Video Gamers Podcast - Worst Trends in Gaming - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Gaming hosts Michael, Josh and Paul are bringing you one of our best episodes yet! What do all gamers hate? The same things. Terrible gaming trends that have popped up over the decades. We go head to head tournament style with the worst trends in gaming. Which trend is the worst of the worst? Only way to find out is to check out this awesome episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: 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

Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew the content we're putting out, consider supporting the show. We also give you extra perks like bonus episodes, which are really cool. It's really just a bunch of fun banter and all kinds of cool stuff, and we talk about random things. So if you want to support the show, head over 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. Aw, that's so sweet, Paul. After all the picking on me that you've been doing lately. Yeah, we ought to balance it out.

He really does care, Michael. Yeah, we've got kind of a well-balanced show. 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 and i'm like 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 then we're gonna slap you when you're why does that make me easy to pick on that well you're a troll troll yeah you're an instigator online already so not in real life but online you certainly are fair fair all right so, 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, honestly, because as gamers, we love to complain about things

gaming related. And I feel like tonight is going to be this, just everybody 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 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 trend and is terrible and is universally hated? I think you have it absolutely right, except you make it sound like campfires are pleasant and fun. You forget the fact, 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 going to change.

Like, 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, we'll 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 going to say, I get first pick, but then I got to wait so long before I get to pick again. Yep. And so long to your chances of winning, too. I don't know about that, buddy.

I do have a question for you guys. Do you guys feel like there is one overwhelmingly first choice in this category? No, I don't. I think there's four or five overwhelmingly first choices. Yes. There's a lot that might fall to the second round that I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to pick that first for my first pick or see if it

falls the second or what you guys takes it. It's there's a lot. There's a lot of annoying things. That's what I was going to 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 I feel like this one's really going to come down to discussion like who's going to be able to put the best argument those ones are probably going to 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 gonna just agree with you guys a lot that really bugs me yeah it's just a matter of degree right like yes we all agree that's terrible but how bad so like uh 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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. 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? Warzone. What's one of the major issues with 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. I mean, 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 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.

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 like that snap and it's like no nobody can actually do that nobody tracking through walls exactly it's like that's not possible and so i do get it because i've been i've been in some comp matches you know when i was trying to get from bronze to silver because i'm perma stuck in bronze because

i'm terrible uh i'm one win away from getting a silver man i'm almost 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's most annoying? Not so much us trying to prove our point so much. It's just, what's the most annoying?

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 oh yeah battle.net was down for a couple hours and sure 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'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. 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 at the top. I've got like a 1370 score, all that stuff. I'm ready to go.

And the game gives you like a 4% chance of upgrading your gear piece. And you have to upgrade it like 16 times to get out of each of that to go to the next tier, right? Well, guess what happens? Like, oh, but if you want more of these little star, whatever they're called, to the next tier, right? Well, guess what happens? Oh, but if you want more of these little star, whatever they're called, or the sun star, there's all kinds of little things. And you can just buy them. You can buy them. And you can buy lots of them for $100. And then you can go and increase your chance to 20% on your weapon or your gear or whatever. And it's like, can I just play a game? Can I just play the game and get there on

my own? And there's always that thing. Or even one of my favorite games of old was Star Trek Online. And they made it free to play, which it's fine. I get the free to play thing. 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, something like that, where I'm like, okay, I'm going to 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, spend 10 bucks and it happens now. And then I can upgrade my house and my barn. And it's awful. 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 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 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. Right. And so developers will try to say, well, this is just pay for convenience, but we all know better. 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. 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 mechanic i do like that pick michael i was going to take that with one of my two if you did nice i know what i know what one of your next two picks is going to be.

I don't want to say it just in case, but I absolutely know one of yours. Will you tell me? Because I don't know what I'm taking. It's a trap, Michael. Don't do it. I have a list of 21, and I don't really know. Oh, yeah. I thought my list was the biggest of 16.

Nice. I am going to go with... You know what? This might just be recency bias because Josh and I were just playing V Rising. I'm going to say busted day one servers. Yes. Oh, good one. Yes.

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 uh 10 hours ago this morning 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 going to say busted servers on day one. Launch day lag. Yeah.

