Video Gamers Podcast - Among Us Update, Frost Giant RTS, and Operation Chicken Drumstick - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another episode of This Week in Gaming! Diving into the hottest (and nottest) gaming news each and every week. Keeping you up to date on the cool video game news and the hot gaming takes. Another grand episode is here and it's one you don't want to miss! Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe on YouTube Visit us on the web Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We're just a couple of dads who love to have lighthearted, family-friendly conversations about our favorite hobby, video games. Today is Thursday, which means we are due for a This Week in Gaming episode, where we are going to be discussing some news stories that have come out over the last week. I am your host, Paul, and with me, he's currently undercover working for the Chinese police tracking down gaming cheaters. Oops, I guess I just blew his cover. It's my co-host, Josh.

You owe me a chicken drumstick now, Paul. Okay, that's a great reference that no one's yet going to understand. Oh, Operation Chicken Drumstick is coming up. Oh, goodness. All right, stick with the episode. That'll make sense to you in a couple minutes here. Now, this week, Josh, has historically been my least favorite week for gaming news. Can you guess why?

April Fool's. Yes. So this week was April Fool's. And here's the thing. I enjoy a good April Fool's prank if it's obvious that it's a prank. When you're scouring news articles for a podcast that's going to be heard by other people, I had to look at each article with a proper level of cynicism just to make sure none of them were April Fool's jokes. So that was an extra level of work here this week.

Yeah, and so many, I mean, I like it. I'm a prankster. I'm all about pranks. I love them. So I enjoy me some April Fool's Day, for sure. But yeah yeah it's like a game companies like april fool's too so you know some of them are obvious like we were playing overwatch the other day and all the characters had googly eyes which is like okay or at least one googly eye you know or one we did start laughing when anna only had one googly eye. And then I was like, oh, man. The part that got me was Hanzo's dragons. Like, the enemy Hanzo shot him, and then they come flying through the wall. And then here come the twirling dragons with googly eyes.

I lost it on that one. Yeah, if it's going to be just a silly prank like that, I'm all for it. Valheim had a little fake update about how you could create a new character that was a deer king. And obviously that's fake. And I'm for it. What I don't like is when game developers make announcements on Twitter with no obvious sarcasm or picture. And they make announcements. And you're just never too sure if it's a joke or not. So all of that is just the caveat to say, I'm 78% sure everything we cover today is going to be true. Yes, I'm moderately confident that this will be a factual show about gaming news.

I sure hope so. All right, so I think the biggest story of the week is the release of Outriders. And we have lots of takes, lots of thoughts about the game, along with how the launch has been working so far. Although we are going to be doing a deep dive episode on Outriders, so we're just going to put a pin in that one for now. But we will go into details on that in our next deep dive episode. I just hope that Snoop Dogg is able to play right now, but we will go into details on that in our next Deep Dive episode. I just hope that Snoop Dogg is able to play right now, because he did not seem terribly happy when the servers were down. So let's at least get them back up for Snoop. Dude, Snoop Dogg is hilarious to watch get mad.

I love when that guy streams, because he's got, I mean, look at his gaming room. He's got the greatest setup, and then you just see him, and the servers are down, and he just cusses and then just walks away. And I'm like, I know how you feel, Snoop. I know how you feel. Yeah, he's had a couple videos expressing his discontent, but it seems like the servers are a little bit more operational at this point so i think snoop's doing a little bit better all right so the first actual story we're going to talk about this week uh is operation chicken drumstick i did not make that up so you did not make it up so this is a little story that has to do with the chinese police and the game publisher tencent

go ahead josh tell the people what happened which tencent is now i think one of the largest publishers in the world because they just had some other acquisition or something so if they're not the largest they are one of the largest so i believe they are number one now but i might be wrong yeah i think you might be right so apparently So apparently, we joke around a lot about hackers and a lot of that stuff and how there's a lot of – in the U.S., hacking is highly regulated, so it's a little bit harder for companies to release hacks in the U the US, right? So China has been cracking down on hacking because it's a lot more prevalent there just due to a lack of laws, I guess. But because esports are taking off in China, like gangbusters, they are starting to crack down on cheating and hacking and things like that. And so they set up and did a raid on one of the largest cheat manufacturers. What's crazy to me is that they charge a monthly fee for these services. Number one, I would never in a million years cheat in a video game.

