M Today is Tuesday, March eighteenth, twenty fourteen. This is the Giant
Bomb Cast. I'm Jeff Gerstman hosting this week's installment of the show, and
I'm joined by if Any Caravella. Hey, what day did you say?
It was? The eighteenth man I watched is four days by. That's Daylight
Savings is a motherfucker main. I just noticed it. This is why you
should get like some kind of electronic wash automatically sets itself and you're worry about
that sort of stuff. Soundn't like this digital economy? Fair enough? Fair
enough? If you don't like the future economy, it's not then yeah,
go ahead and have your watch be off. Brad Shoemaker, you look like
a man who knows what day it is. Not what I'm making that up.
Okay, yep, that's all I got. I can only hear one
half of my headphones right now. It's making me crazy. That's I'm only
hearing half of what you're saying. Every other world cable or pull out pull
out the cable part way, Janel. Eventually just a little bit, the
headphones are off, Let's do this. WHOA all right? If Brad can't
okay, we're saying now that guy, Hey, what's up? You put
your headphones back on? Hear you again? All right, Well, Drew
is out on assignment of a very personal nature. He's on personal assignment,
personal assign Yeah. So we're joined by the Chicago Double Yeah, a hot
duo. Giant Bombs Chicago two thirds of Giant Bomb Chicago or in the building
the Best two thirds, the best two thirds. Patrick klebick Yo, welcome
back the area. And Dave Lang greetings up up in the building for the
podcast. This is my first podcast ever here, Ever, here, I
was gonna say, ever ever, Like, what what are you doing?
Man? One time I was on the Pringles chat. Okay, they just
like crowled me at the Super Bowl and like, hey, do you have
a good thing to say about pringles? I talked for an hour straight?
Did you talk for an hour straight? About just did you? Was it?
How comedy? Curly mustache riffles? Basically ruffles don't have ridges, No
they don't. They don't need them. Yeah, one time they tried to
put them in bullshit, No you don't want you don't just in ruffles.
No ruffles have ruffles. Getting your brands about pringles ruffles. You're off brand
here, you're off message in Chicago. No reason this never aired, but
so much is being discovered now. Yeah, you got in there and say,
yeah, I love ruffles. Let's talk. Can you Can you seriously
not get the pringles with ridges anymore? I don't. I was making all
I don't think I've ever seen a pringle with ridges? How do they stack?
I don't interweaving weaves? That sounds complicated, You get that. It's
thousands of man hours of engineering went into this, this incredible culinary feat.
Oh man, what a waste. Well, it's chips. Chips are important,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the chips economy. I mean
it's it's basically like since the you know, most of the video game development
and the organized crime went away. I think that's that in pizza are the
big Chicago things now? Right? Is that right? Yeah? That's right?
Don't we authorized? I think that checks up? Okay, okay,
all right, I want you guys get in trouble or anything. Yeah,
so you guys are in town because GDC is happening. Yeah week, the
Game Developers Conference all week, but mainly kind of kicking off on Wednesday.
It's when like the the big talks start right because there's been some stuff.
So so Monday and Tuesday are like independent track, narrative track, like GDC
is split in the tracks, and it used to be there like almost nothing
of worth happening on Monday Tuesday. But that's not really the case anymore like
that. Real heavy hitters are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. But that's when
like the expo floor is open too, So if you want to go look
at like scale form, yeah, that's also what everybody's good and hungover yep,
yeah, but you feel bad for anyone that has like the when the
Friday at like four pm slot, it's just like why even give it.
It's like a bunch of people going to the airport. That looks like a
really good talk, but I I'm already on a plane. Yeah yeah,
yeah, cool, Well why don't we's let's talk about Patrick. You've been
actually out and about seeing stuff, but you know, even just let's let's
talk about time back at Chicago as well. What's been going on, what
is the what's the cleptic existence looking like these days? Dave and I were
talking about that it's cold, we hope and it's warm when we go back
in a week. Yeah, it's got to be. It's been a bad
winter. We were talking about this before the podcast, but the worst winter
in a hundred years historic, real bad and it's like in my memory,
which in Italy is like only good for two years going backwards. But like
I don't remember anything this bad ever. No, Like there's that one time
when I was a little kid, or literally like five foot of snow in
my driveway, like, but that was like one day and it was gone
a few years ago. Yeah, snowed on crazy, but the cheer it's
been again and again and again. Well then it'll get like warm and then
the city will like temporarily flood for the day, which is why the my
downstairs in my apartment flooded. Oh yeah, yeah, I want to hear
about the flood. So nothing got damaged, thankfully, because our the floor
dips like in the kind of the center, so all the all the water
pooled in the center, like underneath the couch, and it didn't like spread
out naturally to the entire floor, which would have gotten to like it like
it should have hit the electronics. The electronics are right by the door.
How deep? How deep are talking? Uh, it's not like like a
whole foot, but it was like probably like when it was pooling, like
a couple of inches, like it was just under our couch, like it
should have ruined the couch. It only ruined a rug. But what happened
was our apartment is a two levels, uh, and downstairs is kind of
like this reformed basement. And it's been what's been happening in the winter in
chicag right now. It is like it gets really really cold and then everything
will freeze, and then it'll get warm for like a day or two and
things will melt and then it'll freeze again. And what happened was like there's,
uh, the stairwell outside of our downstairs that connects like our apartment in
another apartment, and that froze over the drain and I didn't I didn't know
there was a drain out there. Obviously, this drain is very important for
what the thing that drains do. Uh. And I work from home in
the morning and then I work out of the cards office in the afternoon usually,
and I there was kind of like a puddle on the floor, but
it was no big deal. It's like, oh, it's I mean,
I don't know what that is, but it's I don't know, well whatever,
I looked around, I could not figure it out. Like I was
like, well, I guess maybe that just won't happen again. And then
like went in like did a splunky stream came out and just like holy shit,
like everywhere and what had happened was like the it was a day where
uh it it was it was raining because it was warm enough where it should
have been snowing, but it was also warm enough that all of the snow
like a foot and a half was melting, and it was just the pipes
couldn't even contain it, like if you went outside and looks like in the
different apartment complexes, like it was just spewing out of the pipes like it
could not handle all the water, and so it was just rushing into our
apartment and I open it up and I just it's just like the actual like
drainage area was like like half a foot of water. And so I get
out there, I get my boots and I don't know what to do,
Like we call it landlord. He's like, there's a drain there. I
was like, it's not a fucking drain, dude, Like I can't.
There's no drain. And he's like, is there ice there? And I'm
like, he's like, it's under the drain, it's under the ice.
So I went and got a hammer and then like put something over my head
because this is just straight up hard ice and so like sharp pieces are just
flying everywhere. So I just put something over my head and I'm just smashing
the ice with a hammer for like two or three minutes. Got that away.
But all while this is happening, there is flooding water just coming in.
There's no way to stop it, yes, and like we're putting like
towels down, but they're just the towels are being just washed away and there's
nothing you can do. And then our landlord pointed out, like deep in
the back of like this part of the apartment we don't really use, there's
a shop back there, you go, So we get the shot back out
and and so my wife is using the shot back to like get all the
water up. I'm hitting it with a hammer. Uh. And then once
we even found the drain, the drain had frozen all the way down.
There's nothing, there's nothing we can do about that, except then we went
upstairs boiled a huge pot of water. I'm sitting there with a shot back
and like just trying to maintain like we just forgot about the water in the
living room, Like there's nothing, like nothing we can do about that right
now. On the ice, yes, crack the pipe and half not my
problem, Like this is this, this is like the the the apartment complexes
problem. This is part of their property. I was like, I don't
really care right now, So so I just dumped the hot water on there,
cleared that out, and then uh then we went in there with like
thirty towels and just like you have a lot of felt like thirty towels might
have been like four, but it felt like I got a lot of things
to clean up. So shot back up all the water. You said,
run. Yeah, there was a rug and we have a really cool landlord
guy. He was like, hey, this should have been taken like he
claimed the building claims there was a guy who goes through and checks that thing
every single day. Like absolutely not. So he was like, you know,
he replaced the rug and like knocked our rent down for a couple of
months. It's like don't uh, It's like, well, it's just dirty
water. Right, like so like it's just it can't really be cleaned out
or carpet rug there's no carpet, what kind of flooring? Why was it
bowing? It's the actual like apartment itself is like slightly at an angle downstairs.
So like when we were putting up the furniture, in certain parts it
will line up straight and then it's like in certain walls you will just notice
that it's kind of at a slant, and that slant bows in a certain
way. That just the water pooled under there and like I had just gotten
a brand new TV and everything like it just hooked everything up and uh,
we got lucky. Yeah, yeah, No, And I didnt get frostbite
when I locked myself out of my apartment either, that one. That one
was bad. Get frostbite and negative forty degree weather in like ninety seconds and
I had no shoes on. That seems like a good way to lose a
toe, yeah, yep, or like a couple really Yeah, I don't
care what Will Smith says. You should not be running barefoot, especially when
it's negative forty degrees out. Yeah, my option was to run to Walgreens.
That was my only other option I had a T shirt and sweatpants.
Did you go outside get the paper or something? Know that we were getting
furniture delivered and the guy it was negative like forty degree out like whipping wind,
and the guys trying to get this huge like thing up. So I
went out to help him. I try and get it up and didn't realize
the bottom door was locked, but somebody was inside. Then No, Katie
was out of town. How about the guy who brought the couch in,
Uh, well, he just left it like outside like and then he's like
this, He goes, are you locked out? And I was like,
not your problem, because he has to deliver all this freaking furniture and negative
forty degree. I was like, I'm not gonna let you worry about this.
I was also trying to not panic, yeah, because I knew I
had like two options. Was like I was reading about all the dangers of
frost bite, like in the forty eight hours leading up to this, like
it's all like these like don't leave your house, don't go outside, and
now I'm suddenly I have no shoes, no socks, I have no phone,
I have like no little covering me. And everything turned out okay,
fortunately, there was a locksmith outside of our building, came in and popped
it. He didn't have to mess up the lock, he just did.
Had like one of the air things they puff up and it just goes.
It's like they It's one of those things where when you look at it,
you're like get a little bit worried, Like, man, it's too easy
to say, why doesn't everybody have when it wasn't you have to be you
have to go to school, Like you cannot even buy the devices without Okay,
yeah, we all know that only honest people go to school. So
that's cool. Yeah, good, No. That was the thing, like,
you know, growing up around kind of auto repair and stuff, like
seeing people use slim gyms and seeing people use like you know, locksmith sets
and all this other stuff and seeing the difference between the tools that you know,
hooligans would use and the stuff that like, you know, likes and
professionals would have, and just looking at it and going like all these catalogs
just say like you just need to fax us proof of whatever bullshit thing like
I was gonna write like I went to lock school and then fax it to
them and then they'll be off the hook. They'll send you whatever the hell.
I mean, the guy came in and he was literally thirty seconds and
he's like, well, here's two dollar bill. And I was like,
well, that's this is great. I'm really good. I'm back in my
place. But it's scary how easy it is. Yeah, Like he literally
just slides these two things in puff puff puff, and then he like runs
a little something along the lock and then yeah, and he's in. I
think those bumps, like remember they put the saggy bump it and the thing
just opens up. Remember the thing. It's like he's rotate the right analog
sticks so you feel it vibrate and little the right trigger and then it opens.
It's easy. Actually, felt like that or fast. I'm never going
to talk shit about a lock No, a lock picking mini game ever.
No, uh yeah, advanced lock tech. So you've been in town for
I guess Saturday. You got in right, Yeah? I got in Saturday
because on Sunday I was giving us or talk at this like one day Games
Criticism conference that was that GDC called Critical Proximity. So I was in for
that and then just kind of hung out, go what was the general vibe
of that. I feel like you know, games criticism is something that I'm
not sure how I feel. It's so it's a weird thing where like I
feel like reviews are like the review end of things. As someone who has
done thousands of those, I look at it and go like, this is
like increasingly of limited use to people, as like as buying advice, Like
it's intended effect is not necessarily being met as well as it used to be.
Yeah, and I don't think like the term getting criticism is like,
you know, sort of hoity toity, Like it's still like not really sure
what that is exactly. And then that conference was a lot of people just
like I don't know what I'm doing, but like, you know, it's
it's more just like taking you know, games more seriously. Sure, Like
I guess if that's like sort of the bottom line. And and if there
was like a narrative to the entire conference, it was like it's really hard
to make money doing this, Like games criticism is the thing that's trying to
figure itself out, just as there are precious few ways to make money writing
about games. Yeah, it's like the other side of it, the like
information entertainment end of it. This is not that much easier. No,
No, So it's like, you know a lot of folks that are kind
of in that end and like sort of like the smaller, like not established
sites, like they use things like Patreon like and stuff like that that like,
there are like some tools coming out that allow people to I don't know
if i'd call it livable wages, but they can complete projects like I saw
like what Kara Elson was trying to to get funded for, and then that
all seemed super smart. It was just like this actually seems like something that
would be worth reading. Absolutely, but I understand why as someone who has
controlled a freelance budget before and thought about things that way, like, yeah,
that's probably a tough sell. Yeah. Well, and like the wopeful
thing with some of that stuff is that maybe that proves out there's an audience
and then bigger sites will take a chance on stuff like that. So my
talk was fairly serious. It was about like sort of uniformity in game criticism
in big like generally, when like a big game comes out, it's sort
of it's good or it's bad, Like it's sort of the same review at
a lot of different places. Yeah, you know, the flashpoint of that
was like Bowish Infinite last year, where like when that game come out,
everyone loved it on the big sites, and then there was like this long
sustained sort of critical backlash to the game in smaller communities. And so my
talk was like why is that sort of divergence there, Like it shouldn't be
so like exparing, Like when a game comes out, I like to read
the one dude that hates it, Like that's why I left tom Chicks Reviews.
I never agree with that guy, but he always hates stuff that people
love, and he's really smart about articulating it. Yeah. I think that
that's the difference. Right. It's not just like I'm gonna come out and
say fuck this ship. Yeah, there are plenty of people that's YouTube.
All of that is that, But being able to actually give sound reasons why
you feel that way, I think is the difference. Yeah. Yeah,
So so mine kind of explored like maybe why those happened to big sites,
and a lot of it was like it's kind of like systemic hiring practices of
people hiring who they know and a lot of like people games are like to
have games as a hobby when you were young, like you kind of had
to come from a decent back, like a like a background of like your
parents had money, Like games are not cheap, and so that I think
some of that's changed, absolutely, absolutely, like for the people that are
like running websites right now and like like sort of like the systems that are
in place the games have led to a very similar style of person that tends
to get the jobs. I think it's like, like you could look at
it from that angle, but I think it's increasingly it's the thing of like,
okay, well, like so I was going to like, we got
Infamous second son in and my first reaction was to look at it and go
all right and immediately hand it to Brad, not for because you know Brad
has played and reviewed previous Infamous games. Yeah, so it's like, you
know, it's it's that that thing of like are we gonna just have continuity
from year to year from these franchises? And it eventually leads to a situation
we're like, okay, well, now there's a game that is very similar
to Infamous, so that would be more of a Brad game. And it
ends up you know, it's like it's why I review so many shooters and
stuff like that, and it's it's led to this situation where you're kind of
assigning reviews to people who are probably going to like them, yeah in a
weird way and or you know, but at the same time, I think
they'll actually be keenly aware of a game's faults as well, because they're experienced
in the genre and that sort of stuff. But we've created this problem across
like this end across the review end of things, I think on multiple sites
where uh, the way the system is built, the way that this is
all structured, it is not actually helping anyone as the way it used to,
right, And it's led to this situation where like, uh, you
know, I'd liked for reviews to be you know, it was it was
kind of the thing when we started the site to begin with. It was
more of that discussion of just like, you know, I want to say
what I think about a game, period, and and that's you know,
and and and you should be able to do the same thing, and the
rest of you should be able to do the same separate land. You have
to like everything because you're you have to talk to you have to you know,
talking businesses. Yeah, so it's probably terrible, Yeah, yeah,
it's probably terrible. It was probably even worse before we got there, and
thank god we helped. Yeah, or the part you were working on got
cut completely. Well, yeah that happens too. Yeah. Sometimes you know
you can't save everything right Yeah? Yeah? Wait, how do we get
here again? I don't know BioShock talking about BioShock, no, not talking
about bot shock. So with that in mind, with the system, the
way the system works, like you get to a point where like, okay,
you know, like yeah, like it would be really interesting on in
some weird way. As someone who has played as attempted to play every game
in the Souls series and not liked it. There were actually people going like,
oh, you should do something with Dark Souls too, And I'm like,
that's that's a dumb waste of time in a lot of ways, because
like I already kind of you know, having seen it, having messed with
the previous games, like, I'm pretty sure how this will go. And
I don't want to start a site that's just like, hey, look at
this game. I think it sucks. Well you like it? Fuck off?
In like video content and that sort of stuff. It's not it's not
really necessary, but we've created a situation where because the reviews get funneled into
this system and because of the way the audience expects reviews to be, that's
why you get that situation of people going like this review isn't objective, as
if that's like something you can actually the highest compliment, like when you tell
me my review is not objective, mission accomplished. That's the kind of the
fucking point at this at this stage in the game, at one point we
were thinking that we were trying to approach things objectively. It's how you result.
It's how you got the result of Majora's Mask getting like an eid or
whatever it was. I gave it while I fucking hate Majora's Mask because I
had to play it, then try to remove myself from it, and then
like an audience, which is it for an audience that I don't actually know,
and then reviewing it like based on like component scores like graphics and sound,
where you're like, you know, regardless of my feelings about Major's mask
and whatever, this like computer that is about to catch on fire over here,
like the fans spun up real big yeah it saw it heard Majora's masking
with I'm about this game I'm trying to breakthrough, So like it led to
that situation back in the day, because that's that's how we were attempting to
run reviews as like okay, well take take me out of it. And
now we're at a point now where you have to put more of the people
into it, and then you know, you have to trust the audience to
be smarter, smart enough to deal with that sort of stuff. So I
don't know, I think fact like this is like a it's interesting that there
are people out there trying to approach it from the criticism perspective coming in,
because like I'm it's something that I kind of keep thinking about from the reviewer
perspective going out. Uh, And I don't know if there's a way to
meet in the middle on it, because at some point, like it's Metacritic
and the industry and like a bunch of fucking weird shit. Yea that happens
in the middle. Whereas like if I was writing a review of Madden and
said, this is a really good football game two stars, because fuck football,
Like who does that help. It's not it's not fair to the game,
it's the way the system is set up, Like that's that's really shitty
to do in a weird way. So I don't know, Like there are
so many other avenues to to get that content on day one release. Now
release comes and there are one hundred and fifty people live streaming that game that
you can go watch and probably get a walkthrough of that game day one and
watch an entire thing and make a purchasing decision. That when people that know
the game better than like any of us, any like hype, like hyper
like interested, like people like the Souls Games has that like in spades,
like just like a really attentive communities that have like not like ambassadors, but
like critics like that are just specific to like Souls Games and things like that
that like if they can answer your questions better than we can. So it's
it's an environment that's really odd now where you have this. You know,
it used to be that you'd get the magazine and that would have the review
a couple of days early. Like I don't know what that means. I
don't know what that means. Should probably for the master system, but like
all I've seen so far, or a couple of screenshots and a previous magazine
like a couple of things from me three, and then you know, you
slowly started getting video previews, and then you'd get the reviews day one from
websites. And now we've caught up to where a copy of a game leaks
a week beforehand. Somebody's put up the entire game. You can go check
out anything you want, and then you know, you go read review to
kind of share your opinion on what you think, not to get buying advice,
right, you just go in there to be like, yeah, full
of shit, like this game should have got a five, or this game
should have got a three. Yeah, I've made up my mind a month
ago based on the demo pre pre ordered and pre ordered. Uh, it's
really it's a weird environment and competing against that with like reviews and stuff.
It's also something we've been thinking about a lot, like how do you how
do you compete against an environment that has kind of the same a similar level
of access, if not sometimes better than the media does. Right, right,
we're like we're embargoed, Yeah, we're you know today this the posting
of this podcast is one of the first things we'll do on ground Zeros.
Meanwhile, like that game leaked like a week ago or Like I was laughing
when when soft Park came out and Alex couldn't publish his review until midnight,
Yet I could buy it on Steam at ten pm and I just could have
started streaming it. Yeah right, Like what that stuff that like that that
stuff that is slow to change. You know. It used to be that
all the embargo times, we're like nine am Pacific and stuff like that.
But the midnight releases on Steam and other stores of definitely that stuff has started
to change. You have more people going like, all right, run your
review and I pm Pacific because it goes on sale in the East Coast or
whatever it is, right, yeah, how do you fix it? Ling?
I think the thing that's super interesting about criticism in general for games is
like I used to always be the guy who's like someone complains about like money
in the trash Canon, BioShock Infinite or master Chief can't run or whatever.
Yeah, Like I was like, dude, it's a design decision. It's
just fun or whatever. Right. I would just like would have rejected wholesale
just I wouldn't even like read it or listen to because I think, like,
oh, you just don't get how games get made or whatever. But
I've slowly come around where I really like it now, and I've been going
back and reading stuff from games I really liked that people wrote, like five
or six years ago or whatever, I read this thing an La noir.
Maybe it was in The Escapist or whatever, but it was this guy talking
about how Cole's running everywhere, right, He's running for no reason. He's
just running, running, running, running, and it's like, yeah,
it's like just it's a mechanical thing. It's like if you you head and
he's gonna run you though he's got no reason to do it. And it
was the whole I'm doing a horrible job describing this great podcast story brouh,
But anyway we like. I mean, if if he walked everywhere, the
game would take fucking forever. It would be long stretches off. You're doing
nothing, and unless you're way into the atmosphere of it, that's that's yeah.
