other game studios that are really good at doing that as well. And then a lot of these games that come out that fail probably just aren't very good at doing that. And there's a lot of other game studios that are really good at doing that as well. And then a lot of these games that come out that fail probably just aren't very good at doing that. It's just a combination of a lot of things. Such a fine line, I think. I mean, I think that there is potentially a great opportunity for big studios

to make games that we love. And XCOM's a great example. It's something where they took it. The original game had a lot of problems with it. They refined it down. XCOM 1 was really excellent. XCOM 2 was really good. You know, it was just a great,

had a great time, right? Loved it. And then like you look at, for example, Hearthstone, I always think when I think of Hearthstone, I think it's just a better Magic the Gathering. So I've been playing Magic the Gathering Arena and the UI, it's complicated, you know, with magic like this.

There's these unnecessary things that, sure, there are magics in a place where it can't change, right? And it's kind of been going in the same way for so long that there's things ingrained. You have your deck, it's got lands in it, certain things help you find lands, certain things, it's like a real part of the game to have that deck with everything mixed in. And Hearthstone took the lands out, and it took all the opportunities to play on your

opponent's turn out, and it took all these other things out. But because of that, it's just a better fucking game. And Magic is so slow sometimes, so frustrating sometimes. I do love it. I love the it's so much more vibrant. Here's the thing. I'm playing Hearthstone. I'm playing fucking, the other day I was playing Miracle Rogue. I was like, what fucking year is this?

Do you know what I mean? It's like, I'm using the same fucking cards. I'm playing a mage and I'm using fucking Manoworm, Fireball, Frostbolt. I'm like,

fuck me. Do you know what I mean? I mean, in Magic, sure, there's some cards that, you know, they reprint every set

and there's similar cards that come back, but it's more like, it's more like, I'm playing Magic and it's like,'s like barely changed uh i'm playing house zone it's barely changed in in it feels like there's not enough cards where i'm playing magic i'm playing commander there's like 100 cards with loads of cool effects i'm playing like all these different formats yeah and it's like just so much more vibrant you can run so many more deck types as well like there's all kinds of different approaches. Oh my God, so many more. How much time you can spend deck building in Magic is insane. The people that design Magic know the kind of people that are playing Magic.

And so the decisions they make reflect that, right? So it's a much more complex. I've never even played Magic. From what I've heard, it's a lot more complicated. Like you were saying, there's a lot of different mechanics. There's a lot of different effects and stuff. And that appeals to the sort of core base of people that play Magic. But a game like Hearthstone, they're going for mass appeal, right?

They're trying to make a game that on the outset is simple so that more and more people get into it. Like my wife doesn't play games but she's played hearthstone before because it's it was simple enough for her to to like just go through the tutorial and play a couple of matches with just like a dumb deck that she totally threw together that the game threw together for her and she was like oh yeah you know i can see why people would like this it's kind of cool yeah so my mom told me if i'd given her magic the gathering and said oh here you go. Play this for 10 minutes and see what you think.

There's no fucking way. Like she would take one look at it and say, oh, fuck. Okay, no. I don't, you know, I got to go. The kids poop their pants even though they haven't. I need to leave the room right now sort of thing. It's just, it's totally different approaches to design, but totally different audiences as well. And don't get me wrong.

There's some really hardcore Hearth different audiences as well and don't get me wrong there's some really hardcore hearthstone players as well but you know the game will always be designed uh more for everyone else than them they just take it to like a further degree sort of thing you know what i mean yeah yeah so like a lot of like the balance changes and stuff that come in yeah like pro players would be like this isn't good for the game but yeah it's probably not good for the pro scene but for the game overall for yeah, it's probably not good for the pro scene, but for the game overall, for all the grandmas and stuff playing it on the tablet, it's probably

great, right? And that's what they're thinking about. They've done it the other way to the way Dota does it. In Dota, they balance purely around the pro scene. So the balances are like, this hero isn't getting picked on the pro scene, or this hero's getting picked too much, or this hero's winning too much in the pro scene, or this hero doesn't win enough. So that's what the buffs go by.

Like, they do not balance around the pub scene at all. So the game is brutally hard. And you're right. And then sometimes the pub scene sucks because of it. Dota has a dominant culture of people play it and everybody feels like they are a pro and on the pro scene. Whereas Hearthstone is played a lot more casually by people who, you know, some people just put decks together

because they think they'll be fun and they enjoy that aspect of it honestly like i prefer it i prefer i prefer it like sometimes you know it's just i think you just have to gravitate towards what you enjoy doing and i think that you're very much the master of your own destiny and and you will end up playing the things that you enjoy the most so yeah like we're really spoiled for choice there's a lot of really good stuff a lot of good stuff coming out in the fall as well. Oh, I'm going to look forward to that. Send me a link. I'm going to look ahead to what's coming out.

There's a lot of games I want to come out. I want to play Last of Us 2, and I want to play Death Stranding or whatever it's called. But those are both PS4 games, so I need to talk to you guys about how to stream console because I have no fucking idea. Just get it in Elgato. You should be able to do it with the Elgato.

Okay, yeah. Well, we're going to end the podcast before we start talking about tech crap on a technical support question thanks everyone see you all next week peace

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