Video Gamers Podcast - Minecraft 2 Confirmed, AC: Shadows Delayed and Witcher 4 Updates - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. Gaming hosts Josh and Ryan are back chatting the latest gaming news. This week we discuss Notch confirming Minecraft 2, the delay of Assassins Creed Shadows, CD Projekt gives an update on Witcher 4 and more! All the video game news you need, each and every week from the Video Gamers Podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Ol’ Jake, Disratory and Gaius Thanks to Legendary Supporter: FitNerdJohn 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

This is Carry the Fire. I'm your host, Lisa Laflamme. Carry the Fire, a podcast by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation featuring inspiring personal stories about what happens when world-leading doctors, nurses, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs. Carry the Fire launches Monday, January 27th, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, fellow gamers,

and welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. On this episode of This Week in Gaming, we're discussing Notch confirming Minecraft 2, Assassin's Creed Shadows getting delayed, some news on The Witcher 4 development, and more. But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh. And joining me, he's been practicing his slappies, his boned ollies, his wallies, his power slides, his pre-wind spins, and his grind bump outs. It's Ryan. Bro, you think I should go switch flip that ledge there? Gnolly half cab throwback?

Like, come on. Gnarly. That'd be so gnarly, man. Wait, can I gnolly half cab? I don't think I can gnolly half cab. I don Like, come on. Gnarly. That'd be so gnarly, man. Wait, can I nolly half cab? I don't think I can nolly half cab. I don't know. No, you idiot. You can't nolly half cab?

What are you talking about? Fakie half cab. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Skater dies. What was the move from Tony Hawk's where the dude did the Christ air? That was one of my favorites, dude.

Yeah. The Christ air was great. Yeah, you're just flowing in the air, just spinning. man that was great oh well if people didn't know we're gonna be talking about some skate here in a little bit yeah but welcome into the show everybody today's episode we finally got some video game news right we do it's it's uh been a long time coming so i'm excited apparently all the news outlets take like this really extended break from like christmas to like right january where they're like dude we don't feel like working we don't want to talk about video games there's no video game news and we've been making

the best of it i gotta say we've had some pretty darn good episodes absolutely heck yeah man i'm excited but we do like to keep people up to date with the goings on in the gaming world and so that's what these episodes are. That's why we call them This Week in Gaming. It's just to kind of catch you up on things that are going on in the gaming industry. We teased some of it. I mean, Minecraft 2? How is this thing flying under the radar?

So we'll talk about that story and some others. But before we get into that, Ryan, we got somebody to thank, man. Do we? Well, whatever could it be for? It could be for them being awesome and making this podcast possible to the world. And that is a fine gentleman by the name of Technophile who signed up to support the show with epic status. Epic! Going the extra mile to say, hey, planet Earth, you need a good video game podcast.

And I am the hero that's going to make that happen. Also, I hear that's the next Marvel Rivals character is Technophile, hero to the world for supporting the show. Yes, I would agree. I'm going to main Technophile for sure. Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Technophile, for supporting the show. If you want to be quite possibly the next superhero that is going to bring our smooth, buttery voices to the rest of planet Earth and possibly space, because I hear they're kind of broadcasting this out into the universe at this point. We're in the cosmos, man. I think it's probably more like a warning than anything that says like,

hey, these are the people that you guys might come in contact with, so stay away. But if you want to help support this podcast, you can do that over at multiplayer squad.com where you can sign up for as little as five bucks a month, but it really does go a long way for helping us keep this content flowing, covering video games, providing news for people, um, and helping Ryan buy the latest battle pass in Marvel rivals so that he could

have his moon night skin that he was really excited for. Uh, luxury battle pass. Oh, Oh really excited for. Luxury Battle Pass. Oh, Ryan! Luxury Battle Pass. I'm going next level, brother. You spendy person, man.

Listen, listen. I was buying filament for the 3D prints for Fan Fusion with my own money. I was buying games with my own money forever, and I buy one Battle Pass and I'm getting gruff. No, no, no. You didn't buy one Battle Pass. You bought the luxury Battle Pass.

I did. Listen, I live in a land of luxury with my Marvel's rivals. Alright. Well, hey, you know what? Like I said, we do this for research. We had to know if those skins are good, man. Yep.

We're doing it for the people. Yes. Invisible woman skin is good. The invisible woman? Yes. Yeah, you can't see her, though. How do you know? Mental acuity, I guess.

