Video Gamers Podcast - A Decade of Gaming - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Gaming hosts Paul, Michael and Josh are breaking down an entire decade of gaming in this absolutely can’t miss episode. 2010-2019 saw the emergence of some of the best video games ever, advancement of gaming consoles, gaming technology and more. We break it all down in the best way imaginable in one of our best episodes yet! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are three dads who love gaming, and today we are going to be doing something new that we haven't tried before, breaking down an entire decade of gaming, in this case, the 2010s. We're going to talk about some of our favorite games and some of the trends that we saw over the course of the decade. Please rate our show five stars, leave a written review, and sign up on Patreon for bonus episodes. You can do that over at MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul. Joining me today, he's reflecting back on the start of the 2010s when he was still using his Nintendo Wii and his Wii Fit to weigh in and see how many hula hoops he

can do in a minute. It's Josh. Did you have a Wii Fit, Josh? I actually did have the... I had a Wii Fit. Can I tell one quick story about the Wii Fit? My poor daughter, one of my daughters, okay, a little bit on the larger side, we bought a Wii Fit, and it weighs you in the first time you do it, and you put your age

and your height... Every American is, like, poofy on the Wii Fit, man. Yep. It went... And it just keeps getting wider. And my daughter was not very happy about it. When I got that, I was fairly good shape. And it still made me kind of like puffy, you know? And I was like, hey, like, come on, man. That's not fair.

I thought when you said he was reflecting on, I thought you were going to talk about me being bald at first. So I was like, good job, Paul. But then you just went normal. Yeah, totally normal. I will say I was king at the ski jump on the Wii Fit, the balance board. Oh, really? Oh, the ski jump was great.

I liked the hula hoop. That's the one that always stuck out to me. How many could you do in a minute? Yeah. All right. one that always stuck out to me how many could you do in a minute yeah all right and then joining me and josh he's reflecting back on the end of the 2010s when he was living inside his valve index playing vr games like beat saber and waiting for the release of half-life alex in just a couple months it's michael oh yes i have not actually ever played beat saber and i've always thought about it i've always thought about it i'm like always thought about it. I'm like, that seems like a fun one. It's a lot of energy. I've got a lot of energy and you use freaking

lightsabers. But no, I haven't done it probably because I'm always like RPG or puzzle game or something like that. But yeah, I spent a lot of time in my valve. Hey, Paul, I'll bet you have $5. Michael owns Beat Saber, though. Probably. Hold on. Let me look it up i don't i don't think i own it oh how funny you could make an argument beat saber might be like pound for pound the most fun you can have in vr like there's an argument to be made it's that good it's like the spiritual successor to the we fit or to like rock band or right our hero or something there's so much movement yeah all right well before jumping into the 2010s josh are there any reviews to read here that people have left the show?

We do. Another review. We're going to just keep it to one. This is a longer one, so we're just going to do the one review right now. But hey, I always read everything. So buckle in, ladies and gentlemen. Here we go. This one comes in from Booshkies, and it's titled, What is Sure to Be the Greatest Podcast Ever.

I like where this is going. All right. And it says, this is very quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite podcasts. The hosts are hilarious and don't take themselves too seriously. I really appreciate the family-friendly nature of the podcast as well. I listen to a lot of podcasts. A lot of podcasts. Usually over I listen to a lot of podcasts, a lot of podcasts, usually over 350 hours a year worth of podcasts,

and this one is definitely among the absolute best I've heard. Even the small details that most other podcasts will brush over, these guys find a way to make fun and enjoyable to listen to. In the beginning of some episodes, they promote their Patreon, oftentimes with an amusing and lovably cheesy skit, which I never forward through. When the host introduces his co-hosts he finds new ways to do so either by referencing the topic at hand giving a compliment to his co-hosts alluding to a previous experience playing the game that they had or my favorite is when he outright insults them

keep up the good work guys p.s waffles are better than are better than pancakes. I kid you not, me and my friends say trust the fungus. Basically, every time we hang out, usually when we part ways, it's kind of our version of May the Force Be With You. I, too, love spreadsheets and data. If someone asked me what humanity's single greatest achievement is, I would tell them Microsoft Excel. I frequently make spreadsheets for nothing more than my own amusement. Ocarina of Time is not even close to being the best Zelda game. I'm only 22, but sometimes you make me feel old because I have played

KOTOR, Mario 64, and the original Final Fantasy VII in the last four years, and I still had a ton of fun with them despite their age, and Chrono Trigger is my fourth favorite game of all time. See, they say the youth are going downhill, and I say no, because this man has it right clearly

this could be my clone other than being 22 i'm a little bit older than that but other than that like this is almost straight out of my mouth i feel like we met paul's younger spirit animal here we were literally just talking about excel too because we were talking about games and years and ranking that we years and ranking them. We're not ranking them, but listing them by year. And I'm like, would you make an Excel spreadsheet? We were literally just talking about that before the show. What was that username?

Booshkies. Booshkies. Booshkies, yes. So Booshkies. Thank you, Booshkies. Amazing review. Thanks for all the little tidbits of extra info there as well. And I always say I read every review word for word.

So take that in mind if you're about to leave us a review and bushkis i don't know for sure it sounds polish and i'm also polish so we've got a lot of connections here i think me and bushkis i like pierogies there you go pierogies are so good thanks bushkis i'm not the hugest fan of Polish food, but I ride for pierogies. They're not bad. Just trust the fungus. Yeah, trust the fungus. All right.

Well, let's start talking about the 2010s, guys. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. We have broken down consoles. We've broken down a certain game year, but we've never actually tackled an entire decade so we've got hardware to talk about gaming trends new franchises that started others that ended in in the 2010s we've got a lot to cover so to put things in perspective how about i hit you guys with a couple of markers for what was going on in 2010 i was i was gonna say early 2010 versus like 2019 is i feel like to tell a little bit of the story. So hit The highest grossing movie was James Cameron's Avatar, and the best-selling game was Call of Duty Black Ops

on the 360 and PS3. Overall, Nintendo was dominating the market with five out of the top 10 selling games, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Just Dance 2, the Wii Fit, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Pokemon's SoulSilver version. And the best graphics card at the time, guys, was the GTX 460. The 460. Wow. How long ago does that feel? Oh, man. I feel old now. Well, I mean, as they say, a decade is almost 10 years. so that was a long time ago. What's really funny is none of us were really even friends in 2010, which I find bananas.

