Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's not Tuesday, it's Friday. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Giant BombCast Revengeance Podcast. I'm Jeff Grub from giant bomb
Speaker 1: dot Com and I have a full crew with me,
Speaker 1: starting with two more.
Speaker 2: Who's saying, Tam, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: How is Chelsea Handler? Is Chelsea Handler a good one?
Speaker 4: I remember recently she was speaking ten fifteen years ago.
Speaker 5: She definitely felt she was everywhere, but fell off hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gotcha, Samantha, Oh damn, you gotta stop. How is
Speaker 1: Samantha Bee Show? I never watched.
Speaker 4: Mike Drucker was executive producer on it, so I have
Speaker 4: not seen it. But there had to be some funny stuff.
Speaker 1: A drugs had to be had to be something to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Drucker does good stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh. We also have Nicki Grayson. Nicki Grayson, how's it going? Hello?
Speaker 5: Something I've learned in the last couple of minutes is
Speaker 5: that my hair is still wet and it's kind of
Speaker 5: dripping down my back in a way that's kind of unpleasant.
Speaker 4: Before a podcast, are you, like, you know, before Roman
Speaker 4: Reigns comes out and he sprays his hair, you do that?
Speaker 5: Not not unlike that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: That is kind of what I did today.
Speaker 5: I did hop in this hour and mostly focus on
Speaker 5: my hair, and then I did this a couple of
Speaker 5: times to get it to go. And now see now
Speaker 5: that shit all over my glasses.
Speaker 2: Giant bomb, that's exactly right. Friend of Denim, Dan Reiker,
Speaker 2: Dan Kerd, how are you doing?
Speaker 4: I'm not an enemy of den Denhim. Okay, I'm doing great,
Speaker 4: but I'm not an enemy of Denim. I don't think
Speaker 4: I'm wearing No, actually, I'm wearing the like extreme stretchy
Speaker 4: motion jeans.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I don't know if this is like actual Denim,
Speaker 4: but it's like it's like what I think would wear,
Speaker 4: you know, very stretchy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the motion engine. Yeah, they have the emotion engine,
Speaker 1: and they get the motion engine, they put it in jeans,
Speaker 1: exact very good stuff.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, if you break down a PS three like a
Speaker 4: a vow, you get stretched jeans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you can reconsecute it into janes now. Yes.
Speaker 1: And then Nathan Grayson with this as well, special guest,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Nathan Grayson, you have a book I do. It's called
Speaker 2: Stream Big, The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the
Speaker 2: Stars Behind the screen and it will be out on
Speaker 2: the eighteenth. You can pre order it now if you
Speaker 2: really want to, or you can just wait and order it.
Speaker 2: It's your call.
Speaker 5: A really right now?
Speaker 4: Is the on your wall?
Speaker 3: Nice?
Speaker 4: Look at that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And then I camera immediately goes out of focus. Fantastic,
Speaker 2: there it is.
Speaker 3: That's okay.
Speaker 1: I was reading it last night. You had the publisher
Speaker 1: sent me a copy. I appreciate that. Uh, it's what
Speaker 1: the fuck?
Speaker 2: I know?
Speaker 1: Right, just specifically block you all out from getting the
Speaker 1: copy too.
Speaker 2: Does anyone else want one? I might know. I get that.
Speaker 3: I read that.
Speaker 2: I felt really bad about that. That actually really hurt me, so.
Speaker 1: And then I said, you'd be quiet, let's be look
Speaker 1: at my book. I'm trying to read here. It's like
Speaker 1: really starts off. I like, oh, yeah, God, this is
Speaker 1: such a dramatic, dramatic story of like all of this
Speaker 1: a small community of people who are just doing a
Speaker 1: thing they really liked, and then how it blew up
Speaker 1: and of course, like all things, gets subsumed by a conglomerate,
Speaker 1: and how it has to change to meet the needs
Speaker 1: of the new master, and how the people who are
Speaker 1: there from the beginning feel about that and how they
Speaker 1: still just hire from the community. Like, there's so many
Speaker 1: fascinating aspects. Uh, I guess what, Let's do the basic
Speaker 1: questions first, like what prompted you to want to start
Speaker 1: writing about this other than of course you've been following
Speaker 1: this for a very long time, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a big part of it.
Speaker 2: And then the other part is that I think that
Speaker 2: there are you know, there are a number of books
Speaker 2: about like different platforms, different social media platforms. There are
Speaker 2: books at this point about YouTube, about TikTok, you know,
Speaker 2: about pretty much all the big ones, but they're very
Speaker 2: focused on the platforms themselves. They're like, you know, a
Speaker 2: history of this platform, a whatever, this platform. I wanted
Speaker 2: to do something that was more creator focused, and so
Speaker 2: from my book, the first chapter is kind of like
Speaker 2: an overview of Twitch in its history, but even then
Speaker 2: through the eyes of one creator, that being DJ Wheed,
Speaker 2: who's a person who used to be a very early
Speaker 2: live streaming creator went on to become one of the
Speaker 2: first Twitch employees. And then every other chapter is about
Speaker 2: just like a particular creator and their life and the
Speaker 2: way that the platform has shaped them and the way
Speaker 2: that they in turn have shaped the platform, and so
Speaker 2: it's much more people focused, I think, than a lot
Speaker 2: of these books tend to be. And I kind of
Speaker 2: wanted to tell the story that way because I think
Speaker 2: that the story of Twitch is very much one about
Speaker 2: its creators. It wouldn't be what it is without creators.
Speaker 2: So much of its early growth and development was centered
Speaker 2: around the company hiring people from its own community and
Speaker 2: like making decisions around what they wanted, and so much
Speaker 2: of the controversy that has ensued since has been about
Speaker 2: people saying, Hey, you guys have kind of lost your way.
Speaker 2: You've stopped caring so much about creators. You've started doing
Speaker 2: everything in service of profit and what Amazon wants from you,
Speaker 2: and that's not going over as well. So I wanted
Speaker 2: to sort of explore the material impacts of that on
Speaker 2: the people who are on that platform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's got to help that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: by talking to the people who are part of the community.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are big names, stars, people that
Speaker 1: have a history that is somewhat known by their audience.
Speaker 1: But maybe there's some aspects or some thoughts they they've
Speaker 1: had that you can elucidate a little bit better. Were
Speaker 1: there some things that surprised you to learn when you
Speaker 1: were talking to these streamers and these creators.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of cases because also, like what
Speaker 2: I ended up doing for this book is I for
Speaker 2: every like big interview, for the ones that kind of
Speaker 2: are the backbone of each chapter, I did them in person,
Speaker 2: and usually like at that person's house or like in
Speaker 2: a place that represented their place of work. Essentially, because
Speaker 2: I think that when it comes to Twitch and other
Speaker 2: platforms like it, you can have this misconception that you
Speaker 2: understand or know everything about like your favorite creator. So
Speaker 2: I mean you see them for like, you know, depending
Speaker 2: on how much you watch, it could be up to
Speaker 2: eight ten hours per day. A lot of people don't
Speaker 2: watch that much. They probably tune in for a couple
Speaker 2: hours here and there. But you know, doing that, you're like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: I see all the work they do, I know them,
Speaker 2: and therefore I don't need to know anymore. But there's
Speaker 2: a ton of invisible labor that goes into live streaming
Speaker 2: and content creation. There's a lot of stuff that happens
Speaker 2: in the background that you don't see when the cameras
Speaker 2: are off, and I wanted to sort of be able
Speaker 2: to capture some of that and show what that's like
Speaker 2: and all of the different like other people that contribute
Speaker 2: to that, not just the streamer. So I also ended
Speaker 2: up talking to like people's friends and families and their
Speaker 2: moderators and their editors and their staff and you know,
Speaker 2: pretty much anyone that I could get in front of
Speaker 2: a microphone. And then like, through that, I learned a
Speaker 2: lot of surprising stuff, Like I mean, I uh, one
Speaker 2: of the chapters is about Hassan Piker, who I'm sure
Speaker 2: you all know and follow. When I was at his place,
Speaker 2: his mom happened to be around, and so he was
Speaker 2: kind of cage on the subject of swattings and things
Speaker 2: of that nature. Right, But you know, Hassan has a
Speaker 2: pretty well known house. It was the source of some
Speaker 2: controversy a couple of years back because people were like
Speaker 2: a leftist buying a house, that's impossible, And so he
Speaker 2: wouldn't really talk about that. And so I was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: Hassan's mom, will you talk about this? And she was like, oh, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you all suse the stories. And I was like, great,
Speaker 2: Hassan's going to be mad about this, but it still
Speaker 2: works for me. So when you're.
Speaker 1: Building like the structure of the book, and you like
Speaker 1: begin to like have a piece together these the things
Speaker 1: you're learning from these interviews. Do you begin building like
Speaker 1: an overarching narrative of like here's the beginning of Twitch
Speaker 1: and the people that were there at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: here's how these things have changed and got complicated over
Speaker 1: over time. Like how does that narrative reveal itself to you?
Speaker 2: I think it depends on the particular creator, because what
Speaker 2: I tried to do is get a mix of people
Speaker 2: who are like instrumental to Twitch's growth and you know,
Speaker 2: sort of represented like landmark figures on the platform, and
Speaker 2: then like you know, again one person who was kind
Speaker 2: of who worked for the company and was part of it.
Speaker 2: And then I also wanted like smaller creators too, so
Speaker 2: people who have existed on it not necessarily seen instance success,
Speaker 2: and in one particular instance, like you know, grinded really
Speaker 2: hard for success, like kind of had this viral moment
Speaker 2: and then tried to capitalize on that and like literally
Speaker 2: broke her body in the process. I wanted to sort
Speaker 2: of represent all of these different ways that being a
Speaker 2: creator on a platform like Twitch, one that more than
Speaker 2: anything wants your time can unfold, and so it was
Speaker 2: really more just like I set down and I talked
Speaker 2: to them, and then over the course of cause again,
Speaker 2: like the initial interviews for each of these chapters were
Speaker 2: like five hours long, so just you know, these things
Speaker 2: would reveal themselves to me as we conversed. You know,
Speaker 2: there'd be times where I was like talking to somebody
Speaker 2: and thinking like, oh, there it is, like that's the
Speaker 2: that's the opening scene of the book. That's the opening
Speaker 2: scene of the chapter. I got it, and.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I could totally see how that works out
Speaker 1: that way. Sometimes when when you talk to these people
Speaker 1: and when you begin like seeing the common themes, what
Speaker 1: do you get the sense that people believe is the
Speaker 1: future of Twitch from this point like going forward, like
Speaker 1: how are people feeling about it now?
Speaker 2: I mean, I I don't think people are feeling super
Speaker 2: great about Twitch at the moment for a few reasons.
Speaker 2: One of them is that at this point Amazon really
Speaker 2: wants Twitch to turn a profit. It remains unprofitable, and
Speaker 2: so as a result, Twitch is taken to you know,
Speaker 2: overloading the site with ads, which everybody has been able
Speaker 2: to witness that you know, you'd be watching your favorite
Speaker 2: streamer or like a GDQ run or something, and then
Speaker 2: you get hit with a two minute ad block out
Speaker 2: of nowhere and you're like that that that killed all
Speaker 2: of my enjoyment of this. I'm just angry now.
