Video Gamers Podcast - [Force a Friend] Two Weeks Notice - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is kicking off 2024 with another Hijack a Host Episode. Video games hosts Ryan, Paul and Josh are being Hijacked and one of them is going to be forced to play a game chosen by Legendary supporter YayaArizona. This video game has been a hot topic for the show and long requested by listeners! Which host will it be and what’s the game of choice? There’s only one way to find out! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiitaclyzm, YayaArizona Morgau and Disratory Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's time to talk about what game is going to be our first deep dive of 2024. This is a very special Hijack-A-Host pre-dive. After what was maybe the best year of gaming ever in 2023, I'm very curious, maybe even a little nervous to find out what we're going to first cover this year. I am your host, Paul. I am joined as always by my two brothers in gaming. First up, he's the man with the power. He is the keeper of gaming secrets today. He's going to reveal in a bit which one of us is going to play a game and what it is. It's Josh. I like having power. I like having secrets. I'm kind of digging this, guys. Everybody's coming to you.

And I will say this. The other part of that is that when somebody goes legendary, which is how you can hijack a host by supporting us over at MultiplayerSquad.com, but when they go legendary and then I get a DM from that person, I instantly know that I am not the one that is getting chosen to play the game. So then there's that little bit of like, ha ha, but then it's like, oh wait, but then why didn't they pick me? Yeah. Well, you have just become, you've become the official master of whisperers from Game of Thrones. That's just your role now for the pod. Yeah. All right.

And then joining Josh and me, he was last chosen by Kidaclysm for the last deep dive, which was Endless Dungeon. Ryan, how are you doing? How are you holding up? I gotta say, I'm pretty disappointed in that intro. I had nothing. How you doing, bud? How you doing there?

And Ryan. And it's Ryan. And it's Ryan. Let's start this year off good. Hey, how you doing, bud? No, no, no. Have you touched Endless Dungeons since the deep dive? I actually have played it a couple times more. It was a good game.

So sometimes being forced to play games that you would otherwise not play is a good thing. Absolutely. All right. games that you would otherwise not play is a good thing absolutely all right so for our listeners out here that are not familiar with our format we have a way of doing deep dives where we cover one game over a full hour and the way that we choose these games is through our force a friend format basically we take turns we pick one of the other hosts and we pick a game and they are forced to play that game we also have through our, the legendary tier where if someone signs up, they get to hijack a host where they get to step in, they pick a game, they pick a host to play that game, and then we play it, and then we come back and record that

deep dive. So today is one of those very special hijack a host episodes because we had someone on Patreon go legendary. Like Josh mentioned, that's over at MultiplayerSquad.com. And whenever we do these kinds of episodes, these are always a little bit interesting because whether it's force a friend or hijack a host, we don't really know what's coming. Like, how do you guys feel when we record these? Do you feel excited, anxious? What's going on?

For me, it's like the going up the hill on a roller coaster. Like, there's that nervous excitement. Click, click, click, click. Yeah, but, you know, it's like you know you're, you think you're about to have a really good time, but there's also that part of you that goes like, what if it goes terribly wrong? And so, like, these Forre of friends are kind of like that,

where I don't know what game I'm going to wind up playing. Is it going to be me? And then if it is me, am I going to like this game? Am I going to hate this game? Now, I will say so far, we have done a few force of friends where we have picked games for each other. And I feel like that's paid off pretty darn well. I mean, nobody has disliked a game that they've been forced to play yet. And then we had this incredible run and we're still having this run of support for the podcast and people signing up and then hijacking us to where the decision is not in our hands at all at that point. And so I know for me, I get a little nervous. There is a small amount of dread that goes, well, what if I hate this game? Number one, is the listener going to be disappointed

that I hated this game? But then number two, sometimes those opinions make for some of the best episodes at the same time. So yeah, it's a little bit of both for me. Yeah, it's good. You get that kind of mishmash, like you were saying. You have the anticipation. You're ready for what may come, what may not come. You're not sure if you're going to be picked or you're not.