I had not even met Michael yet. Michael and I did not meet until 2014. I know this because I went back in my Gmail and I tracked down when that happened. And Josh, were you still in Louisiana in 2010? My youngest daughter was born in 2010, and she was one. She was turning one when we moved here. So I'll be honest, I don't know if we were just in Arizona or just leaving to go to Arizona. Yeah, I don't think you were here quite yet.

I don't think we were. If I had to guess, I'm going to say we were probably still like a couple months out. I searched my Gmail for as far back as i could go with you josh and what i found was you being so happy that you had ladanian tomlinson on your fantasy football team yeah that tells you how long ago this was he's been retired for over 10 years oh wow you asked me, I thought he retired even longer than that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, when I hear

some of these facts, it feels like 20 years or longer. All right. And then by the end of the decade in 2019, we had the first picture ever of a black hole.

We had our first COVID patients in Wuhan. Lil Nas X had taken the rap and country world by storm with Old town road the highest grossing movie was avengers end game and the best-selling game it was call of duty modern warfare also in the top 10 we had some games like borderlands 3 star wars jedi fallen order smash bros and the division 2 so you know i sent you guys a list of the best-selling games in 2010 and then also

in 2019. Right off the bat, as we kind of look at the games, is there anything that stands out between those lists? 100%. Call of Duty and sports games. Apparently, we need to cover a lot more on this podcast because they're all over the place. Safe bets, right? I was going to say, Call of Duty, shooters in the early 2010s, I mean, Halo Reach, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, you know, these are some of the things in 2010. And then, you know, I mean, but then again, look at 2019, right? You've got Borderlands 3. You've got The Division 2, which was fun.

And again, Call of Duty. Like, I mean, we just slandered Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. We said, hey, it really wasn't for us. I know that people are playing it. Some people are enjoying it. But is it really any different? Like, is it that different that 10 years later, it's still in the top 10? The maps are a little bit different, maybe.

Yeah. So. Yeah. I mean, we are just not really Call of Duty people. So I feel kind of bad about that. But clearly, Call of Duty was doing very well in the 2010s, holding the top spot to start and end the decade. I think the other thing that really stuck out to me is casual gaming. Because if you look at that list in 2010, we've got Just

Dance in the top 10. You're never going to see anything like that again. I think we saw a lot of casual gamers using the Wii at the beginning of the 2010s. And by the end of the decade, I think all casual gaming basically moved over to mobile because you don't see that in the 2019 list. So I think casual games on console have kind of died off quite a bit. That makes sense, actually. It makes a lot of sense. When did the iPhone come out?

The original one? 2008, I think. Yeah, because I'm thinking about it. Back in 2010, probably mobile gaming wasn't really a big deal at all. Whereas now, what? Mobile gaming is actually more popular than console gaming, isn't it? Way more. I'd have to make up numbers on that.

But it's like 97% higher than console games. That's what my brain told me just now. But seriously, that's insane. So it's an interesting trend to see that. Yeah. I mean, you also had Facebook gaming. I don't know when that came out, necessarily. So don't quote me on that. I don't know if that's in the 2010s or not. But it seems like it would be because I feel like it wasn't that long ago when everybody in the world was playing Farmville and stuff like that. So it was like, if you wanted that casual game,

you were either playing a game on your iPhone or playing a game on Facebook. Well, Josh, I got some bad news. Farmville released June 19th, 2009. Oh, it doesn't count? The other thing that kind of stood out, too, for me was I did not realize that Jedi Fallen Order had made top 10 in 2019. That kind of surprised me. Do you know why, Michael? Because it's awesome.

It's awesome is why, exactly. Because he's got Darth Vader. Spoilers. Spoiler. Oh, yeah, sorry. Right at the beginning of the show. When does the spoiler section of this 2010 breakdown? Oh, yeah.

No spoilers needed. We're going to spoil stuff here. You know, the other thing that's really fun to look at in the 2010s is the hardware. Like, there was a lot of hardware that released over the course of the 2010s. We saw the release of the iPad. So we didn't even have tablets at the beginning of the decade. We saw the Xbox Kinect. Guys, I owned an Xbox an xbox connect and i have

not thought about it in eight or nine years i completely forgot they existed was that the camera yes it was the one that tracked movement i had a connect at one point i don't remember what the heck i used it for paul jog my memory what would i have played on the connect that made having the connect worthwhile well there were a couple things the dance games were a lot of fun it was a dance I'll jog my memory. What would I have played on the Kinect that made having the Kinect worthwhile? Well, there were a couple things. The dance games were a lot of fun. I was going to say it was a dance game. The dance games were good because you didn't have to hold anything.

But our kids loved it, Josh, because by the time we became friends, our whole friend group, we all had kids that were exactly the same age. And they had, I think it was called like maybe dance party or block party or something. And it would just like drop balloons and all the kids could just jump and hit them with their hands. And they would fly in the air and they would play that for like hours on end. They thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I feel like that's a piece of technology or peripheral that they just didn't use properly. Because it seems great in theory but i don't i mean i had one i don't remember what the heck i used it for no yeah i don't i i've got one for

the ps4 slash ps5 but it's it's only for like vr but it is used the same way as it connect you can play dance games and stuff but i've only ever used it because it it tracks the vr but i i wanted to connect and then i realized that it was just kind of cartoony games like you know just like uh i don't know what i'm doing emotion my hand nobody can see i think i'm doing badminton let's go with that i thought you were hitting i thought you were hitting yeah or i thought he was hitting gophers you know a little gopher game whack-a-mole yeah there you go yeah that's a play i know if they had whack-a-mole with the connect i would have owned a connect for sure Yeah, so on top of the iPad and the Kinect, we also had the release of the Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Wii U in the decade from 2010 to 2012 in just a two year period, we got tablets all the way through VR. That's incredible.

It's pretty crazy. I think what kind of kicked that off a little bit too is at the exact same time, identical time, 3D movies and 3D TVs were jumping off. Avatar came out in December of 2009. And then the first 3D TVs came out about six months later because you want to be able to watch Avatar in 3D, right? So I think what happened was all the people that follow the trends and develop technology were like, people want more immersion. They want the 3D movies and they want a real virtual reality environment. So I wonder if they kind of went hand in hand. But thank goodness somebody made VR because I'm so happy.

