Double Fine Announces Layoffs After Xbox Split - Kinda Funny Games Daily 07.29.26

0:00At the Home Depot, get up to 15 % off all installed carpet projects for a limited time. Featuring brands like LifeProof, LifeProof with PetProof Technology, Home Decorators Collection, and Traffic Master. Take your pick of carpet built for real life and designed for real comfort. Plus, with installation starting as low as 49 cents per square foot and a free measure to get you started, we'll handle the hard parts for you. Offer valid July 16th, 2026 through August 2nd, 2026. Exclusions apply. For licenses, see homedepot.com slash license numbers. It's kind of funny. He's Patreon pledge month. Support us at patrion.com slash kind of funny.

0:35We really appreciate it. Now we're over to you here. Today's gaming news stories include double fines hit with layoffs. The status of clear obscures switch to port and fans are loving Splatoon Raiders. We'll have all this and more because this is kind of funny games daily.

0:59there's a lot going on everybody wow the monitor uh the tv out here that we normally look at to see ourselves is uh having no signal and there was just an accident there and so then barrett was like oh we're going to the cold open and i was like i guess i'm going and it wasn't the cold open and then yeah it was the case of none of us paying attention i did i don't know if it was loud for y 'all but then the intro was very very loud uh but but here we are here we are How are you? I'm startled. I'm a little bit scared. We can reset right now. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games Daily for Wednesday, July 29th, 2026.

1:31Of course, I'm your host, Tim Geddes. I am joined today by Blessing Adeoye Jr. I kid you not, like the screen not being on the right channel is something I would have noticed. I've been so distracted this morning because I'm just looking up magic cards. Yeah. What's going on? Is there any new? No, it's nothing new. I'm just trying to make a new deck and I'm trying to figure I want to make a deck that's going to make people hate me we've reached that point this is your era now we've reached that point in magic and specifically my magic friend group where i'm like i need to i need to make waves i need to become a dominant force i need to push people to the next level i had that moment back in uh somewhere around like the summer of eighth grade with yugioh where me and my friends we all played and it was like a fairly balanced uh win rate between us like i'd say there was like five or six of us and like there was no one person that won more than other people and then my friend vince got a summer job before anyone else did what's that mean he gets to buy all the nice cards he wants so then all of a sudden his deck was just dominant and that it wasn't fun anymore it's like it's just you just paid to win literally you know yeah so i schemed and i was like i need to come up with a strategy to to outwit outplay outlast like survivor this motherfucker and i came up with an idea that didn't work forever but it worked really well for a while the with yugioh if i remember correctly and it was a long time ago we also give give me some grace here your deck could be as big as you want it to be yeah so a lot of people maybe there's some limit but like you could have a lot of cards and so like my friend curran he would just have all his dope cards in there and like there was some level of strategy but really it's just like luck of the draw yeah the minimum amount of cards you had to have i think was 40 yeah and so i was like i'm gonna have exactly 40 cards i want to know exactly how close i am to my fucking fighters yeah you know what i mean and that strategy worked for me so well i think that's like supposed to be the optimal way to play at least magic again i'm not saying like i came up with some like oh it was when i was 13 when everybody's like you know that's i mean funny enough that's how magic started for me where in standard, I think it's a 60 card deck.

3:45And for me, I was like, oh, I'm going to put 90 cards in here because I'm just going to put all the best cards in one deck. And I started playing. I started streaming my games. And people were like, bless. Why do you have 90 cards in your deck? You got to get that down to 60 because that's optimally you want to have like. You want control. You want control. You want to be able to draw the exact cards that you're looking for. And so you're trying to get like four repeats of the same card, get down to 60, all this shit, right? To like if you're trying to play the optimal play. And so really you were just thinking about it the way the pros were thinking about it.