You know, something like that. Yeah. Dude, it's the worst because... I mean, I don't know about you guys, but if there's a game that I'm super hyped for, I'll ask off of work that day. I want to play it. 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, it's funny because I was watching the launch of vRising got delayed just like two hours or maybe even an hour. And people were like, 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, yeah, exactly. 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

let me ask you let me ask you a question paul on 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 going to 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 gonna drop a little day four five and six it's high but now it's kind of normalized and so why are we gonna 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 i i'm not 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, Hey, 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 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 none of us are game developers. I did take a couple classes in C++ in high school, but that 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++. Oh, wonderful. All right. So now that we're 20 minutes in, we have finished round one. So let's see here. Round two, I am going to go with... I know I at least have Josh on my side for this one.

I'm going to go with remakes and remasters. No! Boom. That's the one I was guessing. You stole my pick! Yeah. Dang it! I didn't think you were gonna go that one this early nope this is i knew he picked this with one of us too i i have

it on here i'm like that's the one you were that one i said earlier that's the one especially when the remake or the remaster is worse than the original uh we're looking at you rock star 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 gonna say remakes and remasters especially when they charge 60 bucks 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, 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 2 or 3, you have to buy the definitive edition of their crappy remake that's not really a remake. It's a reskin, basically, at best.

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 well. Same thing. 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 uh looking at ucg cd words are hard cd project red uh 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 going to buy it anyways. How many people bought Cyberpunk? A lot. How many were like me? 15, 20 million, something like that. 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 I'm like, I'll go back to it someday. And a lot of people are like me, I think, out there. I don't think I'm alone where I'm like, I'll go back to it someday and then I move on to something else. And that publisher and developer just got my money. I don't feel 2042. Released in an unplayable state, basically. Exactly the same thing. Fallout 76.

Another great example of just games. Thank you for supporting me. I mean, honestly because, like I said, this episode's just going to be all of us agreeing with each other. But again, I mean, the games getting released when they're not ready to be released should be a crime. Or there should 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, 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 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 ship 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 awesome i 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.

Yeah. Game developers are the ones they're the artists. They're the ones that should be developing the game, EA, Activision, and even CD project red, even though they, you know,

they develop and publish their own games. You know, 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 anytime 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. Look at Valheim, right? That game came out of nowhere. Five-person team made a gajillion dollars. 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 Studio? Yeah. 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 like, top players can't even get there. So what do they do? 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 Projekt Red the way they were five years ago. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not either. As much as I hate to say it, because they made one of my favorite video games ever. But at this point, you burned me bad, man. It's going to take a lot to get that trust back.

Alright, so Josh, first pick of round three. What are you taking? Alright, this one might be a little bit contested, but 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 don't think you guys are going to pick my fourth one. So if either one of you do, I will protest a lot. But 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. 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. It 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 that free-to-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... I mean, 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. Right? 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. 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 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 everybody blew up. Thankfully, collectively, gamers went, no! No! 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, we'll give it to you for free. It wasn't intended to be free. 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'm looking at numbers. And when Fortnite is bringing in three to six billion dollars a year, everyone's going to copy that model. But see, here's the problem. Look at Warzone. We just made fun of Warzone,

right? Because they have Godzilla and freaking King Kong in Warzone 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 going to 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 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 out of that. You get something. Yeah.

But even then, it's just like, dude, those things are expensive, man. Yeah. 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 going to be a bit of a spoiler for the show we have coming up next week. But even that game, if I want to put certain paint schemes on my spaceship, I got to buy those with real money. 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 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. 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 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 gonna get shot real fast take the health packs real fast just 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 over watch 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. We saw it a lot in... There's a game called Atlas, 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 would happen 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 his 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 it's not i know that you're getting excited about this but you're literally a bully like 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? I might not win, but I got 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. Like, 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. 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 an Xbox 360, and I would roll with that for 10 years. And I was able, a 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 to get an extra 30% 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. 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 really hate it. It's not because people just wanted the latest technology. It is that movement was 100%

