Video Gamers Podcast - The Worst Week in News, Dad of War and Microsoft goes Mega - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another incredible This Week in Gaming. In what could possibly be the worst week of gaming news ever, we find the stories that gamers care about to keep you up to date on all that’s going on in the video game world. The news may be bad, but we make it great! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad 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 everybody, it's Josh and I'm back with another Gaming Quick Takes bonus episode. Ha! Tricked ya! This is just an intro for our regular episodes, but if you wanted to hear that sweet, sweet intro on those bonus episodes, head over to MultiplayerSquad.com where you can sign up to support the show. You get two bonus episodes every week, some killer Discord perks, and our eternal gratitude. We couldn't do the show without the support of our listeners, and you too can join those ranks over at MultiplayerSquad.com. Hello everybody! Happy Thursday! This is the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are two dads that love to chat about video games in a family-friendly format, Hello, everybody. Happy Thursday. This is the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast.

We are two dads that love to chat about video games in a family-friendly format. And if you like our show and what we do, think about joining our gaming community on Discord. It's completely free. It's a great way to chat with me, Josh, and other listeners of the show. You can see a link in the episode description. And if you also want to, you can head over to MultiplayerSquad.com to see our Patreon page. We rely on listener support to keep this show going, and if you are a Patreon supporter, you will have our eternal gratitude, and you'll also get some great perks. Today is Thursday, which means it's time for Twig, This Week in Gaming, where we talk about what we've been playing

and also give our thoughts on recent gaming news. I am your host, Paul. Joining me, as always, is Josh. Microsoft, if you're listening, our show is 100% available for buyout. Go ahead and email us your best offer at paulorjosh at multiplayerpodcast.com. Josh first. I'll pass the news along to paul yeah yeah oh my goodness so josh you and i were making fun of what we have

to talk about here today it's a very light week for video game news normally we've got at least three or four stories to talk about this week the big news is that microsoft is acquiring activision blizzard for a paltry sum of 70 billion dollars 70 billion dollars that is a lot of money man a lot of cash yeah dude i i don't somebody at microsoft got real smart real quick. I mean, when they they let's let's look back, right? They acquired ZeniMax Media. Yep. They acquired Bethesda, which is no slouch of a game developer, by the way. Not at all. And then all of a sudden, this news breaks where Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard. Now, I don't know if you remember a few

years ago when Activision and Blizzard merged. Right, which was a big deal. Which was a very big deal. And everybody was like, well, wow, look at this gaming company now. Look how massive this is. And then Microsoft swoops in and goes, let us show you how it's done, guys. It just drops a cool 70 billion on the table and now picks up Activision Blizzard, which is nuts, man. I think they got very smart somewhere along the way and they went, there is a ton of money to be made

in the gaming industry. And they said, you know what? You got to spend money to make money. And they're going all in, man. You don't buy something for $70 billion if you don't think that it's going to turn around and make you a lot more money than that. I can't even imagine paperwork and putting together numbers where you are spending this large amount of money. But you got to give them credit. I mean, Microsoft is now, I believe, the third largest

video game developer in the world, which they basically just got to immediately by acquiring other studios. Well, name a game that Microsoft has developed, Paul. Minesweeper. Yes. Solitaire. Freestyle. Oh, man. developed paul uh mine sweeper yes solitaire freestyle man yeah yeah what what a crazy story i believe they are now only behind sony and tencent they are now the third largest developer i think that this is kind of an interesting story especially in light of all of the bad press in particular blizzard has had over the last couple of years,

it kind of feels like they needed a giant reset button. And I can't help but think we're probably going to see some moves personnel-wise, see some changes about philosophy, how the business is run. I'm hoping that in the long run, this ends up being a really good thing. And maybe we can get back to some of the roots of what made some of these companies awesome developers in years past. But I mean, Microsoft now has the rights to franchises like Call of Duty, Hearthstone, Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero. And I think most hilariously is that they now own spyro and crash