Speaker 5: I actually think it's a good experience personally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, thank you, Jeff Bezos. I love so
Speaker 2: much Tina's pizza roles. I did not know about it.
Speaker 5: You're telling me that they're making another that's crazy.
Speaker 3: To find.
Speaker 2: That would be a great way for them to sell cars,
Speaker 2: to be like, this is the final Honda. We're never
Speaker 2: making another Honda, and then say, like, just kidding. But yeah,
Speaker 2: So there's that, And there's also the fact that Amazon is,
Speaker 2: i think with Twitch, trying to cut its way to
Speaker 2: profitability too. So in the past couple of years they've
Speaker 2: laid off almost a thousand people from a company that
Speaker 2: previously had a little bit over two thousand, so that's
Speaker 2: like almost half the company. And so as a result,
Speaker 2: I think Twitch is kind of just in this holding
Speaker 2: pattern and they've been releasing like little new features where
Speaker 2: they can, but nothing that has genuinely changed the platform.
Speaker 2: And quite some time they're also like really focused on
Speaker 2: this one platform called or this one feature called guest
Speaker 2: Star that no one really seems to care about or use.
Speaker 2: It's just all this stuff where people look at Twitch
Speaker 2: and they say, Okay, it's kind of languishing. It's in
Speaker 2: a holding pattern. It doesn't seem like Amazon wants to
Speaker 2: really grow or expand it anymore or help it find
Speaker 2: new audiences, and so it's sort of like best case scenario,
Speaker 2: it kind of stays here. Absolute worst case scenario. Amazon
Speaker 2: eventually says, Okay, this is not working for us anymore.
Speaker 2: Let's put this in what Amazon calls maintenance mode, where
Speaker 2: they basically wind down a product and they stop updating it.
Speaker 2: They just keep it sort of functional, but they don't
Speaker 2: do anything with it anymore, the bare minimum essentially.
Speaker 3: Well, last time I last time I checked, they were
Speaker 3: trying to pivot into like weird TikTok area with a
Speaker 3: redesign of the app. Because I watch a lot of Twitch,
Speaker 3: I try my best now to stay away from the
Speaker 3: app because it is atrocious.
Speaker 2: Everyone hates the stories stories like functionality.
Speaker 3: Yeah that and also like they formatted the main page
Speaker 3: to be like a swipe up to go through your
Speaker 3: different and it's awful because it's all encapsulated and like
Speaker 3: you open the app, if you press it will give
Speaker 3: you a stream Like let's say I'm watching Giant Bomp,
Speaker 3: It'll give you a streaming me. Then if I press
Speaker 3: Giant Bomb, if I hit the stream bind, it opens
Speaker 3: another instance of it. And you're like, yeah, this is
Speaker 3: the dumbest thing, And it's it's the kind of thing
Speaker 3: where I feel like if one person tested it, they
Speaker 3: would know this is bad. So it just makes me
Speaker 3: feel like no one there is paying any attention or
Speaker 3: what's going on. It's like close to unusable on a
Speaker 3: on a mobile phone. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also that classic issue of you know, there's
Speaker 2: still plenty of people at the company that care, but
Speaker 2: a lot of the people that power don't really use
Speaker 2: the platform I understand it or give a shit in
Speaker 2: ways that would prevent something catastrophic like that from happening.
Speaker 1: They and then they hear something it'll be like TikTok
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, that sounds good, so let's do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, that's also like an interesting situation because
Speaker 2: there was clamor from the community for that kind of
Speaker 2: a feature. There's this moment where when they were putting
Speaker 2: all of the ads or like, you know, when they
Speaker 2: were flooding the flooding Twitch with ads, people were like, well,
Speaker 2: what you could do is create a stories like function
Speaker 2: and put it in the app and then put ads
Speaker 2: on that, because then you're not missing anything live necessarily,
Speaker 2: you just put it over people's VODs and their clips
Speaker 2: and so this is a version of that. But I
Speaker 2: think it's much more front and center within the app
Speaker 2: than people wanted it to be. And as as Tomorrow
Speaker 2: was saying, like it takes over the entire interface that
Speaker 2: you experienced by default, Like you just you're in this
Speaker 2: like river of stories essentially, and yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 2: not well done. It's one of many gaffs that they've
Speaker 2: had in the past year or two. Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1: The story of everything right now, rightfications and then make
Speaker 1: it worse to make more money. Yeah, we can make
Speaker 1: We can make a little bit more money if we
Speaker 1: make it a little bit worse.
Speaker 3: I got a question about I mean, like, how how
Speaker 3: much of the future I guess you kind of answered
Speaker 3: the question kind of, but how much of the kind
Speaker 3: of roadmap for Twitch have you been able to glean
Speaker 3: from these interviews? Because I know most recently, like they
Speaker 3: had that that time where they were just throwing money
Speaker 3: at various careers. Hasan's one of them. He openly talks
Speaker 3: about having a very specific contract that he no longer has.
Speaker 3: He Yeah, no longer has it, so there's no more
Speaker 3: top of the ad breaks. It feels like that's part
Speaker 3: of the kind of step away from trying to make
Speaker 3: Twitch happen. Have you did you get any sense from
Speaker 3: the creators of where Twitch is going or do you
Speaker 3: have did you get any sense on how dedicated these
Speaker 3: Twitch creators are going to be to the platform itself,
Speaker 3: because some of them have now moved to multi streaming,
Speaker 3: you know, but then some of them are like coming
Speaker 3: back to Twitch, like I think Ludwig or someone like
Speaker 3: that recently.
Speaker 2: Can returned to Twitch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like said he wouldn't stream elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a couple of things happened here. One is
Speaker 2: that a lot of those contracts that big streamers had,
Speaker 2: because you know, to be clear for the audience, there's
Speaker 2: a period of time where big name streamers, people like
Speaker 2: Hasan or Pokemon which she was still Twitch exclusive, or
Speaker 2: even let Wig ever have one he might have he
Speaker 2: got a YouTube YouTube. Yeah, they had these multi million
Speaker 2: dollar contracts that were you know, keeping them exclusive to
Speaker 2: particular platforms. But that was kind of like the meta
Speaker 2: in the like twenty twenty to twenty twenty two to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three era. And that's in part because YouTube
Speaker 2: emerged as a competitor to Twitch. They were directly trying
Speaker 2: to steal or not steal, but you know, cultivate an
Speaker 2: audience like Twitches, and so they started pulling over creators
Speaker 2: from Twitch by saying, hey, we'll give you millions of
Speaker 2: dollars if you come over here, even though like our
Speaker 2: audience for live streaming is not quite as big and
Speaker 2: you might lose some of your audience in the transition,
Speaker 2: will more than make up for that by giving you
Speaker 2: all this money. And so a lot of creators did it,
Speaker 2: and as a result twhich was like, well, we got
Speaker 2: to do something now. And so Twitch already had like
Speaker 2: some exclusivity contracts in place, but the amount that they
Speaker 2: were paying for those went way up and it became
Speaker 2: this bidding war. And because of the way that streaming works,
Speaker 2: these platforms were not making that amount of money back
Speaker 2: on those creators, Like ads and subscriptions were not making
Speaker 2: millions of dollars, and so it was more about like
Speaker 2: clout or prestige. It was to be able to say
Speaker 2: we have these particular people, therefore you should be over
Speaker 2: here watching our platform, not the other one. But then
Speaker 2: everyone kind of collectively realized that they were overpaying for streamers,
Speaker 2: and so as contracts expired in the past couple of years,
Speaker 2: they just let them.
Speaker 1: Lapse or they just shut down their entire platform. It's
Speaker 1: like no more Mixer.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, Mixer was I mean, that was just
Speaker 2: a disaster because Microsoft owned that they theoretically had the
Speaker 2: money to keep it going. They had made some big
Speaker 2: deals people like Ninja and Shroud, and then not even
Speaker 2: a year after they made those deals, which were set
Speaker 2: for two years, they're like, never mind, we give up,
Speaker 2: pull the play and they paid. They paid, They paid
Speaker 2: the money.
Speaker 1: But it's like clearly they looked at the numbers very
Speaker 1: quickly and were like, oh, we did an oopsie, man,
Speaker 1: we did We didn't do this very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It's also just really hard to make money
Speaker 2: on live streaming in general, because a platform like Twitch,
Speaker 2: as it expands, as it gains more users, it also
Speaker 2: becomes more expensive to run. Like this is one of
Speaker 2: the things that calculator.
Speaker 1: There's a calculator, like the live streaming cost calculator. Is
Speaker 1: that thing accurate? Like how many minutes for how many
Speaker 1: people watch or whatever? I'd like you could do a
Speaker 1: little calculation it says, oh, that stream cost Twitch forty dollars.
Speaker 2: For a couple hours. That's almost certainly Napkin math. I
Speaker 2: doubt that it's like fully accurate, but it is generally correct. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 2: as as a platform like Twitch grows, it becomes more
Speaker 2: expensive to run, and as a result, a company like
Speaker 2: Amazon has to find new ways to monetize it. Now
Speaker 2: there's some other like you know, Amazon is also making
Speaker 2: up the math as it goes. So like, is Twitch
Speaker 2: profitable is it not? It depends on how you decide
Speaker 2: where Twitch is making money. There's a lot of tech
Speaker 2: Amazon uses that Twitch originally developed, and now Amazon charges
Speaker 2: Twitch to use that tech internally. That's so that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, what I My biggest worry is Amazon will
Speaker 3: do what it did to Twitch to what it did
Speaker 3: to Comixology, where they just like stripped it of any
Speaker 3: sort of presence and and kind of like any independence
Speaker 3: and comics Oology no longer exists. It's just the kind
Speaker 3: of kindle. It's like folded into kindle, and it's one
Speaker 3: of the worst reading experiences for digital comics that I've
Speaker 3: ever seen. And my fear is, as much as I
Speaker 3: think Twitch is not great to use right now, it's
Speaker 3: going to be much worse when they just jam it
Speaker 3: into like a Prime video or something like that. So
Speaker 3: it's a big concern about that. One other question I had, Sorry,
Speaker 3: go ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I was just going to say, Twitch is
Speaker 2: also like where the community is right and so if
Speaker 2: Amazon ever pulls the plug or degrades it so much
Speaker 2: that people have nowhere to go or they end up leaving,
Speaker 2: then that that thing that makes Twitch special, that reason
Speaker 2: that like a lot of streamers have returned to Twitch,
Speaker 2: for example, after being on YouTube and cultivating audience, is
Speaker 2: there that goes away? And if that goes away, what
Speaker 2: if anything takes its place?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm one other thing that I'm interested in. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you explore it. I'll find out when
Speaker 3: I read the book. But did you do you kind
Speaker 3: of explore the impact that politics has on the growth
Speaker 3: of t which and perhaps other platforms, because you know,
Speaker 3: you have the likes of Aiden Ross, for example, being
Speaker 3: a huge presence in the streaming space and then having
Speaker 3: his right wing pivot and then going to you know,
Speaker 3: a specific platform, and you know, currently the biggest I
Speaker 3: believe political streamer is Asthma Gold, who you know, originally
Speaker 3: started off as a water warcraft person and now has
Speaker 3: interesting perspectives on life and that kind of like you
Speaker 3: know that that the ebb and flow of it and
Speaker 3: the success of generation Socrates.