Acuity? Something like that. Oh, my goodness. Oh, man. Off the rails already. Here we go. I did almost have a different introduction for you because we're going to be talking a little bit about some really cool Stellar Blade news as well. But then I mixed it up right at the end because I was like, Ryan was a skater. He's going to know all these terms. Skater dies. Skate forever.

Yeah. So, all right. Well, let's get into it because we actually have a lot of news to cover. So the first one, and I did tease this at the intro, is Notch, who is the creator of Minecraft. Filthy, stinking rich guy, by the way, at this point. You and I were chatting before we actually started recording. And a fun little tidbit for people that are fans of Minecraft notch sold the rights for Minecraft, AKA Mojang, the company to, uh, Microsoft for $2.5 billion with a B with a B with a B.

And then, uh, promptly just disappeared into obscurity while the world, uh, made Minecraft the most sold video game of all time. I believe. It's up there. This one's weird, man.

You ever try to look something up on the internet and you can't get a straight answer? Yeah, all the time. Try to look up the video game that's the most popular, most sold video game. And it's like half the time you're going to see Minecraft, the other half of the time you're going to see Tetris. Oh, okay. And it's like, I don't know if one actually has more monetary sales, but one has more actual number of like, I don't know if one actually has like more monetary sales, but one has like more actual like number of sales or I don't, I don't know. You know, we're not accountants.

We're not mathematicians, but what we do know is, is some Minecraft. So yeah, notch goes onto social media and he creates a poll that says, Hey, what kind of game would you guys like to see me create and he came back afterwards and he basically goes hey um this this i just like confirmed minecraft 2 to everybody and so i'm making it yeah and and like i don't understand how this is not just all over the place man because i think this is one of those cases where people don't really believe it until they see it kind of thing. Now I'm going to read the tweet. So this is actually from notch himself and it says honest and legitimate

request for feedback for once the new game I'm passionately working on is currently set to be a traditional roguelike mixed with a tile-based first-person dungeon crawler a la Legend of Grim Rock or Eye of the Beholder. But then I got to thinking that maybe there are people who like my work, but might not share my taste in retro nostalgia and would prefer for me to make a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft. And I mean, sure, I'd take that cash. So market research, I'd be happy to oblige either which one would make you happier. Now this got 286,000 votes. This was not like 14 people voting on this, right 81 and a half percent of people said make minecraft 2 boomer do it now it's literally the option and and so number one that's an overwhelming majority of people that said do we want minecraft

2 yeah but so then notch comes out and says, Hey, based on this, um, I thought, I guess people actually want me to make another game. That's similar to the first one. And he said, and I'm loving working on games again. Now in a followup tweet to this, to this poll that he put,

he comes out and he says, I basically announced Minecraft two. That's the first sentence of this whole tweet. It's a long tweet, so I'm not going to read the whole thing. But I know that you and I are a little bit older, and I know that any parent that has kids who love Minecraft kind of begrudgingly go, ah. Yeah.

Is that your feeling for minecraft ryan um you know honestly thankfully not anymore because my son's graduated to uh games like marvel rivals and um like actual video games actual good decent games the thing that i'm curious about with all this is like if it's gonna be a successor and it's gonna be a second like what does he do is he gonna make the graphics better or is he gonna leave on blocky kind of the same way to uh have that same feel like i mean it's an open kind of crazy world where you just build and craft and do all these things like what would a second game look like? What would be the sequel to that? I don't know, to be honest. And I do know that he was clear

that it cannot be like a mimic of Minecraft because there's some agreements that were made in this $2.5 billion sale. So he can't just come out and make another Minecraft and then call it Minecraft kind of thing. So, you know, as we have seen, you can copy Minecraft to a certain degree and then call it whatever the heck you want at that point. But he did kind of expand on that a little bit. And he did say, hey, if Microsoft wants to bring me on board and have me actually make what we will call Minecraft 2, I will 100% be happy to do that.

I'll even cut them a share that is well beyond what the norm for the industry would be for that just so that we can do it. So he's kind of well aware of like the legalities and stuff. But one of the things that he did confirm is that he said, I absolutely am making a game. Like this isn't, I'm thinking about it. This isn't, hey, wouldn't it be cool if

minecraft 2 ever came out i mean he confirmed that he is back to making video games um and so we'll see what happens with that it's funny because you think you'd see a little bit more chatter about this online yeah that's weird that it doesn't it doesn't seem to be popping off like you would think for something this big i think think people are kind of going, well, we need to see something. Give us a concept. Give us a trailer. Give us just an idea. I mean, I've always said, as much as we don't like Minecraft, part of it is that it just kind of looks kiddy.