And it's just there's something you said for just rejecting those conventions, right
and not accepting the games are what they are and they always need to be
this way, you know, and then you can want better things from games
and without it's not gonna come like you're staying from reviews. Right review is
kind of going to tell you, you know, what you're perceived. ROI
on its value is going to be right sure, And criticism isn't like that
all. It'll tell you like the inherent worth of something, you know.
And uh, I used to have like no place in my life bar but
now I find it's super super interesting. I've been like retroactively reading a lot
of it. Huh. So have you noticed any trends on on that sort
of stuff. Do you feel like overall people people are too harsh expect too
much out of games? Yeah, I mean I do think the pendulums,
like the swing so far the other way, it feels like I'm purposed a
lot of the time, like I'm gonna, you know, this thing that
everyone loves, I'm gonna tear it down just because I can. You know,
there's there's that angle to it. And but like not everything's like that,
and you kind of got to sort through some of that stuff to find
the well thought out stuff that's like, uh, well I shouldn't say the
other stuff isn't well thought out, but uh, the stuff that is more
kind of interesting than just like I'm gonna do a teardown of this super popular
game, cause you know, yeah, so well, what do you think
about, like as somebody who makes games, the agency that the audience feels
like they have in your game, Like I am part of this, I'm
a consumer. I should you should do it. I'm I got good ideas.
Yeah, I've come around on this too. Like I was, say
so when I really love the first Halo, like I was like obsession fanboy
level about it, and I would go to like Halo dot Bungee dot org,
which is like the fan site, and people would be like writing like,
oh, like fictional reasons why master Chief couldn't sprint, or like or
like fictional reasons why like the medpack works instantly and he doesn't have to do
stuff right, and like you guys are more and I'm just getting really angry
about it. Right. But then now and kind of like you know,
however long fifteen years removed or whatever, however long ago that was like,
uh, that stuff's really really awesome, right, It's like those are the
people that are super engaged and like super passionate about what gamemakers do, and
like without them, like everything falls apart. And so now it's kind of
like when people are out there like writing their their die Kick stories and the
forums or whatever it's talking about like this tournament they went to or this thing
or this thing. Whereas before I might just be like, oh man,
this is like the dumbest thing of all time. Now it's like I'll go
and engage with them. It's amazing, right, And it's it's it's been
like the last five years, and games have been really great about that in
general, Like for in he's getting to publish and he's get to make their
own games, all the way to how we interact with people, you know,
like the whole thing is opened up and fix it every conceivable way,
and I think only good things have really come from it. Yeah, it's
been. It's been really interesting to watch because you know that that conduct used
to not exist, and you still run into people like it's one of those
things where you know, like I you still run into developers that don't read
anything, that don't know about reviews, anything, website this, that like
they just don't interact with any kind of community or don't engage with any sort
of discussion of their work at all. And I don't know if maybe those
people just aren't necessarily that into games to begin with. They're just like,
look, man, I just draw the art. Some of it's a scale
problem, right, Like we're you know, if dive kick was actually really
popular, it would be impossible to do that with everybody, right, Like
there's you couldn't hire enough community managers to do that, and so like,
I don't have no idea how Like you know, Gearbox stays on top of
the Borderland's community and they know what's a real problem, what people are getting
mad about legitimately, what needs to get fixed, what doesn't, Because I'm
sure it's just this the signal noise ratio is so low on everything they hear.
Yeah, but if you don't pay attention, you're gonna miss so much
good stuff. And I think that's the revelation recently is like that is now
like you want to figure out instead of just ignoring it wholesale because that's easy,
you want to find a find a way to mind that for whatever it's
worth, right, And yeah, it's I have no idea how the big
companies do it, but it's easy for us because you know, it's different
when one hundred thousand people buy your game versus you know, seven million,
sure, you know, yeah, I was. One of the guys I
talked to this morning was Hugo gr who's the mission director on like the AC
series, and he was Combat, yes, the highly lucrative ACE Combat series
Assassin's Creed, and on AC three, like there was like one guy assigned
with like figuring out like the lock picking mechanic that they had in that game
when you would unlock some chess and it like lock picking is one of those
things in games, unless it's like a thief or something or probably just games
in general, like you can only screw it up, right, Like,
no one is going to be like, man, the lock picking is terrific
in this game, Like it's just not something that's going to get called out,
but if it's terrible, like people are going to say, like the
lock picking really sucks, I have to do all the time. And an
AC three, Uh there was lock picking in AC three. Yeah, she's
a don't even remember that, Yes, probably remember any of that. Probably
a good thing. And and I guess, uh he was he was telling
me the story about that guy and how I guess Kataku ran a story that
was like this big analysis of like, hey, the lock picking in like
AC three is like really cool and like and that guy like printed that out
and just like walked around the office with it up, just like screaming,
like someone cares really nice. Yeah, yeah, it was really awesome.
That is like one of the infuriating things about making games, like you'll do
you know what, Like when ever someone starts and they've never like made a
game professionally before, the thing the conversation I have with them is like,
listen, over the course of making this game, we're gonna make thousands and
thousands of decisions. Right, all we can hope for is that we get
like seventy percent of them, right, That's all. It's all we can
reasonably hope for. And if you get really obsessed about each little thing,
right, you're gonna drive yourself nuts. But it does really make you mad
when like the team there's like some decisions that become seem like they're small things
but become big decisions because people are so invested in the work they've done or
whatever. And like when like the studio is basically coming to blows over this
thing and then nobody turns out would have noticed either way, right, Yeah,
it's like this was like a month of drama in the studio. These
guys are super pissed about this thing or this thing. These other guys got
their way and they're super happy, and it's not in any review, and
you realize it wouldn't have been in the review the other way either. The
fuck are we doing with our lives? It's like, oh my god?
What is Are there any examples? I guess like some of those products are
probably still in development you might not want to talk about, but are there
any examples you can think of? Yeah? With Third Strike, we spent
a lot of time obsessing over just what should be on the main menu,
right, like how many? Like you can't have six things on the main
menu, that's too many, you know, stuff like that. Yeah,
And it was literally like this would go on for months and months and months
of like people putting them in, trying it on. It's like wow,
but now it's like six button presses instead of five to get to the vault.
I don't like that. Maybe we should separate the challenges in a single
player and multiplayer that way makes them easier to read. But what if I
want to check my multiplayer challenges when I'm in a single player, I have
to back out to the main man you go into multiplayer. Yeah, but
who's really gonna do that? No one's gonna do that, you idiot.
And uh, that's like one where we argued and argued and argued about it,
and you know, any way we would have done it would have been
fine. People are like, oh, these challenges are novel. It's kind
of cool. It's kind of like a neat way to expose like old game
stuff and make you do stuff. Maybe you didn't do the frost time around,
yeah, huh, but the number of button presses it takes to get
to the list, it's not necessarily. That's the one that immediately jumps to
mind. But there's it's like that on every game. There's stuff like,
uh, you know, sort of think of a relevant one I can talk
about, like Borderlands two for the Vita. You know, like, uh
so if you should be official Sony and Gearbox are making all Borderlands and Vita
nown Yeah, yeah, I shouldn't say anything as really says about the Okay,
all right, well I can say one thing. All right, so
Sony and Gearbox are making all Borderlands two. Really announcements, but like even
something like how you know you you take. So obviously they use the four
triggers, right right, Okay, so what do you do with the other
two triggers on the Vita? You know, you look at the other games.
Some people use reard touch, some people use front touch, and you're
like, how contentious that issue was, Like some people are like, oh
I love the weird touch. People like my fingers just rest on it.
Naturally, you can't use that. It's like it's like, you know,
the next thing, you know, it's like a guys, we gotta shift
this game sometime. Let's just pick something and go, or you end up
with like the worst possible compromise of like, well, let's just make it
user configurable, and then that just pushes the argument back out to like what
the default behavior is. Generally, if it gets to that level, it
bubbles up to me and then I step in and I see which one I
like better and make a decision. I try not to do that, but
that's how those things get solved. Yeah, man, And uh yeah,
we don't make more works for ourselves when whenever possible, So yeah, doing
let's have both in there. Let you pick, right, It sounds like
bugs waiting to happen. Let's add more to the men use perfect. Let's
do it. That is my solution for any time there's any sort of like
we're thinking about adding this feature to the site and all this other stuff's like,
okay, but you need to let users opt out of this, this,
and this needs to be profile level setting for this, this, and
then that is like a super interesting discussion. Like I'm like going back to
the third strike because this is the thing we've been dealing with the community the
longest time. Like there's a bunch of things there where there's a difference between
things that we just think are good. Like we got a lot of feedback
on the fake scan line effect. People like, oh, it doesn't look
real enough or doesn't look at whatever, and you should give us an option
to change how that looks, make them fatter or skinny or whatever. I'm
like, no, we're happy with how these look. Iron Galaxy likes these.
We are leaving them as is. But then there's other stuff in there.
It's like, oh, we should let you know, let them pick
this or this or this. And it's interesting because my general approach was like
we should do what we think is best at all times and make it make
it like an author or author oil, our authorial decision, real decision of
what we think is best for the user. But that's actually like a really
slippery slope because if you go down that too far, then they'll be nothing
left for everybody. Some people have different taste on stuff, and so letting
pople customiser experience to a point is like something I'm slowly warming up too.
But some stuff like I appreciate it when there's a vision from a studio and
I'm seeing that vision right, like there's a zero compromise, like this is
what So I recently played like Lords of Shadow too, right, and there's
an option and there's just turn off all the QuickTime events they just play,
and it's like, why would you put that in there? Do you think
these QuickTime events suck? Like what are you trying to tell me here?
So I turned them. It just seems like it was like some quick I
mean, who knows how it actually went, but that just seems like they
focus tested something and people came back and like some significant numbers said these are
all bullshit, right, I said, well, well, I mean we
already made them all right, So as soon as you give me the option
to turn off. I immediately think, like, well, somebody there thinks
these are not worth doing, and like that's actually like an incredibly common debate
that I used to have a lot more in Triple A game development than a
dozen stuff we do now. But like, do you allow the user to
button through any cutscene they want? Right? And the thinking is, we
want we made these and they're awesome, yeah, or we want them to
be and we're gonna keep working on them. Why would we this is what
the game is, why would we let you button through it? But that's
something where people get so mad if you can let them bump through a cut
scene, Like if they don't care about the story at all, if they
just want to drive the car whatever the fuck it is, Uh, they
just want to get to it, and you should give them the option to
do it. But it's always something where it's like, you know, the
guys that spend basically a year or two years ago was making these cinematics and
this is crap, and I totally understand why to be mad about it.
But I think that's an instance where you know, don't try to tell the
user what the game should be to them. You know, like there's a
fine line between that vision and the experience. Sure, that's yeah, that
that the mix stuff user like research group persons talking to we like her talk
was all about like like enhancing narrative in games through like you know, data
analysis like that was it was like always let them skip the cut scene,
Like it doesn't matter how long you've worked on it, Like, just let
them skip the cut scene because half your audience doesn't care that you're game.
Because the way she was talking about was like like a lot of her group
was spending time figuring out like when you ask the player, like did you
like the story in this game? And even if they said yes, when
you actually try and figure out what that means, players are very bad at
expressing what that means, Like does that mean like the cut scene story?
Does that mean like they enjoyed the missions and their experience? Thus that was
the story? Is it? The characters like and and different people might say
like I really like the story, but it had nothing to do with the
cut scenes. That's part of it too, is because like developers have very
specific language, we've evolved to mean different things, right, and we assume
we get feedback that everyone is using the same language and that's not the case
of the players have no idea, Like dev language is like probably that came
up at the criticism conferences, like dev language has like gotten so into the
weeds and like writing about games like it's so useless, like it doesn't help
anyone. And like if, like even in my own any of our own
writing, I bet if you looked at a paragraph, like the amount of
jargon in there is like awful, I can put a gun to your head
and just like shoot yourself. I feel like we get to cut some of
those corners because we're talking to a smaller and like more engaged audience than like
game Spot. You know who's just like someone who someone cruises into that site.
They know jack fuck about games. They just hear the titan Fall is
coming out. They want to know what it is to loop. Yeah,
let's talk about the loop Like that's you know the number of times I've seen
people refer to a build. Yeah, in like mainstream game writing, I'm
like, that's what the fuck are you talking about? Think about this IP
is the one that bothers me and I've done that before and like just I
feel okay about it. In like a more casual setting, like a podcast
or that sort of thing, but the writing end of it seems different.
It's why that Strider review went off without me saying Metroid Vanya in it.
That's a bad one thing, you know. I was just like this this
assumes. It's why the titan Fall review doesn't talk about the Brink campaign,
which is sort of similarly structured. But no one fucking played Brink, so
that doesn't help anyone. Yes, Brink Vanyas are very hot this year.
They've all got weird, long, britishy faces to stop watch most what Igarashi
left to go do? We get tired of Metroid Mania Universe. I think
it's that though, that makes the mixed developers think that the audience is more
like savvy than it is, right, because like, this is why you
need to engage with people who play you a game, because like you get
feedback from someone the story stunk, Right, It's like, okay, story
stunk. I'm gonna go blame the writers. Well, how about I talk
to this person longer. It turns out they just don't like like the way
the facial animation on the main character. It's not actually story really did at
all, Right, It's just it's an element of how it was executed.
Yeah, and if I didn't spend that time to talk to him about that,
like nine, don't got to yell at the right or I gotta yelled
the facial animation guy or not. Actually I'm gonna go yell at him anymore
because the players are really bad. And that's what the researcher was time,
was like they're horrible at articlate. Like one of the class examples I heard
from a guy a Bungee once was like they were play testing it's one of
the Halo games and this guy is just like an over like dude, the
shotgun is overpowered. The shotgun is overpowered, and like it was actually it
was just the pistol was underpowered, right, like, but the player doesn't
know that. But then the designer to send out interpret like player language which
doesn't know all the variables like and the shot gun. Yeah, it's like
shot guns not the problem, the pistols the problem, and then everything feels
okay. Yeah. That's like the stuff Microsoft does with their usability labs is
amazing because if you can you watch someone play, then they have like cameras
on the controller, cameras on their face and then the gameplay, and then
you see their survey after and if you go back and compare like the stuff
they complain about and then watch them experienced it in game, there's a lot
of aha moments there. Right, it's like, oh, okay, so
you know he thought this mission was a long and kind of boring. That
was his feedback, but he didn't tell me verbally about the five minutes he
spent his rooms running around in a circle, right, And it's like that's
what. So the real problem is they just have to make this room cleaner.
You know, I feel like light the exit or whatever it is,
right, because yeah, it's it's you can't trust. It's like, you
know, the the old writing thing where they say don't trust the teller,
trust the tale, like don't trust what the gamer is telling you trust their
playthrough and watch that and you learn so much more from that than talking to
him most of the time. So so do you have any like data analytics,
like any analytics tools built into any of your games? Like do you
get stuff back ever and just go like, oh, okay, we're seeing
you know this is being picked more than this or you know, like none
of these options are happening. It's like the EA does some of that stuff.
I'm not sure what data they actually get out of it. We had
we had some pretty good data built in the records here, but then no
one played it, so there's actually none. That's an important data point though.
That's yeah, an ample size too small, So we we got any
more of those download codes, that's the thing. Yeah, actually, I
do we spent We spent all this time like putting on out all this time.
We spent a non trivial amount of time that could have been used to
polish in the game. We're making it better or whatever, but we spent
some time like putting in staffs, putting in hooks, figuring out like,
hey, what shots are people doing well with? You know, all this
kind of like uh, you know, a hair of like hair short of
like hot spots on levels and things like that, but a lot of stuff,
and it would have helped us, like you know, refine the DLC
and do stuff. But then so you look at that, it's like,
wow, we invested a lot of time and money in that absolutely zero payoff,
So okay, we're not gonna do that again. And then with Third
Strike it would have been super useful to see how people are playing the game
online, right, you know, so it's like we always guess and we
always guess wrong. I think I think what we need as a next speak
for the like for Iron Galaxy, what we need is we need like an
independent UH system that we just developed that we can put in games we develop
for other people. Right, And that's always like thorny legally and you have
to like clear it with people. But I think if we could do that
over time, our games as a whole would be much much better. Yeah.
But you know when when most of the stuff you do is for other
people, that's not always easy. Yeah, because there's no just like analytics
middleware, is there there's stuff that does it like like you could use UH
like you like, I guess the closest thing you can probably use is telemetry
by Bank that's mostly used for performance capture, but you could use that to
you know, harness game stats and or whatever it is. Unreal has also
gotta bunch stuff built into it, uh and then you can like actually post
a server online and have it all posted to the air and stuff. But
you know that's all time and the energy and then yeah, time you're trying
to get the game done. So it's tricky, but it's one of those
things that academically I know it would make everything we do better, but it's
always something that's really hard to cost in time justify and more more more difficult
to time justify than costs justify, because like I know, I see these
problems in the game here. I don't need someone to tell me what's broken
with the game. This ship here is broken, don't think of that.
And then you know two days before it's ships were done and everything comes together.
Yeah, it's like, oh great, would have been nice to put
some cooks in there. Oh well yeah maybe next time. Yeah, there's
just no shortage of stuff you know is broken in the game. And so
that's why, Yeah, how many bugs on average of of course for your
career, how many crash bugs do you know about in games that you worked
on that that made it through? So I bet there's uh, every game
is different, Every game is different, stakes, But I would say on
like and the stuff we've done in the last and it's just say the stuff
we've done for Capcom, let's look at those, right, Okay, So
it's like real small, it's just a port of like an old game that
you know, we do our little wrapper around and make it cool or whatever.
Each of those has like ten in them, wow, and they're hard
to get two or whatever, like uh, someone eventually finds them and then
it's like you gotta patch it. And if there's ten I know about,
there's probably ten I don't know about, you know, and fixing those ten
will create another ten or Yeah, it's it's just one of those things,
like you it's really shitty for the person who discovers that bug, right,
Like it doesn't it's like cold comfort for them. But it's one of those
things where it's like, hey, we can spend like to fix that problem.
So if whatever X percent of our budget is assigned a QA and DEV
to fix QA found issues, right, we would have to x two x
times two that to make sure we eradicate all those issues right. And if
we do that, then the game is shitty, right because we don't have
less, we have fewer features. It's a game just not as polished or
other things are just missing. Right. And so for the vast majority of
people, like for ninety five percent of the people at least, that's the
correct decision because they end up with a much better experience. But for the
five percent people to find those things, it's shitty. And but you know,
all you can do is like, oh, this is more widespread than
we thought. We got to patch this right away or fix it or whatever
it is. And so, you know, I don't think it's something anyone
in the industry is particularly proud about. But it's that kind of like,
you know, human calculus, you just have to do right. Yeah.
Yeah. Cool. Also, I'm a you know, business machine who doesn't
feel pain and human emotions. No, exactly, cold to the world,
you know, like, oh, this is this thing you spent money on
broke, Yeah, bummer should have thought of that, I guess because before
you bought it. Yeah, maybe he checked it before you bought. You
couldn't do that, That's right, That's right. You couldn't caveat into our
motherfucker. That's That's why I'm at a point where I just assume every game
ship's broken because they do so smart. Well, I just buy another one.
I hope that one works right, good call. Yeah, yeah,
this one's obviously we should hang out. Couldn't work this time. This one's
gonna work way better. I'll buy it on PC instead. This is this,
but that might actually solve the problem. Vitty, How has it been
for you this last week? It's been fantastic. Yeah, never been better.
What have you been doing? What do you play? Anything? I
did? I played? I played some Stick of Truth. Okay, that's
okay, and I think that's all right, just all right. Yeah,
I didn't get that deep into it and uh, kind of just stayed in
the fighting there the elves. Yeah. Have you not played it since we
talked about that? Yeah? No, no, that was your problem.
Yeah, I was playing it wrong, So apparently I was playing wrong.
But everything's okay, man, okay, Uh, and what are you doing
wrong? I was not. I was kind of trying to, like I
do find every hidden object, not do the main Yeah, that's that game,
the game, the classes under its own weight if you don't just keep
going through all the cool like funny stuff. Yeah, so I kind of
got bored, like just the over world battles that were like nothing in that.
You don't need to grind in that game at all. Yeah, you
hit the level cap just with the main bat Nothing in that game is repeatable.
You don't want to keep doing the same thing. Because it'll get old
fast. But then I just played more Dark Souls too. I'm cruising.
How's that pen? Has there any large breakthroughs? Like? How different is
that game from the previous game? What's what? What's up? Where are
you on it now? Is it harder? Easier? I still think I
still think it's a little bit easier, okay, And I know there's a
there's hot the beat happen whether it is or not. And I think different
people obviously are playing it differently. And I talk to Ian who finished the
game, and he said, you know, it's probably on par He said,
I will run into a lot of trouble later on, coming up with
the way I'm playing it, Like, yeah, it's the way I'm playing.
It's kind of brute forcing it a lot of armor, big shields,
big swords. Hey, come hit me, I'll hit you back. But
I hit harder than you do, so I'm gonna win. He said,
I will run into trouble later on, so we'll see. And uh,
the more I play it, there there are differences and it's funny too kind
of play it. Uh, And now have everybody, now that the game
is out, have everybody kind of hitting me up as I'm like I don't
get this, and people being like, well duh, they changed this but
didn't tell you. It'd be like, oh, well how'd you find out?
