Video Gamers Podcast - Monster Hunter Woes and Ghost of Tsushima meets Witcher (TWIG) – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan, and John break down This Week in Gaming with some major video game shakeups and surprise reveals. We’re talking: Monster Hunter Wilds suffers a review bomb and drops to “Overwhelmingly Negative” on Steam Blood Message trailer drops out of nowhere—it’s giving Witcher meets Ghost of Tsushima Splitgate 2 developer 1047 Games hit with layoffs as co-founders refuse pay to keep the dream alive Mindseye’s disastrous launch leads to layoffs at Build A Rocket Boy Charlie Cox says he feels like a fraud after the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 It’s a jam-packed TWIG episode with gaming news, controversy, and a few unexpected feels. All the video game news and discussions you need, every week, right here on the Video Gamers Podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, and Phelps Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on X: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1    Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. With so many incredible games already out in 2025, we can celebrate the wins and sometimes mourn the losses. Not every game can be a split fiction, a Kingdom come deliverance to, or an expedition 33 and the sad truth is some studios will fail and some games will fall. In today's episode we've got a few sad stories but there's hope gamers, some incredible looking trailers, some endearing voice actors and more are on the plate for today. But first, some introductions are in order.

I am your host Josh, and joining me, some studios use terms like redundancy, reorganization, or restructuring, but he'll forever be safe from any of that. It's Ryan. Yeah, because all anyone needs to ever do is just re Ryan and then you're good to go, right? No, oh, come on. That was on the spot Pretty good No, oh Ryan Whatever move on move on, you know, it's gonna happen in five minutes

You're gonna think of like the best answer to that and then you're like gosh guys guys no yeah and joining us his approval rating is steadily increasing and while he did have a slight delay by moving to Washington he's back and ready to leave his early access period it's John hello everybody yeah great great news News week this week very interesting stuff happening in the gaming in the gaming industry really start to talk about and John's back John still on his gaming headset, but man soon last one Last episode before people are here and that smooth buttery voice coming from a good microphone. I love it.

If only Amazon would deliver packages on time. I swear, every time, dude, you go and you order something and it'll be there in an hour and a half for just whatever, but the thing you need in the time, when it's like, okay, I need it this date, all right, it can be there, we're good to go, thank you Amazon Prime, your package is delayed like two hours before. You're like, oh, come on. Yeah, yeah. I get the things I don't need like within an hour

and the things I absolutely need this day. It's like, oh, we're sorry guys. Oh, there was a slight delay. So man, you know, some weeks we get to talk about a bunch of trailers, a bunch of awesome news, that kind of thing. This is the nature of the gaming industry, man. And, you know, it seems like some of these stories are just.

It's not good, Bob. So we're not trying to be negative, but hey, our job is to bring the news and what's going on in the gaming world to you. And this week it's people are just they're getting kicked a little bit, man. So let's just jump in boys, except we have to thank somebody. Yes. We have to thank an incredible member of our community,

a fine gentleman by the name of Brett. Brett signed up for rare status. Brett is honestly one of, I love Brett to death, man. He's always positive. He's always cheering people on. He loves games. He's always positive. He's always cheering people on. He loves games. He's always there in the morning, telling people good morning.

So Brett, we appreciate you, buddy. Thank you for signing up to support this show. Yeah, thank you, Brett. Thank you, Brett. Yeah, Brett's hanging out with us in streams, man. Yeah, you're our kind of people, Brett. Great dude. Thank you, buddy.

Well, that ends the good news, boys. Yeah. Oh, no. And now that we've had that moment of joy, let's really take everybody's mood. All right. Well, like I said, don't shoot the messenger here, people. Let's just start off, man.