But you give me a really spectacular looking survival crafting game with the creative and the, uh, the, Oh my goodness. What's the mode adventure mode or whatever the real survival is. Survival. Thank you. I was like,

what the heck's this mode called? Someone creepers to blow you up. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, but I mean, that could be pretty fun. Yeah.

That would, what happens? That would be good if they can do something like that. But yeah, like you said, we'll see what happens. would be good if they can do something like that but yeah like you said we'll see what happens um definitely in its infant stage but uh man what it it's not like he's uh short on funds so he can definitely go in you you talk about a game that's hard to follow up right like we're getting more and more like half-life 3 rumors and you know they've said hey at this point what do we have to really gain by making Half-Life 3? Because unless it's like the best game ever made, people are going to be disappointed.

Minecraft 2, I feel like kind of falls into that category where it's like, it better be better than the original at this point. So I don't know. We'll see. There's nothing out there as far as anything visually to see other than his tweets, which you can check out. But yeah, we'll see.

Again, Minecraft 2. Sure you're excited if you are under the age of 25. I mean, you were a huge Rocket League player. If they come out and they say, we're making Rocket League 2, it's like, okay, well, what could you do? What would that be? What would that encompass?

So that's where my mind goes to with with minecraft like what can you do that's different you know yeah but we'll see and then there's all the minecraft spinoff type games there's the minecraft realms where people it's almost like roblox where people have made a thousand different games within minecraft yeah so it's kind of almost like an infinite like platform as far as creating other fun spinoffs and stuff like that. So, all right, Ryan. Oh, man, this one. I don't know why. I sound like, okay, everybody that knows me knows that I have a little bit of a dark side. You also have a little bit of a dark side. We have made it very apparent that, you know what, you give me a choice of a lightsaber.

I'm going red. Yes. You know, I know myself. You know yourself. It's like, dude, we're good dudes. You know, we do, you know, we're family friendly. family friendly, a lot of good things. But at the same time, everybody's got a little bit of a dark side to them. And part of our dark side is just kind of digging at Ubisoft a little bit. And it's like, I get that this doesn't necessarily, this is not good news. Okay. I'm'm gonna preface this by saying that but at the

same time there's just a teeny little part of me Ryan that I just kind of go like I told you poor Ace oh man well what's even worse is we've converted Ace, Ace is like Ubisoft is dead to me now

I'm like what have we done okay so we do have some news Ace is like, Ubisoft is dead to me now. I'm like, what have we done? Okay, so we do have some news on Assassin's Creed Shadows. We got an official kind of tweet that said, hey, Assassin's Creed Shadows is now releasing March 20th of 2025. Okay, and so it was originally set to release on february 14th which is a month away there was no issues with development at this point there was none of this stuff it wasn't like oh we may not make this deadline you know we're really struggling to get this game released or any of that stuff i mean it was it was right yeah and then they they they tweeted this i'm gonna read

it for people just to give some context to this because then we're gonna we're gonna dig at them and it says dear players we want to extend our heartfelt thanks to our incredible fans and dedicated teams for your unwavering support since our announcement in september to further refine and polish assassin's cre Shadows. Since November, we've been thrilled to share our progress through gameplay overviews and the overwhelming excitement has truly inspired us. Each week, we brought valuable feedback from our community. While we've already made remarkable strides, we believe a few additional weeks are needed to implement that feedback and ensure an even more ambitious

and engaging day one experience. Accordingly, the new release date is March 20th of 2025. We remain committed to delivering a high quality immersive experience fostered by ongoing dialogue between our players and development teams. We know you're eager to learn more about Assassin's Creed Shadows, and we're excited to share that more updates will be coming your way very soon. Dude. Ryan, let me just ask you.

