Speaker 1: Hey everybody, It's Tuesday, October first, twenty twenty four. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Giant BombCast, Episode eight one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: powered by NZXT. I'm your host, jan Oh Shoah. Welcome
Speaker 1: everybody to Infrastructure Week. We have the man that is
Speaker 1: building all the bridges. He's bridging the gap from us
Speaker 1: to you to the news co Captain of.
Speaker 2: The Ship Jeff Grubb. I'm building bridges between you and me,
Speaker 2: jam between everybody, happy to be here.
Speaker 1: We got the master of paths. He's building roads. He's
Speaker 1: learning about asphalt. He's painting the lines on the floor
Speaker 1: as we speak. Dan reichert are woodpeckers infrastructure because they
Speaker 1: are in my walls right now and I just had
Speaker 1: to bang on my wall right anti infrastructure if we think, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just the infrastructure destroyed. Yes, yes, okay. We got
Speaker 1: the bad boy of games media. He's knocking down all
Speaker 1: of your Jenga towers as you play politely with your
Speaker 1: friends from games Beat.
Speaker 2: Mike Manatti.
Speaker 3: I literally bought my tickets for a w as we
Speaker 3: were starting this. They have a heck of a car
Speaker 3: Pasberg Tomorrow. I rubbed somebody into it.
Speaker 2: Wait ticket he said, tickets play no, no, no no.
Speaker 4: I rubbed someone into it, someone into it.
Speaker 2: I'm not going by.
Speaker 3: People get really mad if I if I say, like
Speaker 3: some kind of freaks a joke, you can go things
Speaker 3: by yourself.
Speaker 4: I don't want to go to a wrestling show by myself.
Speaker 2: I don't know why don't you want to go to
Speaker 2: a wrestling show byers?
Speaker 4: Nothing wrong with it yourself?
Speaker 3: I know, I want to become like a social paria.
Speaker 3: I just think doesn't sound as much fun to me.
Speaker 3: I just want to go with someone.
Speaker 2: What are you becoming?
Speaker 5: I like going with a group, but like, there's nothing
Speaker 5: wrong with going by yourself. You just want to see Danielsonokata?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, but I want to see dan Seltata
Speaker 2: with someone. Yell all your jokes loud enough so Danielson
Speaker 2: will hear you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he'll really appreciate it. Yeah, bring a bunch of signs, Mike,
Speaker 1: He'll be fine.
Speaker 4: Do you think Danielson would like me?
Speaker 1: He would be fascinated at least our special guest, mister
Speaker 1: infrastructure himself, Chasten try or everybody.
Speaker 6: Hello, when you're talking about building bridges, let me let
Speaker 6: me explain you how my mind works for you. For
Speaker 6: a second, I thought, I thought about Death Stranding, and
Speaker 6: then I thought, oh, he's going to introduce Sam sam
Speaker 6: Porter Bridges. But for some reason, I couldn't remember the
Speaker 6: name of the hero of Death Stranding, and so my
Speaker 6: mind went to Sam Bankman Freed, and I realized, Oh God,
Speaker 6: in this thought process, I realized that Sam Bankman Freed
Speaker 6: would be the perfect name for a Deo Kajima character. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it does kind of feel right, but yeah, would has
Speaker 6: gotten to jail big Man is now in jail with Diddy?
Speaker 2: Must have.
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: Oh man, what if?
Speaker 1: What a different world it would have been if Hedeo
Speaker 1: kojimad teamed up and like putting Diddy in a game.
Speaker 6: I just don't want to very different.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he hasn't done a lot of musicians.
Speaker 5: It's always like filmmakers and and uh twenty five year
Speaker 5: old models.
Speaker 2: Music.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well he puts music in his games. He had
Speaker 5: a lot of music industry.
Speaker 2: No, it's not. It's like health And I'm.
Speaker 3: Only thinking you have the credit so from Elgar Solid
Speaker 3: four that's my only thing.
Speaker 5: Oh, there's that. Here's to you the sixties songs by songs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's old Minati. Were you a death
Speaker 2: stranding guy? Mm? Okay cool? Uh?
Speaker 1: Jason, sir, thank you for joining us on the show today.
Speaker 1: Thank you for devoting uh at least maybe two to
Speaker 1: three hours spending with us. I also apologize nothing else
Speaker 1: to do. Fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 2: So we got you on the show because you got
Speaker 2: something coming out I do.
Speaker 6: Can you see it?
Speaker 2: Like right there? Wow? Right there?
Speaker 6: Play nice of the Rise Fallen Future A Blizzard Entertainment
Speaker 6: is my new bucket comes out on October eighth, and
Speaker 6: I'm very very excited about it. I hope everybody reads it.
Speaker 2: First question, ever, I like that cover. Did you have
Speaker 2: to did you try to fight to get the Oxford
Speaker 2: comma in the subtitle? Or is it just like that's
Speaker 2: not cool anymore?
Speaker 6: Guarantee no, I put Oxford commas in every In fact,
Speaker 6: Bloomberg has a no Oxford Comma policy, which has driven
Speaker 6: me to quit like four times, but Mike Bloomberg every time,
Speaker 6: Mike Bloomer calls me up, but he's like, Jason, you
Speaker 6: can't quit. I can't.
Speaker 2: I can't. I get this issue with the Oxford comma.
Speaker 2: But please no, I'm.
Speaker 6: A big fan of Oxford Commas and clarity in writing
Speaker 6: in general, there's no reason, not like why would you not.
Speaker 6: I think it's clarification things beat.
Speaker 3: Like a while ago there was like we're doing We're
Speaker 3: not doing Oxford Commas anymore. As I had to, I
Speaker 3: kind of just slowly like I'm gonna put them back
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 4: See if so far.
Speaker 2: Grab.
Speaker 6: I want to say, I feel like I've been able
Speaker 6: to relate to you heavily the past few days because
Speaker 6: usually when people aggregate my work, it's written and so
Speaker 6: all of the context is there. But recently I've been
Speaker 6: going on all these podcasts is part of the book tour,
Speaker 6: and I've experienced the Jeff Grub effect where everybody like
Speaker 6: takes parts of my quotes and interprets whatever they want
Speaker 6: out of them, and it causes all sorts of havoc and.
Speaker 2: Clarifying doesn't ever work either. It doesn't it never helps
Speaker 2: at least. Yeah, it's a real, real pain. I mean
Speaker 2: you kind of like you're in those place where it's
Speaker 2: like you're promoting the book. You want to like talk
Speaker 2: about stuff, get people excited, but like the story of
Speaker 2: the book is this interesting story about these people and
Speaker 2: what they actually went through. It's kind of a telling
Speaker 2: of a history, like a memoir on behalf of a studio, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're not trying to go out there and a
Speaker 2: bunch of scoops that's sort of just been a byproduct
Speaker 2: of this process.
Speaker 6: It's interesting, Okay. So I set out to write this
Speaker 6: book to be the kind of a chronicle of Blizzard's
Speaker 6: history that kind of tells a specific story about Blizzard
Speaker 6: over the last thirty three years. And I'll get into
Speaker 6: what that is in a second. But when I do
Speaker 6: a book, to me, there's no point in doing it.
Speaker 6: There's no point in me spending three years of my
Speaker 6: life on something like this unless it's going to bring
Speaker 6: information into the world, reveal information that has not been
Speaker 6: made public before. And so my books are always based
Speaker 6: on like firsthand interviews, and this one is based on
Speaker 6: interviews with some three hundred and fifty some ridiculous number
Speaker 6: of people, and so a lot of the stuff in
Speaker 6: the book has never been reported before, whether it's kind
Speaker 6: of like human perspectives on pr disasters like Diablo Mortal,
Speaker 6: on Blitzchung, or like just tidbits from Blizzard's history that
Speaker 6: nobody knows about. Like the cancelation of a second expansion
Speaker 6: for Diablo three that never happened, or like the real
Speaker 6: story behind the making of Hearthstone, or how StarCraft one
Speaker 6: was like for a brief hot second and almost a
Speaker 6: Star Wars license game. Potentially maybe I don't know. You
Speaker 6: have to read the book to find out. But the
Speaker 6: goal is to tell the story. But all of that
Speaker 6: stuff comes out in the making of it. And that
Speaker 6: stuff is what different websites and podcasts have been kind
Speaker 6: of wanting to talk about and seizoning on. And I'm
Speaker 6: happy to talk about that. I don't mind the aggregation.
Speaker 6: It's just funny to see like the context stripped out
Speaker 6: of some of these quotes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the game of telephone every time, and it's
Speaker 2: just it gets to eventually an audience that was never
Speaker 2: listening in the first place.
Speaker 6: And yeah, and just judges. Yeah, And what's funny is that,
Speaker 6: like what always happens with this is one outlet will
Speaker 6: listen to the podcast and transcribe it, and then every
Speaker 6: other outlet will just take that quote use that they
Speaker 6: won't actually even listen in the original source. And I
Speaker 6: don't like blame the people writing for these sites because
Speaker 6: they're doing it for pennies on the dollar and like overworked,
Speaker 6: and I feel bad for everybody involved in the system.
Speaker 6: But it is a heavily broken system.
Speaker 2: So I guess I haven't read the book yet. I
Speaker 2: can't wait to do so. But what is it the
Speaker 2: big thing that you hope people kind of take away? Like,
Speaker 2: did you learn something about the overall narrative of what
Speaker 2: happened with the with the studio and the publisher that
Speaker 2: you hope people take away, or is it the several
Speaker 2: like little lessons and things like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a whole story. I'll get into in a second.
Speaker 6: I will say that Dan's wife sent me a very
Speaker 6: lovely text. She was one of the earliest people to
Speaker 6: read it and really enjoyed it. I appreciated that. Shout
Speaker 6: out to Bianca. Yeah, so it is. It's really it's
Speaker 6: the story of Blizzard over thirty three years. So there's
Speaker 6: a lot in there, everything from like the development of
Speaker 6: all these mega franchises and how they became these billion
Speaker 6: dollar franchises, like how Warcraft exploded, how World of Warcraft
Speaker 6: really like became a cultural phenomenon, how StarCraft became a
Speaker 6: national sport in Korea, it follows a lot of these
Speaker 6: kind of overarching big stories. One kind of crux of
Speaker 6: the book that you were hinting at there is the
Speaker 6: battle between Blizzard and its parent company, Activision Blizzard, which
Speaker 6: is a really fascinating one because that is that that
Speaker 6: story is really what made me kind of decide to
Speaker 6: do the book in the first place. It was like,
Speaker 6: I started working on this thing in like March of
Speaker 6: twenty twenty one, and it was basically the pitch that
Speaker 6: I made to my editor and my agent was like, Hey,
Speaker 6: I want to do the story that is like a
Speaker 6: hostile corporate takeover in a lot of ways, because Activision
Speaker 6: came in started playing a bigger role in operations at Blizzard,
Speaker 6: drove out the CEO and co founder Mike Moreheim and
Speaker 6: a bunch of other veteran Blizzard people, and it led
Speaker 6: to some problems and there's a lot of nuance there.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of comp complexity behind that relationship and
Speaker 6: reasons why Activision felt the need to come in. But
Speaker 6: it's a really interesting story, and so yeah, a large
Speaker 6: chunk of the book kind of examines that dynamic and
Speaker 6: how it happened, why it happened. The clash between Bobby
Speaker 6: Kotek and Blizzard people. I tried to explore bobbi Kotek's
Speaker 6: kind of business philosophies and perspectives and why he does
Speaker 6: the things he does. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, it's kind of thing where it is.
Speaker 2: It definitely touches on something I've been thinking of a
Speaker 2: lot about recently, which is I don't know how to
Speaker 2: feel about what the corporations that have kind of come
Speaker 2: into these gaming spaces and these gaming companies and and
Speaker 2: kind of took things over, Like what had they brought
Speaker 2: to the table, And I don't know, did you do
Speaker 2: you do you on the other side of writing this book?
Speaker 2: Do you feel like you have an idea of what
Speaker 2: they bring or is it just them sort of exploiting
Speaker 2: a resource to make the most money possible possible.
Speaker 6: So, okay, you have these two companies in Activision. For
Speaker 6: simplicity's sake, let's just call it Activision, even though for
Speaker 6: the corporate part it was Activision Blizzard over Blizzard, which
Speaker 6: is very confusing. So let's just say Activision versus Lizards.
Speaker 6: So on one hand, you have Blizzard, which is a
Speaker 6: company that was started by video game enthusiasts who loved
Speaker 6: games wanted to play games. For a long time, they
Speaker 6: had had a rule that they would only hire gamers.
Speaker 6: They would only hire hardcore gamers, which had it's good
Speaker 6: and bad. Like, on one hand, all right, that makes
Speaker 6: it so everyone's familiar with the products, can like test out,
Speaker 6: can really get it. On the other hand, it kind
Speaker 6: of cuts you out of a lot of demographics if
Speaker 6: you're only hiring people who play your own games. And
Speaker 6: the book gets into that as well. And so that's
Speaker 6: the philosophy a Blizzard from the beginning. It served them well.
Speaker 6: It led them to make a lot of awesome, beloved hits.
Speaker 6: And then by the time Activision came in, they still
Speaker 6: kind of tried to embody that philosophy, but Activision came
Speaker 6: in with a very different sort of way of doing business,
Speaker 6: which is, as Bobby Kodik describes it, finding a hit
Speaker 6: franchise and then quote nquote exploiting that franchise, which essentially
Speaker 6: means releasing a new game every year.
Speaker 1: Tony Hawk Guitar Hero Scott Landers.
Speaker 6: The only franchise that this actually worked for without dying
Speaker 6: is Call of Duty, And so that philosophy worked for him.
Speaker 6: And and Bobby is kind of like, instead of hiring
Speaker 6: gamers and game developers in his executive circle to run things,
Speaker 6: he would hire consumer product goods people, people from like
Speaker 6: Procter and Gamble and like Nessley who knew how to
Speaker 6: ship and al soap and shampoo and diapers.
Speaker 2: And yeah, well that's the thing.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think I won't say who, but at
Speaker 6: least two of the five of us are wearing diapers
Speaker 6: right now, so I don't get it. Yeah, And it's like,
Speaker 6: it's this philosophy of like, these are commodities that must
Speaker 6: be shipped every single year without missing a deadline, like
Speaker 6: unpredictable schedules versus this kind of we are creative game
Speaker 6: developers who must innovate and iterate and take all the
Speaker 6: time we need, like when it's ready. Was always the
Speaker 6: Blizzard philosophy. And the two are like oil and water
Speaker 6: when they meet and start clashing. And it's interesting, I
Speaker 6: think one of the takeaways that I had from writing
Speaker 6: the book. I'm very curious to see what other people think,
Speaker 6: but at least one of my takeaways was like, uh,
Speaker 6: you have the spectrum of like the we are the
Speaker 6: ultimate artists. On one side, and we are the ultimate
Speaker 6: business people on the other side, and they couldn't find
Speaker 6: a way to meet in the middle, so it just
Speaker 6: became an eruption. It just kind of everybody like clashed
Speaker 6: instead of finding common ground. And yeah, I mean there
Speaker 6: are a lot of reasons for that, and I think
Speaker 6: people who read the book will come away with their
Speaker 6: own ideas of who is to blame for what. But
Speaker 6: it's definitely not as simple as like good guy Blizzard
Speaker 6: versus bad guy Actavision, And I think there's a lot
Speaker 6: of nuance and complexity there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was covering Blizzard a lot, kind of like
Speaker 3: right after Overwatch came out, in that period where it
Speaker 3: was that and Hearthstone just really popping off. I think
Speaker 3: most of my time gaming was spent on you know,
Speaker 3: battle net like all that.
Speaker 2: You didn't like, have you steam that back then? I
Speaker 2: remember talking to you were like, I'm on Battlenet all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because there's just so many gains playing there.
Speaker 3: It's funny because like you know, there was it seemed
Speaker 3: like this weird period of incredible highs, like wow, these
Speaker 3: games are really popping off, and then just these incredible
Speaker 3: loads with things falling off or you know, the Diablo
Speaker 3: Immortal situation and then the actual controversies. I can't imagine
Speaker 3: the sort of whiplash effect that was happening for the
Speaker 3: kind of you know, rink and file staff inside of
Speaker 3: Blizzard at that time, right, And you know, I'm you
Speaker 3: talked to tons of people. I just wondering what the
Speaker 3: sense was kind of having to work through these ridiculous
Speaker 3: periods of highs and lows.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's kind of I mean it's almost like that
Speaker 6: now in some ways too, where like every time morale
Speaker 6: kind of stabilizes and people are feeling good about like
Speaker 6: the war within launch or something, Microsoft comes in and
Speaker 6: lays people off or like does something stupid and everybody
Speaker 6: is just bummed out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think it was really rough for a lot of
Speaker 6: people the last few years being a Blizzard, and I
Speaker 6: think people kind of tried to make the best of it,
Speaker 6: stuck together. And I mean, I think working at Blizzard
Speaker 6: you still get to like make games all day, you
Speaker 6: still meet a lot of people who you're close friends with.
Speaker 6: I think for a lot of people it's still pretty great,
Speaker 6: and it's always been pretty great. I think it's worth
Speaker 6: getting into the cultural stuff too, right, because that was
Speaker 6: the biggest controversy surrounding Blizzard is that in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 6: the summer of twenty twenty one, incidentally, like four months
Speaker 6: after I started working on this book. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 6: this is a twist. This is definitely changing the course
Speaker 6: of this book. California, the California government sued Activision, the
Speaker 6: parent company, for sexual misconduct and harassment and made all
Speaker 6: sorts of allegations, and the book actually gets into how
Speaker 6: the lawsuit is actually pretty sloppy and misleading in a
Speaker 6: lot of ways. And the book calls out a few
Speaker 6: specific cases such as the Cosby suite, which.
Speaker 2: I can I was going to ask about, like I
Speaker 2: still don't know, like what was the sort of how
Speaker 2: do people come down on the Cosby sweep? Because I'm like,
Speaker 2: it seemed like maybe that wasn't as real as we thought.
Speaker 6: It was not at all. I'll get into that in
Speaker 6: a second, But just to answer your question, Mike, I
Speaker 6: think that like throughout that it was really miserable to
Speaker 6: work there because even if you personally hadn't experienced the
Speaker 6: kind of discrimination or harassment that like other people had,
Speaker 6: just knowing that it had happened was like so painful
Speaker 6: for people, And I think what ultimately happened was even
Speaker 6: though the lawsuit had a lot of inaccuracies and was
Speaker 6: some of the stuff was old, some of it was wrong,
Speaker 6: it was still it still captured a broader truth for
Speaker 6: a lot of people, and a lot of people were like, look,
Speaker 6: even if I wasn't like sexually assaulted while working up Blizzard,
Speaker 6: I still face discrimination. I still face a grost comment
Speaker 6: here or there. And the book really dives into the
Speaker 6: culture that made that happen. It dives into a lot
Speaker 6: of like what made Blizzard unique in both good and
Speaker 6: bad ways. The best way I can describe it is,
Speaker 6: I got this great I had this fantastic conversation with
Speaker 6: the woman who worked there, and she spoke to me anonymously,
Speaker 6: but she told me that like working at Blizzard, working
Speaker 6: at most companies, it's like every day is like on
Speaker 6: a scale from one to ten. Every day is like
Speaker 6: a five out of ten, a six out of ten.
Speaker 6: It's like a normal day. At Blizzard, you have so
Speaker 6: many days that are ten out of ten, and then
Speaker 6: you have some days that are zero out of ten,
Speaker 6: and it's just an exercise in extremes and I think
Speaker 6: that really defined the experience for a lot of people
Speaker 6: is just this kind of really extreme, just kind of
Speaker 6: contradictory feelings all the time. But you're still I mean,
Speaker 6: you're working on Blizzard games. You're working on games and
Speaker 6: millions of people love. There are a lot of highs
Speaker 6: to go with that. Yeah, I can tell the whole
Speaker 6: Cosby sweet story if you guys are interested.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty damage. Yeah, and I definitely want to kind
Speaker 2: of just get the gist of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, because it made a lot of headlines and
Speaker 6: it became kind of like this shorthand for like blizzards problems.
Speaker 6: It's like, oh my god, they had a suite dedicated
Speaker 6: to Bill Cosby.
Speaker 4: Holy crap.
Speaker 6: So here's the actual story of what happened. So the
Speaker 6: lawsuit mentions the Cosby suite. They actually call it the
Speaker 6: Crosby Suite, which I think shows how sloppy the whole
Speaker 6: lawsuit was. And they say that like this guy Alex
Speaker 6: Eferciabi had the suite at BlizzCon that was dedicated that
Speaker 6: was named after an alleged sex pest. And then this
Speaker 6: was elaborated upon by an article on Kataku that had
Speaker 6: this big picture of like like eight different Blizzard employees
Speaker 6: kind of smiling and laughing in front of this free
Speaker 6: picture of Bill Cosby. It had a bunch of other
Speaker 6: stuff that I give into in the book, like involving
Speaker 6: textbostages and stuff. I'll skip over those details, but the
Speaker 6: gist of it was this picture that looked absolutely horrifying
Speaker 6: of like top Blizzard employees. Some of these were like
Speaker 6: high level employees just posing in front of Bill Cosby.
Speaker 6: It's like horrendous, especially in the wake of this lawsuit,
Speaker 6: Like what do you make of that? You think it's horrible.
Speaker 6: But what the article didn't mention is that even that
Speaker 6: picture was actually taken in twenty thirteen, and nobody knew
Speaker 6: about the Bill Cosby allegations until a year later, twenty fourteen,
Speaker 6: when Hannibal Buris, the comedian, came out and mentioned that
Speaker 6: Bill Cosby was an alleged rapist in a routine and
Speaker 6: that just was the first domino in this whole cascading
Speaker 6: like allegations resurfacing, new allegations coming up, and essentially the
Speaker 6: entire consciousness cultural understanding of Bill Cosby changing within a
Speaker 6: week or two. That happened a year after this picture
Speaker 6: was taken. And then when you think about that, you
Speaker 6: kind of think about it a little more, and it's like,
Speaker 6: why would people be smiling and posing in front of
Speaker 6: a picture of Bill Cosby, even if they did horrible things?