I wish it was more popular than it is. But I wish a lot of things. I wish I had a million bucks too. So, you know. I remember VR coming out and I was so desperate to try it. The Oculus Rift got released and it was super expensive at the time.

And Michael's realizing, right? Because I, and Michael, you didn't have a Rift, but you had a buddy that had a Rift. And you were like, dude, if you want to check this out, come to my house. I'll invite my buddy over. You can try VR for the first time. I remember my entire family came over, me, my wife, my kids. You strapped us into this VR system. It was the most mind-blowing thing I think I've experienced in a long, long time. And Paul, you said it, man. Going from having the first tablets to a wearable VR headset, was the 2010s just the decade of miniaturization? Is that what happened? This is so weird.

Have we ever talked about 3D TV on this podcast? I don't think so. If we did, it was very briefly and how bad of a flop it was. I still have one. I still use it. I love it. I hate 3D movies so much. I cannot tell you how much I hate them. I tried. I went to so many 3D movies so much. I cannot tell you how much I hate them.

I tried. I went to so many 3D movies. And then it was just like, but this isn't good. I hate that eventually my 3D glasses and my... Because I've got a Sony 55-inch 3D TV upstairs. It's not 4K because by the time 4K came out, they'd kicked 3D TVs to the curb. So it's a 1080. But I'm so afraid that like my glasses are gonna break or the tv's gonna break and i will not be able to replace it because i've got like

the star trek movies in 3d avatar uh by the way if you guys want to come over have your mind blown come over and watch edge of tomorrow in 3d whoa no thank you um i searched my... He just dismisses it like that. Nope. Cut. Cut that. I had to go back, and I won't put him on blast, but a certain person who might be Josh's brother-in-law, he and I got into a huge debate about 3D TVs, and I found it January 6th of 2010 that he guaranteed absolutely 3D TVs will be mainstream within the next two years and i said dude until they make tvs where you don't need glasses no one's gonna buy these and then funny

enough he emailed me on december 31st 2013 and it has the subject line 3d tv and all it says is i guess you win the bet. You know what? I've learned one thing in the last five minutes of this episode. Paul remembers everything, and he keeps a record. So be careful what you send to Paul. Spreadsheets, man. It's all the Excel. If I remember calling something correct,

I'll forget all the ones I called wrong. And there's a lot of those, too. But I will not forget the ones I called wrong. And there's a lot of those too. I do. But I will not forget the ones I got right. And I will bring them up. All right. So anything else to say about hardware before we move on? There's a lot there.

I can't believe that we got iPads all the way through the Switch. That's a lot of technology developed in 10 years. I think it's crazy as kind of a footnote here that the original Oculus Rift when it came out was actually crowdfunded on like one of those websites where you can give the crowdfunding. Kickstarter or whatever it was. Josh, that Rift that you had, that was a crowdfunded Rift. It wasn't even

the first one. That was the pre-release. Yeah. Because Reece had given like he crowdfunded like $1,000 or something and got it. It's just interesting that that's how it started. It's like, hey, we've got a great idea. We kind of want to do it. You guys want to throw some money our way so we can afford to do it? And then within the next couple of years, like right now, what is there?

Like 50? Oh, nope. 51? No, a new one came out. 52. There are 52 different VR headsets out now. But that's just interesting that it started there and blew up so fast. I actually didn't even know it started with crowdfunding.

So you just taught me this, Michael. I had no idea. Then again, since I was always so anti-3D stuff, I didn't really even pay attention to VR until a couple years ago. And I love my Quest 2. So I love VR. I just don't love 3D TVs, no matter how good Edge of Tomorrow might look. All right.

So I do have a list here of the most acclaimed games of the 2010s. This is based on how many journalists included the game in their best of the decade list. So this is going in order. According to gaming journalists, these were the best games of the decade. Coming in number one overall, Michael, buckle up. You're going to love this. The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. I have to go.

Josh, buckle up for this one. Number two is last of us oh whatever man these are the two games that you guys have always said are way overrated i think you're both crazy they are overrated they i'm not saying that they're not good i like breath of the wild it's it's a great game i played. I didn't beat it, but I played it a lot. I played Last of Us 2. I played that game. And it's just like they're good games. But to say that those are the two best games of the decade? Because I pulled a list of games that we can get into here in a little bit.

We don't have to cover all of them because there's like 40 of them on there. But I'll just spit out like 15 games. And you tell me that Last of Us and Breath of the Wild top that list? Like, come on. There's no way. I mean, number three, I think, is a good contender for the top. I've got your list up, Paul,

but I won't spoil it. You can spoil it. Number three is a game we all hold very dear to our hearts, The Witcher 3, Wild Hunt. There you go. Can't argue with that. That's a game of a decade right there. Game of the decade, yep, right there. Yeah, I think the rest of this list is actually very solid i think the whole list is

solid i don't have any qualms with any of these 10 uh so after breath of the wild last of us and witcher 3 we've got elder scrolls 5 skyrim dark souls gta 5 yep god of war oh yeah baby wait God of War, Minecraft, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption 2. The only one I'm sad about, guys, number 11 is Portal 2. Yeah. Portal 2 did not make the top 10, but I had to say that that comes in at number 11. Swap it out with Minecraft. Yeah, that's what I would say. Yeah, just flip them.

You know what? I knew that Minecraft was going to come up. So since it came up, you guys, we've all played Minecraft with our kids. You cannot deny that Minecraft was perhaps the... Well, I think it is. I mean, I think the numbers prove it. It is the single biggest success in gaming history. I mean, Minecraft crushes every other sale of games in existence at this point. Minecraft makes me understand that I'm a terrible human being. Here's why. I haven't actually played Minecraft with my kids. You know what I do with Minecraft? I get called upstairs because we have the Nintendo Switch on the upstairs TV. It's my 3D TV, mind you, that I would like to use. But they've got Minecraft on it and I have to stand there as my children show me this elaborate

97-room mansion they have built out of blocks and point out every single thing in there. And I'm like, I just want to go somewhere else right now. Oh no, I am a terrible human and a terrible father because I do not care about this. My children do not listen to this show

neither does my wife so i can say that but i feel terrible because i'm like i just want to leave i don't like minecraft you're in a safe place michael i feel exactly the same way now just throw out a guess how many copies of minecraft do you think have sold 260 million 261 million prices right rules okay well shockingly you both went too high um but it has sold 238 million which is crazy there are only three games of all time that have sold 100 million and it is tetris on mobile gta 5 which is 169 million and then minecraft at 238 million yeah that's wild all right make love marry murder minecraft right now oh murder i can't how do you murder the most successful game of all time i can understand why other people love it it's just not for me i'm too old your dad age is showing yes i'm yeah hey as much as I'm trying to not slander Minecraft, I don't find it very fun.