Like so, you know, I know a guy my uncle works for
from software and Nintendo. Yeah, he'say slalomn too. It's great. So
there are different stats and uh that you can put points into now and that
is there a useless one again stats? Yeah? Well is there. I've
only played like a ninety minutes, so I don't think origin the original thinking
was no, But I don't know if you've noticed, in the last couple
of days, people have turned on adaptability pretty hard. Oh. I don't
think anybody has ever gone from it's useless. I feel like day one people
were like, yeah, man, that's the one if you want to raise
your shield up quickly. What I'm saying is that apparently it doesn't do as
many things as people thought it did. Oh that's turn yeah. Oh no,
it's not useless, but it's not useful. Well apparently it's still sort
of works, like it does make you drink flasks faster and stuff like that.
That, Like people were testing the thing about oh there's extra invistibility frames
in the role. When you do that, it's like that apparently is not
the case. That's funny. There's a lot of this information still flying around
out there because what resistance was the useless stat uh so stuff like that I'm
finding very different of like especially if you're coming out this game with a preconceived
notions of like what the points are you should be putting in being like I
don't get why this is? How did this just work? Like some things
like well what would you call them? Like status effects? Right? Yeah,
like, hey, you're cursed or poisoned or are very different now than
they were in other games. So going in being like I'm cursed and like
the Dark Souls one was a terrible, terrible thing and you would fuck up
your game for like four hours, And this just seems like, yeah,
not big deal, just kills you or something maybe like makes your health a
little lower that one time. But the stuff I heard beforehand about you're gonna
get invaded constantly, like whether you're alive or dead. I have not been
invaded once I've been down the two times I've played it oh times since,
not since like the day the day one. Stuff has a server been down
for me, but not invaded once. Yeah, I like spots that are
zones that like, hey, dude, you're in an invasion zone. Just
kind of tooling around the world like not really. And I've been playing.
I've been alive a bunch, I've been dead a bunch. It's really interesting.
I really enjoy it. It's I think this game is more accessible,
but I have played a bunch of the other ones, so it's kind of
I've lost my perspective on it. I don't know that's all you can make
once you've been through the two other games already, you know. Yeah,
but it does seem I think there is. There are mechanics in it that
are, uh, make it easier for new players. I think the fast
travel is one of them. I think the combination of est this flash,
which is a renewable healing item, plus just having a consumable healing items,
that combination, I think it makes it a little easier, and the same
thing with some spell stuff. I think it makes it a little more accessible.
Easier's not the right word, but yeah, I really enjoy it.
Brady, you've played more. I'm not nearly as far as you are,
but yeah, I spent a lot of time on Saturday dropping my summon sign
and helping people out with bosses. That's fun. You've never done that before?
Yeah, it seems a lot. I've been. I've been on the
shitty end of invasions, you know a few times. But is that a
way to grind? Yes? Yeah, you do get souls out of the
helping people beat bosses. But also it was just kind of fun going in,
Like I was helping mostly with the Pursuer and the Sentinels, and it's
like, yeah, these were shitty bosses to fight by yourself. What a
huge pain in the ass they were before, Like oh, now I can
go in and help somebody out and they're going to have less of a shitty
time with it. So when Brad and I were playing before release and the
servers were down, you know, you're soloing the whole game, right,
And there were definitely fights I was in during that time that I was like,
yeah, this is a multi person fucking fight. This sucks. And
now that I'm playing, as soon as I hit a roadblock, I just
go summon two dudes and we try and take on the boss and it is
much more playable and much easier to get past hurdles that way you summon.
I didn't summon it at all in Dark Souls, Like it felt like it
was cheapening the experience to some degree. I will say some of the bosses
that are insanely hard in this by yourself are complete pushovers with like three that's
the thing, like like O and s right, like that's constantly and Dark
Souls a scene is like like some of those difficult boss because it's two boss
using that lingo again, Man, yeah, and I did that. It's
combat and I did that by myself, and like, but I would see
why it would be super simple and more approachable with two people, but it
seemed to sort of defeat the purpose of like having to really study out that
boss's strategy. Like I get why you would do it. Like I'm not
saying like playing the game wrong, but like so it depends what you want,
right, yeah, Like if you want to put it in the game,
they put it in the game for people to use it, you know,
Like it's I'm I'm not saying it's wrong to you, but I do
think you you get a little less out of like you don't have to learn
the boss as much. Yeah, like you you can throw away parts of
what you're you know, the tells of a boss because someone can you know,
take his attention away like I make. I make no claims to being
very good at this game or good at games in general, So I'm not
looking for a badge of honor for like, you know, I soloed this
boss and like didn't take a hit, and like when I try a couple
of times and if it's like fuck, I'm either going to put this game
down where I just go summon some dudes, let's let's move on. I've
got a kid that's gonna wake up in an hour. Like we need to
get through more than and there in this game. So yeah, to your
point, J if you can grind on these bosses and grind on these bosses,
yeah, but there are met like an order of ten, I'd say
more times more bosses than this. There's like forty, and they're smaller and
they range from like small to its really hard. But like you can find
any place within a half hour of a session that you're hitting a boss,
hitting a boss, hitting a boss and putting down that sign and jumping in
there. And I've done it too, I've put down signs being like this
is shitty. Boss man summoned me, like we'll go in there. I'm
like way higher. Well then you'll probably be on this boss. Let's just
go fuck him up. I'll fuck this boss up all day long because it's
a piece of shit. And that's been fun. And there are a couple
of bosses that are some people use the term puzzle boss, but I might
be using it wrong, but they are just like weird events that happen,
and like, once you know those events, helping a dude out with that
boss becomes super easy because he or she might not know what to do.
You know, dude, I know what the fucking dude check this out.
You just stay in a corner and like pull this lever, hit this thing,
and like boss is done. And so what happens when you fight a
boss and you summon guys in. They can die as long as you don't
die. The battle is still going, right, So you can have like
two other dudes rolling with you. I think it's a maximum too, and
they can get picked off, but you're still fighting, right. So for
one boss that I was having such a hard time, but the boss was
killing me in one shot every time I just couldn't get near it. I
just hung back and was like, go get them guys, and I'm just
gonna sucking like hit throw arrows and then I'm gonna come in when the health
is one hit away, and I'm gonna come in and steal the glory and
like take the shot. But uh yeah, because as soon as I got
hit, I would die and they they get a two guys, like the
one guy just went right out of the fight you got the other guy was
real close to dying. And I came in and finally tried. I was
like, fucking, we're not gonna win this. He's gonna die. And
we beat it. But they definitely did the lion share of the work on
that, and like, like Patrick, you were saying, like I did
not feel like I was an ACE player, but I was like, hey
man, we did it. Let's move on. Like I don't want to
stay, I don't want to spend three days on this boss. I want
to get going on here. And I think that stuff right now, it's
weird. It's such a it's such a community driven game. Like you those
people were not online, it would be a very different experience and Brad and
I were talking about this this morning. Having not getting gotten invaded might just
be that the odds are less likely because so many people are playing, whereas
like when you go back into Dark soulis one now you and like five other
dudes are playing right right and it's like you wall, yeah, probably getting
Also, I mean, I think you know, the game is still new
to everybody right now, so most people are just playing the content, so
not not going around trying to troll other people might be. But even so,
if you're going to try and get, you know, invade somebody,
so many people are playing that your odds are probably lear. But yeah,
how do you guys feel about the stuff? Like Dead Nation came out on
PS four, it's got that kind of like interactive stream stuff because kind of
one of the things that was the promise of Sony's set up is eventually having
kind of more interactive stuff. Like you know, in this game, you're
literally summoning other people into the world to help. But what if it was
something like people watching you want to stream could throw in assist items or like
messages on the ground occasionally help you in the fight in various ways. Whether
it was like kind of guiding you in the right direction or throwing out items.
Does that feel like it's over the line for you and that would be
like too much like cheating. I think if they could like hashtag do something
and write one of those messages on the ground in an area that you're in
to help you out, that would be cool. I think maybe dropping items
so it happens if you leave a message underground, other people see them in
their world and they can rate it and in your world you get I think
more health or something like so that kind of does happen. Yeah, I
think if people could just spam like health buffs or something like that in a
chat, he probably have to do it within reason. I mean, you
have to try to balance around it, right. It sounds like what's like
that horror game that Atlas is coming out of Daylight where you can you can
use the Twitch chat to trigger things, but they're on a cool down,
right, So it's not it's it's not like you're just making like a million
ghosts. However, the games like a Dead Nation for you know, like
it's not a great game, but you know it basically basically every checkpoint or
two, it'll pop up with something for the stream voter like people to vote
on and it'll be like it'll like do you want to make it harder?
Do you want to make it easier? It's basically what it comes down to.
It's like, do you want to give them some health or spawn a
bunch of fast zombies? What do you think? It seems like this is
going to be a gimmick that gets poorly exploited in especially after the like Twitch
place Pokemon stuff, Like, yeah, people are going to do a bunch
of like twitches, get to streaming can influence like what's happening, and I
think it's going to be really shitty in most experience. I feel like there's
got to be some cool ways. I think that in the Dark Souls example,
going to the other end of the spectrum of what you proposed would be
really cool because and what I mean is instead of spawning like healing items,
like being able to influence where the enemy spawn or like what comes at you.
Because as much as people talk about learning like the boss patterns and stuff,
those games are just as much about learning like what leads up to the
bosses. You know, like every time you run an area, the enemies
are in the exact same places. It's like, all right, when I
go through this one gate, the one guy's gonna jump down and run at
me, and then the other guy will come from the left, like it's
identical every time. Yeah, So if that could be randomized to some degree
or like people could mess with how the level comes at you, like,
it would give a whole lot of extra replay value to some of those areas.
And something like the Souls games, I can see that fitting in there,
particularly because they have done in the past just weird things with multiplayer in
right, it's like a particular area, right like in Demon Souls, one
of the bosses was a player controlled character, right like it just you hit
the boss battle and it's summoned another player into your world to fight. And
they had the world tendency stuff right where it's like, this area is gonna
be harder because everybody keeps sucking dying here and like, well that sucks.
So yeah, I think those are games that would definitely lend themselves to that
kind of external influence, you know, and then you can just yank your
internet plug if you don't want to deal with it, yeah, I mean,
you know, just or you know, only let it happen if you're
streaming the game or something, because that's the only time and people could watch
anyway. You know, there seems like there's plenty of ways around it.
But so far, I think that series I've kind of avoided looking at too
much online, but I'm liking it, and I feel like the reception is
I mean, what a fucking hard game to launch, right, Like,
you're talking about this thing that became this beloved went from a cult status to
kind of bigger mainstream but so many passionate people. Something like we were talking
before about having agency and designer don't fuck it up. But it looks like
that series is doing fun and I wouldn't be a surprised we saw more coming
from it in the future. It didn't look like well I mean, I
mean they said like this engine is designed for next gen, so like they
will make another Souls game, and you know, the original guys off making
something. Yeah, it just it doesn't seem like they sucked it up,
but they changed a bit. But in weird ways, that to me is
that's a victory, right Like, if you have this thing that people love
so much and are able to change it and still have them be like,
yeah, man, good job, Like you didn't fuck it up, but
you made it different. Like that's I think that's a big victory. You
see, they're gonna say something about this lighting nonsense next week. Don't say
anything. They are that was according to Kataka, they're going to release some
sort of statement next week about it. What's the lighting thing? I don't
really think about this. This is like like all all the preview builds that
they showed had like a lighting model in it that were was showing, like
was it like torches flickering off walls and sort of stuff that didn't make it
into the final game. So that's kind of there's been a ground swell of
people saying like this was like intentional deceit. Well that's I thought you were
talking about something. I thought you mean you were talking about that light.
No, no, no, Like Dave's a good person to ask about sort
of like this sort of stuff, like the this is like a pre released
demo that had like a lighting engine with the torches, and then it just
disappeared. I mean there's geometry changes, there's some text or changes, like
it's more than just a torch stuff. But like the kind of stuff that
changes in a pre release build that is even even played versus the retail stuff.
I mean, no one is gonna willfully do I shouldn't say no one,
I should be careful. I say this so it's hard to imagine a
world in which you would spend a lot of time and energy knowing you're gonna
throw away something just to trick some money, right Like, it would be
hard to get the team motivated to do that. It would be hard to
like justify spending that money. How do you sell the higher ups on we
should we should trick these people into spend the money to develop this stuff and
then flush it. Yeah, it's really just like they just aimed a little
too high, got too close to the sun, had to pull back the
last minute, and maybe they can you know, make some use of that
tech going forward. It's like I would nine times out of one hundred,
I'm sure that's what this is, right Like, there's some very like public
examples of this recently, But I guess I would be stunned if like this
was some like bizarro like you had a PR stunt, I'd be shocked.
And that seems like that's you know, the it's it's similar stuff happening around
Watchdogs when they showed her off recently, Like the stuff they were showing didn't
I thought that, like polygonn article was the funniest thing of all time.
God, I was laughing my ass off when I read that, Like,
oh yeah, the game just wasn't fun yet, Like that was like the
like the head, like the head, the big shocking quote out of it.
Yeah, we've got to push this back because it wasn't fun. Yeah,
let me get this straight. So the game wasn't fun yet and it
got delayed. That's color me stunned. Yeah. Yeah, but people we're
at there talking about like just like visual quality, like differences now that it's
like not some like target render that they created when to inspire the team or
whatever, or something that's running on a PC before the console. Remember that
maddened video before they did their first three sixth run, Yes, where it's
like Michael straight and yeah, games still don't even look look like that.
To set the record straight with respected Dark Souls, like the narrative is like
nobody knew until it came out that any of these things have changed like that
build me and Vinnie went and played like what's six weeks ago. Yeah,
probably that was like basically the shipping build, like well that is exactly what
we played when it came out, and they gave us and they gave us
b roll of that build. Like there was media of the final game out
there like weeks before release. So people keep talking about was there a demo
for there was the beta, There was the wastest network. So I always
imagine that it was just like, you know, stress the system as much
as you can, and like, this is a network test and we want
to test that stuff. I didn't notice the lighting stuff until people's side,
but did side by side stuff on me anything? Whatever it is, to
me, it looks like, yeah, man, that I hope the PC
version looks like some of that other stuff because it looks fantastic. But that
to me that I mean, you know, all I can do is where
I speculate, But that just looks like the sort of thing where they you
know, this is a series that has had frame right trouble in the past.
Yeah, I would not be shocked if they looked at it and when
like, you know this the sliding stuff looks all right, but we can't
the performance is not there. There was also like the theory that holding the
torch would be like required in sections. So like someone like you, right,
who like is a big armor build holding a shield, like it would
force you to act differently because you need to hold a torch to get through
there, like, and there's only the one that the Tomb of the Giants
and Dark Souls where you have to hold that, but that's everybody, right,
Like, so part one of the theories is that, like, well
they would took that out because that just unfairly punishes certain builds just because uh,
they like to hold a shield or something like that, and suddenly they
can't play the game the way they like to play it. Like does that
actually fair? There? There are there's definitely one area where I found holding
a torch to be interesting. But you know, like you know, castle
and light because it's dark area right in two or in the first two.
Okay, I I think the I think the lighting effects, the real time
stuff off of the torch the held light source are are pretty impressive. Yeah,
they're good looks. You do look at those, like, you know,
we've probably all seen him at this point, like the side by side
stuff, and it does look very different it does. And uh, like
I said, I hope the PC version looks that good, because that stuff
does look great. Uh. Well, like I'm playing the PS three one,
which has a little frameier issues in sixty one and it's like really fun
to just like point the camera at the ground and then it just becomes sixty
frames a second and then like to lift it up and like, oh,
so I reached a boss when I was playing over the weekend that is in
this kind of long tunnel that is lit by torches, and when the guy
comes through, there's a bunch of enemies around and this guy's just fucking cruising
through and the frame rate goes like Banana is like dumb ass like fucking drops
through the floors. Three and uh and when you have people summoned in,
it's laggy kind of already. Yeah, like guys are kind of warping around
a bit, and it was just it was kind of a mess. It
was a beautiful mass happening in there. And I can only imagine if that
lighting system we're in there in this particular part, uh, there would have
just been a nightmare. Uh you know, it clears eventually, but me
and yeah, they probably had to optimize it. I assume they probably went
in and we're like, this fucking playing system looks beautiful, but like,
we can't nobody can play the game. Yeah, I judged primarily on the
track record of the previous games, and in that context, I think some
parts of this game look amazing, because these games have always been really rough
around the edges in the technical sense, and some areas still are. But
you know, I understand why people are like, I think calling it a
beta instead of a network test is a little misleading. When people are like
I played the demo and like the demo was better looking. I think I
think that's a little wrong. But I understand where people are like, I
played this on my PS three hackament doesn't look well. Somebody, somebody will
need to clarify for us. But I'm pretty sure all the footage in question
is not from that network beta. I think it's provided different from others from
a different series or videos where it could have been a debug that we're taken
from, or like, the source of all this footage is kind of in
question. I think, like I said, my biggest take weight, like,
I'm sorry if people you know this lead whatever, that sucks, But
I personally hope the PC version looks awesome, Like I'm gonna probably get that
version as well. And if it looks like what, yeah, does animated
gifts and stuff look like, I'll actually be really psyched. And I'm curious
to see, you know, like Watchdogs for myself because I saw it in
person coming up on a year ago. Now that was the last time I
saw it. You know, it was right before E three last year.
You saw it being played, yeah, right, And I thought it looked
really nice. You know, it was like a it was a good looking
game. Like the section they were showing, you know, they showed like
one little mission. It wasn't enough to know like was it fun yet or
not? Like I don't know, it seemed like the core tools were there
in place for them to make something good. But some of the video that
they put out recently just doesn't look the way it used to. But you
know, we're around a console launch and and what's the what's the deal there?
Like the original demos run PC and now this is when I when I
saw it was running on a PC, and I saw it was definitely running
on a PC. But I don't know, it just it seems like a
slippery slope to see like you know, two or three animated ifs of some
footage footing around and kind of like make these sweeping generalizations. They ruined it.
Let's start the boycott campaign, like like a little bit broader experience with
the thing. You think that's reactionary? Really? Sure? So, Dave
Lang, you've been through a handful of console launches at this point. Yes,
in the game making business. I know my favorite yeah PS three,
Yeah, aka The Widow Maker. Holy crap, if you wanted, if
you wanted to crunch the PS three was your platform. Oh man, undercooked
hardware tools weren't ready. If you launched a game on PS three on day
one. God, there's a special place in heaven reserved just for you.
Like you could murder a billion people, you could be the worst piece of
shit on the planet. You're still going straight to heap God, amazing.
Yeah, it was. It was. It was unique. Like it's always
hard, it's always like hey, I don't know everything I need to know
to ship this, But it's rare when you felt like you're like the harbormakers
conspiring against like like oh, it's really trivially easy to break this super expensive
death kit man. Yeah, like one guide Midway we were doing this,
And so anytime you're on like what did Midway have it launched? Did maybe
have anything launched? The stranglehold was that launch No, okay, was it
supposed to be? Yeah, we're supposed to a bunch of stuff. So
but the thing was so firmware version eight five we'll live in infamy. So
anytime you're dealing with firmware version before one, you know, right, you
were there and oh eight five was the one god so you were on O
six and then you had probably to go to oh eight five after oh six
because no one cared about anyone else. And then like that I flash from
from anything prep previous to eight five two eight five was like, okay,
where are the monks? Bring the monks in ship? Only two monks are
here. We need three and they have to be channing in units. It
was like one guy in all Midway that we would trust the flash the dev
kates right, and anytime someone needed you'd bring your devoicated his office. Hope
he was awake. It like he was properly caffeinated, and so we could
do it. It was the It was amazing games got out, Oh so
so crazy? What was the what was the consequences if one of these things
got briked, Like how much money down the drain? Uh generally generally take
to get replaced. Generally you would just wrestle with it until you've got it
working in some shape or fashion. Again, like it was basically just the
expense was developer sanity right as it always is. But yeah, that was
PS three was amazing And and how do these machines? How how has that?
How has it been a lot better? Ye? Yeah, they're both
really really like uh hardware. Uh it was lockdown much sooner. Some aspects
of the SDK were not, but they were very public and clear about what
is going to change. And you know, we we helped ship a couple
of things at launch and that was not like one hundred and twenty hour weeks
or anything like that. To get had done that was that was kind of
normal, just game to have hard It was not like insane to do difficult.
Yeah yeah, but did you did you feel that there were definitely things
that need to be ironed out with the experience of just like making games for
those platforms like the just the I feel like the thing we've heard from developers
a handful of times is that, like, you know, the tool stuff
on the Xbox One is maybe not where it needs to be yet. I
mean there's developer support obviously there like, yeah, there's, but there's things
they're also highly confident in, right, Like, I'm highly confident Microsoft will
get the tools where they need to be sure. The first thing with all
this stuff is does Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, do they acknowledge the problem?
Right? And if nine times out of ten, then this launch has
been like this thing really sucks, We're working on it, and that's all
we need to hear. Right. If we know it sucks, then it's
like we're not kind of trying to guess where you're going to be on the
next firm warre update or whatever. But it was the biggest thing with the
Xbox One around launch was about well, I guess it was about nine months
before launch they kept pushing the first big firmware update out out, out out,
But that was really the most drama there was around launch of anything.
