Video Gamers Podcast - Worst Gaming Trends Rewind - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Gaming hosts Michael, Josh and Paul are rewinding time and heading back to a phenomenal gaming episode where we break down the Worst Trends in Gaming. These are the things that make gamers rage and we all hate. With an awesome tournament format, we crown one rage inducing trend above all in this classic episode. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming 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

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, fellow gamers. This is Paul here. I am joined with Josh and Michael. We are currently in the middle of our Christmas break to spend time with our families during this two-week period. We will be back with fully new episodes starting on January 9th,

and we have chosen a couple of our favorite episodes to re-release during our two weeks off. And this episode here is one of our famous tournaments. We always do these where we draft teams and then we match our choices up against one another until we have a winner. And in this episode, you are going to hear us talk about the worst gaming trends in gaming today. And guys, I think this is a really fun one because

we all got to complain together about all the things that we hate about the industry. Josh, as you think back on this episode, anything you want to tell the people? I don't want to spoil this episode. People may have heard this one already, but if they haven't heard it already, all I'm going to say is that some very recent game releases only solidify the winner of this episode. And I mean, I cannot tell you how much it makes me go, yep, that is the absolute worst trend in gaming right now. I can deal with a lot of the other ones. They're inconvenient. They're annoying.

But I can deal with a lot of the other ones. They're inconvenient. They're annoying, but I can deal with them. But man, I am at my wits end with the one that wins this episode is all I'm going to say on this one. Yeah, it's a good choice that ended up winning, especially as we look back in hindsight. Michael, what do you remember about this episode that you want to tell the people? I win, baby! Wait, what? Dang it.

I'm sorry. I really didn't want to spoil it. I just intentionally didn't spoil it spoil it dang it dang it only won one of these i want to yell about it and be excited to be fair they don't know which selection that's why that's why i said it i'm not going to say which one wins um i will say though it's funny because when i was looking at this list um the long list of all of the things we came up with because we can't put 12 different things obviously four rounds of three people picking like there's a couple of games very recently that i won't mention that definitely fall into more than one of these categories each and like infuriating so get ready to get mad now i know a lot of people like like to listen to

the podcast while they drive don't get any road rage or anything if you if your blood pressure starts going up because we infuriate you which which is the point of this episode, pull over, take a deep breath. Yeah. Deep breaths as we talk about pay to win mechanics, review bombing, whatever it might be. By the way, I really love that Michael will ruin who won this episode, but then won't mention Callistoisto protocol which is clearly the game that you had in mind that you won't name that committed some of these sins so yeah i didn't want to mention the sins so if i brought up if i mentioned the game you might know the sins because the entire deal with what josh said about like which game yeah also han solo dies what else can we spoil

bruce willis was dead the preacher was the werewolf sorry that goes way back come on who gets that one i i have no idea what you're talking about silver bullet the island is just a place they all created to spend time together in the afterlife that that might be the worst all right well let's go ahead let's get this one started worst gaming trends let's go ahead. Let's get this one started. Worst gaming trends. Let's get into it. Hello, squad mates. Welcome back to another episode of the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, where three dads get together to talk about gaming. I want to take a second to ask you all to consider supporting us on Patreon.

Support starts at five bucks a month and listener support is actually what pays our bills and keeps our show running. And we know that a lot of you guys out there are already supporters. We want to give you all a very special thank you. And supporters get some pretty awesome perks, which includes exclusive access to the Squadcast, which is a 30-minute bonus episode that we release twice a month. And if that is something you might be interested in, head on over to MultiplayerSquad.com. All right, today is a bonus round Monday, and we are going to be doing a draft and tournament of the worst trends in gaming. Let me introduce the man who has the first overall pick

and he's the first pick in our hearts it's josh oh that's so sweet paul after all the one and only picking on me that you've been doing lately yeah we gotta balance it out he he really does care michael yeah we've got kind of a well-balanced show he He's got a big heart. Yeah, but we're going wholesome today. And then he has the second overall pick, but he's also tied for first pick in our hearts. It's Michael. I was really waiting for you to finally rip into me and finally give me a good one there, because it's coming. I can't believe you didn't call him the second pick.

Right, right. Second pick overall. And also, you know, close 14th in our hearts. And I'm like, there's only three people on this podcast, so who's beating me? Michael's too nice. It's hard. It's hard to poke fun at him. But yeah, I'm just lulling you to sleep, Michael.

And then we're going to slap you when you're least expecting it. Why does that make me easy to pick on then? Well, you're a troll. Jolly old troll. Yeah, you're an instigator online already. Not in real life, but online, you certainly are. Fair, fair. All right.

So guys, what better way to spend this Monday than to sit around whining about modern gaming? Because misery seeks company, right? Let's just get together and complain about all the things that we currently hate about gaming. I'm so excited for this one, because as gamers we love to complain about things gaming related and i feel like tonight is going to be this just everybody's sitting around the campfire just mentioning the things that we hate about gaming like the trends you know like we're not talking about like oh i, I hate that one boss. We're talking about in general, like what's something that has happened in gaming in the last however long that has become a trend that should not be a my friend, that this is a battle. And I am no longer going to have the moniker of Owen after this battle, my friends. I believe you're currently Owen 4?

That's right. Michael, is that correct? Is this your fifth? I brought it up. This is my fifth. And yes, I have not won a single one yet. I mean, in my mind, I've won all four of them. And tonight, things are gonna

change like this is a here it comes right we're playoff bound baby let's do it paul what do you think his chances really are yeah i was gonna say a lot of large numbers michael you got to win one of these sometimes so it ain't gonna be tonight so if any of you out there have not heard our drafts and tournaments basically in a nutshell what we do is we are going to be doing a draft same way you would do in sports or fantasy football anything like that we are going to be going four rounds and so each of us will be drafting one trend in video games that we hate and then after we make a pick we'll talk about it for a couple minutes and then after we have each completed all four of our picks individually, then we will match all of them up against each other March Madness style until we have one consensus worst trend in gaming.

And so these are always fun because there's a little bit of debate. We have to vote and take sides and figure out you know which game which gaming trends are going to move on which ones are going to be eliminated and it just so happens that josh is due for the first overall pick so round one will go josh michael and then me and then we go snake style so then round two goes in reverse me michael and then josh i like being the meat in the sandwich by the way because it was fun last month being back to back but waiting those like four picks is brutal it's i was gonna say i get first pick but then i gotta wait so long before i get to pick again yep and so long to

your chances of winning too i don't i don't know about that buddy um i do have a question for you guys do you guys feel like there is one overwhelmingly like first choice no category i think there's like four or five overwhelming first choices like yes like there's a lot that might fall to the second round that i'm like i don't know if i'm gonna pick that first for my first pick or see if it falls the second or whether you guys takes it it's there's a lot there's a lot of annoying things gaming that's what i was gonna say sometimes having the first pick super beneficial and then other times it's not if there's not like a clear-cut leader so yeah i feel like this one's really gonna come down to discussion like who's gonna be able to put the best argument those ones are probably

gonna make it through i could see like a second or third round choice winning in this case i did mention to you guys that normally on these tournaments, like, we fight. But this category, this topic is so, like, universal for gamers that I feel like I'm going to just agree with you guys a lot. Right. And that really bugs me. Yeah. It's just a matter of degree, right? Right. Like, yes, we all agree that's terrible, but how bad?

So, like, give us a couple examples, Josh. Why don't you just tell us, like, your top four hated gaming trends. Yeah, let's do that. Just as an example. You ain't fooling me, man. I was going to say, I'm not giving anything away. When we were talking about this, I posted earlier because at first we were kind of just thinking developer type stuff. And I'm sure people are already thinking about some of that stuff, but I'm not going to tip my hand at all. But then there's trends that as players we do or affect gaming as well.

And so it was like, hey, don't forget, there's different aspects here to this topic. And I mean, man, it's just it really opens up a lot of options for things that just really ruin gaming sometimes. Exactly. All right. So let's just hop right into this draft. Josh, you've got the first overall pick. How do you want to lead this off? Man, I have waffled. I do have a top four. I have 12 things on my list, but I felt like after a lot of internal thinking that I was like, okay, I've got this narrowed down to like four. But it's really hard for me to say which one of these four I consider the worst. And throughout the day, I have reshuffled this list probably 10 times, man. Nice.

But I'm trying to go with the thing that I think actually really messes up gaming for people. There's trends out there that maybe we don't like, but we're willing to deal with. There's trends that have come about lately that it's like, hey, I won't mention any, but that have definitely backfired on developers and publishers and things like that. But when I think about what am I going to take with my first pick, this... I don't even know if this is a trend necessarily, but I feel like it has gotten more prolific over probably the last decade. And so with my number one pick, I am taking hacking. Okay, hacking. Good one.