But I get it. Like, I get why it's so popular. It's an open sandbox. It's basically like, I mean, I'm old. I played in literal sandboxes when I was a kid. Yes. You know? I remember thinking like, hey, what's this funny rock?

And it was cat poop in my sandbox. You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, this is what I grew up with. So it's like kids nowadays get their own sandbox. It may be digital. They don't have to accidentally play with poop. Dude, we had so much poop in our sandbox growing up. We had a fork that was wrapped with duct tape.

And it was the cat poop fork that you knew. Don't eat with this fork. We only use this one outside to rake and it was the cat poop fork that you knew, don't eat with this fork. We only use this one outside to rake and pick up the cat poop. Don't eat with this fork! Yeah. I've eaten at Paul's house many times, and I'm really hoping we didn't mix that up. No, this is my parents' house.

Not me as an adult, Michael. This is when I was a kid. I would never have a cat poop fork. You have kids. I would have a dedicated outside tool only held outside for something like that in our home we would put in the dishwasher and it got put in the drawer and if you need to clear out cat poop you'd grab it from the silverware drawer and take it outside and uh we just thought that was adorable so i i mean i have

to give minecraft its dues like yes it's not super fun, but it's evolved too. Like, you've got all these servers that have all of these mini games in it. My daughter plays Bedwars, which actually seems like a cool game. There's the build battle where it gives you a thing and you have to, like, you know, everybody builds it and then you compare who looks like the best pig or whatever. Like, there's a lot of neat stuff to it, man. Oh, yeah. When did Roblox come out? I feel like Rob best pig or whatever. There's a lot of neat stuff to it, man. Oh, yeah. When did Roblox come out? I feel like that would have been 20 years.

Oh, Roblox is terrible. I think it's better than Minecraft. Roblox is a Minecraft wannabe. It's got a lot of games, though. I play games in there with my kids sometimes. Roblox, shockingly, released in 2006. So you got to go back pretty far for that one. Yeah.

Oh, wow. The other thing that stands out to me on that list is that almost all of them are sequels. Three of them are original. That would be Minecraft, The Last of Us, and Dark Souls. Now, The Last of Us, we have only had two installments. I think we've had more remakes of The Last of Us than we have had sequels. Than actual Last of Uses?

Yeah. And Minecraft is what it is you don't need sequels or anything like that but dark souls is a really interesting one guys because that spawned a slew of mega hits in the 2010s you've got dark souls one two and three plus bloodborne and sakiro shadows die twice like they created their own genre in the 2010s. You call games Souls-like. What is it about Dark Souls that really crashed the gaming industry? It created a genre. I mean, that's literally it. This was the introduction of a new genre of games at that point. I'll tell you why, because I love them. And it's because they

took combat and they elevated combat to a level where it actually mattered what you did. It was not button mashing. It was not strictly Nintendo just pushing a button at the right time. I mean, while that does come into play with dodging and things like that, for me, the dark souls combat formula feels like what combat should be in a video game and it is not cheesy it is not the computer cheating which you know i like to say happens if i get beat on something like i don't know if you guys ever played street fighter on like super hard difficulty but the computer cheats it actually knows your button input and will react to it before like as you're pushing the button and like dude that's cheating you know what i mean and so but dark souls made it to where it's like hey this game is hard but it's hard because you suck get good at it and then guess what it's not hard

anymore and i love that aspect i love the fact that it said you cannot button mash we will punish you for it your positioning matters matters. Your timing matters. The weapons. You know, I was always like a weapon nerd. I loved the ninjas when I was a kid and stuff like that. And it's like, dude, you want to use a katana? Use a katana. You want to use a gigantic two-handed battle axe?

Like, use one of those. And they feel different. I feel like the Dark Souls games mastered what i feel like combat should be i think that the dark souls games also have this weird allure because they have a feeling to them it's this overwhelming despair and then also they're really hard but to josh's point on the combat i mean i look at like for instance elder scrolls skyrim i feel like everything before dark souls games was like skyrim skyrim fights are not hard and it and it's an action-based game. You fight a lot in Skyrim. Go to any one of those caves, and you're like 27 draugrs in.

You're like, man, let me get to the big guy with the cool horns on top of his head so I can get out of here, right? But all it is is just you don't have to block. If you want to shield, sure, but just keep smashing the same button. You're going to get through it. And really, Dark Souls is not like that. And the only dark souls games i've really played i've watched some people play them but i played elden ring and holy cow was that a breath of fresh air to have to try different things and then the idea of okay my two-handed axe is slow but it can stagger someone who's blocking or i can try a quick little dagger thing that if I see them attacking, I can attack first and stop and interrupt.

It's more on your play style, which I think is really alluring and it's addictive. Yeah, and I think you kind of hinted at something there, Michael, which is that overall, games became a lot easier at some point. I don't know when this became the case, because you had 2D games for a long time. And in the 90s, they got progressively harder. And then all of a sudden, you got 3D games. And it seemed like maybe they were afraid people would have to learn how 3D works. And so the games became easier over time. And then I think Dark Souls was the backlash to that. It was, you've all gone soft.

And now we're going to hit you with the hard combat. We're not even going to give you a story. We're not going to give you an ounce of character development or anything you're going to start this game with a minimal menu and all of a sudden you're just in the game fighting and i think that's what people really liked it was almost like a return to those harder games from our youth it's a hundred percent that i mean i i'm with you and it's weird that i never actually even thought about the transition between like Nintendo hard days and the old console games that were brutal. Because they needed to be because they had to keep you playing them for so long. And then you're right.

3D gaming started coming around and games got really easy for a long time. And then Dark Souls comes around and says, no, we're going to put it back on you at this point. This thought just popped in my head, but FromSoft makes the Dark Souls games. Is it because they're bringing you from being soft? Ooh. Did we just figure that out? Maybe that's a little bit of a double entendre there.

You might be onto something, Josh. Yeah. You heard it here first, people. Look at them go. Look at us go, too. We're just sleuths. We're solving things. Oh, very nice.

