Video Gamers Podcast - Guardians of the Galaxy, Mass Effect TV and How Not to Spend $680,000 - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another incredible This Week in Gaming. Josh has been playing a good bit of the new Guardians of the Galaxy and gives some thoughts on it. Amazon is making a push for a Mass Effect series and a woman steals $680,000 and then spends it in the worst way possible. It’s all the gaming news you could want, in an awesome podcast with your two favorite hosts. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad  Thanks to Razer for sponsoring the show. Use code: Multiplayer at checkout for your free gift! Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our 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

Hey guys, Josh here. I just wanted to take a second and let you know about this amazing new product called MultiplayerSquad.com. It's the greatest new addition to gaming. Well, I mean practically life. It's sure to fill you with glee, help you make new friends, and expose you to all sorts of awesome memes. It's got the best community of gamers around, and more than that, it's the best way to help support the show and let us keep providing awesome content. What? I gotta read this disclaimer for legal reasons. Warning. MultiplayerSquad.com can cause feelings of joy, happiness, companionship, ownage, and all around sense of being awesome.

If you notice yourself acting more like Josh, please discontinue use immediately and seek professional help. Hey, who put that in there? Paul! Hello! Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, where we release two episodes every week dedicated to gaming. We are two dads that take our gaming seriously, but have casual, lighthearted, and family-friendly conversations on the podcast. Happy Thursday to all of our listeners. For those of you out there who are new and don't know our schedule,

Thursdays are dedicated to This Week in Gaming, where we talk about what we've been playing lately, along with any gaming news stories that dropped over the last seven days. I am your host, Paul. And then joining me, I hope he's having a good end of the holiday weekend here since we just had Thanksgiving a couple of days ago. So Josh, how was your holiday weekend? Paul? Keep in mind, you just gave a massive yawn like a bear five seconds before I asked you. I had to lean back from the microphone, so it didn't pick up. I'm going to cover it real quick. On Thanksgiving, I realized that we did not have cranberry

sauce. We had that terrible cranberry dressing, or the kind where you just mush it all up and it's got actual pieces of cranberry and bits in it and stuff, which is an absolute abomination. So you prefer the canned cranberry jelly. You don't want cranberry sauce. You just want the homogenous sticks in the exact same shape as the can. It better have the ring still in the jelly from the can. Yes, exactly. And so that was, you know, right then I was just like, well, this is no good. And so my wife, to her credit, went to like five different stores over the course of the last like three days trying to find me a can of cranberry sauce to have with all the leftovers. Okay. And apparently there's a shortage of cranberry sauce.

So this is the first Thanksgiving and I can't remember how long where I have not had cranberry sauce. And now it just makes me crave it all the more. Yeah, because you can't have it, right? Yes! I want my cranberry sauce, man! All right, so there was a giant lack of cranberry sauce, but what was the best thing that you ate? Stuffing. I mean, Ooh, uh, stuffing. I mean,

you're a big stuff top stuffing. It's, I don't eat it any other time of the year. I don't know why. Like it's always at the store. I just don't eat it any other time of year. That was funny when you mentioned that on our discord server. Cause I said,

no, like literally anytime I'm going to cook chicken, I just make stuffing with it because it's such a classic combination. Because you're smart, Paul. You're a smart guy. Yeah, yeah. So Josh, are you doing any Black Friday shopping? I am not.

No, I spent my weekend painting our master bedroom and our bathroom. I mentioned this in the discord server. I like to whine sometimes, you know, it's like, I feel like at my age, I get to do that. You've earned it. And, uh, my entire body just hurts, man. I painted for not, I painted a ceiling for nine hours yesterday up, up like a, like a good 10 foot ladder with a 10 foot extension pole, like rolling the ceiling above me. That's where that yawn came from.

But I'm ready, man. I am a man of the people. People need their podcast. So here we are. Yeah. Josh, does it sound like I'm stalling? Yes. Why are you stalling?