One of the most beloved games this year, one of the fastest selling games on Steam ever. Uh, just a little franchise, uh, called Monster Hunter with their recent release of Monster Hunter Wilds. You know, came out this year. There was a ton of people that were super excited for Monster Hunter Wilds. I know a few people in our community were playing it. Ace and Greg, uh, jumped in our community were playing it. Ace and Greg jumped in and were playing this together

and were like, guys, you are missing out, man. This game is so much fun. And we just went, yeah, we don't have time, man. Well, it just goes to show you, because if you happen to go check Steam right now and you think man, it's monster hunter It's amazing. Everybody in the world loves it. All right, you know gamers that we knew we're having a blast with it It's it's overwhelmingly negative guys. So it's it's a disaster right now 54% dude listen to this. Okay. Look at this right now

steam DB 4686 people in game, you know what? You know what their all-time peak was? It's a lot three months ago one almost 1.4 million That is crazy. That is the biggest drop-off I have ever seen That is the biggest drop off I have ever seen. Yeah, 10 million sales is the best performing Steam game this year and the fifth best of all time. This just goes to show you though that sales numbers

don't necessarily reflect quality. It's so to kind of give people some info on what's happening. So a lot of this is coming through just a bad, a bad PC port. Performance issues are absolutely just gutting this game as far as its review rating on Steam. I know a lot of people are very unhappy

with the way that the performance in the game is now. Apparently it wasn't that bad initially, but then it got bad and it's like I don't know if they don't know how to fix it or listen guys we've already made our money we sold 10 million copies in like a shorter period of time number five on Steam all time yeah we're just laughing all the way to the bank people because you know it's time to move on to the DLC now or whatever they're doing with it but like this begs a question I I don't wanna spend too much time on this,

but it's like, dude, they've made their money. They got everything they could possibly want out of Monster Hunter Wilds. People that played it initially seem to be pretty happy with it. So like, if you were Capcom, would you put a ton of effort into trying to turn these negative ratings

around at this point? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we're going to be talking a little bit later in this episode about a couple of examples of, you know, studios basically that are going to fail because of a bad game. And Capcom obviously is a, it's a legacy company. They've got a whole line of games that have a loyal following But the reality is is that any company is only as good as their reputation people don't care what you did yesterday They care what you're doing today and tomorrow and I think that if monster hunter, which is one of their biggest properties leaves a bad taste in people's mouth that is going to Rob a giant chunk of future revenue from them.

So yeah, I absolutely believe they care. I know they made a lot of money and they would like to continue making money. I think they will too. Something like that. When you have a second release on such an iconic IP, you want the people to keep that good feelings, that good vibes with that that you know series so the next one there no questions asked they're gonna buy it because they have all the good memories with the prior regardless

of what it looks like obviously they're gonna try to make it look good but you know you want those steadfast fans that are gonna be there what I don't get is I know I know Greg and ace played it and I was talking to Greg because I was asking him about this. I'm like, hey man, I think you guys played. What's the deal? And he's like, dude, we loved it. Like, I don't know what the deal is.

Like they- They were all about it. Yeah, they loved it. And they had, I don't understand, like, Blanche is so critical and so many developers and so many games failed the launch process. I don't know if I've seen one that has hit the launch so well and then just taken such a nosedive on updates and whatever ones, what?

I can name another one, Helldivers 2. Okay. Remember the absolute crap that Helldivers 2 went through with Sony trying to enforce the region lock and you had to link your PlayStation account to be able to play stuff though. Like this is- No, no it wasn't gameplay but that's what I'm saying the example of a great lunch I mean helldivers had some some server issues at first but but then again that wasn't really helped I forgot about that dude I remember oh my

gosh dude you just hit a memory core memory unlocked dude I remember setting my computer and then leaving for hours and then coming back like, Oh, I'm in, I'm in, you know, and then we can jump into the game, dude. Oh my God. I left it and then I'm just, I went to work for like eight hours and came home and there's my dude standing in my ship. That's why we don't leave it in. We just sit on our ship. Yep. Yeah. So John, I agree with you completely on this, by the way. I think that it is Capcom. I think that they do have a reputation to protect.