All right. Well, we're going to take a very short break, and we'll be right back with some more multiplayer gaming podcasts. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. High school. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, the credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time

every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, guys. I think the last thing that I was going to mention looking at this most acclaimed game list is there's also a big emphasis on story. Other than looking at Dark Souls, which we just ironically said has no story, Minecraft is also somewhat similar in that regard, but almost all the other games are like long, sweeping, epic stories, whether it's Witcher 3 or God of War, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption 2. These are like very long, epic stories. And I think that's another thing that we started seeing in the 2010s. We were not getting as many sequels year after year after year. Instead, we start to see the bigger, more epic games that take five, six, seven, eight, nine years to make. And so now we don't have as many sequels, but they come out as much bigger epic games. I don't know about you guys.

I love that trend. I would way rather buy fewer games that are more epic in scale than to have a new one every year. I love getting into these nice, long, epic RPGs in particular. I'm with you. I'll just say that because I'm just going to disagree with Josh already. Go ahead, Josh. I was going to let you two have your moment as far as that goes. I'll say this because I am a little bit different than you guys i enjoy a good story a game with a good story stands out to me this is again like i i talk about like i mention all all the time you know subnautica and outer wilds firewatch you know some of these games that i'm

a little bit more partial to than you guys are all very story driven. We've mentioned the Walking Dead series Telltale. I mean, that game made me freaking cry, man. You know, I mean, it should, but it did, you know, and so we started to see this emergence of like, hey, let's just tell a story with video games. But I feel like there was a couple of years there where that came at a cost and that cost was gameplay. And so I think what happened is people started realizing developers started realizing, hey, we can actually tell an amazing story with a game. But they didn't know how to include gameplay in that. Right? So it just became these interactive stories at a point with very, very little gameplay options.

You brought up the most guilty game of all time at that is Firewatch. Like, it's literally just a story. I think you, at one point, you step over over a log that's the most action you're seeing i mean yeah but the story was great x to repel down a cliff at one point michael it's the same button you use to step over the log yeah so no but i i understand what you're saying though it totally makes sense because you've got like hey let's get these interactive stories which i'm not against those but when that's all that comes out is a bunch of that, you're like, well, we need to find a good, happy medium.

It's funny. I think the good, happy medium is probably God of War. It's the perfect thing. It's got good combat. It's got a lot of story. And I haven't played the 2018 one. I played earlier ones, like God of War 3. They all kind of have that, where they're like,

hey, we're going to tell a story. We're going to have some combat that's a little bit more difficult. It's not Souls-like at all. It's not super difficult, but it's certainly not Skyrim. And it's the appropriate length. I think the 2010s really kind of nailed that. Because if you look back at the 90s, games didn't really have storylines. You might have a little bit with your Final Fantasies and whatnot.

But even those were pretty limited in scope. I feel like the 2010s really hit their stride where they were able to maximize gameplay and story. Probably no better example than The Witcher 3 and God of War, Mass Effect 2. Those games are perfect games. You can't really do anything to make them better. I was going to say, I feel like towards the end of the decade is when they really started to figure it out. Like Red Dead Redemption 2, fantastic mix of story and gameplay. I personally feel like the gameplay is lacking, but the story is incredible. God of War is the absolute perfect blend to me. The Witcher 3, right?

What's the one complaint that a lot of people have with Witcher 3? Is the actual combat and gameplay portion feels a little janky to them. Story's incredible, right? You don't need the magic at all. Right. And so I feel like we went from just pure story, no gameplay, to companies starting to figure this out. And then at the same time, we see emergencies of games that said,

hey, you know what? We're going to buck the story trend, and we're just going to go 100% gameplay. And that's when you have games like Overwatch that came out in 2016, Rocket League that came out in 2017. And some of these things where they just said, we don't need... I'm sorry, Rocket League came out in 2015. Correction there. Where they said, if gameplay is incredible, you don't need a story at that point. So I liked it as the decade started progressing. People kind of went, how do we mesh all of that together? And that's how we wound up with Red Dead Redemption 2, Mass Effect 2, God of War,

Witcher 3, and some of those incredible games. They stand out above all the others. Yeah. Honorable mention to Nier Automata as well, because that one had a pretty robust story in the combat. I remember being pretty good as well. So it's a very unique game as well in how they handle combat. Very unique. Yeah. So let's just open things up, guys. Let's talk about whatever we want. We can bring up games, franchises, trends you noticed. What do you guys want to talk about? Well, we can talk about 2B right now. 2B? No. No. Shut that down family friendly michael i i do have to say real fast it's funny and this is me making fun of myself but we said we were covering the 2010s i was thinking in my head

why are we covering a decade we're still in uh oh boy Nope. I was like, nope. Never mind. So that was there. Michael's still living in the 2010s. Yeah, I still watch my TV. I want to throw out, and we don't have to dive into these at all if you guys don't want to, but I want to throw out some of the games. I have a list of, I don't know, 25, 30 games that I just very quickly put together, and I'm not going to read all of them, but this is why I have contention

with The Last of Us and Breath of the Wild being declared the best games of the entire decade. I'm not saying those games aren't good, but you do, we've already talked about it. You have games like Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Mass Effect 2, right? Yeah, I mean, these are games. Overwatch, now Overwatch 2, it's got issues, three grand theft auto five you know massive marrying all of those right yeah i mean these

are games yeah overwatch now overwatch 2 it's got issues but if we think back to the original overwatch i mean in my opinion one of the best games released portal 2 for sure portal 2 if you look up the best video games of all time you will find portal 2 at the top of that list. So how is it not at the top of a game list that says, hey, best games of the 2010s in that regard? You could argue it belongs in the number one spot. Right. Yeah, exactly. Then we started seeing the emergence of some roguelite games, right? I mean, roguelite games were not super popular for a while. I don't know when the genre actually came to be, but you have games like Hades, Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, and a lot of the emergence of the roguelite genre by a lot of the indie developers and things like that. I still don't know what that word means.