Yes. Do you believe that them delaying this has anything to do with implementing feedback and ensuring an even more ambitious and engaging day one experience? I'm going to take what is no. Yeah. Are there any other games that might be big title games

that are releasing? I don't know. Right around the first, second week of February. I feel like maybe one or two might be pretty dang big coming out in February, but I don't know. That's just me. I mean, a company like Ubisoft that's on its last leg

and is probably saying Assassin's Creed Shadows is really our last chance to steer this ship in the right direction. Do you think a company like that and and that's betting everything on assassin's creed shadows um probably doesn't want to go up against two major releases that are both looking like they're going to be way better than this game anyway that's that's probably a safe bet uh for for uh their decision i would assume huh huh you don't say you don't you don't say what that dude what is five weeks gonna do like come on man oh we have to implement these changes we're gonna update it and dial it in no no we're not stupid we're not stupid well we're not entirely stupid okay i was gonna say we are kind of stupid but not full we're fully stupid. We're not all the way stupid.

We're smart enough to understand when, you know, you know when your kid tries to do the same things you did as a kid, and you're like, come on, buddy. Like my son all the time, he tries to tell me I can't pause it. I can't back out on the game. I'm like, bro. I was like, I played this game. Come on, man. Come on. Just, we don't even have to the game. I'm like, bro. I was like, I played this game. Come on, man.

Come on. Just we don't even have to do this. Come on. And so it's just they're just trying to like pull the like it's almost more insulting than just saying, hey, those are some pretty awesome games. We commend them on their development and what they're creating what they're releasing we feel that it's going to be best for us and to get engagement and and get uh people people's eyes on this game if we release in march and that's what we're going to do for the interest of our game and our company okay you know it's like have some have some faith in your game but also i respect that you know but this is just this is garbage i hate this stuff i don't like this stuff either and i can't remember the

company that came out and said hey we're deleting our game because there's too many good games coming out we don't want to have to compete yeah we feel like it would be better for gamers and better for us if we simply just delayed the game a little bit longer so that people can actually play this without competition or other games and then i'm pretty sure that was a vow actually it was a vow i think it was yeah yeah and then it was like well kingdom come deliverance 2 came out and said hey we're gonna release right around then too and then it was kind of like dang it well oh well this is this this is absolutely nothing to do with needing more development time this is a hundred percent we don't want to go up against avowed and we don't want to go up against kingdom come deliverance too.

I don't fault you for that. I'm not saying that the reasoning you're delaying the game is wrong at all. In fact, I think it's probably smart because this is, in my opinion, their last ditch effort. The problem is, is that when you give this fake PR speak to say that, oh, well,

we're implementing feedback from people and we want to make it more ambitious and engaging on a day one experience. It's like, dude, just be honest, man. You know, the other thing is if Assassin's Creed Shadows is not the game that some people are hoping it is going to be. And I know you and I have talked about this and we're not convinced that this game is going to be like the savior for Ubisoft. If nothing else, you can go, oh, you know, man, this game would have been so great. It would have been so good except these other two games released. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not buying it. It's just another thing that irritates me about Ubisoft and the way that they kind of can't just relate to gamers directly.

So I don't know, man. Fix your problems, Ubisoft. They're not. They're just trying to hide them. Well, that's the thing. It's like if you're, I mean, geez, just to make it just blatantly obvious, if you were a soda manufacturer guy and you're selling your own soda brand and you're going to this big festival and on the day you wanted to go there

coke and pepsi are there and you're like well you know i'm gonna perfect my recipe a little bit longer we're gonna come in two weeks or four weeks when they're not there you know but that just happens to be when i'll be done perfecting my recipe no look coke and pepsi are there i don't want to battle against them i'll go in four weeks when nobody else is there, and I'll be the main show. It's just it doesn't – we're not stupid. We see right through it. But at the same time, you know that you have an inferior product if you are not willing to go up against Coke and Pepsi.

Exactly. You know what I mean? Because you're like, look, my soda is pretty good, but it ain't like Coke or Pepsi, man. So it's like I don't really want people to realize that my coke my soda is not as good which has me worried about this game too like exactly that's the thing like they i mean this is not a brand new series or like a new launch with ip like that that is new that doesn't have a long-standing like fan base you know we mentioned a huge assassin's creed fan i i played

the originals like i loved them and and I kind of fell off because they weren't very good. And for them to come in here and just not even be willing to duke it out, like, all right, let's go. They're not confident, dude. And there was a day when an Assassin's Creed release would make other developers be like, no, we're not going up against Assassin's Creed, dude. Delay it. We can't do that. And now they're're like we don't care yeah you you delay your game movies oh man oh boy all right I mean we've probably kicked that horse enough for this episode kick it more kick it all right let's take a quick break and then we're going to talk about a game that that I know we're both excited for and that's a game called skate and

we're going to talk about that right after this short break. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others better help offers therapy a hundred percent online and sign up only takes a few minutes visit betterhelp.com today to get 10 off your first month that's better help help.com all right ryan mr skater man let's play. Mr. Christ Air 360. Bro, I wish I could do a Christ Air.