I am stalling because gaming news this week, not so good, guys. It turns out when nobody's working, no one's writing articles on gaming. So we did not have a whole lot to grab from. Well, unless people want to know the best Cyber Monday deals on RAM, or the best Cyber Monday deals on monitors, or the best Cyber Monday deals on gaming chairs, or the best Cyber Monday deals on gaming chairs. Or the best Cyber Monday deals on mice and keyboards. Which will all be sold out by the time this episode releases.

So, yes. So we had to scrape down in the dredges of the gaming news this week. But before we jump into that, we always like to talk a little bit and to catch up on what we've been playing in our personal game time. Our next deep dive episode on Monday will be on Battlefield 2042. So I know that you and I have both been playing Battlefield and we will be getting into that next episode. But what else have you been playing here in the meantime? Well, Paul, Cranberry, Debacleberry debacle and painting aside it's debacle debacle i got it i got it i thankfully have found a game that i am enjoying the heck out of right

now and that is guardians of the galaxy man yeah i saw this one was on sale in steam and it's been getting some decent reviews it's a fairly sale in Steam, and it's been getting some decent reviews. It's a fairly new release. I feel like it's only been out for probably three weeks. You know me, man. I love Marvel. Guardians of the Galaxy are some of my favorite movies out there. I remember this game coming out, but it kind of just passed me over. And I don't know if that's the whole Avengers vibe, because the Avengers video game was... Everybody liked it for four hours. And then everybody went, this is terrible. They just copied and pasted everything else. And so I just assumed that Guardians of the Galaxy was that way. But then I started looking up reviews. And people that have played the game really had a lot of very

good things to say about it. Yeah. So I popped it on my wishlist. I didn't know if I was willing to spend $60 on it. And then lo and behold, Paul, the Steam Autumn Sale hits. So is it down to like $38 or something like that? It was $38. And I've already gotten my $38 out of it. I don't even know how far. I think I'm maybe like a third of the way through the game yeah um but it is top notch man i am having a blast the it is so well done dude like the the graphics are insane one of my kids walked into the room like wow what's that game daddy and i was like guardians of the galaxy and they're like that game's beautiful the character interactions are second to none, man.

Like, honestly, this is going to be very a bold statement, but I think it's actually better than the movies. Oh, wow. In regards to like how the characters interact and the stuff that you go through, the plot line and the characters that you come across. There are a ton of references to other really cool Marvel stuff. And they kind of fix some stuff. For a guy that used to be a comic book nerd back in the day, I'm not so much anymore, but even like Nowhere. So if you've seen Guardians of the Galaxy, you know they go to that place called Nowhere and it's in like the big floating head of something. Well, in the movie, they kind of make it just look like a skull. But in the game,

because they're much more true to the comic books, it's actually the severed head of one of the celestial beings that they show off in Eternals. And so it's like they've kind of corrected some of the Hollywood leeway stuff. So it's much more true to the comic books and stuff too, which I thought was super good. But I'm having an absolute blast with it, man. Well, that's cool. I'm glad you're able to find something fun to play. I have scrolled through the Autumn Sale a couple times, and I'll pause on something. I still haven't played Hades, which I know everybody loves.

Oh, you would love Hades, dude. Yeah. I mean, maybe I'll get around to it, like it's just hard to spend any money on any games in the middle of the holiday season yeah when we're like buying so many things for christmas and it's like i just need to be patient on certain things so i don't even maybe i already mentioned this did i mention last week that i finished gta3 you did you said that you were moving on to vice city yeah yeah yeah so i played a little bit of vice city but then after you and i recorded our bonus round episode and i kept talking about

gta 4 i stopped playing vice city and now i've been playing gta 4 so instead of spending any money i'm just going through apparently just playing all the old gt. That's where I'm at. I mean, it's not... Remasters aside, GTA 4 is really good. You know? I don't know how the... I mean, I've heard how the remasters are. I don't know from first-hand experience there. But, I mean, I get that.