That just seems crazy to me. But then to pay like 10 bucks a month like to be able to cheat is like that's bananas man yeah you're paying for a game but then you're paying to make the game no longer a challenge or to make it fun so i don't totally get the point but they even had packages up to $200 a month to get these cheats. Dude. And the cheats were predominantly

for Overwatch and COD Mobile. Which, who cheats in COD Mobile? It's a mobile shooter, man. Yeah, like why of all games to cheat? I don't know why that would be one of them. Yeah. Yeah, I'm totally with you. I don't understand the cheating. But in the article that you and I had both reviewed,

it did mention that according to a 2019 survey, one third of all gamers admit to using cheats in online games. That's crazy. I was shocked, man, because like we come across cheaters, we come across hackers. Like it's always been blatantly obvious. I am infamous for when we come across somebody that is really, really good to be like, Oh, man, that guy's hacking. He killed me like four times in a row. He's got to be a hacker. He turned on his aim bot.

His aim bot, yeah. And then it's like, so, yes, some people are just really good, but that's, you know, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it. But yeah, I mean, I would never guess that it's a third of people, but maybe it's the games that we're not playing that people are, you know, cheating in as well. I don't get it. What I love about this story was that number one they named it operation chicken drumstick where did this name come from i like i could see that being a u.s like like that's what's

hilarious to me is like you know this america right like we love our chicken drumsticks right like this is over in china like They named it Operation Chicken Drumstick. But then they said this raid that they did was like $76 million worth of stuff. Like, they seized all kinds of Lamborghinis and sports cars and all this mega money type stuff. And then it's like, wow, this is legitimately a problem. Yeah. Well, especially when there's big money with esports and tournaments and things like that. The article did also mention that they destroyed 17 cheats.

I don't really know what that means, because if it's all programming code and people already have it, I don't know if that's something you can really destroy but that was part of the hot of the the bust of the bust as well yeah destroying cheats i did laugh at the name because now that you have gone through arrested development the first thing i thought of was when they named their mission operation hot mother and that this name just totally reminded me of those terrible operation names. You always hear about these from the government.

Sometimes they're fine, like Operation Warp Speed. And then other times, it's just like, I don't know where they got this. Yeah, I think it's just to make people say funny names. Yeah, that's gotta be it. So, moral of the story is, don't cheat. Don't pay money for cheats. Or the chicken drumsticks are coming to get you.

Exactly. All right. The next story that we have here is in regards to a startup developer called Frost Giant Studios. And this is actually made by a couple of veterans who had worked for Blizzard. They have really high pedigree, having worked on Warcraft 3, having worked on Command & Conquer Generals 2. And they have developed Frost Giant Studios solely for the purpose of developing a brand new top-of-the-line RTS game. And they have already been able to raise $10 million. And they're working on this.

And Todd's not with us here today, but we know how much Todd loves the RTS genre. You, not so much. But if there was a new hot RTS, do you think that's a game you might be interested in? I would play it, yeah. I mean, one of the things that's part of their pedigree is StarCraft II also. And so StarCraft II is my favorite RTS game. Like, I played the heck out of StarCraft II. Now, am I good competitively in that game?

No, I am hot garbage when it comes to competitive RTS games. But I loved the StarCraft series. I mean, I played every single one of them from start to finish, which for me is saying something. So I can get into them. I just don't like doing them competitively. I remember our buddy Andy, one time we were looking for something to play. And he was like, I had mentioned StarCraft. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll play StarCraft.

That's fine. I used to play that too. And I'm like'm like okay so we play this game of starcraft i'm like i'm 10 minutes into this game and all of a sudden here comes this like horde of guys right and it just wipes me out within like the first 10 minutes of this game and then i'm like dude like what like how and he's like oh yeah man used to play this game a lot. And then I'm just like, I suck at these games. In the words of D.Va, gotta raise up your APM. Yeah, man. That's the thing.

So, I mean, yeah. So, I'm excited about what a pedigree, right? I mean, these guys that have Frost Giant Studios, these guys know how to do it. So, if a very good top-of- of the line RTS came out and it got really good reviews, I would definitely be into playing it. I don't, I mean, I'll try a multiplayer, but I'm not going to be good at it. Yeah. So here's a quote that I had pulled from one of the guys running the studio. We have a genre that's underserved. A lot of companies are moving out of the space, but there is a loyal that's underserved. A lot of companies are moving

out of the space, but there is a loyal and a passionate audience and a lot of gameplay potential that's untapped. So we see a really big opportunity to do something special in this space. I totally get it. I see what they're saying. Everyone's worked their way out of the RTS market, and you still have a lot of people that are playing Age of Empires, a lot of people that still play StarCraft. And so they're looking to jump in. But my question for you, Josh, is I feel like the RTS genre dying out is so strange because it's only because of RTS games that we have esports, right? They really pioneered all that. Fast forward a few years, esports are through the roof, and there is no sign of RTS anywhere anymore.