Ollie, oh man, Benny Hanna. That was the other one. Benny Hanna was a good one. Benny Hanna and the Christ Air was good. Yeah, oh man, see, it's all coming back now, buddy. So we're just calling it Skate. It is kind of AKA Skate 4 for those people that don't know, but they,

the company that's making this has come out and said, Hey, we've been making this game for a little while now. It is going to be free to play, which I think is kind of an interesting take on a game like this, because normally this would be like, you just pay 40 bucks for it. Um,

but it is an EA game. It is going to be free to play. They're just calling it Skate. This is the spiritual kind of successor to the Skate franchise. They are actually doing their console play testing is happening, which is, this is kind of big

because it means the game's far enough in its development that they're getting people in there and they're letting them test these things out. I watched, admittedly, I told you right before we started recording, I said, dude, I don't know that I've actually seen gameplay for this prior to now. I'm familiar with the series and I loved Tony Hawk, their games. So I'm pretty excited about this, Ryan, but as our resident skater dude um why don't you uh why don't you talk about this one a little bit i mean you're excited for this game you know why

and and what's your hopes for this um i am excited i mean it's like you said it's been in development for quite some time um but it's just it's kind it is that successor, but more of that sim style, realistic kind of skating exposure type game. It is not that you're not going to get that 25 combo move thing and just jump over buildings and do things like that like you do in Tony Hawk. So it's going to be a little bit different, a little more realistic. But, man, I sure hope this game is good because I just – I still to this day, I'm just – it's – when you take that on and you become like, you know, quote-unquote skater, it's just like in your blood. And you can't get away from it.

So anytime I see things, I still – I broke my wrist a couple years ago skating because I'm a big old goofball trying to do more than he could in a big old 14-foot bowl. And snapped my wrist to have a skate a little too much after that. But I still love it. And it just never leaves you so playing a game like this is just something that you know it's it's i just i really hope that it they do well with the production of it they they develop it you know they've had plenty of time so i think i i don't have any doubts honestly it's just one of those things it's like get it here like i'll release it i wonder fix the kinks fix the bugs and then just release it my only concern with this game is, is the world, have they moved past that gameplay loop?

We had the Tony Hawk's remake that came out. I remember being very excited about it. I picked it up the day it released, played it, honestly, a pretty good bit. But then just kind of went like, I've been here before. It's kind of the same. It's what i remember from like my teenage years and you know chilling with my buddies and stuff like that and trying like you said trying to put together like the biggest combos and high scores and stuff like that

and you know we kind of see this a little bit where i i am you know famously a very big fan of the twisted metal series oh yeah and that kind of vehicular combat and i really want to see anytime somebody's like what's the series you want to see remade i'm like twisted metal give me more twisted metals but but it's like sometimes the world just kind of moves on and and like my only concern and this is not like slandering the game at all but like my only concern is has the world kind of moved on from like the whole like skate sim skating type game now i will say that the gameplay that i saw looks very good there's like really good camera angles that like you said it's a little bit more of the sim type skater versus like the arcade skater like tony

hawks would be it doesn't mean that you're not dropping 20 feet into a half pipe or like launching over some ramp and doing a cool like backflip or something like that. But that's really my only concern on this. Now, this game is going. It's been in development. You said it's been in development for four and a half years. It's releasing into early access after four and a half years of development, which does make me kind of go like, is this not ready after almost five years of development? But it's also been 15 years since Skate 3 came out. So it's been a long time, man. So I really do want to see this game succeed. I know that, like you said, I'm not a skater, but I love Tony Hawk skating games and I loved watching the X games and stuff like that. So it's like I have a kind of

like an innate appreciation for it. So I am excited but I'm also a little cautious as to like is the world ready for this? That's the thing. I think I mean back late 90s you know early 2000s and a lot of these games came out and skating was a lot bigger too.