Speaker 6: Does that really track? And then the pictures were found
Speaker 6: on Facebook? Would people really be putting a picture like
Speaker 6: that on Facebook? Like maybe if they were like doing
Speaker 6: some dark ironything, but like, something about this doesn't feel right,
Speaker 6: And then you realize nobody actually knew about it. And
Speaker 6: then I dug further and it turns out that this
Speaker 6: was the suite itself was like a run joke named
Speaker 6: after the hotel carpet at some convention a few years
Speaker 6: earlier that looked like a Bill cos sweater, right, So yeah,
Speaker 6: and so they became it became this running joke that
Speaker 6: turned out to be this horrible timing thing where it
Speaker 6: was just this horribly awful coincidence that, as I reveal
Speaker 6: in the book, led to two different people who both
Speaker 6: told me their stories who were pictured in well, actually
Speaker 6: one of them told me their stories, the other one
Speaker 6: kind of like wouldn't comment on it, but I found
Speaker 6: out it happened. Two people who were in that picture
Speaker 6: on Kataco, and because of that Katako article of them
Speaker 6: being pictured next to Bill Cosby, they lost their jobs
Speaker 6: at companies they were at after Blizzard. Two different people
Speaker 6: lost their jobs because so it's kind of it's a
Speaker 6: lesson in what kind of I think misleading reporting and
Speaker 6: misleading lawsuits and just bad information can do to people.
Speaker 6: It was also like, remember when this came out, it
Speaker 6: was this hugely emotional time where people were like, oh
Speaker 6: my god, Blizzard had this really awful thing like this
Speaker 6: hap a Blizzard, Like Blizzard is my favorite company. Ever,
Speaker 6: I can't believe this happened there. So a lot of
Speaker 6: heightened emotions were surrounding that article too, and people were
Speaker 6: just shocked and appalled seeing it. But I think if
Speaker 6: you give it some scrutiny, it kind of it's it's
Speaker 6: not what it seems. And the book dives into that too.
Speaker 6: But here's the other wrinkle, and then I promise we
Speaker 6: can move on, but just one more quick wrinkle, which
Speaker 6: is that the guy who ran the suite, Alex Epferciabi,
Speaker 6: was an alleged sex predator. A lot of people spoke
Speaker 6: out about him both in public in the lawsuit, on
Speaker 6: Twitter and also to me for my book. So you
Speaker 6: have this kind of twist where it's like or this
Speaker 6: muddied situation where it's like the suite itself that's misleading.
Speaker 6: The people posing in front of this cosy picture, they're not.
Speaker 6: That's not what it seems. But the guy who ran
Speaker 6: the suite and whose sweet it was was accused of
Speaker 6: all these awful things and fired for his behavior at
Speaker 6: Blizzard in twenty twenty, a year before the lossuit. So
Speaker 6: whole complicated story of things there.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what my takeaway here is like it's
Speaker 2: way more complicated than you can imagine, and it's you
Speaker 2: can say, oh, there was this bad culture, but maybe
Speaker 2: it was as bad as the average was. Oh it's
Speaker 2: a boys club, And then there were these extreme individuals
Speaker 2: who actually were as bad.
Speaker 6: As you might have imagined, right yep, yeah, yeah, one
Speaker 6: hundred percent. And I name a couple of them in
Speaker 6: the book. What's really scary about Blizzard is that one
Speaker 6: of the people who was fired for well he was
Speaker 6: technically fired for like lying during an HR investigation, But
Speaker 6: someone who was accused of bad things was this guy
Speaker 6: Ben Kilgore, who was in the C suite at Blizzard.
Speaker 6: He was the chief technology officer and then chief development officer,
Speaker 6: and he was actually, as the book reveals, he was
Speaker 6: lined up to be Mike Morheim, the CEO's successor. So like,
Speaker 6: this is a company where it's not just like some
Speaker 6: bad apples and middle management or whatever. It's like some
Speaker 6: people who were really high up at the company who
Speaker 6: were accused of doing bad things and reprimanded or fired
Speaker 6: as a result. He was fired in the summer of
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen, Ben Kokor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, talking about Morheim's successor, I think about Jail and
Speaker 3: brack Alan and I still always have so many questions
Speaker 3: about that situation, right, Like, was he in a possible
Speaker 3: situation trying to lead Blizzard in this really rough time.
Speaker 3: Was he kind of part of the problem, you know,
Speaker 3: did he have to go? Or was he a bit
Speaker 3: of a scapegoat? That's kind of one figure that I'm
Speaker 3: interested in learning more about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, the book dives into he did not
Speaker 6: have a good relationship with Activision, So in terms of
Speaker 6: the business end of things, Activision versus Blizzard, that really
Speaker 6: kind of hit its peak when Mike Morheim left in
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen. Mirk Moreheim left, as the book reveals, because
Speaker 6: he was sick of dealing with Bobby Kotick, Jayleen Brack
Speaker 6: took over. Jyalen Breck was seen within the company as
Speaker 6: like a Blizzard loyalist, someone who would really defend Blizzards.
Speaker 2: From World of Warcraft.
Speaker 6: Yes, World of Warcrafts executive producer had his own kind
Speaker 6: of issues that the book gets into a little bit,
Speaker 6: but also someone who was pretty widely respected there, and
Speaker 6: he notably was given the title president instead of CEO.
Speaker 6: Bobby Kotick then became the only CEO at Activision. Blizzard
Speaker 6: worth noting there, and it was very clear from the
Speaker 6: beginning to Blizzard people that like he did not have
Speaker 6: the power or the clout that Morheim did. Morheim, just
Speaker 6: because of his tenure, because he was a co founder
Speaker 6: of the company, because he had a lot of leverage
Speaker 6: and a lot of respect, he could do more to
Speaker 6: protect the company from Activision than Brack ever could. And
Speaker 6: on top of that, this was the period going into
Speaker 6: twenty nineteen and then twenty twenty and twenty twenty one.
Speaker 6: This is a period when diablofhorn overwatched you kept getting
Speaker 6: delayed and Jay and Brack had to like go to
Speaker 6: the board and like defend, like explain why they were
Speaker 6: getting delayed, and face all these battles of his own
Speaker 6: with the Activision people. So his relationship with them was
Speaker 6: also just kind of totally deteriorated by the point that
Speaker 6: the lawsuit had hit. I won't kind of speculate as
Speaker 6: to what Bobby Kodig was thinking, but like, there's certainly
Speaker 6: you could certainly see why it would be it would
Speaker 6: be useful to have someone else in charge potentially and
Speaker 6: ahead a blizzard. You could also see a pierce of
Speaker 6: like a situation where like someone had to go when
Speaker 6: all these allegations were floating around and a lot of
Speaker 6: One of the other really sloppy things about the lawsuit
Speaker 6: is that if you read through it, it just confuses
Speaker 6: like Activision, Activision, Blizzard, Blizzard, Blizzard departments within Blizzard. It's
Speaker 6: very confused about what it's trying to do. But a
Speaker 6: lot of the allegations centered on Blizzard itself. So I
Speaker 6: guess Ahead had to roll and it had to be him.
Speaker 6: He I don't think there have been It's hard to say.
Speaker 6: A lot of people have asked me like who knew what,
Speaker 6: Like who was responsible? Like ultimately, at the end of
Speaker 6: the day. But like to me, I don't think short
Speaker 6: of seeing HR investigations, which I have not done, it's
Speaker 6: very difficult to prove who knew what or when I
Speaker 6: think it's more the more, the kind of more reasonable
Speaker 6: conclusion is that like, if you're in charge of a company,
Speaker 6: you either know and you do nothing or you don't know,
Speaker 6: and both of those options are pretty badly bad. So
Speaker 6: it's it's a tough spot to be in. But yeah,
Speaker 6: I don't really think it matters who knew what because
Speaker 6: that's ultimately more high And then Brack were running the
Speaker 6: company as all this stuff was happening. That said, under Brack.
Speaker 6: I mean some of this stuff was like Alex Stuffer
Speaker 6: Siabi was fired under Brack, Like there were some things
Speaker 6: that were Blizzard was cleaning house. One of the responses
Speaker 6: from Activision Blizzard when the lawsuit hit was like a
Speaker 6: lot of this stuff is old, it happened in the past,
Speaker 6: And that is one hundred percent true. A lot of
Speaker 6: the stuff in the lawsuit was old, and Blizzard had
Speaker 6: been cleaning up some of that stuff. That said, judging
Speaker 6: by the fact that after the lawsuit hit, they fired
Speaker 6: or punished like dozens of people at the company. Clearly
Speaker 6: they had not done everything. Then again, the flip side
Speaker 6: of this is that, like HR, not everybody reports things
Speaker 6: to HR. And I heard stories from women who like
Speaker 6: wouldn't report things to HR because they were told by HR,
Speaker 6: if you were going to file a formal report on this,
Speaker 6: we have to contact the police and you have to
Speaker 6: like put file someone's name and file a police report.
Speaker 6: And they were like, I don't want.
Speaker 2: To do that.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to report this at all. But when
Speaker 6: the lawsuit hits, a lot more stories start bubbling up
Speaker 6: because a lot more women feel comfortable sharing their stories.
Speaker 6: They feel like, oh, it's not me, Oh this is
Speaker 6: something where I can have my voice to this and
Speaker 6: maybe help clean up the place. So it winds up
Speaker 6: having a cascading effect. So you could also argue that,
Speaker 6: like those dozens of people who were reprimanded or fired
Speaker 6: after the lawsuit hit, maybe nobody would have ever known
Speaker 6: about that if not for the lawsuit in the first place.
Speaker 2: So it's all very.
Speaker 6: Message and complicated, and yeah, I just I don't like
Speaker 6: to say I don't like to explain that like or
Speaker 6: I don't like to blame like this person for knowing
Speaker 6: or not knowing because it just feels like the truth
Speaker 6: is always so.
Speaker 2: Much more common. Humans are more complicated than that. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And also something that executives told me while I was
Speaker 6: reporting on this book, and I thought this was a
Speaker 6: salient point, is that a lot of the times, just
Speaker 6: because of the way this stuff works, is if I
Speaker 6: am an employee of Blizzard and I fire a file
Speaker 6: an HR complaint about someone, that person might be punished
Speaker 6: in some way, have their salary doctor be put on
Speaker 6: suspension or demoted, and I would never know about it
Speaker 6: because HR can't necessarily tell me what they did to
Speaker 6: that person. So sometimes people at the lower levels felt
Speaker 6: like their HR complaints weren't listening to, but they were.
Speaker 6: The people at the lower levels just didn't know about it.
Speaker 6: And I thought that was a good point as well.
Speaker 6: So again, all very complicated. And if there's one takeaway
Speaker 6: I hope people have from this book, pltaty nice. It's
Speaker 6: like that the reality is so much more nuanced and
Speaker 6: complicated than like these headlines are tweets about how Blizzard
Speaker 6: was a sex den full of Cosby suite and stuff like,
Speaker 6: Blizzard had lots of problems and they were complicated and
Speaker 6: it's worth thinking about and seeing the whole picture, which
Speaker 6: is one of the reasons that I'm glad I was
Speaker 6: able to do this book and I'm excited to put
Speaker 6: it out there because I feel like it's got some
Speaker 6: nuance that, hopefully people gives people a broader and more
Speaker 6: like a multifaceted perspective than they had before reading it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I always appreciate searching for nuance because it is
Speaker 2: something that is so frequently lost in day to day reporting.
Speaker 2: One last thing and then we should like reiterate when
Speaker 2: the book's coming out and all that stuff. I remember maybe, god,
Speaker 2: it's probably about ten years ago now. One of the
Speaker 2: things that kind of first it's like, oh yeah, Jason
Speaker 2: Trin know, as we was talking about I was thinking
Speaker 2: at the time, boy, these Triple A games are getting
Speaker 2: more and more expensive, and it seems like they're on
Speaker 2: a path towards unsustainability. And then I think I read
Speaker 2: a story that you did or something like that where like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the feeling a lot of people have,
Speaker 2: and as we look at stuff, it's kind of the
Speaker 2: feeling I have. Has that feeling dissipated or is it
Speaker 2: kind of seem more obvious than ever that it's unsustainable.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about the future, especially companies like
Speaker 2: Sony Microsoft, big publishers like Activision selling to Microsoft so
Speaker 2: they can kind of justify their ongoing existence. How do
Speaker 2: you feel about all of that in the future of
Speaker 2: big games from big publishers.
Speaker 6: That's a debacle. There are too many games out there.
Speaker 6: You When the book is written about like the last
Speaker 6: few years of the games industry, it'll be really interesting
Speaker 6: to see how many problems can be pinpointed to Fortnite,
Speaker 6: Grand Theft, Auto Online and like the other games that
Speaker 6: just cannibalize the audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, black Hole games that they.
Speaker 6: Just yea kill the market, right, Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 6: I mean, my last book, press Reset, was about the
Speaker 6: volatility and unsustainability of the videogram industry. So and that
Speaker 6: came out in twenty twenty one, so things on only
Speaker 6: stayed the same or gotten worse since then. And yeah,
Speaker 6: it's really it's hard to imagine what the future looks like,
Speaker 6: especially for these big budget extravaganzas.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 6: The one thing that gives me so less in terms
Speaker 6: of like looking at the broad industry is just how
Speaker 6: much cool creative stuff is coming from the indie space,
Speaker 6: and a lot of people feel that way. But playing
Speaker 6: games like Animal Well and like the Latro and UFO fifty,
Speaker 6: it's just like, oh man, there's so much cool stuff
Speaker 6: out there that it's you can't get too depressed about
Speaker 6: the future. Right.
Speaker 2: It feels like the answer is already built in, right,
Speaker 2: we will, we know the solution to the problem. We're
Speaker 2: already playing those games exactly. The problem's not going to
Speaker 2: pop up at like Microsoft Sony.
Speaker 4: Acts problem for them, so and it's curious, yeah, se but.
Speaker 2: Not a problem for me who likes playing games, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Online Horizon to solve all the.
Speaker 6: Mike I was about to be like, well, the future
Speaker 6: is enough life everybody wants.
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about that in the news again the
Speaker 2: Jason Tryer segment. So don't worry about that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: tell us, Yeah, tell us what's again? Like, when is
Speaker 2: the book at? Where can people get it? Where should
Speaker 2: they go to pre order it? Yeah?
Speaker 6: If you think it sounds cool, and I hope you do,
Speaker 6: it's called plain nice. The Rise, Future, Rise, Fallen Future
Speaker 6: BISI Incertainment comes out on October eighth, so just a
Speaker 6: week from today. The day we're recording this, and you
Speaker 6: can get it in hardcover, you can get it in
Speaker 6: digital on your Kindle or whatever ebook, and you can
Speaker 6: get it in audio. It's read by uh Ray Trace
Speaker 6: Ray Chase, the prolific voice actor best known for Final
Speaker 6: Fantasy fifteen. He's Nactus. He also plays Warcraft. He plays
Speaker 6: like uh what's his name in Warcraft? One of the
Speaker 6: orcs he plays in Warcraft, and most notably, he's the
Speaker 6: subway announcer in Persona five. And yeah, you can preorder
Speaker 6: it now. I recommend pre ordering it because I called
Speaker 6: a couple of Barns and Nobles near me and they
Speaker 6: bill told me they've only ordered like three or four copies.
Speaker 6: So pre order it so you can make sure you
Speaker 6: get yourself a copy, ideally at your local indie bookstore.
Speaker 6: Help support your local indie bookstore, unless you're gonna get
Speaker 6: digital or audio, which is also totally fine, and get
Speaker 6: that online. And yeah, check it out. I think people
Speaker 6: will really dig it. I mean, I think it's it's
Speaker 6: my best book to date. I'm really proud of it.
Speaker 6: If you liked my previous books or any of my reporting,
Speaker 6: I think you'll really you'll really enjoy it.
Speaker 4: I'm really excited for it. I can't wait.
Speaker 3: It was just really in the trenches with Blizzard for
Speaker 3: a while there, so really going deep in those stories
Speaker 3: is going to be a ton of fun.
Speaker 6: I hope you dig it.
Speaker 2: I hope the enjoyant. Mike. I'm looking forward to it
Speaker 2: as well. Jason.
Speaker 1: I find that these books are, you know, little mini
Speaker 1: museums in pay per form and speak about museums. Dan Reikert,
Speaker 1: you just came back from maybe the most Dan museum
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: If it wasn't about what I thought at all, right,
Speaker 2: oh god, it's bigger than I thought.
Speaker 4: Honestly, tell the audio listeners.
Speaker 3: It's got a giant the ten to sixty four control
Speaker 3: and it's just so much bigger than I was even expecting.
Speaker 5: As I bought extra luggage to bring this home, I
Speaker 5: knew it was gonna be a problem. I didn't bring
Speaker 5: any check luggage to Japan. I brought a backpack and
Speaker 5: a little carry on thing. And I saw that at
Speaker 5: the gift shop and I was like, fuck, are you
Speaker 5: kidding me? It's like and I tried to like, but
Speaker 5: it's like really puffy and hard and stuff, and like
Speaker 5: I could not squeeze it down. So I had to
Speaker 5: go to a don Quixote at a mall in Kyoto
Speaker 5: and buy like a fold out luggage thing for that.
Speaker 5: So I just filled it with an N sixty four
Speaker 5: controller and a shit ton of candy and that.
Speaker 2: Then I checked that.
Speaker 5: So somebody like inspected that it's just like, oh, the
Speaker 5: eight year old is flying to Minneapolis. Yeah, so I
Speaker 5: wrote an entire big article thing on Uh.
Speaker 2: It was very good, Dan, Thank you, thanks. It's funny.
Speaker 5: I've been doing a little bit of writing for it
Speaker 5: a metal gear and this. It's fun to kind of
Speaker 5: you know, go back to that. But so, yeah, check
Speaker 5: it out on game spot. Just look up into museum
Speaker 5: Dan Record on a game spot and you'll see it.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, I go into the details there.
Speaker 5: But the short version is I thought it was incredible,
Speaker 5: you know, as a lifelong Nintendo fan.
Speaker 4: Obviously it is.
Speaker 5: Pretty uniquely laid out for a museum, and that it
Speaker 5: is not a lot of plaques or placards or information
Speaker 5: or text. It's a lot of like it's a lot
Speaker 5: of game boxes, it's a lot of displays, it's a
Speaker 5: lot of audio and video.
Speaker 4: The backs of all these.
Speaker 5: Displays have like like the fronts you saw in the
Speaker 5: direct word, it's like here's all the different territories you
Speaker 5: know of every box art, So here's you know, the
Speaker 5: North American, here's the European, here's the Japanese. But then
Speaker 5: on the back it's all the hardware stuff. There's like
Speaker 5: it's I counted all of them. It was almost like
Speaker 5: thirty variants of the sp all next to each other,
Speaker 5: all pristine. Like my collector brain was just going insane
Speaker 5: looking at everything, like they're all complete in box, every
Speaker 5: single one of these games.
Speaker 4: I asked them about it, and seeing all these.
Speaker 5: Sps, like the weird like Mario Tribal tattoo one, so
Speaker 5: like a case with every Fantastic Transparent sixty four in there.
Speaker 5: Seeing an Ultra sixty four in person, Yeah that's yeah,
Speaker 5: the older sixty four it's right there, and like I
Speaker 5: got right up to it and it's got a big
Speaker 5: chunky analog stick and it's just like crazy because that
Speaker 5: was like everyding EGMs and game informers in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 5: You know, as we're building up to the sixty four,
Speaker 5: you saw all these images of it and it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: I can't wait to get an Alder sixteens.
Speaker 3: So I remember playing Happened Cruising USA and Arkide I
Speaker 3: think right, and had the ultore logo blog like that
Speaker 3: was so almost the name of that console.
Speaker 5: And then seeing like an actual one along with like
Speaker 5: a bunch of prototypes and stuff. They have a ton
Speaker 5: of like prototypes of like the DS and just like
Speaker 5: wacky ways they were trying to like figure out that technology.
Speaker 5: And like the first Game Boy micros was just like
Speaker 5: four big buttons and then one little screen up top
Speaker 5: a we remote prototype that was a Frisbee with an
Speaker 5: Invincibility star in the middle of it. It's just that
Speaker 5: there is a lot more than just the game boxes.
Speaker 5: Like the main thing when you go up the escalator
Speaker 5: is seeing all the displays of the boxes. But then
Speaker 5: like I spent pretty much two days walking around this
Speaker 5: place taking everything in, uh and it was like a
Speaker 5: small or media thing, and a lot of the media folks,
Speaker 5: like you know, left after lunch. The place stayed open
Speaker 5: and fully staffed until six both days, so like I
Speaker 5: had hours where I was literally just like walking around
Speaker 5: the Nintendo Museum by myself and then going to the
Speaker 5: lower level with all the interactive stuff and trying like
Speaker 5: I guess I'll do every one of these batting cage
Speaker 5: rooms with the like ultramachine pitching machine, and.
Speaker 4: Like I played all the big controllers.
Speaker 5: I was doing speed run strats on a fucking or
Speaker 5: As controller the size of my door it was. And
Speaker 5: I went in there and they were like, they're like, well,
Speaker 5: you know it's suposed to be done with two people,
Speaker 5: and I was like.
Speaker 2: No, I got this.
Speaker 5: Playing Mario one with like I had just done a
Speaker 5: bunch of the like NES World Championship, like see how
Speaker 5: far you can get in uh in Mario one. So
Speaker 5: I'm literally doing speed run strats on this giant NES
Speaker 5: controller and like all the intendings and stuff are watching.
Speaker 4: And like clapping and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's awesome. Gosh, you said you had enough times
Speaker 2: like that. You're supposed to get to the end of one one,
Speaker 2: but you got to like four to two or something and.
Speaker 5: The four three four three in the whole goal of
Speaker 5: the thing, and they have like X amount of seconds
Speaker 5: and you have to just get to the black ball
Speaker 5: one one was like fuck that.