bandicoot both of which used to be playstation exclusives now microsoft is actually developing those games in the future what a wild story yeah it's it's really hard to think about the impact of this and i don't think anybody will really know yet uh i did see a story where they came out and they said listen call of duty will not become like an exclusive it's still going to be available on playstation and stuff like that because instantly like with like with the bethesda acquisition right people went well what about elder scrolls are we going to be able to play the next Elder Scrolls game? Or is it going to be Xbox exclusive? And they went, no, it's going to

be Xbox exclusive. Buy an Xbox if you want to play it. And a lot of PlayStation users went, oh, no. And so when this happened, I think instantly people started looking and going, well, does that mean all this stuff's going to be exclusive or not? I don't think so. I think instantly people started looking and going, well, does that mean all this stuff's going to be exclusive or not? I don't think so. I think you're starting to see that exclusivity is not the best way to turn a profit. And I think these companies are becoming very aware of that. You need a really good exclusive if you're trying to sell a console. God of War Ragnarok. I mentioned that would be the game coming out that I would consider buying a PS5 for at that point. But I feel like those days are almost gone. Now you just have to put out a really good video game and make it available to as many

people as possible. I think you're going to make a lot more money that way. Yeah. And of course, I mean, I feel like we're talking about the Xbox Game Pass every episode now, but we're just talking about more and more resources that they can funnel through the Game Pass. I saw that they are still currently having 25 million Game Pass subscribers, and this is just going to sweeten the pot more and more i really do think microsoft is just trying to be like netflix of gaming just pay your monthly rate you've got a vast library of all this stuff available and i think this is just the model for the future i mean we've said it a hundred times at this point uh i am a little disappointed i got a ps5 i feel like if i could go back i would swap it out

for an xbox i would just roll with the pass and uh maybe that'll change as we get more of the playstation exclusives but you really just have to hand it to microsoft they were already winning this race i feel like they're just gaining their lead more and more do you remember like 20 years ago when people were really concerned about microsoft being uh like like with antitrust laws they thought they were getting too big monopoly yeah yeah yeah with windows especially i mean when windows is on every computer in the world you have these weird linux guys that are somewhere in the background and they're really smart some way yeah linux or lin i linux linux linux whatever see i'm not a linux nerd paul but yeah like people were so concerned about microsoft being too big back then which is almost laughable now because they are so much larger than ever. There's some good and there's some bad. The good

is that I think when it comes to Activision Blizzard, everybody hates Activision, right? EA and Activision are your two big bad guys. No gamers like them. They just have done a lot of really bad things for the gaming industry. Blizzard was much beloved for the games that it would put out and the quality of games and how they would continually improve those games and build on them in sequels and stuff like that. And then they merged with Activision. Everybody went, oh, no. Rightfully so, because now Blizzard has a terrible reputation for the way that they treat their employees. I think one of the good things that could come from all this is there is a very strong rumor. I feel like it's more than a rumor that the CEO of Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, is going to basically not be the CEO anymore once this merger is done. He'll be invited to no longer be the CEO.

Yeah, we're going to invite you to be fired. Is that okay yeah i mean you you just see so much controversy whether it's involvement in politics especially in regards to china and hong kong uh treatment of employees impending lawsuits just a whole lot of mess and so i i hope that this will you know put them on a positive path i don't like hearing bad stories about blizzard i really wish we could go back in time to where it was like anything blizzard or bioware does i'll pay full price i can't wait till it comes out these are my favorite studios it's more fun to be able to root for these guys. And so hopefully with some restructuring and whatnot, we can go back to that. But this was by far the biggest news story of the week. We definitely

had to cover it first. It's a pretty huge story. And the concern that I have with all of this, I do think there's some good. I think it can refresh the Blizzard name. Maybe they'll put some good leadership in there to where they're not... You don't have these CEOs and corporate guys that are trying do all of my shopping through Amazon. If it's not grocery store nearby where we need food, literally 100% of stuff that we buy comes from Amazon. Amazon also owns like 80% of the internet because of the web services. So Amazon can do whatever the heck Amazon wants, and nobody can do a thing about it. They can spend $250 million to make one season of Lord of the Rings, and it's just a drop in the bucket. What do they care?