Outer Wilds. Stardew Valley, Paul, came out. None of us play this anymore, but it's the number one game played on Steam ever. And CSGO, right? I think that still has the most active users at any given moment. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, I did have my moments with Counter-Strike, but CSGO, I mean, there's just... I started looking at the games that came out in in this decade and i i like we can decide this later on but i started going like is this the greatest decade for gaming and then you're gonna put last of us and breath of the wild which are fine

you know what i mean like they're fine but i almost feel like this is why i'm glad we're not experts right like like the critics because i feel like the critics went, well, we have to vote for this game because we're critics, right? It's like, dude, there's so many better games out there. Yeah. And I got to mention this one because The Witness, which I think I'm the only person that has talked about The Witness, but it's the best puzzle game ever made, in my opinion, next to Portal 2. That came out in 2016. There's just, there's so many amazing games. I do own The Witness. I did not finish or beat it. I remember getting stuck at some point,

and I just didn't feel like looking up a guide, and I never went back to it. But yeah, there's a ton of great puzzle games that came out this decade. I think in the 2010s, everything, and I mean, it does have the advantage of newer technology. The games can be bigger. We're not stuck on little cartridges with

only a couple megabytes like back in the day so of course on one hand we would expect these games to be the best josh you didn't even mention diablo 3 i have it on my list i i there's issues there's issues with that game but again that's a huge mega game of the decade uncharted 4 like there are so many great games this decade uh one thing that i did want to mention which i didn't even really think about until you were reading off some of the multiplayer games josh look at the creativity with multiplayer games in the 2010s between overwatch and rocket league even stuff like titanfall 2 oh it's on my list like you saw the rise of like that hero shooter or people who are just willing to get

weird with video game development. You say soccer meets racing, and I don't know that anyone is going to immediately say, oh yeah, that sounds like one of the best games of the decade. But then you actually put it together, and it's one of the most successful games of all time. I love the fact that people were willing to try something new in this regard. I mean, I didn't mention PUBG, Fortnite. I mean, we covered some of these games we covered in our 2017 breakdown. We actually broke down the 2017 year in gaming. So if you want a full kind of breakdown of those, you can check out that episode. But I mean, there's just a ton

of games on this list. I didn't read the whole list by any means, but it's just like, I take issue with the critics' consensus of what they nominated the best games. And that's not to Slander Breath of the Wild and Last of Us, but I just feel like there's, as gamers, we always pride ourselves on we're real world gamers. I just feel like there's, as gamers, we always pride ourselves on we're real world gamers. I just feel like there's so many better options out there. So that brings up an interesting point, Josh, because the whole idea of game awards and awards season for gaming did not exist in decades prior. That's a very recent thing. Do you think that's a positive trend or negative? What are your thoughts on

things like the Game Awards? I am a sucker for game reviews, right? Like, you and I had this discussion, Paul, because we do these deep dives and we don't talk about what we think about games with each other. So every time we do a deep dive, I mean, we get glimpses. I think I know what you think about this game. You guys think I know. And I always try to mislead you guys because it's fun and stuff like that. Right? But I think there is something to be said for here's some game reviews. Here's what we think.

When I see 10 out of 10 out of 10 across multiple sites and multiple critics, I get excited. You know what I mean? They trust, too. You like those publications. You're like, Oh, if this is universally loved, then it's got to get something right.

When I see five out of 10, five out of 10, six out of 10, four out of 10, I kind of go, man, there's probably something wrong here. And,

and everybody's different right now. Here's where it gets really weird because Armageddon, the movie, I love Armageddon. I don't know too many people out there that really weird because armageddon the movie i love armageddon i don't know too many people out there that don't like armageddon when they sit down and watch it but the critics hate armageddon oh they killed it because it's not what a movie's supposed to be oh it's it's cheesy and it's hokey and it's like i don't care it's a great movie you know that was the beginning of michael bay being michael bay as well and so

and so what and i'm i keep going back to this well because breath of the wild i'm with michael a little bit on breath of the wild i played it i loved it it was fine it's a great video game is it the best game no it's not it didn't revolutionize anything last of us i played last of us for about eight hours. It's not like I've never played it. And I just found the gameplay to be lacking. I kind of went, dude, there's just, I don't get it. Maybe I need to give it a second try.

You know what I mean? In that regard. But I think it's like critics went, oh, well, we've got to vote for this, right? Because everybody else is talking about it. And we can't be wrong because if critics are wrong, then they're not critics anymore because people stop paying attention to them so did uh what was the game you just mentioned last of us wild no breath well did birth the wild win a game of the year award oh absolutely yeah ready ready for this i'm gonna hit you guys with a wild stat go ahead guess well i'm not gonna make you. 18 publications named Breath of the Wild the number one overall game of the decade.

Not game of the year, game of the decade. That's just wrong, dude. I don't understand. The next 11 games have a combined 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Only 11 votes combined for Last of Us, Witcher 3 skyrim dark souls gta 5 this is just one of those games where it doesn't quite match what you guys are looking for from gaming but for a lot of people it hits all those perfect spots uh breath of the wild by far has the most number one votes which is pretty crazy i could i could i could see that simply because it has a very wide audience.

That's the key. We play it. Our kids play it. My parents play it. That's a 40-some-odd-year gap in age that the Souls games aren't capturing that. My parents aren't playing Dark Souls. My kids aren't playing Dark Souls. But my kids and my parents and I have played that game.

Oh, the funny stat you know what didn't uh win game of the year far cry six but they still want to pay charge 120 for the game of the year edition so that's when that's when i have a problem with game of the years i don't know what to trust like when you see a game it's like game of the year edition it's like well is that a made-up publication where is this coming from is it steam saying that is it voted by people is it just the editors of that publications everything Is it self-proclaimed? And that's where I think it gets a little bit rocky. It's kind of like car commercials. You have a Ford truck and they're saying, the most dependable truck on the road. And then Chevy's like, the most dependable,

best-selling truck on the road. And it's like, is it the best-selling one that's also dependable? How are you mixing these words to both say the same thing i don't trust it and i just let's be clear breath of the wild is a fantastic video game it's it's a great game i am not saying that breath of the wild is not good what i am saying is that breath of the wild is far from being the best game of the decade can i make you guys really mad right now? Yeah, go for it. I'm going to list a couple games that nobody voted game of the decade. Not a single

publication voted for Mass Effect 2, God of War, or Portal 2, but do you know what game did get a number one pick for the decade? I don't know. Fortnite? No, I don't. I actually saw that. I fortnight in a list and i scrolled as fast as i possibly could past that publication because i was like come on man

i have no idea who did that but we should track them down and i i'm not gonna believe a single thing they say i i'm never reading that publication again every gamer is different everybody likes different tastes paul you and i don't like the same games a lot of times. Michael doesn't like the same games. This is why I love the three of us having these different takes. And we are gamers. We're not experts and critics and stuff like that, which I also love. We don't pretend to be that in that regard. And I hope that never changes, to be honest. But it's one of these things where when you look at the decade as a whole, there's just so many incredible games that came out. And of course, if you ask 100 people, you're probably going to get a lot of different answers as far as, hey, what's the best game?