The GTA games are pretty timeless, man. Yeah. They're just a blast, no matter what. And then, of course, you and i are still playing a little bit of halo infinite you know they did have some halo updates because we're still waiting for a lot of the game modes to come out so when we did the deep dive there was not a whole lot to pick from but they did release fiesta mode have you played any of that yet because i was i know i've played a lot but i don't know if it was ever with you. I think it was always with other people. Yeah, we haven't played together. I've played probably like six matches of the

Fiesta mode. It's fun. I feel like it's luck of the draw. You know me, man. I hate RNG determining my fate in video games. And I feel like when you spawn in Fiesta mode, like maybe you spawn with a rocket launcher, right? Or maybe you spawn with a stupid plasma carbine, which sucks, you know? And then it's like, oh, well, that guy spawned with a sniper rifle and I've got, you know, a needler or something. It's like, well, that's not really fair. So I've played some. I'm really just a huge fan of the normal modes. So I've played some of the Fiesta mode, but I just,

I like the basic multiplayer, man. It's funny to me that they did not have Fiesta in the beginning, because if there was ever a time that you would want it, it would be when you're first playing Halo. And so you have to get used to all the weapons. Because even you and I would joke about, oh, like in the very beginning, it was like, oh, what's the Ravager? I have no idea what this gun is. And some of the guns you have to press and hold to charge. And we didn't know that in the beginning. So Fiesta is so fun to learn the weapons.

But now that I already know them all, I don't find myself really ever playing Fiesta. I'd rather just do normal quick play or the big team battle if we have a big group. I feel like Fiesta mode is the mystery heroes from Overwatch. Yeah, it's a little bit like that. It's like if you ever wanted to learn how to play other characters, like mystery heroes was the way to go because it forced you into playing characters that you would not normally pick. And so Fiesta mode is kind of like that.

Like, here's your two guns. Hurry up and die. Yeah, I played, i want to say like eight fiesta matches in a row with a couple other people in our discord and one of the games because you know you're dying and you're finding and picking up weapons and i think i played six matches in a row without once getting the rocket launcher. And I swear every other time I would spawn with the plasma pistol and something like the heat wave where it's like, okay, well on this map, it's so wide open. Like I just, if I don't find a weapon, I'm just going to die. And that

can be the worst. Yeah. That's exactly what I was saying is the luck of the draw in that I don't, it's fun for a few rounds, but I'm not a huge fan of it. I'm still having a blast with Halo Infinite, to be honest. It's becoming the game that I default to when I have 10 or 15 minutes to just hop on and play a round or two. And that used to be Rocket League or Overwatch,

but I'm finding that it is quickly becoming Halo. And I love it, man. Like I said, when you learn the pacing and all that stuff, we played the other night. It was a ton of fun. I have this personal challenge of being in the top three of the leaderboard. And so it's like, if I can finish in the top three on our team, then I'm super happy. And if I'm not, then it's like, oh man, I need to try harder and get sweaty a little bit here. But that part's fun for me too. And I like getting better with the weapons and learning all that stuff and the different modes and stuff. I've legitimately been having a lot of fun with Halo still. Yeah. Halo Infinite is exactly filling that

same spot for me where if I have nothing else to play, that's just what I'll put on. And that's kind of telling that Rocket League is now six years old and Overwatch is five years old. And the fact that really nothing in the last five years has taken that spot. So the fact that Halo is doing that for us, I think is pretty neat. I mean, I know that some people have issues with the battle pass and the cosmetics and you and I don't care about that at all. To us, it's just gameplay. Get me in a match. Let me just start clicking heads and fighting people. And it's been great. I did laugh because the other day I played around and when they announced the legendary

samurai looking armor for the Spartans, like everybody lost their minds like, oh, I can't wait to have that armor. It looks so cool. I played a match the other day, Everybody lost their minds. Like, oh, I can't wait to have that armor. It looks so cool. I played a match the other day, Paul. No lie. They do the little intro for each person on your team. And it was samurai guy, samurai guy, me, samurai guy. And then I went, it's not unique. It's not like the cosmetics.