And then you don't have any idea what the game's going to be you may like it you may you may not like the game but from what we've seen so far it's i mean personally for me it's i've played a few games that i would have never touched that i thoroughly enjoyed so it's it's been really cool so far yeah and even if you get picked for a bad game, then at least you're usually the next one up to pick the game. So between the three of us, it's still technically my turn from The Witness. One of these days.

Which, by the way, one of these days, I had to go back and look. Guys, that episode released on October 16th. Oh, wow. So we're a whole quarter past that. Hey, let's keep it up guys i was gonna say because the listener support has been incredible which is why we do this we we love just having people tell us they love the show like honestly you know and supporting the show is why we still

do it absolutely so today's patreon supporter i i guess I'll just call them the Patreon supporter of the hour. It is none other than Yaya Arizona, who has been a very long-term supporter of our show, just recently went legendary. Many of our listeners probably recognize that name. We've brought her up a couple of times she may or may not be my mom so thank you very much yaya arizona for not just supporting the episode in the podcast but uh also raising me my entire life so thank you uh i will say this dude number one yaya is a gamer uh she plays and streams a lot of fortnite um which is i guess her favorite game i don't know that she branches out a whole lot um but number one is pokemon go in there yeah is a gamer so respect there but number two is just awesome i love the fact that every single person in my family calls her yaya including myself which is where her name cut like her username comes from as well um but i mean just

an awesome person to be around a lot of fun to be around and as a gamer at heart as well which is really cool so appreciate the support yeah yeah so side note do you know why she goes by yaya have we ever talked about this like uh it's uh it's not like german i thought yaya is like a certain uh language is uh referral to like a grandmother or something, right? Oh, it sure is. Yeah. Polish? It's Greek for grandma.

Oh, okay. Do you know what percentage Greek I am? Two. 1%. Absolutely 0% Greek. Okay. So this, just a little bit of Paul family history here. When my wife and I fostered and adopted our two oldest girls,

they were 13 and 10 when they got placed with us. And this was back in 2008. When they came in, since I was the oldest sibling, my parents immediately became grandparents of teenagers. And they didn't really know what they wanted the kids to call them so my mom just gave a printed list to our oldest and said just pick whatever name you want for me and she thought yaya sounded cool so even though we are not greek we are very irish very polish i am probably the palest person either of you two know there is zero greek blood at all but

uh yes that is the famed yaya i didn't know this i didn't know this either this is blowing my mind yeah there you go so ryan ryan do you think there's any universe here where my mom chose a game for you or are we both just figuring this one's picked for all i know is when i when josh said there was a game picked but it was yaya i knew i was safe i knew i was good to go and i probably know what the game is out of a guess but we'll see we'll wait for uh the reveal the big reveal well i will since this is not a surprise paul your mom did pick you yes i knew it so you are the person that has been chosen to play the game you just don't know what the game is yet that's true i would pretty much put everything i

own on it being fortnite clash royale or pokemon go pokemon go i think we would really struggle to record a one hour deep dive so i'm guessing this is probably fortnight which we have famously never covered on this show which did start almost four years ago now our oldest episodes are uh are not available because they're not very good but but we've been doing the show a long time and we have never done a deep dive of fortnight so i'm definitely leaning toward that probably being the pick. There's a reason. There's a reason. All right, well, let me ask you this, Paul.

Just for the sake of building up suspense a little bit. Sure. If it was Fortnite, how would you feel about that? I would still feel very grateful, but it would be a little bit of a backhanded gratefulness because i have played fortnight i think the game is perfectly fine for what it is amongst battle royales i am far more inclined to play apex pub g something else i have not touched fortnight in a long time i will say that uh i wouldn't i wouldn't be mad about the pick and i think a lot of our listeners would be tuning