driven by the used market. Greed, baby. It's like, hey, 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 it 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 like, no. What? How am I going to give you this game to try out? Yep. 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 because that's a really good point. The ability to go back and say, I got these couple of games i know i'm not going to

touch them again i can't afford this new triple a title but i really want to play it i'm gonna take these three games that i'm never going to play again go trade them in get that triple a 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 and just go play that? And then you return it after the weekend? Like that's days of old. I know that Blockbuster is days of old as well, but that kind of thing can't happen anymore. Like Josh was saying, I can't say, 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 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 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 giving 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 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. 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, i get it's kind of it's a tough one man i get it because it is it is kind of a necessity because discovery is everything right yeah exactly paul's 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 dada and she hands it to me i'm like not not now not now don't do that again you know it's like how about give me an option for never again literally ever please yeah you know not now not ever you want to talk about pay-to-play or mic 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 uh 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? All right. I'm going to 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. Battle pass, season pass. Yep. And it's like, okay, so. I guess that doesn't fall under microtransactions, 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 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 with $300 because 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 months later because it was a dud.

Now, the good thing is 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 into 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 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 SWTOR did that. I'm actually happy about it because in that game, Star Trek Online, I get a special color for my ship that no one else can get because I basically supported them from the beginning.

Yeah. Josh, we get to hear your mystery. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Josh, we get to hear your mystery last pick. 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 BattleRite. BattleRite 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 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'm 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. Yeah. 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? Paul, because right after that, 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 since then. No, but it was funny because right afterwards, Paul was like, I thought about it, but it didn't make my list 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 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 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's way lower than the game is we're like dude this that's crazy this game is great and we look and it's because it got review bomb for some stupid reason

yeah no exact point too like 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 a 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 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 microtransactions, and review bombing. And yeah, just reading all four of those back to back makes me feel sick uh 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 all right 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 like a lightning button because i could have gotten lightning hosted just now um i'll just give you a couple uh 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 uh permanent early access yeah those games um

escort missions enough said uh uh and uh 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 where you get seen once. It's an immediate failure, and the game has to reload. That is awful. Quick hits for me. DLC. Honestly, if you're going to 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.

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. I get I'm a troll, right? 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. Did any of you actually watch the Twitch for Overwatch 2? No. A little, only a little bit. 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 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's annoying i hate motion using motion with controllers so mostly looking at like the Nintendo Wii and, 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, 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 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 makes sense. Can I add one more that's more of a personal thing for me? Yeah course me complain about uh bots buying all the next gen consoles so i can't have one that's a great that's that's actually a really good one that might be about half the ones we drafted yeah that's amazing oh i had it here too and i i didn't even i was like i'll say that as 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. Hacking will straight up lose ruin fun yeah 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 i i'm gonna say pay to win i'm gonna say as well yeah clearly pay to win pay to win was gonna be probably my first pick if it was still on the on the table so i got no problem with that all right next matchup we've got day one server issues versus review bombing oh that's review bombing is sad it does not personally affect me it's permanent though but it's not it does not 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 that's affecting other people so just by nature day one server issues are going to bother me more you know 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 kind of biased. I personally, I'm the idiot that will sit there and just refresh the server every five 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. I will literally sit there and just be like,

refresh. Why aren't you up yet? Refresh. Ah, 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. And then you're, yeah. Yep. Or it's like, I know they said it's a global release, but let me just try my VPN.

Now I'm going to try it in Korea. Now I'm going to try it in India. Now I'm going to try it in Spain.a now i'm gonna try it in india now i'm gonna 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 it makes you the most angry you don't 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. 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 gotta go with the remasters thing so i actually messed up here because i think that i could have said um 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 like all of it. Yeah, I still think that myself like there are some good look at last of us, right?