Speaker 6: I'm like in the in the video trailer they revealed
Speaker 6: for the museum, there was like a shot of Mimoto
Speaker 6: in front of a stroller and a gun. Did you
Speaker 6: see that?
Speaker 2: What it was?
Speaker 4: I saw the gun?
Speaker 5: So that's the thing is like I didn't really know, Like,
Speaker 5: you know, I was born in eighty four, so like
Speaker 5: my earliest memories were like Mario one playing it when
Speaker 5: I was four years old, and like, you know, eighty eight,
Speaker 5: so I knew vaguely that you know, they had made
Speaker 5: a hunt of food, of cards and toys and things.
Speaker 2: And then there's that bad stuff in Warrior where that
Speaker 2: I never placed.
Speaker 5: And then yeah, the amount of things that I saw
Speaker 5: from like old toys and stuff like the ultrahand grabber
Speaker 5: thing and night thing. It's like, oh, that's from that
Speaker 5: Warrior worre thing the or the cowboy we have to
Speaker 5: shoot him over with the gun.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh, that was a Nintendo.
Speaker 2: One of the toys they made like before the nes Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And learning about like it was so crazy, Like you know,
Speaker 5: it goes chronologically, and I started at like the nineteen
Speaker 5: fifties there and seeing all these like a lot of
Speaker 5: Disney license stuff with Nintendo logos on it, which was weird.
Speaker 4: And somebody cares about Mickey Mouse it's weird that they
Speaker 4: in the fifties they did. And the fifties, right, that's
Speaker 4: when many realized there were better things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Jon, Do your kids know who Mickey Mouse is?
Speaker 5: Yes, they get more excited if you got them like
Speaker 5: a backpack of Rosalina from Mario or of Many Mouse.
Speaker 6: They wouldn't know who Rosalina is right now. So my
Speaker 6: son Dan, my son is too and he got very
Speaker 6: excited because he got an Alma backpack. That's the stage there.
Speaker 6: But no, okay, okay, but my daughter is five and
Speaker 6: she I've played some games with her to the point
Speaker 6: where she's excited because I got that stupid three hundred
Speaker 6: dollars Lego Deku tree and she's excited to build that way.
Speaker 2: H huh.
Speaker 5: I'm excited to do that too. Yeah, did you know
Speaker 5: Peach or Mini Mouse more?
Speaker 6: She would know Peach better than Miny. She's never like
Speaker 6: she only knows Mickey just because I've been like, oh
Speaker 6: that's Mickey Mouse, not because she like absorbs anything. She
Speaker 6: knows Peach from playing Mario Wonder with me.
Speaker 5: So, but it's not gonna be showing the dollar bill
Speaker 5: like this is George Washington, like that's that's the context
Speaker 5: of many mouse.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like, there's no Mickey is not part of like
Speaker 6: they watched Bluie and Daniel Tiger and like shows that
Speaker 6: have nothing to do with Mickey. Mickey is not even.
Speaker 4: Part of our diseasi properly to the US. So there's
Speaker 4: kind of a thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, calm down, comes an al bud.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it's not You always ask video people like what
Speaker 3: do your children who grew up with all your feelings?
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 6: I just wish that Drake was here so I could
Speaker 6: be like nobody could about Mickey.
Speaker 2: It hurts me more than Drake. Dan.
Speaker 3: You're still burying the real lead here though. You had
Speaker 3: a big scoop, and I think you should share it
Speaker 3: with all of us about the States mainline Maria.
Speaker 4: Game, just to show that I'm an honorable man.
Speaker 5: I could have buried this, but I I looked at
Speaker 5: the situation and I was like, I have to report
Speaker 5: on this.
Speaker 2: I love the idea of you being like, I got
Speaker 2: this hot information I can't let the people know, but
Speaker 2: you like and everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I knew it was funny and I knew I
Speaker 4: had to say it.
Speaker 5: So Jason, are you aware of my longtime crusade of
Speaker 5: saying that Yoshi's Island is a mainline Mario game.
Speaker 6: I am.
Speaker 2: I am with that.
Speaker 6: I don't have strong opinions about this. I'll side with
Speaker 6: Dan Reicher as for.
Speaker 2: The walls, just sryer, Okay.
Speaker 5: So they have in a corner they have like it
Speaker 5: displays by franchise, so like the biggest one is Mario,
Speaker 5: and so you know, it kind of goes chronologically co
Speaker 5: introduced in nineteen eighty five, you know, Yoshi introduced in whatever,
Speaker 5: Kirby Donkey Kong, all this stuff, and the Mario one's huge,
Speaker 5: by the way, side note, it's hilarious. This is in
Speaker 5: the back corner of the exhibit room and in the
Speaker 5: furthest corner of this back corner exhibit, they have some
Speaker 5: stuff from the movies. And so here's a few things
Speaker 5: from like the successful movie from last year, and literally
Speaker 5: just like they're trying to hide it while still technically
Speaker 5: acknowledging it. There's a DVD of the Bob Hoskins in
Speaker 5: front office.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so there's a big center ring in the
Speaker 5: Mario exhibit and it's the mainline platformers, and you know
Speaker 5: it's got Mario USA.
Speaker 2: You know, our Mario everything, the Mario series.
Speaker 5: Just you just look at it and there's like a huge,
Speaker 5: like wallpaper like borrow, it's a clearly grand wallpaper. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and it's like, oh, here's all the party games, here's
Speaker 5: the golf stuff, here's the tennis stuff, here's the carts,
Speaker 5: all that stuff. And I immediately when I realized what
Speaker 5: they're doing there, I'm like, hang on, okay, this is
Speaker 5: the platformers. I'm like, okay, Mario one two three World
Speaker 5: goes right to sixty four? What And then I was like, hmm, okay,
Speaker 5: maybe it's somewhere else in here. I turned my head
Speaker 5: to the right. Here's the Yoshi series, big green display here.
Speaker 5: First one on the Yoshi series is Yoshi's Island.
Speaker 2: And I just can't.
Speaker 4: Believe that Yoshi's Island where you play is Yoshi is
Speaker 4: a Yoshi game. Mario World two Yoshi's Island.
Speaker 5: But I will always be able to fall back on
Speaker 5: the fact that I asked Miyamoto and Miamoto said it's corn.
Speaker 3: Translation and all he said he was like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: Yoshi's a Mario game. He didn't see it, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: Yoshi Island is a main line Mario game, And yeah.
Speaker 4: Were you did read the quote again, read the qute again?
Speaker 4: Trust me I did.
Speaker 3: Were you equally surprised to learn that Mario Wonder is
Speaker 3: a mainline Mario game?
Speaker 2: The son of a big all right?
Speaker 6: I can guarantee you was thinking to himself, who gives
Speaker 6: a fu?
Speaker 2: In Japanese going Dan originally asked the question too. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, get this man out of this room.
Speaker 5: It's one hundred percent that itching scratchy panel they do
Speaker 5: or yeah, two distinct tones like I'm that guy, yes,
Speaker 5: but no, it was really incredible. I also went to
Speaker 5: the Nintendo store in Kyoto and I got all the
Speaker 5: I startered with children to make sure I got all
Speaker 5: of the gotcha's all these little key.
Speaker 2: Cho these little Japanese children.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was awesome. It was honestly, everyone
Speaker 5: won because everyone's happy. Everyone wound up getting the things
Speaker 5: they wanted because we're all around, We're all trying to
Speaker 5: get as many as possible. And I have all these
Speaker 5: doubles and I'm like, okay, hey, I'm not hovering over these,
Speaker 5: like five, which one you get?
Speaker 2: You get? You get this?
Speaker 4: The Japanese at least with like ears, like we're keeping
Speaker 4: an eye of the situation.
Speaker 5: But the dinner store employees were looking at me. But
Speaker 5: I wasn't the only one doing it, So I think
Speaker 5: I was good.
Speaker 2: You could say that you were the one doing it
Speaker 2: the most or the loudest, right, I was.
Speaker 4: There until I got all of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, Yeah, Okay, you go home.
Speaker 6: You were there, so you had an army of children
Speaker 6: to send to steal hats for you throughout all of us.
Speaker 5: Sokka, yes, yes, uh, there's a nice couple from Calgary.
Speaker 5: We talked about Brett Hart for a while, so yeah,
Speaker 5: everybody was trying to get away the international language.
Speaker 4: Yeah, was that?
Speaker 2: Did they bring up Brett Hart? Dan?
Speaker 5: No, they said they're from Calgary, and I immediately started
Speaker 5: talking about Brette Hart and they seemed somewhat aware of him. Hey, hitmen, Yes,
Speaker 5: that's what they brought up the job.
Speaker 4: Did you do anything?
Speaker 2: Kyoto?
Speaker 3: For funzies are just mostly around the Nintendo stuff, mostly
Speaker 3: Nintendo stuff spent.
Speaker 5: I had one afternoon to kind of explore, went to
Speaker 5: a retro game shop and bought a good amount of stuff,
Speaker 5: got some great Everything's just so cheap there as far
Speaker 5: as like CIB stuff.
Speaker 4: So I got a bunch of sixty four stuff.
Speaker 5: I got Mario World Complete in box, I got a
Speaker 5: Majora's mask and box had a great moment.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 5: Ay, we were going to the Nintendo Museum. It's rush
Speaker 5: hour at Kyoto Station, which is this giant train station,
Speaker 5: and you know, it's just like I am in those situations.
Speaker 5: I just don't want to be in anyone's way. I
Speaker 5: don't want to bother anyone. I just want to you know,
Speaker 5: I'm confused, and I'm the dumb American. I just don't
Speaker 5: want to like fuck anything up, you know. And so
Speaker 5: I'm just like, I'm gonna follow whatever this person does
Speaker 5: in front of me. And I had a card, a
Speaker 5: plastic card that had all this like preloaded, you know,
Speaker 5: money for traveling on it or whatever. And so I'm
Speaker 5: all right, I'm gonna watch these people do in front
Speaker 5: of me at the turnstiles. And they went up and
Speaker 5: somebody had something in their hand and they put it
Speaker 5: in the slot. It comes out the other side. They
Speaker 5: grabbed the things open up, they move on. I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: got it, got it, I'm gonna do it. So I
Speaker 5: put my plastic card, you know, the slot. Yeah, not
Speaker 5: realizing that people in front of me had a paper ticket,
Speaker 5: I put in this like credit card thing just rush hour,
Speaker 5: everything freezes, fucking meltdown. People have to come take the
Speaker 5: machine apart and take my gnarled card out.
Speaker 2: Of this thing. Everyone behind me's pissed off. I'm dying.
Speaker 5: I just apparently you're supposed to just hold the thing
Speaker 5: like that instead of put it through.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I fuck that up real bad.
Speaker 1: So they should send all of us to Japan, is
Speaker 1: what I'm Yeah, we can stop.
Speaker 2: These things from happening exactly.
Speaker 5: Yes, it was my first time in Kyoto. I'd been
Speaker 5: a couple of times. It's been like ten years. Last
Speaker 5: time I went was before Middle Year five came out
Speaker 5: and I went out there for game informers. So first
Speaker 5: time in Kyoto for some of Japan ten years. Man,
Speaker 5: it's just a cool country. Like the seven eleven situation
Speaker 5: is ridiculous there. It was great before, and I think
Speaker 5: it's gotten better. I got to my hotel and I
Speaker 5: was like, oh, fuck, yeah, there's a seven eleven a
Speaker 5: block away. If you don't know, seven eleven has all
Speaker 5: this like Coonbani food that is just amazing, Like all
Speaker 5: this like Gonigari and like these pre packed like just great.
Speaker 2: Snacks basically, and it's a block away from my hotel. Awesome.
Speaker 5: The next day, I'm coming back in an uber and
Speaker 5: I see my hotel and I'm like, wait, what is that.
Speaker 5: It's another seven eleven attached to my hotel. That's bigger.
Speaker 5: So they're like every block, every train station, airport, everywhere
Speaker 5: you go, these seven elevens are there with all these
Speaker 5: awesome snacks and candies and everything, just you know, fried
Speaker 5: chicken on a stick, these pizza buns that I kept
Speaker 5: buying break coffee, and it seems like they're not as
Speaker 5: big on soda. They'll have like coke, but like Bakari
Speaker 5: Sweat had a lot of that, and you got Pikachu
Speaker 5: vending machines. Yeah man, Yeah, I went to Coco Chibania.
Speaker 5: I know that it's a big chain that we've got
Speaker 5: him in the States somewhere, but like I had it
Speaker 5: and it's just the fucking best. I remember meet Tim
Speaker 5: and Ben Hansen go into Coco Chibania a million times
Speaker 5: when we used to go, so so good. Wow, what
Speaker 5: else it's I just I love that country. It's really cool.
Speaker 5: I rode the bullet train, So I flew into Tokyo
Speaker 5: direct and then I bullet trained to Kyoto, which is like,
Speaker 5: you know, a little shy three hours and so comfortable
Speaker 5: and just everything's just so clean and nice.
Speaker 2: And what was it like coming back here?
Speaker 5: Coming back? Well, I came back to Minneapols. I like Minneapolis, Okay,
Speaker 5: also really good in a different way. But yeah, I
Speaker 5: don't know, it was just it was a great time.
Speaker 5: The museum itself is just like it's you know, people
Speaker 5: talk like you Mike talk about like the Disney magic
Speaker 5: of Disney World and things like that and the care
Speaker 5: that goes into everything. There's a lot of that here
Speaker 5: where it's like there's hidden Pickman that you can find.
Speaker 5: I loved looking around and like, you know, even like
Speaker 5: late on the second day, still finding like little Pickman's
Speaker 5: and you know, oh that bush has a little Pikachu
Speaker 5: tale coming out of it or things like that.
Speaker 4: Making the hat of Food of Cards was really nice.
Speaker 4: I kind of thought that, like.
Speaker 2: You seem like you're in the zone. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Don't really have like a connection obviously to the Hana
Speaker 5: fooda cards or anything. And I've thought like, okay, I'll
Speaker 5: just do this because it's one of the things they
Speaker 5: offer here, but it's actually really nice and like kind
Speaker 5: of a calming thing to do. I talked to a
Speaker 5: lot of people, like press people there, and I think
Speaker 5: we all had a similar feeling of this is a
Speaker 5: unique museum in that, you know, if you go to
Speaker 5: a historical museum or an art museum or something like that,
Speaker 5: you can appreciate the exhibits obviously in the historical aspect
Speaker 5: of it, the artistry of it, but you don't have
Speaker 5: a personal connection with a lot of it. For me,
Speaker 5: you know, I was going chronologically and you know, walking
Speaker 5: around and like I really got almost overwhelmed with the
Speaker 5: amount of memories of just like my life. It was
Speaker 5: almost like I'm time stamping my life. Like you know,
Speaker 5: I'm walking through the NES exhibit. It's like, oh, I
Speaker 5: remember watching Dad play the first Zelda here and it's
Speaker 5: like it's Superintendent. It's like, oh, there's Ken Griffy Junior, like,
Speaker 5: or here's Mario cart I remember when Dad used to
Speaker 5: race home so we could get a Grand Prix in.
Speaker 2: Before you had to go back to work. Here's sixty four.
Speaker 5: Oh me and my sisters, you know, trying to get
Speaker 5: my grandma to learn no buy Mario Party and you know,
Speaker 5: just like time stamping all this stuff like oh the
Speaker 5: Wei you know, like not the best library, but it
Speaker 5: brought me back to like in the last months of
Speaker 5: my grandpa's life, like he never was able to play
Speaker 5: video games, but then we Bowling. I remember being in
Speaker 5: the nursing home with them playing we Bowling. So it's
Speaker 5: like you kind of bring with you if you're a
Speaker 5: lifelong Nintendo fan, you know, all these personal memories, and
Speaker 5: it made it very affecting to me to have all
Speaker 5: this just displayed so so beautifully. Everything's so pristine. The
Speaker 5: big controllers are so so cool, like not just the
Speaker 5: ones that are interactive that you can play, but like
Speaker 5: above every exhibit they have, like here's a giant Weu
Speaker 5: game pad, there's a Virtual Boy exhibit. There's like they
Speaker 5: don't shy away from the failures.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: There there's we You, There's Virtual Boy. All that stuff
Speaker 5: is there. So yeah, it's I'm curious. The thing I'm
Speaker 5: curious about is like I realize what a specific experience
Speaker 5: I had where it's like, Okay, I pretty much had
Speaker 5: the place to myself. I was able to do all
Speaker 5: of the interactive things where you know you'll have to
Speaker 5: like pick and choose because it's on this like coin
Speaker 5: system once it opens.
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
Speaker 5: I had the most ideal possible thing as a lifelong
Speaker 5: Nintendo fan with this access. I do wonder once it comes,
Speaker 5: once it's open, which is tomorrow, you know, if somebody
Speaker 5: makes the whole hike out there, goes out to Kyoto
Speaker 5: and all that, I wonder what the line situation is
Speaker 5: going to be. Like, I wonder how people are gonna
Speaker 5: feel about like the interactive things, which they were fun.
Speaker 5: I like the interactive things some more than others. But
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's a thing we're remember like
Speaker 5: a Super Nintendo Land when we were there, yes, and
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, okay, I would love to go do this.
Speaker 2: Thing where Bous Junior stuff. Yeah, yeah, you try to hit.
Speaker 5: A thing to get a blue coin or something like that,
Speaker 5: but it's like an hour wait. It's like, okay, I'm
Speaker 5: not I appreciate that they did this, but I'm not
Speaker 5: waiting that long. I am wondering if the coin system,
Speaker 5: which is like it loads up your pass with ten
Speaker 5: coins when you go, and there's no way to like
Speaker 5: earn more, so you go, you get ten coins per visit,
Speaker 5: and so some of them, like that shooting gallery thing
Speaker 5: from the direct is four coins, and actually I kind
Speaker 5: of thought that was one of the weaker ones. You know,
Speaker 5: if you want to do the big controller stuff you're
Speaker 5: supposed to do with two people, it's two coins per
Speaker 5: person per thing. So it's not like two coins to
Speaker 5: get into the big controller room and you can just
Speaker 5: go to town. It's like, okay, two coins to do
Speaker 5: this link with the past challenge and your friend two coins. Okay,
Speaker 5: you want to do a sixty four two coins for
Speaker 5: each there, So like I wonder if that's a way
Speaker 5: to try to keep things from getting too busy definitely,
Speaker 5: you know, line wise and stuff like that. So yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm curious to hear, you know, experiences from people that
Speaker 5: didn't have this level of access.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead, Yeah, I was just gonna ask, like, like,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like you're disappointed, but do you think
Speaker 2: there's a chance of some people coming in to this
Speaker 2: place will be like I wish this was even more
Speaker 2: educational because it does seem like vibes based, like it
Speaker 2: seems like they are trying to illustrate a feeling that
Speaker 2: you're supposed to feel when you engage with Nintendo products,
Speaker 2: and they're trying to capture that and put that in
Speaker 2: a building, which I think is great for me, But
Speaker 2: I also kind of would like like more displace like
Speaker 2: explicitly explain the history of Nintendo. Do you think that
Speaker 2: stuff's missing or do you think that this is just
Speaker 2: a Nintendo way of doing things.
Speaker 5: I think it fits with like Nintendo's whole philosophy. You know,
Speaker 5: They've always been very big on just kind of play
Speaker 5: and fun, and like I think that's very much. You know,
Speaker 5: this is a playful type of museum. It's not one
Speaker 5: where here's a room where you go sit down and
Speaker 5: it's going to play a fifteen minute documentary or something
Speaker 5: like that. And they have some stuff like that where
Speaker 5: it's like, Okay, here's this plaque that explains what this
Speaker 5: place was in the sixties, what this building did and
Speaker 5: manufacture these cards. There's stuff where like in the in
Speaker 5: the cafe, like they've got the palettes with the old
Speaker 5: like Nintendo's stencils and stuff on. It's like, oh, this
Speaker 5: is the palettes from when they were making on a fooda
Speaker 5: cards and stuff like that. Like, there are elements of that,
Speaker 5: but if that is the primary thing you want out
Speaker 5: of this museum, there's not There's not a ton of that.
Speaker 5: The most interesting part of that to me was seeing
Speaker 5: all of the actual toys, because they have all of
Speaker 5: these boxes and all the actual toys, and and above
Speaker 5: it they have.
Speaker 4: All the commercials.
Speaker 5: So it was really cool watching like, oh, that's cool
Speaker 5: commercials from the sixties of like these wacky Nintendo toys
Speaker 5: that you know, you fly around your room or whatever.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: For me, uh, I would I would rather see Nintendo
Speaker 5: presented this way than like a bunch of like lengthy
Speaker 5: plaques and documentaries and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Right, And like you said, I think it does fit. Sure,
Speaker 2: I just want to stare at a Kickle cubicle box.
Speaker 4: For a while.
Speaker 2: Sure, And I want that. I want that for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, folks, we've been running a little long. Let's go
Speaker 1: take a quick breaking break and we'll we'll talk about
Speaker 1: games and news in the same segment right after this
Speaker 1: been so long talking about Nintendo that I want to
Speaker 1: hear about another Nintendo game.
Speaker 2: It's right, we're talking about video games now. On the
Speaker 2: video Game Podcast. Here's here's my big problem. Gents. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I've broken another switch. Dude, what is how?
Speaker 2: You know what? It's the luscious hair. It gets in everything,
Speaker 2: it's what it is. Fine, I just keep rubbing the
Speaker 2: switch on my my hair off. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 2: comb my hair with the switch. Actually, it's actually very good.
Speaker 2: I think I've bricked another switch. It's like dead. It's
Speaker 2: like dead, like, uh, are you just specifically turning it
Speaker 2: off when it's saving? Like what are you doing? No?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, it's I let it sit in
Speaker 1: its little dock for like maybe a week, picked it
Speaker 1: back up to have a fire up. Zelda played it
Speaker 1: fine and let me let it down over the weekend.
Speaker 1: Not charge Jing picked it back up on Monday. It
Speaker 1: was plugged in the whole time.