Hacking slash hackers absolutely suck. If you hack in an... Okay, let me preface this. Back in the days of the... What was it? The Genie? The Nintendo Genie? The Game Genie. The Game Genie, right?

Yeah. If you want to hack a single player game to make it a little less grindy or maybe change up some of the dynamics, we call that modding nowadays. Yes. If you want to do that, that is a-okay. Because you know what? It's your game. It's your world.

You're playing solo. By all means, go for it. You can do whatever you want in that. But if you are playing a multiplayer game and you are a hacker, you are the lowest life form on the planet, in my opinion. Because not only are you not spending the time to get good at something, but you are legitimately ruining other human beings' entertainment and fun. I think as gamers, we all play games to have a good time. Sometimes we play games as an escapism, a way to relax.

Everybody's got their reasons for doing it. Maybe you're super competitive and you want that competition, right? But if you are going up against a hacker, those guys are ruining your entertainment immensely. I mean, let's look at Rust, Paul, right? We love Rust. But what is one of the biggest problems with Rust? It's definitely the hacking. It's hackers, right? I mean, those guys can absolutely completely ruin a game.

If they hack and they kill you and they're headshotting you from halfway across the map and they steal all your stuff game over man that game's ruined let's look at some of the more popular games right war zone what's one of the major issues with the one of the top battle royales in existence and free to play for people riddled with hackers hackers right it's like if you're playing a game and you're trying to have fun and there's a hacker in that game, your game is ruined. Overwatch, that widow's too good. And then you watch the kill cam and it's like, she actually is too good. Yes. And it's fun to accuse people of hacking when somebody's

better than me. Guess what? You're a hacker. Whether you're hacking or not. You're not allowed to just be really good. But yeah, for me, I feel like that is the cream of the crop, absolute worst trend that we have seen in gaming come about. I feel like it's become more prolific as companies are realizing they can make money on selling hacks to popular games. We see that companies are spending a fortune in anti-hack software.

But what's the problem with that? Sometimes it affects the gameplay because if in anti-hack software. But what's the problem with that? Sometimes it affects the gameplay because if the anti-hack software is running and it's causing stuttering or frame rate losses or something like that, it's negatively affecting the game. So that's my pick. Again, if you're a hacker, please stop. For the good of everybody else, it's okay to be bad at video games. Look at Michael.

He's terrible at shooters. I'm really bad. Yeah. And the funniest thing is just like when we pick games. I love you, Michael. I'm just picking on you, man. I love you, too. Number two in my heart because everyone knows Numeruno is me.

No, but it's funny because I think about this, and I have 16 things on my list, and hacking isn't one of them, which is crazy. And you know why? It's the same reason that when I drafted Elite Dangerous number one overall in the best space game draft, I don't play games where people hack very much.

This might hurt you later on, my friend, because I might not vote for it because I don't experience this very much. Now, granted, I do understand because I played a little bit of Overwatch and sometimes you can tell in the kill cam, right? Like that snap. And it's like, nobody can actually do that.

Or tracking through walls. Exactly. It's like, that's not possible. And so I do get it because I've been in some comp matches. When I was trying to get from bronze to silver because I'm perma-stuck in bronze because I'm terrible, I was like, I'm one win away from getting to silver, man. I'm almost out of bronze.

And then there's someone tracking through. I don't know why anybody would hack in bronze, but whatever. It happens. But no, I agree with you. And I do feel like you have a good point, though, with the whole point about us sitting around a campfire. It's going to be us agreeing about it and being like, which one most annoying not so much us trying to prove our point so much it's just what's the most annoying um yeah and that is pretty annoying i agree well uh we'll have to move on to pick two but i will say just one thing i hesitate to make your picks sound even better

josh but you did not even mention hackers doing ddos attacks on game developers' servers. Just the other day, Battle.net was down for a couple hours, and sure enough, you get the alert, we're currently under a DDOS attack. Now I can't play Hearthstone or Overwatch, my two go-tos, and we've seen that also in Rust and in other games. So yeah, hackers are no good. I just don't get it, man.

You're intentionally trying to ruin fun. And it's not fun to win. I can't fathom that. Yeah, and even if you win, you're cheating. You didn't win. You didn't accomplish anything. Right, exactly. It's unfathomable to me,

but it's one of the absolute worst things. It's rage-inducing. It's my number one. All right, Michael, what are you going to come in with for the number two pick? All right,'s my number one. All right, Michael, what are you going to come in with for the number two pick? All right. So my number two is actually pretty easy for me. It's putting out a fake video of a Japanese train station and saying it's Unreal Engine 5. I'm totally kidding. Sorry. I'm going back to that last episode where it's like,

that's not real. Or that's not... That's real. That's real. All right. So I don't know if this is considered two separate categories, and I hope it's not. And I hope this isn't too big. But I think that pay to win or pay to play. It's absolutely an awful trend. It's been around a little while. It's been happening a lot more. I just experienced with Lost Ark recently.

I almost can't play Lost Ark anymore, right? Because at one point, I'm playing the game, and I'm doing all the stuff I want to do. I'm top. I'm on the top. I've got a 1370 score, all that stuff. I'm ready to go. And the game gives you a 4% chance

of upgrading your gear piece. And you have to upgrade it 16 times to get out of each of that to go to the next tier right well guess what happens like oh but you know if you want more of these little star whatever they're called or the sun star there's all kinds of little things you and you you can just buy them you can buy them and you can buy lots of them for like a hundred dollars and then you can go and increase your chance to like 20 on your weapon or your gear or whatever and it's like can i just play a game like can i just play the game and get there on my own and

there's always that thing you know or like even like one of my favorite games of old was star trek online you know and they made it free to play which it's fine i get i get the free free to play thing right free to play is one thing and you put in a pay-to-play mechanic. Sure. But pay-to-win, sometimes... Pay-to-win, pay-to-play, they're kind of the same thing to me. It's just one of those things where it gets really annoying that you hit a wall, and there's nothing you can do. And in mobile games, you see this a ton, where you're playing a mobile game. And the only mobile games I ever really play are like those... It's like a farming simulator or something like that, where I'm like,

okay, I'm gonna wait for these crops to go. And you get to a point where the crops are going to take like seven days. Or you can spend five bucks, and it happens now, and you can move on. Well, guess what happens when you spend that five bucks? You're going to plant the crop again. Now it's 14 days, and you're like, I can spend 10 bucks, and it happens now. And then I can upgrade my house and my barn. And it's awful.

It's like, it's so annoying that this is a thing, but it eats you alive. Yeah. I'll say this because pay to win has become such a negative connotation that even developers will not admit that a game or a function is pay to win. If you look at Hearthstone, people will say, Hey, that's not a pay to win game. You get card packs and you can... There's nothing that you can't get if you put in the time. Because they try to separate it out. If you can't get something in the game by playing it, but you can only get it with money, well, then it's pay to win. But that's not actually true. Because let's take a game like Hearthstone that is not generally considered a pay to win game. If I am doing a duel, right, where the cards are given to me for the most part, but I go up against somebody that has

the entire card collection, they have cards that I do not have in my deck that are way better than the cards that I have. So that gives them a significant advantage in the game. If you have a significant advantage because you paid money versus somebody that did not pay money, that is pay to win. I get that, yes, I could put in 15 years worth of effort to get to the point where you are because you spent a few hundred dollars, but that's not really apples to apples at that point either. And so developers

will try to say well this is just pay for convenience but we all know better like gamers are smart we know the difference you can call it whatever you want but it's still a pay-to-win mechanic you can try to temper it a little bit but it's still there yeah yeah candy crush is another one where they design levels that you can't beat it unless you buy additional items and then it's just 99 cents but guess what you're gonna need it every five to ten levels and there's like 4 000 levels so these games suck you in and they bleed you dry and yeah what a what a terrible what a terrible mechanic. I do like that pick, Michael. I was going to take that with one of my two.

If you do. Nice. I know what, I know what one of your next two picks is going to be. I don't want to say just in case, but I, I absolutely know. Will you tell me,

will you tell me? Cause I don't know what I'm taking. It's a trap, Michael. Don't do it. I, I have a list of 21 and I don't really know. Oh yeah.

I thought my list was the biggest at 16 nice i am gonna go with you know what this might just be recency bias because josh and i were just playing v rising i'm gonna say busted day one servers yes oh good one yeah good one what is sadder than finally getting your hands on that new game and the servers are either offline or there is so much lag that you literally cannot do anything? Like, V Rising just released, what, like, 10 hours ago this morning? 10 hours, maybe? Yeah.

Yeah. And Josh and I were playing and you literally cannot loot a chest. You cannot place a wall. You can run around, but you really can't do anything else. So I'm super hyped for i'll ask off for work that day like i want to play and i get i get very excited right and it's like but now because there's so many launch issues there's such a common thing that it's like i it's funny because i was watching the launch of v rising got delayed just like two hours or maybe even an hour and people were like people that's not that big of a deal now the servers aren't working so good right but people were like i took off of work for this. Can you give us an idea of when they're going to be up?