Right. Exactly. And I'm excited for that, by the way. And so when you get Microsoft, they're becoming this gaming juggernaut, which could be a very good thing, but it could be a bad thing. Is the days of buying a video game going to be over? Is it all going to be subscription-based of buying a video game going to be over? Is it all going to be subscription-based services? How are they going to run it? We just don't know that stuff yet. So I'm optimistic that this is a very good thing for companies like Blizzard to reset that and get employees and people treated better. But I just get a little worried that Microsoft now owns two-thirds of the gaming industry.

I think it's a really smart move for them business-wise because who buys CDs or albums anymore? Nobody. Nobody. They're not even making cars with CD players anymore because that's outdated technology. And I go like, wait a minute, what? Unless you're in that like we know some people who really love buying records you know whatever that's like their little hobby on the side this

is not like back in the day when you used to buy like actual furniture to hold all of your cds and you would have your carry cases so you could carry all your cds the car. All of it has gone subscription, right? Like you either just use Spotify or maybe you pay for, you know, Amazon Prime even has their streaming music service. TV shows and movies, people don't buy those anymore for the most part. You just use your streaming software. Why would we not think gaming would go the same route?

Because that's where it's going to go. Yeah, and it makes sense perfect sense yeah it really does it it i love the fact that it gives people access to a ton of games we just gave away uh in our discord server a couple months of xbox game pass ultimate that a listener donated as a giveaway item so thank you you. Thank you, Blizz. Yeah, honestly. Ironically, it's his name, not Blizzard. Not Blizzard. Discord user Blizz. But the guy that won it is like,

now this guy has access to a thousand video games for at least two months, you know, and then all your video games go away. That's the downside, right? Yeah. But yeah, I think the model does make a lot of sense. I really hope that they use some of this money to improve the Xbox Game Pass app for PC because it's still terrible. But yeah, we'll have to see where things go. I think this is the kick in the

pants that Blizzard likely needed to help reset its reputation some. And so if any good in the pants that blizzard likely needed to help reset its reputation some and so if any good in the immediate future comes to that that's kind of my hope yeah so let's just hope that they either improve the xbox app or maybe they will incorporate battle.net or something even todd was saying that in our discord server can we please just transition and use battle.net because it's so much easier than the xbox app yeah it really is and it's man. When you want a game where the servers don't crash and people can play, that's why people pay Blizzard.net so much money, because they know how to do it. Yeah. All right. So as far as gaming time this week, you and I have been, you know, quote, like fake whining that we have so

many games that we're playing right now because we have all these deep dives that are lined up in order so we have been playing demio on vr we have been playing hollow knight which is going to be a future deep dive and then we realized that there there was a little bit of a gap before Lost Ark came out. You were already playing God of War on PC. I kind of wanted to jump back into God of War, so I said, why don't we just plug that in as a deep dive in between, even though the game itself is a little bit old, it's new on PC. Let's just do it. And so now we're also playing God of War. I'm still going through Half-Life Alyx. Is there anything else you're playing on top of all that? As if I didn't have enough games to play at the moment.

And I have been absolutely cracking out on God of War. It's funny because the Discord server has noticed that I am not chatting nearly as much. Right. And it's simply because I have been absolutely cracked on God of War. No lie. Life is busy. Don't get me wrong. But I think I have like 45, maybe 50 hours in God of War. And it came out, what, like a week and a half ago? When did it release? January 14th. So I mean... Yeah, nine days from the time of this recording. I'm putting in about five hours a day.