Speaker 2: Charger. Yeah, I tried a different charge.
Speaker 4: Do you have the official one?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Okay, try a cheap one.
Speaker 2: Then I'll try a cheap one. I'll try. I'll you know,
Speaker 2: the taco truck outside has saved me multiple times. Now,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll just plug into their generator. Okay, there you go. Perfect.
Speaker 1: I can't magically summon an item to help me. Fix
Speaker 1: the situation. But Dan and Grub you have continued to
Speaker 1: summon tables, beds, spiders, and uh the cool armadillo guy
Speaker 1: to save you.
Speaker 2: How Well, yeah.
Speaker 5: You'll get attached to something for a little bit and
Speaker 5: then it's like, oh wait no, now.
Speaker 2: I I'll never use the bed again after getting the
Speaker 2: water cube.
Speaker 4: Like that dead to me.
Speaker 5: Well, you use the bed to get your hearts. I
Speaker 5: used to be all about trampolines. Yeah, I'm a trampoline over.
Speaker 3: Bed guy on the water cube over trans a trampoline
Speaker 3: over bed guy.
Speaker 5: Now, well's the thing is, like, I okay, so yes,
Speaker 5: this Zelda game is it has dungeons like Zelda typically does,
Speaker 5: but since everything's based around these echoes, it's not like
Speaker 5: it's not like here's the dungeon where you get the
Speaker 5: hook shot, here's the one where you get a bow
Speaker 5: and arrow. It's more like you will get certain echoes
Speaker 5: that are like, oh this kind of changed this one.
Speaker 2: You'll get a category of echoes yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: Or here's here's a fish with a bomb in its
Speaker 5: mouth and that's basically your bomb. Here's the yeah, the
Speaker 5: bomb fish is school the tile that you can stand
Speaker 5: on it. You know those tiles and like to the past.
Speaker 2: Like the first legends all them the dungeon where you
Speaker 2: walk in and they start zooming at you and you
Speaker 2: can sword to break them. You can summon those and
Speaker 2: stand on it and it will zoom you across the room.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just like a little like coverboard that you
Speaker 5: can go like. And so that's the thing, is like
Speaker 5: they are bigger than the other ones. Yeah, sure you'll
Speaker 5: get a bunch of different snakes and birds and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. But then there's these ones that like open
Speaker 5: the map up in a smart way.
Speaker 2: Well, then that's the important part. Is the is open.
Speaker 2: So you see a border between the desert biome and
Speaker 2: the jungle biome, that's not a border. You can use
Speaker 2: these items to jump over that, and then suddenly you're
Speaker 2: just exploring the open world. And it is such a
Speaker 2: cool feeling. That is so cool to the point where
Speaker 2: I did started like messing around with summoning. Two things,
Speaker 2: like if you summon a piece of meat or like
Speaker 2: a dead fish, you'll notice that some of the guys
Speaker 2: that you summon will just stare at the thing. And
Speaker 2: so when you've been like capture them with your buying
Speaker 2: tool and you'll be holding them and as you're moving around,
Speaker 2: you just see them staring at the thing, which gets
Speaker 2: you thinking like how can I combine these things? And
Speaker 2: then I saw someone actually do like, Okay, if you
Speaker 2: summon the bird and you bind them immediately, then you
Speaker 2: turn around and summon a dead fish or a piece
Speaker 2: of meat. I use the fish, and then you pick
Speaker 2: up the fish, and then you hit the button so
Speaker 2: that now you move along with how the bird wants
Speaker 2: to move. The bird will chase the fish, and you'll
Speaker 2: be able to fly across the world. And now I
Speaker 2: am just like a zooming across the sky. This game.
Speaker 4: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: This game is awesome. It's so much better than I thought.
Speaker 3: When I first say, you seem to bit like your niche,
Speaker 3: I presson seemed a bit reserved, Jeff, Yes, and it was.
Speaker 2: I wasn't fully understanding all of the possibilities. Part of
Speaker 2: that is you're limited in the possibilities when you start.
Speaker 2: And of course the big thing is combat's weird because
Speaker 2: you're zeld in. You could only be. The link mode
Speaker 2: really is what it is, but they call it the
Speaker 2: Swordsman mode for like limit like ten seconds at the
Speaker 2: most at the start that does, you can expand that
Speaker 2: later on it becomes much more powerful. But so you're
Speaker 2: not gonna be able to walk up everything and he
Speaker 2: with your sword, which means you're summoning the weird moblins
Speaker 2: that have the spears, and when you summon them, they're
Speaker 2: the dumb idiot AI guys that take thirty seconds to
Speaker 2: realize they even have something in their hands to throw.
Speaker 2: So you're kind of like, how do I solve some
Speaker 2: of these basic combat encounters? And that is something like
Speaker 2: you just got to push through that because you will
Speaker 2: come up with some cool solutions just by accident. You
Speaker 2: get the bombfish. I was I'm throwing that bombfish at everybody.
Speaker 2: That feels great. It's stupid because it's a fish with
Speaker 2: a bomb in its mouth. But once I got of like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go to these, they're like, oh, open
Speaker 2: world dungeons kind of similar to Skyward Sword, where it's
Speaker 2: like you're gonna go to an area, they're gonna give
Speaker 2: you a bunch of puzzles to solve to get into
Speaker 2: the dungeon, and then the dungeon itself is kind of
Speaker 2: like a typical sella dungeon maybe a little bit smaller
Speaker 2: because you've already done a lot of stuff leading up
Speaker 2: to that. But I've also gotten off that beaten path,
Speaker 2: and I am just like I want to just go
Speaker 2: see what's out there. I do see this border, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna jump over it using my trampolines or now the
Speaker 2: water cube, and I'm just gonna go see what I
Speaker 2: can find. And I'm getting all these other tools and
Speaker 2: now taking that in and like having all these other
Speaker 2: things I can use like a level three liss Alphos.
Speaker 4: I did feel like in a dungeon.
Speaker 3: I felt like a bad boy, Like I was using
Speaker 3: a bird to kind of get through like a big
Speaker 3: desert barrier that felt like I wasn't supposed to go to.
Speaker 4: I didn't know about the meat things, so I was
Speaker 4: just bound to this.
Speaker 3: Bird kind of randomly for to fly where I wanted to.
Speaker 3: But like then I let go, and you know, I
Speaker 3: find a place to go to. And it's not so
Speaker 3: much that there's a heart piece, but there's this character.
Speaker 3: It's like it's basically like a swomp from Mario, but
Speaker 3: the top as five as you can stand on it,
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I feel like I got this maybe
Speaker 3: earlier than the game thinks like I would, and this
Speaker 3: seems like a very useful item, and I just, you know,
Speaker 3: it feels like I'm sequence breaking, even though I probably
Speaker 3: am not, And that feels great.
Speaker 6: Yes, better, because I'm pretty underwhelmed it's by this game.
Speaker 5: So I was clear of that way for a while.
Speaker 5: Like how many dungeons would you say you've done?
Speaker 6: I'm on the second, I'm on the desert one right now.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yes, that's after the desert one is when
Speaker 2: it started picking up for me.
Speaker 5: There were like three no spoilers, but like after like
Speaker 5: a thing you have to do with hyroll Castle, like
Speaker 5: that's kind of where I'm at now, where like side
Speaker 5: quests and stuff are opening up, and like that's when
Speaker 5: I really started liking it, because like the thing I
Speaker 5: wasn't loving for the first few hours was this like
Speaker 5: the process of like Okay, I got to go to
Speaker 5: this desert place or I got to go to this
Speaker 5: water place. And there's like a weird amount of talking
Speaker 5: for a Zelda game, where it's like pretty frequently yeah,
Speaker 5: and it's like okay, so I got to talk. There's
Speaker 5: some problem going on with this village. I got to
Speaker 5: go talk to a fish and you got to play
Speaker 5: a harp or whatever. You know, it's just like a
Speaker 5: lot of that stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just got to save jazz, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: And then you have to go into this like rift
Speaker 5: and it's the same thing every time, where it's like, okay,
Speaker 5: I got a find five of these shiny blobs or whatever,
Speaker 5: and then I can go into the dungeon. I was
Speaker 5: getting very bored with that loop of like, talk to
Speaker 5: these characters I don't care about, do this thing that's
Speaker 5: kind of the same thing every time, and then I
Speaker 5: get to do a dungeon.
Speaker 6: And every encounter along the way takes you twenty seconds
Speaker 6: to be because you have to summon a thing hope
Speaker 6: that the enemy actually attacks it.
Speaker 4: Well, I was thinking with that too.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: I started remembering things where it's like I forget that
Speaker 5: I have that sword fighter thing, and that helps a
Speaker 5: lot if you just go into a room with like
Speaker 5: three or four enemies just sword fighter, and.
Speaker 6: Then you run out of time and you're like, this
Speaker 6: is not fun at all. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 6: want to be too much of a bummer here, but yeah.
Speaker 2: I had all these same prints too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I felt all these same things too, and then
Speaker 5: I'll like remember the tools at her disposal where it's like,
Speaker 5: oh right, I can just bind this fucker and drop
Speaker 5: them over a cliff, you know, like that type of stuff.
Speaker 5: Like there's you know, it's very easy to go into
Speaker 5: normal Zelda mindset and just be like why I wish
Speaker 5: I could just slash my sword at this guy, But
Speaker 5: you forget that this is a different type of Zelda
Speaker 5: game and you have different tools, and like, as I'm
Speaker 5: kind of clicking with that, I'm enjoying it a lot more.
Speaker 5: Plus it just opens up so much more like where
Speaker 5: me and Greg are talking about, where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm actually enjoying this a lot more. These side quests
Speaker 5: are very interesting. I've got a horse in an open
Speaker 5: world Zelda game or in a top down Zelda game,
Speaker 5: which is you know, m used to having happening on
Speaker 5: the three D ones.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I've been I'm in this like, uh, I
Speaker 6: find myself frustrated with it. And also I'm playing this
Speaker 6: other game than I am deeply in love with, but
Speaker 6: embargoed on that is running on my Steam deck that
Speaker 6: resembles Persona five.
Speaker 2: Sure well because it sounds fantastical because I've drawn to that.
Speaker 6: I'm also just kind of even more frustrated Zelda and
Speaker 6: don'tant to play it. But but I'm glad to hear
Speaker 6: it gets better because I will stick with it because
Speaker 6: it's a freaking Zelda game.
Speaker 2: I love Zelda.
Speaker 5: Stamp Guy best News react in a while, love stamp Guy,
Speaker 5: but I do that this one.
Speaker 2: I appreciated the writing where they're like, it looks like
Speaker 2: it's handmade, because it is like when you hands you
Speaker 2: the stamp card and then you get to see it
Speaker 2: and it's like it looks like dog shit, and I
Speaker 2: love it. Yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 5: A lot of quality of life stuff, like things on
Speaker 5: the map that just kind of tell you like, here's
Speaker 5: how many treasure tests you've got here, or heart pieces
Speaker 5: you know it's got the like breath the wild tiers
Speaker 5: of the Kingdom, like stamps on the map thing you
Speaker 5: can do, which is nice in a top down one.
Speaker 2: By the wayst log the waypoints, which felt like very
Speaker 2: like they are funneling you to the next thing you're
Speaker 2: supposed to be doing. Feel I really appreciate them. Once
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, I'm gonna go do my own thing instead,
Speaker 2: and now when it is time when I feel like
Speaker 2: getting back on the path, I know where to go
Speaker 2: and I'm not lost, So it feels like this good
Speaker 2: anchor to the main main quest when I do get
Speaker 2: off to do and all this side stuff, which again
Speaker 2: has been like completely changed the game for me, just
Speaker 2: making me feel like I can go find my own
Speaker 2: fund whenever I want. And yeah, that's when it really.
Speaker 6: Clicked, so very more Breath of the wild ish and
Speaker 6: it comes.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, at least it's evoking the same feelings. And
Speaker 2: I wasn't expecting that. Actually, I was like kind of
Speaker 2: thinking we would be more confined than like a link
Speaker 2: between worlds, and it's like, no, it's actually way more
Speaker 2: open than even that was.
Speaker 5: And getting around the map is like it's a big map,
Speaker 5: and the quantity and ease of like warp points is
Speaker 5: very nice, even with in dungeons and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yea. And then they kind of put the main things
Speaker 2: that are going to happen near those warp points. So
Speaker 2: if you are doing one of these main quests that
Speaker 2: has you going back and forth and talking to one
Speaker 2: kind of Zora and then the other kind of Zora,
Speaker 2: and now they're like Okay, well we're going here because
Speaker 2: we're still fighting and you got to come here and
Speaker 2: talk to us there. It's like, well, no, just warp
Speaker 2: there and we'll be right in that next room and
Speaker 2: talk to us. And it kind of makes it all
Speaker 2: pretty easy and go buy pretty fast.
Speaker 6: So how do you guys deal with the fact that
Speaker 6: when you open up the echo, I don't Therefore I
Speaker 6: hit the star.
Speaker 2: Button of them? Okay, do you hit the star button
Speaker 2: and just go right to the journal and then you
Speaker 2: get the grid? This is something we discovered in the
Speaker 2: line you've been doing.
Speaker 4: Okay, I know you can do that, but I didn't
Speaker 4: think about that being easier.
Speaker 2: That's the main way of doing it for me at
Speaker 2: this point, because if I have the line, it's so
Speaker 2: big that by the time I get to the end
Speaker 2: my terrible memory, I forget what was at the beginning.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, God, what did I even come here for?
Speaker 6: So can't you start a favorite spar like a bar
Speaker 6: that is just.
Speaker 5: The there's most used, which I I default the most used,
Speaker 5: And it's like, all right, I'm always gonna have the
Speaker 5: water cube, is always gonna have the bomb. All these
Speaker 5: obvious ones, the one that lights fire.
Speaker 2: You just got to change the filter. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but then it's like I'll kill a cool new
Speaker 5: enemy and have this new ability, but like it'll be
Speaker 5: tucked all the way in the back and I'll forget
Speaker 5: that's there.
Speaker 2: So I think the start menu is organized pretty well
Speaker 2: where it's like here's the stuff that kind of catches
Speaker 2: on fire, and here's the furniture, and here's the water stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's just like visually, it's just very easy to
Speaker 2: jump for one category to the other. And if you
Speaker 2: kind of use that menu frequently when you hit start,
Speaker 2: you'll just go right back to there. And then of
Speaker 2: course if you do want to go to other stuff
Speaker 2: on that men, you're going to have to go back.
Speaker 2: But ninety five percent of the time I hit start,
Speaker 2: that's the menu I'm at. I can find the thing
Speaker 2: very quickly. It's much easier to navigate that way. Now.
Speaker 2: I think there's a argument to be met to be
Speaker 2: made that the when you hit the LB it should
Speaker 2: just kind of have a menu like that. There should
Speaker 2: be a grid instead of the long line. But hey, whatever, at.
Speaker 4: Least they have this solution making so many smoothies.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yes, And like the sort of meta game
Speaker 2: of make ten recipes for me, it's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna make the I want to make these smoothies now
Speaker 2: because I can get this reward if I do that,
Speaker 2: and now I have to make thirty smoothies, and then
Speaker 2: by byproduct of that, I am full of smoothies in
Speaker 2: my inventory, so that when I am occasionally in a
Speaker 2: situation where it's a little bit more dangerous and I
Speaker 2: do feel like maybe I'm gonna die, I have plenty
Speaker 2: of things to get me life, or to make me
Speaker 2: swim faster, or stay under water longer, or be immune
Speaker 2: to electricity. When you come across to a boss that
Speaker 2: uses that it's their main attack, it's like, oh, okay, fantastic,
Speaker 2: I'm actually using these smoothies. Where in a typical game
Speaker 2: where it's like, hey, if you want to think about that,
Speaker 2: go do that before you come to this room, and
Speaker 2: now you have it, it's like you don't have to.
Speaker 2: The game is kind of encouraging to encourage you, encouraging
Speaker 2: you to experiment with the smoothie system before you even
Speaker 2: think about needing a failing me. The Princess Zelda is juicing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was gonna.
Speaker 6: Say, you have to get careful because if you have
Speaker 6: too many smoothies, she gets way too small, and then
Speaker 6: you just cannot beat the game because she just crushes
Speaker 6: her staff.
Speaker 2: Yeah off the drug test too. Yeah it's bad for her. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I feel like we all had a me Grub and Jason.
Speaker 5: I feel like we've had similar experiences where we were
Speaker 5: a little underwhelmed, like in the earlier part, and then Jason,
Speaker 5: I wonder if you're gonna have a similar turn where
Speaker 5: it's like, Okay, actually really enjoying this more.
Speaker 2: I think you enjoy it more will whether or not
Speaker 2: you like it as much as we do. I think
Speaker 2: that's to be open to most people. But it seems
Speaker 2: like most people kind of got to this point before
Speaker 2: we did. Dan, everyone seems to like this game.
Speaker 6: I mean, I just feel like it feels like the
Speaker 6: combat is wasting my time, and I hate it when
Speaker 6: deans feel they're wasting my time, Like it feels like
Speaker 6: it's wasting my time to have to go into my
Speaker 6: inventory pick up something, figure out how to beat the enemy,
Speaker 6: like where I should just be slashing enemies. My initial
Speaker 6: impression was like, man, this would be so cool if
Speaker 6: it was just a puzzle. Game, and there was no
Speaker 6: overworld encounters because those are such a waste of everybody's
Speaker 6: like why am I doing this? But maybe as I
Speaker 6: play more, I'll feel differently. I don't know, yeah, just
Speaker 6: it's tedious for me. So far, it's been very tedious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think kind of learning the handful of things.
Speaker 2: It's like, in this situation, this, this enemy that I
Speaker 2: could summon is going to be very useful, and it's
Speaker 2: right there my most used So I'm just gonna bring
Speaker 2: it back out. Or I'm just gonna throw this bomb
Speaker 2: and it's gonna explode while I'm off doing something else
Speaker 2: and it's gonna kill those It's kind of how most
Speaker 2: of these encounters are going for me right now, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of become a non factor. Awesome. Awesome.
Speaker 1: A game that is incredibly similar to Echoes of Wisdom,
Speaker 1: actually not at all is a game I've been playing
Speaker 1: called kill Night. The developers are touting this game as
Speaker 1: a Hades meets Doom game, and I see the similarities
Speaker 1: and I think y'all would really dig this. I would
Speaker 1: describe this as Gothic satan cyberpunk. In the look of it,
Speaker 1: it's a you have a whole lot of tools.
Speaker 2: It is basically a.
Speaker 1: Survival game, not a survival game, but wave based survival
Speaker 1: game where you are just taking on a flood of
Speaker 1: enemies constantly. It is a constant brage of just little
Speaker 1: spider things and demons constantly trying to get you, and
Speaker 1: you have several weapons at your disposal. You have a
Speaker 1: set of pistols that you're constantly shooting off an active reload.
Speaker 1: You get a shotgun that you refill the AMMO by
Speaker 1: using a sword to hack and slash at folks, and
Speaker 1: then you're also ony musha styling sucking the souls of
Speaker 1: all these demons once you defeat them, to charge up
Speaker 1: a spectral cannon that refills your health as you kill
Speaker 1: more enemies with it and is incredibly punishing. There's three
Speaker 1: difficulties right from the jump, and I can't stop playing it,
Speaker 1: and it's hurting my eyeballs as I play it because
Speaker 1: it's just so deeply entrenched into its style. It's funny
Speaker 1: because they totally recommend from the jump, like, hey, just
Speaker 1: set it out of the easiest divility just so you
Speaker 1: can learn the game. Also, you should one hundred percent
Speaker 1: play the tutorial otherwise you're going to be absolutely lost.
Speaker 1: Because they introduce mechanics where there's also a pairing system.
Speaker 1: There's also a remote detonating system in the game where
Speaker 1: you have to use your spectrum can at the right
Speaker 1: time to fire off at a specific enemy, and once
Speaker 1: you hit that enemy, they will remotely detonate and blow
Speaker 1: up a bunch of other enemies. And there's also a
Speaker 1: combo meter going on at the same time of like,
Speaker 1: all right, you got to keep killing all these mobs.
Speaker 1: You got to keep going constantly. It is just sensory
Speaker 1: overload in the best way possible. And as you complete
Speaker 1: each run or die in each run, you're progressing and
Speaker 1: you have a set of objectives like kill nine hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety nine enemies in one run with your pistols
Speaker 1: or your overcharged pistols, and once you complete that objective,
Speaker 1: you have the ability with the points you're making each
Speaker 1: each run to unlock modifiers or upgraded versions of your weapons.
Speaker 1: The active reload. They do something very smart with it,
Speaker 1: where you could hit the shoot button to do the
Speaker 1: active reload and you'd get an up graded mini burst
Speaker 1: of your pistol fire. But instead, if you want, if
Speaker 1: you see a bunch of the demon Gem souls around
Speaker 1: and you need to suck really fast, and it also
Speaker 1: times out that you need to hit your active reload.
Speaker 1: You hit the soul suck button and then you automatically
Speaker 1: consume all of them around you in the immediate vicinity.
Speaker 1: Or say you're in a bind and you hit the
Speaker 1: active reload, but you hit your sword instead, you do
Speaker 1: an upgraded sword attack. The parry's also really sick. This
Speaker 1: whole game is just sick out the wazoo. It looks
Speaker 1: it makes me feel some type of way kill night.
Speaker 1: I believe it's coming out later this week.
Speaker 2: It's it's out tomorrow. It is a good name. It's
Speaker 2: out tomorrow on Steam. It says October two jan is it.
Speaker 2: It's not dual stick? It is?
Speaker 1: It is like Haites right, it's it's kind of dual
Speaker 1: stick because with your right analog stick you're aiming your
Speaker 1: guns with it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so okah, all right, that sounds even.
Speaker 1: Better to constantly be moving as well. I made a
Speaker 1: mistake of like, oh, I'm just gonna sit here and
Speaker 1: shoot my weapons off, and like I was immediately getting swamped.