And people were like, LOL, don't take off of work on a launch day. Right? Which, I mean, it sounds like a jerky thing, but it's kind of become true. You don't expect to be able to play a game within the first few hours of the launch of that game. And that's sad. Like, why do you have a launch if we can't play it yeah i i yeah exactly it sucks i have never requested time off of work to play a game so i try not to get trapped in that but nowadays like you wouldn't even think

to do it because so how many games can you even play on day one? Well, it's so incredibly rare. It's almost never. Let me ask you a question, Paul. On that, does that include like, okay, Burning Crusade comes out, right? And the servers didn't really have a problem except for the fact that you've got, what, a thousand people standing outside that gate ready to go to that next continent. Kill those five more. And you're getting like two frames per second because there's so many real people there does that count yeah i'm just gonna call it day one server issues all day one server issues and i i i

get it because companies probably look at the dollars and cents and they say we're gonna get a giant spike on day one day two and three it's going to drop a little day four five and six it's high but now it's kind of normalized and so why are we going to go out of our way to pay all this extra money for just one day i i get it but it's still annoying so yeah day one server i'll tell you why you should pay that money it's called first impressions uh yeah yeah i mean and tech i i'm an IT guy. I feel like we're about to attempt to send people to Mars here in probably the next few years. Why can we not have scalable servers that just say, if I have 250,000 people that are trying to play my game, it expands the servers to let those

people play. And when the player total drops off, the servers shrink back down. I feel like that technology should exist. Or easy enough. Easy enough. It does exist. You can lease a couple of servers from a third-party company and say, Hey, I'm going to pay an extra couple million for a month. I don't know what the cost is. I'm throwing a number out there. You lease them for a month. Your game base, especially in something like an MO or any big launch, is going to go down by whatever that extra server space is. And you don't have to own them or even think about the technology to shrink a server.

It's just it's done. You're like, hey, our lease is up. Thank you for letting us borrow those servers. These servers are now combined with this server. We're good to go. I'm sure it must be more complicated than just opening servers or people would probably do it. I don't think so i

think we're the first to come up with this idea ever yeah i was gonna say none of none of us are game developers i did take a couple classes in c++ in high school uh but that does not make does not make an expert i literally took a couple of classes of c++ and by that i mean it was my zero hour my senior year i went twice and then i dropped the class i took a couple of classes of c plus plus oh wonderful all right so now that we're 20 minutes in we have finished round one so uh let's see here round two i am gonna go with i know i at least have josh on my side for this one'm going to go with remakes and remasters. No!

That's the one I was guessing. You stole my pick! Yeah. Dang it! I didn't think you were going to go that one this early. Nope. I knew he'd pick this one of his two. I have it on here.

I'm like, that's the one. That one I said earlier? That's the one. Especially when the remake or the remaster is worse than the original. We're looking at you, Rockstar. Yep. The definitive edition of Grand Theft Auto. Yeah, the definitive edition, which looks so much worse.

It's not even funny. So, yeah, I'm going to say remakes and remasters, especially when they charge $60. Like, at least if it's a $20 remake, fine. But Sky... What's the Zelda game? Skyward Sword? Yeah. Going for a full 60 that's criminal in my opinion well and to support your argument which i don't want to do there's one further step there as well yes looking at you again rockstar when you make the original version of

that game unavailable on all platforms to buy and you have to get so you can't get the original grand theft auto or two or three yeah that's have to buy the definitive edition yep of their crappy remake that's not really a remake it's a reskin basically at best you know i thought you were going to complain about coming out with the same game on three generations of consoles without releasing gta 6 sure same thing because that one could be on the list as same thing yeah i'm, because this was number two on my list and you stole it from me, Paul, I'm actually going to talk this one up for you just a little bit. The other major problem with remasters and remakes, remakes I'm actually okay with sometimes. If you're completely remaking it, like we just talked about Dead Space, and you do it the right way, I feel like that could actually be a beneficial thing. Remasters are terrible. Yeah. And the biggest problem that I have with remasters

isn't the money grab, because hey, that's obvious, right? The problem is that you're squashing creativity. When you're just rehashing content that's already existed, you're not making anything new. Use some ingenuity. Gamers want new ideas. We want new games. I don't want the same game that I've played four times with slightly higher polygon count. That's the biggest problem that I have with it. It's prohibiting creativity in gaming. Yeah. Totally with you. Totally agree. All right, Michael, coming back to you. What are you going to take for your second pick?

My hands down, number two actually fell to me. And I'm very thrilled about this. This is a trend you've seen a lot lately. Looking at UCG CD. Words are hard. CD Projekt Red releasing unfinished games. And this happens. This happens for multiple reasons. One, because. Yeah. Yeah. I'm killing this one, guys. I'm going to win today. releasing unfinished games and this happens this happens for multiple reasons one because

yeah yeah i'm killing this one guys i'm going to win today um no but uh but that's the whole thing is like you know releasing unfinished games you have it multiple reasons and i get it right the developer is being pressured by the publisher the publisher is like you got to get this out we got to make our money or the investors are pressuring them that's a whole thing right but there's got to be some kind of a balance there where like, hey, you will make more money if you just wait a few more months and let us delay or whatever. Or a lot of times, straight up greed gets involved. And the company is just like, we want to release it now. We spent a lot of money. Let's just get out. They're going to

buy it anyways. We've hyped this thing up like crazy looking at you, CD Projekt Red. We've hyped this thing up so much that people are gonna buy it anyways how many people how many people bought um cyberpunk and a lot like how many how many were like 20 million something that played it for like five hours and never touched it again i spent like 80 bucks in that game because i think i bought a special edition i have not picked it up again and they took my money and i was like it's so broken i don't believe in it again and a lot of people are like me i think out there i don't think i'm alone where like i'm like i'll go back to it someday and then i move on to something else and that that publisher and developer just got my money i don't feel 2042 released in an unplayable state

basically exactly the same thing. be a way to process refunds beyond just the Steam refund window or something like that. As consumers, we should be able to say, hey, this game is not complete and it was sold to me as a complete product. You're not allowed to say that you're going to patch it for four years to make it a product that is enjoyable at that point. So there needs to be some sort of repercussion there or avenue for gamers to say, hey, I want my money back. Well, you played more than two hours. Two hours in a video game is nothing. That's like the character creation anymore or the tutorial. How do I know I'm going to like the game if the tutorial takes me two hours and then I go, oh, this game sucks? Well, it's too late. No, you played it too long. You know what two hours is, Josh? Two hours is day one of Lost Ark and there's a 12,000 person queue and you have to wait two hours is josh two hours is day one of lost ark and there's a 12 000 person queue and

you have to wait two hours to get in you have already played for two hours right yep exactly yeah and unfinished games were not really so much of an issue back in the day there were games like et on atari right stuff like that that was unfinished but for the most part because they shipped games on discs and nothing was online yet, they had to deliver finished games. And then it became day one patches. And then it became, well, we're going to be in early access for seven years like Rust. And now we just flat out get unfinished games that we're all pre-ordering and we're bankrolling and paying for ahead of time and not getting finished products. So, yeah, I think we all agree.

That's a great pick. All right, Josh, you get back to back picks here. What are you going to follow up after hacking? Oh man, you guys stole my next two picks. So I'm,

I am honestly scrambling a little bit here because I, while I do have a decent list, I want to pick the best ones on this list. And you guys just took the next two best ones. I would have loved to have had both of these. I feel like that would have guaranteed me victory. I have one that I think is actually my number two pick, but I don't think either of you guys will actually think of this one. So I think I'm going to roll the dice and save it for my last pick.

I like that. Good call, dude. Because I don't think either one of you would have thought about this one. So, all right. My next pick. This is a terrible trend that we have seen with the likes of Activision and EA, right? These hated video game publishers. And we've seen it a lot more recently. But publishers having input on

game development, I feel like has ruined a lot of video games. Game developers are the ones, they're the artists, they're the ones that should be developing the game. EA, Activision, and even CD Projekt Red, even though they develop and publish their own games, you mentioned Cyberpunk. Part of that issue is that you have these publishers and these CEOs of a financial institution that are making decisions about game development that they should absolutely not have any say-so in whatsoever. Again, I'll reference Battlefield 2042, right? The company that made it, DICE, I believe that was DICE if I remember right, for 2042.

They've got a decent history of actually developing good shooters. But when EA gets involved and says, no, no, no, no, you're going to need to have operators in your game. We're not going to do the class-based system because we can't sell enough of the skins and the operators for you to do that. So we need to be able to monetize this game more. So don't develop that. Develop this instead. And when any time that happens, you can tell that the game absolutely suffers for it. Publishers should not have any say in the development of a video game.