Speaker 2: It's not what's not mince words asmen Gold called Palestinians
Speaker 2: like a lesser people.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that's not mince word. That dude is
Speaker 3: a fucking gremlin.
Speaker 1: So he also he also gags when he drinks water,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, not as bad but pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Still. Yeah, that's you know, I didn't think about.
Speaker 3: It any any kind of like that, that exploration of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So the last chapter in the book is
Speaker 2: about Hassan, and it uses him as a kind of
Speaker 2: a lens through which to view that section of the
Speaker 2: livestreaming world and how it's grown and how it's become
Speaker 2: its own sort of portion of twitch and even a
Speaker 2: little bit like we were saying, what it means for
Speaker 2: people to sort of cross pollinate into doing politics when
Speaker 2: their original background is not being a political streamer, or
Speaker 2: even like necessarily in the case of somebody like Aiden
Speaker 2: Ross having much knowledge in that space, like Aiden Ross,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll talk about politics when he's going down
Speaker 2: some red pill rabbit hole. But it's not like he
Speaker 2: studies this stuff. It's not like he's read history. What
Speaker 2: was the There was a clip of him trying to
Speaker 2: like sound out like a very call said it was
Speaker 2: something pertaining to like politics, and I was like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to find it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But you know, nonetheless, this is a guy
Speaker 2: fist he said fastest. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right. He
Speaker 2: was trying to sound out fascist, which is perfect, by
Speaker 2: the way, given that he, you know, months later, had
Speaker 2: Donald Trump on his stream and conducted a long interview
Speaker 2: with him that drew like almost five hundred thousand concurrent viewers,
Speaker 2: a ridiculous number, as you yourselves know, as people who
Speaker 2: stream those regularly.
Speaker 3: You know, I think it was it was an ultranationalist, okay, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean still an absolutely perfect word for him to
Speaker 3: not be able to say.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like it's hard to measure the impact of
Speaker 2: these things on like an election but you know, there
Speaker 2: was disproportionate turnout of young men voting in favor of Trump.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude
Speaker 2: Aiden Ross's stream and others like it might have had
Speaker 2: some impact on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so there's I think, oh sorry, I just
Speaker 5: think that there's like, there's such an interesting lack of
Speaker 5: acknowledgment by institutionalized powers on how straight the fucking line is?
Speaker 5: Are political movements being empowered by people who are watching
Speaker 5: shit on Twitch dot tv And it's like and like
Speaker 5: radicalized by Reddit and in the wake of gamer Gate,
Speaker 5: like it is just it is simply a straight line
Speaker 5: with no variants or like or or ups and downs,
Speaker 5: ebbs and flows. It is literally a straight line. You
Speaker 5: can track every single beat and be like oh yeah,
Speaker 5: all of this, Yeah it makes yes, And it's like yeah,
Speaker 5: absolutely fueled and empowered by by these platforms. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Would say quick note, Aiden Ross is on kick not Twitch,
Speaker 2: but it's a similar culture. Aiden Ross came from Twitch.
Speaker 2: Originally he got banned for not preventing people from being
Speaker 2: racist in his chat, and it's not surprising what he's
Speaker 2: turned into with that history in mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get people the details on the book again.
Speaker 1: So it's out next week. They can pre order it
Speaker 1: from where what should they know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can pre order it pretty much wherever books
Speaker 2: are sold. There's like a main link though from Simon
Speaker 2: Shooster is the publisher. If you just search like stream
Speaker 2: Big Book, you can probably find that on Google. If
Speaker 2: somebody can drop it into you that you'll maintain.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you're a bomb chat, it's up at the
Speaker 5: top and then I will head over to twitch chat
Speaker 5: and pop it in there.
Speaker 3: I just pray. Is there a preferred place you would
Speaker 3: want us to get it from in terms of like
Speaker 3: cuts and that kind of stuff?
Speaker 2: Can I sorry, I gotta see if I can do this.
Speaker 2: You can.
Speaker 1: Line it up perfectly and then you move it and
Speaker 1: it's like it's still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. I should have done that sooner. But
Speaker 2: is there a preferred place? No, just get it where
Speaker 2: you get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, if any viewers are If any viewers or listeners
Speaker 2: are in New York, there's a launch party on Sunday
Speaker 2: at Wonderville and Bushwick. So it's a two pm come through.
Speaker 1: Last real quick question, who optioned the book and when's
Speaker 1: the movie.
Speaker 2: Come out nobody so far. Although when I first got
Speaker 2: the deal, because I got the book deal forever ago,
Speaker 2: and then the pandemic happened and I had to sort
Speaker 2: of pause working on it for a minute because doing
Speaker 2: stuff a person was functionally impossible, And so like the
Speaker 2: day after I got the book deal in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: some person emailed me and it was like, yeah, we
Speaker 2: could turn this into a movie, and I was like,
Speaker 2: a howe, and be hold your horses. The book is
Speaker 2: not even close to that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you we have the same last name. Does
Speaker 5: that work?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, that's that's how that ever, always played somebody
Speaker 2: with their last name.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, awesome, cool, Yeah, that's bind excellent, Sorry, Bud.
Speaker 1: All right, what we're gonna do is, Sean, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say we're gonna take a break right now. We'll come
Speaker 1: back with more after this for the podcast version, and
Speaker 1: then for the live version.
Speaker 2: We're gonna come right back. Okay.
Speaker 1: So let's uh, let's talk about split fiction. Let's see Nick,
Speaker 1: Nikki and Tam you both were in LA recently earlier
Speaker 1: this week.
Speaker 2: Was it to play split fiction or was it late
Speaker 2: last week?
Speaker 5: Uh? It was fuck me running it was supposed to
Speaker 5: be the hard question. It's nuts.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's understandable given the state of man.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Damn all right, tell me about split fiction. Just as
Speaker 1: quick reminder, Joseph Faris Hayes Light is that the name
Speaker 1: of their studio, their new game, People Made Brothers. People
Speaker 1: that Made It Takes two. Game of the years, twenty
Speaker 1: three million copies sold, very popular in China because apparently
Speaker 1: divorce is popular in China. Now I think that's a
Speaker 1: shoot popular. Yes, popular, Yes, divorce is hot. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: are like into divorce in China right now. That one
Speaker 1: of the helping that game out. Okay, so you guys,
Speaker 1: you played it. What's one of the basics that people
Speaker 1: should know? And how'd you find it?
Speaker 5: Do you remember it Takes two?
Speaker 2: Yes? Okay, okay, cool, thank you.
Speaker 3: It is pretty accurate that that kind of format is
Speaker 3: is something that they like to stick close to. I think,
Speaker 3: like perhaps Away is the biggest departure from it. But
Speaker 3: in the same way that It Takes Two is a
Speaker 3: a collection of really wildly varying ideas. Split fiction is
Speaker 3: very similar and it still has a cohesive element to it.
Speaker 3: And it was like top down broad kind of take
Speaker 3: on it. It was a lot of fun. I had
Speaker 3: a lot playing that game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think something that like it's really it's I
Speaker 5: was trying to figure out how to talk about this
Speaker 5: when I was like in the shower today, I was
Speaker 5: like trying to form my words. And it's in a
Speaker 5: way that is not denigrating to the game at all.
Speaker 5: It's like the last it's more of the last one,
Speaker 5: and if you really liked the last one, you're gonna
Speaker 5: really like this one. There are new different ideas. It
Speaker 5: feels like they came up with a huge list of
Speaker 5: ideas on ways to do two player co op experiences.
Speaker 5: They put some of them in the last one, and
Speaker 5: then the last one sold, you said, twenty three million copies.
Speaker 5: So Joseph went to EA and said, you're gonna give
Speaker 5: me triple the budget and they said absolutely, and then
Speaker 5: it gave him however much money he wanted. And then
Speaker 5: now the ideas are bigger and better. And I think
Speaker 5: that the beautiful thing about the time that I spent
Speaker 5: with Split Fiction was that none of it and it
Speaker 5: takes to have this, I think to a different degree,
Speaker 5: but really really felt this with Split fiction. It didn't
Speaker 5: feel like any of the stuff that I was doing
Speaker 5: felt throwaway. It all felt like a like team was
Speaker 5: really like, Okay, we're making a pinball level where one
Speaker 5: person is the ball and then the other person is
Speaker 5: controlling the paddles. What if we made sure that every
Speaker 5: single part of this experience felt good. It didn't feel
Speaker 5: like any of it was like second thought or like
Speaker 5: one person. Well, sometimes it did feel like one and
Speaker 5: I had to play second fiddle. And I want to
Speaker 5: talk to you about that, Tim, because I did feel
Speaker 5: like there were some bits where I was like, I
Speaker 5: wish I was I was being jammed right now and
Speaker 5: I'm sure Jan Also.
Speaker 4: If you're the ball is helpless, right.
Speaker 3: Was the hardest? Yes?
Speaker 5: Really so yeah, the ball the ball physics didn't feel
Speaker 5: very good, but like there was yeah, yeah, he's going
Speaker 5: to be mad. There was like after touch on the
Speaker 5: ball also, which like so the ball would go in
Speaker 5: the air and then you would kind of be able
Speaker 5: to move. It left burnout space a lot like burnout.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to tig Woods.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Tim, I did you at any point feel like
Speaker 5: you were wishing that you were being the role that
Speaker 5: Lucy was? No, did Lucy feel like.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think the balance there is
Speaker 3: good because there are times where one person, like for example,
Speaker 3: in the pinball level, Lucy was the ball and I
Speaker 3: was the flippers, and it can feel like the other
Speaker 3: person is having more fun. But they, I think they
Speaker 3: do a good job of inverting that as much as
Speaker 3: they can, so there will be a level fairly soon
Speaker 3: after where you'll be having the fun thing and the
Speaker 3: other person is doing kind of like the support thing.
Speaker 3: And that is to say neither time is like it
Speaker 3: wasn't like Lucy was having all the fun and I
Speaker 3: was just like, oh, it was like I kind of
Speaker 3: want to beat the ball to try it out of
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. The ball, the big ball one
Speaker 3: was rough because one the ball based on me watching Lucy,
Speaker 3: who's good at games, and was like we were both
Speaker 3: struggling through this. The ball felt a bit too heavy
Speaker 3: and wasn't like jumping as high as you want it to.