They redid it for PS 5 from PS 4 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 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 you're right on the dot i'm over yeah i 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'm 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 match up unfinished they're both mine oh they're both yours unfinished games versus loot boxes and micro transactions. I'll get this to Michael. Unfinished games. 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 have it. 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 so i was 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 can play horizon forbidden west on your ps4 and i bought it and i'm like no you. And I'm like, I have been dying to play that game for two years since they announced it, and 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. 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 directing development 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, the loathing and the hate for these companies doesn't just come out of nowhere. I'm going to give Paul one chance to counter-argue and win me over. I mean, 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 actually a really good point. And that's a good counter. I was probably still going to go with publishers directing development. But I got to 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 yeah stick to your guns on that smart choice it's it's there's 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 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, iPhonehone 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

doesn't really happen to me and so i'm gonna vote against it but obviously i'm gonna vote against it because it's my pick that's going against it. 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's 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, they won, 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 bucks on this AAA title. And you're like, okay, I know I have the game in my hands, but I'm gonna 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. Remember 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 ready to be wined and dined. No, here's what I was going to say.

As much as I hate hacking... I'll buy you a loot box. Thank you. I'd really love that. By the way, my Overwatch account has like 1,700 loot boxes. I could not care less. 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 that probably the number one worst trend right now is releasing unfinished games. Like I said, this honestly could be, 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 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,

we all hate that. And it's become such a trend that we see it so often. Now, thankfully, I do feel like there is starting to be this movement of pushback from gamers to say like, 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 baby because you know what i'm looking here and i don't know if i'm gonna have one in the finals uh michael you're already there so you're uh 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 it's annoying that they exist, but you don't have to buy it. Now, pay to win? You could be 100 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. It's pay for convenience, Michael. It's pay to win. 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 gamers stop buying remasters, guess what's going to stop being developed?

Remasters. If nobody buys it, they're going to 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. And I say that as someone who bought the GTA Definitive trilogy, so I know I'm part of the problem.

I'm part of the problem, too, but mostly with an actual full remake. I am excited about Dead Space remake because I've never played it, and I can't play it. Because realistically, it's kind of unplayable. Right, guys? 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. 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'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 going to 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. 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.

Well, the funniest thing is I was going to think strategy. Now, I have integrity, though, guys. Integrity is when you're an honest, good-hearted person and you don't do things that are wrong. 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 up. Integrity is the root word integer, meaning whole. Numbers. I think it means that your whole being is 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 honesty would be under integrity

what was that yeah it's under the umbrella of honesty is under the umbrella of integrity okay i believe i believe so yeah there we go all right so yeah day one server issues or publishers directing development i i might actually 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. With publishers 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 kind of 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 kind of expect them. They suck, but you know they're going to happen with big games at least. It's terrible that we've come to accept that, though. It is. Yeah. All right. Like hackers. We expect hackers 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've got unfinished games versus pay to win versus

publishers directing development and so we're just going to match up each one against each other. What do you guys hate more, pay to win 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 pay to win. If you don't like pay to win, don't pay the money. You know, it kind of goes back to that one where you're, nobody's forcing you into spending money on a game. And you usually with pay to win games,

you can still play for free. Now you might be at a severe disadvantage in various aspects, but 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, 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 great deep dives and stuff like that. But also, 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 was pay to win and now most games you know they're paid to win you just don't play candy crush everybody knows it's paid away 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 uh need to worry too much because i i really like what you still have here in the race we now have a match up of unfinished games versus publishers directing development and I gotta say I think it's unfinished games

I agree Josh one last one last attempt does it even matter at this point? it doesn't mean that it's gone we could have a

three-way tie but i 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 why 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 timestamp 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 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. Like, you can't do that, right? You can't say like, well, EA made us release this game, you know, 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. I mean, look at Among Us. 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 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 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 can't fault 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 pay to win pay to win is worse no just because i want just because i want three you know it's not you know you know it's not you guys knew i 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 at all. No. You know I want to win more than anything. Yeah, exactly. Nice job, Michael. Pat yourself on the back. Hey, Michael, one-one!

We can now call you one-fur. One-fur. Yes! Obi-Wan? No. Oh, come on! No. You don't get to be Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan. Oh, man. Hey, does that mean that I get to introduce Make Love, Marry Murder now?

Go ahead, Michael. Go ahead. Bring a cinch for the next segment. that mean that i get to i get to introduce make love marry murder now uh go ahead michael go ahead bring us to 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 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 going to get crushed in that. I think we can give that to one of you two. If I was playing for that kind of strategy, it would have been very different. I'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 deserve it. All right. See you, everybody. Thank you, guys.