You're going to reap the benefits if the game is good. You know, look at Valheim, right? Like that game came out of nowhere. Five person team made a gajillion dollars. If there was a whoever the publisher for that was, I don't know if it was self-published or not, is laughing all the way to the bank. But they didn't have anything to do with the actual development of the game at that point.

So I don't want to go on a huge rant on this one. But yeah, publishers having influence on game development is an absolutely terrible trend in gaming. I'll give you a support as well, since we're all supporting each other. A couple months after... No, like a month after Lost Ark came out, right? Amazon is putting tons

of pressure on Tripod, I think it is. Is it the studio? Yep, it is Tripod. Putting tons of pressure on them to come out with their first patch, which is the Argos raid. And Tripod is like, we're not ready. This came out like six months later in Asia. We're not doing that.

And they did it. And it furthermore compounded my issue with my first pick, the pay to win or pay to play, because people couldn't get to the level to actually fight this raid boss. And they wanted to. They're like, I can only get to 1340. It takes months to get to 1370. But you have to be 1370 item level to fight this raid boss. And so they're're like top players can't even get there so what do they do they start the whales start shelling out thousands of dollars to be able to do this all because amazon put pressure on the studio to release this too early yep same thing yeah i mean the analogy in sports is when you have the team owner who thinks that they know better than the coaches and the scouts of what to do. Yep. And that's exactly what you end up getting with publishers.

What you need to do is hire people that you trust. Let the business people run the business side. Let the art people run the art side. And as long as you hire good talent and you put your trust in them, let them see their vision through to the end. It doesn't always work. But I feel like on the whole, that tends to lead to better products. Better products is going to mean better money. And I think you have to have the long view, right?

You want to have loyal customers. Don't burn people with a poor release like Cyberpunk, where a lot of people aren't loyal to cd project red the way they were five years ago so i'm not yeah not as much as i hate to say it because they they made one of my favorite video games ever but at this point you've you burned me bad man it's gonna take a lot to get that trust back yeah all right so josh first pick of round three what you taking all right this one might be a little bit contested but for for me, it's up there. And again, I don't think you guys are going to pick my fourth one. So if either one of you do, I will protest a lot.

I've got to go with this trend because this is a more recent trend lately, and that is microtransactions slash loot boxes in games. You took my next one for sure. You took my next one for sure. I will say this. I know that there's people out there that like cosmetics. Michael, you've admitted, hey, you actually like cosmetics. I don't care about cosmetics. Looking at you, Loncombe.

And the thing is, yes, I have bought loot boxes. In Rocket League, before Rocket League went free-to-play, you would get these crates and you would have to purchase the key to open the crate. Well, that game was so cheap and I've gotten so much enjoyment out of that game that I didn't mind buying a few keys for that. I felt like I was tipping the game developers in that regard, right? But this trend of every game requiring microtransactions now has led to a huge

upset in gaming. I mean, I get thatto-play games have to pay the bills somehow. And I'm not faulting them necessarily. If you look at Fortnite or Apex or some of these larger... And it tends to be Battle Royales or Genshin Impact. Not that any of us play that, but I know that's a wildly popular game. If you're a free-to-play game and you got to pay the bills, I don't fault you quite as much. The problem I have is when I pay for a game and that game is based on microtransactions, if I give you $40, which is considered a fair amount... We're not talking a $60 AAA title, but man, let's be honest, there's a lot of guilty publishers in that regard. Oh, yeah.

If I give you $60 of my hard earned money and you build things into your game to try to get me to give you more money, that's a big no-no, man. That is just... I feel like you're trying to take advantage of me. I feel like you have the wrong intentions when you're making this game. I feel like it affects game decisions. Again, I'll touch on Battlefield 2042, right? Because we were super hyped for that game. And everything about that game was wrong. The design choices they made were so that people would spend money in-game to unlock new characters, new operators, or whatever the heck they call them. I don't even remember right now. They had the Santa Claus thing. Remember when they had the patch where they were going to

release the Santa Claus outfit? And and everybody blew up like thankfully collectively gamers went no like no you you just made it so obvious that you're trying to take more of my money and what did they do they backed down and they said well uh we'll give it to you for free right it wasn't intended to be free you know like that was just you crawfishing and realizing that you mega messed up, man, at that point. So I feel like just microtransactions in paid video games have absolutely no place whatsoever. Well, the reason why that's so prevalent is Fortnite. I know. I'm looking at numbers and when fortnite is bringing in three to six billion

dollars a year everyone's gonna copy that model but see here's the problem but look at warzone we just made fun of warzone right because they have godzilla and freaking king kong right now do you know why they have those because people pay money for the gun skins the godzilla gun that spits out little fire and stuff like that, right? It's all just a ploy to soak more money out of gamers. Well, and the worst thing too, I can't think of an example. I'd have to look one up. But I believe there are now some single player games where there are microtransactions and you can get a skin for your gun in a single player game. And it's like, you have to pay for this. And it's like,

hold on a minute wait nobody else is gonna see this it's just for me i'll tell you who's super guilty of that and i've never bought a single one but i think it's the worst idea ever nintendo i'm calling you out for your stupid amiibo amiibo things you know the little figurines that you can plop on top and then unlocks a character in the game for you yep like at least you get a physical toy you get something yeah but even then it's just like dude those things are expensive man yeah i mean i mean i've talked up elite dangerous a lot previously on the show so we can't hide my feelings about this game because i've talked

about it so much it's kind of gonna be a bit of spoiler for the for the show we have coming up next week but um even that game if i want to put certain paint schemes on my spaceship i gotta buy those with real money yeah yeah and it's already developed that's the thing it's like it's there you've you've already put the time into developing that skin or that operator whatever it is you're just saying you can't have it because you're not giving us more money oh you gave us money you can have it yep that's it i'm like i put 900 hours in your stupid video game i've brought like 17 people to buy your stupid video game because i put 900 hours in i can't buy that with in-game currency come on let me just put the black sparkly spaceship job you know let me put that paint job on my spaceship all right we

are back to you michael with your third pick i'm really happy you picked that because it makes my next pick much easier because i was i was going there next or this one and this is my first of my player created not developer created um if you steal mine i'm going to be so upset michael i hope not but if it is purposely throwing a match or raid because you just want to troll then here it is how many times have we been in a match or raid because you just want to troll, then here it is. How many times have we been in a match and there's somebody who's just doing their own thing on purpose or going and helping the enemy or just like, like,

Oh, there's all these health packs around. And this guy's like, I'm going to shout real fast. Take the health packs real fast. It's on purpose. And they're not helping or they're just standing off or they're AFK and they're purposefully throwing the match.

And there's no reason to do it. There's no reason to do it. I mean, in Overwatch, and they're not helping or they're just standing off or they're AFK and they're purposefully throwing the match. And there's no reason to do it. There's no reason to do it. I mean, in Overwatch, you know what the likelihood is? Because I always thought in Overwatch when somebody does this, I'm like, they must be friends with the other person's team. You know what the likelihood is that you're going to be mashed up with someone from that other team? Like, zero.

Right. We saw it a lot in... There's a game called Atlaslas which is a pirate game right and there was there should have been a toggle switch but there's not a toggle switch but the whole point of the end of the game is you summon the kraken and all these boats fight the kraken well after you beat the kraken 1.0 you go and do all these other missions and you can come back and fight the kraken 2.0 but you have to have this item in your hands well what happened is we'd have all these people go in the center of the map

at this one time and summon the Kraken 1.0, but somebody in there clicked this item and is like, joke on you guys! It's 2.0 now, and it would wipe us all, and when your ships are done, they're done for good. And he'd wipe us all out. And the guy did it like four times in a row. And it was like, dude, this isn't funny.

I know that you're getting excited about this, but you're literally a bully. You're a bully. Anybody dude, this isn't funny. It's not... I know that you're getting excited about this, but you're literally a bully. You're a bully. Anybody that does this is a bully. It's terrible. I'm taking my ball and going home mentality, which there's not a human on the planet that enjoys that mentality. But I'm popping your balls

before I leave. Right. Yep. It's exactly it. Everybody's experienced this and it's the video game version of it and that's my third pick. That's a really good one. Oddly enough, not on my list, but also one of my most hated things. Yeah. I'm doing well, aren't I? Like, I might not win, but I got some good picks.

I'm real excited. This is the best I've done so far. I like how we're not even to the voting part, and Michael's feeling very good. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. All right. So I get my back-to-back picks here to end the third round and to start the fourth. I know that this is probably not as big of a deal for you guys, but it's a big deal for me.