I think that they absolutely will fix this. It is the timeliness of how soon they fix it that I'm a little curious about, but I agree with you 100% that it is Capcom. This is a beloved series. You can't stain this. And I get, look man, Monster Hunter, that's a console-ish game and maybe they don't care about the PC port 100%, but you also can't overlook the PC port nowadays either because PC gamers are not, they're really not happy about these bad ports man and so I agree I

think that they will do the right thing they will fix this but man have they dug themselves a hole all right let's let's have a let's have a moment of you know joy guys another moment of brightness because goodness gracious I I'll be honest I didn't know about this trailer until John brought it up and And I don't know how you get a trailer like this That that we don't know about but I'm like what the heck is this thing called blood message? Like what and it says ghost of Tsushima meets the witcher What like I? Start watching this trailer and I'm, this might be the greatest thing

I've ever seen, man. It looks amazing. It looks so rad, dude. And then you start combining Ghost of Tsushima with The Witcher and stuff, and it's like, wait a minute. Like, wait a minute. But then the Spidey sense starts tingling just a little bit. The little bit of being a skeptic when you've been gaming for like 40 years

You know kind of starts kicking in and then I'm just like there's no way dude There's no way this game is this good and It kind of reminded me for people that have been listening to the show for a while It kind of reminded me about a game that we talked about. It was probably almost two years ago called Alkahest, where it was the most mind blowing trailer we have ever seen. And we went, the future of gaming is here.

It's like, it's here. And then like it came out that that whole trailer, even though it was made to look like gameplay, it was not actually gameplay, it was all pre-rendered stuff. And the developers were kind of like, well, I mean, it's going to be indicative of gameplay. And then we were like, Oh, come on, man. You can't do that.

We hope it looks this way. I mean, that's what we're trying. So, but blood message, guys, this looks insane. But is it actually going to look that way? Like that's the question, man. John, what did you think of this? You the question man John. What did you think of this? You found this like what did you think on this? Well, it looks I'm a sucker for anything. That's feudal Japan Yeah, so so when I saw it I glommed onto it right away and I had the same take you do at face value It looks amazing, but we have no idea what it's gonna actually turn out to be Another game we're gonna be talking about later looked really, really good. And then when it was released, you know, not so much.

So all I can say is that there's a lot of really good looking games that are in the pipe and I have no idea how they're gonna play and I will reserve judgment until I get the opportunity. Oh, that's so responsible of you. I'm not, I'm gonna say I don't think this game's gonna look this way. Well, look at- I think that's a responsible of you. I'm not, I'm gonna say I don't think this game's gonna look this way.

Well look at- I think that's a safe bet, man. Look at how long it's been since we've talked about Acahest, like in the, we don't even, I honestly, I forgot about it until you mentioned it because there's no news on the forefront, like something that would revolutionize gaming with the way it looked in the gameplay, you know, just kind

of disappeared because people were like, yeah, that's not what it's really going to be. Anyone can make a cinematic trailer or movie. So yeah, man, this just, it looks so good. It's the future, but when that's going to be, that remains to be seen. The animation in this game looks insane to me. The graphics look insane. The fidelity, the lighting, like the characters, like everything in this absolutely screams

like future of gaming. But then it's kind of like, here's my big problem, man, is that they're trying, they're starting to make trailers that look like gameplay, that are not actually the gameplay of the game now I will I will eat these words with a spoonful mayonnaise, which I hate by the way If this game actually comes out and looks and plays like this trailer does I will I will eat my words gladly because that means We are getting something truly incredible, but the issue is I cannot stand the idea of trailers being made to look like

gameplay, but they're not gameplay. You know what the perfect example of this is on the mobile gaming things? You know where they have the little games and it looks all neat and then you download the mobile game and it's freaking Candy Crush instead? Yeah. That should be a crime, man. Yeah, like that should be a crime man. I agree man, I agree. So that's my worry is that we're getting these like Alka-Hast and Blood Message trailers where it is mind blowing and then it's like oh but that's not actually going to be the game guys. Wait a second, did we just like kind of unveil something?

Is this the reason why you hate indie? Not indie, but mobile mobile games mobile games so much Yes, it is. I hate mobile games because they're liars. They're big fat rotten liars You don't give me a game where I'm trying to free the princess by pulling little rods out and stuff And then I download the game and it's freaking candy crush, man So do you also just like pop any link that pops up on your screen too on your computer? Yeah, they're all legit aren't they? Like the free Steam gift card link that I think. It's on the internet.