into here and i think roughly two-thirds of them would hope we would really trash it hard and i think the other third probably have very fond memories of playing it yeah my daughter is literally playing fortnight right now with her friends um and so that's about right you know but you know you bring up a good point there are a couple major major games on this podcast that we have never covered and that people have long requested that we cover arc was one of them but we did cover arc um at that point minecraft famously we have never done a deep dive on the other one is minecraft dungeons yeah but not yes exactly and then the other one most requested you know is fortnight uh and we've never covered it i think we've always

just said like what is there like what can we cover at this point? Everybody knows what those games are. All right, Paul, what if I told you it's not Fortnite? I would be absolutely shocked. What if I told you that your mom wanted you to play a game that everybody has been raving about this year, but you have not played yet? This is going to be so ironic if this is Baldur's Gate 3, because I'm going to let you finish first. Did you just pick up Baldur's Gate 3?

Josh, I am in Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3. What? I was saving this for this. Okay, our listeners are going to hear this out of order. We may or may not be recording this before we release our end of year gaming awards. I have been secretly playing Baldur's Gate three and was going to share all my thoughts on that episode. You haven't told my mom really picked Baldur's Gate three.

No, she picked fortnight. I was like, let's go back to this thing for a split second i was like let's just let's roll it out right now let's talk about it you got yankee i'm so tired of these fools let's talk about it you guys back you got me okay okay yeah you're playing fortnight but now i'm really you've secretly been playing balder's gay three yeah i'm in act three right now i you're further than me i was looking at our achievements and comparing them and it was kind of making me laugh just seeing the different how many do i have zero in balder's gate zero okay we can't go down this

road but now i am dying to hear what you think about this game paul but well you won't have to wait long you're gonna hear it for our uh our end of year awards because it's definitely gonna pop up yes all right paul you are playing fortnight courtesy of your mom you knew this was coming despite my efforts to try to dodge it but my mom does listen to the podcast so i thought you know you have hassled me a bit on not playing balder's gate 3 i thought maybe maybe there a chance, or maybe she could have asked you, hey, I'm not too sure what to pick, what would be a funny pick for Paul. And you might say, yeah, my idiot friend won't play Baldur's Gate 3, even though he loves DOS 2 and he loves RPGs.

So is it extra painful now? Because otherwise you would have been like, I'm almost done this game already. Yeah, I did have a little glimmer of hope that it would be thanks for the money mom what are we doing yeah oh you're right laughing too you're just as guilty ryan all right yeah fortnight okay all right it's been a minute all right but we'll have to get back into it am am i going to be venturing into this world alone or by any chance are either of you going to join me as much as i despise the world of fortnite i will absolutely play with you i have it installed literally the second paul because wait is it installed under uh under my? No, no, it was installed under mine.

But yeah, I'm ready to play with you. And I will say this. Let's play tonight. I will say this. The introduction of no build mode has gotten me interested in Fortnite again. Now, I think for the sake of the deep dive, we'll play some both of them so you can kind of compare.

But you got me as your Battle Royale buddy, Paul. Provided you send an invite and say, hey guys, do you want to play with me? Not like you do with PUBG. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. By the way, I haven't touched PUBG in a while. So Josh, you and I played Fortnite back in the day because we loved PUBG so much.

This was back in the early days, the rubber banding, the server issues galore, all that jazz. We were so starving for a Battle Royale. When Fortnite came out, we all jumped in it. How many games do you think we legit played? Five. I was going to say four or five is my guess. And it did not click with us.

I have logged in maybe three or four times since to just play with my kids when they were younger. They haven't really been crazy about Fortnite so much the last couple years. But I'm glad to hear that I won't be venturing into this alone. I have not played Battle Royale in a while. And I've had the itch. And we dabbled in PUBG. But, you know, PUBG's always rubbed me a little weird at the same time so i'm i'm with you paul i'm i'm down this is really gonna sting when

we start losing to eight-year-olds that just have quicker reflexes i played with my daughter's friends the other day bro some little kid with a little screechy voice i played one match with my daughter's friends the other day and one of them was so sweaty and literally wiped two squads by himself. Yeah. And then we won the match because I watched him build a skyscraper in like two seconds and then just pop off. It was ridiculous. It's going to be a little miserable for us all.