It was like that one thing, that one firmware update that's gonna be Okay,
here's where Purpo is really gonna be, Here's we're gonna see what it's
like. We're gonna see what it's like. And they push it out like
two months, like uh, some total of two months, and every day
it's like you're waiting for it, waiting for it. But that was as
crazy as I got. It was. It was this was pretty tame.
Yeah, So they're both really good boxes. It's amazing how far Sony has
come from PS three to PS four. It's it's stunning, like it seems
like you almost would have to go through something like the cell process or to
come out the other end and go like, no, we need to get
it, we need to do better than this. It wasn't just the cell
though. Man, it was like a holistic uh just end to end underbaked,
like you're trying to put this as delicately as I can. But Sony
knows this. That's that's why it's so good now, right, Like it
was the whole thing just from their documentation in Japanese. You know a lot
of times like Sony was like they used to do this thing where they're very
open with how they would They don't want to tell developers how to solve problems,
right and for the most part, that's like a really good approach to
take, like, because every game is different, every game is different needs,
and you shouldn't like force or prescribe a way for me to do things.
But they took it so crazy on the PS three, where like they
would have three ways you could emulate a game on disk, right, and
none of them worked. Like one of them was literally like take the hard
drive out of the PS three and put it in your computer and use this
tool to copy the image over right. And so it's like, you know,
the criticism we would give them at the time was, instead of giving
me three things that don't work, how about you just give me one that
is consistently. I can learn two steps on and it might be problematic or
whatever, but I can I can get it done. And it was just
like, you know, it's like a joke about the monks, but that's
what you felt like. You felt like when you figured out the magic steps
to get something to work on the PS three on oh eight five or earlier,
if you felt like, you know, you were the most valuable employee
at the company, so you needed to ask for a raise at that point,
Yeah, I know how to do this. Yeah, yeah, you
can't get rid of me. I'm the only person I will brick every one
of these. Yeah, there's a reason. So Dan Coleman is one of
my guys. I worked with him midway and he was kind of like the
PS three guy in Stranglehold. There's a reason he does not have a hair
on his head right now, and it's because of it's because of PreO eight
five firmware. God to bless you, Dan Coleman. He made it.
So eight five is good firmware. Await five is when it started to sneak
up to competent. It was tiptoeing in the pinking about it. Yeah,
so yeah, it was no longer like like literally like not to dwell on
this because, like I said, PS four is fucking amazing. They did
a great job, and I think but largely how bad the PS three pre
launch was is basically public knowledge. But like they've come out and said,
yeah, as much like but it was it was like crazy stuff like you
would plug it in, you would plug in the HDMI and like it wouldn't
auto to tech HDMI was in and then you'd plug in all the different video
outputs and no screens were coming on. So then you had to like basically
the equivalent of tel netting into the box and like doing shell commands and looking
at text coming back on the shell to manually set the video mode including resolution
and frequency and like it could you just spend like an hour just getting like
the screen to come on right. And it's just like stuff like that.
Times one hundred was where they were at. It was bad news bearers And
like I said, if you shipped the game, god bless you. Like
if you shipped the game and somehow you hear this before GDC is over and
you see me walking around, come get your hug because you deserve it.
God. Wow. Yes, how's the Vida? What's the vida? Like?
Feed is really good? Vita is amazing. Yeah, yeah, I
think the big the big thing I my critique about the Vita in general is
the central processor of the main CPU is really good. It's got like you
know, it's like a quad or so you can have a lot of different
threads going. The big problem with it is most modern game engines don't take
advantage of well, most last gen game engines and even some this gen don't
take advantage of that many cores, but they'll use two at most, right,
And so it kind of like is wasted power if you're just trying to
do something like off the shell, if you're not trying to do some custom
with the Vita. But for the most part, I really really like it.
Cool. That's something I'm curious about going forward with everything because these new
boxes or you know, they're kind of massively parallel. Yeah, with the
eight cores on each side, Like, is that something people are ramping up
to you pretty quickly? Yeah, I mean it depends on what your goals
are, right, Like, it's not something you know, we need for
the games we do like dive kick and stuff like that or whatever, Right,
we don't need any of that. But like, if you look at
UI four and you go watch their sales pitch for UI four, it's basically,
you know, they spend so much time talking about how you know,
they basically take advantage of every little bit of silicon on the box, right,
and that's their pitch. This time is like because like last time,
they're notoriously like basically bound to two threads the way they kind of did their
object management and object lifetime management, and it really really difficult to do anything
else. And they've you know, presumably they fixed that all that with UE
four, and so I'm excited to see the first round of UE four games.
I bet they're going to be super, super, super impressive. So
do you think that developers will get more power out of these consoles faster as
a result of some much such optimization, because it seems like that's the thing
where you know, it would see like the late generation games and you're like,
man, it was seems impossible that this game could look this good compared
to what this ship looked like at launch. The still feel like there's a
lot of room to move from these yeahs, Like every launch is a shadow
of what the box can be. Sure, you know, it's like it's
combination of like it's not just optimization, right, Like ninety percent of it
is content. It's not code magic right anymore Like in the sixteen bit days,
like the programmers made the game look good, right, and then the
thirty two bit days, like you know, PSX addern Nintendo, it was
kind of even split. It was like, Okay, you need awesome programmers
and cool artist and they're both pulling their own weight. And last Gen and
now it's like ninety percent up the artists. Right, it's not about code
wizardry. It's about like programmers coming up with cool pipelines, cool tools,
giving the content creators feedback that lets them make art an optimal way so it'll
run really well and look great and just kind of like watching the store shop,
you know. And because of that, as people learn Okay, here's
the right way to you know, do whatever whatever on these boxes, game
is gonna look amazing. It's gonna be great cool. Yeah. Well,
speaking to the Vida, I played, uh significant amount of loof Rousers.
Oh yeah, I played too. Yeah, yeah, you do. You
have a higher square than means I do. I mostly played on the PC,
but it's available on on Vida NPS three this week as well. It's
your high score, it's like fourteen thousand. Look, it's not that you
were playing on the Vida. I've played almost exclusively on the Vida. I
think my ascort is like twelve seem of the high score on the leaderboard right
now was like fifty seven thousand or something. That's just like the amount of
combo time you would have to combo all. Yeah, you'd have to just
have a real long combo going on that It's a. It's a really fun
arcade style, like it's kind of you know, Defender ish with its wrap
around world and basic perspective. Yeah, it still reminds me of the flying
stuff from Combat for the twenty six. Yeah, it's the way that you
point a direction and then fly that way by like pushing up or one of
the controls. Yeah, there's there's a momentum on it that feels like that.
It's almost like a space like a land fighting fighting. You're cutting engines
and dropping down for a while and stuff like stalling stalling the plane is like
it's but it's it's a pure score game by and large, you know,
it has some of the kind of like missions, I could do this to
complete this mission, to unlock more parts, and some of that actually feels
a lot like like ridiculous fishing in a way, Like it's it's not currency
base though, it's sort of just you're building up XP You're you're completing challenges
and and all that. But they're all like per part so it's like equipped
the spread missile or the spread weapon and then go kill two boats or what
or whatever. It is, so right, they're tailored for that. Yeah,
they're tailored for those specific parts, and it's three parts for the plane,
like a real cool kind of retro style. Uh. And you end
up with like, you know, a weapon part, a body part,
and a propulsion part. And so with weapons you end up getting like lasers
and homing missiles and stuff like that. You have to choose which one you
want, uh right, because there are there are like five ish weapons.
I was gonna say eight, but yeah, that's yeah somewhere between those two
probably. And you mix and match, Yeah, you mix and matchup parts.
Have you got all the stuff? Yet? I don't have the last
one in each tier because I think you have to complete every challenge across the
rest of the game to get the last because I was gonna say, like
they all have little lock icons except for the last one. It's it's like
a big skull. It's a big skull. So I have a lot with
SFMT mode, which is where you complete the last challenge for every part,
and it is like hardcore fucking crazy like that. No one of the achievements
is like what does this stand for? So they don't, but yeah that's
soon, super fucking motherfu messed up time. Uh yeah, I was watching
you play that was like where you're at about on a great game, like
thirty minutes in on normal and everything is like batshit crazy starts off. But
yeah, when you start that mode, like it immediately spawns a blimp like
right off the bat. So it's it's right there, you know, fucking
your ship up. But like I said in Pure score game, you know
you're just you're you're Yeah, great soundtrack. You're you're flying around trying to
build up your Comba multiplier and then kill as much stuff while your multiplier is
up there. Uh. And it's basically like a two tone game. It's
like tan and brown. Yeah, but I've unlocked like six or seven different
color palettes for it. Are they literally dread and yellow? Is that all
it is? They're just swapping colors like they don't. It doesn't profoundly change
the look or anything. That's all just just color stuff. Yeah. It
is awesome. Yeah. The control line, it's really great. Just the
feel you get of like cutting the engine, installing to get under some shots
and loop around come back up. Like some of some of the stuff you're
doing that game is you feel pretty fucking rude when you're flying through just barrages
of just hellish bullets coming out of a battleship and just weaving right between them,
uh, to try and stay alive. It. It's it's really a
lot of fun. Do you like the body that or maybe it's an engine
that effectively nullifies the effect of gravity, Yeah, the hover engine. Yeah,
it's it's really fun. I just got that one. Yeah, almost
makes it a different game. Yeah, way, uh hover like Cover Nuke
or Melee, like the Melee body because he just crash into stuff to kill
it. It's got This game's got so much personality. Yeah, Like the
intro cut scene is literally about three seconds long, and like hard cuts when
it seems like it shouldn't be finished, and all of a sudden you're in
the gameplay. Yeah, Like it's like very quick restart, like says pressed
up to rouse you start the game rightly, but it only says that when
you start the game only the one time. Yeah, it's like it's the
tutorial or something. And then every single combination of the three parts has its
own name. Yep, Like you get like the fork and the pig and
the jacque and the car rouser kuser the karate rousers might be Karate Rouser might
be my favorite design. There are a handful of different ones that I that
I go to, but you eventually unlocked random just set to all random,
so I don't know what I'm gonna get. Sometimes it's something real useful and
sometimes it's total garbage with their own challenges, right. Yeah, yeah,
that's interesting. Yeah, So that's that is just that is just a great
time. It's like ten bucks. I think it's It's totally worth checking out.
It's the controls are super tight of Lambert really just they did a great
job. It's super fun. It's one of those games too when you put
it on and you're like, man, then I just want to play this
through good speakers, want to hear good subwaff. We're going and yeah,
great music, great music. Uh. And then I played Infamous, but
we can't talk about that yet, so we'll talk about that later this week.
Brad, did you play anything else? Yes? I played that new
metal gear yeah, Potion, like two and a half times. Basically That's
what I've been sitting here doing this whole time. So ground zeros that,
Yeah, I completely forgot that they are actually calling a thing metal. You're
solid five five zeros seems a little goofy, but they're solid prologue. Yeah,
which back I guess. I guess that leads me to wonder if like
this is entirely representative of what the real five is going to be like?
Is this the gameplay? Is this what the menus are gonna look like?
And the aiming? Is it all gonna feel the same? Is it a
case West? Yeah, exactly of Dave. Yeah, it's like, let's
metal You're solid five. Yeah. I haven't played a metal Gear game since
two, so I'm probably the wrong person. I asked, why do you
why do you think a metal Gear game is in this day and age?
Uh, I'm just not going to comment on metal Gear, all right.
I think that's probably a good policy for me, just like just they're clear
of commenting on metal Gear. It's been working so far. Well, I
was going to ask you, why does this game exist? So this is
like a what like two or two and a half hour segment of like a
let's say average hour and a half to two hours or first time you tech
that we suppose will be I have to imagine. Yeah, it's definitely the
Fox engine. Definitely on the Fox Engine. It's like a thirty dollars release.
Is this is something where they're like, we can build this like self
contained little thing and put it out and it seems like a DLC but before
pre LC or something like that. It's like that case zero thing. Yeah,
I mean, yeah, maybe it's just them dipping their toe in that
pool, like they saw Capcom had success with it and they want to give
it a shot. I see that. And then and I like Grant to
Rismo, like having prolog out ahead of the full It's just one of those
like you're you're sprawling multimillion dollar productions taking way too long when you can put
something out and generate revenue. It's my guess. But yeah, I doubt
it's that. I mean, not because they I mean, I'm sure there's
an element to that, but that's probably not the primary motivator. I mean,
or maybe you know, maybe less cynical view as they use this as
a test case for a lot of the gameplay concepts and yeah, I mean
yeah, it's like they want to engine up and running and stuff like that.
Yeah, there's probably like they've been talking about this for a while,
and you know how it's like you don't want to talk about things for too
long because some people lose interest, probably felt they need to get something out
to keep the conversation going. Give like hard fans have been waiting a taste.
You know. It's hard to say though without being in those rooms,
but uh, I would, I would think it's more just them, Like
I'm sure someone in Konami in the business side said hey, this this kid
zero thing, like everyone really liked that we should do something like that,
and they kept talking about it, talking about and then it became a thing,
and that did be my best guess. But it's strictly that I guess,
and then you rip them one or two lines you're not going to use
for of key fer in the final game and stick them in here and space
entire story around. There is not a lot of key for Sutherland and that
thing. Yeah, I would. I would estimate between five and ten minutes,
like if you're strong every line in the end, like between five and
ten minutes of dialogue that actually seems like a decent ex Well, I don't
know. I don't know if I feel like the various snakes have always been
fairly chatty though, right, Yeah, there's been a lot of back and
forth on like a Codex screen, but you tell me does not exist in
this game. There is no yeah, no cardboard box, no rations.
I don't know about this game all of a sudden, Yeah, I'm getting
super excited. Check it out. Like it's a it's a very different game
they are. You can go into the options and change it to shooter type
controls and then you just reload Square and yeah, I think they had that
before, but it's emphasized even more here. I think. I mean,
it's still defaults to the weird, quirky metagare controls, but like you can
play this like you play most any third person action game these days, just
in any control sense. But like I found the stealth stuff to be super
satisfying in this game, like the just the range of tools they give you,
like a quick look should be on the site so you can see the
stuff. But like being able to tag every single enemy and vehicle in the
base see it. Yeah, totally. It's very far Car three where you
can see them through walls and see them on your map, but like no
limits, like you're you literally mean tag everything and it's all stay tag anything.
It's just permanent. Yeah. One of my favorite things would be to
tag a guy who I guess was marked as like a jeep driver, but
not when he was in the jeep because then occasionally you would see because you
can see they're sort of silhouette through walls. Once they're tagged, he would
be in his jeep driving around, So you just see the silhouette of a
guy in the pose like he's driving a team, just like flying through the
air, like he's not sitting on anything. It's really dumb, but like
that, that one feature gives you all this situational awareness that I feel like
you didn't have before. Yeah. And recharging health. Yeah, recharging health.
You know, there's there's that is what it is. Well like watching
you get in combat scenarios, be able to like duck behind a box and
your health recharge different places. You can you can evade the guys pretty well,
even after you've tripped an alarm. Yeah, it just seems like there's
a real survivor survivability to the character that is just don't happen in the previous
games, I guess for Better for work. Yeah, all that all that
said, though, like my first time through it, I pretty much restarted
every checkpoint once I got caught. Yeah, because you are capable of getting
through the whole thing without being seen if you really want to. Is there
any incentive to do that? Well, you do get graded at the end.
You know, they give you a letter grade on your I'm sure it's
hashed from performance and like number of time spotted and you know, did you
kill anybody and blah blah blah, and you unlock better stuff. The higher
that grade is for like a new game plus. Yeah. Like so my
second time through, I got a B which got me like two extra weapons
that were very different from the stuff that I started with. There's a ton
of little like inline challenges in there, Like there's like there's a challenge for
how fast can you mark, you know, tag every guy on the island?
Every guy? Yeah, and it'll pop a little counter up saying like
one of forty guys marked or whatever. They track stuff like the like the
farthest head shot you've made, or what was the one that popped uphen I
was driving that number of time? Yeah, Like this weird stuff that just
seems so not metal gear, right. Uh. This was a debug version,
so I couldn't get online with it, So I don't know how much
of that gets pushed up to the leaderboards, but like it'd be kind of
fun to compare. And that's partially because there's so little actual content in the
game, like you sort of need to like you're squeezing a little bit of
blood from stone. But they do have so they have these side ops that
are separate, like separate missions from the main thing. They'll you go back
onto that exact environment and do different, different stuff. So it's not canon,
it's like it's reality. They all say, like this is like a
pseudohistorical recreation of a of a mission somebody else care out using the same map,
same map. It is the one snake, the snake character model.
But it's like, oh, this one was in nineteen seventy five and it
was to take out these two snipers or something. Okay, but people just
keep invading this space over the years. Everyone's like, we got to go
back into this base. Why this time you think that we got three anti
aircraft things? We should probably just take out those three and leave everything else
intact. You think they would have put up like a bigger fence by now
I saw you playing and you just like hopped over barbed wire, Like yeah,
what he wants. They're probably wearing gloves. That's all it really takes.
They put a decent amount of work into those side ops, like there's
unique vo and some art and stuff for those, and it takes allycent during
the daytime. So the island looks different at least does the other Does the
main mission only take place at night? Yeah, it's all in the rain,
and it looks fucking incredible at night in the rain, like just all
the wet pavement and stuff everywhere, Like I played through the PS four version
and it looks really good, and like story wise, they kind of rain
in the like over the top anime qualities of Metal Gear two certain extent,
that's the best part about Metal Gear though. Yeah, yeah, I don't
don't. I don't know if I'm into this, like trying to take it
a little more serious. There's still this hairless guy in a church coat and
fedora called skull Face, who's got like a shriveled up like raising look at
rug he basically looks like Freddy Kruger. His name skull Face. And don't
forget I mean you know that the fallow up to this game does have that
quiet character yet I mean there's still there's some really dumb well maybe dumb's not
the right word, but very some very ridiculous events take place in this.
But they're leaning into their Cold War like nuclear proliferation stuff pretty hard in this.
And this is because because it's very clearly leading up to the timeline of
the original Metal Gear games. The main menu has a just really look at
this. If you didn't play peace Walker, you should read through this,
like like a dense eleven page summary of like everything that happened in peace Walker.
Yes, I kind of have the same reads why by video games I
have the same reaction, but the things that happened and that they have an
audiobook form that I can read. Sorry, just to be clear, that
was Patrick falling asleep. You didn't play peace Walker? Who played peace Walker?
Tried? I tried. I tried to. I liked the mechanics of
like the weird Wi fi like access the game. The game was sort of
fundamentally broken in the US because the peace Walker was built with a Monster Hunter
influence, so the bosses are meant to be played with multiple people and no
one If you tried to play that game solo, like the difficulty was swung
really really hard. So I gave up pretty early on the same here just
played acid point point being the acid was. I fucking loved Ascida. I
wanted to do. I tried to do Acid on iPad. Tried to pitch
him that that's would be amazing. It's like, it's right if we got
don't with scribble knots on iPad and it was like really well received. It's
like, hey, we're the kind of go to for your your big game
on iPad. Where are those guys? And they're like, now, like
your acid, what's that game? Well this is their response, wait for
it. Okay, that was their response. That sucks. That just means
you just gotta like Cojim is probably here somewhere. Yeah, you just gotta
go track him down and go. Man, did you ever hear the Mike
Micah Kajima story. I don't know. I don't know that I did.
It's amazing. So it was it was, Yeah, it was a GDC
two years ago. So Mike Micah had a meeting with someone from I think
it was SNK and he was gonna meet him, he's never met him before,
trying to get that wind jammers. Yeah, exactly, and he's gonna
meet him at the what's there's there's two is it two Hyatts around right around?
Like there's one by the park and there's one or is it two Hilton's.
I think there's two hilts So there's two Hiltons. So he's gonna meet
this guy in the lobby. The Hilton never met him before. He's like,
he's like running five minutes late. He gets there, he doesn't see
anybody that looks like they're from SNK. He's waiting around five minutes later,
this guy comes rushing in right and Mike kind of waves at him. Guy
comes over and grabs him. He's like, oh, we're very late.
Let's you know, it's kind of like broken English. That's super clear English,
beause clearly not his first language. Mike's like, no problem, no
problem, rushes Mike in the elevator. They go up to the top floor,
they go out, They go into this room and it's just a table
like I don't know where the beds are in the hotel room. Right,
there's like a table like it's like a boardroom table with nine people sitting at
it and Kajima in the middle, and Mike's like walks in and he's like,
uh, who and he leans. The guy's like, this is not
I He shows him his business card, and the guy realized. The guy
just turns white. He starts talking in Japanese to everyone at the board table,
and Mike just naturally starts handing out business cards and uh. He promptly
left, and he imagined that guy was fired. The funny part is at
the other Hilton, probably the other thing has happened exactly. Those other two
guys were paired up at the other Hilton, but they're like going up to
take the Coajima meeting, and then it's like, we really want to bring
King of Fighters BACKA No, that's a great idea. We could do k
of ninety eight. And I'm wait, what some of that's? What are
we doing here? Like, let's let's talk about it, the revival of
you know what. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back, and
I want to talk to you about the revival of some neo geo classics.
Let's do it. I'm excited to talk about it. I've got a lot
of updates for everyone. Okay, great, and we're back. All right,
let's get into it straight away. It's very refreshing break. Yeah,
I feel reinvigorated. Guys listening have no idea what they do, but they
get massages. Yeah. We have people come in this like the whole team.
I actually got a mud bath. Yeah, it was amazing. It's
my pores are open. I feel refreshed and theresas toxins have been removed.