4:11You know? you were just you that's all that it was that's all that it was good for you uh but i fucked vince up you know he bought all those fancy cards you couldn't get him you couldn't even draw him too many cards there's a guy in our group his name is zachary zachary for our group is basically the godfather of magic the gathering he's been playing for years and years and years though everybody else who's been playing in our crew started playing within the last couple of years and so he has all he's he has an encyclopedic brain when it comes to the rules and mechanics magic in the game always introduces like a new keyword and so like they'll release a set that has menace and now that card can attack and you can't block or you have to block it with two creatures or whatever he knows every single keyword menace is a very basic one but like he knows every single thing and he has such strategy he watches streamers play magic he watches youtube videos he watches content creators and i i want to push him specifically you know what i mean because i can tell that when he's playing with us fuck him up he's he's he's chilling you know what i mean he's having a good time but he's not he's not stressed yeah i mean i'm not pushing him to his limit you need to have that you need to give him that moment where all of a sudden in the anime it goes black the screen scripts spleen splits spleen scripts the screen splits yeah and his eyes just get the oh yeah it's gonna be like the death note ellen light like yeah the realization bless thank you we're gonna make it happen uh for now though let's begin with what is and forever will be the roper report it's time for some news we have five stories today uh bakers doesn't i appreciate how chaotic this is starting off you didn't even shout out to patreon we also have patreon producers carl jacobs omega buster delaney the som 20 and last no but i will say i am still dealing with my head pressure thing i'm in such a bad place dude oh no i've i said this a couple days ago and it still remains i've never been in this much pain prolonged this sucks dude it fucking sucks it's not feeling any better than what no better no better at all yeah it is it's it's freaking brutal but is anything helping uh yeah unfortunately like an insane amount of ibuprofen and Tylenol and like i don't like taking those things like that and i've learned if i don't i am it's i can't live i can't yeah yeah this is this is hell on earth but if you're watching live be part of the show by super chatting on youtube.com slash kind of funny games but let's get to Story number one Double Fine lays off employees amid Xbox separation.

6:36This comes from Rebecca Valentine at Kotaku Psychonauts 2 developer Double Fine is Undergoing layoffs. Kotaku Has learned. Some individuals have begun Posting about the impacts on social media Kotaku's reached out to Xbox and Double Fine for comment. An Xbox spokesperson Has shared the following statement with Kotaku. Quote, Double Fine fully Returned to independent management earlier this week With their IP, catalog, and runway For their next games. As they begin their next chapter as an independent studio. We look forward to seeing what they create next. Xbox declined to comment on how much runway Double Fine has.

7:07Double Fine has published the following statement confirming 23 individuals were impacted. Today, Double Fine Productions let go of 23 members of our staff. As a small, tightly knit team, these actions are not taken lightly. Only the survival of our studio would ever make us consider such a painful action. Our transition to becoming an independent company also means becoming a size that we can sustain. The people we are losing were all important. They all made an impact on our games and culture, and they will be missed. We are committed to supporting each affected person as best as we can, and we thank them for their hard work and commitment to the creative spirit we cherish here at Double Fine.

7:42It was recently announced that Double Fine would spin off into its own independent studio once again amid a massive shakeup at Xbox, sparked by the division's lack of profitability within Microsoft, as well as multiple years of overstretching itself but buying up studios. with an xbox 1600 individuals were laid off one month ago with another 1600 layoffs planned throughout the coming year and then even more because they got rid of these studios and these studios are going to continue to have layoffs as well so even more people affected plus yeah is there anything new to say here i mean anything new i don't think so anything worth deep diving into here not really right like this is kind of just one of those ones of it's the continued um fall out from everything happening at xbox everything that has happened at xbox for the last decade but specifically we were talking about these last couple of months of them announcing um divesting from these studios um like this is a conversation that i think me to not you me greg and andy were going back and forth on and you know i think it was andy that mentioned like oh yeah double fund's gonna have layoffs and i try to push back against it and i think one of the reason the main reason i want to push back against it is this feeling of wanting to hope that a studio that i view as pure as double fine granted like also a well one thing i'll shout out right san francisco based studio right they have their office physically in san francisco i got friends at double fine i hang out at double fine sometimes to play board games so like that's my that's my connection when it comes to this studio and so i think part of me is like oh man those the homies like they'll be good like they gotta be good and so to hear news like this of course heartbreaking but then also i think goes back to the thing of how tough it is to run a games business how much overhead you have especially when uh one of the things we talked about in that conversation was when they got acquired by xbox what were the things that changed they then moved into an office for a double fine right like those are things that add costs that are able to be subsidized by xbox and you're owned there when you're not owned by xbox then it's like well now we've put ourselves in a situation where it is we got to figure out how to cut costs and sort of make the studio have the studio survive and so that's how you kind of get here and i'm really sad to to hear this news i still hope for the best for the future of double fine i hope they continue to get to be the creative brilliant studio that they've always been but this is all this always sucks to to read from a studio that you might adore so much absolutely and here the only the survival of a studio would ever make us consider such a painful action and to your point i think survival of a studio looks really different when you are purely independent when you are uh not independent and owned by a company like xbox but then also independent post that right like there's a pre-independency pre uh being acquired and then post that is going to look very very different in terms of like what you need to be able to get back on your feet it is good that they have some type of runway they own their ip they have access to everything they got so it's like you know they are as set up as possible for some level of success but like man that's tough and it's like i it's hard to be incredibly hopeful about the future of all of this double fine i think are an example of a team that have been very progressive in terms of finding ways to make games right like when we think about the the fig and uh just the early kickstarter um uh projects and all of that like they've always been kind of thinking outside the box because video games are hard man it's hard to make it's hard to get a team to be able to feel confident that they'll be able to have a place to create uh and then when you get a creation out there you need to make sure it gets in people's hands and that they like it i think that that is uh another uphill battle because double fine are so special for what they are but i think the world has changed so much that their projects like things like keeper a game i adored you you adored right yeah so much and we endured it because it was weird and different and like pushed for those things but like it also felt like the world wasn't ready to accept that they're not even ready willing sure right yeah i think we're in a place where it's harder and harder to stand out with a with a game like that i think in like a 2014 when you have games like journey and you have like cool artsy games that come out and really stand out because you know there's not as much noise happening in these ecosystems and there's not as much volatility in the market itself you're able to maybe put out a keeper and put out maybe a kiln and have those things be able to survive under 2026 xbox 2025 xbox when we talk about a keeper right like the the reason an xbox acquires double fine at the time they did is because they're trying to push content for game pass and a keeper and a kiln still contribute to that strategy in a meaningful way now that you're on your own as a studio yeah i wonder what changes what needs to change like double fine is still a i think very talented and brilliant studio and has the means to continue to put out something that can be i think financially viable i look at a um what's the one that won all the awards the platformer that we love psychonauts yeah i look at a psychonauts and i'm like hey you have psychonauts you know what i mean like you also have an audience that I think still rocks real hard for Double Fine.