Yeah. It's got to be true. What are you talking about, Ryan? All right, good to know. No, I'm just glad that I figured out why you hate mobile games so much now. Anyway, listen, we've been talking about it. I'm going to include the trailer for Blood Message

in this video. So if you're listening on Spotify, you can scrub back a little bit and watch this trailer to see why we're kind of like, oh my goodness, but also I'm a little skeptical on this one, man. Yep. But yeah, what a trailer though. Kudos to one of the main bet.

One of the coolest trailers I've ever seen. Put that talent towards the gameplay and we'll be all right. And like we always, we talk about Blizzard trailers, they were always some of the best ever to do it. Oh my gosh. Some of the best ever, but you knew they weren't trying to portray it as gameplay. They're just saying, look at this world.

This is what it's gonna be. But this is our gameplay. This is just to get you hyped. Like this is just about kind of- Well, yeah, and I think that like, Blizzard's been around for a long time. 24 Entertainment, who's the developer of this game that we're talking about, Blood Message, is a much newer developer. And when Blizzard was doing it,

it was when they started doing cinematics and stuff like that, cinematics and trailer, it was like not something that everyone could do very well. Yeah. You know, that was like a, man, we are a, we are we are a triple triple a quadruple a studio and Look at what we can produce guys Nobody else can produce these cinematics and it was special at the time it was but now now it's not so now it's far easier To produce a good point full cinematics Yeah, the overwatch shorts man when they started doing the character shorts that are like these full-fledged like five-minute cartoons are still some of the best things I've seen man

Totally yeah like legitimately so All right. Well, that's the only good news you get people the rest of well now there is one more charming story that we'll wrap up on because we always want to leave on a good note, but Guys this one this one makes me a little sad man because this game was great and it came out of nowhere So split gate we've talked about Splitgate on this podcast before many years ago. Splitgate, the original game was a college project. I don't know if he was going for his master's or PhD,

you're just graduating and this was his project or whatever. But the history of Splitgate is basically that. A couple guys developed this game in college as just a fun project and then people started playing it went yo this game is super fun this is a halo with portals basically it was an arena shooter you got to use portals literally the portals from portal to they're the same colors even I mean you know it was but man who knew an arena shooter with portals was super fun man it was free to

play boom so then split gate 2 gets announced I think it's only been within the last year to be honest where they announced it and said hey, it's coming out They went through an open beta split gate 2 releases And it's not going so well boys You know There was some I don't want to call it political controversy that kind of came about, and we won't get into that, but I guess the founder or the owner of the

company wore a hat that said, make first person shooters great again. A lot of people took that to be a political stance. He said it was not. They thought it was just a funny saying. They meant no political affiliation with that whatsoever but at that point people had latched on to it and They took a lot of heat for that even though they tried to say no no no no no we were just trying to say hey First-person shooters like let's make them fun the arena shooter genre has died out and this was a huge thing like

You guys have played quake right? Yeah, we've played unreal tournament right you played halo back in the day like arena shooters were the jam Oh, they were everything greatest things ever super fun And then they just died out because of battle royals in these these you know the genre evolved So split gay 2 came out with a battle Royale mode apparently? I did not know this. I've never played their Battle Royale mode, but they also came out with a micro transaction pack. Yeah, for like $140. I was going to say you got a couple hundred bucks. Yeah, it was $140 some odd, man. yeah that gives you the yuck doesn't it yep? Yeah like Ryan you've played split game right yes, okay, John have you ever played split gate?

No, I I mean I kind of had the same feeling about this is your initial impression of marathon You know that just nothing's right. Yeah, like? It might be for some people, but yeah. There's a bazillion other games out there I gotta play. Here's what makes me sad. Splitgate, amazing. We played it a lot back in the day, man. And Paul was insanely good at this game out of nowhere. Paul was really good at Splitgate, yeah.

It's just like, how are you so good at this, man? Was he really good at the shooter part or the teleporting part? Both. That was the part that, yeah, I don't know, man. But it was just all of a sudden, Paul's like, I found my game, boys. And I'm like, you did, because he was talking. We're moving on. We're not good at this.