It's perfect, just like going into g dcs. Want to make sure that
you feel properly refreshed. I get my Manny Petty every week on the podcast
during the breaks. So smart. Yeah, you gotta take care of you,
gotta take care of yourself. You gotta take care of yourself. I'm
just finishing up my high Klonic right now. How's that going good? It
made like twenty five cents nice. I think I think I think the shop
fact is about to give out. But yeah, thanks for bringing that though,
Patrick, He's almost welcome. Yeah, it's multiple uses. Yeah,
great, great, all right, let's get into it. King of Fighters
ninety eight, let's bring it back. Let's do it all right. You
go ahead. You're a game company. All I can do is review it
at the end, So you go ahead and take care of that and make
it good and make it good. So not ultimate match, Like just what
do you The one of the one people always banging on us to do is
uh cvs two capcom Verse SMK. Sure, yeah, that'd be great.
That's the one people always want us to do. But you know, like
always, we don't own these ip right, No what, just get out
there and do the leg work. I'm sure everyone wants to work together.
This is another that's why there hasn't been one in a very long time.
It's not a classic example of people don't really know how things happen in the
industry and why I like talking about it because, like I think only good
things can come from it. Even if they don't like the answer, at
least now they know. And maybe I wanted to answer those questions again,
you're definitely gonna answer to lay it out for me. How do things happen
in the industry? So, say we wanted to do something like wind jammers,
Okay, it's a class, I'll say it. You want to do
something like wind, just say, hypothetically there was a wind let's say,
a resurgence in popularity right by the way, you know what Adam Hart gave
the keats he uh finished first place at the Midwest Classic. Uh wind Jammers
tournament. He's got a trophy. Wow, there's a classic. He is
godlike for the wind Jammers. Yeah. But anyway, so see in town
because I got the I got the set up here. I don't think he's
coming. I don't think it's coming time. Who's his character? I don't
know. Blond guy, that blond guy, I don't know. Uh So
anyway, so you have three choices, right. You can try to buy
the IP, which is notoriously difficult from Japanese companies because it's not so much
like the IP you'll lose, but like you know, they're afraid they're going
to give away secrets of code or whatever it is. Like, it's notoriously
difficult to buy ips from Japanese companies. So that's probably off the table.
So then you could license it. But then if you license it, you'd
probably give them some percentage, like say, anywhere between ten and thirty percent
and some guaranteed minimum return. Right, But then you're investing money to make
someone else's IP better, right, right? Yeah, And that doesn't make
sense long term, that's crazy. Oh, it doesn't make sense even short
term, right, Like I'd much rather invest in something I own, and
you know, you could like see, basically I can make like a five
percent profit on wind jammers or potentially a much bigger profit on something we create
from scratch, right right, So it's like, so licensing probably doesn't make
any sense, makes a lot of sense for those guys, but wouldn't make
any sense for someone like me. And then there is have someone and I
said, kay, pay us to do it, and that's probably the avenue
would have to go. But a new a new contenders reared its head.
Jack, there's a new option of it, all right. So our good
friends at Sony and we are kind of like the flagship prototype in this.
I don't know if you're if you guys went to games comra you heard,
but like they did this big thing on stage. You're like, hey,
let us know what games you want us to help bring back. And they
have their third party game production run by Geo and all that stuff. Right,
And so it's called it's a hashtag saving the list. You can follow
the conversation, gentlemen in real time. God, So it's building the list,
building the lists, building the list. You're saving the lists, building
the list, You're correct, Yeah, hashtag building the list. Yeah,
not at building the list. I'm a Twitter expert. And so people tweeted
Geo all day with hashtag building the list, and then you call out the
ninety five percent of shen Move crazies and then you see walk. These are
the other games people want to make. And so if we can get enough
people tweeting at Geo Corsi that they want to see win Jammer's revival, then
Sony can step in and kind of act as at intermediary and help alleviate a
lot of these problems because, let's face it, there's no way S and
K is gonna pay Iron Galaxy dollars. That's just not happening. No,
Like, there's very few companies that can Thank you Bethesda, thank you Sony,
thank you Microsoft, Thank you two K. I love you dearly,
WB I love you too. Don't think I've forgot Yeah, and so this
is kind of our quickest route to get this game done. So people should
tweet at Geo Corsi a Geo Corsi hashtag and if you want to, and
if you want to, also maybe tweeted Adam Boys too, because this is
kind of this whole thing, Like Geo it wasn't there. Adam had this
crazy idea and he hired Geo to do it, So you should probably tweet
at them both with hashtag building the list, hashtag follow the conversation. I'll
bet say I want wind Jammers on PS four and Vita. That's a long
hashtag. No that that part's not the hashtag. That's not that's a Twitter
amateur. But yeah, that that's why. Uh so you should do that,
even I'm about to dismiss it. You should do that because that'd be
funny. But that's why these things are very very hard to do. Yeah,
well, what about the other option, which is, yeah, take
take a game like an IP that you do have more control over with a
cast of characters, then, because then the only literally so if you if
you make a new wind Jammers game, there's a chance that's someone outside of
the Giant Bomb viewership would buy it. There's a remote chance of that.
Yeah, I guess if you make I don't know why they would, but
yeah, maybe if you make a wind Jammers game that's not called wind Jammers,
then I bet I bet you not even half the Giant Bomb people will
know what's happened, right, Like they'll be like, this isn't a wind
like you know, that's why you need to bolt it onto an ip that
you already have some contro roll over records here, wind jammers, no Microsoft
Zones records here. Dive Kick, it's called with but dive I would it's
called catch throw. The cast of Dive Kick who decides to enter a competitive
disc throwing tournament. We've got bigger plans for the cast of Dive Kick than
just mere beach battles with frisbees. We've got broad ranging plans. Okay,
we basically wrote a we called the story Bible. I don't know what most
studios called. We called the story Bible. Yeah, and it's mister n
hen tie. But the other ten percent is really good and we're gonna tell
like the rich emotional tapestry of what it was like growing in West Philadelphia for
Diving Kick. And uh yeah, other studios called that fan fiction. No,
no, no, it's rich when stuff that you own, it can't
be. It can't be fan fiction. Kids. Oh yeah, so no,
it's gonna be. Uh you know, we we we actually did consider
this for briefly, but it's just without the name, it's hard to sell.
Yeah, without that hot wind Jammer's name that everyone they can't know.
I guarantee you like wind Jammers is the value. It's not the game,
right like people, it's like it's like any old game, like like Metal
Slug. Sureing people buy Metal Slug because it's a good game or whatever because
they remember having fun playing Metal Sung. Yeah, because I mean, like
the last couple of Metal Hull games were kind of blame without commenting on that,
like they they remember having fun playing Metal Slug. It's I could like
metal and that's like it'd be the same thing with wind Jammers, right,
and without the name, you don't have that, And then it's just like
the most you could sell would be like fifty thousand copies. But you can
always hire a guy who was like on the credits for wind Jammers, right,
and then say Windjammers. They actually didn't think about that. Option five.
That's pretty holy cow? Yeah are you this is why I'm your intern?
Yeah, so yeah, that's a good idea. Oh okay, so
there's now a fifth table back on So actually, don't tweet at GEO.
I'm gonna explore option five because I might not want I want to want to
cut him out find some poor guys. I'm sure. I'm sure the names
on the wind Jever's credits are probably one hundred accurate because it's usually Japanese credits.
Go. Yeah, well, like I said, I want to explore
it, and Huberman's that you be montreal now. I think if you see
me tweet option five is off the table. Then everyone tweeted Geo and l
got it like okay, all right, we've we've got a proper plan.
So I guess is that the because that's been the thing is, you know
a lot of people are bringing back old ips and and you know, treating
them in different ways, making free to play games, and and you know,
handling that stuff, you know either like sort of well or kind of
poorly. And do you think that it's that there's value in So I guess
I guess the Actually the answer is you do think there's real value in the
names of old I well, it's it's scale, right, It's like,
so, say, like the difference if you made a really great game,
like a four player local person game, maybe some online play that played like
wind Jammers, right, and it was great, and but it's gonna be
but you're you're now you're not selling Windjammers, You're selling an indie game,
right, and the market for indie games is gonna be Here's forget the outliers
like Braid and stuff like the there's always go to people to break through.
But the size of the quote unquote indie game market is between one hundred and
two hundred thousand people, right, right, That's basically what you're looking at.
And so you have to scale because we have to make money doing this
because if we don't make money, then we don't get to make more games,
right, and so you have to scale the game for a budget.
That makes sense that that kind of you know, uh, that kind of
like user base. Right. But so if you just if you're not selling
wind Jammers proper, you're selling even smaller net because like, of all people
like indie games, people that like four player local competitive games is even smaller,
right right, Like it's a tough style, I mean just and even
people who like it are not sometimes there's not in situations where they can play
those games. Like I like, you know, I'm gonna go out and
get like a bunch of controllers so I can play Power Fall with my kids.
Yeah, Like that's gonna be fun, but then they're not gonna want
to play it because they're kids. They'll build play with me for a week,
and then they'll want to go back to something else or whatever it is
and be like, oh, I don't want to play Tower Fall. I
don't know. It's the only age old thing we've talked about better times.
But like and so, uh, but there are people. But then if
you can sell wind Jammers, you're not selling an indie game. You're selling
a retro game. Sure, and that is a bigger that is in fact
a bigger market. That's like not that's like, yeah, that's not debatable,
Okay, Uh, you have stuff to do it, right, You
stuff to execute your stuff to find that. You have to find a way
to to get the people that loved wind Jammers and love neo geo games and
love that culture. You have to be able to find a way to communicate
to them very cheaply that you've done this. But then that's a bigger market.
And that's that's like you're talking about like four player games online doing it
doing when Jammer's rights. Uh, that's more. You need to spend more
than you could just five you know, one hundred thousand copies. Sure,
whatever. Yeah, so it's cut the players in half when jammers two player
games so smart, yeah, so smart, and then making it that works.
That scales right, that's just budget right, that's half the budget.
Yeah, that's the way it works. Yeah, three dollars character and just
used like I don't know, the killer Instant model or something like that.
Yeah, that's free to play. It makes every game better, yeah,
totally. Yeah, just take out the money part and slide it in somewhere
else. Business. So some news happens. It's not just GDC going around
or on these parts. A few things have happened here. Kicking off this
week, Kochi Igarashi as a state of the he is leaving or has left
Konami to start a new studio. Explains why Konami when I asked about because
he's doing a panel at GDC about like Symphony of the Night or like the
Metro. Yeah, like is in the title of the talk. Yeah.
I email them and it was just like, hey, it's like he this
would makes sense, like he would be doing interviews. You're like, not
that I'm aware of. And I was like that's a weird response. Yeah,
like not that I'm aware of. Like that's not a no or a
yeah, like oh now it makes sense. He is not at economy anymore.
Yeah, starting his own studio for him? What you still might do
something with him this week? Yeah, yeah, he's We can get him
in here, hope, I mean hopefully brought the hat and the whip.
If he doesn't, no, no whip, no deal, Like I don't
want to talk to him. He doesn't, how's he going to keep the
vampires out of here? That's true? I wonder, like, you know,
if he were to set out, I mean, so he's starting out
to start his own studio, you want to assume that he would get right
back to doing the things that he's kind of maybe best at, or one
of the things that he's become known for, and make that style of game.
I mean, it's his his GDC talk is about that topic. It's
probably still on his mind. But he would not be using the castawania ip.
Would he make something with vampires? Would Dracula still be a threat?
What is I hope? Would he just do what I did just lunch Kickstarter
try and make a like Cassivania style game, Just say, like this one's
mummies, you guys, I don't know. Mummies are crazy. The names
the game mummies are crazy looks like the letter R and it's backwards because no
presents. Yeah, because you're crazy. I wonder what the legality of that
stuff would be the R because Dracula is like long in the public domain.
Right, yeah, you can. He could just go make a game about
hilarious right, I would love it. Yeah, businessman Dave Lang, what
do you think? Uh, that's why I have lawyers. Okay, I
don't I don't guess at things like this. I could pay three hundred dollars
an hour and have someone tell I think that makes you can use Dracula.
But what if his name is backwards? If he opens his cape and three
fireballs come out, that is you are over the live You should have seen
the first time we showed the lawyers not to get off quick digression. We
showed them all the parody elements we were doing and dive kick. Yeah,
and like lawyers love parody, they love to clear it, they love to
explain it. Yeah, and uh yeah, that was a fun couple of
meetings. But it's like, no, no, you don't think you because
they don't know anything about games, right, Like they're their games lawyers,
but they don't know anything about games. And it's hilarious. It's probably actually
a good thing in a weird way, because if they did, they'd probably
be a little more apt to go, oh yeah, it's totally different.
You're right, yeah, you don't like what the acid test or if something
is, I guess this is what they do in courts, Like so they
would say, like what they what they'll do if they say, oh,
no, you clearly just ripped off Johnny Cage or whatever. Right, what
they do is they take your character and they would take Johnny Cage and they
would go to like malls across the country and they would just like pay people
Johnny Cage Mall tour, Yeah, and they would pay people to do a
survey. Do these two things look alike? Do they this is look inspired
by this? This is any way related to this? And if that's that's
like the acid tests like they do use in courts. It is like for
determining like if someone just ripped something off or if it's just inspired by or
whatever it is, right, and if most of the people felt it was,
then it's you know, then you have to justify your parody, right,
But if people don't feel it's related at all, then you don't need
to justify the parody, right, And uh, yeah, it's it's really
interesting and depressing and uh, everything's broken in on our laws. Yeah,
no laws. How do you scary to make this digression longer? How do
you prove its parody and not ripping off? So there's there's a very there
is actually a very firm definition of parody. So parody you have to be
making some kind of commentary about the topic. Like one of dive kicks problems
originally was we were trying to paradise Is that a word? Sure? Now
yeah, we're trying to like we're trying to paradise individual elements from a bunch
of different fighting games, right, And you can't do that, like like
you you can. You can do a parody on let's say, more Marvel
Verse, Capcom three, you could do a parody of that, but you
couldn't take like one's not a salad bar, Like you couldn't take an element
out of Marvel Capcom three, an element out of Blast Blue And then like,
oh, we're just gonna know, because then you're just ripping off characters
out all these games wholesale, right, And that's like one of the kind
of common distinctions about it. And uh, it's really really tricky, and
basically it's one of those things you get smarter and dumber at the same time
the more you learn about it. It's like stuff you don't want to know,
but it's filling your brains. I would never there are a lot of
changes that needed to be made to Dive kick Over. It's over the course
of its development. No, we were always legally compliant. We never violated
any IP holders of course, like that. There was no prototype version.
I don't even know what a prototype is. Yeah, so no, we
were always compliant. I don't know what these files in my drop box are.
No, we were for the most were for the most part in really
good shape. Like there are some things they wanted, like like, there
are some things we did not because we're in violation, but just because some
people like Marvel is incredibly litigious. Yeah, they will sue you at the
drop of hat just because they're a huge company and you're not. And so
there's some things we changed willfully, just knowing that, right, But even
though it's like we probably would have won, but it would have we would
have lost if we got sued periods. So it's one of those things you
have to worry about, Like when you have a company and you have some
money like that, someone might want to have one of those things. Yeah,
well, yeah, okay, I have a company. But you know,
theoretically the company is worth enough for that they could come in and shut
it down and then own it themselves. The crappy thing is not whether you
are right or wrong, and is whether you can afford to go to court
exactly. Yeah, And that was the thing when we were doing we did
those T shirts. That was like the biggest boondoggle, like the T shirt
guy ran off with the money at the end of it, and it was
we ended up doing it for charity because we did Oscar Meyer logos, but
it said Oscar Mike like call duty. I tried by one was but I
was too late. Yeah, And it was one of those things where like
the you know, eventually a lawyer got to look at it went all I
don't know. I was like, come on, man, they sell bootleg
logo T shirts in the mall all day long. And the story was with
that was like yeah, but the company that makes that is two guys in
a garage, not the founder of c Net fronting this internet company. Like
someone could look at this and look at it and go like, well there's
some money there. We can probably at least get them to, you know,
and it just it was it was the moment where I was like this,
at some point, this cool idea is not worth it anymore. But
then it got away worse because we're like, let's do it for charity.
It's like, okay, cool, We'll totally do it for charity. And
then the guy that we had worked with to make the T shirts disappeared with
the money and stop surprising for a T shirt guy. Yeah, you wouldn't
think he STU line of work, huh, but learned something new every day.
In this case, it went a little sideways on us. So anyway
about that guy from Kanami, Yeah, but yes, Igarashi no longer there,
so yeah, you want to have to wonder, Yeah, if it's
just literally I wonder if we'll see more kind of developers of that era,
of that stature that are maybe not getting to make the games they want to
make anymore because the changes in that market and just the changes in the market
overall looking at the success of something like Mighty Number nine and going like,
oh, we can totally, Yeah, we can totally. He's one of
those guys, absolutely one of those guys, and those people that are passionate
about him and and the types of games he makes will totally he is fun
fund game. My gut says, New Symphony of the Night would create even
more of a buzz than New Mega Man. But yeah maybe that's oh man
like like maybe it's maybe it's a toss up. Yeah, I just I
feel like Symphony of the Night is like so revered if we're talking about like
MegaMan is like one of the old time greats that's gone done nothing but wrong
lately. Uh, either way, he would be able to pull it off.
Yeah. Yeah, And like those games scope in a way that like
kick Starter makes sense, whereas like the people that have these dumb fantasies about
like Shenmu three, like the amount of money that would cost to make that
game the game you want does not exist on Kickstarter. That's not that's not
six million dollars, that's like sixty million dollars. Here's your option six.
Huh okay, Option six. Wind Jammers from the creator of Symphony of the
Night. Yeah, rack Jammers, you could probably do some cool stuff with
a whip and win Jammers, I bet. Or you could probably do some
cool stuff with a disc and stuff. You could like perry the disc with
a whip. Yeah, just whip it in weird ways. Don't give it
all away. For Freeman, there were just ideation, right, and we're
ideating this is fine, copyrightable. They have to mail this for ourselves.
Yeah. Do you think Igarashi just played like Lord's Shadow Too? And I
was like, I'm I'm sucking out of here, you know what? It
was like the seventh the Facebook game that he was asked to make that he
finally just snapped, just like my contract is done. I just wonder,
you know, because that was the thing, like they said that Lord's Shadow
Too was kind of concluding that saga and that that would be kind of it
for that that Castlevania timeline. Yeah, and you'd like to think, like,
oh, that means they're just going to get back to the real deal
and give that man his hat and his whip and his Belmont's back. Was
he doing Facebook games? Yeah? I bet he designed all the quick time
events and then when it shipped he saw the odd menu option. That was
it. It's like, fuck, this ship got sworn to me. This
is the last time. Whipped the awards off the shelf and ran out,
ran out. What are you talking about? He swamped out on that.
Yeah, it's totally broke a window and then hit a lampost straight up bass
style, but then swung back in, grabbed his hat and then was smart.
Yeah, I don't want to leave the hap on. No, I
would love to see I will love to see what that guy does next.
He's an interesting fella and has been behind some fantastic Castlavania games. So Shadow
Complex too creative director of Shadow Complex. Only now it's Mummies and that's the
name of the game, Shadow Complex too, Colin Only now it's Mummies.
Awesome soundtrack. Yeah, really looking forward to it. Uh, let's see
Warner. The Warner Brothers have gone ahead and announced that they are making a
new Gauntlet with Arrowhead Games, The Magic of People, which seems like a
kind of a crazy perfect fit. So who owned who put out Gauntlan originally
Atari, then it was purchased by Midway when they bought the the Arcade arm
of Atari, and then they put out Dark Legacy and all those other terrific
Gauntlet games. Okay, and then that went to Warner in the sale.
Did you ever work on a Gauntlet game at your time at Midway? The
one they did that Seven Sorrows game when I was there, huh uh.
And I was friends with some of the people working on that, but I
did not actually contribute. Okay, so that was that was one Patrick's running
away Goodbye Midwest by Patrick. All right, go play your horror games finally,
I know right now. Wait did he say, see one Wednesda Chicago
is only pick enough for one of us. He's jamming up my town.
Man, it's horse shit, yeah, yeah, flooding your town, like
yeah, everything he said. By the way, it's a fucking classic Rube
Chicago guy. Like I moved in this great basement apartment. I've heard that
like a billion times. All it did, but except before it was like
all my friends that just graduated college and moved into shitty basement apartments. Except
he's an adult. So good job, Patrick, Well, I mean to
fine adults, well just strictly in age, okay, all right, yeah,
they got two stories. Yeah, not in problem solving or mental mental
acuity. Just strictly, I don't know. He's better that Splunky than you
are. Well, yeah, that's all. I got paid to play Splunk.
I'd be pretty fucking good too. But you know it's saying this is
fucking my fault, you know. Yeah, Okay, all right, yeah,
okay, okay, okay, Jeff, Damn, that's cold. I'm
getting better though. I'm about this, Like I've now beat the game three
times. I feel like I'm it's not just a matter of how many like
do I get to the black market? Do I scape the black market?
Yeah? And then it's like my odds of doing well at that point are
really good. I'm gonna start my Yama runs now. I played it for
six days or so and beat Patrick on like the third or fourth day or
whatever, and was like, all right, I'm out retire on Top's come
back, scome back video game player beat means fatigo once we retired Champ Life
time Champ. Yeah, fucking perfect record. Why did you change seats?
Bread? Because I like it? Over here? What do you like it?
Just a microphone but mainly that giant spotlight not pointing right in my face?