Speaker 1: So you constantly have to be moving. You have to
Speaker 1: be using all of your weapons all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it is not a game to unwind and relax.
Speaker 2: To as I mean, they describe it on Steam as
Speaker 2: a bullet hell and that sounds like what you're describing
Speaker 2: and and yeah, I think you're right. Looks very much
Speaker 2: like Haiti's me to do.
Speaker 3: That's exactly Vampire Survivors, aside from the whole auto attacking thing,
Speaker 3: just seeing how many enemies there are and how much
Speaker 3: you're dodging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Smash TV is also like a people.
Speaker 3: That's what they'd say to me if I brought up
Speaker 3: Smash TV.
Speaker 2: I want you to know how weird? Okay.
Speaker 1: Also just a fantastic, fantastic name of a game. I
Speaker 1: just wind up saying to myself as I'm playing with
Speaker 1: a K with a K. Yes, yes, another game that
Speaker 1: has been occupying a lot of our times and it's.
Speaker 2: A bunch of games is UFO fifty Yep. Yeah I
Speaker 2: played this now? Yeah, how do you fratulations Mike?
Speaker 4: I did it.
Speaker 3: I was like I got over my like being grumpy
Speaker 3: that is not on switch and just bought it very
Speaker 3: good on the stand deck too, yea or rag Alley.
Speaker 3: Actually I got I got a rock Ally X and
Speaker 3: installing stuff on it. But I'm pretty excited about that
Speaker 3: because I love my old rock ally But uh yeah,
Speaker 3: this is pretty great. I was just kind of going
Speaker 3: through games chronologically, not trying to, you know, beat all
Speaker 3: of them, but they're just something that would naturally stick
Speaker 3: with longer. I was surprisingly into paint Chase early on,
Speaker 3: which is.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I like paint Chase. You were good at that.
Speaker 2: That was impressed by that.
Speaker 5: That was the first one. Yeah, there were something I
Speaker 5: definitely bounced off of pretty quick, and Paint Chase was
Speaker 5: like the first one where I was like, oh, I
Speaker 5: actually want to see how far I can get them against.
Speaker 2: Like a game where you're playing as a car, there
Speaker 2: are enemies that are painting the floor red, you're painting
Speaker 2: your color. You need to basically chase them and kill them.
Speaker 2: So you want to stop them from painting the floor,
Speaker 2: and while you're doing that, you're covering the floor. And
Speaker 2: at the end you want to have at least fifty percent,
Speaker 2: although there are some like I guess Boss levels where
Speaker 2: it's like you need to have seventy five percent on
Speaker 2: this level and it gets gets pretty challenging.
Speaker 6: It's my favorite is Attack Tricks.
Speaker 4: You guys played Attack Tricks?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm not.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's the one where you put the guys
Speaker 5: in the columns right like in the rows, and then
Speaker 5: you gotta line them up and defend your castle.
Speaker 6: Right. Yep, I beat that one, superfeated okay, super fun level.
Speaker 4: Oh I did do this one? Yes, yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 4: that's not really one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Have you guys beaten any of the other ones, because
Speaker 2: the only ones I've beaten so far off Barbada the
Speaker 2: very first game. Wow, yeah, yeah it was. It was
Speaker 2: like a sort of I kind of accidentally locked in,
Speaker 2: which will happen to me sometimes where it's like I
Speaker 2: don't love this, but I'm like, I'm I've already learned
Speaker 2: two things and I'm not going to let that go
Speaker 2: to waste. So I'm like, I'll just keep hitting my
Speaker 2: head against this wall. And I found like the one
Speaker 2: thing where it's like, oh this love is not really
Speaker 2: a lot, but the.
Speaker 3: First one the first one I want to beat, so
Speaker 3: I played more and I did really like it. But
Speaker 3: right after that is velgris the one we're just kind
Speaker 3: of jumping upwards the whole time, and it kind of
Speaker 3: reminds me of that one Metroid Nintended World Championship Challenge
Speaker 3: that we were all playing for a while. I don't
Speaker 3: know why Belgris really speaks to me. It's been my
Speaker 3: favorite one so far.
Speaker 2: I also be the Pilot Quest, which is the clicker
Speaker 2: IDOL game.
Speaker 4: I started that.
Speaker 2: You should definitely started. It's addictive immediately. Apparently I did.
Speaker 2: I just played it. I raw dogged it. Apparently you
Speaker 2: can let it run in the background while you're playing
Speaker 2: other games. I guess, so like moon Sharks whatever.
Speaker 6: Play it first, so it starts running for you.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what's going now.
Speaker 2: While you're playing. I wonder if I have a bunch
Speaker 2: of shit, Okay, that'd be great. Yeah, But that that
Speaker 2: was like I'm like, oh man, okay. But I just
Speaker 2: mainlined it and played the whole thing until I beat it,
Speaker 2: and that was that was a lot of fun, as.
Speaker 5: Soon as you realize like, oh, I can plant these
Speaker 5: trees and just like yeah, they're popping off there, and
Speaker 5: it's like, okay, that feels very very good.
Speaker 2: Exactly. You played an IDOL game before.
Speaker 4: Dan, Was that an adventure capitalist game?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, okay, yes, I like that.
Speaker 4: I've done a couple of years. Assistance tapped out that
Speaker 4: seems like maybe you would like.
Speaker 2: Game after twelve years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, not not a ton, but enough to see
Speaker 5: how it goes. Yeah, Oh, how many moon shirts I haven't.
Speaker 4: It's a man, It's just so much fun going through
Speaker 4: these things.
Speaker 3: Kick Club was very much my alley because it's basically
Speaker 3: bubble bobble and that's like a game I associate with
Speaker 3: the NS as much as anything. I played a ton
Speaker 3: of that back then, and like I was, I had
Speaker 3: a great time playing it the first time, playing it
Speaker 3: for a couple hours, and I got through like eleven
Speaker 3: or twelve of the fifty games, and it does seem
Speaker 3: like it's not like they necessarily just get better as
Speaker 3: you get for long, but they become a bit more complex,
Speaker 3: a bit prettier because it is chronological. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'm just like so excited to see these other thirty
Speaker 3: eight games and how many other ones here?
Speaker 4: I'm really gonna dig.
Speaker 6: What's gonna your mind is when you get when you
Speaker 6: get towards the end, you're kind of like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: how much did they put in here? And then you
Speaker 6: discover a full on j RPG.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you played that one? I was. I've been
Speaker 2: like wondering putting one back in that.
Speaker 6: I mean, the problem is it came out when there
Speaker 6: was a lot of other stuff coming out, So I imagine
Speaker 6: I'll be revisiting you for fifty a lot in the
Speaker 6: like months to come to check out games like that.
Speaker 6: And I also I really want to play that point
Speaker 6: and click adventure like shadow Gate style game.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that just came out, right, Yeah, no, the
Speaker 2: one in.
Speaker 6: Adventure that's kind of like modeled after the ane scheme
Speaker 6: shadow Gate where it's like it's like your mansion or something.
Speaker 6: I forget exactly what.
Speaker 2: Literally, it's just a new shadow Gate that came out
Speaker 2: that's based on in the n S sequel.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, that's yeah, that's all the other things.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, not enough moon drops.
Speaker 5: So I got to de pluged it and now I've
Speaker 5: got it running in the background on podcast Crypto Minor.
Speaker 2: Now you're just sucking up energy you can get exactly.
Speaker 2: I have never really encountered any of the meta stuff
Speaker 2: beyond like reading the descriptions of the games, though people
Speaker 2: keep hinting that there's maybe more there, but I'm like
Speaker 2: still not sure. How I'm going to come across that.
Speaker 2: And I'm like at a point where do I let
Speaker 2: that try to happen naturally or do I seek it
Speaker 2: out and just try to force it to happen so
Speaker 2: I don't miss it. And I'm kind of leaning towards
Speaker 2: letting it happen naturally and if I never see it,
Speaker 2: oh well, and then a certain point I'll go look
Speaker 2: it up. The reddit threads about the people who did
Speaker 2: find everything, But have you guys seen anything beyond that?
Speaker 6: Yeah? There, it turns out there are fifty more games. No,
Speaker 6: I'm just kidding. That's Freshnick's Freshnick like said that to me,
Speaker 6: do it I believed about?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I bought you.
Speaker 6: No, it's there's a terminal. You guys have seen the term.
Speaker 2: A terminal, and I don't know what to do with it.
Speaker 6: There's like codes you can enter and you can unlock
Speaker 6: all sorts of crazy stuff. I actually have message Derek you,
Speaker 6: who's lead designer also known as the designer of Splunky
Speaker 6: and Right Muster games, and he was like, yeah, there's
Speaker 6: there's some stuff going on there. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 6: see like when people discover it all, which is pretty wild.
Speaker 6: It feels like between this and Animal. Well, like the
Speaker 6: meta the meta secrets games are having a moment this year.
Speaker 6: It's the year of Metal.
Speaker 2: Hill Fish likes. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, people love that.
Speaker 6: Yesterday last year was the year of metaverse and nobody
Speaker 6: wanted that. But meta gaming we're okay with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it continues to be a very cool
Speaker 2: thing that I'm impressed by and having a good time with,
Speaker 2: and I just I do fear like falling off of it.
Speaker 2: At some point something else comes along and it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: am I going to get back to it, but sticking
Speaker 2: with it for now?
Speaker 6: Too much?
Speaker 2: Too many games? Ye, too many.
Speaker 6: It's like there were ready too many games, and here
Speaker 6: comes fifty more games, literally, fifty more games for you
Speaker 6: to play. Someone. I think I was on the Besties
Speaker 6: the other day and they were comparing it to like
Speaker 6: looking at your Steam while like getting a game that's
Speaker 6: Steam Library and suddenly you have this massive back this
Speaker 6: new Steam library backlog.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredibly difficult to try and attack the backlog
Speaker 1: and other games that are coming out When a game
Speaker 1: that's already out comes out again and now it's on
Speaker 1: my phone, Dan record, this is the worst thing you've
Speaker 1: ever done to me by by sharing access to this
Speaker 1: with me. I can't believe you've done this to me.
Speaker 4: It's bad. It's Blatro. It's good.
Speaker 5: It's one of the best games of the year, but
Speaker 5: I am in a bad way with this on my
Speaker 5: phone at this point. I played for five hours on
Speaker 5: the Flight of Japan, and that was a pre release
Speaker 5: one that I had like a cloud sink error, and
Speaker 5: so it like overrode it with my iPad one, which
Speaker 5: I hadn't played. So I had to restart, and I
Speaker 5: was like, oh good, I get to do that five
Speaker 5: hours again. That was excited about it. I will So
Speaker 5: my sleep has been fucked up since I got back
Speaker 5: from Japan. I woke up at like two two thirty
Speaker 5: in the morning today. I just reach over grab my phone.
Speaker 5: I played Bilatro from like two am until breakfast out
Speaker 5: this morning.
Speaker 4: Daniel, I ate it?
Speaker 2: Or I played it during breakfast. I went on a run.
Speaker 2: You ate it.
Speaker 4: I went on a run.
Speaker 5: And when I was stretching after my run, I was
Speaker 5: stretching for much longer than usual because I was down
Speaker 5: on the ground holding like a pigeon pos playing Blatro.
Speaker 5: Took a ship play an a way too long playing.
Speaker 5: It has been since two o'clock this morning, every element
Speaker 5: of my day has involved playing Blattro on my phone.
Speaker 6: Okay, Dan, can I all right? Let me tell you
Speaker 6: how I stopped playing Blatro after many I don't want
Speaker 6: to stop, you know, Okay, if you don't want to stuff,
Speaker 6: that's fine for me. So I like hit I got
Speaker 6: the optimal run in Blatro, which is basically when you
Speaker 6: just do single high card kings with with Barren and
Speaker 6: Mime and all the kings have like red seals and
Speaker 6: you get into the exponentials and you break the game essentially,
Speaker 6: and once you do that, it's way less fun to
Speaker 6: play because others are playing just don't get you, and
Speaker 6: it's kind of it's like mid max in the game almost,
Speaker 6: but that's how you get past like level Anti Anti
Speaker 6: thirteen and fourteen and stuff, which which I got to
Speaker 6: like Anti eighteen or something like that. And this was
Speaker 6: after like I don't know, one hundred hours of playing Blattro.
Speaker 6: And once I got to that and did that, I
Speaker 6: was like, oh, if playing with like a flush or
Speaker 6: a straight or any other bills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you kind of just kind of feel solved or yeah.
Speaker 6: It's solved. You solve the game exactly, I'm not the
Speaker 6: way of putting it. Yeah, so that's the probable. Yeah,
Speaker 6: if you if you ever want to stop, just do
Speaker 6: that and you'll be like, oh, I don't feel the
Speaker 6: need to play this game.
Speaker 4: And I'm mad that I even have this knowledge that
Speaker 4: that's possible now, because.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, man, I think you should be.
Speaker 4: Arrested for doing this perfect experience.
Speaker 2: I am afraid of falling into it. So I bought
Speaker 2: it on stream the other day and I just did
Speaker 2: one run while the Bliants were playing last night, and
Speaker 2: I I did, really, I did way better than my
Speaker 2: first runs when I was originally playing it. Almost got
Speaker 2: to the end I failed, and I'm like, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna put it down now and go play some
Speaker 2: other games so I actually have something to talk about
Speaker 2: on the podcast and I could stick with Zolda and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. I have a fear of being in
Speaker 2: the situation you're in. Down. I have kids. I don't
Speaker 2: have time for this, man, this is a time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I already get looks for looking at weird stuff on
Speaker 1: my phone, but now I'm getting even weirder looks of
Speaker 1: people seeing me play something that looks like poker and
Speaker 1: now amend.
Speaker 2: That energy though gambling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the people in the underground majong Den don't appreciate
Speaker 1: when you're playing a different game and.
Speaker 2: Not Yeah, you don't want to offend them.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, especially when like all the lights are
Speaker 1: purple neon and here you are with your phone at
Speaker 1: full brightness, like breathing out of your mouth playing bulatro.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's great right there, that's good. Yeah. The repeating
Speaker 2: music that is like not that long of a loop
Speaker 2: is still so good to me after all those it's
Speaker 2: uh god, what a good game.
Speaker 4: I keep the audio on. Yeah, I listen to it
Speaker 4: every day.
Speaker 2: Did just get the physical copy, which I think I'm love,
Speaker 2: I mean the way we showed that on the BombCast
Speaker 2: couch for the Giant Bomb Coutch. Yeah. I just got
Speaker 2: the physical copy for the Switch, And like, man, it's
Speaker 2: just everywhere right now, everywhere I turned more blatro. So
Speaker 2: I can't fold down that pit, not right now.
Speaker 5: Like the fourth or fifth time I've started on a
Speaker 5: different device or platform, and like I've been unlock everything again.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I can't wait, I.
Speaker 2: Can't wait, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: I can wait to play more games. But in celebration
Speaker 1: of Infrastructure Week, Mike Manatti, thank you for doing the
Speaker 1: work and checking out frost Punk two.
Speaker 3: Yeah you have New city Builder. I did not play
Speaker 3: frost Punk one. I always meant to, and then before
Speaker 3: I could, here's this sequel. So just dove right into
Speaker 3: this pretty pretty good stuff. For people who don't know
Speaker 3: the frost Punk thing. It's kind of in an alternate
Speaker 3: world where the planet was frozen over sort of during
Speaker 3: the Industrial Revolution. That's kind of the level of technology
Speaker 3: we have. It got a bit more advanced than that.
Speaker 2: Kind of like a snow piercer. It's a little bit
Speaker 2: of a snonow piercer.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's my sick Midwestern brain, but
Speaker 3: the whole game is supposed to be very dire and
Speaker 3: kind of depressing and sad, but I'm like, oh, snow,
Speaker 3: this is cozy, yes, even though it's like like one
Speaker 3: of the best things the game does is when when
Speaker 3: things like bad things happened, that like kind of like
Speaker 3: you know, twist things up and like give you a crisis.
Speaker 3: They kind of like make it personal, like a poppable
Speaker 3: come up and first it'll be like a person like
Speaker 3: talking like in their diary, like, oh, like the kids
Speaker 3: they have too much free time and they're starting gang
Speaker 3: wars and whatnot. And then like a little bit later
Speaker 3: you'll get the gang war problem. So it is need
Speaker 3: that kind of makes a person like that, but still
Speaker 3: because it is like a city builder, I have this
Speaker 3: god like I view I'm able to be somewhat dispassionate
Speaker 3: about things, so you know, I could do things that
Speaker 3: I would never do, like you know, send the children
Speaker 3: to the minds, which I hear them they yearn for
Speaker 3: what time I had a coal mine. It's like a
Speaker 3: big loop of the game is that you have this
Speaker 3: kind of central part of your city and there's a
Speaker 3: furnace there and it's a very resource heavy game, right,
Speaker 3: so you need to kind of balance all of that.
Speaker 3: And when the big resources is coal or fuel to
Speaker 3: keep the generator going, they always have these coal mines
Speaker 3: or whatever, and there's this emergency like oh uh oh,
Speaker 3: the coal mine's like gonna blow up. Do we do
Speaker 3: we just like sacrifice the home mine or do we
Speaker 3: like shut off this door and some people will die,
Speaker 3: but we'll get to save the mind I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I guess we'll just I guess we'll just close that door.
Speaker 3: Did immediately get like text bubbles coming up, like, no,
Speaker 3: my brother's still in there. I'm like, it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I said some people will die, it's like six hundred
Speaker 3: people died. Yeah, that's more than some people.
Speaker 2: This is what I like about the original frost punkin
Speaker 2: and now what you're doing here with this guy, which
Speaker 2: I guess there is like some ramping up of like
Speaker 2: the level of control you have over Frostpunk two compared
Speaker 2: to frost Punk one, But what you're doing here is
Speaker 2: exactly what I enjoyed about it, which is you're making
Speaker 2: decisions and then you're coming away with stories about what
Speaker 2: that meant to the people in the world and what
Speaker 2: it meant to you as the leader. And it was
Speaker 2: like for me in the first one, it was starting
Speaker 2: the religious police that would punish people if they didn't
Speaker 2: work too hard, and it was like, again, you're becoming
Speaker 2: this evil villain that is making the hard choices so
Speaker 2: society can continue, and it puts you in that in
Speaker 2: that situation and that's a lot of fun. And I
Speaker 2: think Frostpunk two sound it's like it's kind of striking
Speaker 2: the same tone. So I'm excited to start this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And there's just there's a lot going on.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of systems, you have tech trees that
Speaker 3: you can invest in, and there are different factions at play.
Speaker 3: You kind of have like a counsel or you know
Speaker 3: this government like at Congress and you want to pass laws,
Speaker 3: that'll be like, oh, you know, there's there's free necessities
Speaker 3: for people, or people have to pay for that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. Or like when I had that children problem
Speaker 3: and there was a child gang war, It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: well you can pass the law so that all children
Speaker 3: have to go to school, and maybe that's going to
Speaker 3: keep them busy. Just give them fortnite and just give
Speaker 3: them a fortnight, they'll be fine. You sometimes you have
Speaker 3: to like play these factions kind of to get more votes.
Speaker 3: Like you'll see how many votes a law is gonna
Speaker 3: get yeas and nays, and there's a lot of undecided.
Speaker 3: You can get one faction on your side, but then
Speaker 3: you have to promise them something like getting another law
Speaker 3: passed or uh, investing in a specific tech tree kind
Speaker 3: of thing. But if you do that then they're happy.
Speaker 3: You get you know, points with them. You don't do that,
Speaker 3: they're unhappy. And then off top of that, eventually I
Speaker 3: was expanding to exploring the area outside of my main
Speaker 3: city because we had to get more coal. So eventually
Speaker 3: I have like a whole nother settlement going on, and
Speaker 3: I'm sort of trading between these two things. So even
Speaker 3: just after a couple of hours, the complexity was pretty intense.
Speaker 3: In a way, I was still enjoying, but it was
Speaker 3: I was like, when I was done, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: good head, kind of hurt. That's a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: to take care of. Who knew that managing a post
Speaker 3: apocalyptic snow city would be so stressful and hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another thing. Like you're like riding the line
Speaker 2: and you're just trying to like straight by there so
Speaker 2: that you can get everybody to the wind scenario. And
Speaker 2: when it works out, it feels like you know, in
Speaker 2: the Forts or Horizon races where they're like faking you
Speaker 2: being in a race with a train, so it's always
Speaker 2: so close that it feels cinematic. I kind of have
Speaker 2: the same feeling in Frostpunk one, where it's like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, we're just barely getting across the finish line
Speaker 2: with the resources we have, and it feels cool while
Speaker 2: you're playing, like now you're a very empathetic I mean,
Speaker 2: you wind up empathizing and sympathizing with an anime character
Speaker 2: that you've never fictional characters mostly empathizes with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is any of the dourness of this game bugging
Speaker 1: with you or sticking with you at all?
Speaker 3: It's funny because like I, you know, I streamed and
Speaker 3: allow people my chapping like worried for me, like oh
Speaker 3: this Mike might not like this is like depress them.
Speaker 3: But again, for one thing, when it's a video don't
Speaker 3: care about their children for some reason, video games already
Speaker 3: sometimes have a better degree of separation from than other media,
Speaker 3: just in terms of that stuff. I still get invested,
Speaker 3: but you know, I won't get super depressed necessarily, But again,
Speaker 3: that kind of god side view of things, it's like
Speaker 3: another layer of separation. Even though they do do things
Speaker 3: like those kind of testimonials from the on the ground
Speaker 3: characters that help make things feel a bit more real,
Speaker 3: it is kind of still all numbers on a spreadsheet, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's like it's terrible, I get that, but it's like,
Speaker 3: here's how many workers I have and oops, now two
Speaker 3: hundred died because of it an outbreak. That's a shame,
Speaker 3: But I'll just go an expedition and find more workers.
Speaker 4: Something like that.
Speaker 2: It's bad, but I can get more game.
Speaker 4: Me about it.
Speaker 6: I think more games should have child gang wars.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's an incredible I mean, I, like I said.