Yeah, so but Splink A2, it's like, bro, you get the chance to evolve this game. Like you're re-animating a genre that has been dead for a long time, and you're bringing the arena shooter back. And then they just botched it, dude. Like, I get you want to make money, man. And I get that if your game is free to play, that you have to have microtransactions in there.

Nobody faults you for that. But when you come out with a hundred and forty dollar microtransaction pack, you know, that starts to scream like, dude, Nicklin died me to death, man. Let me give you two dollars over and over and over again. But when you ask for one hundred and forty dollars, like the key said, John, I kind of I kind of feel gross about it. Yeah. And politics aside, right, when you're wearing a hat

that says make first person shooters great again, and you release an expensive pack like this, like you're kind of drawing yourself in the drawing a line in the sand like Conor McGregor, for instance, who is a big, what do you want to call it provocateur in mixed martial arts. He was a trash talker, one of the best if not the the best trash talkers ever. And that's really great. I don't like the guy personally, but if you can back it up, that's awesome. Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.

But when you posture yourself like that and you slip up, oh man, do the wolves come out for you. Like you had better deliver or People are going to take their pound of flesh and that's exactly what's happening. There's just I do got to say What one little silver lining part of this story is? You know, this is very PR facing but the fact that the founders are not taking the salary So, you know, they're recognizing there's an issue and they're laying people off, but the founders are not taking a salary while they're trying to correct this situation.

I think at face value is a nice gesture. I agree. That is the one saving caveat to all of this is it's like, instead of being greedy and being like, well, we're just gonna get our money and run, they're literally saying like, we are not taking money. We're going to fix the game. We're going to fix the issues.

Like I would love to see it to be honest, because I think that there is something there with Splitgate and Splitgate 2. I did play a closed beta. So I did get a few matches in of Splitgate 2. It didn't grab me kind of the way that the original Splitgate did, but I also really didn't have enough time

to give it like a fair shake either. But I do like the fact that these guys are saying we are not taking money We're gonna make sure that our developers are paid. We're gonna fix the game. We're listening to you Like I do think and again, that's probably a little bit of PR speak But when you say I'm not taking a salary on this until we fix the game that at least shows me that you actually do Care, so alright. We got a couple more stories But we're going to take a quick break and then we'll come right back and talk about quite possibly one of the biggest

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And listen, full transparency because we are honest and we always say we don't get it right all the time you know and this is a game that actually came up in our most anticipated games for the remainder of the year episode and one of the games that we brought up is a game called Minds Eye. It looked like a futuristic GTA kind of knockoff the animations and the gameplay looked pretty darn good man. It was literally GTA in the future. You had high tech drones and all this stuff going on. And, you know, it had the driving. It had the characters is like, man, this game looks like it could be really good. It still looks like it could be really good.

Why isn't it? I'm shocked. I'm absolutely shocked at the response to this game. I, you know, this is one of those things where I'm shocked. I'm absolutely shocked at the response to this game. I, you know, this is one of those things where I'm, I won't say I'm shocked. I am disappointed because I think that you could have had a really neat IP and used a franchise like GTA to kind of drum up interest and stuff, which kind of worked because let's be honest, Minds Eye has been in the news, you know, leading up to its launch. It was making headlines and stuff, but then it all just came crashing down because. I they made the critical error and I'm going to, I'm going to start calling this like the,

the rule one when it comes to a game anymore is that you cannot you cannot release a game that is unfinished and insanely buggy and is not ready for release and hope that you can fix it later on I know that for a year or two or three that that was okay and gamers kind of went oh man day one patch like what poor performance well they'll patch it all out it'll be fine no, dude and Minds Eye released in a Disastrous state for a lot of people We have one long-standing community member that played this game and went look I think there's a case a little bit of a case of like the internet raging against these people. He played the full game

He said it was it had some really good moments It had some moments that weren't so good But like overall this was not the disaster that the internet is making it seem like but If you watch some of the reels and some of the trailers and things like that that people are posting This game looks buggy as anything dude. It looks unfinished and you can't do that, man You cannot do that. And here's the thing, this was their first game.