This sounds horrible. Sounds about right. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and take a short break and we'll be right back get groceries delivered across the gta from real canadian superstore with pc express shop online for super prices and super savings try it today and get up to 75 in pc optimum points visit superstore.ca to get started all right so continuing our conversation here about Fortnite, obviously, we're not going into this game blind. We're all very aware of Fortnite. It would be a crime

if we did not know much about it. Josh, I think you have a couple of fun facts to share with us. I do. I try to look up a couple of things that maybe even long-term fans of Fortnite might not know about the game um so just a couple i don't want to you know like i said this game's been out for a while but um fortnight's so popular that epic games who is the game developer for fortnight is reported to make three billion dollars a year on fortnight now that is an estimate by various companies and stuff. It is confirmed that they have made at least $1.8 billion from Fortnite in a year before, and they think the revenue has gone up since then. pretty well fortnight is also free to play so they're doing very well with all of the side monetization that they've got going on there um the highest peak daily player count for fortnight so the peak players over the course of a day was 44.7 million people that That's insane. That's more than the entire population of Canada or Australia.

And actually, I think it's Canada and Australia combined because they combine to be like right at like 42 million or something like that. So, yeah, that's like not that far off from like i mean that's not as high as like super bowl numbers but that's still insane talking about over 40 million people playing in one day the peak concurrent player count was 5.8 million people playing fortnight at the same time i would have guessed 2 million and that's two and a half times already an outrageously high number yeah so all of that to say that there are a ton of people that play fortnight and love fortnight and maybe we're gonna find out why you know i mean we're i can guarantee you this we're gonna play a lot more than five matches so you know we're gonna do or you know I say this cause I'm going to not abandon Paul on this one.

I can't promise. I'm going to play every game with you, Paul, but you know, he wouldn't invite us anyway. And then like three games in, I just, I three games in,

I'm just going to be like, I'm out, Paul. Yeah. Yeah. I won't be, I won't be shocked. At least,

you know, I'll be there. Okay. I'll take it. Ryan. Ryan's always down for multiplayer. Do you guys and maybe you were going to mention this josh but do you guys remember when fortnight was supposed to be primarily a single player game zombies oh i remember getting really excited about that this fortnight saved the world yeah yeah but and then it just

went by and they went hey this whole battle royale thing's working out pretty good like oh this will make us some money all right two more two more quick facts here the highest prize in a tournament for fortnite was three million dollars won in 2019 by a 16 year old kyle gearsdorf actually remember seeing the video on that because dude won three million dollars by playing fortnight in a tournament i don't even know what i would have done with like ten thousand dollars when i was 16 years old let alone three million yeah i don't know and then um the fortnight champion series which is organized by epic games has a 10 million dollar prize pool so So Fortnite is still very, very big business. I know that we've talked about it a lot

and we've never played it or covered it on the show, but it's not like Fortnite is going away anytime soon either. No, not at all. Yeah, and actually, so people that, you know, you might say, oh, well, the game's been out a long time. There's better Battle Royales out there. When they released the OG map like two weeks ago, that is when they hit their peak concurrent player count. So, I mean, it just goes to show you that this game has an insane amount of longevity.

There's got to be something there, right, boys? How many dances do I have to learn and perform? Oh, well, that is the other part of this, Paul, because we're going to get some video of you doing the Fortnite dances. That's what you think. That's going to be the ultra legendary tier. That's going to be like the $10,000 tier

to get something like that. I did mention maybe there's something there for this game. Maybe we'll find out that we actually really enjoy Fortnite. Who knows, right? That's the beauty of these things. But Paul, for Fortnite to be a success for you, when we come back to it, what would it have to do? What would need to happen for you to go, you know what? I underestimated this game. This game's a lot more fun than I thought. So I am going into this

with pretty much the world's lowest expectations. It is almost impossible for this game to not impress me. Okay. So for it to be successful, it just has to be relatively playable. And for me to not absolutely hate every minute of playing. If it's anything higher than that, I will consider it a success. I do not believe that I am going to love it, but I think there is a chance that I will look on it more fondly after being forced back into it. And I will give it the old college try. I will not play four matches and pretend like I can talk about it.