Speaker 6: Before, I'm a little underwhelmed by Zelda because of wisdom.
Speaker 6: But like if it started off with a I don't
Speaker 6: think gang war. I would be like, WHOA. I can
Speaker 6: summon children and make.
Speaker 2: Them fight each other village town.
Speaker 1: That's what every persona game is. You are a child
Speaker 1: gang going to war. Yeah, there you go, Dan Reikert,
Speaker 1: how do you think a child gang would fare against
Speaker 1: the Horde of zombies?
Speaker 4: Advising zombie a child gang very quickly?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 5: Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. Not a ton to say about
Speaker 5: it other than just it's it's a really good remaster.
Speaker 5: It it looks, it looks great, runs great.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: You know, some of the sticking points that bug people
Speaker 5: originally about the save system and things like that have
Speaker 5: been kind of ironed out.
Speaker 4: Auto saves, it's you know, everything works there.
Speaker 5: Obviously, the small tech stuff got fixed forever ago and
Speaker 5: that's not a problem here, So.
Speaker 2: Ye're still playing on a CRT that that yeah, that
Speaker 2: must have helped.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, well no, I actually so I played this
Speaker 5: a lot on I got the Rock Alix as well,
Speaker 5: and so I thought this would be a good one
Speaker 5: to test on the Steam Deck versus the rog Allyx.
Speaker 5: And because I'm trying to, I haven't used the rock
Speaker 5: stuff before, and so I'm trying to figure out like
Speaker 5: the use case for It's like, okay, when would I
Speaker 5: play a game on the Alix versus the Steam Deck?
Speaker 5: And I think Dead Rising was like a perfect example
Speaker 5: because it's one that I noticed that like, Okay, I
Speaker 5: can crank everything up to pretty much max on the
Speaker 5: rog Alix and it runs very smoothly, good frame rate
Speaker 5: and everything. Where is it really chugged by doing it
Speaker 5: on the Steam Deck. But then I know, like grub,
Speaker 5: you've you've been in that ecosystem longer than I have,
Speaker 5: with like the ally stuff and everything. Here's my takeaway
Speaker 5: is that like, if it's a game like a Dead Rising,
Speaker 5: that's going to kind of you know, push the hardware
Speaker 5: a little more. It's better to use the rog Allyx.
Speaker 5: If I'm like at home, I'm gonna be on the
Speaker 5: couch watching wrestling for cup Flowers or something. I can
Speaker 5: charge it, maybe not the thing I take on a
Speaker 5: flight to Japan or something like that, Whereas like the
Speaker 5: steam Deck is better for if I want to play
Speaker 5: a bunch of UFO fifty or indie games or something
Speaker 5: that will get more out of like you know it,
Speaker 5: the battery life seems longer.
Speaker 2: You turn down the TDP on done all five and
Speaker 2: it's fine, yeah, yeah, yeah, and so but the Rock
Speaker 2: has that too. It's got there's three different stars.
Speaker 5: It's got like the Turbo one and everything, and if
Speaker 5: I go Turbo and everything, like it'll run dead rising
Speaker 5: very very well. So yeah, it's like I'm finding that
Speaker 5: like steam Deck will probably be my long haul kind
Speaker 5: of flight stuff indie games and things like that, and
Speaker 5: then the ally X I'll play on my couch, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe like the Star.
Speaker 2: Wars loss on my original ally for example. So yeah, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 5: The screen's really good, Like it just seems pretty powerful.
Speaker 5: I like the form factor of it and everything. So
Speaker 5: I'm definitely impressed with it. And I think I'm starting
Speaker 5: to understand because I was reading conflicting things about the batteries.
Speaker 5: Some people were saying it's got more battery than the
Speaker 5: Steam DECKO led and some were saying it has less.
Speaker 2: And it's like, I kind of think it's depends on
Speaker 2: what you're playing. Yeah, if you have it on turbo,
Speaker 2: it's using more power than the steam Deck would ever use,
Speaker 2: I think, And then if you plug it in with
Speaker 2: the adapter that comes with it, it gives it like
Speaker 2: five extra watts, so you get even more power. So
Speaker 2: that's why I like plugging it in and playing in bed.
Speaker 2: When I'm playing Star Wars Run pretty well.
Speaker 4: Yes, I use my rock mostly.
Speaker 3: It is kind of like my in bed device, which
Speaker 3: is like how I pretty much exclusively use my switch anyway.
Speaker 3: So I just associate this kind of one to two
Speaker 3: hours is that I give myself to play games in bed,
Speaker 3: which isn't maybe great for sleep schedules, but very comfy.
Speaker 3: It's very cozy. I get a lot of good gaming
Speaker 3: done that way. And yeah, it's like the big problem
Speaker 3: with the rog Alley original was the battery life. I
Speaker 3: know the ex is supposed to be better, and I
Speaker 3: am curious to see how much better it does feel,
Speaker 3: But I bet at the end of the day. I'll
Speaker 3: keep it plugged in anyways one because you don't have
Speaker 3: to worry about it until you do get a little
Speaker 3: bit of a performance boost when you do.
Speaker 5: And the Windows stuff doesn't bother me. I know a
Speaker 5: lot of people don't like, you know, the Windows stuff,
Speaker 5: but has not been a problem with me. And also like,
Speaker 5: I don't miss the track pads. The track pads a
Speaker 5: ton I love. So would you use it for like FPS.
Speaker 2: On well, I'll use it for mouse and keyboard games.
Speaker 2: I don't use it for FPS, but I use it
Speaker 2: for like when I am doing emulation, I will add
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff to the radial menus and stuff
Speaker 2: good for that, yes, and then and then when I
Speaker 2: am in Linux, I do like having that as an option,
Speaker 2: whereas you are always in Windows on the the ally
Speaker 2: and then using the right stick for the mouse. It's fine,
Speaker 2: It's that's fine. The issues is just Windows kind of
Speaker 2: stumbles when it doesn't have a keyboard and uh and
Speaker 2: you and you can't get like access to certain parts
Speaker 2: of the screen because the Windows get in the way,
Speaker 2: and then you have to update things and it's three
Speaker 2: different apps. It's just a little bit more of a
Speaker 2: pain in the ass that it's it's getting better over
Speaker 2: time though, Like I've always said, once you're in a
Speaker 2: game on the ally, it's great, there's no issues. Yeah
Speaker 2: I've been I've been really impressed. And uh, you going
Speaker 2: back to Dead Rising real quick?
Speaker 5: So I just kind of forgot, Like I remember really
Speaker 5: enjoying that game back in six or whatever, but it's
Speaker 5: not one that I really went back to a lot.
Speaker 5: I don't think I ever played four. I remember, you know,
Speaker 5: liking two and three, but that first one was just
Speaker 5: such a novel thing and that setting was great and
Speaker 5: the photo element and all that stuff, and uh, I'll
Speaker 5: be damned, but it's still it's really really funny. It's
Speaker 5: still very fun like all of that. That tone really works.
Speaker 5: It's it's it's a great one to go back to,
Speaker 5: and I beat it so and I want to do
Speaker 5: the thing because it's like, what's that, Mike, Why do
Speaker 5: you look like that?
Speaker 4: Nothing?
Speaker 2: I just wanted to camera. I just wanted to gym
Speaker 2: the camera for a second.
Speaker 5: Don't worry about Oh okay, okay, yeah, I remember being
Speaker 5: a fun one to go back and restart with. Like
Speaker 5: you know, I'm on super levels up now and now
Speaker 5: I can just kind of mow through everything. So I'll
Speaker 5: probably play more of it, and it's a great game.
Speaker 3: Very excited to play this. I actually never played the
Speaker 3: original somehow I just enjoy it. That was very anti
Speaker 3: zombie for a while, I was too anti zombie. So
Speaker 3: but now, especially for Spooky Season which starts today, Happy
Speaker 3: October everybody, I think this is going to be a
Speaker 3: good one to check out this month.
Speaker 5: Mike, I was the same way I did zombie pop
Speaker 5: culture and games. I think it's lame and boring, like
Speaker 5: Walking Dead manias. This shit sucks. The Telltale Walking Dead
Speaker 5: games that everyone freaked out about. Those games suck, so
Speaker 5: it's fu yeah, But Dead Rising is the one where
Speaker 5: it's like, no, this is very very good.
Speaker 2: I like this, folks.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of video games coming out, and thankfully
Speaker 1: we have another podcast later in the week where we
Speaker 1: will talk about the rest of them, because I've also.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well up on something that we didn't have time
Speaker 2: to talk about today for sure, Wizards of Blood. Of
Speaker 2: time to play it. I'm your Beast Expeditions, a mud
Speaker 2: Runner game.
Speaker 1: Jeff Grubb. I played more of this game afterwards he did,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to tell you about it, because
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a lot to make.
Speaker 2: I ditched the bus and then I think I understood
Speaker 2: more of you by playing. Yeah, it is about the struggle,
Speaker 2: Like I get excited when the truck gets stuck in
Speaker 2: the mud or especially in snow ridder. Getting stuck in
Speaker 2: the snow is a very special kind of hell. And
Speaker 2: having to get three other trucks out there to get
Speaker 2: the main truck that has the cargo on it that
Speaker 2: you actually need, and then starting to use the crane,
Speaker 2: it just becomes this great mess that I don't know,
Speaker 2: I find very satisfying speaking about a special type of hell.
Speaker 2: Let's get into the news. Yeah, I'm maxed out on
Speaker 2: moon drops? Who congratulations? Really worried? Did you update your
Speaker 2: silos so you can have more?
Speaker 4: I don't have silos yet, but I got twenty five
Speaker 4: hundred moon drops.
Speaker 2: Are you getting yoyo's? Yeah yet? Oh you got upgrader, Yo,
Speaker 2: you got to get the wizard Yoyo.
Speaker 4: I keep dying every time I go into the field.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, me too. I did that for a
Speaker 2: very long time. All right, let's let's make the news
Speaker 2: pretty breezy. Star Wars Outlaws is highlighting Ubisoft's current woes.
Speaker 2: They apparently only sold a million copies according to one
Speaker 2: report in the first month. Part like the response to
Speaker 2: that has led Ubisoft to delay Assassiness Creed Shadows into February,
Speaker 2: and Ubisoft says that they're board is launching a review
Speaker 2: of the company. H it's kind of a mess over there,
Speaker 2: and the mess seems to be associated with them doing
Speaker 2: the thing that they very frequently have done, which is
Speaker 2: release big games made by a lot of people in
Speaker 2: a state where it's like, maybe we can get away
Speaker 2: with this and we'll kind of update it once it's live,
Speaker 2: and they've regretted that in the past. They've done it
Speaker 2: once again. Now they're doing the thing they've done every
Speaker 2: single one of those times, and it's delay all their
Speaker 2: other big games right now. That is just apparently Assassin's
Speaker 2: Creed Shadows US stock price dropped to the lowest point
Speaker 2: in eleven years. It's not looking great over there. I
Speaker 2: certainly do not know the answer for that company, but
Speaker 2: how can.
Speaker 6: I just find out? You mentioned the board is doing
Speaker 6: a review. Sportive directors have the last name. Five of
Speaker 6: them are Gilmant brother.
Speaker 2: Right, so this doesn't exactly spell the end of Yeskimo,
Speaker 2: when they when something like that happens, right, because who
Speaker 2: is reviewing him?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, so what happens is if shareholders pressure the board.
Speaker 6: I mean there are a lot of different methods in
Speaker 6: which board control and they don't have like complete voting
Speaker 6: control as far as I know of the company, and
Speaker 6: even if they did, I mean, corporate like, they're hostile
Speaker 6: takeovers all the time. We've all seen succession.
Speaker 2: Things can get dicey, and it's they're certainly this is
Speaker 2: what this is. Same things are certainly getting dicey right now.
Speaker 6: But yeah, one of the problems with you isself one
Speaker 6: of the reasons they're in this situation in the first
Speaker 6: place is that they're a family owned company. Like they
Speaker 6: were started by the Guillmant brothers in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 6: or whatever it was, and the Guilmant brothers have remained
Speaker 6: in control ever since, and that has its pros and
Speaker 6: its cons. One of the cons is, whatever the last
Speaker 6: few years have been, it's just constant trend chasing and
Speaker 6: just spinning their wheels and making bad bets and like
Speaker 6: just seems like disastrous coming if Shadows is not.
Speaker 2: A hit, right, and they seem over confident in their
Speaker 2: way of doing things because it is so big and
Speaker 2: complex and using so many people in so many studios
Speaker 2: all over the world, and like part of that is
Speaker 2: like impressive that they're able to make games that way,
Speaker 2: and it is bigger than kind of any of the
Speaker 2: way anyone else does it. But now when they're in
Speaker 2: a situation where it's like, hey, these games aren't finished
Speaker 2: and we do got to get them out so we
Speaker 2: can make some money back, and then they're forced to
Speaker 2: delay it, it looks really bad, and it probably because
Speaker 2: it is. And Assassin's Creed Shadows has it's in a
Speaker 2: precarious situation where it was maybe one of the bigger
Speaker 2: games come out in the second half of this year,
Speaker 2: and now it's in a February that is very crowded,
Speaker 2: and of course people keep wanting to go to Yota
Speaker 2: that just got announced as being some competitor next year.
Speaker 2: But there's an Assassin's Creed audience that is hoping this
Speaker 2: game will come out and be good, but a lot
Speaker 2: of it's just going to be left to be seen
Speaker 2: until they can actually get it out. The big issue
Speaker 2: apparently has been that the game it was going to
Speaker 2: be messy with bugs and other than that, it was finished,
Speaker 2: So they're just talking about polish as they frequently do, Jason,
Speaker 2: when you talk to people that make games, this amount
Speaker 2: of a delay, is it enough to sort of deal
Speaker 2: with that kind of issue with bugs?
Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely. I mean three months can make a big deal,
Speaker 6: a big difference when it comes to launching a game
Speaker 6: that feels polished and a game that doesn't. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 6: three month's going to make a significant difference. But notable
Speaker 6: of that, Like they're still keeping it within the fiscal year,
Speaker 6: which is at the end of March, and that strikes
Speaker 6: vias something they have to do for fear of really
Speaker 6: upsetting investors. Investors already spooked, and that's why the stock
Speaker 6: is plumbing. But yeah, three months is a good amount
Speaker 6: of time to fix bu because it's not enough time
Speaker 6: to overhaul the whole game. Even a year wouldn't be
Speaker 6: enough to overhaul the whole game. But it doesn't sound
Speaker 6: like they need to do that. I think they're pretty confident.
Speaker 6: What I've heard from folks that Ubisoft is that like
Speaker 6: Shadows is pretty good, and that like if it if
Speaker 6: it's in if it's fixed and in shape, it should
Speaker 6: be pretty good. It's not like mind blowing. I heard
Speaker 6: that the next one hex is that what it's called
Speaker 6: Neo I think was the code name. That one is
Speaker 6: supposed to be like totally different and unlike anything that
Speaker 6: like the Holy Roman Empire, which is stuff that one's
Speaker 6: supposed to be very different. But if they make it
Speaker 6: that far right, but Shadows, I think is just going
Speaker 6: to be another like good like Origin Slash odysty Slash
Speaker 6: Valhalla style Assassin's Creed game, which I'm all up for.
Speaker 6: I loved all three of those games, so I'm for that.
Speaker 3: Du soond pretty interested that maybe hear what you think
Speaker 3: is the cause for Wars Outlaws Looes. That's a pretty
Speaker 3: soft launch for that, And it seems like there's like
Speaker 3: so many things you could point the finger to, like
Speaker 3: maybe Star Wars is kind of lost a step is
Speaker 3: in a bit of a bad way. Is it just
Speaker 3: that the game came out too early and in sort
Speaker 3: of a rough state, or is it is it because
Speaker 3: so many people do know they can wait and buy
Speaker 3: you be soft games on a sale, like even in
Speaker 3: fact they're all of that in I'm so like a
Speaker 3: little bit shocked that a big star Wars game like
Speaker 3: this is only going to sell like a million units
Speaker 3: in its first month.
Speaker 4: It's kind of kind of bizarre.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the oversaturation is a big part of it. The
Speaker 6: kind of mediocre reviews is a big part of it.
Speaker 6: I think Star Wars games, Jeff, you might know this
Speaker 6: better than I, but if I remember correctly, the second
Speaker 6: Jedi did not hit expectations.
Speaker 2: It's not the first, right, That's why they did the
Speaker 2: pay release on PS four Xbox right, right, yeah? Right?
Speaker 2: Or right? Yeah, so I think that.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 6: Yeah, part of it is that Star Wars is oversaturated.
Speaker 6: A big part of it is, like we mentioned before,
Speaker 6: those black Hole games, Like people aren't buying new games
Speaker 6: of the same game today. Yeah, Like nothing is hitting
Speaker 6: quite the way that people wanted to. If you look
Speaker 6: at all the Triple A games this year, other than
Speaker 6: Black Mith Fukong, which is an exception because it's mostly
Speaker 6: Chinese audience who are just super into that game. There,
Speaker 6: I can't think of many Triple A games this year
Speaker 6: that have like done beyond expectations. Maybe Warhammer maybe, I
Speaker 6: guess Hell divers Too is the biggest example anyway out
Speaker 6: As a service game, you look at Rebirth Fantasy se Rebirth,
Speaker 6: that's probably the best reviewed Triple A game of the year,
Speaker 6: and even that like failed to hit like Square Innix's expectations.
Speaker 6: So yeah, it's kind of it's the industry. The vide
Speaker 6: game industry is in a weird place at the moment,
Speaker 6: and it seems like a lot of people are just
Speaker 6: kind of like treading.
Speaker 2: Water for a while.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of people are waiting for GTA
Speaker 6: six to come out, which will then like buoi sales
Speaker 6: of the PlayStation five, which will then lead to more
Speaker 6: people buying PS five game games.
Speaker 3: I think that maybe or maybe they only PLAYDTA six
Speaker 3: for the next ten years.
Speaker 6: Well that's the thing, right, So the thing that I'm
Speaker 6: really keeping a close eye on is if Dragon Age
Speaker 6: Vailguard does well critically, like if it's an eighty five
Speaker 6: plus Metacritic and like people really like it, which I
Speaker 6: expect that it will, and then it doesn't sell quite
Speaker 6: as well as hopes, then I think we're like Triple
Speaker 6: A is really in trouble because that game is like
Speaker 6: it's set up to be doing really well dragon Age.
Speaker 6: It's been ten years since a dragon Age game, so
Speaker 6: there's a big appetite for that.
Speaker 2: If it does.
Speaker 6: If it's like critically well received and people still won't
Speaker 6: buy it's multiplatform, Umike reworth. If it's critically well received
Speaker 6: and people don't buy it, that's a concern for Everybody're right.
Speaker 2: Yep, it's and it's nothing kind of thing where it's
Speaker 2: like what it like, because a game like Boulder Skate
Speaker 2: three can come out and shock the world and take
Speaker 2: over everything, but these publishers keep, even when they have
Speaker 2: a good game, can't seem to capture that same kind
Speaker 2: of success. And I don't expect them to capture that
Speaker 2: kind of success, but to still have a big hit
Speaker 2: here if it's like eighty five plus you said, yeah,
Speaker 2: and if it misses, it will maybe illustrate some other
Speaker 2: issues that are deeper seeded, which I just think is
Speaker 2: maybe if I were trying to diagnose that, it's like,
Speaker 2: I just gamers don't seem happy with gaming right now,
Speaker 2: and that is a weird and scary thing for these
Speaker 2: companies spending a lot of money on everything. Tony Hawk
Speaker 2: is kind of suggesting maybe there is more. Tony Hawk's
Speaker 2: pro skater. He says there will be a future, even
Speaker 2: though he's not supposed to tease anything about what the
Speaker 2: future of the series is. That can mean anything. I
Speaker 2: am choosing to get my hopes up because I am
Speaker 2: a fool, and I'm hoping this means more Tony Hawk's
Speaker 2: pro Skater for real, Tony Hawks pro Skater one plus
Speaker 2: two best selling Tony Hawk games by my understanding, So
Speaker 2: why not make more of that? Would have rather had?
Speaker 4: Good?
Speaker 2: What if he's just going to guess on the Hawk
Speaker 2: Tour podcast and now that's a possibility, of course, number
Speaker 2: three podcasts on Spotify, you know, the Tony Hawk to
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, pro Skater.
Speaker 4: I'm never going to listen to that, but I'm always like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I get that bag, mean girl, all.
Speaker 2: Of course, Yeah, I'm proud of. Of course, we're all
Speaker 2: proud of.
Speaker 3: Would you rather have a three remake or a new
Speaker 3: Tony Hawk take what I can get. I think those
Speaker 3: would both be fantastic. Yeah, the Underground I want Underground.
Speaker 3: I want to punch the face.
Speaker 2: I'll take any of that American Skateland too, I don't care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I'd be a little bit worried about
Speaker 3: the new thing, just because like the scars of Tonyaks
Speaker 3: pro Skater five still hurt a little bit, whereas I know,
Speaker 3: a remake of Tonyak's pro Skater three it's gonna be amazing.
Speaker 3: But I would also like respect them doing a new
Speaker 3: game a little bit more. I suppose I also think
Speaker 3: they did a new one now. I don't think it'd
Speaker 3: be another five situation, considering one plus two was like
Speaker 3: done properly, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if I carry his visions now, Blizzard like, there's
Speaker 2: no chance those people come back and work on Tony.
Speaker 6: Hawk, right, Jason, I don't know. They're Blizzard Albany now.
Speaker 6: They're all working on Diablo and Overwatch too, so it
Speaker 6: seems unlikely that they would move to a game. But
Speaker 6: like near Microsoft, you never know it's going to happen
Speaker 6: with any of these studios and BECAUSO changes its minds
Speaker 6: every three months about everything.
Speaker 4: So Tony Hawk's cooler than those games.
Speaker 3: Maybe, yeah, maybe the hell Blay two team is gonna
Speaker 3: work on Tony Hawk. Now, I's like, forget this narrative garbage.