So do you think that an RTS game at this point would be able to crack the esports market? Honestly, no, because here's why. I think as esports, esports are not esports if you can't get people to watch them, right? That's the thing. And so if you look at Overwatch League, they made Overwatch easy to watch as a person that both knows a lot about Overwatch and people that don't know a lot about Overwatch, right? Because the casters are very good at explaining things, but it's very easy to kind of follow along with the characters.

With RTS, there's so much going on on the screen at once that if you are not a huge fan of that RTS game, it just looks like a bunch of gibberish on the screen. Right, and jumping around a lot around the map. Yeah, these guys are clicking and dragging, and it's like you talk about, right? Like these actions per minute thing, Right. And jumping around a lot around the map. unless you are a huge fan of that game. I don't like MOBAs, right? It's one of those things like League of Legends. I've tried it. I've tried Dota 2. I'm not a fan of MOBAs. And I have watched some of the League of Legends championships and stuff. And while I understand what's going on in those

games, it's kind of that same process where there comes a point where there's just a ton of particle effects on the screen. There's a bunch of stuff flying around, and it's kind of hard to keep track of what's going on. And I think that's even more exacerbated with RTS games. Yeah, I think you're definitely right. I feel like Overwatch is, in a lot of ways, a best-case scenario for esports because you can cover it exactly like you do a game of basketball. You have the commentators and the color commentators and they can narrate the action, but also provide some context and talk about what they've seen earlier in the match and talk about strategy. It's a little harder to do that with RTS, especially because a lot of the game is just building up your base and just buying units.

You're kind of just sitting around and waiting for certain parts. Now, obviously, they're always busy clicking and moving things around, but it's such a funny thing that it really did build the esports industry, and there is not a whiff of it anywhere. It's just rather ironic. All right, so we do have some more news, or I guess probably the better word is some speculation in the world of VR. You know, I feel like we don't talk about VR a whole lot. I know we've had some people mention maybe to try to work it in here a little bit more often. You and I both have our Oculus Quest 2s, and maybe we just need to tap into VR a little bit more. But this last week was the official one-year anniversary of Half-Life Alyx. And Steam Spy, which runs estimates of

how many copies games have sold, they bumped up Half-Life Alyx to estimate now that they have sold between two and five million copies. That's pretty good. Which is enormous for a VR game, especially for one as full price as Half-Life is. 60 bucks. Yeah, full 60. And there were some leaks that include some programming code, and it has monikers like HLVR, which sounds an awful lot like Half-Life VR. So it points to the possibility of a sequel. And I assume if a sequel to Half-Life Alyx comes out, that's one that you would be interested

in. Oh, 100%, man. Here's the thing. I love VR. I had the original Oculus Rift when it came out. You know, I love the technology. It's mind-blowing. It's super fun to introduce people to VR that have never tried it. So I'm a big fan of it. The issue with VR is for the most part, a lot of the games are somewhat gimmicky. So Half-Life Alex comes out and they show, look, we can do it. We can make a AAA title that is engrossing,

has great graphics, has really good gameplay. And to me, Alex is the first true blockbuster VR game, you know? Um, and it's a shame that it's taken this long to get there, but somebody did it finally. And so now I think that this sets the tone for people that want to develop like the actual like triple A type VR games. Now there's certainly a place for just your fun VR games and your demo type to let your friends try that

haven't tried it. But Valve did it, and now that kind of sets the bar. And it also, I think, sets kind of the formula as well. People love Half-Life, man. I'll take Half-Life stuff all day. To me, Half-Life, man. I'll take Half-Life stuff all day. To me, Half-Life Alyx is Half-Life 3. I mean, I get that it's a prequel and all

that stuff, but it's like, this is the game that fans of Half-Life were asking for, looking for. It just came on a platform that maybe everybody doesn't have. Exactly. Yeah, I think it is still, for my money, the best VR game that has been made. I think it is the best example of using VR to make a game more immersive and just making it better. There is nothing at all gimmicky in Half-Life Alyx.

I love using the gravity gloves. You get to point it at like a magazine of ammo on the ground. You flick your wrist. It flies towards you. You can catch it. I love the idea of grabbing the clips off my back, physically sticking them in the gun. You know, all of that is just so immersive and great. And I remember that there's one point in that game where there's, I don't even totally remember the context, but there's like a giant train that comes out of nowhere and crashes into a wall next to you.