Because they're going to resonate different with different people. There's probably people out there that'll say, hey, Stardew Valley is is the number one the best game i've ever played it's one of the highest reviewed games ever like i think isn't it like top three on steam for like like positive review rates like what does that say yeah exactly you know what i mean in that regard so it's okay to have things be different but in in this expert opinion the critics opinion you know you get these scores and stuff like that. I always say take those with a grain of salt because I think that you have to stay in this very narrow lane when you are a critic because you're not allowed to get outside that lane. I just found an article and this is... I was looking up what publication listed Fortnite

as the best game of the decade. And I found an article. This goes to your point exactly, Josh. It says, quote, Fortnite was the most important video game of this decade, and it will be for the next decade, too. Fart noise. Who cares? Guess who this publication is.

Like GQ or Forbes or something like that. It's Business Insider. Yeah, exactly. It's not a video game company. And they're like, this is the best game of the decade. And it's like, okay, so it's important to find out

where this is coming from. So if you're seeing a game of the year, because we've seen that before, like 2018 probably has 17 different games of the year. But where are they coming from? Who's saying that? And is it voted on by fans or is it voted on by critics?

Or is it literally just the editors of this biased publication? I don't know that Business Insider should be in the business of talking about video games anyway. I'm curious about reading it though. There's one trend that we have to talk about that we've not yet mentioned because of how prevalent it is. I want to bring up a little game called Amnesia the Dark Descent. I freaking love that game, dude. What is that?

Oh, man. Go ahead, Josh. Scariest game I've ever played. One of the scariest. I'm not going to lie. If you said, what's the scariest game you have ever played? It is Amnesia the Dark Descent. And one of the really clever things about it is it played with a sanity meter, which

Josh and I have always talked about with Eternal Darkness back in GameCube days. Well, Amnesia the Dark Descent was a great game in and of itself. I don't want to take anything away from the game. But what I want to talk about as far as a trend goes is that Amnesia, for the most part, launched the Let's Play trend on YouTube, which eventually led to the rise of streaming on Twitch. This is where where pewdiepie built his entire career it was playing amnesia this little dorky young man from sweden playing amnesia screaming curse words in swedish when he would get scared playing this new horror game and you fast forward a couple years and you've got people making tens of millions of dollars every year just by streaming themselves playing games online.

And all of that started, for the most part, because of amnesia, which is crazy. I was going to say Twitch launched in 2012, I think, if I've got the date right. It sounds right. I'm not entirely sure. I'm pretty sure it launched in 2011 officially. So that goes to show you... When did Mixer launch? Yeah, I don't know.

We don't even talk about Mixer. But this is true because people realize, hey, I love gaming and people like watching entertainment at the same time. And Twitch was smart. And they said, hey, we can combine this because maybe you don't want to play this game. You don't have to buy it. You can watch somebody else play it.

And if they're entertaining, not only do you get to enjoy a video game that maybe you don't own or you can learn more about, but now you have this colorful personality that you get to watch at the same time. Twitch has changed the gaming landscape in a lot of ways. True story. I actually have never played a game

that we've ever done a deep dive on. I just watched twist streamers play it i'm not being serious at all yeah let's let's let's make sure everyone knows that is a joke right that is a joke uh paul's looking up my achievements right now yep okay he's done really well um no question though i haven't used the dark descent you said it was one of the scariest games you guys ever played i think it's a very scary game it's terrifying would you dive into it if it was in vr oh it would be a very fun i could not imagine the scariest game in vr i as long as i can teleport i can't do free motion but yeah i think that would be terrible oh my goodness yes right yeah i would do that i want to play this

game now i've got there's three of them too's two other, there's two other amnesia. The problem is, is it's like it's dated. The graphics are very dated. So if you can get past the graphics on it, this game knows how to mess with your fear levels, man. There is just, it's, it's really,

really well done. It's hard to describe, you know, but it's a, it's a phenomenal horror game. You can get past graphics with modding, probably. Probably. So before we switch topics here, do you guys ever watch any streamers play games?

I don't. I'm not really into that. The only time I really watch... There's a couple where I do enjoy... If I ever start watching Dr. Disrespect, there's something about that guy that just... There's a kinship to the trolly nature that he has that just resonates with me. I like his attitude and just the whole shtick that he's got going on. So it's funny because I will watch him. I'd rather play the video games than watch them. So where Twitch gets me is if you

have to watch a stream to get beta access to something, which I'm not sure I'm a fan of. But they suck me in. And I mean, I watched so many hours of Valorant because I was dying to play Valorant. Overwatch 2, they had the beta where you had to get... And so it's like, it works. And I get that it drums up excitement. So from a marketing standpoint, I get it. I'd rather play the games than watch them, to be honest. I actually almost always have a stream up while I'm at work. Because I've got three monitors. I've got three monitors.

And my dock for my work computer will not switch more than two over. So right now, I've got them all three running. But when I'm working, only two of them cancel. My personal computer, I've always got a Twitch streamer up. I used to watch it. I always watch the same ones for the most part. There's like two of them. But the one that I used to love, he doesn't stream anymore.

He stopped like a year ago. His name was Grizzly Ben, and he was absolutely my favorite in the world. But now I have a couple that i watch religiously and in fact i i do i amazon subscribe to one of them and then i actually do subscribe to another one with my my own money to support them because i hours of entertainment and most of my job is just staring at spreadsheets and stuff anyway so it's nice to have something going on yeah you know i went through little phases i I remember watching PewDiePie for a while. I remember listening to, and wow, this is also going to age things, Cracked.com.