This one's a little bit more from the heart. I'm going with phasing out physical discs and moving everything all digital trying to eliminate the secondhand market i like that one it's not on my list but it almost made my list it really does drive me wild i most of my life i have had to be a budget gamer and for long stretches i did not have a gaming pc that could run modern games i would buy like an x Xbox 360 and I would roll with that for 10 years. And I was able a lot of times to buy a brand new game because I could pick it up, beat it in three weeks and sell the game back for $45 after buying it for 60. Now this game only cost me 15 bucks. And the only games that I would keep were the ones that were multiplayer and i

could play it online for hundreds of hours and i would keep those and there was just something really fun about being able to go to gamestop trade in your three games because they've got a deal trade in three games get an extra 30 percent trade in value and even though gamestop always paid you less than the games were worth at least it was an option i mean nowadays you might buy a 60 game not be able to refund it and now you're just stuck with it you can't even lend it to a friend you know we've talked about that in the past josh we have lent entire consoles and games to friends and i mean i guess you could still do that with digital copies but i just hate the fact that there's this big attempt to phase out physical

discs i i really hate it it's not because people just wanted the latest technology it is that that movement was 100 percent uh driven by the used right baby you know right it's like hey if i we don't want you to be able to give this game to your i we don't want you to be able to give this game to your friend we don't want you to be able to resell this game and somebody else gets to buy cheaper we want people to have to buy brand new copies and i mean yes technology changes and everything's digital now but that is a trend that hurt gaming i can't say paul i want to play oh i heard you picked up V Rising today. Can I borrow it and test it out and see if it's worth my money or not? Because you're just going

to go, No, that's not... No. What? How am I going to give you this game to try out? Yep. Paul, two things here real fast. One, I tip my hat to you because this didn't make my list, but you made a really good point about budget gaming that I did not consider that actually puts it much higher up on where it should have been on my list, but you made a really good point about budget gaming that I did not consider that actually puts it much higher up on where it should have been on my list, because that's a really good point. The ability to go back and say, I've got these couple of games, I know I'm not going to touch them again. I can't afford this new AAA title, but I really want to play it. I'm going to take these three games that I'm never going to play again, go trade them in, get that AAA title, I can play games second of all nostalgia

since you were talking about nostalgia pick here um you guys remember when you could go to blockbuster and rent a sega genesis and rent nba jam oh and just go play that and then you return it after the weekend like that that's days of old i know that blockbuster's days of old as well but that that kind of thing can't happen anymore like josh was saying i can't say let me let me loan you this game so you can try it out anymore and that is sad that's actually very sad i almost put on my list not being able to rent games from blockbuster anymore because nobody wants to use gamefly and redbox was fine and convenient there was something special about going to best buy picking up the box,

reading it, looking at it, looking at the features. Well, does this one have two player split screen or is it two player online and, you know, trying to figure out what you're going to rent and play? Yeah, there's super nostalgia there that you just can't do anymore. So, all right. And then to round out my team with my last pick i i i have to pick this because it's something that we're all so guilty of and i think everybody hates it but we all understand why it has to exist this mostly goes to mobile gaming and it's when you download a free game and about three minutes later you get a pop-up are you enjoying our game will you leave us a review will you rate us five stars and it's like look i get it every podcast i'm given the same

spiel hey if you haven't done so rate us five stars leave a written review join us on discord join us on patreon but like i totally get it because you have to hit people with it you got to remind them but man do i hate every single time I hear that on a podcast or see it in a mobile game. So yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and say pop-ups asking for ratings. I have seen it. I just ignore them.

You know, honestly, it's one of those things where usually it has the button that says not now or something like that. It is very annoying, but I get it's kind of a tough one, man. I get it because it is kind of a necessity because discovery is everything, right? Yeah, exactly. I'm 100% on Paul's side on this one because it happened like three times today. It happens in everything.

I'm going into Paramount Plus on my iPhone so my four-year-old can watch it. She can't read. And the second it pops up, I hand it to her and she's like, da-da. And she hands it to me. I'm like, not now. Not now. Don't do that again. It's like, how about give me an option for never again, literally ever, please? Yeah. Not now now not ever you want to talk about pay to play or micro transactions if they were to be like hey you can pay two dollars and never be asked this question i would pay it for every single app i've ever had in my entire life there's a business idea for y'all app developers by the way i would pay for that because i hate what paul just brought up are you enjoying this game? And you click no.

And they're like, will you please now type a paragraph and tell us what you don't like about the game? It's like, no, no, I'm not. I'm not doing any of that. All right. So I know that that one's not so much in line with what you guys would pick, but I had to include it there, especially for mobile games. It's every free mobile game. You get hit with that. All right, Michael, you now get your last pick how are you going to round out your team i'm really between three and this sucks and none of them are probably josh's pick because josh's pick is probably something i didn't think of which kudos to josh man we do get an honorable mentions at the end right because i do want to bring up a couple of

these oh yeah which one of these upsets me the most um all right i'm gonna throw this one out there expensive season passes without telling you what you're getting season passes just in general yep season passes in general season pass like yep and it's like okay so i guess that doesn't fall under micro transactions though does it no it's different because you're not buying an item in the game. They want you to pay this amount, and now you're going to get whatever we're going to give you in the future. It's almost like gambling, though, because if you look at some of those games that are like, hey, you can buy the season pass for $99, and you get every expansion we ever come out with. And the game is a dud.

And they come out with two expansions that might cost 20 bucks each, and you just lost your money. But if you're excited and amped about the game, and you're like, I have this opportunity to get the season pass now on a discount or something like that, or even just, Hey,

here's a season pass. And now you can play without a monthly subscription. Well, I don't know how long I'm going to play this for. I did a lifetime pass for Star Trek online straight up was $300. Cause the game was supposed to be 15 a month you could pay 300 one time when you bought the game and you would never have to pay a monthly subscription fee the game went free to play two out two weeks two months later because it was a done now the good thing is they did do they did

do right though what they did is in game like i haven't played the game in like 10 years i'm probably loaded in that game because they said we're going to go ahead and give you an equivalent of like 15 a month of our buyable in-game currency every month for the rest of your life while the game is live plus you can get special access to different starships you can't get and stuff like that which is kind of funny and i know i'm going on a rant right here but i need to load it in that game again because i'm probably loaded because i haven't touched it in 10 years and i'm getting 15 a month worth of in-game currency right now i'm actually okay when a game does that like a like a paid game goes free to play and because you were one of the people that paid for the game they give you a lot of in-game stuff i feel like uh swotor did that

i'm actually happy about it because like in that game star trek online like i get a special color for my ship that no one else can get. Because I basically supported them from the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Josh, we get to hear your mystery last pick. I'm so glad. I'm really curious.

Guys, this could be a first rounder, in my opinion. I took a gamble and it paid off. My last pick, one of the worst trends as gamers that we do is review bombing. Honestly, I did not put it on my list, but I thought about it. Did you? I'll tell you what, man. Again, I'll reference just because it came out today. And I know that we're excited about it to play it.

But V Rising just came out today. I happened to be on Reddit and somebody made a post that said, if you're review bombing this game, please stop. And I was like, this game's been out for two hours. How are people review bombing it already? And sure enough, if you go to the Steam reviews... Now, again, I haven't played this game more than 30 minutes. So I don't know if it's good or not.

But apparently nobody else does either. But the issue is that people are review bombing v rising because they're mad at the developer because they stopped supporting battle right battle right was a free to play battle game like moba style it was free to play that's ridiculous and people are mad at stunlock studios and are review bombing this game that they just released, which looks very good because they're mad about the fact that they don't support Battlerite anymore. Review bombing has become this trend that is absolutely infuriating to me as a gamer because I want to know if a game is good. I don't care about your political beliefs about the game. I don't care about your hardware issues

with the game. I don't care about your hardware issues with the game. I don't care if you have prior... They review bomb games because it's on Epic Game Store or it's on Steam. This has nothing to do with the game itself. I am looking and you are looking as a gamer at reviews because you want to know if the game is worth your money or not. And you know what? It's the most pointless thing ever, man. It's completely counterproductive to what reviews should be. Stop it. Stop review bombing games. If you don't like a game legitimately and you want to leave a negative review for it, fine. That's exactly what the reviews are for. If you have issues with the game apart from the

gameplay itself, do not review bomb a Game. You're not doing anybody any favors. I feel like that was a really good entry just now, but you talked it up so much that it was actually kind of disappointing. What? I'm leaving you a negative

review, Michael. No, don't do it. Don't do it. That was yesterday, Michael, that said that. It was the other developer. We sold we sold since then no but it was funny because right afterwards paul was like it was i thought about it but it didn't make my list and i'm like josh had put on top of this pedestal and the next comment is paul saying i thought about it but yeah yeah it does bother me i mean i do hate review bombing it would be nice if everyone would just review games on the merits of the game and if you want to express your political opinions or you know if you're part of some kind of activism that's fine and that's great but it would be nice if that was separate from the development of that specific game because people want to read reviews on the

game not so much see your opinions on the business whether your opinions are right or wrong it's just a separate issue the other problem is we have seen that a lot of times if you review bomb something you are legitimately hurting a good developer at the same time for something that is completely unrelated you know what i mean and it's like we want good video games and if this is a good video game and you're review bombing it, how many of those have we talked about in our deep dives? Where it's like, we guessed the rating and the rating is way lower than the game is. We're like, dude, that's crazy. This game is great.