There's nothing special when everybody has them at that point. Like, I was the unique guy in my basic armor at that point. Well, it's just goofy. Like seeing these guys in these super bright red and blue uniforms. Yeah. Like I even said in our discord, I feel like you don't look like a Spartan.

You don't look like you're in the halo extended universe. You look like you're in another game. So I don't know. a spartan you don't look like you're in the halo extended universe you look like you're in another game so i don't know i like my pure default spartan and that's what i run with yeah he's just total og cosmetics all right well let's go ahead and talk about some gaming news stories here from this week the first story is one that you had run across, Josh, that you had shared with me. And this first story comes from our friends in the land down under, comes from Australia, where a woman named Rachel Perry has pled guilty to 25 counts of computer-related fraud and one count of good old school vanilla fraud, I guess. This is one of those stories

that's equal parts sad and funny, but this woman ended up siphoning $940,000 Australian dollars, which is equivalent to about $680,000 American dollars. That's a lot of cash. A lot of cash, a lot of cashish from a veterinary hospital. And Josh, why don't you tell the people what she stole all of this money to do? Because this is really where the story comes into play. I'm going to lose it, Paul. Because maybe someone steals a bunch of money to pay off debts or to put to some purpose.

You would like to think if you're stealing money, it's going to be used for something. You go to Vegas and you just gamble it to try to launder that money, right? Sure. Hey, if I spend this money and then I win money with it, well, now that's my money because it's my winnings and they don't know where that money came from. This lady, she stole all this money and she put it towards an online slot machine game. So a virtual slot machine game. Hearts of Vegas. Hearts of Vegas. Now what's funny is I think my mother-in-law actually plays this game

because she likes the little electronic slot machine games. And she just plays them for the gold coins that float around the screen and just the fun of that part of it. Right. Like there's, she doesn't ever play like real money or any of that stuff. Um, but I'm pretty sure I've actually seen this game in action and it's like, Hey, if you're, if you steal all this money and then you're trying to launder it through this online slot machine game, I can at least wrap my head around that. I'm not saying that I would ever do that or I condone that behavior, but I at least could understand how that happens. But then I got to the end of the article, and you cannot win real money. No, it's not a gambling app. This is just purely one of those games that you just play slots for fun, but you can pay real life money to get more of the in-game currency.

And so clearly this is someone who knew that she was struggling with gambling addiction, which is the sad side of things. But I cannot imagine stealing $860,000 and then have nothing to show for it. It would be like if I said, yeah, I stole $860,000 and I bought all Halo cosmetics. And then there's nothing lasting. There's no use out of any of it. I can't imagine jeopardizing my entire livelihood and jail time and things of that nature just to play a stupid fake currency slot game i mean slots are even the worst gambling game of all of them i at least get blackjack and craps and roulette slot sucks josh i don't know why anyone would play it but the whole idea of stealing all this money so she got caught and said she was waiting for a knock on the door.

But she got caught because she ended up being let go from her job, where I'm guessing she must have been in charge of bookkeeping. Because as soon as she was let go, they started noticing financial anomalies in the financial records and realized that she had been stealing from the company over three years. But I can't imagine stealing that much money over three years and nobody noticed. I mean, it happens all the time. Yeah, I was going to say, that's a really big veterinary hospital. It's almost a million dollars. I can't believe that she took all this money and then just completely blew it on a game where you can't win money.

Yeah. blew it on a game where you can't win money. Like you said, it's literally the most useless thing that you could possibly spend this money on. And I don't even know how that's possible, man. Like, who spends money? I mean, I guess it's equivalent to cosmetics. I mean, honestly, I don't know. Like, my brain can't fathom that, to be honest. But your analogy is probably pretty good, where it's like, hey, you have something in an electronic universe, these pixels that you paid for, but you never actually own either? I don't know, man. That story made me laugh. Because when I got to the part where it was like, by the way, this is not an actual online gambling. This is strictly entertainment value with no real money ever to be won. I just lost it, man. And I was like,

oh my goodness. It's so wild. I get that a company is not under any kind of obligation to flag this account. But a little part of me is like, anyone who sees someone spending two-thirds of a million dollars in a slots game, a little part of me would be like, should we check in with this person, make sure they're doing okay? You send them a Christmas card and say thank you for playing our game?