And the train passes like within inches of you. And that to me was like one of those very rare moments that you just realize like your jaws just open and on the ground. And it's like, Oh, I'm going to remember this moment. Like this is like a big game you know historical moment and i just can't wait to see how this influences other vr games moving forward certainly half-life alex 2 would bring that so i i can't wait to see what else they might do with that format yeah i they got it right so

that's kind of my point is that they figured it out. Go with that. Tweak it, do what you want, make it better, which is going to be tough because, I mean, Alex is a masterpiece, honestly. But take the things that worked, enhance those some, and then just roll with it because what's going to happen is you're going to see... I mean, think about it. If that game sold, let's just take the median, right? 3 million copies at 60 bucks a piece. That's $180 million, dude. I don't know what the development cost was for it, but I find it hard to believe that it was 180 million. So that game has to be a rousing success as far as a developer goes. And that's what we want. Honestly, I want to see VR become a lot more mainstream and a lot more developers start to focus on stuff for it. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with Beat Saber or Superhot, and those games are great.

But it's just very much like, here's the one gimmick, and it doesn't really provide much else. Half-Life provided the engaging story. I remember in the beginning wondering if the game was going to be too slow, but I think it's because they were easing a lot of first-time VR users into the action, where all of a sudden you're in these full-blown firefights and you have to take cover. And I can't wait to see what the next iteration is in the series. All right. And then lastly for this week, we have two games that we have previously covered on the show that received pretty big updates both no man's sky and among us had huge patches

uh which one do you want to start with do you have a preference um let's do no man's sky all right no man's sky all right take it away because you've always been like in the no man's sky world since the very beginning. I was very late to the show. Well, lucky you, buddy. Lucky me. I did not have any of the disappointment early on like you did. Yeah, I went through the heartache of the hype and then seeing where the game is now. So yes, as they're doing, man, I've said it before. Kudos to these guys. You know, what is it? Hello Games?

What's what's Hello Games? Hello. Yeah. OK, so honestly, part of me at this point, they've done so well over the years with expanding No Man's Sky. Like part of me is just like I want to like write them and be like, guys, it's OK. It's OK. It's OK. Like you can relax. You can go like take a break, man. I want to write them and be like, guys, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay now.

You can relax. You can go take a break, man. Go develop another game. No Man's Sky is a masterpiece now. You did it. You don't owe people anything anymore. You've worked off the debt. Yes. It's all good.

Don't worry about it. But hey, they just keep going, man. They just keep going. And so another update, it's the Expeditions update. So what they're doing is, and we kind of saw this, we covered No Man's Sky on an episode. And as a multiplayer experience, it leaves a little bit to be desired in the sense that we felt more so that we were people that were playing the same game, but we were not people that were cooperatively working together for the same goal. We were playing side by side in the sandbox,

but not playing together. Right, exactly. And so what this Expeditions update does is I think tries to remedy that, where you kind of log in as your group of friends, and that will put you together on a starting point. And then it will give you these milestones. It'll say, hey, you need to, as a group, accomplish X. And then you guys go and do that and you accomplish that. And it'll say, okay, great. Congratulations. Here's a reward. Now go and then it's so it's kind of directing you as a group and giving you that guidance to work as a team and you know that that actual multiplayer aspect which i think is phenomenal i'd be very curious to try it out at some point just to see how well

it actually works i would too when i saw the trailer man when they get into the ship and start flying i was like dang it now i want to play no man's sky again and we don't have any time we're playing outriders we're trying to play it takes two for the following deep dive after that like we've got all these games lined up and i would love nothing more than to revisit no man's sky i it's still on the back burner for now but but just seeing, hopping in that ship and leaving the atmosphere, that was such a fun experience. I remember us joking when we covered it on the show,

give this another year or two and it might be number one because it just keeps getting better and better. It really does. You gotta hand it to them. They've really handled it well. Yeah. All right, and then finally we have Among Us. So Among Us came with a pretty big update. They added the airship map, which is the largest

map that they have. I have not played it yet, but based on what I read, I did hear that it is an incredibly fun map to play for a variety of reasons, but a lot of people did feel like it might be better suited when they start having 15 person lobbies, which are supposed to be coming down the road. Yep. That's exactly right. I think this is in preparation for them kind of doing some further updates on the game too.

I have not played it either. I'll be honest. I haven't played among us in months, man. Um, but part of that is, is because I think it needed an update, you know? And so I think this is a good step in that direction. So it's a new map. It's a really big map and it's

got some interesting components to it. Like there's like a rift in the middle of the map where you have to take like a little platform from one side of the ship to the other. So it's creating these kind of like choke points and stuff like that, which I think is really neat. But to me, one of the things that sounded really nice was that there's new crew missions. Because I can't tell you how many times I was getting tired of flushing the leaves out the chute thing, you know what I mean? Or connecting the wires or something like that. And I get that these need- Filling the gasoline jug. Right. I get that these need to be simple tasks,

but apparently there's a whole bunch of brand new tasks on this, which even though I know they're super simple, to me that adds a lot because they're almost like tiny little mini games, which I like that aspect of it, but you gotta have a lot of them to keep it interesting. But yeah, it's the one complaint that I was reading on it is that the ship is just

too big right now. And so because of that, you can actually go a long time because I guess you can actually spawn in one of three locations now. It's not like everybody spawns in the cafeteria and then just goes different directions. So it's like now you can actually spawn in different areas of the ship, but that means you might not actually see a crewmate for a little while. Exactly, yeah. Which is interesting, but I do like the fact that it spreads everyone out from the beginning. Because that was a big issue that we had when we played with groups, is that no one ever wanted to be alone. And so everyone would go in these giant mobs, and at least now the idea of it being a little bit more spread, I think that does make sense. I also really love the fact that they have made the rooms a little

bit easier to distinguish. Because when we played, even though we had been playing for several weeks, there were still times when it was, oh, I forget the name of the room. It's the one where you swipe the card. And it's like, well, I don't remember exactly which room, but I was the one on the top right. And so in this one, they actually have like tile flooring in the bathroom and they have where these rooms are much easier to distinguish. And I think that'll be a little bit easier for communication. I think that'll just apply a little bit more context to the overall map instead of just trying to remember these really vague locations. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of tweaks. They say there's a graphical update coming,

which, you know, that would be really neat too. You know, it's a fun game. It would be neat to have the graphics be not necessarily like a lot nicer, but maybe just better color palettes and, you know, a little bit more, you know, cartoony or vibrant or things like that as well. So I know they are really working on it. They canceled Among Us 2 so that they could focus on Among Us. The only thing that's weird to me is this game seems insanely simple at its core, right?

Uh-huh. I get the impression- Pretty simple. This is a game that, and I don't mean this in any sort of derogatory fashion, but, like, this is a game that, like, college, like, freshmen in computer science could develop. Do you know what I mean? Like, and again, I don't mean that in a bad way, but I just mean it's simple in its function and its form, right? And this game exploded, man. I mean, these people have to just be swimming like Scrooge McDuck in their piles of cash.

And it's like, it's been how long now before we've gotten any kind of update? You know what I mean? And it's like, they're telling this map, but it's like, dude, my 13-year-old daughter could draw this map on the iPad. Yeah. You know? So it's like- I hear you.

Why is it taking so long? It does feel a little drawn out. Now, I don't know how many people work for their studio. For all I know, it's like Valheim, where it's just this group of five people. And obviously, there's only so much you can do. Maybe it's a situation like that. I don't know. But if we don't invite our friend Curtis, do you think we could bring this back into our gaming regiment? I would be fine with that, to be honest. But Curtis, if you're listening, you brought this on yourself, number one. Not a good sport.

But no, Curtis is the guy that will sabotage everything just to watch the world burn. Curtis, I have known since fourth grade. He's one of my oldest friends. Love him to death. But he is the kind of guy that if he gets killed, he just gets mad and goes, well, this is dumb. Josh and Paul are the killers. Yes, I know. Okay, well, I guess that spoils that round. But anyway, I think it would be fun to dive back in at some point. We had a good group going there for a while for Among Us. It might be time to bring it back into the fold. I would like, honestly, with some of these updates,

I'd be very curious to see, you know, if it makes the game any better. Yeah. All right. Well, that's all that we have for this week in gaming. Thanks for listening to today's episode. We will be back with a full hour episode on Monday, where we will be doing a bonus round

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who love the show who love gaming they're looking to talk about gaming and find groups for stuff so come check us out there we'd love to have you on board and then that's it for this week we'll see you guys on Monday. See you guys! Paul, I ate so much food before the show. A lot of food today on Easter? I didn't think I was going to make it. On our side, there was a revolt against ham

by my wife's father and he requested a rib roast so we had a rib roast for easter who doesn't like ham i know right it was bananas oh my goodness all right well that's weird well happy easter everyone