And we look and it's because it got review bombed for some stupid reason. To your exact point, too. If it's a small publisher and they stop supporting an older game like in your instance right here you know it's because they're a small developer but not publisher but small developer you know and they they might not be able to have the manpower to work on their next game but no one's buying their old game people are playing it and they're like we can't we can't support this anymore we have to move on because we have to stay afloat it's the same thing and so you're review bombing them because they have to run a business

and these are people's lives and families you're talking about, especially with a small publisher or small developer. The other thing is practice makes perfect, man. If you make a game and that game's really good, like Battle Rite was,

and then you go, hey, you know what? We've learned a ton of stuff. We want to make a really good video game now. Fine. Give me the better video game. I get it if you don't want to support the old one anymore. If you're going to give me something better video game. I get it. If you don't want to support the old one anymore,

you know, like if you're going to give me something better in the long run, that's a great trade off. All right. So to summarize our picks here, Josh's team is made up of hacking publishers, directing development, loot boxes,

slash micro transactions and review bombing. And yeah, just reading all four of those back to back makes me feel sick. These are all trends we certainly hate. I think all these teams are pretty good overall. Michael is coming in with pay to win mechanics, unfinished games being released, intentional throwing to troll, and season passes when you don't know what you're getting and then my team is day one server issues remakes and remasters flooding the market phasing out discs losing the second hand market and pop-ups asking for ratings

do we give our uh do we give our quick little honorable mentions right here yeah that's exactly what i was gonna say let's just run through a few honorable mentions. I was hoping you didn't forget. Sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you. Oh, no, you're good. What do you have as honorable? Thank goodness the host doesn't have a lightning button, because I could have gotten lightning hosted just now.

I'll just give you a couple. When developers attack modders, I don't like that. I think it's really ridiculous that someone is trying to make your game more fun and keeping your game alive by maybe bringing it back to life. Permanent early access. Yeah. Those games. Escort missions.

Enough said. And let's do last one is mandatory stealth sequences where the mission is over when you get caught. Oh, that's the worst. No. Go straight to you know where. You can go there. That's a good one. I do hate where you get caught oh that's the worst no go straight to you know where you can go there that's a good one i do hate where you yeah you get seen once it's an immediate failure and the game has to reload that is awful quick hits for me uh dlc uh honestly if you're gonna make a game

give me the full game don't make a game cut it up into pieces and then sell me each piece of the game uh especially when they announce it before it even comes out. Right. Exactly. I'll pay the $60. I'll pay $80. I'll pay $100 if I know the game's going to be amazing. You know what I mean? But give me an amazing game and I'll give you a lot of money for it.

But yeah, so DLCs, toxicity. Like I get I'm a troll, right? Like we don't make any, but I'm a counter troll. I am not just outright mean to people for no reason whatsoever. If you are the guy in the game that's throwing the game and throwing a fit, I will troll you to no end. But toxicity as gamers, that's not fun for anybody, man. I see it in Rocket League all the time. We see it in Overwatch. I mean, what game do we not experience that in? And as gamers, it's terrible. Support each other. We're all here to

have fun, man. Putting each other down, I just don't understand that trend. And it feels like it's getting worse. Live service games, I think that's a terrible trend. Twitch drops for beta invites. I hate that. Nobody wants to watch Twitch for four hours to be able to play Overwatch 2. And no one's really watching the Twitch either either did any of you actually watch the twitch for overwatch 2 no a little only a little bit um and then finally and then finally uh dps meters gauges or mods that take the fun out of a game uh good one where it makes it a math sequence right it's not a game anymore it's just oh what's your numbers boiling it down to the calculator yeah what about you do you have any left on your list paul that we didn't already just cover sure uh nfts gold farmers oh yeah gold farmers uh it is like borderline round one if you play a lot of mmos and it's getting hit with those whispers seeing

it in the world chat the gold farmers and mmo chat is way up there. That is annoying. I hate motion, using motion with controllers. So mostly looking at like the Nintendo Wii and even PS4 games, there were games where you'd have to like twirl your controller in a circle to do something. I really hate that in games. How does that make you feel about Dance Dance Revolution where your whole body's a controller?

That's totally different. That is great. I love DDR. I love Rock band i i'm not opposed to alternative controllers it's when you're using very poorly made motion to control things in a game because that's the thing the the wiimotes never worked right or worked well the way that you thought it would and then i also have in here an inability to pause games looking at you elden ring oh man and drm slash always online games especially if you live out in the boonies there are people in our discord server who say i just can't play that game because it's drm and i don't really get internet where i live so even though it's a single player

game i can't even play it. No, that's terrible. That totally makes sense. Can I add one more that's more of a personal thing for me? Yeah, of course. That you've heard me complain about? Bots buying all the next gen consoles so I can't have one. That's a great, that's actually a really good one.

That might be better than half the ones we drafted. Scalping. Yeah, that is gaming. That does affect gaming. Oh, I had it here too. And I didn't even, I was like, I'll say that as a... You would have won, Michael, and now you're a loser. That's not true. I'm still going to win.

You guys are losers. All right, so let's go ahead and start doing these matchups. Maybe we'll debate these a little bit less than we've done in the past, just for the interest of time. But round one, match one, we have hacking versus season passes. Hacking wins. Yeah. I'm just going to run away.

Straight up. Yep. Lose. Ruin fun. Yep. Yeah. Hacking. I don't like season passes, but I also am guilty of buying all of them.

So, hacking. Yeah. I'll agree with hacking. What about pay-to-win mechanics versus pop-ups asking for ratings? Mine's easy here. I'm going to say pay-to-win. I'm going to say pay-to-win mechanics versus pop-ups asking for ratings? I'm going to say pay-to-win. I'm going to say pay-to-win as well. Clearly pay-to-win. Pay-to-win was going to be probably my first pick if it was still on the table.

So I've got no problem with that. All right. Next matchup, we've got day one server issues versus review bombing. Ooh. That's tough. Review bombing. Ooh. That's tough. Review bombing is sad. It does not personally affect me. It's permanent, though.

But it does not affect me the way where I sit down and I want to play a game and I can't play it. Review bombing is sad, but that's affecting other people. So just by nature, day one server issues are going to bother me more. I can have a strategy here because I'm the tiebreaker. I can have a strategy here because Paul's going to move on because I do agree with day one server issues. I do agree they're both terrible. But day one server issues are really annoying. I should let Paul go longer because I've got a big Achilles heel for day one server issues that I'm going to save for later on as an argument against one of mine. So I think as much as I agree with you,

Josh, I think the day one server issues, I personally am affected by more. So my vote is biased. I personally... I'm the idiot that will sit there and just refresh the server every 5 minutes waiting for it to launch instead of just getting up and going to do something with my family you know what i mean or something like that like i will literally sit there and just be like refresh why aren't you up yet refresh kick it in finally it starts to load you think you're in and then it goes like we were unable to process your login and it dumps you back out then you're yep or it's like i know they said it's a global release, but let me just try my VPN. I'm going to try it.

Oh, yeah. Now I'm going to try it in India. Now I'm going to try it in Spain. All right. Just I will agree with Paul, but please stop review bombing people. Yes. Agreed. PSA.

Please stop that. All right. Round one match for remakes and remasters versus intentional throwing to troll. Which one of these actually affects you the most and makes you the most angry? You don't have to buy the remake. And there are some good remasters out there. Here's what I'm going to say about this. I am on record probably 100 times on this podcast talking about how much I hate remasters.

Yeah. And I have never once talked about hating throwing. Yes, I hate people that throw in a video game. But man, have I made my distaste of remasters known on this podcast. For the sake of my own posterity, I got to go with the remasters thing. So I actually messed up here because I think that I could have said, what is it? Toxic gamers and toxic gamers could have covered that under that umbrella,

and I messed up because Toxic Gamers would have been all of it. I still think that myself, there are some good... Look at Last of Us, right? They redid it for PS5 from PS4, and it was beautiful, and the game was so much more playable. Look at what's coming out. I'm excited. Gears of War, the first three, they're going to to be redone they're almost unplayable now because if

you go back you remember it in your mind is looking so good now you go back and you're like that does not look good anymore and i would like to play that game again i would i would rather play a new game with a new ip like oh man i already wrote it on the dot come over yeah i had actually had that on my list too which was just too many sequels and not enough new ip which i didn't bring up but same with movies right like sometimes you just want something new that you haven't seen before instead of the same old stuff reskinned right what about my perspective i've never played dead space i would never play dead space but it's being remastered that's what i was saying remakes are okay sometimes

remasters are terrible well but it says right on there remakes remakes and remasters i mean they do kind of go hand in hand but i think a lot of remakes are still the remasters at this point yeah so we can move on with the show and i've already got at least one thing that's made it across fine let's move on all right next matchup unfinished they're both mine oh they're both ears unfinished games versus loot boxes and micro transactions i'll give this to michael unfinished games or it's unfinished games yeah it's definitely unfinished games it's one of the worst trends for sure oh wait not only that but it's it's super sucky to get excited about a game like Cyberpunk and then realize on release day or afterwards that this game is completely unfinished and should never have released in the first place. That's just a terrible feeling.