Okay, because you finished seven s Uh, that was one. Yeah,
I think that was. Like there's a lot of games at Midway that
I think everyone would agree, like Midway was a really weird place because we're
crazy talented people there. There's crazy passion of people there, Like that was
probably the most dense collection of talent I've ever worked. Well, just we
could never put it together and make good games. It always it always seemed
like the company was trying to really do something with those old arcade IPAs to
the point where it just started weighing them down. Because like when when seven
Sarrows was coming along, that was right around the time the like Defender and
Joust were going no, no, no, that was or that okay,
yeah that was There was a Defender game, Defender Ships Joss didn't did that?
Defender came out, Defender was two and two yeah, and it was
like behind the back, like third person Ship Shooter, Wow, uh did
that just come and go? Yeah I have. But like if you look
at the games, like the more MK guys, they always they pick them
up and put them down. They've been making MK yeah so many years,
so they know do it like everyone outside of them. It's like, you
know, Ballers started off interesting concepts and then just went down this weird rat
hole and ended up becoming irrelevant. Blitz, you know, Blitz the League
was cute once, but nobody wanted a second time. Stranglehold was awesome.
It was just like too late for too long. By the time it came
out, it wasn't competitive anymore. Still like really good in a lot of
ways, but just like other games had passed it at this point, right,
and just that rinse and repeat with that, right, And it's just
one of those things where you look at the people that were there and the
potential energy that company had and the output and you know, bumps me out.
I'm sure bumps almost everybody out too. It was there. But if
only this is Vega, this is Vegas had made it out. Oh man,
I've kind about that. That was I was at that last Midway press
event where the two showed this is Vegas and yeah, I played a little
bit of it. Yeah, I'm not gonna there's a lot of things.
I'll yeah, there's feelings. So it's to keep this the games actually came
out, Okay, I'll comment on the Doctor Mudo. I just remember even
at that event, I remember the three distinct like modes of gameplay. They
were showing they had booted off of three different debugs, Like right, it's
like this station the driving and then gambling I think was the other one.
I think you're right. Yeah, it was like they had to go to
a different console. It's cool. Like that's the thing about even that game,
right, like it seems super ambitious. Yeah, like like nothing else,
it just seemed like it hadn't come together at that point. Like I
was never a super big fan of that game, like or what it you
know, just all the resources it sucked or whatever in the company. But
like they were doing some cool stuff like the way you could cheat cards and
there was super like like quirky and neat and fun, like they had something
novel about every game mode they had. It's just they needed like a company
bigger than Midway to be able to support them so they could pull it all
together. You know, like that's a game, that's a game Midway never
should have green. Let it's not necessarily because like those guys could never pulled
it off because it was so ambitious, right, It's more just like those
guys just needed more people and more support than Midway could have given them.
To do it, and we should have known that ahead of time. So
like anytime I'm banging on that game, it's not like the dev or the
team or whatever. It's just like that one is one we shouldn't have even
tried to do. And there's some other games like that too. It was
like that John Singleton game, what was it called Snoop Dogs on the Cover
that that got canceled like right when I got there. That was like one
of the last like uh, Neil the Castro when he got outstad as the
CEO and the new guy, David Zucker came in and just like canceled a
bunch of games. That was one of them. But yeah, it was
uh, like you know, Wheelman ended up being a pretty fun game.
Yeah, wheel Man was good, but that was like a Christmas miracle,
you know. That was like I don't know how those guys pulled that off
and just but that's like the theme, right, and it's really it's a
bummer because that has so many awesome people there and it would have been fun
to work with, you know, guys like Johnny V and Adam for the
rest of our lives and do cool shit. But like you know, we
had to go and do different stuff because it wasn't happening there. Yeah,
well, you know, Adam and johny V seem like they've they've moved on
to pretty good careers. Finally, after bumping around for a while, there's
nothing that depresses me more in the world. When I realized, like,
so, when me and Adam met, like he started like two weeks after
I did it midway and we're both on Slugfest, I was like lead programmer
and he was like associate producer. I could basically boss him around it will
because he was like, you know, two weeks on him. Yeah,
not only that, but I was like the lead programmer and he was associate
producer, which at the time was like a coffee a hair above into her.
And then at some point the executive producer on the project realized, holy
shit, we're about to finish this game and they haven't told me what the
next thing is. I'm probably getting fired. I need to do to find
a job, and completely checked out. Like the second producer literally like didn't
come to work for like three months because he was off like looking for other
things to do or whatever. So Adam then became the de facto executive and
like I still didn't listen to him then, yeah, because like I knew
what he really was. But then it's like, you know, then it's
like, okay, we're by kind of going through the ranks. I become
like studio tech director. He's like in charge of Blitz, so I'm still
kind of above him studio director. That's like you're you touch multiple games.
Yeah, so it's like but he's like he's closing the gap rapidly and it's
like uh. And then he goes to Capcom and becomes like director of production
there, And that was the hardest day of my life. And I realized
that this, this this wonderful Canadian friend of mine is now this dear friend
but achieved more in life than I have. That was a sobering moment.
That was when I was looking the mirror. Look in the mirror moments for
me And now, Jesus Christ, you can't fucking open Neil Gaff without seeing
his picture. It's still basically this is how I know that life is actually
a simulation that's not real, and it's tailored to every person's individual torments,
Like there's someone out there programming, like how can we really fuck with Dave's
simulation and I'm gonna wake up one day and realize it was all bullshit and
still be furious about it. That's mad. That's how mad I am.
He successful. But anyway, I'm happy for JV though. Sure, yeah
he deserves it. I mean, yeah, he you know he did.
And that guy worked on Crimecraft he did, you know, yeah he did.
It deserves better than that, deserves better than that. So yeah,
that Gauntlet games out in the summer only on PC, and it's gonna have
Linux support for SteamOS supported and Steam machines like in the first paragraph. Yeah,
that seems kind of crazy. We were just talking about this last week
of like, when are we gonna see the PC only released? Really usher
in this new age of like PCs where it's at. I don't know that
we are, ye, but it's definitely an interesting I wonder if this is
something where they just are announcing it now and haven't gotten the concept approval or
whatever for consoles, because it seems like a couch co op kind of game.
Yeah, and you know, we just looked at Helldivers last week,
which is also from those guys. Yep, it's Arrowhead, Arrowhead. I
don't know why. I always just think of them as the Magic people.
I can never keep the name of the studio because Magic has more evocative name.
Yes, Arrowhead, but but I mean helldivers is. You know,
it's a four player like a bug, like Starship Troopers, like space shoot
'em up, Yeah, but top down. But they've basically mapsed the Magic
concept into that game on a dpad. You know, they made it work.
We're gonna come to think of a Magic I worked on a dpad.
Yeah, So I don't see why. I'm seriously, all we've seen at
this point is the trailer for Gauntlet. I think we'll be able to get
a closer look at it here kind a thing to see it on Thursday.
Yeah, so we'll go check it out. I mean, the trailer didn't
look like there were a whole lot of ghosts in it. I didn't see
death. I didn't see anyone talking about food and the shoot thereof so or
of the needing badly of it. Yeah, I don't know that. To
me, at some point, for better or for worse, Gauntlet kind of
has to have that stuff, and when it doesn't, like I don't know
what they're doing anymore. Yeah, I don't know, magic I had a
pretty irreverent tone to it. Yeah, I bet there's some stuff like that
buried in there. Yeah, I don't know. It's just weird. Like
I feel like the you know, I really liked, like when Gauntlet came
out incredible, you know, it was just an incredible arcade game. And
Gauntlet too, I think that, you know, they made smart changes to
it, and I feel like every time they've done Gauntlet since then has just
been lost. Like that game was something that was designed to suck quarters away
from you. In the minute they took that aspect of it away, it
was just like I don't know, like like the what the Gauntlet Legends and
Dark Legacy, the arcade game, the last arcade game they did, got
some of that back because it was literally an arcade game that was sucking money
out of you again. But it's just one of those things that I just
never felt like they translate it at it well at home. But I feel
like the culture's back now with all the like Rogue Leglis and all that stuff.
I feel like you can make a Gauntlet where it's like, dude,
you get one life, run the run the Gauntlet going in with four dudes,
and like it's a you'll start as soon as you die, I'll start
over, but from level to level you'll keep it. I just don't I
don't think it'll be that kind of game. I don't think so either.
I think and I think if you're naming a game Gauntlet, I think like
putting that type of like going a little too roguelike on the on the permanence
of death and stuff like that, I think it would be too harsh.
But like, what like without putting if you were to play on one quarter,
right, Yeah, like that's basically what it was. It's like eight
hundred health or something. Yeah, well you can set and you can get
a little more, you can get some food. Yeah, but you know
it was kind of a but that wasn't the thing. It wasn't you put
in one quarter. It was you put in fucking eighty quarters while you were
standing there is going to mother your god damn it shit stand here long enough,
all the fucking walls turn into exits because fuck it, you lost enough
health with it just ticking down, We'll let you go on to the next
level. Oh that game. The problem is that you can't now build in
the monetary risk at home. Unless you just make this thing free to play,
solves all problems. What if it was what if it was free but
every life cost twenty five cents? I feel like that's like everyone like jokes
about that every time any kind of arcady game goes free to play, and
no one has really had the guts to do it because it would probably never
work. You would work. This one tried to do that a few years
ago. There was there's a it was a bad approach. It was the
wrong approach. It's gonna be someone like Microsoft or Sony have to do it
themselves. But there was like a middleware company that was supposedly licensed with Sony
or Microsoft or maybe both to do just that, to basically like quarter up,
and they had the back end and all this stuff. And the thinking
was, you know, for old arcade games or whatever, you just do
that. And I mean game Room was kind of it was gonna be much
more could have been. It was gonna be much more. Like it was
gonna be outside of the Uh, like you don't buy points and then all
I don't have enough points and I got these five men used to buy more
points. Yeah, Like there's gonna be more seamless than that, Right,
that was the intent. But then like I, I guess I just want
awake because no one ever used it or whatever. But it did seem like
an interesting idea. I don't feel like that recreates the whole experience, though,
you know, like there was there was there was like a ritual quality
to fishing another quarter out of your pocket and like hearing it clinked down the
coin slot. There's something to do a start button, you know like that.
I don't know that that Well, what if you just you know,
had a bitcoin wallet and then there was an animation of a like piece of
a bitcoin moving across the screen and disappearing and somehow turning into drugs or whatever.
She's saying that, like if it counted down from five before the treasure
shot opened, be more meaningful somehow. Yeah, That's what I'm saying.
Oh, I think you're onto something. I do actually wonder though, like
if Splunky, right, which I think is the single greatest game, you
could do that for now, right if they like this is strictly like a
mental exercise, but if they launched with that, so it's free and first
five times you play it, or first ten or whatever, it's free and
it's a quarter after every time, right, Like, would they have made
more money or would they've just tanked and burned? Like because if like,
I don't think I would stop pumping quarters into Spilunky anytime soon. But that's
but that's with the knowledge that you already have because you have to play it
unlimited times for free. Yeah, like how many people, I like,
I wonder how long it would have taken for somebody that you actually uncover the
variety and depth in Spilunky if they were paying their way to get there.
Let's assume they executed perfectly and they ab tested it and they found the exact
number of right free games to give away before they started doing a quarter,
right, But like, let's also assume it doesn't get cracked by a bunch
of hackers for free after that, right, like a stack all these sysmptions
on the top of each other. But like I do think, uh,
I think for some games that could make tremendous sense, but there's just so
few that are built to take advantage of that naturally, because like you think,
it's like any free to play game you like, you want, you
have to believe it's fair and maybe you can't suspend a belief that it's fair,
just believe that it's fair. The whole thing comes in raveled and you
lose all interest, right, and it's a remarkably hard problem, and you
end up with situation too where like, you know, would you then not
allow people to just buy it? Right? You know? And and at
what point is I mean, obviously that's the maximum price someone would ever pay.
Yeah, And if you tried to do a free to play game where
the biggest thing you could buy was a quarter, like every suit in the
world would tell you're being idiot. You need to guz the whales need something.
You know, best value is you know you It's just like it's just
like the pinball machines. If you put in the Susan b anthony, it
would give you five games instead of full exactly. Yeah, And so it's
you know, this is largely it was like I said, it will always
be a mental exercise. I don't think this is something that will ever happen,
but I find myself thinking about that a lot, and like and what
games would have worked for and there's not many, but yeah, yeah,
yeah, I think Spunky would be more devious if they just put it on
a timer. It's just like, dude, you get five minutes and then
the curtains close and I put another quarter and you want to see it straight
up peep show, like literally the curtain closest. Man. This is a
really good run. It's a really good run. It just stinks in here.
I believe I can't put in another quarter. It's just like when the
time expires, the ghost appears. I was like, you want the ghost
goes literally be the ghost off. Yeah, just got his hand out,
Like, come on, we need hardware for this, like actually the act
of putting a quarter in a box like a lock box that gets mounted into
the home connection and then a man has to come once a week to empty
your coin box. Yeah uh so, yeah, gone, it'll be out
this summer. That's it. It's a super weird announcement that like I can't
think of a team other than the Magic a team or you know, the
Arrowhead games, like they seem like the perfect gauntlet people really seriously or for
that sort of thing like they they've been making kind of it. I feel
like Magic in a lot of ways was kind of a new vot. I
didn't know they were making and when you guys said it, it's like,
oh, yeah, that makes right. Of course, why wouldn't they do
that? Will there be a Vietnam level? Uh? Four characters which you
know, the same four characters or they say Warrior Valkyrie, they don't say,
you know, Questore Fyra and Hearthstone is out like done, Like it's
out. It's not in beta. It's out, o heart, anybody can
Stone. Anyone could download it for a while. They were in open beta
for a chunk of time, which changed. It's not in beta anymore.
As of the eleventh it is out. It's no longer unfinished. That's right,
that game is finished, so we should go do quick look of it.
What did they did they do for people who put money in? Nothing
like, Yeah, I think they stuff I think from open beta. Like
at one point they were resetting it was it was a case where like if
if they had to make changes that impacted the economy, they would turn your
cards back into packs or back into in game credit that you would spend on
packs or whatever material. Yeah, yeah, but they kept it. But
at some point they got to a point we're like, we're not wiping packs
and we're not wiping cards anymore. From here on out, what you get
is what you got, so they didn't have to reset it at launch to
do anything like that. I played like through most of the tutorial. I
don't know. I don't know if I'll play anymore. Yea, it is
so not the sort of game that I am likely to play. I didn't
get through the tutorial either. It's just that kind of game doesn't do much
for me. Yeah, is that only? Is that on iPad? I
know, not not yet, it's uh just PC or Yeah. I wonder
what they're holding off on, because I mean the interface on what you saw
the PC I think you were in the quickly Yeah, like it looks even
the PC version practically is a touch interface, you know, like the even
the art style, you know, it looks like what you would expect an
iPad game to look like it like it is right there. I'm not sure
what they're waiting on. Maybe maybe this, you know, maybe the PC
version to be quote unquote out. Yeah, get out there, kick tires
for a while, make sure it all works works, and go from there.
I forgot to mention, you know, I start playing that here as
the Storm alpha. Speaking of free to play Blizzard Games last week. It's
pretty fun. Yeah, it's uh, it's such a different beast from I
know. I was watching you play the first go through some of the tutorial
in the first game, and you're just like, this is bullshit. I
it was. I mean, it doesn't make the greatest first impression if you're
playing one of those other games, because it's so slow, yeah, by
comparison, and it feels so kind of limited in a lot of ways.
But that's kind of ultimately what makes it different, you know, is that
the focus of it is very different. It's a lot more about completing team
objectives. You know, they've got different maps and stuff like. It's not
where does the money come in? What do you buy? It is league
style in that there is a subset of free characters at all times, but
which ones are free rotates. Ye, So yeah, you pay for a
character if you want it to be free all the time. And it's kind
of crazy that it's not free. You pay, you bought that character available
available, sorry whatever. Some characters already cost more money than others, which
immediately makes you kind of raise your eyebrow. Presumably it's just like, oh,
people like eldince so they'll pay more for him and not Oh this character
is more powerful than these others that that always seems weird. I hope the
Marvel Heroes does a lot of that stuff where it was like costumes for the
more popular characters. Ay, they're just way more costumes for you know,
iron Man than there are for I don't know, Black Widow or League is
like that would League the heroes that don't all cost the same thing? Yeah,
I mean I don't think anyone. You know, that's not a point
of attention for most people. Yeah, as long as they're a problems with
the balance. You know, you were playing you were were you playing League
for a while? Yeah? I really I really like League? Yeah yeah,
what do you What do you like about it? What keeps you coming
back? That style of game? You know, it's it's first and foremost,
it's a social thing. And so I think we might we could be
transitioning in titan Fall, because we gave titan Fall a test group run on
Saturday and that was so fun. But yeah, primarily it's like, hey,
all of us, we're all like crazy busy, right, but it's
like it breaks for an hour and have some fun together. Okay, let's
do it. Let's see then, Like it isn't kind of in a weird
and like I don't want to say a pathetic way, but like it is
sort of a way to hang out with your buddies, you know, like
because as you can't get out of the house anymore. Yeah, because it's
like we know, the married kids, got your job, you got all
this ship, and it's like it's impossible to do anything fun. But because
the Internet now, it's like, okay, we can at least kind of
be connected together. And uh, you know, we're never gonna be any
good. We'll never be competitive, Like we play you know, a couple
times a month or whatever, but it's just when we're in there, we're
having fun. We're yelling at each other. You know, no one takes
it too seriously, which is good. So it could be Doda, it
could be any game, but right now it's League for that, you know.
But what do I like it? You know, I couldn't say like
when I like League to Doda. I've literally never even seen Doda. Like
I watched Doda at the Internationals. How do you call it? Yeah,
Like I watched that and it's like, oh that this looks similar. I
I don't think strong pains on one game or the other, but we have
fun with league. I'm a jungler, Yeah you are. I can tell
by looking at you jungle. You look like your jungle. I'm jungling.
I'm I got my loops down. Yeah, I'm the best jungle. I'm
the best jungler. So that's all you do. That's interesting like that.
You see that in DODA sometimes but not that often, where people dedicate themselves
to like one role and just really nail well. It's because, like I
think it's part of it is because I'm the worst person on the team,
and so if we are gonna be like, I'm never gonna play mid,
like if we have any chance, like the group, the five people we
have are not good and I'm the worst, and so if we have any
chance to do okay, it's like Kaiser's got to be mid. You know
ramone and Kurt'll be low and you know Sasnowski will be high and I'll jungle,
and that's the best chance we have. And it's more like that's the
that's the extent of the thought we put into it. So and also when
we started playing, it was like season three when we started playing, and
one of the junglers I already bought because he was cool looking. He's a
big bear. Oh yeah. One day me Adam and John Vaniaki John Vanaki
may have heard of him, Jonathan, we decided we're all gonna be bears,
and we're gonna go into games and role play as bears with two other
teammates who've never met us before. So we all bought, Like Adam bought
Annie, who he is, the big teddy bear that goes. I was
the the jungle bear. I remember his name, like Voldemort, it's not
Voltimorta' and then there's one with then Johnny bought one, and so we're in
chat. It's like I'm a bear and the other two people had no fun
clue what was happening. They were not happy. But we did that,
like we did that basically every day for a week because it was so funny.
They never did it again. Yeah, it was pretty get out of
your system. And so that's why I jungle because the guy I bought into
being a good jungler. So a lot of deep thought into that. Yeah,
absolutely, But bottom line, I'm a jungler. Keep that in mind
I jungle, Yeah, known to be jungling. My loops are tight,
tight jungle loops. Is there is there hot jungling in Heroes of the Swarm?
Not really, Chrispy said he's kind of found a way to jungle a
little bit on certain maps, but it's really not that kind of game.
I mean, like, you know, you don't even gain individual experience on
your characters, you know, it's just the whole team is getting experienced.
Yeah, hey, what's the jungling? Is that when you're going between lanes?
Yeah it's the area Okay, it's the forest area. Yeah, I
got it. Yeah, it's because you don't want to know, you guys
deep in the lingo. Yeah, I just yeah, I just wanted to
man. Jungler still the best game available on the Microsoft Game Room. Sure
ahead of its time apparently, Yeah, totally, everyone's into Yeah, everyone
learned so much from it now that it's just this huge thing. I bet
this game will do really, like super well for them, Yeah, I
bet. You know, it's pretty polished. Do you think it'll kind of
bring back them in an esports way that StarCraft maybe doesn't have the clout anymore.
I mean, it's It's really hard to say with the thing only having
been out a few days, and I'm not the best guy to analyze it
regardless, but it doesn't seem like the kind of game where the swings can
be as wild. Okay, I've never seen I've only played a week,
maybe a dozen games or something, but I never saw a game where one
team like dramatically out leveled the other one and it got into that kind of
scenario where it's just a stamp like that. So I don't know if the
potential for comebacks is there and like kind of a drama that you look for
in a good match of like StarCraft or something like that, But I don't
know. Who know, who knows. My favorite part of that game is
watching the intro where they're recruiting heroes from across the Blizzard universe. Is it
just a fucking intro to Quake three? Exactly? But the best part is
you know they're like across the universe. We're recruiting all these heroes from like
like cameras, like flying through space with planets whizzing by. It's like and
like Sanctuary is it all the planets from rock and roll Racing? Because they're
only three fucking properties. So three there's rock and roll racing, there's black
they don't get blackthorn in there. Then fuck that game. Like three planets
go by, and then it's like, you know, is this whole his
whole ability? It is like you push one to shoot shotgun, push two
to shoot shot behind you. Fuck, I'd pay eight bucks for that character.