Maybe they still have their podcast, but I remember listening to it, and they were saying, I watch PewDiePie, and I don't get it. I don't know why he's so popular. And I was like, oh, yeah, I've heard of that guy, and I watched some, and I kind of got sucked in for a while. I remember watching Shroud just for all the crazy snipe shots in pub g and cs go and all that stuff i will say i did go through a stretch where i watched a lot of overwatch streamers especially lucio players like i remember watching a lot of froggy and just seeing how some of those guys could use wall writing and i would try to emulate some of that in my playing but i would never just sit back and just watch it was usually for the purpose of

trying to get better myself but that being said i totally get it you just want to vicariously live through someone they're murking fools left and right you kind of feel like you're doing it yourself when you're watching and cheering for them um but yeah there's no denying the power of streamers right now, especially with gaming. There's a downside to that too, though. And not to be a downer, but it's like, you were talking about a 1% or a half percent success rate on something. And I feel like, I mean, let's be on a social media, like the rise of social media over the decade as well, right? And things like that. And so it's like, I think it gives people like a false sense of

what they need to do necessarily. You know, I mean, over the last decade, you've had this massive rise of content creators, right? That's kind of the label that we gave people. Including us. I mean, but we are, right? I mean, literally, we're doing it at the same time. But here's like, the only time it really bothers me is when I see somebody that is like, they judge their worth on like, how many people are watching them. You know what I mean? Like, I was a Twitch streamer for a little while, right? I tried going down that route and it ruined gaming for me. Like, gaming is a way

to relax for me and to kind of unplug and unwind and when you're streaming you have to constantly be on on on all the time which is why i stopped doing it but i was part of a lot of like streaming groups and stuff like that and there were people that were like i quit my full-time job to become a streamer and i'm like dude that's a terrible decision like what are you doing it's honestly it's so hard to do that too like because i did that as well i did it right after josh did i started streaming a stream for just a little bit with the uh that other channel that i had and it was just like man to grow your like i was growing okay but like you have to make sure you're consistent all the time you You got to constantly be on your game.

And it's like, we record here twice a week, three times sometimes if we have the bonus episode for the people that subscribe on Patreon, which everybody should do that. So we can quit our full-time jobs and become streamers. But it's a lot of work. And honestly, unless you're in the top 0.005% of streamers, you're not making a healthy income doing it. Right. It's not a lot of money at all. We can get off our soapbox.

Just don't judge your self-worth on your content creation. Well, they kind of have to, though, because... It's the dad in me coming out, but it's like, don't... Do it if it's fun. Right. Do it for the fun of it and nothing else. That's the problem with going full time though is like they kind of have to judge that's

why that's a terrible literal terrible ideas from it yeah it's way more fun as a hobby yes worrying about numbers to make it a right like if my wife wanted to do it she she doesn't work she's she's I don't know what you'd call her the domestic a bums partner yeah that's exactly what she is.

She's a bum that takes care of the kids and works really hard all the time. I'm clipping this. 59 minutes in. Don't clip it. Oh, my wife is going to kill me because of something you said just now. She's going to kill Paul. I did not say that. Listen, Samantha, I did not say that that was Paul.

Give him a mulligan. There's no proof. No proof I ever said it. If she wanted to do something like that, I'd beigan. There's no proof. No proof. I ever see if she wanted to do something like that. I'd be like all for it. Go ahead. Stream a couple hours a week, whatever you want to do, because she's like it's different from her and me. Like if I were to quit my job

and do it like there's no way I can support my family doing that. Now I just want to make our wives stream together. Let's make them play PUBG or something and I'll be so good. See what happens. It would be such a nightmare. Oh man, it'd be awful. It's about time to wrap this episode up.

Any other thoughts? Anything else we gotta mention before wrapping it? We should break down the 2020s. I'm gonna say it. I hinted at it earlier. I think this is the best decade in gaming. And I am a long-term gamer that loved some of the old Sierra games

and the rise of Nintendo and stuff like that, man. I'm looking back and maybe if I looked at another decade, I'd go, that's the best decade in gaming. But honestly, my personal top 10 list, there's like five games on my personal top 10 list if not more and then i just go like i think it's the best decade in gaming man i really do so 2020s will top it though but that's my question right that's exactly where i was going paul is it's like is it just gonna get better yeah i i the thing is is that that i not... Not to discount you,

but saying the 2010s is the best year in gaming is a very obtuse statement, I think, because we've got four decades to look at. And just as technology gets better and trends get better... Like right now, we're in... We like to play these types of games. So it's easy that this is going to be the best decade ever.

It's just easy. Because the games are better. Because there's more into them. There's more money involved. There's decade ever. It's just easy because the games are better because there's more into them. There's more money involved. There's more graphics. It's just more stuff. I think that's kind of an easy statement to make that it's the best decade ever because it is. And that's why the 2020s

and every decade from now on will be the best decade. I don't know. Maybe. Is it recency bias? I look at the days of Goldeneye and Street Fighter with my friends, you know what I mean? And stuff like that. And maybe at the time I'd go, this is the best decade ever. But when you look at an overall list of games, and that's what I mean, we don't have to rehash them, but I look at that and I just go, dude,

does it get any better than this? Yeah, it does have that heavy hit of Fortnite kind of carrying the whole thing. Yeah. The one thing I was also thinking about is just the death of arcades so if you include the whole arcade experience maybe you could make an argument for 80s or 90s that's yeah there was an there's an arcade pub in west seattle that i go to seattle like four or five times a year for work um well i haven haven't for a couple of years cause we're not traveling for COVID, but I, there's an arcade pub there that they just closed cause they can't, they can't stay open.

And I'm like, it killed me cause we, I would go there every time I visited and I'm like, it just breaks my heart that arcades are dead. Yeah. It's too bad. We were huge fans. I mean,

if you, if you were born in the 70s or 80s, like arcades were a huge part of growing up. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that wraps up this bonus round episode about the 2010s.

We do want to thank everyone out there for listening. We also want to give a thank you and a shout out to all of our Patreon supporters. If you want to join their ranks and get those bonus episodes, you can visit MultiplayerSquad.com we'd also very fun do it we'd also like to ask you to follow us on socials at multiplayer pod and then we will have our twig episode on thursday a quick take on saturday and then we will be back with a deep dive on gotham knights a week from today did i say yeah gotham

knights a week from today we will have that ready Yeah. Gotham Knights a week from today. We will have that ready for you all. And we'd love you to come join us on discord. It's completely free to join. There's a link in the episode description. You can just install the app on your phone or just use your desktop and you can come talk to other listeners of the show. Come hang out with me, Josh and Michael.

We'd love to hear your questions and chat with you all. And I think that's everything for now. So come join us again on Thursday for This Week in Gaming. And until then, happy gaming, all. One thing I learned in the 2010s is that pancakes are way better than waffles. I learned I'm old. See you, everybody. Bye.