13:02If they were to put out a Kickstarter to be like, yo, we're making a small game. We're making another broken age-like product. Do you want to support it? I think they would get support there too. I think they have options, but it is such a different landscape than it used to be when they were last independent. And so I wonder so much about where they go from here. Yeah, I do think that so much of it, it's hope. I really hope that they can figure this out. And I think that in 2026 and beyond, it's only going to get harder to figure out what that looks like because yes they do have their the ip of psychonauts but what does that look like right like like how much would they need to be able to make a psychonauts 3 yeah and if they just put out another psychonauts side project like uh what was it something of rhombus of ruin right the the vr thing oh sure yeah um it's which again is very in the ethos of double find right let's try something that's off the beaten path and uh You know, I remember Greg liked that game a lot, but it was a PSVR game.

14:00Yeah. Right. Was it just PSVR? Was it everywhere else? Either way. I wonder what a Psychonauts 3 would need to look like in order to even be a viable project nowadays. And it concerns me. It concerns me that if that is the A, what's bet on the known quantity, is that known quantity even enough to be a surefire win? Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really good point. And I don't, knowing Double Fine, like, I don't even bet that they do that. Me neither. I don't think the next thing, I think if I'm thinking of any other studio, I'm like, oh, yeah, then revert to your biggest thing. For you, it's probably Psychonauts.

14:39Make a Psychonauts 3 as fast as you can. I don't view Double Fine as that kind of studio. I think they make another weird, different thing. Yeah. And, like, how does that do? Who knows? But also, like, their weird things do work at times. You know what I mean? like i go back to a broken age i forget how i don't know how many sales sales broken age had but that seemed like a game that had a splash when it came out i think back to like random shit like they did headlander i think and i remember they published it they published it okay i gotcha gotcha but like i remember hearing conversations about that and that's a game that in any other circumstance i would have thought would have came and went for how weird of a thing that is you can then talk about psychonauts which has a bigger reach when you're talking about at least critical reception and game awards and all that stuff yeah um costume quest you know a huge one for them and then when you look at the history yeah like you can go back and far enough to like yeah brutal legend or a um like oh what's the one with the skeleton man that i know barrett loves grim fandango is that double fun or is that just tim schafer no that was a barrett so i think they own i think they own that now but that was lucas arts back in the day before lucas arts that's what it was interesting if they own it though if they do own those ips now because i think they were in charge of that remaster that came out back in like 2013 2014 so that could be interesting that's the thing is like yeah i'm looking through their catalog now here on um wikipedia right when they first started the studio their first game was psychonauts for ps2 um i'm gonna jump down to more of the ones that you might recognize brutal legend of course costume quest of course uh they made a sesame street game one time uh let's see here they made a lot of games god dang broken age like i mentioned yeah they they were the ones that were that remastered grim fandango day of the tentacle remastered as well so they own that uh headlander like i mentioned and that was published by adult swim games actually but i think they made it there was the game rad in 2019 they have a lot of weird shit i mean they have a lot of weird stuff but it's like the good type of weird right yeah like it's the type of weird that speaks to people and it might be niche groups But if you can find enough communities that have those niche groups within them, there's, I think, the osmosis of like, okay, well, I liked this game.