Speaker 3: And then the flippers, which is what I had, There
Speaker 3: was like a delay to when you hit the bottom
Speaker 3: and the flip actually happening, so we were constantly not
Speaker 3: able to kind of synchronize properly. That's a very small
Speaker 3: thing that they will hopefully iron out, but that it
Speaker 3: was like whatever. Then you know, a few sections later,
Speaker 3: I was in we were in this like motorbike section
Speaker 3: in a futuristic like like a city where we're being
Speaker 3: chased by like a helicopter with a gunner on it,
Speaker 3: and we're both on the bike. I'm controlling the bike
Speaker 3: and Lucy is trying to disarm a bomb by reading
Speaker 3: through a and user license agreement and capture on a
Speaker 3: mobile phone. It's like moving around chaotically, and it was
Speaker 3: like we were both like like I was technically having
Speaker 3: the fun there, but she was like in the next
Speaker 3: to me, just screaming like I can't use this thing.
Speaker 3: I can't do THET. I can't do THET. So like
Speaker 3: it balances out, and then we're like we're two pigs
Speaker 3: and my my traversal ability is the ability to far
Speaker 3: and launch myself and she's a spring and it's like
Speaker 3: there's always a good balance. It's not like if you
Speaker 3: take control of meal, the other character is like done
Speaker 3: and bored for the rest of it.
Speaker 5: Back and yeah, they're that back and forth between facility
Speaker 5: of fun and then doing the fun. That relationship is
Speaker 5: really good and then which makes the moments where you're
Speaker 5: both in the same space as like, because the game
Speaker 5: does create environments where it's like, oh, we're separated, and
Speaker 5: then we're kind of back together doing the same thing,
Speaker 5: where they're like, oh, we're both doing the same platforming
Speaker 5: style situation. We're both doing the same There's another there's
Speaker 5: a stage that we've played, there's I'll take a step
Speaker 5: back in the way that this This demo was formatic
Speaker 5: because we played a three hour chunk and they jumped
Speaker 5: us around a bunch. It sometimes felt like we were
Speaker 5: in a car that all of a sudden, sometimes the
Speaker 5: handbrake would get pulled because we would finish the stage
Speaker 5: and we'd be like, oh, I can't wait to see
Speaker 5: what's going to happen, And they will put a big
Speaker 5: black screen on the black screen, and then it would
Speaker 5: have some white text on it that would be like,
Speaker 5: now we're going to take you to the sci fi
Speaker 5: time p s and then I would I kind of
Speaker 5: was like, it would fucking bang if that was how
Speaker 5: the game actually was, it would be awesome. If they
Speaker 5: were like, we're sci fi time, no transitions, We couldn't
Speaker 5: figure it out that is how it goes. But yeah,
Speaker 5: there's I lost some thought the part, oh we're we
Speaker 5: moved into the dragon zone? Did you did y'all get
Speaker 5: that far in the demo? And that was really cool
Speaker 5: because there were these two you're in the fantasy chunk.
Speaker 5: The core conceit of the game, if you don't know,
Speaker 5: is that these two people get book deals, what they
Speaker 5: think are book deals. They go into this publishing company
Speaker 5: that very obviously gang. I don't know who the fuck
Speaker 5: these girlies are. Read the contract and look at the building,
Speaker 5: publishing houses. There are so many steps on the path
Speaker 5: to they got stuck inside the computer, which is what
Speaker 5: happens to them. That I would have been like, No,
Speaker 5: I'm okay, I think I'm good. I think I'm so
Speaker 5: good on this one.
Speaker 3: Come back one of the immediately he is like what
Speaker 3: the and the other one, I'm so excited to get
Speaker 3: my book deal by having my ideas sucked out of
Speaker 3: my brain. It's like, that's how it works.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's just how it works. So one of the
Speaker 5: characters is a fantasy writer and then the other one
Speaker 5: is a sci fi writer, and then you are moving
Speaker 5: back and forth yourthhoe genres and you're moving back and
Speaker 5: forth between their ideas. There is one part where you're
Speaker 5: a dragon. You're both dragons, and there there was such
Speaker 5: interesting back and forth there because I was kind of
Speaker 5: under the impression that that ability set was going to
Speaker 5: be the same for both dragons, but one of the
Speaker 5: dragons couldn't fly and actually had a sonic the hedgehog
Speaker 5: spin dash roll situation. Yeah, so you're like knocking this
Speaker 5: ball around, trying to do like puzzles where you're moving
Speaker 5: this ball through this stage, and then the other dragon
Speaker 5: can spit acid to like blow up the ball and
Speaker 5: fill up a cup that will move bits of the level.
Speaker 5: So it's it really does subvert what you are under
Speaker 5: like what your expectation is for that format. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 5: we're going to be dragons. We're gonna be fighting other
Speaker 5: little monsters because we're fucking dragons, and like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: it's puzzles, And I was like, oh, okay, I like puzzle.
Speaker 3: That part was really cool because they kind of make
Speaker 3: sure that you're having different paces in the type of
Speaker 3: cooperation that you're doing. So in that dragon section, it's
Speaker 3: very much like take your time, figure out how you
Speaker 3: solve this puzzle for the longest time, I didn't know
Speaker 3: my dragon could fly because I wasn't moving. When I
Speaker 3: hit the fly button, I was just like fly, fly, Fly,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't work. And unless it was like move you
Speaker 3: then hit the fly all right, man. And then so
Speaker 3: like that's a very kind of like at your own
Speaker 3: pace and then like the final level of the demo
Speaker 3: is very much not at your own pace cooperation. It's
Speaker 3: like a side scrolling shooter, like a twin stick shooter,
Speaker 3: but it's also got like that Ikaruga element where you
Speaker 3: can only interact with your assigned color, but it means
Speaker 3: that when it splits you up. It's like she was
Speaker 3: she had like a wall of fire coming towards her,
Speaker 3: and the kind of block in front of her was
Speaker 3: my color. So I have to quickly divert my attention
Speaker 3: from platforming to shoot her thing to help her out,
Speaker 3: and back and forth, and it was like you had
Speaker 3: to we had to fight bosses together, where I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can't hit him, you need to hit him with
Speaker 3: your color. So that was like intense cooperation. I think
Speaker 3: they in the demo that we've played, they spread out
Speaker 3: that kind of different pacing of cooperation really well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and oh sorry, go ahead, I was just going
Speaker 1: to ask to you. Guys mentioned a very similar in
Speaker 1: terms of the way it placed.
Speaker 2: It Takes Two.
Speaker 1: Uh, I think It Takes Two is a very sold game.
Speaker 1: Obviously a lot of people really love it. Uh, where
Speaker 1: where do you see If you do see refinements, where
Speaker 1: are they? And do you get the sense maybe that
Speaker 1: the PA scene might be a little bit tighter because
Speaker 1: the one complaint I always hear but It Takes Too,
Speaker 1: is it maybe dragged on a little bit?
Speaker 5: I think the thing that's so hard for this is
Speaker 5: like we they it's very explicitly we're like we're bouncing
Speaker 5: you around, so we don't know if any of it
Speaker 5: oversays it's welcome because we were really never doing anything
Speaker 5: for too long. Because I also felt the same with
Speaker 5: It Takes Too. I was like, wow, I like I
Speaker 5: get it gang like like I had a good time
Speaker 5: and was having a good time, but like at this
Speaker 5: point I'm kind of I'm over it. I'm here so
Speaker 5: I can finish the game. I have no idea like
Speaker 5: if they've gotten if they've trimmed it down that in that.
Speaker 1: Taking an editor's eye to yeah, we're gonna and also
Speaker 1: we're not the way long. This game is out next month.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's next month, like on the third or sixth, seventh,
Speaker 5: six really soon. The other thing I will say is
Speaker 5: I think this one will have a longer or I
Speaker 5: think I can see myself being invested in it longer
Speaker 5: than it takes too. Because at some point with this
Speaker 5: with it takes too, I was like, God, these fucking
Speaker 5: people just shouldn't be together. Like the narrative of it
Speaker 5: made me kind of quit on the me playing it
Speaker 5: because I was like, I just these people just you're
Speaker 5: hurting your child, like like I was like, this kind
Speaker 5: of sucks. I didn't really want to participate in it anymore.
Speaker 5: And because this story is not that, I think I
Speaker 5: will be more willing to kind of be invested in it.
Speaker 5: And I think that's just like a time play setting situation.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that's that's the right kind of
Speaker 3: angle on that one. They it's more of a case
Speaker 3: of two people discovering commonalities and building a friendship than
Speaker 3: it is like the degradation of a relationship in slow
Speaker 3: drawn out you know, whimsic away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is an easier it is a more complex story,
Speaker 5: I guess, but it is an easier story to swallow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah uh.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite moments last year was at the
Speaker 1: Game Awards where Joseph Ferris was on stage and he
Speaker 1: pointed out that he does still have a wife because people.
Speaker 3: Just think of him as I mean, the two characters
Speaker 3: are named after his daughters leave, so which is very cool.
Speaker 3: I also would like to know Nikki about dried mango,
Speaker 3: because you had an experience with dried mango.
Speaker 5: Dog hold on, crowd, I think I might hold on
Speaker 5: fucking start.
Speaker 3: I think I have it. I don't want to put
Speaker 3: this is just like a random stupid thing on the side.
Speaker 3: But like they had snacks and ship this at this event,
Speaker 3: and Nicky like tricked me into eating some dried mango,
Speaker 3: which is genuinely the one.
Speaker 5: That's not what happened.
Speaker 3: You looked at me like mango, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I love mango, and you were like, try this.
Speaker 5: And then I said, try this. It's really bad, and
Speaker 5: it was already in my mouth at that point. It
Speaker 5: was the wackiest dried mango I've ever had. It came
Speaker 5: in as in a bag that looked like cheese. Its
Speaker 5: like the color schemes exactly cheese. It so opened it
Speaker 5: and then it was crunch and dry mango is fine
Speaker 5: if it's like there are many textures that you can
Speaker 5: try go at, but this was like it was crunchy
Speaker 5: and as soon it tasted rancid to me, would you
Speaker 5: just would you also describe this it this way? And
Speaker 5: then the worst part is that it just sat in
Speaker 5: your fucking molars like it took you to write today,
Speaker 5: and all it did was like a third of it
Speaker 5: went down your fucking gullet and then the rest of
Speaker 5: it just sat in the.
Speaker 2: Fucking dance yourself and your teeth, like sit with it.
Speaker 3: It's a dry and mango that you would find in
Speaker 3: like a Fallout vault, right yes, and like.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't have even hit That's how bad it was.
Speaker 5: I still would have been pissed if it was Fallout.
Speaker 5: If I was like, oh ship, yeah, dried mango. I
Speaker 5: haven't had fruit ever, and then I've opened the package,
Speaker 5: I'm still pissed. That's how bad it was.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: That's what we need, though, we need to be able
Speaker 2: to taste the next Fallout game, and this one that's
Speaker 2: everything that you encounter. Not only can you pick it
Speaker 2: up and like put it in your inventory. You can
Speaker 2: lick it first. It's got Todd taste technology.
Speaker 3: Alright, Todd is the most cursed thing I've ever had.
Speaker 4: They gave out Cola's at E three two thousand and six,
Speaker 4: and they're pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I bought a new Co Cola when they were selling
Speaker 5: them for Fallout four and I was like, this is soda.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huh.