I don't even want to play that game. Nine. Yeah, this
is like we're all right, you have three worlds. I forgot it.
Actually, it actually starts taking on a little bit of like a Smash Brothers
feel when you're going through all those characters. Yeah, like one of the
characters is a siege take, Okay, just a straight up siege take.
And is it like there's not like a dude in it? I mean the
problem is I mean I think the name of the unit is called Sergeant Hammer,
so I was probably referring to whoever's in there. I just like to
think of it as like an empty scent siege take. Ye, I am
the tank. And then Diabblo rides on a pony. Yeah, and then
Diabblo gets on a horse and rides around. Fuck that it's weird. Yeah,
No, that's great, that's great. Sure, make a siege tank,
ride on a horse, make a big dump. God, I don't
know, like like probably not. What's the mount for the mount? M
hmm. I know. So there's one guy who doesn't get on a mount
because he's kind of on it all the time. Yeah, Well he's don't
in Griffin and he never gets off of it. Okay, so siege Chank
probably doesn't get on it. Yeah, the Sea Chank probably just like that,
like siege mode, and well it's not supposed to if they're remaining lore
appropriate, it's not supposed to be able to move faults in siege mode,
right, right. I remember Dabblo on the horse at the end of two.
Yeah, more appropriate? Yeah, the right. Somebody forget who it
was. Somebody somebody reminded me while we were playing that they went with Diablo
two Diablo and not female Diablo three Diablo. They know where they're character.
Yeah, probably there's no wait though, there's an ald skin though for it,
right, Like everybody's got all skin. Yeah, and it's they're super
weird and like completely fiction breaking and like more problematically, they kind of make
it harder to identify who the hero is because yeah, like the two alternate
Diablo skins are one of them turns them green and puts like a Godzilla head
on him. Okay, the other one turns the blue and makes him a
merlock and like a certain point if you're not if you're new to the game,
well yeah, but you could say the exact same thing about Doda and
all its cosmetic shit. But it is nowhere near that dramatic, like not
even close. Like to completely change a character's color palette head to toe like
that is is kind of crazy. But again, like this game is pretty
forgiving compared to to something like Doda, So I don't know, it doesn't
seem to be taking taking itself super seriously. Huh. Harder to swarm heroes
of it? Yeah, I don't even know what to make of the fact
that it's like, do they just they just give up on StarCraft because they
just went and repurposed that same acronym for another game. Maybe it's something like
weird Nintendo deal, that's weird. Yeah, they didn't even notice that the
both hots. What if every game they release from here on out just abbreviates
to hots huh? Think about it? Yea heart stone Heart of the Stone.
There you go, holy shit robbing something here. Yeah, I'm gonna
write that down, mail it to myself. I now own this. All
right. That's it for news. Actually some news broke. It's kind of
a bum or Patrick had to leave. I'm sure he would have been interested
in this. Was he involved in the news. Yes, he brought it
about. No, Mark Whitten has left Microsoft. Wow, Yeah, like
happened like he just announced it on Twitter like twenty thirty minutes ago. Yeah.
Uh he what was his what was his role exactly? So No,
he was like way up there. Yeah, like I don't know what's up
with you know, the kind of ongoing executive full at Microsoft. I think
you know there were people above him the like sort of ran not whatever it
is entertainment or devices or whatever the division is. But like, did he
demo the smart class stuff at E three? Was that Witten? He didn't
want of them? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, don't know if he don't
know if he was definitely one of their on stage, it's definitely one of
their. Hid he was people guys, he was a VP over there.
He was like the one guy product Like he's the one guy that was on
stage it didn't look like you should be on stage. He's like a regular
guy. It's a product officer. Yeah, so he's gone weird. Yeah,
maybe Jack Trenton's going it's just like a week after Trenton. You know
who was this? Sons? And how do I buy it? Played music
anywhere in your house? Is that what it is? I think? Yeah,
yeah, it's it's like a it's an audio speaker. We make up
something else. Okay, they're going to the Okay, how about this.
They're releasing a new video game console. They've decided that. You know,
they've they've mastered the streaming audio from a computer to speaker, set up up
part of it, and now they're gonna do it for video games. They
need Mark Whitton, they need Jack Trenton, they need Amy heading exclusive news,
exclusive news breaking, and they're gonna you're gonna fight Tracula of it.
And then yeah, you're gonna fight Tracula. She is making his actually exclusive
mummy wearing a cape. And then when he opens the cape, three strips
of mummy rap fly out. That's amazing design. You like it? Yeah,
it's really mummies and capes. It's my fucking hot shit cape mummy,
And you're gonna be able to play this on any bookshelf in your home because
streamed all of them. Wow, you can read your audio books there as
well. God damn it, there's probably no story here, you know,
I was I was reading, you know. Just like Trenton launched four PlayStations,
this guy launched three xboxes. You know. Yeah, it's probably probably
just like, all right, the work is done on this thing. It's
time to move on. Yeah, at some point you're like, maybe I
should do something else for my life, or you know, the corporate structure
here is such that I'm not going to advance anytime soon, and now I
want to go to some who knows who knows? Uh MA always seem like
solid, dude. I don't know. I never I'd talked to him a
couple times briefly, but I always always seemed like I always seemed like you
genuinely cared about what they were doing. Yeah, well with that, why
don't we get into emails. Emails BombCast at giant bomb dot com is the
email address. Emails have gone dark. They have gone It has been a
rough month in the world of email. To this podcast, there's one hundred
more of there was three hundred more emails that are like these. This is
just a sampling of the topics, and it's it's all, it's all fucking
In a normal week, how many emails do you get for the cast,
Uh, somewhere around two hundred ish, So this has been three hundred this
week. I don't know, just on those topics bikes, No, just
on the topics, these specific topics. So some of these I think may
close out some of these topics. I don't know. Let's start with something
about video games, and an oonymous game developer who would certainly know wrote in
to say Fortnite is a fucking game and not a tech demo like that guy
last week's said you'll see soon enough. All right, Okay, do you
know some beefs and starting. Yeah, one beef closes, another beef opens.
Yes, I wonder if I wonder if soon enough means a GDC A
weird not a news podcast. I don't know. Take that as an email.
Yeah, that story is now running. A Fortnite coming out GDC,
GDC Beta launching at g DC exclusively SteamOS playing. I don't don't know if
you can speak to this next twelve like it was always I don't know if
this was just like the understanding or if this is actually in the contracts,
but like the thought about Unreal engines was nobody else was allowed to ship on
Real games until Epic had shipped their first game on the engine. That is
that true? Or is that like apocrypha so every contracts different. Yeah,
I think that's not true. Okay, I think that's really good advice.
Yeah, because it isn't that. That's how it was for three, right,
like years and years was the first Unreal three game, right, yeah,
and the and like one of the reasons we struggled with Stranglehold so much
is because like Stranglehold and Turak came out like within a week of each other,
and those are the first PS three games that launched on U E three,
and like Epic hadn't like finished all their stuff for it yet, and
so like getting that done alongside them wasn't impossible. But then it meant,
now all the other cool stuff they're going to keep doing on the PS three,
it's almost impossible to grab it because you've branched and diverse at this point,
So it's more of a necessity than like a leal or like yeah,
no, it's it's it's it's best practices and you should really like one of
the things we do a lot of, like U E. Three consulting with
people, and basically one of the things I always tell anybody when they're if.
We rarely get brought in the beginning, but if we if when that
does happen, when I tell people it's like, listen, look at the
last couple of games Epic shipped. Use every middleware as they used it,
and you will probably be fine. If you do not use it in the
same way they used it, expect you will need to work on that part
of the game in a bit. It's like, you know, it's like,
no, there's no there's no free lunches, right, And I don't
think that's like, I think it's a reasonable expectation. But for whatever reason,
people are like, Okay, we don't need engine programmers now, you
know, no, you still need to Every game is different, everything has
its own requirements make games at all. That sounded like walking a tight rope.
Uh, well, it's it's like it's one inch to the left of
the right, You're fucked. It's not that it's it's really easy to get
to spend money on dumb stuff, and I kind of obsess over, uh
spending money on things that give really good value, you know, like like
there's some people out there who spend like you know, like, uh,
spend money on things like Nope, this one part has to be like this
no matter what, because it's my vision, Like I'm not that's not me,
Like I'm I'm always value focused on this stuff. And that's why if
it sounds like yeah, I think, I think you can do that,
you can do other things like you do uh real type strategy game and Unreal
three, but you know you're gonna have to work for it, and uh,
it's probably not the best use of time of money. And wasn't it
like a at the time, like a kind of a crazy feat that the
Mortal Kombat team got UE three running at sixty frames a second. Yeah,
that was a lot of work by a couple of people like Greenberg and the
tech team there, And it was because you know, like it's set up
to do they made a bunch of fundamental sumptions about how lighting would work,
and there was just so much sunk cost into every rendering frame just on we're
going to do all these lighting calculations whether there's lights on or not, or
this we're using this thing or not, and just getting that sunk cost removed,
like there's like I don't want to put a number on it, but
it was a pretty big number and getting that removed so you could do like
because if you're running like if you yeah, so it's sixty years games are
more than like twice as hard as a thirty hurts game, right, it's
probably like four to five times as hard. And the reason is because so
if you're running thirty hurts, you have thirty three point three milliseconds to do
all your business right, your physics, your AI, whatever, and but
you never try to use all third You need a little overhead because there's spikes
here and there. So maybe it's shaved he shave five milliseconds off because the
spikes. So we're gonna get twenty eight milliseconds to do everything you want to
do. But if you're doing a six years game, you have sixteen point
six milliseconds, but you still need to shave like five milliseconds off for those
spikes and stuff like that. Like that that buffer doesn't reduce It does a
little bit, but not necessarily. One to one, and so now all
of a sudden, you've got to do everything in like ten milliseconds, and
it is really, really, really challenging to start off with an engine that
was, you know, designed for thirty and make it work sixty. That's
why this fucking guilty gear zard. Yeah, oh my god. When I
heard they were doing that, yeah, like, oh, y'all so crazy
and now you see it looks amazing. I want to see this game,
yeah, I want to see that. So but like everything else, Unreals
getting better over the years too, Like this was this was like Dawn of
Unreal three when we were doing this right, and so it was pretty there's
some hard lessons learned, okay, But the main reason I asked that was
just, you know, like, or we're gonna have to wait for Fortnite
to ship before we start seeing another UBE four games. They've licensed it out.
There are other people working already in UE four. I mean, whether
they ship, who knows, but yeah and not. I don't know anything
one way or the other. But I would not want to, like,
having been that situation once before, and it wouldn't be it's not epic.
I would want to do as a cry at tech. I wouldn't want to
do this with anybody, right, I would not want to ship on an
unproven engine, Like you'll let them work out the kinks, let them work
out you know, all the stuff that you know, like video games,
there's like two phases of video game filment. There's making the game, there's
finishing the game. And what you learn is like, oh, I got
this task ninety percent done. That first ninety percent of the work is only
really like thirty three percent of the work because then when you integrate your stuff
with everyone else, you do bug testing, all these pieces come together and
mesh and someone else breaks your code and you've got to maintain it. And
it's like that's like the one of the hardest lessons for young developers to learn
is like you're never ever done with the task, like never ever ever,
right, And so it's that's exacerbated with an unproven engine hasn't gone through certain
a couple of times, that hasn't proven itself, and so you'd always rather
have someone else go through those pains than you. So I don't think it's
contractual. I think it's just common sense kind of smart best practice stuff.
Next email Russell from Perth writes in Perth is in Australia. I think okay,
I'm a California native living in Perth, Western Australia. While I've listened
to your podcast from the very start, I've never been compelled to write in
until now. Your recent discussion of thongs or flip flops as they are properly
known as totally missed the point. I moved here in November of twenty thirteen,
and by my estimate, somewhere between one and five percent of Australians are
going around barefoot at any time. Footwear etiquette in the workplace is very similar
to the United States, unless you are a customer or a retail establishment.
I've been baffled by the side of people young and old going barefoot in grocery
store, shopping malls and take away restaurants. I think he means like take
out like that that he blew his cover. Yeah, you're not a California
native take away restaurants. I am going to take away this to my motor
carriage first. The beer's my CV. The offenders have ranged from young kids
to thirty semping adults of varying apparent socioeconomic backgrounds. Where in the US only
the homeless and insane would be barefoot, unshot Australians from all walks of life
will boldly go without shoes. Maybe some of your Australian listeners can shed some
light on this mystery. So yeah, maybe the flip flop thing is just
like a smoke screen. We can find common ground here, common ground And
like, apparently all Australians are scum because they're barefoot all the time. Also,
all these people are walking around barefoot in the country most full of things
trying to kill you all the time. Yeah, I don't know, just
carpets of spiders yea, scorpions and like kangaroos yep i qualas. I don't
know. None of this is making me want to try to make the trip
to Packs Australia. But at the same time, all of this is kind
of making me want to make the trip to Packs I think now, yeah,
I think so, like to finish the fight right uh George in California,
rights, this is a long time listener, first time writer. Why
is it the digital downloads upon release cost the same as in store. Obviously
there are costs such as servers and bandwidth, but there's no costs for manufacturing,
printing, and pressing of packaging of media. I understand it's a bit
more complicated but than that, But my question is why aren't digital games released
at a lower rate. I would be encouraged to expand my digital digital library
if I could spend less instead of having Amazon deliver it to my front door
and possibly trading inter selling in the next few weeks. Where's the incentive if
ordering from online retailers fulfills the whole not leaving your house bit? Yeah,
yeah, some of it, Yeah, yeah, son of a bitches.
I assume that. I mean it seemed like back in the day when when
digital distribution first started, it seemed like retailer politics, we're a big part
of it, right, And I think that's still assumes some extent that,
Like, you know, retailers are like, well, if you're just gonna
undercut us on your own store, why should we carry your game at all?
Right? Uh, fuck you? And I think that actually that's part
of the note they write back, is the end of it is like fuck
you signed game stuff. Hello, if we're friends at Walmart, fuck off,
take our seven billion dollars annually and go over here. We're rolling back
prices and not carrying your game. Well, the other the other thing you
mentioned maybe Dave knows more about this, but like how much how much is
manufacturing and distribution in the in terms of the overall pie of how much it
costs so or how much money you need to make back? Everyone's every publisher
has their own deal for stuff like cogs, cost of goods, and they're
all very very very different like that. That is some of the most closely
guarded secrets in the industry is like what Activision pays like Sony as a royalty
or they pay Microsoft as a royalty. How he got you know, Microsoft
to use their own servers as part of their like publishing agreement and stuff like
that way back in the Xbox one and and that stuff is all crazy.
But like what I can say, like, uh, it's not like this
is not and I'm just that's all preface too. This is not a hard
and fan rule. This is a general guideline. Like you know, most
digital download services not naming any take about thirty percent, right, and thirty
percent on a sixty dollars game is eighteen dollars. That is not too dissimilar
from a royalty you might pay someone or cogs or whatever, right, and
so it's not one to one, but it's pretty you know, it's it's
not too far either, right, and so that's where the money goes.
And it makes you understand maybe why EA would want to try to launch its
own store, feeling that its games are big enough to let them cut out
giving someone of their other store or that cut sure. Yeah, Like if
you think of like, would you know Battlefield, say that sells ten million
units for sure? Really just I don't know, it's just it's a nice
round number. Let's say it's five whatever it was, right, And then
you think of like all that money sixty bucks pop boom, Okay, now
eighteen percent of that or sorry, thirty thirty percent of that just goes to
someone else just because right, that's certainly not what it cost a how's it?
And do it? But so what the infrastructure us with the sales costs
and all that stuff. And it is a lot of work running those sites,
like to doing handling all the different currencies and are standing the tax rules
and filing taxes for you and doing all that kind of stuff. It's a
lot of g D work, Like how I picked they are not to swear.
Yeah, a good call. Uh but yeah it's uh so I don't
want to make it sound like they're steal money, because they're definitely not.
But like it's a it's not like it's not just like why does everyone open
Origin. It's because it's a tonne of work, just all that other not
even the technology, it's just all that other stuff and the maintenance and stuff
customers support. It's like they launched it and no one likes it. On
top of that, it has not been a good pr move for them.
Like I like, maybe I'll speak for everybody, like I hate the Origin
exists, but I don't really hate the product. Like it works, whatever,
you can buy stuff from it, Like the social aspects of it are
like they exist. You know, I don't know why do you? Why
do you? Why do you hate it exists? Because the number one thing
I hate about it is having to repopulate another friends list, like titan Fall
comes out. I mean, I'm not playing it on the PC, so
this is academic. But like if it came out on Steam, I have
like one hundred and whatever Steam friends already. You know, it's just there,
Like I guess some City was the test case. Like Some City came
out and everybody thought they were all going to play it together. Like I
spent you know, several days of like going around bugging people I knew,
like, hey, what's your origin? I d let's be friends, you
know, Like just every you know you play is a similar thing for Ubisoft,
Like every company that rolls out one of these things. You just have
to kind of go through that whole process again of getting set up on it
and having all these different games siloed in different services. Is it just feels
weird? You know, like what if five years from now one of them
goes goes away, Like you lose some of those games, you still got
these other ones over here, you know. I mean I remember really not
liking Steam, yeah the first of all, and everybody it's only it's only
by virtue of them existing much longer and building a store where a lot a
ton of companies can come together and all sell their stuff, then Steam generally
being a pretty good platform for the use, and then all of a sudden,
like them just getting in the business of like I don't know what,
We're gonna start selling games for a dollar A few times a year. Fuck
it. Yeah, they've built up a lot of good will over the years.
Yeah yeah, all right. George in Japan, all right soon,
says I'm currently living and working in Japan, trying to help teach junior high
school students from English. I thought you might be interested to know the gaming
habits of twelve to fifteen year old Japanese students. I usually have to pay
good money to know what twelve to fifteen year old Japanese people are up to,
so this is great. The main way students in Japan can express themselves
is through pencil cases and charms that hang off their pencil case. By far,
the single most popular video game franchise these kids are repping is Monster Hunter.
In fact, it's rare to see a piece of merch for any other
video game. It's often surprising what they aren't aware of. They once asked
me what games I play, and when I told them I was currently playing
Persona four and Dark Souls, they had no idea what I was talking about,
even when I wrote Dark Souls on the board in bad Japanese. You
almost never see people using handhelds like the Vita or three DS on the street
here, but they are out there. If I take my three DS out
with me for the day, I'm almost guaranteed to max out my street passes.
This is a in a sleepy town on the west coast of Japan.
Finally, I thought you'd be interested in. Finally I thought you might be
interested to hear what sort of foothold the Xbox three sixty has here. I've
checked out the video game sections and quite a few electronic shops, and they
always have big sections for PS three, PS four, Vita, three DS,
DS and we and we U. But I've never seen a single Xbox
console or game on a shelf. This holds true for big retail stores and
second hand shops. Would you be surprised if Microsoft made the decision not to
release in Japan. By the way, I'm originally from Manchester in the UK,
and I would like it known that people people from Liverpool are no good.
Great glad, I'm glad we get this just what we need. Yeah
more. I believe the Liverpool beat Manchester United this weekend in the Premier League.
I believe it was so shots fire. I don't know they take that
guy in Japan. I don't follow basketball, so uh, would you be
surprised if Microsoft made decisions not to release in Japan. Not not really,
I don't know. I would be surprised because it's one of those things that
like they have to It always seemed like one of those things, like you
know, in the early days, they had to do it because they felt
that they in order to attract Japanese developers, they had to make sure that
the games were coming out in that region and try to make it look like
they were at least committing resources to Japan. Nowadays, you know, I
mean that market is not maybe not as important as it once was, and
you know, maybe they could get away with not putting out there at all.
But that doesn't seem that does not seem like a great idea. That
seems like, in fact, a bad idea. It's not released there,
But what do I know, Yeah, it's one of It's one of those
things where, like you know, people are looking at like the weekly PS
four system sales like these aren't necessarily high. They saw that they're not looking
great. Like it almost just makes you wonder if like the concept of the
console is not no longer really in vogue in Japan. I think that could
be part of it. I think, you know, you look at some
of that stuff and start to wonder, like, you know, like there's
still something of a population crisis. There's still something of a you know,
at a low birth rate, the population is getting older. They're saying about
like twenty forty or something like that, over half the population will be over
sixty. You know, at what point is it like, Okay, they've
kind of aged out of video games and they're not reproducing at a rate to
support that market. Like, you know, it's not surprising that you see
you know, uh mighty number nine and stuff like that going a kickstarter and
trying to appeal to the kind of this Western like that's that's just in some
ways, that's how the math has worked out so far, I think.
And I don't know if that will turn around or not, but it's well,
they're still also making a lot of games for PS three, Like bet
in Japan, we don't see half the stuff that's still like RPGs that are
coming out for PS three, I mean Dark Souls even though obviously not carrying
water over there, you know PS three, like you're not seeing PlayStation fives
three. Yeah, So like I don't know, there's not really a lot
of incentive to go out and buy these consoles unless you're the crazy person.
Yeah, and if you look at all the games that launched, you know,
for both of those consoles right now. PS four included like it's it's
not necessarily like the stuff that you would associate with a Japanese launch. Uhu
needs needs more Miku. We all do, you know, we all do?