Yeah, I mean, if you're like Jeff Bezos and you drop $680,000 in an app, I get it. It's like no big deal to that person. But still, a little part of me was like, dang, there must be good money in just making apps, taking advantage of people's gambling addictions, and just raking in crazy amounts of money. But here in this case, she said she expected a knock on the door, and it came and pled guilty to all the charges. So she's waiting sentencing. Yeah, she's going to jail. She the door and it came and pled guilty to all the charges.

So she's waiting. She's going to jail. She's going to jail for a long time. She'll definitely be there. Can you believe the people like, Hey, what are you in here for? Uh,

I stole a bunch of money and then I blew it on slot machines, but there weren't really slot machines and I couldn't actually win any money back. And that's, yeah, it just goes like, they look like that person's crazy. I embezzled $680,000. Oh, oh cool what'd you buy with it like sports cars real estate you know no virtual

slot virtual slot currency oh my goodness wild it's a wild world josh all right and then the next story here is related to new world all right more gold and stuff new world is a game that you and i dug its grave very early okay oh yeah we wanted to like it we really did you and i love mmos we were so excited to jump into the beta i think we really loved it i i wore out on it a lot quicker than you i loved it for about 45 minutes. And then I was like, whoa, this is already repetitive. And then within a couple hours, we were both like, yeah, let's cancel our preorder. We're not even going to do a deep dive. And then literally every single week, you and I have our shared Google Doc where we

just copy and paste links to articles that we think would be fun to talk about. And every single week, there is an article in there about some new disastrous thing that has happened in new world and every week you or i say man we just keep bragging on new world like let's not keep yeah we won't talk about that one this let it go yeah so let's let's just get everyone caught up are you ready here josh i'm gonna let you i'm gonna let you explain the new problem but here's just a couple of highlights all right new world by the way implements a tax system which might be the dumbest thing i've ever heard in regards to an mmo but the fact that taxes in the game were so punitive people were refusing to use in-game

coins to buy and sell items so it was forcing a barter system and the economy completely tanked with deflation because no one would spend their coins. Next up, you found out that people were able to put HTML code into the chat windows, which initially was just funny, but then people started using it to duplicate gold and to kick people out of their service. I was going to say, you could kick people with it too. Yes. Later, so then they you could kick people with it too. Yes. Later. So then they figured that out.

They disabled it. Then the very next week there were new exploits where people started duplicating items. And so the whole economy had to be shut down again. They had to pause the auction hall. They had to reverse all of these, you know, money trades while they were investigating it.

We also talked about on the show, people would run the game in windowed mode, move their screen around, and they were invulnerable during PvP. Now, this game's only been out for like, how long? Like five weeks or something? I was going to say somewhere around there. And now we had news again here this week.

Do you want to tell the people what was going on? Yeah, so in a long series of just terrible, terrible mistakes that New World has made, they started, I guess, through the tax system or something. I don't know what the basis behind it was. They overtaxed people or something. But there were a lot of accounts that got messed up. And so New World said, hey, we're going to make it up it up to you we're gonna give you your money back but oops they gave you back 300 000 gold which i guess is a lot of money in that game and so they went well wait a minute by the time they had figured it out players had gone to the auction house and bought just a lot of like higher end items that they could then you know use to trade or you craft or whatever. So by the time they discovered

it, they went, oh no, we can't fix this. So instead of just going, well, this was your lucky day, they said, no, no, no. They took all of the servers down. And something you do not do in an MMO, if you can absolutely help it because you are going to seriously tick off a lot of people, is they rolled the servers back to the time where they started to implement this credit of this money. Worst thing you can do in an MMO. Yes, because imagine you're the guy that's going on a raid. You've been raiding with your guild. You finally down this boss. The drop that you've been trying to get for weeks or months now finally drops. You get awarded that drop. It's the best day ever. Yay, I've been grinding for hundreds of hours for this. And then you get a notification that,

oh, hey, by the way, we're going to roll the servers back like 24 hours. Yeah. And you're going to lose everything that you've just done in the last 20. That's a huge, huge no-no in the MMO world. Yeah. Lost progress. So people who are leveling and spending time playing the game, that's lost time, losing loot, losing money. It's a complete disaster. I mean, the economy- It's a disaster every week, Paul.