16:51I'm going to try this game because I liked it for it being weird. You know? I feel like people that if Keeper was their first double-fying game, it's a lot easier of a pill to swallow for them to be like, all right, you should try any of the other things. Any of the other things, yeah. I do think that to that point that I was just making about finding the communities, I always say this. but like the Nintendo Switch audience is different than the PlayStation, Xbox, PC audience. And like, there are so many people that only play on switch and double fine games aren't on switch. So it's like right now, I do think like if they were to focus on trying to get even older games, just that they own now ported over to the switch to maybe definitive edition, maybe something like there could be a, a bigger audience for that.

17:35or even the chip damage audiences of the amount of people that would be interested in a current Fandango or a Keeper or Psychodots or whatever it is. Psychodots 2 on Nintendo Switch 2. Oh yeah, that'd be great. They could push that as if it's a new game. And I think people would be really, really into it. So yeah, we'll see. Obviously this news is very unfortunate, but I am just happy that Double Fine is still around. This is a very happy all things considered ending to a story that could have went many many worse ways yeah for double find specifically i hear that story number two clear obscure studio says it wants to bring it to switch two but it's quote way too early to announce anything this comes from chris scullion at vgc were they listening to us talk about this yeah when i saw this this morning i was like this needs to be early on in the show i mean you got to talk about this for sure so funny um exhibition 33 studio sandfall interactive wants to make a switch to part of the game but it's still in the process of seeing how feasible it is.

18:35Following a recent post-mortem event discussing the game in Yokohama, Sandfall CEO and creative director Giyamai Broch, co-founder and CTO Tom Gehrman, and lead character and concept artist Alan Raynard were asked by Automaton whether they thought the game could run on Switch 2 and whether there were plans for a port. The developers replied they did want to bring Clare Obscure to Switch 2, but were still looking at how to overcome the technical hurdles involved in this, suggesting it takes longer for a smaller team to figure these things out. Quote, we're interested in looking for a way to do it, but it's too early for us to announce anything at this point.

19:05It's a big technical challenge because we tried to do something beautiful with the game, but of course, the Switch 2 is not as powerful as the PlayStation or Xbox Series X, so it's an important thing for us to consider, especially given the size of our studio. When asked if the fact the game was released on Unreal Engine 5 made things more challenging, the developers agreed it did, with Broch noting that while the Switch 2 hardware doesn't officially support Unreal Engine 5, a lot of features don't work on switch too they're introducing features like lumen light now which is easier to run than the standard lumen but these things take time to roll out so we'll have to consider the updates coming from unreal engine to determine what to do man you watched the greg episode of game showdown that went live i did i don't want to spoil anything but there is a question that references unreal engine yeah and like lumen and yes and i was like greg you got it you you should get this yeah you should get yeah like come on we talk about this we talk about this a lot um but But there's this, I was going to ask if this surprises you.