And I am just loving every minute of it. So I'm getting very close to the end. I'm doing a lot of the optional stuff that I didn't get to do the first time around. Oddly enough, dude, I've gotten sucked back into Hearthstone yet once again. And I think I say this every four months or so. I'm only playing duels. It's the only mode that I care about right now. The Battlegrounds just takes too long, and I don't know enough of the new cards and all that stuff to even compete in that anymore. But Hearthstone is the game I play when I'm just

tired. It's late at night. I'm trying to wind down God of War's to action-oriented and stuff like that. It's how I calm my brain down. And I don't know if it's not boring necessarily, but it requires very little effort, I guess. And I can play it with one finger. I just click my mouse with the one finger and I'll have to type and I'll have to do any of that stuff. So it's like my relaxation game, I guess. It's comforting. It's familiar. It's a chicken noodle soup, dude. There's nothing phenomenal about it, but it's just good. And it's easy to go like, yeah, I'll have some of that. Sure. I mean, I haven't been playing a ton of it, but I did notice the other day, like my wife came in and she's like, oh, you're playing that game again? And I was like, yeah, I guess I am. Good old Hearthstone. Yeah. For me, that's

still kind of just Overwatch. If I have like a 20 minute gap, that's not necessarily enough to do a whole lot in Hollow Knight. So I might just do like a quick play. So funny enough that we're still drawn back to those old Blizzard titles that we just keep coming back to. the game i just met the world dragon and you know spinning around the giant bridge in the middle of the ocean so that's kind of where i'm at i am much further in hollow knight i think than you because you've just been fully sucked into god of war i'm trying to go through them chronologically of what we're going to cover on the show so i am just dabbling in God of War. You're so responsible, Paul. Well, I was going to say, it's the worst possible thing you could do to Demio and Hollow Knight, which is to play one of the all-time greatest games, unquestionably, right next to anything else. It's very hard for me to focus on these other games, because I do just want to crack out on God of War.

But we have seen even some funny news regarding god of war they released it on pc they did not give the community any kind of modding tools for people to use but they did admit that there are probably some really crafty people out there who are just gonna figure out how to do it on their own and they definitely have josh because you and I have seen some pretty funny mods that people have been running in God of War. Man, I can't unsee some of this stuff, Paul. That's the problem. You know how when you see something, you can't unsee it. Your brain locks it in and you go, brain, no, I don't want that

image in my head. And then your brain's like, sorry, it's there forever. One of these mods takes Kratos's beard away and gives him just a mustache. So he legit looks like the dad of war at this point. I never realized a beard can make a man so much, but it is terrible, man. And I hate, like, every time I see this image on the internet, I just go like, no! Yeah.

Like, no! Can we use these powers for good? Right, yes. Why are we doing this? Yeah, make his beard more flowy or something, man. Like, don't do that. And then, I don't know if you saw the googly eyes one, but they give him googly eyes and like a big gaping mouth and stuff. And it's like, why are you trying to make Kratos look so stupid? It makes him look like he's in Looney Tunes. Like, that's the first thing I thought. Like, you're used to these characters that have the giant eyes that, you know, stick out of their heads. And just imagine that, but permanently on with Kratos. And it's wild.

It's... Yeah. I mean, this is the beauty of PC gaming is that modders are a different breed of people. And I love modders. If you're a modder, thank you. I think Michael Butler mentioned this the other day. But man, those are the unsung heroes of PC gaming. Because when I had my ultrawide monitor and a game was not optimized for ultrawide, I could go to these forums where there was a modder that would make any video game compatible with ultrawide, even though the developers wouldn't do it, and stuff like that. And so that's one of the awesome things about PC gaming that you don't get on console so much is all of these mods. Witcher 3 has been modded insanely well. They've improved the graphics and the gameplay and quality of life and stuff like that. I mean, look at Skyrim. Skyrim would not be around for 10 plus years if it wasn't for the modding community on that. So I'd be very curious

to see what mods people come up with for God of War. I'll probably be done playing it at that point. So I feel like I'm going to miss out on a lot of that. I will say this. I'm very excited for the God of War episode because a lot of people have asked us, hey, since you guys started doing single player games, where do some of these games, where would they rank to you guys? And I won't spoil anything, but we also are likely in the future, and I don't know if this is locked in, but legendary supporter Nevo has mentioned

that he might choose Red Dead Redemption 2 for us to play. Which means we're living back in 2018, which I kind of love. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. So then my brain is instantly going like, where would I put this on the leaderboard? People have said to us, I don't think you'll ever put anything in the top four because of how much we love those games.