Every week, it's a new disaster. And this time, at at least it's not people exploiting the game it's just amazon's own fault i how how do you mess this up someone just put a decimal in the wrong spot is that what happened like people needed to get a couple thousand gold back i think what they were doing was and i might have this wrong but people who were owed taxes while the game got taken down for the last problem that did not pay them their tax money so it was actually trying to fix the last problem that just caused a worse problem but i don't know if you even heard about this josh there were some people in the middle of server transfers and when they this back, they're locked out of their characters and cannot access them. They are getting character restore failure errors.

Dude, this is such a comedy of errors going on with New World right now. I almost feel bad for them. I really do. New World had good, I don't even want to say bones, really, because the bones weren't that good. It had good graphics. was a beautiful world like they whoever the graphic artists were in that game kudos to you but the economy is terrible the combat seems good at first because it's like actually like a skill-based you know weapon oriented combat and i remember being very intrigued by that at first and then it really started to feel shallow once you got like 10 hours in and you're like, well, this combat's not going to hold my attention at all. It was very, very shallow once you really started to understand it. But that's really it, man. I get that they tried to do the whole PvP thing and the

different factions and you can take over towns and zones and stuff like that, but nobody cares. Nobody cares about that stuff. I'll tell you right now, man, in Lost Ark, I love PvP. And we've talked about Lost Ark. I'm sure we'll cover that game fully when it comes out in March, I believe. But the PvP in that game is going to be phenomenal because it's very skill-based, it's quick, all that stuff. But I feel like with New World, every time a problem arises and they fix the problem, they, they create a more severe problem that they then have to deal with. And so it just starts to show us like ineptitude at this point. And I hate that for the people

that are on these teams. I mean, can you imagine being the programmer that's getting yelled at, saying like by some boss, it's going, we'll fix it. And you it and you're like i like how how do you want me to fix this is not my problem yeah it's just such a disaster it's almost like it's this game studio's first major project and uh that's because it is josh i feel like i feel like it's a bunch of people who did not know enough about mmos trying to make an mmo and it just did not know enough about MMOs, trying to make an MMO, and it just did not work for a million different reasons. I mean, the lifeblood of any MMO is the economy. You have to have a booming economy. And the fact that the gold rewards versus the items that you go out and collect were so out of whack that people were like, well, I spend my gold but if you're trying to sell wood

i'll give you some iron ingots like the fact that everyone had to resort to bartering just tells you from the ground up fundamentally this was just a complete disaster economically even if the gameplay works if your economy is that bad people are going to fizzle out they're going to start quitting there's a reason why we kept seeing articles. 80% of New World's player base hasn't logged in. People are leaving because they're just kind of getting fed up with it. Sometimes I'm sad that we can't play all the games we want to play. There are times where we go, hey, there's this game that came out. We talked about it. We were thinking about maybe covering it for the podcast. New World was one of those,

like we played the beta and we just kind of went, I don't think we want to play this. And now I look back and I'm like, man, I'm so glad that we didn't play that game. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what a disaster. All right. Well, to close out the show here, just a couple other minor things that we've seen here in the last few days. Looks like Amazon is more than likely going to be making a Mass Effect TV show. I get excited about that. Cyberpunk's Steam user score is now very positive. I thought that that was kind of interesting. I think I'll have a lot to say about Cyberpunk when we do our year-in-review podcast here in a couple weeks. Yeah. to say about Cyberpunk when we do our year-in-review podcast here in a couple weeks. And then finally, the creative director for Dragon Age 4, his name is Matt Goldman.