What is it, Build a Rocket Boy is the name of the studio? Yeah. Okay, number one, I hate that name for a studio. That's a really bad name. Rocket Boy, like that's just a terrible name. You guys need a PR person, number one. But number two, this is your first game, man. You can't do this. You delay it and you beg and you plead for more money from somebody

and say, guys, we need one more year. But at that point, we think we'll be on to something. But if you release a game in this condition, bro, Sony, Sony was giving refunds for this game and Sony don't do that. Me. That's like, yeah, was giving refunds for this game and Sony don't do that. Like, that's, ah. Yeah, this type of thing continues to surprise me. How games, movies, anything gets this far into production and release without somebody going like,

guys, we need to stop, this is not ready yet. You know, this is going to do more harm than good. If we release it as is, we have to figure out some way to fix this. I, it is frankly beyond me. It's they had to have spent again, a fortune of time and money in this game. And, uh, you know what I get? I don't know. The only thing that makes sense to me is that actually their name

build a rocket boy kind of makes me think like maybe they didn't actually know it was buggy. Like maybe somebody who's in a key decision making position at that company isn't calibrated correctly. And, and when they were playing the game, you know, maybe they had bad playtest or small playtest or something where they're like, ah, it's good enough. It's good enough. It's good enough. It may not have even registered that there was something wrong with the game. I don't know.

This is something that absolutely baffles me, dude. So we have an interview with Warhorse Studios that's going to release later this week because those guys are awesome. We freaking love those guys. This Friday, check it out. And part of the conversation was like, do you know that you're onto something? Do you know that you have made this amazing game? And when you have games like Mind's Eye, they have to know, right?

They have to know. They have to know that this game isn't ready Like is it really a shock to them and if it is a shock to them? guys get gamers involved man gamers love closed betas I get to play a game that other people don't get access to oh I'm so special would not agree more man closed beta would have would have solved so guys Assuming they took the feet guys Guess how many people are playing? Minds eye right now. Oh, it's like 50 something dude. It's

77 people oh yeah Dad is Brutal guys this game just launched the all-time peak within the last 13 days was 3300 Brutal I mean dude. How does that happen? Well, that's my point, right? How does that happen, dude? Because you either knew and you ignored it because you're going, we're out of money and we have to do something.

And so you just lob that Hail Mary into the air and hope and pray that somehow it just doesn't blow up. But if it does, your company's done, dude. Like, build a rocket boy is not going to exist after this man Like they're gonna dissolve they're gonna devs are gonna go and this is the sad part Well that the developers for this game are getting laid off That well, yeah the layoff that I mean we saw layoffs with Marvel rivals, which by any measure was a smashing Oh, yeah, so layoffs post release isn't I think unexpected, you know

there's roles that become redundant once the game is released like artists and that kind of thing, you know, like but Nevertheless, there was something specific that they said in the press release that gave me some indication of health of the company was that they said that they had regrettably had to hire a restructuring company that was looking for redundancies. And typically when somebody, I don't want to say all the time, but a good portion of the time when a company hires a restructuring firm, that is step one towards chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Yeah. If you don't know what your redundancies are, isn't that a problem? If you're the CEO of this company and you're like, guys, I don't know what's redundant and not, maybe you're not in line with what you need to be knowing. Yeah. For being a major game developer too, need to be knowing. Yeah. For, for being a major game developer too. Like, I mean, it, the part of me too wonders cause you know, with the ability of the internet and everything today, where you can just release patches. I feel like a lot of these devs are just kind of using that as a crutch to not

finish these games, you know, before, you know, and we talked to the Warhorse guys and they're like, I don't know how they did it. There's just so much like, how do know, before, you know, and we talked to the Warhorse guys and they're like, I don't know how they did it. There's just so much, like, how do you, how do you get all this done? How do you have all of the bugs smashed out and fleshed out and everything good and having a working game to release,

like without the ability to patch it. And now I think they just rely too much on those. And sometimes it's more than they can handle and you just get a mess so I have to ask this question because this ties right in because it's something that I know we're not huge fans of but early access If if mine's I had gone into early access would that have helped then it'd be an early access for a year year and a half And it's just this but then when it fully launches 1.0 launch and then it comes out and it's like, okay, well, at least it's not super buggy.