Speaker 5: Yeah, is Tony Hawk getting his legs stuck under a
Speaker 5: rock and grimacing for twenty minutes?
Speaker 2: Great? That sounds fun.
Speaker 5: I mean that's the whole thing with Thug was the
Speaker 5: rich narrative right right, No, you could get off your
Speaker 5: board and walk around and then you could import your
Speaker 5: face to connect.
Speaker 2: How did you do that? Because I remember game Boy
Speaker 2: camera yep. No, I remember, like I.
Speaker 5: Had to upload a jpeg of my face to like
Speaker 5: a website. But then how the fuck did I get it?
Speaker 5: Did I have a network adapt at that point? Did
Speaker 5: you have to for thug.
Speaker 1: Card?
Speaker 5: You were using a deck track? Are you using a PlayStation?
Speaker 5: I maybe you're using a PlayStation. I an eey, No,
Speaker 5: I think I might have gotten the network adapt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was through the website.
Speaker 4: Outbreak or whatever that was.
Speaker 5: Oh, there was a Rattet and Clank online mode P
Speaker 5: two that I tried. No, No, they had one in
Speaker 5: like one of the norm rag and klanks like a
Speaker 5: mobile or something. Wasn't it like a mobile?
Speaker 4: Like a mobile? I mean, I don't think old.
Speaker 2: Men trying to remember video games anyways. Of the.
Speaker 6: Man learning about Activision and talking to people in the
Speaker 6: Activision sphere for Activision's history, Like there's a chapter in
Speaker 6: play I is called Bobby and it's all about his
Speaker 6: rise to the Activision Empire to run the Activision Empire.
Speaker 6: That it is fascinating. It is fascinating.
Speaker 2: Is what cool is that?
Speaker 4: Bobby?
Speaker 2: Guy Cool Bobby, I'll let.
Speaker 6: I'll let readers be the judge of is surprisingly good
Speaker 6: as an actor.
Speaker 2: In Yeah, I do like his role in Moneyball got
Speaker 2: lost in the role some people. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So he he like he would take a hit franchise
Speaker 6: and then just turn it into I have an anecdote
Speaker 6: in the book that is like this guy who is
Speaker 6: running the Guitar Hero franchise for a while, and he
Speaker 6: was talking about how he's in a room with Bobby
Speaker 6: and they're putting together presentation and Bobby looks over him
Speaker 6: and he's like, great job, But I want to get
Speaker 6: to a new Guitar Hero game every quarter, and then
Speaker 6: I want to get to a new Guitar Hero game.
Speaker 4: Yes, you understand over saturation at some point, right.
Speaker 6: He just believes that like players are just like insatiable,
Speaker 6: like content. And then he also believes that like.
Speaker 2: If it's going up into the right, the arrow just
Speaker 2: keeps going up into the right.
Speaker 6: I understanding, I'll just kill the franchise and move on
Speaker 6: to something else.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work.
Speaker 6: It always worked, didn't Yeah, And for college Udio it
Speaker 6: worked forever and still works to this day. So Tony
Speaker 6: Hawk was a victim of that, which is why nobody
Speaker 6: can remember all the different Tony Hawk games and who
Speaker 6: which is what and which did what, and there's just
Speaker 6: so many of them. It's fascinating.
Speaker 4: Man Loo can forget Tony Hawk ride I got on
Speaker 4: the board in the other room.
Speaker 2: You won't be able to forget it when we make
Speaker 2: you play it for Blake clubs. So damn it.
Speaker 4: I don't have a fact that I will not get one.
Speaker 2: We'll get you one. Yeah. My dad did just find
Speaker 2: my unopened connect and he threatened to send it to me,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't understand that it's a threat. So all right,
Speaker 2: let's go to the shryer zone. You've been out doing.
Speaker 6: A lot of podcasts for like two hours now, Yeah,
Speaker 6: a little bit.
Speaker 2: This is the deepertcha. Uh, your book's coming out, So
Speaker 2: you've been talking a lot of tidbits. People like Ben
Speaker 2: Hansoon won't let you leave the podcast until you give
Speaker 2: them scoops. So I have a handful of things here.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna say the names and you could tell
Speaker 2: me what's really going on. For example, apparently they're working
Speaker 2: on a new StarCraft shooter at Blizzard, the third one
Speaker 2: in a long lineage of StarCraft shooters that never come out.
Speaker 6: They cannot quit StarCraft shooters. It's true. Yeah, the first
Speaker 6: one of StarCraft ghosts.
Speaker 2: That one.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of people know the story. I
Speaker 6: remember that one was well well documented. I mean it
Speaker 6: was announced that it was like demo trade shows and stuff.
Speaker 6: People played it, and it went through to developers before
Speaker 6: it was finally killed. One of the reasons it was killed,
Speaker 6: fun fact, is that it was like set due to
Speaker 6: come out, or it was like heavy in development during
Speaker 6: a console transition as everyone was moving from the Xbox
Speaker 6: one to the Xbox three sixty xx one, Xbox OG
Speaker 6: to the Xbox sixty or like ps PS two to
Speaker 6: p S three era, and and everyone was worried that
Speaker 6: like the Target and the Walmarts of the world wouldn't
Speaker 6: stock an old gen game like at the front of
Speaker 6: their store. And it's crazy to think that that once mattered,
Speaker 6: like yeah, six and it really made a difference if
Speaker 6: you were getting were top shelf placement at Walmart and Target.
Speaker 6: And so one of the reasons they killed it is
Speaker 6: because because of that, and because it it was one
Speaker 6: of the reasons that Walmart and Target did. That is
Speaker 6: because the new generation was sixty and the previous generation
Speaker 6: had been fifty dollars, and so some people at Blizzard
Speaker 6: thought that the multiplayer for StarCraft Ghost at the time
Speaker 6: was super cool and that it should have been released
Speaker 6: as like a standalone digital title or something like that,
Speaker 6: but Blizzard did not did not seize that opportunity and
Speaker 6: was very distracted with the rise of World of Warcraft
Speaker 6: at the time. Anyway, World of Warcraft was just absorbing everything,
Speaker 6: So they wound up shutting down that project and putting
Speaker 6: all those people on what they called like the Blizzard
Speaker 6: Console team and started prototyping other stuff and then eventually
Speaker 6: racing too into game. Yeah, I don't think Rock and
Speaker 6: Roll that would have been cool now, I don't think
Speaker 6: that was one of them.
Speaker 2: So that was one.
Speaker 6: And then Aris project Arias was more recent that was
Speaker 6: like a StarCraft battlefield game, and that was canceled after
Speaker 6: like three years of development in twenty nineteen. That was
Speaker 6: canceled during after kind of the Mike Morheim to j
Speaker 6: L and Brack transition, and there was a lot of
Speaker 6: pressure from Activision and it was kind of like, hey,
Speaker 6: diablofore and Overwatched two were already super late. Why are
Speaker 6: you guys working on this other shooter when those people
Speaker 6: could be working on Overwatch two to get that at
Speaker 6: the door, like what are you doing here? And so
Speaker 6: there are a lot of pressures and conversations about that.
Speaker 6: And then yeah, and then earlier this year, a game
Speaker 6: called Odyssey code named Odyssey, which was the survival game
Speaker 6: of Blizzard that got canceled, and a small team under
Speaker 6: Dan Hay who was the executive producer on that game
Speaker 6: and brought in from Ubisov best known as the far
Speaker 6: Cry far Cry guy for a long time, that small
Speaker 6: team started prototyping another StarCraft shooter. And the purpose of
Speaker 6: this me sharing this is not to be like, oh,
Speaker 6: look at the scoop, look about what Blizzard's making, but
Speaker 6: really just to point to this pattern of like Blizzard
Speaker 6: not being able to part ways of the idea of
Speaker 6: doing a StarCraft shooter. And here is hoping that this
Speaker 6: one actually comes out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I mean almost twenty five years of shooter, yeah,
Speaker 2: on and off, like a quarter of a century of
Speaker 2: trying to put one out. That's wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I try, I mean, that's that would be nice
Speaker 3: in all part of me is like, boy, it should
Speaker 3: be nice to get a StarCraft RTS again, maybe first,
Speaker 3: And I know you a little bit about some people
Speaker 3: want to do Warcraft and StarCraft artists again, but doesn't
Speaker 3: really seem to be that much of an appetite, or
Speaker 3: there's a worry about how well that would actually do today.
Speaker 6: People wanted to do it and they couldn't, so they left,
Speaker 6: and a lot of those people, led by Tim Morton,
Speaker 6: who was the production director on StarCraft two, went on
Speaker 6: to start a company called Frost Giant that just released
Speaker 6: in early access a game called Stormgate that I think
Speaker 6: has gotten mixed reviews, but it's an early access so
Speaker 6: they have time to get it better hopefully. Yeah, those
Speaker 6: guys tried to get a new arts game offic on,
Speaker 6: but yeah, there was kind of this belief at the
Speaker 6: highest levels of Blizzard that arts games just were not
Speaker 6: selling anymore, and I think there was good reason for that.
Speaker 6: StarCraft two was still popular and is still popular today.
Speaker 6: Like you can log on and I do starcraf two
Speaker 6: is my game. I log in every once in a
Speaker 6: while and it'll take me like ten seconds again a
Speaker 6: one v one match, So still a lot of people
Speaker 6: are playing it. But there was a belief within Blizzard
Speaker 6: on a dev ad executive level that like uh MOBAs
Speaker 6: had killed arts games, and like or like other types
Speaker 6: of strategy Clash of Clans ish games had killed artist games.
Speaker 6: So they did work on a strategy game and it
Speaker 6: was called Warcraft Rumble, and it came out late last year,
Speaker 6: and I don't think many people played.
Speaker 4: It come out, didn't it?
Speaker 6: Yeah plans than it is RTS and the other thing.
Speaker 6: And this is interesting another part of the nuance that
Speaker 6: I was talking about, because this is like something you
Speaker 6: wouldn't really think about, but a lot of the people
Speaker 6: who would be like, they couldn't find a director, someone
Speaker 6: who would be like a good position to actually direct
Speaker 6: a game like that, because a lot of the people
Speaker 6: who were designers or directors on previous RTS games were
Speaker 6: either no longer at Blizzard or didn't want to work
Speaker 6: on arts games anymore because they'd been working on StarCraft
Speaker 6: two for so long, and so they wanted to do
Speaker 6: other things like for example, Ari's at StarCraft Battlefield Shooter
Speaker 6: I mentioned earlier that was being directed by Dustin Browner,
Speaker 6: who was the director of StarCraft two, so he was
Speaker 6: in his own world he didn't want to do like
Speaker 6: Warcraft four or whatever StarCraft three, and now he's a
Speaker 6: dream haven where he's working on a different project. I
Speaker 6: don't actually know what it is, but it's something else.
Speaker 6: So like the other thing to consider is that, like
Speaker 6: sometimes you just can't find the right person to lead
Speaker 6: a project like that who has the experience and know
Speaker 6: how to with the genre, and so that can also
Speaker 6: cause problems.
Speaker 2: Uh star blow, Yeah, damn right, she does. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: this is another one that came up. Is this a
Speaker 2: real thing people should ever imagine could come out?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: So this was Okay, a little bit of history here
Speaker 6: is that Blizzard North was the creator of Diablo that
Speaker 6: was in the San Francisco Bay Area, separate company than
Speaker 6: the Blizzard that we know of today that was in Irvine.
Speaker 6: And so they made Diablo one and Diablo two, and
Speaker 6: after Diablo two they have this period of just complete
Speaker 6: chaos and floundering where like everyone was burnt out, they
Speaker 6: were playing games all day at work, they were just
Speaker 6: kind of hanging now. And for a long time they
Speaker 6: were split into two teams. One was working on Diablo
Speaker 6: three and it's early early stages, a version that would
Speaker 6: never see the light of day, and the other was
Speaker 6: working on something called Project X, which they called it
Speaker 6: that because it changed every three months based on whatever.
Speaker 6: David Brevick, who was the president of the studio, just
Speaker 6: kind of came in and was like, no, let's make
Speaker 6: it this, Let's make it a superhero game, Let's make
Speaker 6: it a game about dragons, whatever it was. And then
Speaker 6: one day he came in and he was like, screw this,
Speaker 6: were making Starblow, and everybody applauded because they knew exactly
Speaker 6: what that meant. Basically, what StarCraft is to Warcraft, Starblow
Speaker 6: is to Diablo. It would be like, it's sci fi.
Speaker 6: It's an action RPG. You're in space, you got a spaceship,
Speaker 6: you fight aliens, YadA YadA, yadah. The works what a
Speaker 6: lot of people would have loved to play. And they
Speaker 6: started working on that, but it wasn't long before Blizzard
Speaker 6: North imploded for a variety of reasons that I detail
Speaker 6: in the book, and that game was canceled and they
Speaker 6: switched to only work on Diabo three. And then two
Speaker 6: years later Blizzer North shut down and Diablo three was
Speaker 6: rebooted again back South in Irvine and started didn't start
Speaker 6: from scratch, but it was essentially rebooted, and then Diablo
Speaker 6: three took another six years after that, so no, Starblough
Speaker 6: was long gone.
Speaker 2: That is not happening. And then yeah, apparently yeah man.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing that you popped off this
Speaker 2: week or maybe reminded people about, is that Horizon Online
Speaker 2: coming before Horizon three or whatever that will end up
Speaker 2: being and that is a vestige a part of the
Speaker 2: ongoing live service initiative at Sony. Should people be expecting
Speaker 2: that to be a really big chance or chance that
Speaker 2: they're taking over at Gorilla for their live service initiative?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I guess. I don't think I said that Horizon
Speaker 6: Online is like coming before Horizon three because I don't
Speaker 6: even know that Horizon Online is actually going to come.
Speaker 2: Out, like it's the thing that they are working on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I actually I didn't think that was a
Speaker 6: new I thought people had an idea of that because
Speaker 6: they've been very public about the fact that they're working
Speaker 6: on this online. I think the name even leaked during
Speaker 6: the Insomniac leaked. It's called like Hunters Gathering or something
Speaker 6: like that. It leaked out, it got it is public.
Speaker 6: So I didn't think that was a big secret or
Speaker 6: news or anything like that. But yes, that was that's
Speaker 6: that's the thing that a lot of people at Gorilla
Speaker 6: have been working on as far as I know, and
Speaker 6: Horizon three last I spoke to people, there was pretty
Speaker 6: pretty pretty early, pretty conceptual. And games take a long
Speaker 6: time as it is. I mean it was five years
Speaker 6: from Zero don to Forbidden West, So yeah, I mean
Speaker 6: the res in three, I don't. I wouldn't expect that
Speaker 6: for a very long.
Speaker 2: Time, right, all right? Is yoship trolling Final Fantasy nine
Speaker 2: fans Square Enixes and a Naoki Yoshuda has hinted that
Speaker 2: a potential Final Fantasy nine rebake could span more than
Speaker 2: one title do the game's extensive content. Basically, it was
Speaker 2: like someone asked, Hey, if you were going to remake
Speaker 2: another Final Fantasy game or any game, what would you
Speaker 2: want to do? And he said, I would do Final
Speaker 2: Fantasy three, But then look at this Final Fantasy nine.
Speaker 2: There's so much content there. If we did that, wouldn't
Speaker 2: we have to put it across several games, kind of
Speaker 2: like seven Final Fantasy seven remake. We've seen that this
Speaker 2: game has been part of that. In video week before
Speaker 2: the suggestion there is that this is something that has
Speaker 2: been happening. He's not really saying that they're going to
Speaker 2: do the same thing they did with Final Fantasy seven remake, right.
Speaker 6: Can I Can I read you a quote? This is
Speaker 6: June fourth, twenty twenty. This is the please Japanese. This
Speaker 6: is Google translated Japanese, but it's still close enough. Producer
Speaker 6: Naoki Yoshida denies rumors that he will be the main
Speaker 6: director of Final Fantasy sixteen. Quote. It's a rumor that
Speaker 6: is false and annoying. I intend to continue working on
Speaker 6: Final Fantasy fourteen for a few more years.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So maybe he is trolling Final Fantasy nine fans.
Speaker 2: It definitely feels that way.
Speaker 3: I mean, not for one thing, I don't think they're
Speaker 3: going to want to do another multi part remake after
Speaker 3: sales have kind of gotten so soft for the seven remake.
Speaker 2: True, and it would never make sense in the first
Speaker 2: place for nine, something that's going to have a narrow room,
Speaker 2: more narrow audience.
Speaker 6: Nine was never Yeah, I mean that project, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I mean, I know it's real, I have no idea
Speaker 6: when it's coming. I don't know the development status of
Speaker 6: it or anything like that, but from everything I heard,
Speaker 6: it was not like the ambitious translit like Final Fantasy
Speaker 6: seven remake is the brand new game. This is not that.
Speaker 2: It's like Persona three reload is the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that everyone.
Speaker 6: Kind of a better comparison. Yeah, that sounds kind of what,
Speaker 6: that's all.
Speaker 4: I kind of went from it too.
Speaker 3: And you know, it was that Pax East this year
Speaker 3: where the Yoship had a panel for Found Face fourteen
Speaker 3: down trail before it came out. Dontrill has some funal
Speaker 3: Fantasy nine illusions and references, and one of like the
Speaker 3: pre order things was like a little character minion based
Speaker 3: on a Fountasy nine character, and at the time he
Speaker 3: was like, oh, you'll see later whether there's so many
Speaker 3: fun Fancy nine references. And at the time people freaked
Speaker 3: out thinking he was talking about the remake, But that
Speaker 3: might just be talking about again, all the illusions that
Speaker 3: are in don trail for Found Fancy nine. But he's
Speaker 3: been kind of coy about this stup before, and as
Speaker 3: Jason's pointed out, he can be you can kind of
Speaker 3: have fun with this stuff and he will just sort
Speaker 3: of you know, uh, well lie sounds strong, but you know,
Speaker 3: intentionally mislead because it is the thing that he should
Speaker 3: be doing. Because of course, brother now and say these things.
Speaker 3: It is a I kind of wanted too, because it's
Speaker 3: sort of a depressing truth of gaming now to be like, well,
Speaker 3: that game from A two thousand is too big to make.
Speaker 4: Now like oh cool, we have to think the game smaller.
Speaker 6: Now do you remember, Mike, you men grab you guys
Speaker 6: must remember this, And like there are mid two thousands
Speaker 6: when Square was like, HG, towns are too hard to make.
Speaker 6: So that's like we're Final Fantasy thirteen just corridors.
Speaker 2: Right because we were.
Speaker 3: It's like, hey, there's no towns in Final Fantasy thirteen.
Speaker 3: There's like a city that's more of a cinematic than anything.
Speaker 2: You used to have one guy make all this for
Speaker 2: the entire game, and now that's not possible.
Speaker 6: Games are worse because the graphics have gotten better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's what.
Speaker 3: He has hit JRPGs like, and especially if you're a
Speaker 3: Square Enix and like your whole bit is that you
Speaker 3: have and make the prettiest RPGs ever, Like, yeah, it
Speaker 3: kind of becomes a major problem.
Speaker 6: And then at the same time they made one of
Speaker 6: the best therapygs like ever in Octopath Traveler two last year,
Speaker 6: and that is because it has awesome graphical limitations. It
Speaker 6: still looks gorgeous, So like, how about more games like that?
Speaker 4: It'll take HD two D Final Fantasy seventeen.
Speaker 6: Hell yeah, that.
Speaker 2: Would be h I wonder if they will come to
Speaker 2: that decision at some point. It probably won't be seventeen,
Speaker 2: but they maybe start doing the Final Fantasy HD. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, Jan you were thinking that a Nintendo mystery
Speaker 2: thing could be a watch a wearable, there's some more
Speaker 2: like look. People looked deeper at some filings at the
Speaker 2: Nintendo made with the FCC for this mysterious box that
Speaker 2: has a twenty four gigahert millimeter wave sensor inside of it,
Speaker 2: and they said it sounds a little bit bigger than
Speaker 2: a watch. Maybe a small cube that like sand sits
Speaker 2: on a desk. What if it's a clock you wear
Speaker 2: around your neck. Well, what if it's a clock that
Speaker 2: watches you while you sleep for Pokemon Sleep. It's maybe
Speaker 2: some of the speculation at this point. Yeah, either way,
Speaker 2: it sounds like it will have a small screen, or
Speaker 2: it could have a small screen. Will is such a
Speaker 2: strong different word it could have a screen and it
Speaker 2: will have this these they'll have the two point four
Speaker 2: gigaherts for Wi Fi. No mention of five gigaherts, so
Speaker 2: it's not It doesn't seem concerned with like a strong
Speaker 2: fast connection, just something that we'll be able to have
Speaker 2: a long range. And then this twenty four gigahertz radar
Speaker 2: that can sense bodily movements in a room. It sounds
Speaker 2: like something maybe does sit on a nightstand, tells you
Speaker 2: the time you could set an alarm, and then it
Speaker 2: tracks your sleep and could be like a health product.
Speaker 2: So yeah, something along those lines seems likely. Nintendo also
Speaker 2: apparently has a history of filing these sorts of things
Speaker 2: on behalf of the Pokemon Company, so this could be
Speaker 2: something like that as well. Kojama showed and talked a
Speaker 2: lot about Death Stranding two at Tokyo Game Show. The
Speaker 2: takeaway is it looks fucking weird still maybe weirder weirder
Speaker 2: than ever with doll Man's dance moves and the polaroid
Speaker 2: photo shoots of el Fanning and her friends, and then
Speaker 2: the release date is decided they won't tell us because
Speaker 2: he said unforeseen reasons.
Speaker 6: It's just crazy that he got Sam Bank and freed too.
Speaker 2: He's not so busy these days. He's more available than
Speaker 2: ever in a lot of ways and less available in
Speaker 2: some he uh yea Kojima. I said, they'll tell us
Speaker 2: the release date in twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: Five, greb, can't you tell us the release date right now?
Speaker 2: Oh? Please? No, don't. I've been avoiding asking you to
Speaker 2: get me all your scus because I actually.