Speaker 1: To Nikki before we move on to Avowed, my understanding
Speaker 1: is that you and jam did some sort of gaming
Speaker 1: performance that directed attracted an audience.
Speaker 2: Dude, a lot of attention. What happened?
Speaker 5: So we didn't realize. I think Jane and I were
Speaker 5: and Jane has the all of the audio, so I
Speaker 5: think maybe I think it would be fun once the
Speaker 5: video game comes out if we just put out the
Speaker 5: put the video out. Because Jane and I were just
Speaker 5: streaming but for ourselves. But at some point someone like,
Speaker 5: Jan did you tim you.
Speaker 3: Took this picture? Yeah? Because we could see Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and we we.
Speaker 5: I had we had. Jane and I were just playing
Speaker 5: the game, talking to each other, and then apparently at
Speaker 5: some point there were like six or seven people from
Speaker 5: the Split Fiction team, every member watching. We're just seeing
Speaker 5: behind usn't watching us play and we had literally no idea.
Speaker 5: We were just like to play video game. So I
Speaker 5: think they were having a good time watching us, which
Speaker 5: is like, honestly, that's probably That's probably like thirty or
Speaker 5: forty percent why they do these events. It's like, is
Speaker 5: the game fun? Do people like it? So it was?
Speaker 5: It was, It was fun, it was a cool event.
Speaker 5: It is a weird little studio in Hollywood. They it
Speaker 5: was nice in there. We had I had a slider
Speaker 5: that was good.
Speaker 2: But was the tomato appropriately sized for it? No?
Speaker 3: It was not.
Speaker 5: The beam slider was bad.
Speaker 2: The chicken slider, sliders and video game events name a
Speaker 2: more iconic. Do they love those guys? All right, this
Speaker 2: game's out March sixth. We said on Everything Switch.
Speaker 4: PS five, I was just looking at that. It's definitely
Speaker 4: PS five Steam an Xbox.
Speaker 5: Okay, I would assume that it is not coming to
Speaker 5: the original Xbox or to the original Switch because it's
Speaker 5: unreal five. But okay, yeah, I would bet that it
Speaker 5: is coming to switch to as soon as they are
Speaker 5: allowed to say that video games are coming to the
Speaker 5: switch to.
Speaker 2: Right, that's not coming.
Speaker 5: That would be not not confirmed, but it would be
Speaker 5: nuts if if it did, and it.
Speaker 3: Takes too was on Switch has that friend posting where
Speaker 3: one of you the other one gets it.
Speaker 2: That's actually really handy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that like not many games do that, but this
Speaker 1: one day it's like you the other person just fully
Speaker 1: gets the game. It's not like, oh, the download play
Speaker 1: you head on the three DS or whatever. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: this is a full pass to actually owning the game.
Speaker 2: And it's also really smart because think about the number
Speaker 2: of games that have sold them like word of mouth
Speaker 2: and co op over the past handful of years, like
Speaker 2: Lethal Company blew up because of that ship, and so
Speaker 2: if you can bake that into the way that your
Speaker 2: game is sold and marketed, then like you're vastly increasing
Speaker 2: its chance is selling. Well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it also.
Speaker 3: Creates a yeah, I was gonna say, I talked to
Speaker 3: Joseph Harris and I and that is something that we
Speaker 3: talked about where it's kind of interesting way Hayes like
Speaker 3: has developed their own kind of like many ecosystem where
Speaker 3: they're the only ones that are really making these types
Speaker 3: of split screen co op games and then so and
Speaker 3: they're making good ones and then they have the friend
Speaker 3: past thing where it's like, so if you play one
Speaker 3: of these and you're like, oh, that was good. I
Speaker 3: like more of that. Pretty much. The only thing that
Speaker 3: you're going to get is one of their games, and
Speaker 3: you can rob someone else into playing that again with
Speaker 3: you by buying one copy, and then you play that
Speaker 3: one and you're like, I won't mind another one, and
Speaker 3: it's another one of their games. So it's like really
Speaker 3: really smart.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that that knock on effect I think is really
Speaker 5: big because it even if it isn't in that like
Speaker 5: that loop, a person who has played off of the
Speaker 5: free copy can then be like, I'm gonna buy it
Speaker 5: and I'll play it with a different person as a
Speaker 5: different as the other role that I didn't play. So
Speaker 5: it's a it's a really good loop. Fulton chatter asking
Speaker 5: if it has single player support, No, find a friend.
Speaker 3: I saw it than you. I didn't play a text
Speaker 3: too because I don't what to play with.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, any any final thoughts on split fiction spliction
Speaker 1: as we call it infliction?
Speaker 2: All right, avowed Dan Riiker. I think you've probably played
Speaker 2: the most out of all of.
Speaker 3: Us last night.
Speaker 4: I'm at like thirty six hours.
Speaker 1: Okay, why don't you kind of break down what this
Speaker 1: game is for people that are that still don't know
Speaker 1: and then kind of give your thoughts.
Speaker 4: Well, jeez, it's I saw the reveal of it, what
Speaker 4: was it at Summer Games Fest last year, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: sure that looks fine. Didn't really like you know, Clock
Speaker 4: with me at all and not a big, you know,
Speaker 4: RPG guy, but so yeah, I just downloaded and I
Speaker 4: was like, I'll give it a shot, see what this
Speaker 4: is about. And first night I downloaded, I think I
Speaker 4: probably played six seven hours. I just immediately got into
Speaker 4: it because, like, as much as I've enjoyed Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout,
Speaker 4: the Bethesda framework.
Speaker 2: You don't dislike those games.
Speaker 4: You actually really like them, you know, I really I
Speaker 4: but I feel, you know, I'm ready for the next
Speaker 4: level of that, which kind of is what this feels like,
Speaker 4: because the old bethesta ones always felt so wooden, even
Speaker 4: like going to Starfield and everything, like, you know, it
Speaker 4: just kind of felt woulden, not just the dialogue and
Speaker 4: things like that. But you know, I'm a dewey video
Speaker 4: game guy. I like the moment to moment. I like platformers,
Speaker 4: I like action games, and it's like I think GB
Speaker 4: you and I were talking about that first time that
Speaker 4: you're basically your guy coming from this government force to
Speaker 4: come into this island called the Living Lands, which is
Speaker 4: just kind of this like No Man's land. A bunch
Speaker 4: of people have just set up cities and things like that,
Speaker 4: but it's just kind of doing its own thing over there.
Speaker 4: And you crash on this island nearby and you start
Speaker 4: fighting these lizards, and right away I was like, ooh
Speaker 4: that felt good. Oh that felt like it really connected.
Speaker 4: There's some good collision going on here. This is a
Speaker 4: you know, first person melee combat is famously difficult to
Speaker 4: make feel good, and that felt really great. And then
Speaker 4: oh shit, I got a wand and I got this
Speaker 4: grimoire and now all of a sudden, oh shit, I'm like,
Speaker 4: you know, dual fisting this. I got this cool wand
Speaker 4: with like infinite magic amos. It's like a stamina. And
Speaker 4: in this Grim War where I can just hold LT
Speaker 4: and pick one of four fun like fire and frost
Speaker 4: and lightning effects and everything. So I was very quickly like,
Speaker 4: oh shit, this feels really good, whereas like if it
Speaker 4: felt like a traditional like Bethes the game, I might
Speaker 4: have fallen off pretty quickly. And then I started playing
Speaker 4: more and more, and the story started getting me more.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm not a story character narrative guy,
Speaker 4: but I'm like, man, the whole idea of like, it's
Speaker 4: not just the same fantasy tropes. It's not just you know,
Speaker 4: dragons and castles. It's this whole dream scourge. It's it's
Speaker 4: this thing like if you've seen the key arts, if
Speaker 4: you've seen the box art and the title screen, it's
Speaker 4: really cool. It's just like a skeleton with like trees
Speaker 4: and flowers and shit grown all inside them. And that
Speaker 4: is very much what's going on with this dream Scourge,
Speaker 4: which is the main kind of story beat here, is like,
Speaker 4: oh shit, this thing's kind of taking over this island,
Speaker 4: and they've sent you in to kind of like you know,
Speaker 4: look into it and send a message to the ambassador
Speaker 4: and blah blah blah. But you know, the thing is,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of choices that feel like they matter,
Speaker 4: and you come in as kind of this like naive,
Speaker 4: like I'm just working with the Adyrions, and you start
Speaker 4: learning more about the Adirrians, and you learn more about
Speaker 4: kind of the rebel faction here, and then there's like
Speaker 4: these kind of religious zealots over here, and then it's
Speaker 4: just like you get to make really interesting decisions about
Speaker 4: like kind of which side you want to take. And
Speaker 4: I'm you know, thirty six hours in, I'm in like
Speaker 4: the third big area. Basically, it's not big, you know,
Speaker 4: square open world the way that a lot of these
Speaker 4: games are. It's more kind of zones where it's like,
Speaker 4: here's like a big ish area here, do all your
Speaker 4: stuff mopped up, and then a story thing will take
Speaker 4: you to the second one, then on to the second one.
Speaker 4: You can go back, but like you know, enemies stay dead.
Speaker 4: There are some like story based events that change, you know,
Speaker 4: the previous places you've been to. But yeah, I've always
Speaker 4: been wary of like side quests in games like this
Speaker 4: because you know, even like you know, Fallout and Skyrim
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, there's just a lot of like,
Speaker 4: oh there's bandits down by the river, go kill a
Speaker 4: bunch of them minutes just like Okay, I did that
Speaker 4: and got whatever. Like here is closer to a Witcher
Speaker 4: type thing where it's like I want to do every
Speaker 4: side thing because I don't know which one of these
Speaker 4: is going to turn into a hour and a half long,
Speaker 4: you know, trek through all these caves and this mystery
Speaker 4: and choices and stuff, and it's everything's paid like there
Speaker 4: haven't been side things where'm like, oh, I gotta do
Speaker 4: another one of these things. You know, it's got bounties
Speaker 4: and stuff like that that you see a lot, but
Speaker 4: those are still fun too here.
Speaker 2: So fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4: I think it's tremendous. I love the way it does
Speaker 4: kind of that cotor style because I've always hate turn
Speaker 4: based combat and this one. You can do the moment
Speaker 4: to moment just you know, shooting and stabbing and stuff.
Speaker 4: But then at any point you can hit LB on
Speaker 4: plane on controller and you've got companions and you can
Speaker 4: say like, okay, you I want you to do your
Speaker 4: explosive thing to this group over here. You you do
Speaker 4: a heel and then when I un pause, I'm going
Speaker 4: to do this bull charge into this group here, and
Speaker 4: it's like okay, unpaused, and you see all this stuff happened,
Speaker 4: bodies flying everywhere, good rag dolling and all that. Just
Speaker 4: immensely satisfying no matter how you play the combat. And
Speaker 4: I've seen the complaints about the difficulty and the crafting
Speaker 4: and the grind and honestly, like, I feel like most
Speaker 4: of the negative sentiment I've seen has been because of that.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if this is the game's fault
Speaker 4: at not surfacing this more, because like I have not
Speaker 4: found that to be a problem at all. I feel like,
Speaker 4: on the normal difficulty, I've died exactly how much I
Speaker 4: would want to die in a game like this where
Speaker 4: it's like I stumble into the wrong camp or whatever,
Speaker 4: I get my ass kicked, you know, I'll go level up,
Speaker 4: get some gear better, and come back and win. Because
Speaker 4: as far as like your health, I think making food
Speaker 4: at there's camps that you can set up, and that's
Speaker 4: where you kind of chat with your companions. You level
Speaker 4: things up, just go to the pot the fire, and
Speaker 4: make everything you can make. There's no reason to have
Speaker 4: these individual components, these apples, these whatever, make all these
Speaker 4: stews and beers and potions and things like that. And
Speaker 4: then if you're having trouble with this combat encounter, go
Speaker 4: in there and just drink a ton of shit and
Speaker 4: it's like, all right, I'm dealing twenty percent more damage,
Speaker 4: I'm taking twenty percent less damage. I'm you know, health
Speaker 4: regenerating stuff. I've got tons of that, and then you've
Speaker 4: got the essence potion stuff like that. For your magic,
Speaker 4: you get like your own personal godlike powers where it's
Speaker 4: just like basically a mana thing that you can do
Speaker 4: to heal yourself and your companions, and your companions can
Speaker 4: get powers too to heal you. So like I felt,
Speaker 4: at any given time, it's like, oh shit, I'm out
Speaker 4: of potions. Okay, well I'm going to have them heal me,
Speaker 4: or I'm gonna use my god power and take your time, pause,
Speaker 4: look around, heal when necessary. I did not find it
Speaker 4: that difficult. And the crafting stuff, I think, Okay, this
Speaker 4: is something I was thinking about a lot. I was
Speaker 4: thinking back to when I played Red Dead two and Destranding,
Speaker 4: and I hated it the first time around it, And
Speaker 4: both those times were because I was rushing through it
Speaker 4: and I was like, goddamn of this game keeps going.
Speaker 4: I gotta get this beat before embargo because we're gonna
Speaker 4: talk about on the podcast or I might be reviewing
Speaker 4: this or something, and so I'm rushing from thing to think.
Speaker 4: And I hated both those games, and then I came
Speaker 4: back to both of them years later, taking my time
Speaker 4: with no time restrictions, and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: I think the rush pre release really impacted my enjoyment
Speaker 4: of this. And I could see myself like if I
Speaker 4: had to review this because it came in kind of hot.
Speaker 4: The Coach came in barely, like within a week or so,
Speaker 4: and I saw some reviews saying they beat it in
Speaker 4: like thirty hours. It's like, Fuck, I'm thirty six and
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm not even quite close to the end.
Speaker 4: So it makes me wonder, you know, we're reviewers or
Speaker 4: we're people trying to rush through this a bit and
Speaker 4: not doing the side quest stuff. That if you're doing
Speaker 4: side quest stuff and you're exploring, you're getting all that
Speaker 4: fucking petrified wood and the leather and all the stuff
Speaker 4: you need. And there's systems in place to where you
Speaker 4: can take the smaller stuff and make the bigger crafting materials,
Speaker 4: or you can break down the bigger ones to get
Speaker 4: the lower ones you need. Like all the systems are
Speaker 4: there in this game to make it a smooth experience.
Speaker 4: But I don't know if A it was surfaced enough maybe,
Speaker 4: or b if some people pre release were rushing through it.
Speaker 4: Because I've I've had no problems with that.
Speaker 5: I also think that like a lot of people are,
Speaker 5: and I'm that's why I'm so deeply curious to see
Speaker 5: what the conversation with this game is post and actually
Speaker 5: being out because you can if you have game Pass,
Speaker 5: you can get it now and it's day one. It's
Speaker 5: still yeah, yeah, it will come out for a sheet
Speaker 5: on the eighteenth. But I think a lot of people
Speaker 5: are used to games that do not have any kind
Speaker 5: of friction in them at all, which is like, that's fine.
Speaker 5: I think I personally, all of this stuff is so
Speaker 5: deeply exciting to me because I am really tired of
Speaker 5: playing games that are like we like not where Avowed
Speaker 5: wants you to play it, obviously, but it also is
Speaker 5: is like, you're supposed to engage with this thing. We
Speaker 5: don't want your brain to turn off while you are
Speaker 5: engaging with this thing. We want you to kind of
Speaker 5: play it. I've been playing a lot of Citizens Leaper two,
Speaker 5: which is like, is different, obviously, but it is also
Speaker 5: a thing where I'm like, I'm really having to sit
Speaker 5: down and kind of figure out I have to. My
Speaker 5: brain is actively working all of the time when I'm
Speaker 5: playing that game, reading that game, and this seems like, yeah,
Speaker 5: there are ways that you can fuck yourself over, like deeply.
Speaker 5: If you spend all of your currency or your resources
Speaker 5: on shit that you actually don't need or want. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 5: you're gonna be fucked moving.
Speaker 2: Forward to fix that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, and anytime based some gold and kind
Speaker 1: of reallocate all your all your uh, your ability points
Speaker 1: and things like that, what are you gonna say, damn, Nikki.
Speaker 4: That reminds me. That's another tip. If people are struggling
Speaker 4: with that, do not sell your stuff as you were getting.
Speaker 4: You know, you'll get a bunch of O fine ax
Speaker 4: or fine bow or you know, all these things. There's
Speaker 4: a temptation to sell that stuff.
Speaker 2: Don't do that.
Speaker 4: Money comes fairly easily in this game through side quest,
Speaker 4: and you can sell like there's loot. There's like emeralds
Speaker 4: and topazes and things that are it tells you specifically
Speaker 4: like this is for money, sell this at a vendor,
Speaker 4: all the other stuff. Every time you get a weapon
Speaker 4: you're not going to use, break it down. You just
Speaker 4: look at it and the menu hold an X breaks
Speaker 4: it down, gets your crafting materials. I think that's a
Speaker 4: big part of the reason I have not been want
Speaker 4: for crafting materials at all. So that's a big tip
Speaker 4: if you' struggling.
Speaker 5: People can't read.
Speaker 4: I mean literally because because Tam, I can't do the
Speaker 4: get good thing. Tam is mister frumpsoft. So this isn't
Speaker 4: a skill issue. So I'm curious TAM's experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tam, but will give you the floor here in
Speaker 1: a sex Yeah, We're very curious to hear your perspective
Speaker 1: because it's a different perspective. I'll just say, like to
Speaker 1: add on to what Dan said and kind of what
Speaker 1: Nicky was saying, like dance describing like okay, yeah, taking
Speaker 1: all these potions and and setting up so you know
Speaker 1: how to use all your your companion's abilities and things
Speaker 1: like that. It's like, okay, yeah, that stuff was working
Speaker 1: for me. But I also found my own way of
Speaker 1: dealing with problems of like I found I stumbled upon
Speaker 1: a grimoire that had some cool stuff in it pretty early,
Speaker 1: and so I was able to like get some magic
Speaker 1: armor and a magic staff that can take on much
Speaker 1: higher level enemies. So I just like mixed that into
Speaker 1: the spells as I'm in combat, and that stuff wears
Speaker 1: off after a minute or two, so it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got to back up, and that's when I send
Speaker 1: my companions in to kind of keep stuff away from
Speaker 1: me for a minute while I am recharging on cool down.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, I it's just a role play.
Speaker 1: It's the roleplay of combat of I've got these options
Speaker 1: in front of me, I've explored them. This is what's
Speaker 1: working for me. It's going to be different from what's
Speaker 1: working for Dan. And that's some of the magic here
Speaker 1: is that you can really express yourself through the combat,
Speaker 1: and you want to because it's some much fun.
Speaker 2: It's also noteworthy and this is a really small thing,
Speaker 2: but unlike a lot of fantasy role playing games, where
Speaker 2: you know, you go and do the menu, you equip
Speaker 2: and on equip your stuff, you have two load outs
Speaker 2: in this game, and so at any moment you can
Speaker 2: just tap why and switch to your other set of weapons,
Speaker 2: and so you can like alternate and juggle between those
Speaker 2: mid fight and like use all these different abilities that
Speaker 2: those each grant.
Speaker 1: It adds a lot of variability too, and everything's fun
Speaker 1: to use. The bow and arrow is fun, The daggers
Speaker 1: are fun. The guns are fun to use. Though of course,
Speaker 1: the magical wand it's a great time. Yes, magic is fantastic.
Speaker 1: I just started to it was so impactful. I just
Speaker 1: started it last night and I tried to do this
Speaker 1: and I think it worked, but I don't know. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you guys.
Speaker 2: You can like you can electrify water, right and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah right now pistol electrifiers. So I just I'm constantly
Speaker 3: shooting up puddles of war.
Speaker 4: Yeah, electrifiers.
Speaker 2: Day yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: You talk about Nathan uition the like switching between sets,
Speaker 4: and it's not a thing where it's like, oh, it
Speaker 4: also includes your armor. It's simple and that it's like,
Speaker 4: all right, I got my wand in gramoire for range stuff,
Speaker 4: and then if some skeletons getting up in my ass,
Speaker 4: it's like I'll hit. Why all it switches is I
Speaker 4: got a big fucking axe and you know, it's not
Speaker 4: all my armor and everything.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of amazed that other fantasy games have not
Speaker 2: really done that because it's such a simple thing from
Speaker 2: like fresh pressent shooters, and so why not to say like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: switch to your other weapons. It's like ingrained in us
Speaker 2: as people who play video games.
Speaker 4: And it's fairly simple to, Like, you know, there are
Speaker 4: times where it's just like, Okay, each world or each
Speaker 4: area has like these six gold totem things you can
Speaker 4: find that are very worth finding, and so a lot
Speaker 4: of times I'm just running around trying to uncover the map,
Speaker 4: and so it's like very easy to just like I'm
Speaker 4: gonna put on a bunch of boots and stuff that
Speaker 4: give me a speed bonus, and then I've got this
Speaker 4: companion that has an ability that gives me a speed bonus,
Speaker 4: and I've leveled that up for longer duration everything, and
Speaker 4: I'll switch to the third person. I literally it looks
Speaker 4: like a cartoon. Good are like purple light cut me out,
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, And there's boots and stuff. It's like plus
Speaker 4: thirty percent per horse speed. So I'm just dashing it
Speaker 4: just like clambering up everything.
Speaker 1: Horse speed, which rules. And that stuff's also very good
Speaker 1: in this game. I love, uh, you know, as great
Speaker 1: as the combat is, the expiration really works where like
Speaker 1: if I see something or on the mini map, I'll
Speaker 1: see a little red dot of like, oh, there's an enemy,
Speaker 1: but there's a door that's barred there. How can I
Speaker 1: get in there? I bet I can, and I always
Speaker 1: find a way by like just looking around. If there's
Speaker 1: a ramp there, I'll jump up there, go around the
Speaker 1: long way, and it's I love that.