You know, Rocket League, Rust, Apex, Overwatch. Those are in our top four. But if we start covering God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2, these are some things that certainly might compete. I'm very curious to see. I don't want to spoil anything and things might change. Obviously, I'm right in the

throes of loving God of War right now. We'll see when that time comes, but I have a feeling that the leaderboard's going to get shaken up a little bit. Yeah. All right. And then our last story this week is quite the doozy. You know, we have made our living making fun of Battlefield 2042 by this point, but we do have a new story out here.

There was a tweet made by known Battlefield leaker tom henderson who said surprise surprise uh there's some disappointment about the performance and the sales of battlefield 2042 that should not be a surprise to anybody we're kept secret and that they are looking at all of the available options which could possibly include some kind of free-to-play model at least in some capacity in the future uh battlefield 2042 is a terrible game we have it dead last on our leaderboard for good reason it has only 32 positive ratings on steam people are not happy. What do you think about the possibility of Battlefield sullying their name so bad that

they might have to go to some kind of free-to-play model just to get people to play it? To clarify this, the story that I was reading on this is saying that they may take the entire series free- play. So not just 2042, but Battlefield 5, Battlefield 4, Battlefield 1, again, with the weird naming stuff. The next one, Battlefield 0.5, whatever. Yeah, whatever it'll be, it might be free to play. So they're saying that they may make the entire series free to play. And my initial reaction was, well, yeah, that makes sense because this game sucks. But then I kind of went, well, wait a minute, there's some really good free to play games out there. And I don't think it's fair

to imply that if a game is free to play, that it's not good. Halo Infinite multiplayer is free to play and it's amazing. And so it's one of those things where we're seeing this more and more though. PUBG, we just talked about PUBG is now free to play. I've had zero interest in checking it out because we've put our time into PUBG, even though I do get this weird itch every now and then to hop back in. But I feel like PUBG going free to play was because this game is probably approaching its last leg. This is the shock paddles to try to bring it back to life in some way. If we make it available, maybe more people will play it and people will buy some cosmetics.

And with Battlefield 2042, if they do make it free to play, I don't care. The game... It's not that the game costs $40 or $60. I think I saw a thing the other day where somebody posted a picture of the Xbox version of Battlefield 2042, and it was marked down to $5. It's not the cost of the game that's the problem. It's the game that's the problem. Right, exactly. So you can make it free-to-play all you want. I don't think that's going to help a thing. I think that's only going to aggravate the players that you have, because the only way that they're going to make money is by selling cosmetics or battle passes, right? You can't be pay to win because gamers hate that.

If it's cosmetics, who cares? You don't even really see the cosmetics in Battlefield 2042 that much. And so I don't know what that would accomplish for them. It's why it's a strange model for that series, because Battlefield is supposed to be more rooted in realism than some of your other franchises like Halo or Fortnite or something like that. So the idea of selling cosmetics is difficult because you can't have a skin of the rock like you might have in fortnite and start sticking stuff like that in battlefield you start doing that the player base is going to hate it but at the same time if the game sucks and it has terrible word of mouth then no one's going going to pay $60. No one's going to trust the next battlefield.

I guarantee you that no one's going to preorder. No one's going to buy it early. Everyone's going to wait and see how it is. And if it's not fantastic, people aren't going to shell out the 60. So you have to do something a little bit different, but at the same time, what would you say is probably the most natural competitor to battlefield?

What series? Call of Duty. Call of Duty? Right. Well, what's Call of Duty probably going to be on, Josh? Oh, well, no. They've said Call of Duty will stay on. Oh, but it'll be on the Game Pass.