He has left Bioware. We've seen a lot of people leave Bioware the last few years, including Casey Hudson, who was the creative director for Mass Effect. So that's not really a great sign for the future of Dragon Age. They've been developing this game for six years and we have not seen anything. And apparently they've had to reboot it several times. So,

um, I think I'm getting a little worried about dragon age. Is that what that means? Yeah. I'll be honest with you, man. There's so much hype around dragon age. You're seeing this with grand theft auto six as well.

You know, um, I think we heard a little bit of it with not Starfield, but what's the... There was another game where I think it's like the development is taking longer than they thought. And you start to hear these whispers of like, hey, there's no solid direction. They've had to kind of restart development. You hear this a lot, especially with these huge AAA titles. I wouldn't want to have to do one of these games, man. Because when you take such a beloved series, you better get it right or people are going to get very, very upset with you.

Yeah. And when you start having creative directors leaving, that's usually not a good sign because it means that they don't have the direction pinpointed on where they want this game to go. But, I mean, we saw that with Halo Infinite, and look what happened with Halo Infinite. So, I mean, maybe it's a good thing? I don't know. I mean, we still haven't seen Halo's campaign. That's very true.

We've seen that opening level. We've seen a few minutes worth. But, yeah, regardless, it's not a good sign. How about that? You don't like hearing that the person in charge has left. Normally, you need one person with a clear vision running the team. And so when you keep switching these things up, and it seems to be just a little bit more systemic with people leaving BioWare, you know, no one is around from, you know, the

good old days. All those main people are gone. So I'm very worried about the future of Bioware, despite them historically being my favorite developer because of the Dragon Ages and the Mass Effects and the KOTORs and even Star Wars, the Old Republic we loved. What an incredible pedigree. And it makes me sad to see that it's like somewhere along the way, they lost their way. Well, I saw in an article, they said the last successful game that BioWare released was Mass Effect 3, which by the way, a lot of people had a lot of negative things to say. And that was almost 10 years ago. Wow. Yeah, that's crazy, man. I think you're starting to see it with Blizzard, honestly. I mean, all the political stuff aside for all that, it's like you have to release games to make money.

But I feel like development time is taking longer and longer and longer for these AAA titles. I think we're really seeing that shift to indie developers because you can really make some amazing games that people respond to very very well but you don't have the pressure and the gajillions of dollars being poured in to where you have to be beholden to the investors and the activisions and the eas and stuff like that you know because then they're meddling in these games and they're ruining things

like keep investors out of game development you know let game developers handle that stuff yeah and release finished products yeah and then release finished products to dragon age's credit they did release a statement saying we do not yet know who's going to be the next director which by the way tells me that this was not like forcing this person out of the role and And it's a, you know, quote them leaving the company. It definitely sounded to me like they're not sure what they're going to do next. But they did say, we will not release an unfinished product. Okay, well, we'll see. I'll believe it when I see it.

Right. Yes. But that is a trend that needs to continue to happen. And hopefully developers start to do that, is just go, look, we don't want to be the cyberpunk. We don't want to be, you know, some of these... Battlefield 2042. I didn't want to spoil anything, Paul.

Yeah, we don't want to be the Battlefield 2042. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's like, you know, learn the lesson, but they won't. There's a lot of these game companies that they just they won't learn as long as people keep buying it they'll keep spitting it out yeah as long as idiots keep buying the gta trilogy remastered you know those people are going to keep pre-ordering battlefield 2042 and yes yeah we are very much a part of the problem uh all right well that's all that we have here for today.

So next Monday, we will be back with our Battlefield episode. That one's been anticipated for quite some time. Can't wait to talk about it. And if you have not already done so, please leave us a review. Rate us five stars. If you like what we do here with the show and want to help support it and see it continue, then you can subscribe in Apple Podcasts for three bucks a month. Or you can go to MultiplayerSquad.com, which will take you to our

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Yeah, let's go hit it up, Paul. We've got a show to do. All right. Happy gaming, everyone. We'll see you next time. See you, everybody.