I was really sad about it. Yeah, I was really sad about that. And it's the same feeling as when I tried to play because they said, hey, you horizon forbidden west on your ps4 and i bought it and i'm like no you can't and i'm like i have been dying to play that game for two years since they announced it and like cyberpunk the same thing and now i can't play it because it's unfinished or it doesn't work the way it's advertised yeah yeah all right last matchup of round one, publishers directing development or phasing out discs. This one's hard. No,

it's not. You're right. It's not. The nostalgia piece. I love what Paul has to say here, but really I think publishers direct, uh, directing development is,

is toxic to the gaming environment. It's one of the worst issues in gaming right now, to be honest, EA think about how much people hate ea activision i mean they're the the loathing and the hate for these companies doesn't just come out of nowhere i'm gonna give paul one chance to counter argue and win me over uh i mean i was i i think either of these certainly could move on i think that if you are lower income phasing out of discs really cripples your ability to play games full stop now if you're above that income line where it's not as big of a deal

then it's not an issue at all so it's not as universal of a problem uh josh is making some faces i'm not entirely sure why i'm just gonna counter one word game pass game pass if you're a gamer on a budget game pass doesn't get much better that's that's actually a really good point um and that's a good counter i was probably still gonna go with publishers directing development but um i gotta say though that one of the reasons why i'm having a hard time getting a ps5 is because i refuse to buy the digital-only version. I want to be able to buy a disc if I have the option to. It's worth the wait.

I've had the option twice now. I think Target and Best Buy came available and I'm like, I could buy the digital-only but I don't want to. Stick to your guns on that. Smart choice. There's a lot of things that are similar to this in other worlds, like cell phones phasing out the ability to put in an SD card or to have a headphone jack, like stuff like that.

I really miss or even the ability to swap out a battery. So it's just like continuing down that trend of let's not give people access to be able to upgrade their stuff. Let's make everything break as soon as possible. Let's not even let them resell things it's just a huge bummer all around dude paul iphone 13 pro like the 128 gigabytes like a thousand bucks right iphone 13 pro 256 is like 1300 and you're like there's 300 more for 128 more gigabytes or whatever it is that's why and what's what's that what would that cost an sd card like 30 bucks maybe maybe 30 yeah it's a ripoff it's pretty wild all right we are now in round two we are down to our final six gaming trends that we hate and we've got oh this is boy this this honestly

could be the finals matchup someone's gonna be eliminated way too early here. We've got hacking versus unfinished games. Oh, can we just save that one for later? I know. This is round two. You know, the problem I have with this is that I was really hoping to go up against hacking, but not with one of my own, because my thing is like, I don't really experience hacking. I said it earlier.

It doesn't really happen to me. And so I'm going to vote against it. But obviously, I'm going to vote against it because it's my pick that's going against it. So I hate both of these, honestly. I agree. This is the thing. This is not where I think your pick is terrible. The only thing that I will say is that when a game release is unfinished,

usually they do wind up finishing the game six months to a year later. I just saw a post from somebody where they said they just played Cyberpunk and they said, you know what? Cyberpunk is my favorite game ever. When I played it, they didn't have any bugs. The game's great. The story is great. Everybody that played it day one might have had issues, but here I am eight months later and I think this game's amazing. Yeah. So you've been waiting for two years for this game to come out. You've been so excited. You've spent the $60 on this AAA title.

And you're like, okay, I know I have the game in my hands, but I'm going to be able to play it in eight months. Sure. But you know what I can't play is a game that's filled with hackers. Look at PUBG. It completely ruined that game. Rust. I love Rust, man. That game was terrible anyways.

I don't know, man. I'm kidding. And so hackers in a game will actually straight up ruin your ability to enjoy that game or play it, which is different than the disappointment of, man, this game probably should have cooked for another six months or so. I just feel like one absolutely completely ruins a game where the other one is like, I'm disappointed. But six months from now, I still own this game and can go back to it and enjoy it for what it was supposed to be. Yeah, after all, your friends have already spoiled the main story points for you.

The ones that were willing to go through it. Hey, Paul, listen, I need to talk to you for a minute. Hey, Paul. Hey, Paul, you know that money that you owed me? Just don't worry about that, Paul. Listen, Paul, I've never won one of that money that you owed me just don't worry about that paul listen paul i've never won one of these before and i'd like it if you could just for the next two rounds throw me a bone here i'm just gonna notice i'm i'm ready to be

wined and dined uh no here's what i was gonna say i as as much as i hate i'll buy you a loot box as thank you i i i'd really love that by the way my overwatch account has like i could not care less uh as much as i hate hacking and it can ruin certain games hacking is not really a new trend it's kind of just always been around since games have been online we didn't say worst new trends in gaming we said worst trends in gaming worst trends and i think the probably the number one worst trend right now is releasing unfinished games um like i said this this honestly could be the like i said the finals the final two left standing i hate eliminating hacking i almost want to just reorder them to let it keep going

but if those are the two i i think i have to say unfinished games it is the biggest problem of like the last few years honestly it is a new thing too it is new and so for recency bias i'm not protesting this very much because honestly i we all hate that and it's become such a trend that we see we see so often now i thankfully I do feel like there is starting to be this movement of pushback from gamers to say, dude, we're not going to put up with that. We put up with it for a few years, but we're not putting up with it anymore, which I love. I hope that we continue that. I'm not upset. If you pick unfinished games, that's being released. I'm okay with that. All right. So that means that unfinished games is the first one being pushed through to the finals. Michael, you actually have a chance. You're in the finals.

I'm in the finals, baby. Because you know what? I'm looking here, and I don't know if I'm going to have one in the finals. Michael, you're already there, so you're doing pretty good all right hoping i get there again here round two match two we've got pay to win mechanics versus remakes and remasters same argument against remakes and remasters that i made before like i do welcome some of them sometimes i really do and i know it's a problem but you don't have to buy the game like it's annoying that they exist but you don't have to

buy it now pay to win you could be a hundred hours into the game like i was with lost ark before i ever even knew the game was pay to win because nobody else was there either so nobody could it's pay for convenience michael right it's pay to win come on am i the one here that loves pay to win mechanics i get so excited no it's clearly pay to win mechanics is going into the finals that's gonna take it i do i loved when michael was saying you know sometimes you enjoy a good remaster or a good remake and i was like yeah no one's no one's ever enjoyed pay to win all right so uh pay to win mechanics is going to make it through to the finals as well i okay i'm not going to protest this one as much but the only reason is because michael made a great point if you don't like a remaster don't buy it if the if people if

gamers stop buying remasters guess guess what's going to stop being developed remasters if nobody buys it they're gonna go wow we're not doing that anymore guys we just lost a couple million dollars re-skinning all of this game vote with your wallet right exactly yeah so and i say that as someone who bought the gta definitive yeah i know you so i know i'm part of the problem and i i i'm part of the problem too but mostly with an actual full remake like i am excited about dead space remake because i've never played it and i can't play it because it's realistically it's kind of unplayable right guys i the only problem i have with pay to win is i don't play a lot of games that have that functionality built into them you know like i did play lost ark i get the complaints about it but

it didn't really affect me probably just because i didn't play lost ark long enough to get to that point hearthstone i see it sometimes but i i've really only played battlegrounds and occasionally duels when i do play duels i do see it and aggravates the crud out of me you know about that kind of stuff so i get it i you know i just hate the remaster thing too so but that's fine pay to win deserves to be there yeah they all suck all right final matchup in round two day one server issues versus publishers directing development now go ahead and no you go first oh i was gonna say it would have been really funny if michael was one of these and won this matchup

and had all three games in the finals all three choices and then we just vote no confidence in all of them and then he still loses we move on exactly so this means only me or josh are going to get one push through to the finals and i don't even think it really has a chance so i don't know if i really care which of these wins but the funniest thing is i was going to think strategy now i have integrity though guys integrity is when you're you're an, good-hearted person and you don't do things that are wrong, right? I was going to vote for the one that I had a better chance of beating. I thought that was – I'm not going to do that. I thought that was honesty.