I'll put in a legit minimum 15 hours, probably more, you know, probably more in the 2025 hour range. That way I feel like I truly understand this game. Yeah. I'll be watching. I'll be,

I'll be there for, I'll be there for some of those victories, Paul. I certainly, I mean, we joke around around but i'll tell you what if because i really want to play no build mode because i hate the building and i i can tell you that right now i yes i played a match or two with my kids the other day like i said dude built a skyscraper won us the whole match i hate it i hate it but if we can play this like a normal battle royale without the building, I think there's a good chance that we might like it more than we think. We are not shabby at battle royales. I know we're old, but we have a lot of gaming experience and

none of us are slouches at video games. Now, I'm not going to say we're great because I don't want to go there, but I think that there is a good chance that we're going to have a good bit of success as well. No, I agree. I think we'll do well. I think that we will learn these dances and do them. Maybe choreographed, all three of us, do them all together. Maybe make a little TikTok there and put on our gta6 you know tiktok there but um i'm excited i think that as much as i trash on this game you know how i am

with multiplayer you know how i am with battle royales you know how i am with i don't know if you're good at shooters ryan and i don't mean i don't mean that in a bad like whoa this is what i'm saying we have not played hold on a lot of counter strike that you're a call of duty guy and i know that you're a battle you're that you're a battlefield guy we have not played a competitive shooter together. So I have no idea what to expect from Ryan. Ryan's more of a Sims guy. Stardew Valley.

Yeah. It's cracked. It's cracked in half. Ryan, sorry, Ryan. I didn't mean it the way it sounded. You know what?

All we're playing now is the build mode. That's all we're doing. You better have at least a 0.9 KD ratio, Ryan. That's all. No, I've already, I've watched the videos. All you have to do is you just whip your mouse around over and over and over and over and you just build up a tower.

Yep. So that's all it is. That's all Fortnite is. I am looking forward to seeing what kinds of crazy characters you can play. I don't know if you have access to like old seasons i don't even remember how you unlock characters but i did do a quick google search of like weirdest collabs with fortnight i forgot that you could play as bad boys for life when the movie came out they added like will smith and martin lawrence into the game radiohead they put

radiohead in fortnight this is this is insane yeah some of the collabs along the way yeah i know for a while breaking bad couldn't couldn't you be like i think you could be jesse and walt yeah yeah yeah i i'll be honest i don't know who's in there now i know like for a while they were doing like the star wars darth vader arc and then you had spider-man zipping around you had goku from dragon ball. That was Kamehameha and everybody. Like, yeah, it's gone through a lot. Okay, Paul. So I kind of know you're already leaning this way,

but we talked about what it would have to do to be a success for you. For it to fail, what needs to happen? To fail, I would say we get our butts kicked by little kids consistently. I will hate that and abandon you yep we hate every minute of playing um i think that's i think that's like worst case scenario okay so just if we have kds getting wrecked all the time yeah yeah if we played like 10 matches

and my kd was like 0.4 i i think i would just quit the pod sorry mom i'm done yeah refunds issued i'm out i'll see if i can find some uh some little kid drops after we do this episode oh no i i don't even know what that means just drop some little kids talking in movies yeah talk no talking crap on the on the uh oh like in fortnight yeah okay i like it i i don't know that i can handle it's like when that one guy told josh that he really admired that he was still pretty good at games despite being 45 years old dude well you know he's getting up there all right so in uh in moving on here we have just a little bit left here for the show we always like to predict where we think the game is going to land

on our leaderboard so if our listeners don't know you can go to videogamerspod.com we've got a bunch of content on the website my favorite thing is that we have different leaderboards anytime we do a deep dive we always individually place it different leaderboards. Anytime we do a deep dive, we always individually place it against every other game we have done a deep dive of. So we've got over a hundred games here with me and Josh, a little bit shorter since Ryan joined the show a little bit later. As I'm looking at my leaderboard, so PUBG initially was much higher on the leaderboard. It got dropped over time due to all the cheaters. I have PUBG at 93 out of 103, which is like really low. I mean, that's almost all the way at the bottom.