That's like close beta. That's like somebody setting up a painting and they're halfway done. They're like, Hey, you want to see me finish? I mean, I don't disagree with you, but I think this is part of the reason we see this kind of like I get it. Yeah. Early access being so common now, because could this have prevented this problem? I think there's too many devs and too many people think that they can make a game

and then they get stuck with stuff like this when they run out of money they can't manage it properly they can't do what they need to do to have a good launch and we get stuff like this so um get gamers involved honestly gamers love stuff man and I know there's QA teams and there's... Bro, I'm in the beta. I'm in the beta, bro. It's different. Like honestly, get gamers involved, man. We'll give you feedback. And I get that you can't please everybody, but you take that data and you kind of go, okay, guys, like we at least have a general idea now, man. All right. The negative, like once you start paying somebody somebody, if you have somebody on the team that's in some formal role

where they're doing QC or whatever, the problem that you run into is that you're ultimately going to run into some sort of bias where the people go, I have to protect my job. Right. What do these people want to hear? And when you do a closed beta, man, get a bunch of Reddit people on that closed beta, they will when you do a closed beta man get a bunch of reddit people in that closed beta

No, it will tear you apart. Take take some a night's presence before you do that man Cuz you're gonna need them before that Yeah, right, and you have to take a lot of that with the grain of salt But even even in the most like you know face level sort of criticisms There's probably a little kernel of truth, you know, and you could, you could get to the root of what's wrong with your game and give you the opportunity to fix it. Yeah. You think a bunch of my boys, let's end on a, I love this story, man.

I love this story so much. I saw the clip from this earlier today. So Charlie Cox, for those that don't know is the, the voice actor, the he's a daredevil star also for those that didn't know. He is the voice of Gustav in expedition 33. And, you know, expedition 33, all the rage, you know, it's, it's people are throwing game of the year, you know, it's going to win. It very well might. It's, um, yeah. I mean, and so, you know, this is all the news. If you haven't played expedition

33 yet, do yourself a favor, stop what you're doing and play this game. Number one. Um, but, uh, right. Oh man. So, but he was at a panel of some sort and people were congratulating him on the success of expedition 33 and asking him questions. And he just kind of spilled the beans and he went guys I Feel like a total fraud when people congratulate me on the success of this game because number one I'm not a gamer. I have no idea what this game is and number two

I was in the studio for like four hours one day and that's it And I just went like what? Gustav Gustav from Expedition 33. And you were in the studio for four hours, one day? And that's it? Like, that's all you know about this? Like, but I loved the fact that the guy was like,

I love that you guys love this game, but I don't know anything about it. I was only there for four hours, people. You're like, yeah, I voiced some guy named Gustav like okay cool, but like You know I don't I just it just just tickled me so much man. This is character is he like a baker or something yeah Yeah, some of the best voice acting I've ever heard in the game. It's so good. Yeah, that's that's really interesting I wonder if the success of this game has gotten him closer to being a gamer.

You know what I mean? I have to imagine if you're a part of some just insanely popular, successful project that you'd be like, all right, I gotta check this out. I mean, like, come on. It's weird to me too that he's not a gamer being, I mean, he's daredevil. So he's in the comic book world.

He's Marvel, you know, you have these kind of video game adjacent type hobbies. And to not be a gamer is also frustrating to me who, who loves doing voices, making characters, uh, and so he's like, I don't even know who this guy is. And I'm just like doing the voice for a character for one of the greatest games of the year. And for the last decade, you know, I don't even know. I don't care either. He could have a really busy professional life. I mean, he's awesome as Daredevil. There's probably a lot of press and stuff that goes along with that.