Speaker 6: Okay, so I've heard you've probably heard the same thing,
Speaker 6: because I heard this from people close to first party
Speaker 6: studios that like a lot of people are going to
Speaker 6: be announcing games for twenty twenty five and just leave
Speaker 6: it at that twenty twenty five until Rockstar announces their plans,
Speaker 6: because that is going to be like Ripple. Nobody wants
Speaker 6: to be close to GTA sex and a similar thing
Speaker 6: happened with The Red Dead two. But this is like
Speaker 6: five times as big as this.
Speaker 2: Is way bigger than Yeah sure, yeah, yeah that that
Speaker 2: that's kind of thing where it's like that's just assumed
Speaker 2: by everyone that's talking, like, well, of course we're worried
Speaker 2: about gt A, so but yeah, these kinds of dates
Speaker 2: will be more common, although they've been more common in
Speaker 2: general recently where people in that state's pretty late. But
Speaker 2: you think that's what unforeseen circumstances means in the situations
Speaker 2: is GT six Can we cannot handle g T A
Speaker 2: six that actually rules? Did you guys see the photo
Speaker 2: shoot stuff and the dancing doll man? How are you
Speaker 2: feeling about dest ranting too and Kachin's latest efforts.
Speaker 4: That doll guy. I'm into that dude.
Speaker 2: He's he's a big fan of doll man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wanted him to be.
Speaker 5: It's like, remember the annoying head on your belt in
Speaker 5: Ragnarok and he just was like, he's great.
Speaker 4: It looks like that grounder is cracked.
Speaker 2: Be you could jump through.
Speaker 4: Shut up, let me beigure it out.
Speaker 2: Story is not annoying?
Speaker 4: Funny version of that for destranding to I I like
Speaker 4: that doll dude a lot.
Speaker 6: I feel like the PC version of Ragnarok had a toggle.
Speaker 2: To like they did Slider.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't want to go against the wind too much here,
Speaker 4: but I'm a little bum a little bit over all.
Speaker 2: The god you're such a funny Dutch kind of over
Speaker 2: you don't want to take fun polaroids of your friends
Speaker 2: with me? Okay, No, one said they were into that.
Speaker 2: Jan I don't want to be.
Speaker 4: Like dude with a little doll. Gut we're off on
Speaker 4: that one. I'm just gonna say it.
Speaker 5: I don't know a Pokemon snap layas to do, but
Speaker 5: I want to hang out with that doll dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does feel like he just didn't press the
Speaker 2: button that makes all those ladies show their feet. That's
Speaker 2: what that whole segment felt like.
Speaker 1: It was very awkward, just trying to capture friendship. I
Speaker 1: don't know why you're turning into something weird.
Speaker 2: You're right, that's this is all on me. And then
Speaker 2: Sony had their stay to play right after we did
Speaker 2: BombCast last week. Go to Yota is coming in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. Uh pstra but cld I wrote here DLC
Speaker 2: is coming with five speed runs just this fall date.
Speaker 2: Horizons zero Down Remastered is real. It's launching October thirty first,
Speaker 2: and then other things look cool. Monster Hunter Wilds a
Speaker 2: Lunar remastered collection.
Speaker 6: Is awesome. I'm excited. Yeah, can I just say Horizon Okay,
Speaker 6: so we all know. Horizon one came out the same
Speaker 6: week as Breath of the Wild. Horizon two came out
Speaker 6: same week of Eldin Ray Horizon remaster comes out same
Speaker 6: day as Dragon Age four.
Speaker 2: Yes, wow, they always find a way every time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Astrobo DLC continues to be the thing I'm most excited about.
Speaker 2: But uh yeah, Ghost to Uta looked fantastic. It really
Speaker 2: shod trailer. I have none like they show it like
Speaker 2: Astro No no for Yote.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah school Yeah, female protagonist, which has some people
Speaker 6: whining the usual sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, okay, yeah, kind of already attacking the voice artist,
Speaker 2: who seems incredible. Yeah, it takes place three hundred years later.
Speaker 2: There are like muskets, I think there's like guns and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. Yeah, so it's going to be, you know,
Speaker 2: a spiritual sequel in a lot of ways. But yeah, no,
Speaker 2: not a lot of connect the tissue beyond that, although
Speaker 2: as far as we could tell, who knows. That is
Speaker 2: probably a second half of the year game. I would
Speaker 2: imagine next year, yes, right, which.
Speaker 6: Is like depends on GTA is yeah, obviously yes, because
Speaker 6: it's easy to imagine a world in which they either
Speaker 6: bump it back or pull it forward depending when GTA,
Speaker 6: Like if GTA is September, which I know, I have
Speaker 6: a feeling it'll be delayed. I mean, this is not
Speaker 6: a Butta game, but if if they're like GTA f
Speaker 6: roxters like in March, GTA six is coming September whatever,
Speaker 6: it's very easy to imagine sucker Punch like pulling their
Speaker 6: game to August or pushing it to December or something
Speaker 6: like that. Good.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a pretty good state of play
Speaker 2: just because of Ghost and Astrobot and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But how are you all feeling about Sony's slate overall?
Speaker 2: I continue to be like, Hey, we're kicking it off
Speaker 2: with Ghost Uta. I bet there's a lot of other
Speaker 2: stuff in the works coming soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some interesting stuff in terms of like big things, though,
Speaker 3: you're desjointing two and I'll go so Yota, and it
Speaker 3: seems like to me those are both probably second half
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five games, so it could be kind of
Speaker 3: and there's already been a lot of these. It seems
Speaker 3: like it could be another pretty big drought in terms
Speaker 3: of big first party PlayStation studios releases until we get
Speaker 3: to that second half of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Again, I don't know why I've suddenly become Horizon curious
Speaker 2: what happens play play the Lego game. It's really funny.
Speaker 6: Okay, when you hit a certain age jam, most men
Speaker 6: go through certain changes and become little Horizon curious.
Speaker 2: They acknowledge their regrets in life. Absolutely.
Speaker 6: The real question that I'm asking is is Naughty Dog
Speaker 6: going to miss this generation?
Speaker 2: Yeah? We've been wondering that constantly. We bring that up
Speaker 2: in pretty much every time we talk about Sony. It's like,
Speaker 2: we could go through this whole generation without a Naughty
Speaker 2: Dog game, and that feels like like an actual distinct possibility.
Speaker 3: I get that things are have exponentially gotten more expensive
Speaker 3: to able to make, but is wild to me that
Speaker 3: we could go from a PlayStation three with four major
Speaker 3: giant Naughty Dog releases to now zero in a console generation.
Speaker 4: You have some things like remakes and remasters. It's nice,
Speaker 4: but man, is that a problem.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's what happens in P three with so
Speaker 6: many years into an online game that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're saying PS three had four yeah, all three
Speaker 3: uncharteds and last of Us Yeah wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean a lot of factors here, right, Like one
Speaker 6: is that people were crunching a lot more in the
Speaker 6: mid two thousands than they hopefully are today. And another
Speaker 6: is that, yeah, like the the costs are just so
Speaker 6: astronomical these days. And the thing is like a lot
Speaker 6: of these companies they hire more people to get like
Speaker 6: the graphical fidelity up and to get to try to
Speaker 6: produce a lot more content for their games, and hiring
Speaker 6: more people can make games even slower to make because
Speaker 6: you have this like these communication challenges and all of
Speaker 6: this middle management you have to install, and it can
Speaker 6: create all sorts of like blocks in the pipe.
Speaker 2: And it creates like a need for these remasters to
Speaker 2: sort of train people on their processes, and so it
Speaker 2: takes even longer because these things start to get in
Speaker 2: the way when they were supposed to be the solution.
Speaker 6: And you combine that with the fact that like a
Speaker 6: team might spend seven years on a suicide squad and
Speaker 6: then it completely flops, and it's just like, yeah, we
Speaker 6: talked earlier about lack of sustainability in the video game industry.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, you have this is it? Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is this is all that like just in one spot.
Speaker 2: All right, Jane, I'm gonna say that does it for
Speaker 2: the news. I'mone hand the show back over to you.
Speaker 1: Bud Oki dokie this this podcast is getting a little cranky.
Speaker 1: It needs to take a quick little nap and then
Speaker 1: we'll read one email, uh and the show. It better
Speaker 1: be a good one right after this. Emails Pomcasti giant
Speaker 1: bomb dot com is the email address to send your
Speaker 1: emails to Please, for the love of God, stop fucking
Speaker 1: signing us up for so many lists. This is my
Speaker 1: actual public cry for help to stop.
Speaker 2: And this is when you have learned that you cannot
Speaker 2: acknowledge it. You have to ignore it. It is a
Speaker 2: temper tantrum they're throwing and you just have to pretend
Speaker 2: it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: In one in a span of five minutes, we got
Speaker 1: signed up for ten different newsletters and then I had
Speaker 1: to go in and unsubscribe us because this is the
Speaker 1: reaction they want.
Speaker 2: This is it.
Speaker 6: They love mentioning it. Yeah, triggers more.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to try a new style of parenting.
Speaker 2: It's gonna work. This is work.
Speaker 6: This is it.
Speaker 2: You're gonna break break after lipshits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, all right, And we just got signed up
Speaker 1: for three more fishing magazines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really, I'm going.
Speaker 4: To really get into fishing, like in about fifteen years.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 2: I can't wait, Mikey, I will have a newsletter printed
Speaker 2: out ready for you to go. Oh yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: The one email we will read for this show is
Speaker 1: a hot dog is the natural enemy of the hamburger?
Speaker 1: Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 4: I don't read two email.
Speaker 2: I feel like they can collaborate, their their their buddies.
Speaker 2: They together.
Speaker 1: I think, like the burgers is it's ego has gone
Speaker 1: too big. You know, we get a smash.
Speaker 2: Their natural enemy of a burger is a salad.
Speaker 5: Ever, was this a thing that everyone had when they
Speaker 5: were a kid, or is it just my dad? He
Speaker 5: didn't make a lot of stuff at him where he
Speaker 5: would take two hot dogs, okay, and he would slice it.
Speaker 5: I haven't thought of this in forever. Two hot dogs
Speaker 5: and slice them the long way, flop them open, throw
Speaker 5: them on a bun, and throw a slice of cheese
Speaker 5: on it. And that's kind of like a hot dog cheeseburger, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 5: second cheeseburger form.
Speaker 4: It's fine, that's just like a hot dog.
Speaker 2: Two hot dogs. But when you slice them the long
Speaker 2: way and flop them open, there's hot dogs next to
Speaker 2: each other. Do you need to make a burger. I
Speaker 2: don't think that makes the.
Speaker 4: Move, but flopped open, so it's like it's form widthwise, you.
Speaker 1: Could still use one hot dog, cut them hot dog
Speaker 1: style and then hamburger style to make a raft of
Speaker 1: four hot dogs, and then that's a hamburger raft.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hot dog.
Speaker 6: There's a famous restaurant near me called Walter's hot Dogs
Speaker 6: here in Mamarnick, New York. And what they do is
Speaker 6: they cut the hot dog open and then like grill
Speaker 6: it on butter and then serve it un abundance.
Speaker 2: There was a good hot dogs that really good.
Speaker 6: And then also I assume at least some of you
Speaker 6: watched The Sopranos. The Sopranos has a truly disgusting moment
Speaker 6: where Carmela makes for for a j Twinkie hot dog sandwich,
Speaker 6: which is a Twinkie cut open and then like a
Speaker 6: hot dog in its.
Speaker 2: Gross don't don't not until you try it. I'm okay.
Speaker 4: Actually, do hot dogs come fully cooked?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, get them up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I used to microwave in college, but like bacteria
Speaker 2: does not choose the hot dog naturally, so yeah, you're
Speaker 2: probably fine.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I could because I've never most of the
Speaker 5: time I haven't made me and god, you know twenty
Speaker 5: plus years probably so like I but I'm afraid of it,
Speaker 5: like salmonella stuff, and I.
Speaker 2: Know you're not gonna find like I get salmonilla from
Speaker 2: your hot dogs.
Speaker 3: I gotta thank doctor Ryan. And chat is that twinkie
Speaker 3: thing sounded so familiar to me? And I've never seen
Speaker 3: the Sopranos and it was in You Ain't Chef the
Speaker 3: weird al movies.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe on Sopranos is Devil Dogs. I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 6: But anyway, Dan, have you when you say even made meat?
Speaker 6: Are you saying that Bianca makes all the meat?
Speaker 2: Are you are?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 5: No, we different things, And like I have like a
Speaker 5: meal service thing that I just all of my dinners
Speaker 5: are just from this like meal service thing. It just
Speaker 5: shows up in the maimatch every single thing.
Speaker 6: I would talk to you about your food habits for
Speaker 6: like a two hour podcasts every week because every well.
Speaker 2: You should listen to this week's voicemail, dump trunk, next ye, reaction, next.
Speaker 5: Week, next next week, next week, Okay, yes, yeah, I
Speaker 5: mean the only thing I'm comfortable doing these days. Cooking wise,
Speaker 5: is that casey Joe's barbecue that like comes fully cooked
Speaker 5: and literally all your bag is like boil water and
Speaker 5: then just throw it in and let it sit for.
Speaker 4: Twenty minutes in the bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Even the like turning on the stove part is like
Speaker 5: kind of scares me to do if Punk's not home. So,
Speaker 5: but the thing is you get to turn it off
Speaker 5: and then it just sits in the hot water for
Speaker 5: twenty minutes, So it's like, okay, there's not like an
Speaker 5: active flame for twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: That would probably be too much.
Speaker 2: Can you describe to me the process of boiling an egg?
Speaker 2: What do you think it is.
Speaker 4: Boiling an egg?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 4: Is that hard boiled? Soft boiled?
Speaker 2: What is that? Either one?
Speaker 5: Does it make a difference if I never had no
Speaker 5: hard boiled oiled, Dan, I don't think I've had hard
Speaker 5: boiled or soft ooil.
Speaker 4: Did they look the same.
Speaker 2: Form?
Speaker 5: Yeah, both hard boiled and a soft boiled both looks
Speaker 5: like an egg, yeah, yeah, showing everything.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but that soft oiled is like a looser yolk
Speaker 6: in the middle.
Speaker 2: Yes, a looser yolk.
Speaker 6: It'll be less cut.
Speaker 5: You probably boil water and then salt in it. So
Speaker 5: doesn't stick to the bottom.
Speaker 6: That's okay, you're.
Speaker 2: Salt.
Speaker 5: Actual cooking I know how to do is like I
Speaker 5: do the velveto shells and cheese. Now I know to
Speaker 5: put a little bit of salt in there so the
Speaker 5: noodles don't stick.
Speaker 4: No season the noodles has nothing to do with sticking
Speaker 4: to the bottom. What are you talking about?
Speaker 6: But the salted This might be an urban legend, but
Speaker 6: the salt in the water can help you peel the
Speaker 6: shell more, I believe.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: I thought I was keep it from sticking on the
Speaker 4: to the bottom of the bottom.
Speaker 6: Something will only stick to the bottom of the pan
Speaker 6: if you run out of water, they can kind of
Speaker 6: on the bottom.
Speaker 2: Do I need to do this thing?
Speaker 4: Do I need to put the salt in there? It
Speaker 4: seasons the noodles. Even water, wouldn't it come off in
Speaker 4: the draining.
Speaker 3: So noodles absorb the water when they cook, that's why
Speaker 3: they're holding And.
Speaker 4: If it's salty water, then it absorbs the salt.
Speaker 2: Also. Oh that's cool, okay, So I should do more.
Speaker 2: I can do it.
Speaker 5: I didn't know it was impacting the taste, that's very much.
Speaker 5: So can I put like garlic salt in there.
Speaker 2: I would do that after Yeah, but what if I
Speaker 2: want to infuse it?
Speaker 6: Like if it's like suck it, you're losing a lot
Speaker 6: of the flavor.
Speaker 2: I mean, like what you should do, like is finish
Speaker 2: all of your pasta.
Speaker 3: You should cook your pasta like a minute before or
Speaker 3: two before you think it's actually done, and then finish
Speaker 3: cooking it in the warm sauce because it'll absorb some
Speaker 3: of whatever that sauce is.
Speaker 2: And yes, that is the it's it's slipped back. Who's weirder?
Speaker 2: Dan Reikert with forty four, Mike Minaughti with twelve, and
Speaker 2: Jason Trier with three.
Speaker 5: Okay, I mean this is a new like I honestly
Speaker 5: between the Casey Joe's barbecue and the velveta shells and
Speaker 5: cheese thing, this is the most I've like cooked in decades.
Speaker 6: That is Casey j'es. Is that the barbecue we had
Speaker 6: when I came to your house a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yes. You can get it delivered and they
Speaker 2: delivered with dry ice and it's frozen in the bags
Speaker 2: And he's right, you just throw the bags in the
Speaker 2: boiling water. And that's why I'm going to do that
Speaker 2: every year for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Now it's dan when when we're all in town for
Speaker 1: the Game Awards, We're going you and I are going
Speaker 1: to make fried rice together. I would love that. I
Speaker 1: love fried rice and it's just an easy thing. We're
Speaker 1: going to walk through the process. Don't worry about anything.
Speaker 1: No google for eggs.
Speaker 2: Don't be scared when you see the eggs I put
Speaker 2: eggs and fried rice that you got to Yeah.
Speaker 5: I usually screwed out aside when I get trying to
Speaker 5: use food, I realized I don't know how the eggs.
Speaker 4: I like the peas and the eggs.
Speaker 5: I just kind of like shove them over to the side,
Speaker 5: and if there are any visible onions, I'll do that.
Speaker 6: But would get along well with my five year old.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't actually he would be for your children at
Speaker 2: all when he was at my house, Jason, he was
Speaker 2: the five year old. Specifically, she would be like, hey,
Speaker 2: look at the sonic doll that I love and be
Speaker 2: like that's Mario and she lost her mind and he
Speaker 2: would not let it go, and she wouldn't actually.
Speaker 5: Protected the whole time I was there, I didn't fucking
Speaker 5: break kay fame. Once she actually lost them before he did,
Speaker 5: which should tell you because like his daughter was screaming
Speaker 5: at the top for lungs and I turned to grab
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm sorry, I can't.
Speaker 2: I have to protect the business.
Speaker 4: I can't, like I'm not ever going to get the.
Speaker 1: We We can't gloss over the fact that Dan said
Speaker 1: the sentence, I don't know how rice happens.
Speaker 5: Which are well, I think at no step along the line.
Speaker 5: I don't know where it comes from. I don't know
Speaker 5: how you cook it. I don't know how it gets soft.
Speaker 5: I don't know how you flavor it. What we learned
Speaker 5: this week we learned I love Rice.
Speaker 1: We learned that Jason Schreyer is releasing a book next
Speaker 1: week called Play Nice The Rise Fall in Future of
Speaker 1: Blizzard Entertainment out next.
Speaker 2: Week October eighth. Where Rice comes from and then comes
Speaker 2: from you.
Speaker 6: Shred up my book into trees. It's actually called play Rice.
Speaker 4: You did it? Jason's Rice Grow in America?
Speaker 2: Uh, Jason work? Can folks find you on the internet?
Speaker 2: Where can folks pre order the book? Once again? Yeah?
Speaker 6: You can find me on the Triple Click podcast, which
Speaker 6: I'm about to record in like an hour. And I'm
Speaker 6: just gonna be completely drained. So that's gonna be fun. Sorry,
Speaker 6: this entire week for me is just a blur. So
Speaker 6: go check out Triple Click. We just made a super
Speaker 6: cool announcement where which is that me and my co
Speaker 6: host Kirk Hamilton and Madda Myers we are doing a
Speaker 6: three part like standalone kidnapped Matt Mercer, the kidnapped members
Speaker 6: that we're doing a D and D campaign And we
Speaker 6: were like, hey, we want to get a DM, why
Speaker 6: don't we just get the best DM in the world,
Speaker 6: And so we call that Met Mercer got him to
Speaker 6: come and do it for us. So that's gonna be
Speaker 6: super cool. And then uh yeah, the book play nice.
Speaker 6: You can get it in stores, pre order it at
Speaker 6: any store, any bookstore or Amazon or whatever you want.
Speaker 6: Also digital version and audio version. I know a lot
Speaker 6: of a lot of people are into audio. Fun fact,
Speaker 6: like so many people are buying audio books these days
Speaker 6: that it's like almost comparable to print sale. It's like
Speaker 6: a huge chunk of the book market.
Speaker 4: I'm a big audiobook It's great you listen.
Speaker 6: To audiobook while you're driving, you can listen while you're
Speaker 6: playing games. It's really cool. And also like my book
Speaker 6: happens to come out the same day as a new
Speaker 6: Diablo four expansion, so you can listen to it while
Speaker 6: you play Diaba four, which I think is perfect. So yeah,
Speaker 6: Ray Chase, like I said.
Speaker 4: Before, is the narrator.
Speaker 6: He's really really good. I love his work and he's
Speaker 6: really good reading the book. So you can go check
Speaker 6: that out too.
Speaker 2: Awesome, fantastic, Jason, sir, thank you for joining us on
Speaker 2: the show today.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me guys. Thanks please, if we can
Speaker 6: schedule like a two hour just let's talk to Dan about.
Speaker 2: Food and his and we'll make it happen. I've been
Speaker 2: for the last five minutes. I said, it's a semi
Speaker 2: aquatic plant. What does that mean to you?
Speaker 4: That makes me think it's like seaweed? It doesn't grow underwater?
Speaker 2: Does it?
Speaker 4: Semi aquatic?
Speaker 2: Semi aquatic? So a little bit, it's like amphibious. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't climb onto the land. Okay, what's the rice
Speaker 2: infrastructure week here at dot com?
Speaker 4: I don't have any calories, cake, I'm thinking of different.
Speaker 1: Let's see it very another episode of the Giant Podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank your special guests, Jason. With these oh crap, they're
Speaker 2: like crap no with ds, now with ease. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: What do you say now with these nuts? Let's podcast
Speaker 2: somebody