You'd move that up now, wouldn't you? Yeah, for sure. I'd move it up a tad. The problem with PUBG right now is there's just too many bots. They're filling matches too fast. Yeah. So you'll only queue for eight seconds. And I'm like, they're filling matches too fast. Yeah. Um, there it's so, so you'll only queue for eight seconds and I'm like,

I'll queue for three minutes. Let me, let me play with a full, you know, map. I think this is going to fall somewhere in this range. I think it's going to be like late eighties or lower. This means it's going to go up against something like for spoken,

uh, human fall flat, the forest hood outlaws and Legends. I think it's going to be in that territory. I'm just going to guess because I've been looking at my leaderboard. I think for me, it's going to be, I'm just going to guess 71. Okay. Which for me is Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.

Above it is Borderlands 3 and below it it is A Way Out and Deathloop. Deathloop. Game of the Year nominee. I think I'm going to like Fortnite more than I want to admit, and so I think it's going to rank in the 70s for me. That's honestly my biggest fear because of how much I hate that game. I'm going to like it,

but I think the biggest reason is because if I, as it's been said, like if I play a multiplayer game with you guys, that's what's going to be the fun part to me. I can play any game. I can play rock, paper, scissors with you guys online, and I'd be like, that was the best game ever of all time. So I don't know. I think it'll be up there in the consensus board but um

but i think i think we're still gonna have a blast either way yep well the day has finally come this is this is four years in the running josh of people saying when are you gonna cover fortnight because over the last four years it's pretty much always been like a top three most popular game it's never been unseated. Yeah, easily. So, but yeah,

well, I mean, we'll break it all down. I mean, I, we probably won't spend as much time explaining game mechanics to people since, you know,

everybody kind of already knows about Fortnite, but we'll, we'll break down, you know, what we think of the game, the various aspects, you know, especially get Paul's,

you know, take on it. Obviously we'll play it with Paul, but yeah, I'm, I'm very curious to Obviously, we'll play it with Paul. But yeah, I'm very curious to see how we feel about this. Me too. And I will go in trying to like it. I always say that when we do these Force of Friends. I want to like games. I'm never going in trying to be the crotchety old man. Oh, I don't like this mechanic and things like that. I'll do my best to try to enjoy it, see it for what it is, enjoy the parts that are good, try to overlook the stuff that's

maybe not my cup of tea. Do you guys have any final thoughts? Any questions, concerns, thoughts on us playing this? I'm ready. It's been a while since all three of us have played a multiplayer game. I'm ready and I want to see how good Ryan is. I'm a little curious.

Dude, what if Ryan just turns into like the Marine commander? You know, where we're like, we're playing. He's like, guys, all right, guys, get over here. Get it. No, no, don't go around that corner. Well, word on the street is from a Discord today, actually, somebody reached out and said, how do you feel about Solid Snake being in i did see that you

did see that yeah so then i was just like i put execute puke.exe so that's my feelings on fortnight but maybe i'll just be snake and kick butt so we'll see yeah maybe it'll be slightly better than puke we'll have to see we'll be barf yeah maybe it'll just be indig puke. We'll have to see. We'll be barf. Yeah. Maybe it'll just be indigestion. Yeah. After playing. All right. Well,

that wraps up this hijack a host episode. I want to say thank you, mom. Once again, for supporting the show, shout out to yaya, Arizona and to the rest of our listeners, please go take a look at support options at multiplayer squad.com. If you go legendary,

you can pick a game for us. There's also tiers that are far cheaper. It all starts at five bucks a month. And make sure to follow our podcast feed. That way you don't miss any episodes. And toss us a follow on socials everywhere at VideoGamersPod. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, happy gaming.

See ya. All right. See everybody. listening and until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody