Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, Welcome to another great episode of Uncanny Media.
Speaker 1: The show. It's me. You're good, buddy, Spider. I'm in
Speaker 1: a great mood. I mean, well, maybe not a great mood,
Speaker 1: but I'm in a good mood. I'm doing okay, doing great.
Speaker 1: I'm doing good. I'm having fun. I'm having a good time.
Speaker 1: I just finished a gameplay on Twitch. If you are
Speaker 1: not watching me on Twitch, you can go to twitch
Speaker 1: dot tv slash d mg rg N and subscribe to
Speaker 1: watch my gaming videos, or you can continue to watch
Speaker 1: them on YouTube after the fact as Spider does things,
Speaker 1: because that's what we do there. I have just the
Speaker 1: barest last bit of a cough left over from being sick.
Speaker 1: I'm not sick anymore. I just have this last bit
Speaker 1: of cough because that's what happens. And I'm feeling pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's been a good day, it was. I'm tired, but
Speaker 1: not I don't know. I don't feel like I should
Speaker 1: be as tired as I am. It's just anytime I
Speaker 1: make a long drive there and back again to a
Speaker 1: place and then I get I just feel like I'm
Speaker 1: off my game. I feel tired, but I've adjusted the
Speaker 1: volumes a little bit to make the intro and outro
Speaker 1: music match my main speaking here, because I realized that
Speaker 1: under the new system here, the intro and outro is
Speaker 1: probably a lot louder than what you're hearing me speak.
Speaker 1: So this way the volumes should be better. If you
Speaker 1: have any comments about that, definitely let me know. You
Speaker 1: can either comment on this episode either on Spreaker where
Speaker 1: it initially airs, or on Spotify or on YouTube when
Speaker 1: it shows up there, or you can send me an
Speaker 1: email at Spider Underscore Voice at yahoo dot com. So
Speaker 1: here we are. I've got cats to pet next to me,
Speaker 1: bellies to rub, all that good stuff. We are experiencing
Speaker 1: a heat way eve here in Ohio. Summer is definitely
Speaker 1: here and it's getting hot. It is the week before
Speaker 1: the fourth of July. We're doing it's as of this recording,
Speaker 1: it's July first. It's the early hours of the morning.
Speaker 1: You will hear this episode, hopefully at eleven am. I've
Speaker 1: noticed a weird thing with my new setup. Despite the
Speaker 1: fact that I schedule these episodes for eleven am, it
Speaker 1: then schedules them for two pm for some reason. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I'm gonna have to go in and
Speaker 1: play with the settings a little bit. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the deal is. But this Saturday is July fourth,
Speaker 1: and if you're international, you might not care about the
Speaker 1: significance of that, But if you're here in the United
Speaker 1: States messically with me, that means it's Independence Day. July fourth.
Speaker 1: Independence Day. That is the day in seventeen seventy six
Speaker 1: that the United States declared its independence from England, which
Speaker 1: was not yet the United Kingdom. It was still England.
Speaker 1: And regardless of how you feel about patriotism and all
Speaker 1: that other kind of stuff, I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: into all that. I'm not the most Like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not the most patriotic guy in the world. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be going out and wearing American flag
Speaker 1: clothing and going to parades and shooting off fireworks in
Speaker 1: my yard. I don't really do all that. It's not
Speaker 1: a big deal for me. But there will be fireworks
Speaker 1: in this town on the second. For some reason, I
Speaker 1: don't recall when it's been several years now, and I
Speaker 1: don't know the exact year that I first noticed it.
Speaker 1: But here in town, they said slowly been scheduling their
Speaker 1: festivities of the fourth of July on a day other
Speaker 1: than the fourth of July. Last year, I think it
Speaker 1: was on the third, and this year it's on the second.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's maybe because maybe it's
Speaker 1: weather concerns, or maybe it's because the city doesn't work
Speaker 1: on the weekend, so they don't want to do things
Speaker 1: on the weekend. They want to do it during city
Speaker 1: working hours. I don't know what it is, because it
Speaker 1: would be on Thursday of this week. That's the second.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, so I don't know. We don't usually go down.
Speaker 1: They always do a celebration down at the McKinley monument.
Speaker 1: It's a monument to mister William McKinley. He was a
Speaker 1: president of the United States. I don't remember which one. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm showing just how poor of a patriot I am,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but he was a president at some point
Speaker 1: and this was his hometown, was here in where I live,
Speaker 1: and so we have a big monument to him just
Speaker 1: down the street. It's not that far. It's in a
Speaker 1: park that we like to go to. My daughter likes
Speaker 1: to go down to the park and play and walk around,
Speaker 1: and they got bike paths. It's a nice park. It's
Speaker 1: a nice little spot and they down there every year
Speaker 1: on whatever day they decide they do the Independence Day
Speaker 1: fireworks celebration. The city puts on fireworks, and so we
Speaker 1: will probably we won't go down there because unfortunately, my
Speaker 1: town has a history of criminal activity happening around that.
Speaker 1: Areas get broken into and fights happen, and the kids
Speaker 1: get out of control and things, because there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff for young adults and teenagers to do
Speaker 1: in this town. Unfortunately, there's not many places they can go,
Speaker 1: so they get into trouble because they're wound up and
Speaker 1: a lot of I won't say that it's always an issue.
Speaker 1: You don't hear about something every single year, but you
Speaker 1: do hear something every few years that's just off putting,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to put my family at risk.
Speaker 1: So we usually go out on my porch and we
Speaker 1: can see most of the fireworks from here. We don't
Speaker 1: get all the like they do a whole big event.
Speaker 1: They do bands, they do food trucks, they do all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. And then this year they're having like
Speaker 1: a local orchestra doing patriotic songs like America the Beautiful
Speaker 1: and the National Anthem, and then things like that. So
Speaker 1: we won't get to see all of that, mostly likely,
Speaker 1: but we will see the fireworks from out on the
Speaker 1: porch because we have a pretty clear, unobstructed view down
Speaker 1: the street of the sky in that area. So that's
Speaker 1: what we're going to do. Now, this is a pretty
Speaker 1: momentication this year. Again, if you're in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, you might not really care at all, and
Speaker 1: that's fine, you don't have to pay any attention. But
Speaker 1: here in the United States, it's the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary, and there's a big name for it, the Something.
Speaker 1: It's not the bi centennial, but it's like the something
Speaker 1: centennial of the founding of the of this country. It's
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty years we have been a country
Speaker 1: here in the United States, which is interesting. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of other countries in the world that have been countries
Speaker 1: or at least been regional recognized like this has been.
Speaker 1: And you, you, your people have lived here for all
Speaker 1: of this time. You've had a government for all of
Speaker 1: this time in some way, shape or form longer than that.
Speaker 1: In the Middle East, there's places that have been around
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, like Egypt, the country of Egypt,
Speaker 1: whether it's was the size it is now or whether
Speaker 1: it was big or smaller throughout history, it has been
Speaker 1: a thing. Egypt has been a thing for many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many many years, thousands of years. So we don't have that.
Speaker 1: We're still the new kids on the block two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years. But it's a big occasion and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are going to be celebrating, and there's
Speaker 1: also people who are upset because, you know, we got
Speaker 1: various political issues going on here in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it is what it is. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: get into that part of it on this show. I
Speaker 1: do comment on certain politics sometimes, like the grocery prices
Speaker 1: and the gas prices and that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 1: various if a decision by the administration, whatever the administration
Speaker 1: that might be currently does something stupid that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk about it. I talked about it the last two
Speaker 1: administrations and then here we are with this one, and
Speaker 1: you know, dumb things happen, but I'm not gonna go
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to go on a rant
Speaker 1: about it because that's not what we do here. We
Speaker 1: are not political commentators here on Uncanny Media. The show
Speaker 1: as far as that goes, right, now, there's something else
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. There's a few things I
Speaker 1: want to talk about. I am going to address something
Speaker 1: about the local wildlife again, because they continue to do
Speaker 1: what they do and they have some serious things going on.
Speaker 1: They're pretty fractured at the moment, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about them. But first I want to talk about
Speaker 1: an institution. It's a product that I have seen and
Speaker 1: been aware of in my grocery store for as long
Speaker 1: as I've been alive, and it has a history. This
Speaker 1: stretches farther back from long before I was even born,
Speaker 1: for many many, many many years, and I was shocked
Speaker 1: to find out that this business, this company that has
Speaker 1: been around for so long, with such a particularly basic
Speaker 1: product that most people need or most people have every day,
Speaker 1: is looking to liquidate. It's looking to be fit. And
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Schwables Bread Company. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's their I don't know what they're official, like
Speaker 1: what the whole time is. I know they're called Schwabels.
Speaker 1: They make bread, they make bread products. They have been
Speaker 1: making bread products for one hundred and twenty some years,
Speaker 1: and to this day, there's never been a time when
Speaker 1: I've been aware of products in the grocery store. Ever
Speaker 1: since I was aware as a child on up of
Speaker 1: different brands in the grocery store. Schwables branded bread products
Speaker 1: were there in the grocery store, in every grocery store.
Speaker 1: They're they're from this area. They're from I think they're
Speaker 1: from Youngstown, Ohio. I'm gonna look it up real quick
Speaker 1: because it's it's really local, like it's super local as
Speaker 1: far as these things go, these things go, I'm stuck
Speaker 1: in the Schwebbels. Let's see. It's. Yeah, it's based in Youngstown, Youngstown, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and it serves western Pennsylvania, and it serves Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and New York. And so you might not know about
Speaker 1: it if you're not within the Tri state area. That's
Speaker 1: what we call it. We call it the Tri state area, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: New York. But they have been, they've been making bread
Speaker 1: and I have always. We had them growing up when
Speaker 1: I still lived at my parents' where my parents lived,
Speaker 1: we had Schwebel's bread off and on. I mean, they
Speaker 1: weren't the cheapest you could get, but they weren't like gourmet.
Speaker 1: They weren't super like expensive, but they they've always been around.
Speaker 1: It's one hundred and twenty years and now it's closing
Speaker 1: because they said they were citing years of significant operational
Speaker 1: and financial constraints. It's the Schwebel Baking Company is the
Speaker 1: actual official landform and they say they have no other
Speaker 1: option this is from the press release, but to wind
Speaker 1: down operations and pursue a formal liquidation in the coming weeks.
Speaker 1: And this happened a week ago, and they said it
Speaker 1: has faced challenges like aging, manufacturing facilities and equipment costs,
Speaker 1: the labor contracts and pension obligations in lower demand for
Speaker 1: traditional bakery and bread products. And it's going to happen
Speaker 1: so quickly that it said it's going to operate through
Speaker 1: the fourth of July weekend and then wind down operations
Speaker 1: throughout the summer at its bakeries in Youngstown and Hebron, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: as well as its resale retail stores and distribution centers.
Speaker 1: And this is this is a huge deal. This is
Speaker 1: a big deal because again, this is a company and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like how I felt when Sears and
Speaker 1: Kmart started falling apart, because when I was growing up
Speaker 1: as a kid. You had the Sears catalog every year
Speaker 1: around Chris was huge catalog full of stuff. Sears sold
Speaker 1: so many things, and Camart. We would go to Kmart
Speaker 1: for things all the time. And they weren't the same
Speaker 1: company back then, but they were still too like pillars
Speaker 1: of the retail community. And then Walmart came along, and
Speaker 1: everybody likes to blame Walmart, but Walmart is the isn't
Speaker 1: the reason that Camart and Sears went out of business.
Speaker 1: Kmart and Sears went out of business because Eddie Lampert,
Speaker 1: who's a dickhead. He's a hedge fund manager, that's what
Speaker 1: he was. He started buying up different store chains because
Speaker 1: of their retip not because but because of their their
Speaker 1: property value, their realty value, and he would buy up
Speaker 1: their property. He would run the stores into the ground
Speaker 1: and then he can sell things off piecemeal and get
Speaker 1: insurance kickbacks and a bunch of other stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: Eddie Lampert. He's the reason that Sears and Kmart are gone.
Speaker 1: It's not Walmart. I mean, Walmart put a strain on
Speaker 1: all the little stores like that because of how it
Speaker 1: did its pricing and all this stuff. And I don't
Speaker 1: shop at Walmart. But Walmart is not the main reason
Speaker 1: that places like Sears and Kmart went out of business.
Speaker 1: It's one the fault of mister Eddie Lampert and his
Speaker 1: leadership team, because he's a piece of shit. To be perfectly,
Speaker 1: to be perfectly frank here, he is a piece of shit.
Speaker 1: And if he ever hears this, then by all means
Speaker 1: he's welcome to try to assume me for slander and deformation.
Speaker 1: But everybody knows he's a piece of shit. So it's
Speaker 1: a verifiable fact, is what it is. And to get
Speaker 1: sued for slander and whatever, you have to be spouting
Speaker 1: things that are not facts. And I've only said facts.
Speaker 1: I used to work for Sears. I know how it was.
Speaker 1: But this is a lot like that. It's a lot
Speaker 1: like seeing an institution of the United States, something that's
Speaker 1: been around for so long, just fall apart and collapse.
Speaker 1: And I don't think this is because of bad leadership.
Speaker 1: I think it's just because there's a few reasons. For one,
Speaker 1: the price is keep going up, of course. For another,
Speaker 1: there's been plenty of dieting fads over the last ten
Speaker 1: to twenty years that have said cut out carbs, cut
Speaker 1: out brands, cut out this cut out that, and it
Speaker 1: has affected the baking market, I guess you could say,
Speaker 1: and a lot of things have contributed, and I'm kind
Speaker 1: of I'm it depresses me a little bit. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I am depressed in like a mental health kind
Speaker 1: of crisis way, like you don't have to worry about me.
Speaker 1: I'm just it brings me down to know that Schwaebels
Speaker 1: is not going to be around, even though I wasn't
Speaker 1: buying their product a lot over the last several years
Speaker 1: because of pricing constraints. I've been buying the store brand bread,
Speaker 1: which is like a dollar sixty nine for a loaf
Speaker 1: of white bread versus three forty nine for the Schwebels see.
Speaker 1: And now I kind of feel bad about it because
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like maybe if more people spent
Speaker 1: that extra for the Schwabels, maybe they'd still be in business.
Speaker 1: But maybe not. You know, maybe that's part of the
Speaker 1: issue that they couldn't bring their prices down. And it's
Speaker 1: not that they don't make good stuff, because their bread
Speaker 1: is good. It's good bread. It's not it's not like
Speaker 1: it's overpriced and not worth it. It's good bread. But
Speaker 1: you got to save a little bit of money somehow,
Speaker 1: don't you so? And I don't want to justify it either,
Speaker 1: because now I'm kind of like, could I have done
Speaker 1: more to keep them in business? But I'm just one person.
Speaker 1: But if me as a person, and my neighbor is
Speaker 1: a person, and that neighbor is a person, and this
Speaker 1: other person down the street is a person, and whoever's
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, if we all were buying Schwabel's bread,
Speaker 1: then maybe their prices wouldn't be as high, and maybe
Speaker 1: they would be selling more in the long run and
Speaker 1: they would still be around. But after the fourth of July,
Speaker 1: they're going to wind down one hundred and twenty years.
Speaker 1: And when I say I have never I don't remember
Speaker 1: a time when I have not seen them in stores.
Speaker 1: That's an absolute fact. I don't remember a time. From
Speaker 1: my entirety, my entire forty plus years growing up, Schwables
Speaker 1: bread has always been in the store, whether I bought
Speaker 1: it or not, It's always been there. And now it's
Speaker 1: not going to be. And that's it's a weird feeling.
Speaker 1: It's a tough feeling. I I feel bad. I feel
Speaker 1: bad about it, Like I don't know excuse me. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I still have this light cough and still
Speaker 1: throwing me off a little bit. Another thing that's interesting,
Speaker 1: not quite as this isn't quite as American in an
Speaker 1: American institution, but it's still been big news. We've talked
Speaker 1: over the past year or two in this podcast about
Speaker 1: the gaming industry and how people are, how the landscape
Speaker 1: has changed. People are more upset with how games are
Speaker 1: being developed and the messaging in games, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Setup and there's been there's been looming on the horizon.
Speaker 1: There's been a prediction that the gaming not community, but
Speaker 1: the gaming landscape was going to collapse based on a
Speaker 1: lot of factors, based on people not buying what was
Speaker 1: being sold, stuff being too expensive, and the various messaging
Speaker 1: coming out in various games turning people off, and the
Speaker 1: whole gaming landscape was predicted to be stressed to the
Speaker 1: point where it was going to collapse. And right now
Speaker 1: I believe we are seeing the beginning of that collapse
Speaker 1: for a multitude of reasons that I had not expected. Now,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, a lot of studios are there's
Speaker 1: a lot of game studios being reorganized, having people laid
Speaker 1: off and having their values quote unquote looked at and
Speaker 1: examined because there's been a there's been a span of
Speaker 1: time where a multitude of the biggest gaming producers and
Speaker 1: the biggest gaming owners and the console developers, we're trying
Speaker 1: to be more progressive. And I don't want to get
Speaker 1: people riled up when I say that, I mean that
Speaker 1: in a way that they were trying to be more
Speaker 1: This is the language that they're using. This is not
Speaker 1: my language. This is just I'm quoting what they have said.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be more inclusive, they wanted to be
Speaker 1: more available, they wanted to be more open minded, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so there were a lot of games
Speaker 1: that came out that catered to more marginalized communities, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, let's fine, everybody should be able to experience
Speaker 1: a game that they enjoy and maybe put themselves into
Speaker 1: the shoes of the people in the game, you know,
Speaker 1: But it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
Speaker 1: The extremes that the various studios went to, and they
Speaker 1: also were not apologetic in that if people said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't really why I play games. I
Speaker 1: don't really care for this. Then these response usually was aggressive, Well,
Speaker 1: if you don't like games like this, you must be
Speaker 1: a bigot, or you must be an awful person or whatever,
Speaker 1: And there was no consideration for anybody other than the
Speaker 1: team making the game, because they wanted to make it
Speaker 1: the way they wanted to make it. There they had
Speaker 1: a message that they wanted to put out and that's
Speaker 1: what it was. And I'm not railing against quote unquote
Speaker 1: wokeism or any of that kind of stuff. I don't
Speaker 1: do that. I'm a fairly open minded guy. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't care, for example, and I don't want people to
Speaker 1: get upset, but I'm just gonna say it. I don't
Speaker 1: care if there's a trans character in a video game. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't care if there is a gay character in
Speaker 1: a video game, or a lesbian character, or a bisexual
Speaker 1: character or whatever. I don't care if there's a straight
Speaker 1: person in a video game. I don't care. None of
Speaker 1: that matters to me. If I'm playing a game that
Speaker 1: has romantic encounters, then it depends on if the game
Speaker 1: is for a certain group of people and the only
Speaker 1: romantic encounters in the game, or for that group of people,
Speaker 1: I have the choice not to play that game because
Speaker 1: I don't identify with it, and that's fine. I'm not
Speaker 1: mad at the game. I don't hate it. I don't care.
Speaker 1: It's for a certain group of people and they could
Speaker 1: play it, and I don't care. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there should be options for everybody. I don't play games
Speaker 1: for the romance options. I'll say that. First off. I
Speaker 1: play shooters usually, I'll play a lot of RPGs, and
Speaker 1: a lot of RPGs do have romance options, and if
Speaker 1: it's part of the story and whatnot, I'll indulge in
Speaker 1: that kind of thing myself. But I don't specifically look
Speaker 1: at games and say, this game lets me romance this
Speaker 1: type of person. I would love to play that game
Speaker 1: because that's what I like to play. I don't play
Speaker 1: dating simulators. I don't. You know, that's not my thing.
Speaker 1: If that's what you're into, cool, you should have options.
Speaker 1: You should definitely have options if you want to be
Speaker 1: able to play that kind of game. But I don't.
Speaker 1: So I don't hate it, but I don't seek it out.
Speaker 1: So I'm not railing against that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: I have noticed I have noticed over the past several
Speaker 1: years that there have been games that have come out,
Speaker 1: and whether you wanted to play a style of game
Speaker 1: like that or not, the various talking points were put
Speaker 1: towards you where they were unavoidable, where you would be
Speaker 1: playing the game and then somebody would mentioned, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't like that because I'm this kind
Speaker 1: of a person blah blah blah, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times it breaks the immersion. A lot of the times
Speaker 1: it's not part of the story. It's a character just
Speaker 1: injecting some personal thing into it that hadn't come up naturally.
Speaker 1: If you're in a game and it's a romantic situation
Speaker 1: and then it comes up, hey, you know, I'm this
Speaker 1: kind of a person. Is that's still okay with you?
Speaker 1: And you have the choice to be like, oh, well
Speaker 1: that's what I'm into or I'm not really into that,
Speaker 1: and then you move on in separate ways. And as
Speaker 1: far as the characters go, that's fine, that's natural. But
Speaker 1: if it's a constantly like I have to tell you
Speaker 1: at every particular occasion that I am this kind of
Speaker 1: a person so to make sure that you respect it,
Speaker 1: that's heavy handed. And that's not why I play video games,
Speaker 1: and that's why not why a lot of people play
Speaker 1: games not People don't like to have that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff just like thrown at them, whether it's straight or
Speaker 1: LGBT or whatever. Nobody on any side of the issue
Speaker 1: wants all of that just thrown at them constantly. And
Speaker 1: that's all of it. Unless you've made that your entire identity,
Speaker 1: which that's your own personal business. I think you could
Speaker 1: do more with your life outside of that. You're limiting
Speaker 1: yourself a little bit by making your your gender and
Speaker 1: sexuality preferences your entire personality. But I mean, if that's
Speaker 1: what you want to do, that's what you want to do.
Speaker 1: I guess we're just not probably gonna associate that much.
Speaker 1: And that's not me hating on you. That's just saying
Speaker 1: I don't I don't inject gender and sexuality in every
Speaker 1: facet facet of my life. And maybe I'm just ignorant.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm just maybe I just don't understand, which is
Speaker 1: a fair thing to say. I'm not gonna argue with
Speaker 1: you about it. I'm not gonna agree with you necessarily,
Speaker 1: but I'm also not gonna fight with you about it because,
Speaker 1: excuse me, because I don't understand how certain people feel
Speaker 1: if I'm not of the mindset of those people, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna try. I'm just gonna stay in
Speaker 1: my life lane and stick to what I know, and
Speaker 1: stick to how I feel, and stick to how I
Speaker 1: identify and that kind of stuff, right, because that's fair.
Speaker 1: That's a fair game. And I'm gonna let you do you.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you stay on your lane, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Excuse me, pardon me. But the thing about
Speaker 1: it is that the gaming ecosystem is falling apart because
Speaker 1: again of the shifting in various identity politics and things
Speaker 1: like that, but also in pricing. PlayStation Sony PlayStation has
Speaker 1: been known to close studios who've been underperforming relatively often, Okay,
Speaker 1: and people people blame Xbox for this a lot, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to them because they're not safe from
Speaker 1: my scathing retorts here. But people will blame Xbox because
Speaker 1: they're more in the news about it. But Sony has
Speaker 1: been doing this for a long time as well. They'll
Speaker 1: buy up studios, they'll make games, and if the games
Speaker 1: don't do well, they'll start shutting down these studios. They'll
Speaker 1: start firing people, laying people off, switching people to different projects,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, and it's been a common thing
Speaker 1: for Sony for a long time. The whole Bungee destiny
Speaker 1: to debacle, I guess you could call it, is evidence
Speaker 1: of that. But a lot of that is Bungee's fault,
Speaker 1: because Bungee has never grown up. They were a bunch
Speaker 1: of kids who wanted to make video games that were
Speaker 1: not particularly They wanted to make mature video games in
Speaker 1: an immature way, and that obviously didn't work for them.
Speaker 1: They've lost money under every other publisher that they were
Speaker 1: a part of. They lost money under Xbox, they went independent,
Speaker 1: they lost money under Activision, they lost money under Sony,
Speaker 1: and now they're paying the price and most of their
Speaker 1: people are reassigned. Excuse me, the more I talk, the
Speaker 1: more it aggravates this little tickle in the throat where
Speaker 1: this last cough is. And I'm talking a lot so
Speaker 1: so Sony is dealing with its own issues. They still
Speaker 1: want to make live service games, even though several of
Speaker 1: the games that they've made live service have failed. Destiny
Speaker 1: Too itself wasn't necessarily a failure of a game, but
Speaker 1: a failure of the Studio, whereas Concord, if you remember,
Speaker 1: that was an absolute disaster for Sony and it was
Speaker 1: shut down very quickly. But they still want to put
Speaker 1: resources into Marathon, which is Bungee's current supported game, and
Speaker 1: they want to make more games like that. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna work out. I think the era
Speaker 1: of live service games is starting to end, and the
Speaker 1: big game console developers are slow to understand that people
Speaker 1: want more. They want games with depth. They don't want
Speaker 1: to do the grinding games all the time, the constant grind, grind, grind,
Speaker 1: grind grind, Souls like this and rogue like that and
Speaker 1: all this other stuff that people who are not into
Speaker 1: that anymore. A certain group of people are, but the
Speaker 1: vast majority are done with it. They're not buying it,
Speaker 1: they're not paying for it. They're tired of extraction shooters
Speaker 1: and batter Royale. They're done with it. So let's pivot
Speaker 1: and set our sites on Xbox. I am an Xbox player.
Speaker 1: I'm not a PlayStation player for the most part. I
Speaker 1: have a PlayStation three that's secondhand, and I had a
Speaker 1: PlayStation one when they were new, and I still have it.
Speaker 1: It's up in my attic. It's not in great shape,
Speaker 1: but I would still play it if I could. But
Speaker 1: I didn't get a PlayStation four. I didn't get a
Speaker 1: PlayStation five. I'm not gonna buy a PlayStation six whenever
Speaker 1: that comes out. I've been an Xbox player through every
Speaker 1: Xbox generation, from the original to the three sixty, to
Speaker 1: the Xbox One to the series X. Now Xbox apparently
Speaker 1: has been They kept focusing on online, online, online. You
Speaker 1: want to play your games online, blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and they kept pushing prices and doing different things, which
Speaker 1: irritated me, but I was like, whatever, you know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep going. They have their game Pass servis, which
Speaker 1: allows you to play games via a cloud for free
Speaker 1: if you're paying monthly for game Pass, so you can
Speaker 1: play it on pretty much any device that can handle
Speaker 1: the Xbox app, which is a neat idea. I approve
Speaker 1: that idea. I don't think it should be the exclusive focus,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a good idea. And the games
Speaker 1: that were coming out for game Pass for a number
Speaker 1: of years have been kind of like there's always been
Speaker 1: a few big ones because they have some studios that
Speaker 1: they purchased that they have exclusivity with and they can
Speaker 1: get some big Triple A games like Bethesda Games and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But that was the cat. I don't
Speaker 1: know what kind of a noise he just made, but
Speaker 1: there was always a bunch of like little basically trumped
Speaker 1: up mobile games on game Pass that were not work
Speaker 1: buying or playing even for free, that were just I
Speaker 1: don't know who green lit them, but they weren't great.
Speaker 1: And they've been like that for a number of years,
Speaker 1: and game Pass kept getting more and more expensive. It
Speaker 1: was like twelve ninety nine when I first got game
Speaker 1: Pass back in the day after I transitioned from Xbox
Speaker 1: Live Gold, and now it's up to it was up
Speaker 1: to twenty nine ninety nine. It was thirty dollars a month.
Speaker 1: But the recent there's a new there's a new CEO
Speaker 1: at Xbox and she's come in and she's changing things,
Speaker 1: she's making things a difference. She's like, we don't want
Speaker 1: to We're we're gonna focus on our core exclusives. We're
Speaker 1: gonna focus on Xbox as a popular brand. We're gonna
Speaker 1: focus on this and this. We're not gonna focus on
Speaker 1: diversifying quite so much. And the price of game Pass
Speaker 1: lowered to twenty two ninety nine, which is nice, or
Speaker 1: twenty three ninety nine. It's something that's within a dollar.
Speaker 1: It's twenty two twenty three nine nine something, which is nice.
Speaker 1: But they made other decisions, like before the Call of
Speaker 1: Duty franchise, which was done by Activision, was picked up
Speaker 1: by Microsoft Xbox, so they would hold it hostage against
Speaker 1: Sony for a certain amount of time and they would
Speaker 1: put it on game Pass on day one, So new
Speaker 1: Call of Duty game day one, you could play it
Speaker 1: for free if you had game Pass. I'm not a
Speaker 1: big fan of Call of Duty anymore, so not a
Speaker 1: big deal for me, but whatever. And they were losing
Speaker 1: a lot of money that way because Call of Duty
Speaker 1: games have not been very good, and so people were
Speaker 1: playing them for free and then deciding, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: don't care about this, and they weren't buying them after
Speaker 1: the fact. So Xbox has now decided to offset the
Speaker 1: cost of lowering the game pass price is now there's
Speaker 1: a full year of Call of Duty games, where the
Speaker 1: full year is that you have to pay for them
Speaker 1: to play them. You have to buy them after the
Speaker 1: first year, then they go to game Pass. So it's
Speaker 1: a year of exclusive like non freebies to try to
Speaker 1: get people to buy it first, which is kind of slimy,
Speaker 1: to be honest, to be perfectly fair for a franchise
Speaker 1: that isn't quite very good anymore. But unfortunately they're doing
Speaker 1: other things. And I'm fortunate in that I have had
Speaker 1: my Series X for a while. I paid like five
Speaker 1: point fifty for it, which is obnoxiously expensive for a console.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. I wasn't pleased with it at the time,
Speaker 1: but it was also a deal because I didn't get
Speaker 1: them when they were brand new, and the initial Series
Speaker 1: X was I don't know, four ninety nine or maybe
Speaker 1: four forty nine something like that sold out. Scalper's got
Speaker 1: a bunch of them, resold them. I bought mine on
Speaker 1: eBay for five point fifty, which is not that bad
Speaker 1: because a lot of people were reselling them for seven
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars. Now they raised the prices. Xbox has
Speaker 1: recently raised the prices. Microsoft has raised all of the
Speaker 1: prices of their Xbox consoles by about one hundred to
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty dollars per system. So the Series X,
Speaker 1: which I had gotten for five point fifty, it was
Speaker 1: like four ninety nine at retail if you could find one,
Speaker 1: and now it's going for like six fifty or seven
Speaker 1: fifty something like that. And there's an new console coming
Speaker 1: out very soon called the Steam Machine, and everybody's either
Speaker 1: excited or dreading. The Steam Machine is basically a particularly
Speaker 1: built all in one PC. You can't exchange parts out
Speaker 1: of it because it's built like a console. It's like
Speaker 1: a it's based off of PC specs, but it apparently
Speaker 1: performs slightly less than the current crop of PS five
Speaker 1: and Xbox Series X. The specs are a little bit lower. Okay,
Speaker 1: bear that in mind. It's connected to Steam. Steam is
Speaker 1: a game library that you sign up for, and I
Speaker 1: believe you can sign up for Steam itself free where
Speaker 1: it has discounts on the games, and the games go
Speaker 1: on your Steam library. It's basically PC's PC games, and
Speaker 1: I think if you pay a certain monthly amount above
Speaker 1: the free then you get discounts and all these big
Speaker 1: these these games. So they're a lot cheaper for the
Speaker 1: games individually than buying them on console, which are usually
Speaker 1: sixty to seventy dollars a piece. Right now, so the
Speaker 1: Steam Machine is supposed to spare people from having to
Speaker 1: buy a PC and put together the PC parts, you
Speaker 1: can just buy the Steam machine. It's like an all
Speaker 1: inclusive little console to run all your Steam games. The
Speaker 1: console is going to be between eleven hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. I cannot imagine spending that much on a
Speaker 1: gaming console, and it runs the games slightly worse than
Speaker 1: the current Series X and PlayStation five, but you'll get
Speaker 1: all the games at a discount because it's connected to
Speaker 1: your Steam library, which sells the games cheaper, and you
Speaker 1: get mod support and a bunch of other things. So
Speaker 1: the other consoles, unfortunately, rather than saying hey, look we're
Speaker 1: the cheaper option, we still play the games and they're great,
Speaker 1: they're increasing their prices because part of it is memory
Speaker 1: is going up. The cost of PC memory, which again
Speaker 1: is also for consoles. PC memory chips are going up.
Speaker 1: The cost of video cards is still obnoxiously expensive because
Speaker 1: of cryptocurrency using them as extra processing power, and the
Speaker 1: cost of AI because all of these consoles have to
Speaker 1: have AI somewhere on them. All of them are pushing
Speaker 1: the price up, and I honestly, I think if the
Speaker 1: choice is to stick with the console I have and
Speaker 1: never get the latest games ever again, or buy a
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars to fifteen hundred dollars console to play
Speaker 1: the latest games. I think I'll be done by in
Speaker 1: the latest games, because that's I have justified over the
Speaker 1: years the prices of consoles to a certain extent. But
Speaker 1: once you get into that one thousand dollars mark, that's
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. That's that's half of that's a little under
Speaker 1: half of a paycheck. And I know a lot of
Speaker 1: these people. You can break it up on a credit card,
Speaker 1: you can put it on payments, you can do all that,
Speaker 1: but that's not the point. Like, that's half of a paycheck,
Speaker 1: and they're so so many things right now that cost more.
Speaker 1: The grocery prices have not gone down. I know people
Speaker 1: are sick of hearing about it, but they have not
Speaker 1: gone down. I've read stories that the current administration is like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the grocery prices are great, and I'm like, where where
Speaker 1: are they great? Because here in Ohio there's still bad.
Speaker 1: I'm still spending too much for food, just for basic food.
Speaker 1: I'm not buying steaks, I'm not buying like high end anything.
Speaker 1: I'm buying cheap food and it's not cheap, so everything's
Speaker 1: going up and I can't justify spending that kind of
Speaker 1: money on a gaming console, no matter how much I
Speaker 1: like to play games. There's no way I can't justify that,
Speaker 1: so I won't. And on top of that, Microsoft is
Speaker 1: closing studios. They've laid off numerous people. Just like Sony
Speaker 1: laid off most of the people at Bungee, Microsoft has
Speaker 1: laid off numerous people and closed numerous studios and is
Speaker 1: looking to sell off other studios to recoup costs. And
Speaker 1: it's just it's more and more evidence that the reckoning
Speaker 1: of the gaming ecosystem has finally arrived. It's been talked
Speaker 1: about for a number of years that everything's gonna fall apart,
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be this great collapse, and I think
Speaker 1: it's here. I think it's here. I think we're finally
Speaker 1: getting to it where there's just a breaking point between
Speaker 1: the prices people are willing to spend for the content
Speaker 1: they're willing to get, and it's all falling apart, which
Speaker 1: is a shame because I've been a gaming person most
Speaker 1: of my life. I would play my dad's various PC
Speaker 1: incarnations as he learned how to build them, and how
Speaker 1: PC technology advanced over the years. From the late eighties
Speaker 1: on through the nineties and two thousands, I had a
Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System console. I had a PlayStation one. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been a gaming person my entire life, and then
Speaker 1: to see it in such bad shape now is it's disheartening.
Speaker 1: But if it's the choice between ending one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on a console and one thousand dollars on my bills
Speaker 1: and food and my utilities, I don't know where that
Speaker 1: money's going. It's not going towards a new console, and
Speaker 1: I will not feel bad about that one bed like
Speaker 1: I won't. I don't think games can get much better,
Speaker 1: to be honest. I mean, yeah, people can say, oh,
Speaker 1: they can get into four K and ak no it
Speaker 1: hyperrealism and whatnot, but I don't. This is as good
Speaker 1: as most games. I would want to look. The graphics
Speaker 1: are where I like them, So I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's a weird situation, and that ties
Speaker 1: into like there's so many things that I grew up
Speaker 1: with that are either not here anymore, or they're not
Speaker 1: going to be here anymore, or they're suffering some kind
Speaker 1: of vast change and division, the Schwabels Bread Company, the
Speaker 1: the gaming ecosystem, like everything is. It's a weird time
Speaker 1: for me and I'm sure for other people too. I
Speaker 1: don't want to make this just about me, of course,
Speaker 1: but it's a weird time. So what else do we
Speaker 1: want to talk about? To finish out the episode, We've
Speaker 1: got about ten minutes to go here, give or take.
Speaker 1: I was going to take talk more about the local wildlife,
Speaker 1: but I think I'll save those for next week because
Speaker 1: I'm sure there'll be more developments. These these folks are
Speaker 1: going through it. They are going through it, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's gonna be more to talk about from them
Speaker 1: next week. So I think i'll just let that stack
Speaker 1: up a little bit before we get into all that.
Speaker 1: Let's close with what I did today. Why am I tired?
Speaker 1: I was? I went to I went to visit my
Speaker 1: one of my sisters today. I have three sisters. Of course,
Speaker 1: one of them lives in Las Vegas, so I don't
Speaker 1: go to visit her very often. One of them lives
Speaker 1: in Menor, Ohio, north of here, by Cleveland, which is
Speaker 1: a heck of a drive from where I am, so
Speaker 1: I don't visit her much and she's usually busy with
Speaker 1: her own family stuff. So but I visited the other
Speaker 1: sister because you might remember I talked about we'd had
Speaker 1: some kittens and them and the mama cat show up
Speaker 1: in the backyard recently. This isn't the two boys that
Speaker 1: we adopted. Okay, this isn't the two boys. This was
Speaker 1: a whole separate band of kittens. There were three of
Speaker 1: them and the mama and I probably mentioned them, but
Speaker 1: this is how that story's progressing. I managed to capture
Speaker 1: them with my clever wiley e coyote style cage trap,
Speaker 1: which was not designed to catch them and get them
Speaker 1: get rid of them, but it was to catch them
Speaker 1: for their own safety so that they could be adopted.
Speaker 1: One of the kittens was adopted out. We were able
Speaker 1: to one of my wife's coworkers wanted a kitten, and
Speaker 1: he fit the bill, and we were like, okay, here
Speaker 1: you go. And he's living his best life. He's he's growing,
Speaker 1: he's happy, he's got lots of friend and she's doing great.
Speaker 1: The other two kittens and the mother we sent, we
Speaker 1: took to my sister because she is a part of
Speaker 1: a foster care program. She works with a local shelter
Speaker 1: where she lives, and she fosters kittens so that they're
Speaker 1: ready to She helps socialize them so that they're ready
Speaker 1: to be integrated into polite society and they can be
Speaker 1: adopted from them. So the mamma cat was is in
Speaker 1: the adoption system. She's part of the shelter system, so
Speaker 1: if she hasn't been adopted yet, she will be very soon.
Speaker 1: She's a sweetheart, she's great. She was she was spade
Speaker 1: so that she can't have more kittens, which is the
Speaker 1: responsible thing to do, right. The two kittens are a
Speaker 1: bit wild, so they've been living with my sister for
Speaker 1: a little while to get them acclimated, and it's been
Speaker 1: kind of a process. They've been wilder than usual. She
Speaker 1: gets some cats that take a little bit of extra
Speaker 1: care and they usually do well and then they're done.
Speaker 1: And these two have been rambunctious and they've been not
Speaker 1: trusting and they've been just obviously, they came from the outdoors,
Speaker 1: and they would have preferred to stay in the outdoors,
Speaker 1: I guess, but that's not how we do things. So
Speaker 1: we went out there, me and my daughter because my
Speaker 1: daughter wanted to check up and see how they were doing.
Speaker 1: Because she's sentimental, she's eleven. She loves kittens and cats,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to visit them. So we went out
Speaker 1: there spend about an hour or two so that she
Speaker 1: could see how they were adjusting. And they're getting there.
Speaker 1: They're getting there. They're not ready, but they will. They
Speaker 1: have such personalities like people don't think about the personalities
Speaker 1: with their pets all the time. Like the cats that
Speaker 1: I have, they're so different. They all have different ways
Speaker 1: of doing things and ways of behaving, and they just
Speaker 1: they're individuals. And these two kittens that my sister has there,
Speaker 1: they're individuals. They do their own thing. And so we
Speaker 1: went out there. She's about an hour an hour away,
Speaker 1: so we drove an hour out there, spent an hour
Speaker 1: or two out there, visited, came back, picked up some
Speaker 1: food from Burger King because it was late in the
Speaker 1: day and we hadn't had lunch and my daughter was hungry,
Speaker 1: and so we got lunch, and then her and her
Speaker 1: mom played Mario Party for hours because that's been their
Speaker 1: new thing. They've been playing Mario Party on the switch
Speaker 1: having having mama mama daughter time, which is good. I
Speaker 1: got some dishes done, I got some things done around
Speaker 1: the house, so it was kind of an an out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary day and it kind of threw me
Speaker 1: off my groove a little bit. But everything worked out
Speaker 1: good and we all had a good time. So that
Speaker 1: was my day. I'm ending the podcast tonight with how
Speaker 1: I usually begin because I usually talk about my day
Speaker 1: at the beginning, but we're talking about it at the end.
Speaker 1: And once again, it's going to be a heat wave
Speaker 1: this week. So the air conditioners are all on, and
Speaker 1: if you hear any sort of air rushing in the
Speaker 1: background in this episode, then that is probably the air conditioner.
Speaker 1: The other I haven't turned down a little bit so
Speaker 1: that it doesn't cause an excess of noise, but it
Speaker 1: is kind of necessary because it's eighty degrees right now
Speaker 1: at two in the morning as I'm recording this, it's
Speaker 1: still eighty degrees in the house and outside. So for
Speaker 1: the comfort of the cats and things, I have their
Speaker 1: conditioners still running. It's gonna be a hot summer. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be a hot summer I expect with a lot
Speaker 1: going on. So but here we are, we're the last
Speaker 1: few minutes. I don't have a lot to talk about
Speaker 1: Like I said that, the wildlife will we'll talk about
Speaker 1: them next week because there has been some developments with them.
Speaker 1: They're having some fractures, they're having some some moments of reflection,
Speaker 1: we'll say yea. But other than that, things are good here.
Speaker 1: I want to thank everybody for tuning in and listening.
Speaker 1: I appreciate everybody. I've had unprecedented growth around both this
Speaker 1: podcast and just my various other social media over the
Speaker 1: last few weeks, and I just want to thank everybody
Speaker 1: for tuning in and for giving me a few minutes
Speaker 1: out of your day. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: It makes a difference because I wouldn't be doing this
Speaker 1: if people weren't listening. The whole point of everything that
Speaker 1: I'm doing is to entertain you. That's how we started
Speaker 1: in the radio business, and that's how I will end
Speaker 1: in the radio business, entertaining the people and doing what
Speaker 1: I do as best as I can. But that's it.
Speaker 1: That's all we've got. I'm gonna get out of here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a bit of a snack, play some
Speaker 1: games before I go bed. Tune in next week. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be a brand new episode of the show and
Speaker 1: have a good night.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you stop.
Speaker 3: Still sat stop still, sat still about.
Speaker 1: Me, when all.
Speaker 3: About me, when all about