There wasn't I mean nowadays you have how many different systems how many different mobile deck systems a million different games there's just so many options to when there was a lot less back then so people that didn't skate could appreciate a game like this so it's just is it gonna hit people in the right kind of points to where even if they're not skaters or if they don't care about that they'll still enjoy the game um i am curious on how they'll do it with like being kind of that free-to-play style maybe you want to unlock rodney mullen or or something like that you know you gotta burn quiz yeah get the battle pass to get the right skaters the old

school skaters you want which i may i may fall into that trap but uh you never know oh yeah i'll be honest i couldn't name a skater like a popular skater that's from the last five years like i've been out of that kind of mindset for a while and like i said it's kind of my concern with this too but if you're on console and i don't know why they're snubbing the pc crowd here either, but you can actually sign up for the console playtesting right now because they're getting people signed up for that. Ryan, we've got a few more stories. We're going to kind of speed this up just a little bit.

You know, this has kind of become the Marvel Rivals podcast over the last few episodes. You know what? I got no shame, man, because the rest of the world is loving Marvel Rivals, and we love it when people are having fun together and they find video games that they can play. We're seeing people grouping up on our discord server and playing. We have played, uh, we're playing nightly. I mean, it's one of those things where Marvel rivals has taken over the world. Um, as kind of an update to that, they, they kind of finally came out and they said that Marvel Rivals raked in $136 million in its first month.

Dude. That's a lot of money. Now, I know people go, well, $136 million. That's in one month. One month. And that was before season one even released, dude. I mean, I know I bought the Battle Pass. I did, too.

You bought the luxury Battle Pass, apparently. They got 20 of my dollars. They are predicting that Marvel Rivals will actually exceed a billion dollars in revenue in its first year, which means that's a whole lot of cash. Yeah. And that also means that's a whole lot of popularity.

So yeah, they're predicting the annual revenue to be about one point three six billion dollars. This is what people and all these developers are chasing. We saw it with Concord. So with all these live service games, right, this is why all these companies want to make these live service games and why a lot of them whiff, but if you hit... Yeah. $1.36 billion, dude. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money, man. All you got to do, just make a good, fun game

that has an awesome loop that you can continuously play and you continuously feed them content, which is the perfect setup for Marvels because how many million superheroes they are. And even if you don't know them like you may like their play style or like their um character once you get on it and it's free so anyone you're like yeah you should hop on it's free just download it try it out if you don't like it no harm no foul you know it's man like you said it's a risk but man when those like a billion dollars, that's a lot of zeros, buddy.

That is a lot. And I mean, a company, that's what all these developers are hoping for. They did it with Marvel Rivals. I don't see it going away anytime soon. Season one hit. Steam actually reported over a half a million concurrent users playing Marvel Rivals. It was like 660 or something crazy. That's not counting consoles. That's just steam. So this game is massive. It is worldwide. If

you're not at least trying out Marvel Rivals, jump on board. We keep saying this. We don't get anything out of that. They're not giving us a cut. We just want gamers to have fun. They really should. But just give it a shot. Come play with us. Come join our Discord server. There's people that are playing. There's people of all skill sets and all experience levels with this. So have fun. Have fun with other gamers, man. That's one of the things we absolutely love about gaming. And it's one of the things we love about Marvel Rivals is it's bringing everybody together. Honestly, I can't think of another game that's done this since Helldivers 2. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, it's been almost a year now since Helldivers

2 released. And this is the only other game that I can think of where it's like a huge portion of gamers have kind of come together to like enjoy a video game together. So speaking of really good video games, Ryan, we don't really have to dive into this one, but a CD project confirmed that the Witcher just turned 10. So happy birthday, which is one of the best games ever made. I'm I love it. Anytime we see somebody say, Hey, I'm diving into the Witcher three for the first time. And we always go like, Oh man, you're in for such a ride. Oh yeah. By the way, just make it past the first like six hours. Get to the Bloody Baron.

I promise you. Yeah, and then you'll understand what the heck everybody's talking about. But they also did confirm that right now they have over a hundred devs working on The Witcher 4. They also went on to talk about how they have had some of the same quest designers

that have worked for the company through Witcher 1, Witcher 2, Witcher 3, and are now working on the Witcher 4. And we have always said that the side quests and the quests in Witcher 3 are some of the best that gaming has ever known. And for me, knowing that the same people are working on witcher 4 just gives me a ton of confidence now ryan you said something just disgusting and and mean and and unruly to me before we started recording and i want to see if you're brave enough to say that on the air about witcher 4 what that you're a little hesitant that you're not sure it's going to be fantastic well i'm just i'm just a little worried. You never know.