He's probably making a lot more money doing Daredevil than he's used to. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I wonder what he actually got paid for. That's where my brain went, because I'm like, dude, like, OK, let's just say that he got some hourly rate, right, for four hours in the studio or whatever. But then like Expedition 33, one of the most successful games of the year, one of the best games we've played in many, many years. Do you think he's kind of like, dang, I should have asked for more money. Yeah, it's a, it's really interesting. Um,

so I listened to another, uh, another podcast from time to time. Okay. When I'm out of this show, I'm on this show. Come on guys. Uh, when I'm out of this show, I'm on this show, come on guys. When I'm out of this show to listen to, I listen to Daniel Tosh's podcast. Tosh.0? Yeah, well it's like the Tosh Show is the podcast. But he had the voice actress who was Madame Trudeau from Resident Evil, the big tall woman. Oh, oh no, that's Demetresque, Lady Demetresque. Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you.

Lady Demetresque. Yeah, Lady Demetresque. Madame Trudeau, anyway. He had her on the show and he was describing, you know, those are very well received, very popular, very me-me character. Oh yeah, for sure. When it came out, it was kind of all over the internet for a while.

And he was asking her what she got paid for it. And she was very candid and said, not a lot. You know, voice acting in video games doesn't really pay a lot. And the double edged sword, unfortunately, is that unlike movies and TV shows, there's no residuals. So whatever you get paid initially is what you get paid. And the upside for somebody in her position is the ability to visit conventions that are

directly correlated to whatever this is. So for her, it would be video game conventions and horror conventions. And she's able to sell her autographs or photography, photographs, or whatever the case is. And that's really interesting, because Charlie Cox, I don't think he needs it, man. I think if anything, he may be looking to just diversify his portfolio and set himself up as a voice actor or something like that,

so he has a place to pivot in the future. It was only four hours, too. Four four hours of his day he probably went down to studio knocked it out and then went to also kudos though man cuz he freaking knocked it out of the park he did I can't imagine showing up like okay I got a few lines to read I'm gonna be here for half a day and then just freaking like home run dude well yeah and And without spoiling anything for people who haven't played Expedition 33, that four hours that he recorded goes through the whole spectrum of human emotion.

Oh, yeah. That's unbelievable voice acting. So whatever he got paid, it probably wasn't enough. But I'm glad he made it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so what a fun little story, man, of just you know

not even realizing what he did man for one of the best games we've seen in a really long time to just be kind of blissfully ignorant of like the impact that you had and the impact that you have on people that play the game and all that is just insane to me man. Do you think that might have helped him like not having a connection to it to where he could just be kind of raw with that character You don't you want that connection though to like I would need it at least like I need to know like I need to know My relationship with Mayel like I you know, I don't know. I'd be one of those weird Dude where everyone forgets about Sophie's. Yeah All right, well listen we went long on this one, boys.

Thank you everybody for hanging out with us, chatting video games. Sorry for the little bit of a bummer news for the week, but hey, that's what's going on in the gaming world right now. So you know, this is just a reminder to support the good developers, support the indie developers that are pouring their passion and their heart and souls into these games because it does matter. We as gamers vote with our wallets, we vote with our reviews, we vote by telling people about these games.

And you know, taking that one step further, if you like this podcast, hey man, tell a friend, leave us a review. That helps us out just like it helps out these devs. And hopefully we're not one of these devs that we talked about today where we're like, man, these guys really suck. They're just ruining everything.

So if you like this podcast and you enjoy this show, just take a second to help us out, man. Follow the show, leave a review, tell a buddy, tell the guy at the gas station, he's probably a gamer. And tell him like, hey man, have you ever heard of the video gamers podcast? No lie, I did that at my local gas station. And when I walk in the guys like what are you playing man?

And do like we hit it off now. So yeah, so if we can do it you can do it, too So but if you're not already make sure you follow the show join our discord server best community in the world for gaming There's a link in the episode description. It is awesome. I mean, so. And you can meet Brett. You can meet Brett. He's a cool guy. Yeah, you can meet Brett. You get to come hang out with Brett, honestly. Brett's a freaking awesome guy, man. He is.

Come say hi to Brett. We got a lot of Brett's in our community. We got a lot of Brett's, yeah. But there's only one true Brett there, too, so. I said that's gonna do it for this episode, everybody. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya! Toodles!