Speaker 2: That is really good in this game. That is the
Speaker 2: thing that has stricken me about the game in the
Speaker 2: few hours that I played so far, is the world
Speaker 2: feels so intentionally crafted, like compared to even other like
Speaker 2: kind of open worldish games, Like you can feel a
Speaker 2: human touch in like every corner of this thing, and
Speaker 2: like there's so many little secrets and there's so many
Speaker 2: little areas where like you're clearly meant to go in
Speaker 2: and look at one thing and then realize, oh, there's
Speaker 2: this other thing over here. Actually if I climb up
Speaker 2: over here and climb here and do that. And like
Speaker 2: my favorite example of this, it's that tower that you
Speaker 2: find in the first like major port city that you
Speaker 2: just like see off in the distance and it's covered
Speaker 2: in like brambles and vines and everything, and you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna climb that, and yeah, but I just.
Speaker 4: Found the tallest tower I've seen yet in the game,
Speaker 4: and I saw the very top there was like a
Speaker 4: plank going off, and I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: And I got on a plank and I looked down
Speaker 4: and there was a thing like a square of water there,
Speaker 4: and like, I'm fucking jumping off this.
Speaker 2: At the very beginning, you can jump into the ocean
Speaker 2: because I was like, I don't want to climb down this,
Speaker 2: and it like has some little boards with a rope
Speaker 2: hanging down it, which tells the story to itself like
Speaker 2: somebody probably trying to climb down, and and so you're like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna die. I'm the main character, and so
Speaker 2: you just like sprint run off, and as you drop down,
Speaker 2: your character literally literally screams.
Speaker 4: He goes and you see the feet like flailing, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it is funny, Like a lot of the writing has
Speaker 4: been really solid. Some of the choices are very funny. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's great too, because like most encounters and stuff, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: do I want to be a dick about this? Are
Speaker 4: they being cool? Am I going to be cool? And
Speaker 4: then there's usually like the attack thing at the bottom
Speaker 4: you can do, and I feel like I've so rarely
Speaker 4: done that. It's usually I can find a way to
Speaker 4: kind of talk myself out of it even with that
Speaker 4: like skill check type stuff. But then every once in
Speaker 4: a while, there's like a group where it's like, man,
Speaker 4: fuck you guys, Okay, I'm just gonna fucking kill all
Speaker 4: of you. Dialogue and magic everywhere is just slaughter, and
Speaker 4: it's like, oh man, that was fucked up.
Speaker 2: Like it feels great.
Speaker 1: I think that's like the Nathan you were saying, like
Speaker 1: intentionality everywhere, there's also that like it goes. It's broad
Speaker 1: in its intentionality, but it's also deep in that when
Speaker 1: once you start going in these quests and you see
Speaker 1: the various options that you can pick and the forks
Speaker 1: in the road, there's a lot of stuff that feels
Speaker 1: like we're going to put this in here, even though
Speaker 1: we know a lot of people are not going to
Speaker 1: see these things, and that's okay because having the option
Speaker 1: and ignoring it does feel empowering to players still, and
Speaker 1: we recognize that, and so we're going to make this
Speaker 1: a deep personalized experience. And that also has really worked
Speaker 1: for me throughout all these great conversations I'm having with
Speaker 1: the NPCs.
Speaker 2: All Right, let's not everyone does like this game now.
Speaker 1: In tam I think where you set it up, you're
Speaker 1: like cool on it to kind of like not really
Speaker 1: find it a very engrossing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I don't necessarily disagree with a lot
Speaker 3: of what was said there. I think the combat is
Speaker 3: far and away the best part of it. I'm running
Speaker 3: like a gun slash knife build where I shoot from
Speaker 3: a distance and if anyone gets close, I have a
Speaker 3: sword that every time I hit him it gives me
Speaker 3: a halfback. So I'm basically unkillable cool. So it is
Speaker 3: very very satisfying to play in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: I think that the economy of like upgrades and the
Speaker 3: system I do have had, I have run up against
Speaker 3: it a few times, and I think that it's definitely
Speaker 3: resolved in large parts by doing everything. But the fact
Speaker 3: that that's a basically in this necessity is something that
Speaker 3: rubbed me the wrong way because a lot of the
Speaker 3: side quests I found to be quite boring and like
Speaker 3: narratively speaking, quite uninteresting. Most of the characters I've encountered
Speaker 3: are very very forgettable and throw away, even your main party.
Speaker 3: Like the first dude you meet, fish Man, whatever his
Speaker 3: name is, I can't even remembers Garrett Garret. Like I
Speaker 3: realized there was an issue there. When I meet him
Speaker 3: and you speak to him, you have one conversation, He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: hell yeah, I'll help you through everything. And I was like,
Speaker 3: what you you barely know and he's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm coming with you. And I was like what, why? What?
Speaker 3: What is the deal?
Speaker 2: Likestand he's a hot fish man who likes you.
Speaker 3: What more though, every time I see him, this is
Speaker 3: an ugly ass character, really weird.
Speaker 2: He'ser you did not you did not take away the
Speaker 2: intended message from Shape of Water.
Speaker 3: He looks he's got a shark peth and he looks
Speaker 3: like he's made out of foil, And I'm just like, what,
Speaker 3: It's such a weird looking character.
Speaker 2: His skin text shits are fucking amazing. What are you
Speaker 2: talking about?
Speaker 3: Finding him weird?
Speaker 2: I mean, but even there, the amount of craftsmanship in
Speaker 2: this game is crazy to me, Like it looks it's mesrizing,
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 3: Think that's kind of a large part of why I'm
Speaker 3: not vibing with it. I think it just hits for
Speaker 3: some people and won't hit for other people. For me, Like,
Speaker 3: the narrative is completely gibberish to me, Like, I don't
Speaker 3: I'm not, I do not care. The main quest is
Speaker 3: not helping me at all, and it's.
Speaker 1: Also we're pointing out this is a offshoot of the
Speaker 1: Pillars of Eternity branch, so there's a lot of existing
Speaker 1: and it has a that they are using this backdrop.
Speaker 1: You can press F on keyboard when you're playing at
Speaker 1: any time and they'll bring up if there's a blue word,
Speaker 1: they'll give you some.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Very like a wall of options of like proper nouns
Speaker 2: that you've heard in like three sentences and you're like,
Speaker 2: I don't really want to.
Speaker 3: Go And that's the issue. One of the issues where
Speaker 3: like I felt like I was a line would come up,
Speaker 3: someone would say something, and then I was reading for
Speaker 3: like ten minutes through like the sequence of terms, and
Speaker 3: now I'm consuming the narrative in the weirdest way possible,
Speaker 3: where I'm like hearing someone say something and then I'm
Speaker 3: basically absorbing bullet points and then going back to it
Speaker 3: and trying to connect why that's relevant. And then in
Speaker 3: the next line there's a different set of proper nouns
Speaker 3: where you're like, what the what is going on. It's
Speaker 3: a very strange way to and like I know a
Speaker 3: lot of people are like, oh, I love it. It's
Speaker 3: really like dense and that kind of stuff. But it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: mass effect is very very dense, but the way it's
Speaker 3: revealed to you, it's very contextual and like you're you're
Speaker 3: part of the understanding and the discovery process of it,
Speaker 3: where like when you learn something new, you learn it
Speaker 3: because you're part of that and it's necessary to what
Speaker 3: you're about to embark on, or it's good context with this,
Speaker 3: it's just like here's something that exists in our world.
Speaker 3: Here's everything you need to know, here's a Wikipedia entry
Speaker 3: on it. And also you don't really it's not relevant
Speaker 3: right now. It's like, Okay, why why did I need
Speaker 3: to know any of that? So like it's it drowns
Speaker 3: you in. There's a lot of like law, and I
Speaker 3: think the pillars of eternity like foundation can really work
Speaker 3: against it. And and that is an issue that I had.
Speaker 3: And also like a lot of the characters I speak to,
Speaker 3: I think I genuinely feel like some of them. They
Speaker 3: come up on screen, I'm like, what the why do
Speaker 3: you look like that? It's so ugly.
Speaker 4: Defend Yeah, I defend the companions the first three and
Speaker 4: then I just got the fourth one. I was like, ah,
Speaker 4: fuck this thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's secs where I've rung up to it and
Speaker 3: I was like, are you a child or a short adult?
Speaker 3: What are you going? What's going on? It's so weird,
Speaker 3: So like that's that's a part of it. And then
Speaker 3: like I do think that the fact that you have
Speaker 3: to do everything is indicative of an economy that isn't
Speaker 3: properly balanced, because the fact that you need to engage
Speaker 3: in every single element of the side quest to kind
Speaker 3: of more seamlessly or smoothly, or to have a better
Speaker 3: experience in the main quest is not a good kind
Speaker 3: of indication of balance because designers know that not everyone's
Speaker 3: gonna want to do everything. But if the options to
Speaker 3: ignore the things that you don't want are not available
Speaker 3: or you're punished for it, I don't think that's a
Speaker 3: good balance. Like I've been doing everything and even I
Speaker 3: still will have like go into a battle where it's
Speaker 3: like a cut to the end of it, and like
Speaker 3: I've fought that battle and have won, but it's been
Speaker 3: a grind. But the moment you go into a battle,
Speaker 3: like your companions are like you need better armor, It's like,
Speaker 3: how how am I going to get better armor?
Speaker 4: I've picked that a lot it like, even though I've
Speaker 4: got good enough armor for this stuff, they yelled at
Speaker 4: a lot. So that is kind of annoy fine.
Speaker 3: You know, it's also frustrating when you go into like
Speaker 3: your inventory to upgrade something. You know, you have that
Speaker 3: feeling where it's like I'm gonna uprade something. You go
Speaker 3: in there, you're like, oh, yes, this is available for upgrade.
Speaker 3: This game has the opposite effect where the amount of
Speaker 3: times I go into an inventory or an upgrade menu
Speaker 3: and so a lot all my stuff is not upgrading
Speaker 3: is far more frequent than when I open it and
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I've got this one thing to upgrade.
Speaker 3: It's always you need this much, this of this thing,
Speaker 3: just much of this thing, and you might find it
Speaker 3: in the while, or you might not find it for
Speaker 3: hours and hours and hours on end. And I'm just
Speaker 3: like I'm doing fine, but and I'm getting through the game.
Speaker 3: I'm just not having fun with it. I enjoy apart
Speaker 3: from when I'm in combat and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: doing the gunning and like stabbing and all that kind
Speaker 3: of business. That's enjoyable. But at the moment I'm like
Speaker 3: in the world and I have to go and speak
Speaker 3: to a human learn about what they're talking about here
Speaker 3: about some god that I don't really know about. And
Speaker 3: also like the God keeps talking to me and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I just what are you talking about? What are you
Speaker 3: on about? And if it was like being cryptic and
Speaker 3: then I was getting a revelation about something like small
Speaker 3: and it was like building towards something, I'd be more
Speaker 3: into it. But it's just like God appears and it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you haven't heard from us for hours. We have we'd
Speaker 3: like to converse with you. And you're like why, why,
Speaker 3: why do you need to talk to me? Why did
Speaker 3: you make me come here? Like I've had question lines
Speaker 3: where they're like, oh, come back, you need to talk
Speaker 3: to me about moving my soul and I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I did it. I moved your soul into this giant
Speaker 3: thing that someone was trying to use the like nukea civilization.