She's very sexy. Vlad from Romani Romania writes in everyone has to I
feel like we are. This is like they're gonna look back. They're gonna
be books written about this podcast's role in international relations. Yeah, and like
the destruction of all things, Vlad writes and says, I don't fucking know
what these those Oceanians are talking about. But here in Romania they are rightfully
called cow tows. How when the hell they came up with thongs is beyond
me. Maybe all their blood went to their head from being upside down for
so long. Also, it's written as get de Vaca. Wow, I'm
gonna go put on my get de vaca because it's hot out and rolls off
the tongue. That's probably exactly how they say. It sounds tough, vacca
means cow in Spanish. I don't know this is Romania, so I don't
I don't understand how that works languages. I mean, uh, justin right,
Sinces, I'm sending an email to respond to Tom whom emailed in for
your marsh eleventh bomb cast. He is correct up until he says that chemists
do all the real work. It wasn't for physicists, then chemists would be
stuck in cooking classes or doing alchemy, which you could arguably say is where
they belong. Also worth noting, biologists are just people who didn't finish medical
school. They're basically the underachievers of the science community. The townless saying biologists
were dirt. Physicists do all the work. Chemistrs just Glori fled cooks and
biologists are just yeah, people who didn't make it through mats. Yeah,
I got it. Maya rights and says hello, sir, I am a
student and I would like to ask for your permission to use some of your
information about the Tower of Hanoi in my paper. Thank you? What do
you say? Sure? Okay? Wait for free? All right? Uh.
Brad is an Australian Hey Wrightson and says, hey, guys, I
was wondering how you think a Nintendo console with specs on par with the other
consoles will be a success. Nintendo arguably has the most popular first party games,
so if it had a console that could run next generation games like a
Fallout four without compromise, do you think it could be a success. Thought
of being able to play Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, and games like GTA
on seems like a winner. On a side note, I'm also for from
Australia and can tell you for a fact we are all still thieves and scoundrels.
I would kill my mother for a new pair of thongs, which we
all wear on a constant. Yeah, I don't know, do you.
I'm yeah, it's a little too early to throwing the towel on the WU
as much as people keep wanting to do that. Do you think that newton
Nintendo hardware that was on par with the new consoles would change anything for them?
Like for it to even have a shot, I think you would have
to assume that it came out at the same time as the other two,
making this making this purely hypothetical, and I don't think like like if he's
suggesting but so if like, if you know, next Christmas or something,
they were like, hey, guys, we's got a new WEU It runs
those games. Also, isn't isn't everybody already bought into one of the other
two. I don't know, Yeah, a lot of people are. My
bigger concern is, like on the software and infrastructure side, like they continually
blow it on like friends lists and all of the little trimmings you expect out
of a console experience these days. Right, Yeah, Like, so it
would need like I feel like we would need a so it would not be
attractive to me. It would need a comparable system the program for right,
like a simple similar architecture to the Xbox one and PS four, right,
because they're they're more similar now, right, Yes, so you need to
be able to port oh that third party stuff over right, Dave, I'm
looking at you, right, you need that. This is gonna be a
very uninteresting answer. I think the boxes like the least important thing in this.
Like, I feok, it's Sony PS three to PS four. How
did they do that? Right, That's what son That's what Nintendo should be
doing. They should be looking at Wow, everyone hated developing for the PS
three. Sony was notorious be really hard to work with, and now everyone
loves them, Like, how did they do that? How do they do
that? They hired some very smart people, this hurts to say out loud,
some very very smart people who get games and get what's cool about games,
of what is why people are passionate about the pastime? Right, And
they made that the message and the direction from the top down, and everyone
had to follow suit, right, And Nintendo needs something like that. Nintendo
needs Jack Trent. Yeah, I mean I think the boxes, the boxes,
the box, it's gonna have games on it. They're gonna be fun,
uh it. But without kind of overhauling the process and the infrastructure and
the company that got you into the situation, why would you expect it to
be any different? Right? And that's what Sony figured out, and that's
why they're moving so many g D units right now. Yeah, that's a
that's a math term, I think. Yeah, And so that's wait a
minute, it uses g D ROMs. It's like a Dreamcast. They're saying,
if they made a new Dreamcast, that would be the hottest hardware seller
because they use them. Some gd ROMs. They're like, there's gonna be
books about this shit, like mark my words, like how they fucking turn
us around from the PS three of the p S four, Like yeah,
it's amazing, Like this just does not happen like this. Yeah, it's
been it's been crazy to watch. And and then, uh, I think
that's the interesting part of it, Like, you know, do they need
you know, the same kind of like like a PC, but not really
do they need this ram? Do they need this? What do they need
to do with the controller? It's like that's you need that secondary, that's
third like all that stuff, well, all that stuff will come from oh,
getting some smart dudes up there. Not the people I'm saying they're all
dumb. I'm saying whatever they're doing has not worked at this point, and
so they should try something different. Yeah, I mean like this this generation,
all these new consoles, each company made a bed, right, Yeah,
Like Sony went for very powerful console, like reasonably priced, focus on
core gamers. Microsoft is like all in one entertainment approach, and Nintendo is
gimmick, gimmick gimmick you know. But that's the thing. Even if the
PS four wasn't the most powerful, Yeah, I still think that being an
exact same situation. Probably, I mean, you know, the price alone
is it's got to be an enormous driver. Yeah, they probably they priced
right, they message smarter, and I just think they got so much stuff
right, and you know it's not it's never too late for anyone to catch
up. But like if you don't look at what they did and how they
did it and kind of like apply that to what you're doing, I think
you're messing up. How much how much of that stuff do you think is
surprise for either company? Like when Microsoft unveils something at E three or Sony
unveils something at E three, are they sitting here watching a press conference being
like yeah really yeah, like just shocked? Is it? Price points?
Stuffer is a hardware? I mean it's surprised by their competitor. Yeah,
Like are they just like we didn't know about this. They've got a camera.
I bet they didn't know. I bet you know, you never know,
right maybe like uh, I'm sure, well I would be surprised,
like they might hear whispers, they might. I bet they don't know concretely
know anything like like for like specs or anything like that. They don't know
because like because how would they find out, they have to find out from
someone like me who works with both people or every other developer out there,
Like what's the developers incentive to tell Sony or Microsoft anything? Like, Yeah,
it just makes them look like they're untrustworthy with the secrets that they're learning
from this company, Like who knows if they're feeding them back the other way.
It's like it's it's a company ender, you know, like there's there's
no upside to it for a developer to get in the middle there, you
know. And so I bet they're really surprised. I mean maybe you know,
maybe they got really good friends and friends with somebody. Oh I've known
the guy at you know, Shiny or Idoss whatever for twenty years, and
he'll tell me maybe he gives you whispers or whatever. But I bet they
don't know. Yeah, it seemed like that. That's yeah. They they'll
have like a range in mind like Okay, we think they're gonna ship at
this time, and then you know, like, oh shit, they are
shipping this year. We had better do something about that, or you know,
like like that sort of stuff. I was wondering more about like comparable
like hardware specs of like Okay, we need to reach Like they're gonna be
around here, we should be around here. Like let's have a gentleman's agreement,
let's shake on it. Let's both aim for a beat around here.
Well, on the hardware side, like kind of speculative capabilities we're leaking out
like months ahead of time like that stuff. Yeah, I don't know,
of course, I mean at that point it's still like to change your own
design. But like they were both working with the same company on the design.
I have to imagine there was some kind of centers either. So it's
just like there's different between speculation and knowing. Yeah, you know, and
like like just the degree to which the secrecy matters of these companies, like
we were working on uh like the uh it was it can I say?
Because like I said, we helped out with Crimson Dragon for Microsoft and they
had us. We had to get a separate office in the same building for
just those developers could go in and they were the only ones that you know,
they had the only keys that could get in there. No one else
could go over there, and they couldn't talk about that project with anybody else.
And you know, they really do a good job of reminding you of
the consequences if you violate that valuation. And and it's like and uh,
and then we still didn't know everything. You know. We found out some
stuff on E three, you know, like we didn't know, you know,
stuff like price, we didn't know. We didn't know a lot of
things that were like quote unquote final, right, because it's need to know.
And if you don't need to know, and there's a like a point
zero zero zero one percent chance you're gonna leak it, they don't tell you
if it's super important, you know. And so I'm sure someone out there
knows, like I'm sure, like you know, you're Tim Sweeney's. No
guys like that. They probably know everything. But you know, there's no
incent up there to share that info because it's just the consequence, all right.
Here's an anonymous email from someone who works for the Australian Department of Defense.
We started getting emails from the Australian government. Really, this is what
I'm saying here, This is what this one and another one from another person
in a government government I don't know. I currently live in Canbert Canberra,
Canberra, Canberra, Canberra, and just want to let you know it's a
pretty bad rapid. It's often criticized for being boring, usually by people whose
only experience as a primary school visit to Parliament House as a child. It's
actually a pretty rad place to live and was just voted Australia's most livable city.
It also has the bonus of being completely planned from the start, putting
up there with other great pre planned cities such as Nepia, Da Burma and
Brazilia. I don't know, I don't know. It's from the government.
It's from the government. That's it. That's it. Oh oh yeah,
wait, it was just an introduction to government at least laid off for that
part and didn't say, by the way, fuck everybody else, fuck birth.
Yeah, Ryan writes, since I took a flight from la to Montreal
with riff Raff last year, I thought he was the guy from Die Antword.
He laughed and said, I guess that's better than Maclamore. Okay,
here's anonymous from another part of the Australian government. Uh more Australian discussions.
So I have to chime in while I sit at my desk. First up
the thong debate. Thongs are okay with shorts Uh, normally bodies and the
trendy hipster kids wear them with skinny jorts. That's jean shorts. I think
we can all agree upon. Uh. Jeans and thongs are okay, but
never for work unless you consider collecting the dole a job. I think that
means not having it, collecting a doll. I don't know. It's pineapple
right, And James I asked, what's the big idea slagging off Canberra?
Sure, our shops close at five, getting a meal after eight pm is
hard to do. A part from Mecca's and all the politicians are here.
But we have all the hookers and adults shops, slash porn you could want.
It used to be fireworks, hookers and porn, but the fireworks got
banned for some stupid reason. That's it, that's all. And he works
to the government. He's with the government. You know we should do what
now? You're always flirting and going to EVO. You never go. You're
horrible and irredeemable. Well that's part of it. But the other reason is
because the travel plans are usually made right after E three and the last three
is go places. It's so tough to get in a plane and then have
fun and with your friends so bad. So here's the compromise. Okay,
we go to Shadow Lou Showdown? What Shadow Lou Showdown? What is Australia's
fighting game major? Wow? And we we do some in depth investigating ourselves.
When is when is Shadow Showdown? I think it's I think it's late
summer listen, not exactly sure, but this is Shadow shot on five and
it's really good. They've been getting some really good international players. They get
everyone from Japan, uh and uh, some guys from America have been going
like if a j Wong and go and it seems like a legit major,
you're gonna bring a Uh. They probably don't want a but if they want
og dive kick, that's right, they want they want original, I'm bringing
it anyway. Okay, I don't know if I don't know if you know?
What if they if they because what if they want sponsorship? Still contact
them, give him a ham sandwich, a tournament going and get prime stream
time right in between it like A and Marvel figure out how much it would
cost. Yeah, let do Ceo all over again. I watched the SCR
Dive Kick Top eight. Yeah, yeah, that was a good time,
I was from just a gosh, like, the people that want it were
amazing. I was really bummed out. It was two sets or two baths.
Two sets in the baths. Ye top three. Yeah that was a
bummer. It's like, yep, how do we change them making the right
thanks for kicking us out. It wasn't great because it's like the least interesting
matches to watch, even though the players are like really amazing like Gunther and
Perry and Anaheide and but yeah, not fun to watch. So yeah,
well you know that's that's why balance changes exist exactly to make that stuff fun.
Yeah. Maybe maybe. I mean I've been again, we've been flirting
with the idea of going to packs Australia. Also we're originally gonna go last
year and ended up not making it. But uh but yeah that's maybe and
I have Yes, I you are not the only person I've talked to about
just saying fuck it and going to EVO this year. So, uh,
Seth was trying to sell me really hard on it. It's so much fun.
Yeah, I I totally want because like even if you don't, like,
I don't know, I don't know that I would enter anything because I
don't know that, like like what we do as we get there, like
Thursday or Wednesday or whatever. This is when we don't have a booth.
We might do a booth again this year, but we're setting. You sit
in your room, you hook up you know, your system to the fucking
TV in the room, and you just play with your friends, play a
you play Marvel whatever it is. Uh, And when you've done it,
you go downstairs and you go chat out some matches in the ballroom. You
play some casuals down there. Then you go get drunk or whatever it is.
Okay, you go back through me, you play some more. It's
like just like forty eight seventy two hours of just playing fighting games. And
it's so fun. That does sound pretty pretty good. It's like it's so
low maintan. It's that that show is like and if you don't want to
go, like, let's just like two years ago, got so hung over
on Sunday, like literally like this is a different story for a different day.
Yeah, we're your emails, but sure, yeah, and we basically
we streamed the finals from the room on Sunday instead of go in the ballroom.
Nice Christro Austeria Rights and says thongs are banded at school on Australian Wallong
Gong would win the war, although understand why Queenslanders would think this way.
Typical bullshit from that hole. That's it. That's all he say. Dumb
hole. Yeah, I just fuck man. Uh. Bryce from Birmingham says
I'm a biomedical scientist. I just want to follow up with Tom's comment biologists
not being real scientists. Biology is a complex field that requires consideration of multiple
convergent pathways and a range of scientific disciplines, including chemistry, to unveil the
underpinnings of how life functions on our planet. Chemistry just people who exceled at
following easy bake oven instructions as a child. Chemists can pretend mixing a lot
of colorful solutions together is somehow harder than biological research, but biologists do much
more. Honestly, did anyone even like the chemistry majors in college? Tom's
arrogance is a textbook example of why love the show We can't wait to listen
every tune. Kyle Ridson says it happened in a hotel elevator a few weeks
ago, just before one of his shows in a Canadian City. It was
a random encounter and they were able to converse briefly. Mister Raff was wearing
a shirt at the time and seemed like a genuinely nice persons. All right,
riff Raff sidings, yea with shirt. Uh, you know turf like
regional turf wars. And and then this Jason writes in It says, as
a former Lucas Arts employee, I just wanted to confirm that there is no
way the phantom shitter it was actually a malfunctioning toilet, contrary to Viney's theory
laying. I don't know if you heard about this. Someone was apparently messing
up the Lucas Arts bathroom real bad. Near the end, someone former employee
wrote in and talked about this was two weeks ago. That's a couple of
weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, I heard this. Yeah, Okay,
was the it was his name, They had a name for him. It's
like the lucasartshit bandit has this Ever, I think it's Geo. That's probably.
Yeah. We were thinking maybe it was George. Uh. This was
definitely the work of a sick individual. Though there have been theories of copycat
shitters over the years. There was also the lesser known booger Bandit, who
would pick his nose and wipe what he found on the other underside of his
desk. After this happened two or three times, facilities finally decided to check
who sat at these desks, and the person was caught. The person was
not fired, nor did he have to scrape the underside of the desks,
which was apparently a disgusting process. So I'm gonna up the disgusting bathroom talk.
Yeah, let's hear it. So I want to hear about the disgusting
bathrooms of video game developers. So we've got one of the original like guys
that start off the company with me. His names Nathan Mefford. He's been
the industry forever. He's done a lot of East Coast stuff. He has
got a MicroProse bathroom story that will curl your toes. All this other stuff.
This is child's play man, This is fucking bush league. Oh yeah,
that's cute. Some guys smeared shit on the wall. That's adorable,
dude. So we gotta get Nate drunk and get him in here, okay,
and tell him tell the story. Yeah, all right, Nate doesn't
like talking much, so it's gonna be hard, but we'll figure it out.
We'll, you know, when you get back, we'll get you on
a conference call or something, and you can just brought him. I won't
tell him you're there. I won't tell him you're there, like Nate tell
me that classic micropros banger. What could be worse than We're just extrement all
over the walls. I'm all right, that rainy day. You'll never guess
it's it's it is. It's staggering. What yeah, yeah, I don't
know. I don't know. Uh, my imagination is reeling. I know.
Anonymous right Sena says I worked at an awful job years ago where I
was buried in a basement office with one other dude and a room full of
server racks. The worst part of this job is right next to the office
was a bathroom typically used by people to take dumps, as it was basically
hidden two floors down from the main area of the building and the more public
bathrooms. Arvests had no door, and every time someone came down to take
a ship, we have to deal with a lingering smell, needless to say,
and our super hot underground room full of servers and computers. It was
nauseating. Without fail, one of our managers would come down and leave the
most heinous. I'm just, I just, I'm tired of saying the words
shit. It's just, it's just now we're really talking about it. It's
just it's just seven am Wednesdays and Saturdays. Out of revenge, I begin
to hit that bathroom at six am on Wednesdays and Saturdays with reckless, fucking
abandon. I went so far as to drink and eat specific things the night
before to make as much of a mess as possible. For a while,
it was both funny and gratifying to hear this guy lamented the loss of his
favorite spot, and after about a month he stopped showing up, as did
most people. These incidents were a hot topic for a while that eventually it
made me incredibly ashamed whenever someone talked about it. It was kind of like
the Telltale Heart, except with shitting noises. I gave my two weeks notice
a few weeks later and cut off all contact with the people I knew about
this feeling. They knew it was me. This was my greatest shame,
but perhaps my greatest triumph. That was that's dedication. I'm just gonna paraphrase
this next one. Ryan from Virginia wrote in to say that perhaps the one
about finding poop on the front and underside of a bilet bowl, it could
be someone with an austomy situation, like a cost to me having to empty
it and you're supposed to, you know, kind of sit down empty a
very specific way. But you know, sometimes maybe people cut a corner and
something happens there. I don't know, it is possible John Drake's workplace shitter
wasn't oustimate, So and that is somebody with a clastomy bag, yeah,
or another type of situation like a colostomy bag, or I guess they're you
know, some other gastro intestinal disease. It might lead to a situation like
that. Yeah. Sure, So Anonymous rights in It's at this point like
I was just I was digging through so many emails. I didn't even take
full emails anymore. These last couple were just little bits that I thought,
like, this is this is maybe something Anonymous rights in It says, what
are the following things on this list have in common? Loaves of bread,
cake, live fish, open and unopened cans of beans, uncooked steak,
big Max with fries, sick at butts, lots of blood, maggots,
a cantaloup size catfish head, condoms both male and female, A laptop,
bills of various denominations, five tens and a twenty. What are those things
have in common? Fund in toilet? All of these things are more are
things I found in toilet bowls as a janitor. Laptop A laptop that's someone
quitting a fucking job, or that's like a real bad executive trying to hide
information. Yeah, I gotta flust this ship. I'll never find it there.
And our last bit for this week, an elementary school teacher wrote in,
and this is just the one sentence I took. Being elementary school teachers,
we drink a lot. And that's gonna do it. For emails,
BombCast at giant bomb dot com is the place to ride in. Just get
it off your chest, let's hear it. I don't know that I can
handle any more ship stories unless they are of an unbelievably extravagant nature. Yeah,
and I feel like we've we've solved the beef with the Australian footwear by
all rallying around. At least you're wearing something on your feet. Yeah,
exactly like this barefoot thing I think is a totally that's disgusting. Barefoot found,
common ground found the real monsters. Yeah, yeah, if you're if
you're barefoot in Australia, that's actually I want to hear from you, Barefoot
in Australia here signed Barefoot in Australia time listener. Yeah, I never thought
this would happen to me. You finally caught me. You finally caught me.
Thanks for Patrick for coming and hanging out. Drew will be back next
week, and thanks for Dave Lange for coming through. Thank you it was
fun. Yeah, what's what's the rest of your week? Look like you're
out here for g DC. Are you either type of guy you go see
talks? Are you just literally like shaking hands meeting people? Yeah? I
don't have a pass. I just have a lot of meetings, lots of
like, hey we've got let's talk about maybe the next thing we'll do when
we're done with this thing, or just meeting new people or whatever it is.
So lots and lots of meetings. That's like the constant hustle, right,
you gotta you gotta get out there and make sure you're you're consistently lining
up work. Yeah. I think like it's like we're we're never it's like
a strategic decision we do. We're never gonna be a studio, Like we're
seventy of us now, We're never gonna work on like one game. He
guys, really seventy across the two places. Yeah, holy crap, good
for you. Yeah it's Orlando and Chicago, right, so and then one
man in Austin, one man and one man here. Oh yeah, okay,
yeah, but uh yeah, So we're never gonna be someone that like
pushes all in those people doing one thing at a time, because like if
that project is canceled, then we're out of business. Yeah. So we're
always doing lots and lots of littler things, and that means I'm always fucking
on the road to try and write. We'll not fucking on the road,
that would be awesome, yeah, uh instead of an import in the storm,
Yeah, import to storm you see sun. But yeah, so lots
of lots of that stuff. Yeah. Cool. Well, best of luck
out there. But well, what's the general impression. I mean, you
know, you don't even really speak for yourself. What whatever you're out there
talking to a lot of people, is the game? Is everything everything going
well, super super upbeat. Yeah, that's that was the impression I got
coming out of Dice, is that there were deals getting made, money being
spent, Like every everybody seemed like all this nonsense about like, oh,
console numbers are down, it's all I don't know where these people are getting
their numbers from. They're insane. It's great, it's really really good.
Well good to hear. Yes, So yeah, get out there and line
up some work and best of luck, and we'll be around GDC doing all
kinds of stuff. We'll be getting some people through here from interviews from late
night live shows that sort of thing, and uh yeah, check out the
site for more and we'll see you next week. Wrong mouse this mouse, Fine Fie