What's the difference between honesty and integrity? Integrity is like – I think it includes honesty. Paul, you look stuff. Integrity is the root word integer, meaning whole. Numbers. Integrity is the root word integer, meaning whole numbers. So I think it means that your whole being is like singular focus. You always act the same one way, which would be implied like above board and honest. I think that's what it's supposed to be. So honesty would be under integrity.

What was that? Yeah. It's under the umbrella of integrity. Honesty is under the umbrella of integrity. Okay. I believe so. I believe so. I believe so, yeah. There we go.

All right, so, yeah. Day one server issues or publishers directing development. I might actually throw my hat into publishers directing development because day one server issues suck, but it does get fixed over time. Whereas if a publisher forces a game to have bad mechanics, it's just bad. It's also a terrible trend that we are seeing that doesn't seem to be actually on the decline. It seems to be on the incline. Yeah, probably. The publisher is having more of a say, and it is ruining some games that shouldn't be ruined. There's less passion for games, and there's more passion for money.

And we've seen those cross each other. Yeah. And the reason this is happening, exactly what you guys said, is because look at how many in the last year even... Don't even go back 2 years. Go back a year. How many software developers have been bought out or merged in the last 2 years? And that's all happening because investors, big corporate investors, they want things now. They want things. And if you're a publisher and you're like, ooh, our investors who gave us the money are not happy, they start putting pressure saying, get it to us, get it to us, get it to us. And the only argument I have against day one server issues, which is why I'm going with

publishers, direct and development as well, is because you honestly just expect them. They suck, but you know they're going to happen with big games at at least it's terrible that we've come to accept that though it is yeah all right like hackers we expect hackers i didn't make the list either all right so taking a look here at our finals since we are a three-man show we always end up with uh three entries in the finals we We've got Unfinished Games versus Pay2Win versus Publishers Directing Development. And so we're just going to match up each one against each other.

What do you guys hate more? Pay2Win mechanics or Publishers Directing Development? This one's hard for me. This one's easy for me. And it's not because I'm biased in this one. It's just that I think Publishers having a hand in game development ruins a lot more than Pay2Win. If don't like pay to win, don't pay the money. It kind of goes back to that one where nobody free to lose you're still getting a game that you can play to a certain degree for free whereas publishers having their hands in game

development is is like it's the cancerous to the gaming industry paul where do you want to go on this one uh i am swayed by the argument that pay to win just don't play the game but also the fact that this is a trend that's kind of been nipped in the bud and you don't really see it so much anymore so i know that we're not just talking about modern trends but i kind of feel like everyone's already on the same page with this one which is why it doesn't really exist anymore except for older games i i would probably give it to publishers directing development i really want to win but i also agree like i really want to win guys i've never won but i really do think that publishers direct development is more of a problem like like you said pay to win yeah it sucks okay so there's one instance i have with lost ark where i'm 100 hours in i didn't know it was pay to win and yeah i spent a lot of time and i still play that game i still fire it up i want

to play it more to be honest with you i would probably be playing that game a lot more if we didn't want to expand our horizons and give like great deep dives and stuff like that but also like it's it's something that that was one example where I didn't know it was pay-to-win, and now most games you know they're pay-to-win, you just don't play it. Candy Crush, everybody knows it's pay-to-win. You don't play it. Surprise pay-to-win is the worst pay-to-win.

Especially after you hit max level in an MMO. Well, Michael, I don't think you need to worry too much because I really like what you still have here in the race. We now have a matchup of unfinished games versus publishers directing development. And I gotta say, I think it's unfinished games.

I agree. Josh? One last attempt. Does it even matter at this point? It doesn't mean that it's gone. You guys both agreed. We could have a three-way tie, but I just think Unfinished Games is worse than publishers directing development.

I will say this. My only argument is that publishers getting involved in game development is why we have unfinished games. It is the root cause. That's one of the things I was going to say, because I gave a few reasons, if you go back to when I did give the reasons. But one of them, I'm like, they're almost in a certain way,

kind of the same thing, but they're not. But that's exactly right. That's one of the reasons why. Other reasons exist as well. I forget what I said earlier. You can go back to whatever time stamp i said that but i mean if you look at the last few years if a game has really let's look at halo infinite right which is still a fairly beloved game there was not a lot of complaints about that game i get that there's a rabid fan base that's upset that there's not more content that's been released and stuff like

that right but the two the two things that get blamed recently are COVID. Oh, hey, we had issues with people working remotely because of COVID and stuff like that. And no developer will blame their publisher. You can't do that. You can't say, well, EA made us release this game. Exactly. And so they can't blame them directly.

But we all know what the issue is as to why a game got released when it got released. And so my only caveat in this decision is that we would not generally have unfinished games being released if it wasn't for my take, which is the fact that publishers are the ones that are pushing these games out before they're ready. Developers want to make a great video game. That's their goal. There's not a developer out there that goes, we want to make a crappy game. You know, I mean, look at Among Us, right?

They just wanted to make a fun game. It skyrocketed into insane mainstream popularity. They didn't know what to do. And then I'm sure there's publishers that swooped in and said, oh, let us take over on this. And they kind of went, no, you know what? We're just going to make the game that we want to make at that point. And so I feel like there is a root cause to Michael's issue, which we all hate. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we don't, but I feel like that root cause is the fact that publishers

are so involved in game development. Yes and no. You're not wrong, Josh. But there are specific games that were unfinished, like BioWare has really done a poor job these last several years. And they flat out said EA did not get involved in Anthem at all. And Anthem is a great first half of a game. It's flawless. And then it just ends and there's nothing to do and there's no story. And it's like, that's a game that's just unfinished. And, you know, it was polished for the small amount of things that it did.

So, yeah, sometimes you can boil it down to the publisher i do think sometimes i'm gonna help the extended early access i'm gonna help you also because buggy bugginess is something we all hate and that's technically under the unfinished umbrella somewhat yeah and there's also the other point which is a counterpoint to the studio or not the studio the publisher getting involved is look at all the sports games they have to put them out on a timeline and we don't play sports games much so we don't talk about them but if you're talking about fifa 2023 you have to release that game at a certain time and if you're trying to do this big graphical overhaul and you don't get it done in time you gotta put it out you know yeah or whatever it's called next year because it's not fifa it's whatever yeah soccer club or

whatever it is all right by the way i would vote for myself on this one and i know michael is voting for himself and paul i think you said you're voting michael's way yeah i'm voting on unfinished games all right i can't i mean i at all. I think that should have been the final, final, final. Because this one's easy. So, now we have our third matchup, which means either we're going to end up with a three-way tie or Unfinished Games has a chance to win it all.

What about Unfinished Games versus Pay2Win? Pay2Win's worse. Just because I want that. You know it's not. You know it's not. You know it's not. Come on. You guys knew I was going to say that. I know.

And we all know unfinished games is worse than pay to win. Are we giving this to Michael? Did Michael win his first one? And it's not charity. It's not charity at all. No, that is a great one. You full out won, Michael. And that was your second round pick.

I know you guys well enough to know that you're not going to give charity give charity at all no no you know i want to win more than it yeah exactly nice job michael pat yourself on the back we can now call you one for one for yes obi-wan no oh come on no oh and you don't get to be obi-wan i Obi-Wan. Oh, man. Hey, does that mean that I get to introduce Make Love, Marry, Murder now? That's a long show, Michael. Go ahead, Michael. Go ahead. Bring us in for the next segment. Never mind.

The next segment is, hey, thanks, everybody. Don't forget to go over and support us on Patreon if you haven't already done that. We really appreciate the support. Sorry, I was taking Paul's job for a minute because I think that's what's coming next, right? Did you like this episode? Will you rate us five stars yeah yeah that's that's exactly what it is so yes we will crown unfinished games as the worst trend in gaming i i think that's a fair winner i do i do think that we had several uh possible winners here but i think that one's worthy of the title and so i hope that you guys

enjoyed this episode if we missed some trends come let us know let us know on socials at multiplayer pod or on discord with the link in the episode description and also the day this episode releases on our socials i'm gonna put all these games out there or we will put those games out there for you to vote on who you think actually won this and you can just go from the list of all four of each and just pick who you think actually had the best overall top four i'm gonna get crushed in that i i i i think we can give that to one of you too if we if we if i was playing for that kind of strategy it would have been very different i'm'm going to look terrible in that voting. I'm just going to say right now.

All right. So that finishes up this bonus round. We're all done. We're good to go. Our next episode will be on Thursday, where we will cover this week in gaming. And then we will have a quick take for everybody on Saturday. So this was a blast. It's been a lot of fun.

Can't wait until we have that next episode on thursday and until then happy gaming thanks so much cheers all i can't believe you won michael but you all right see you everybody thank you guys