Speaker 3: But there's no meaning, there's no meaningful, like nothing changed.
Speaker 3: You were like okay, cool, we'll see you later. Like God,
Speaker 3: it's like the annoying character in your ear that has
Speaker 3: got nothing really to say but just wants you to
Speaker 3: remind you that they're there. And there's like way too
Speaker 3: much of that, and it does eventually that like Touched
Speaker 3: by a God, thing does eventually build to some small moments,
Speaker 3: but it's not significant enough for me. And also like
Speaker 3: the way it manifests with their box art thing where
Speaker 3: you're like flowery and stuff, Oh that looks good man,
Speaker 3: Like every time I see it it cause it seems
Speaker 3: I'm just like, ugh, that's good.
Speaker 2: But I also feel like it's not necessarily meant to
Speaker 2: look good. And I kind of like that because also,
Speaker 2: characters react to you, and I think that's like, what
Speaker 2: what's with your face? Like, oh, yeah, that you often
Speaker 2: get in video games usually, Yeah, in video games, people
Speaker 2: treat your character as though they are like perfect, or
Speaker 2: at the very least, like their appearance is immaterial, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. I think it's more to actually get a reaction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's more entertaining if you turn that off,
Speaker 3: because they still react to you as if your face
Speaker 3: is fucked up, but you just look normal and they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: what's wrong? Get a face and you're like, what normal?
Speaker 2: I'm a guy.
Speaker 3: I'm just a guy.
Speaker 2: It's like in a world where it's bad to look normal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do, genuinely think this is one of those
Speaker 3: things where it's one of those like divisive games where
Speaker 3: either it will click for you and you'll be like,
Speaker 3: I'm into this, or you'll be like, I'm hitting just
Speaker 3: enough like rough it just that I don't like it
Speaker 3: for me. I'm just like I'm enjoying. I'm still playing
Speaker 3: it because I want to see where it goes a
Speaker 3: little bit. But I could drop it at any moment
Speaker 3: and not feel like I'm missing out on anything but
Speaker 3: the fact that it's on game Pass and if you
Speaker 3: have game Pass, it's a no brain and give it
Speaker 3: a few hours see how you feel. I don't hate it.
Speaker 3: I think it's a decently well made game. I genuinely
Speaker 3: do think if they rebalance the economy of like upgrades
Speaker 3: and that kind of stuff, it'll be a considerably bad game.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this is one that people will have a
Speaker 1: better time with if they do do a dance and
Speaker 1: they like kind of let themselves get into the ebb
Speaker 1: and flow of of the way the game pushes against
Speaker 1: you and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So like when you are running up against those rough.
Speaker 1: Edges, it's like that's actually the game pushing your back
Speaker 1: and say go do something else for a little bit.
Speaker 1: And if people feel like they can get into that,
Speaker 1: I think they're going to have a really good time
Speaker 1: with this game. If they're not in the mood for that,
Speaker 1: I think they will bounce off. But I think over time,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the audience probably will be find
Speaker 1: themselves to be like, no, I am ready to kind
Speaker 1: of get myself over to what this game is trying
Speaker 1: to do, and I think it's going to have a
Speaker 1: kind of long legs and yeah, kind of a.
Speaker 2: Reassessment here pretty soon.
Speaker 3: I will say, for a lot of players that really
Speaker 3: enjoy it, it's the best Bethesda game in a long time. No, No,
Speaker 3: I mean I mean it's Obsidian. Obsidian have one basically
Speaker 3: built a kind of legacy on making better versions of
Speaker 3: what you know Bethesda does. And this is another in
Speaker 3: that line where Starfield came out. Starfield very different game.
Speaker 3: I played it and I was like, this is asked.
Speaker 3: I don't want anything to do with it. And but
Speaker 3: I still had the kind of itch for a Bethesda
Speaker 3: style game, like I want it to feel like I'm
Speaker 3: playing Skyrim Oblivion and something like that, and this does
Speaker 3: scratch that itch doesn't work for me in the same way.
Speaker 3: But I feel like a lot of people are going
Speaker 3: to play it and be like, oh, this is this
Speaker 3: is what I've been waiting for in the lead up
Speaker 3: to like an Elder Scroll. So a lot of people.
Speaker 3: If you're if you're into Bethesda games, definitely play this
Speaker 3: because it probably will hit for you.
Speaker 2: Oh then again with that, with the caveat that, I
Speaker 2: think Bethesda games tend to be like very wide open
Speaker 2: and unfocused, and I think this world feels much more
Speaker 2: crafted and much more like it wants you to do
Speaker 2: certain things. It wants to nudge you along the siddle halfs.
Speaker 2: But also it occurred to me, Obsidian does what Bethes
Speaker 2: don't there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go. That's good.
Speaker 5: Put that on the back of the box.
Speaker 3: Just put that on the back of your new book.
Speaker 4: A quick anecdote of the ship that I love about
Speaker 4: this game. I saw Chap mentioned like, oh, I just
Speaker 4: saw that you can freeze water and walk on it.
Speaker 4: I'm like, yes, you can. It teaches you that because
Speaker 4: you can like knock down these like little freezeberries and
Speaker 4: if it lands in water it makes a little ice platform.
Speaker 4: Not just that I learned that. I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: if that works hang on, I had a spell that
Speaker 4: makes like an ice ring around me. It's like a
Speaker 4: defensive frost shield thing. So I went out to like
Speaker 4: a big lake and I did the frost shield thing,
Speaker 4: which lasts for twenty thirty seconds, and I was able
Speaker 4: to sprint across the lake as it froze underneath my feet.
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Type of this is a video game, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of systems that that it's not like
Speaker 1: ready to fully flesh out, Like there is no real
Speaker 1: law system. Usually, Uh, everything that's in the world that's
Speaker 1: sitting around, even if it's in other people's houses, you
Speaker 1: could just pick it up.
Speaker 2: You're not, you're not.
Speaker 1: It doesn't qualify as stealing. And you get the sense
Speaker 1: they're like, we could have done that, but we would
Speaker 1: have had a half asset, so let's just not do
Speaker 1: it at all. And I'm probably the right choice.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I miss some of that stuff, but I'm glad it's
Speaker 1: not here and done in a way that is half asked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and then I just think overall that that
Speaker 1: they really just focus on the stuff they.
Speaker 2: Wanted to do.
Speaker 3: You were going to say, Tam, how is your technical
Speaker 3: performance because I've been playing on X up and down
Speaker 3: and it's not very consistent. I've had areas where I
Speaker 3: walk into and it's like, oh.
Speaker 1: This is an Unreal Engine five game. It is an
Speaker 1: open world Unreal Engined five game. As always, those can
Speaker 1: be pretty heavy in some areas. This is especially in
Speaker 1: the city. With the fifty eight, I was getting like
Speaker 1: thirty frames per seconds sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm finding with the forty ninety, I have not
Speaker 4: had issues I had on The one issue I had
Speaker 4: was not a performance thing. It was like a bounty
Speaker 4: thing where it's like you have to kill five of
Speaker 4: these pretty tough enemies and I died several times, like
Speaker 4: oh I finally did it, and only four of the
Speaker 4: like trophies that you have to return spawn and so
Speaker 4: it's like I picked up four of them and it
Speaker 4: was like you still need to get one more, and
Speaker 4: it was looking around, like what the fucks I did
Speaker 4: have to roll back and save it were? That was
Speaker 4: the one big issue that.
Speaker 6: Were not but that but not very buggy otherwise, especially
Speaker 6: for an upsity, I think it kind of varies because
Speaker 6: I know our review. I had a bunch of bugs,
Speaker 6: like quest lines that would break and required him to
Speaker 6: like restart and it's interesting because like nicely interesting, but
Speaker 6: like they patched it like a few hours before the
Speaker 6: reviewing bargo went up, so we had to like quickly
Speaker 6: change our reviews because they fixed that stuff. But it's
Speaker 6: still is very much like for me, I find it too.
Speaker 6: I wanted to play on Xbox because Xbox I don't
Speaker 6: play it enough, so I wanted to play a bunch
Speaker 6: of that on and I've been having some no crashes. No,
Speaker 6: I did have one crash. Actually it was just in
Speaker 6: immensely It was like, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5: The Xbox loves to crash though, like that that thing
Speaker 5: to crash playing fucking eyedarb it is not difficult to
Speaker 5: get the Xbox to turn off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was the weirdest bull.
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 2: What is that for? I drew a red Box.
Speaker 4: The kids can't stop talking about.
Speaker 1: My children are obsessed with it for sure, and they
Speaker 1: watch all their favorite Eyed creators.
Speaker 3: Shouldn't be watching.
Speaker 2: Uh last couple of things.
Speaker 1: But the I think to speak to the economy thing
Speaker 1: that Tam was talking about, one quick fix just put
Speaker 1: in a blood moon so that some of the in
Speaker 1: world enemies could just respawd so you can go out
Speaker 1: and get more resources when you want, just do that immediately.
Speaker 2: That I think this is going to solve a lot
Speaker 2: of people's problems, uh with this game.
Speaker 1: And then so people in chat were just wondering, how
Speaker 1: did everyone feel about Outer Worlds and how do you
Speaker 1: compare it to this?
Speaker 2: I I liked Outer world a lot at first.
Speaker 1: I cooled on it over time because they just didn't
Speaker 1: have the juice as it went on, and I think
Speaker 1: this is a better game overall.
Speaker 4: I feel the exact same beat Outer Worlds enjoyed it,
Speaker 4: but not nearly on the level I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Cool, all right, I think that's going to do it.
Speaker 1: Let's see here the anything else from Giant Bomb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are going to have upf here in a little bit. Nikki,
Speaker 1: you want to play some rocket?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like fun to me.
Speaker 3: Everyone going by sports this book?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and then once again Nathan's book available next.
Speaker 2: It's called it is I'll wait, do you have a copy?
Speaker 2: How we can both hold them up?
Speaker 6: It's it's over in the other room, so I don't
Speaker 6: have again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called stream Bag, The Triumphs and Turmoils of
Speaker 2: Twitch and The Stars Behind the Screen by Nathan Grayson,
Speaker 2: and it's out next week on February eighteenth. You can
Speaker 2: pre order wherever books are sold. Also, I am the
Speaker 2: co founder of a website called aftermath Dot site we
Speaker 2: write about video game news and things of that nature.
Speaker 2: We're worker owned, users are reader supported. Go check that out.
Speaker 2: I think we do good work. And also if you
Speaker 2: like Giant Bomb, they'll probably like what we do too.
Speaker 1: Yep, one absolutely great website, all right, for everyone from
Speaker 1: Giant Bomb, for Nathan, thank you everybody for joining us.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get out of here. Until next time, have
Speaker 1: a good one, take care of yourself, and goodbye.