If it's on Game Pass, now Battlefield really has to do something. Because if you have a lot of Game Pass users that have access already to Call of Duty, you're really going to have to do something that's going to make people want to play Battlefield. So I'll be curious to see because normally I would say going free to play would make perfect sense, but I don't know that it really works with cosmetics given the military realism of the game i i don't know i i can't help but think battlefield is just on the way out i i don't know if they can really recover from this i'll wait and see i don't want the series to die but they're they got a long battle uphill that makes me sad but you know we see this a little bit with call of duty vanguard

nobody was really excited about it i mean there were a few people and i know you know we had we have some friends that played it and had fun with it and stuff but every the the overall consensus there was it was just meh right it's calling yeah it's fine like okay i like the older guns whatever um but i i don't know i don't know that they can salvage. But I don't know. I don't know that they can salvage it. And I don't know that they can build what they need to build with any kind of trust level.

There's a part of me that says, this is where you bite the bullet. You spend millions of dollars remaking Battlefield 2042, re-releasing it to what it should have been. Listen to the player base, fix the maps, fix the game, do all this stuff, all of the things that we've talked about. If you take the time and you do those, yes, you're going to lose money,

but you're going to buy back the trust of the gamers at that point. Look at No Man's Sky. People were peeved at No Man's Sky, and they spent five years making it. And now everybody goes, dude, you guys are great. Thanks. Like, so why can't a company like EA just bite the bullet and say, hey, you know what? We're going to fix it. Okay. We're not going to do these stupid little patches. We're going to fix it. We need a year, okay? But it'll be great. That's the only way I see this happening. And I'm with you. If you don't do something incredible, then this is going to be one of those games and franchises that just comes out on Game Pass and nobody cares because there's better stuff to play at that point. Yeah. I mean, I think you're kind of highlighting one of the issues of the mega developers is the fact that they're beholden to their shareholders. They have to release games. If you pause all of your games during COVID, then all of your profits

are down, your stock tanks, everyone's mad. You can't do it. And so you've got to constantly be releasing the next game to make more money to make your shareholders happy so we already know they started working on the next battlefield game well before 2042 even released so they're just not going to have the time or the patience to go back and fix these old games because they got to release the new ones but i'm very curious to see what happens here with this series because if call of duty is on game pass and if game pass continues to grow like i think it will you know sony has talked about coming out with some kind of subscription plan how is all of this going to fit together with battlefield you know battlefield

certainly has a lot of pc users so there's still still a huge market there. I don't think PC users are using Game Pass as much yet, but I do think those numbers are going to keep increasing. And I think Call of Duty is just fine moving forward. Battlefield the same, but the game was fine. Battlefield was a hot disaster. It was not fine. And so it's like they ruined the core gameplay with Battlefield 2042. With Call of Duty Vanguard, they just didn't give you enough new stuff to really make it worthwhile to turn around and sell for $60. But at least the game was okay. And so, yeah, I don't know, man. I hate to think that there's going to be this shift or this end of a franchise, possibly, but it might be. Yeah.

We'll just have to keep watching and see what happens here. Maybe Microsoft is going to acquire EA by the end of this month and maybe they'll just own all of it at that point i mean who knows but in any case uh that's all that we really have to cover here for today now if you did want to know our next deep dive episode is going to be on demio which is going to be our very first deep dive on a VR game. We have played quite a bit of it, even though there are very limited number of campaigns in that game. But it is very similar to a tabletop board game. We've been able to play with some random people online. We've been able to play with a lot of our friends. And so I know you and I are both really looking forward to

talking about it. I'm still enjoying playing Demio. Every day, I'm hoping we can put together a group of four to play it. And so I think we're both really excited to get into that one on Monday. I am for sure. It's been a lot of fun. I like the fact that we're branching into VR. I know a lot of our listeners have VR headsets. We chat about it a lot on Discord server. And so I think that this will be a very good game because it's very approachable for anybody. There's a lot of VR games out there that don't jive with some people. And this game, I feel like, is universally something that anybody could play and have fun with. So I think it's going to be a really good episode.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. And and then as a reminder if you haven't already done so please rate our podcast five stars please leave us a written review in apple podcast if you have not already written one and if you have not left a rating on spotify we especially ask that you would go out of your way to do that since that is now a new feature over there all right well josh we're all done that's it for today so to all of you out there happy gaming we'll see you all in just a couple days all right see you everybody