Cautious optimism. Yeah, cautious optimism. It's just one of those things, man. It's hard to follow up some of these that are just the greatest game ever made. And we talk, again, like you mentioned earlier, Half-Life and stuff.

Yeah, I mean, people are going to go. People move on to other jobs. Yeah, we have some of our old staff here and stuff it's um yeah i mean your people are gonna go people move on to other jobs yeah we have some some of our old staff here but it's like sometimes it's it's that group that makes the magic happen everybody together puts in that little bit that all kind of meshes together and so if it's not there you're always kind of playing with fire so you never know if it's gonna if it's gonna hit or not and so i of playing with fire. So you never know if it's going to, if it's going to hit or not. And so I don't know, do I,

I hope so, man. Cause I know just as much as you, I freaking love, I love this series. Witcher three is one of my all time favorite games ever. I have a lot of faith in Witcher four. I also understand the thinking because there is that fear that it's like,

please don't mess this up, man. Please don't like there's a ton that it's like, please don't mess this up, man. Please don't. There's a ton of risk. Honestly, I think the risk almost outweighs the benefit, except that if it's Fantastic Witcher 4 will be a worldwide phenomenon at that point. But yeah, it's super risky, but I also am glad that we're getting it.

All right, Stellar Blade. The developer for Stellar Blade, which I have not played yet. I'm very grateful to hear that it's coming to PC in 2025. I will absolutely be picking this game up. But this is a really cool story because when a company sees success, we'd like to think that they pass that success on to the people that made it happen, man, not just the CEOs and stuff like that. Well, that's exactly what happened with the Stellar

Blade devs. They saw success in Stellar Blade. And what they did is they gave a PS5 Pro and a $3,400 bonus to all 311 staff that they have working for them as a way of saying thank you. And as a reward for the success of the game. Now that is a really cool thing to see in the gaming industry, dude. Yeah. Oh, for sure. We don't see that with EA. We don't see that with Blizzard. We don't see that with these big AAA developers. You know, we see that what do they get? You get laid off instead. You know, because our shareholders aren't happy. Good job. Go find another one. Yeah. And so this is just one of those quick happy stories that we wanted to talk about because rewarding your staff and saying, hey, good job.

I cannot think of a better way to keep your talent working for you than to show them that they're appreciated. And giving people a PS5 Pro and a big fat stack of $3,400 is just a really cool thing to see. So kudos to Shift Up, who is the developer on this. They had a good year. Stellar Blade was not the only reason or the only game that they released. Apparently they have some action RPG mobile game that's doing better than Stellar Blade but they said that stellar blade is still consistently selling pretty well so just i i'd like to see other devs take a uh take a page from that notebook oh heck yeah i mean and that's gonna uh you know entice people so much more and it's what is it 311 you said yeah 311 employees so that's like i mean roughly based on the money

and then the ps5 like that's like 1.3 ish million that they just popped out just like that you know for their staff which is that's that's pretty cool man you know when other companies are giving people a pizza party yeah oh gosh yeah my wife my wife comes from the corporate world and i'm not ashamed to say it was bank of america you scum of the earth but um uh unless you want to you know sponsor us or advertise or whatever i'm sure we can work something then we can totally totally work something out but but like they would do that all the time they do these dumb little pizza parties or this we hit this quota and then it's like oh by the way you're not getting a raise this year and then their ceo goes and gets some huge bonus so to

see a company do this to repay and kind of give it back to the people like that's who makes your company run so it it is cool to see a larger company do that for its for its people and it's it's it's rare honestly unfortunately but it is yeah it shouldn't be but uh yeah so we did want to end this episode on just kind of a happy note um with you know like i said other developers take a take a page out of this book treat your employees well let them know that they're valued and you're probably going to get better employees that are going to make better video games and you know stick around for the for the long haul simple as that as well. So, yeah. All right.

Well, that does it for this episode of This Week in Gaming. Thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you for chatting video games. It's the reason we do this podcast is we are gamers just like you. Gamers love to talk about games. They love talking about, you know, this kind of stuff. And so this is why we do what we do. If you enjoyed this episode and you haven't done it already, make sure you follow us. Click that plus button, that follow button, that

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