20:01I guess it surprises you a little bit, right? It surprises me a little bit. It's more, I mean, surprise isn't the right word. It's more just like, ah, I hope that wasn't the case. You know? Sure. Okay, that makes sense. We also know it's the case. I mean, what this comes down to, what I'm reading between the lines here, I'm not hearing this isn't going to happen, and I'm not hearing it can't happen. I'm hearing they have a very small team. Yeah. That's it. like if they had a bigger team i think that this could happen a lot sooner than i it might i am a bit surprised that someone like nintendo even aren't getting involved and being like we got this we'll help you you know what i mean because the point i was just making expedition 33 will sell like hot cakes on the switch too they have the audience for these games like that is the type of game that switch players want so i am a bit surprised in that sense but at the same time like they are a small studio which is you know so much of the narrative of that game's success right is like oh my god such an amazing thing came from such a small studio i know there's support and all that stuff but here we are now it's like the core team of sandfall is not that big yeah i wonder what the inside baseball conversation is regarding unreal engine five games and like how quickly slash how often do they get ported to switch to and does like how involved does nintendo get in those like do you think nintendo sees the fact that the game is made in unreal engine five and goes ah shit well you guys like we want to help you like good luck though like you know i wonder if there's a barrier there as far as like we know our platform just doesn't mesh well with that so forgetting the examples but we do know that nintendo worked with third parties on their ports of some games was it wwe 2k maybe oh i don't know yes that's i think that's the one and it's like and it was and it ran great like they they made it work on the switch too so it's like i do feel like there's um precedent of that happening presidents but precedent yeah yeah i mean yeah and like of course like i mean fortnite obviously is on switch too and i think that's unreal engine 5 at this point um doing a quick google search i'm seeing maybe like layers of fear and for witcher 3 uh logical error saying oh which witcher 3 is oh they helped out with witcher 3 is what they're saying yeah yeah but i'm looking into unreal engine 5 games specifically chronos the new dawn uh as well is that on switch too let me double check sometimes you can't trust the internet which game chronos the new dawn because i was trying to find a list of chrono of uh oh yeah chronos the dawn is on switch too That's the most random.

22:38If you would give me a game showdown game of which game is on Switch 2, if I saw Chronos the New Dawn, I'm like, no way. That's on Switch 2. Yeah, that's wild. So how long do you think we wait for this? I mean, I don't know when this interview or situation happens, but I assume this is from the last 24 hours. So that makes me think we're not seeing this announced at Gamescom or the September Nintendo Direct, right? No. game awards being the earliest possible time maybe i'm not sure i'm gonna say june direct next year next year yeah yeah and that's when we hear about it when we actually did it i could see it i see it being if not shadow dropped like i think announced june next year and then it comes out fall next year yeah yeah maybe just because like i only see that being the case if they like make it a definitive edition or something if there's like some level of added i don't know i'm saying it's gonna be worthwhile added stuff but like if they start marketing it presenting it as if it's like a new thing tarnished the tarnished edition type situation which what does tarnished edition even add a couple classes okay a couple classes i think but probably some new weapon types and i think it chat correct me if i'm wrong i think it also puts in the dlc in it as well does the tarnished edition classes go to the playstation and xbox as well there is a tarnished like pack you can buy got on playstation and xbox oh it's a weird it's a weird thing but also it's enough to where you can call it that and like a new class is a meaningful enough addition to the like that changes the way you play the game so yeah yeah it works interesting man it's that double-edged sword of just like i wish sad fault could be making a new game now you know like the ports and all that stuff but it's just like oh they are small teams so it's like we're probably not getting something from them although it didn't take that long to make expedition how long did they say it took them to make i forget wasn't it four years i'll believe that yeah i think it's pretty cool it's tough because you're at a crossroads i know we've talked about this before of what is your next thing as a sandfall i think the immediate priority if I'm working in the city, immediate priority is getting the game out on Switch.

24:54Like, get Expedition out in as many places as it can possibly be. I think they've already announced to you that there's an adaptation or movie or something happening. I'm sure the studio has very minimal involvement as far as what the workload is, but that's something that you think about. Like, Expedition now is an IP. It's not just a game. It's an IP. So how do we treat this in a way that's going to maximize it, how to exploit our audience? I say exploit in a jokey way, but yeah how do we maximize this and then yeah start thinking about that next thing i don't think the next thing is still four years away at this point three years away i don't think so yeah i mean i don't know the chat's saying six years six years and again we're talking about a studio's first game yes so it's like i imagine the second game is not not gonna take as long that long depending on what it is like if it is something radically different which it totally could be from them yeah i would not be surprised if it's a different world different set of characters a completely different story i think even if it's even if it's another expedition game i think it will be radically different from the previous one maybe not in a way where it's it's going to take us five to six years to figure out this whole thing but i think mechanically even maybe art style wise like there's gonna be a lot of shit that you're gonna have to figure out like it's not it's it's it's different from an assassin's creed 1 and 2 you know what i mean it's more like a i don't have a good comparison but just yeah yeah first game to a second game but the second game is completely different from the first game i mean like a final fantasy yeah like that's a good call final fantasy well yeah any of them really but yeah maybe not any of them but a lot of them yeah uh let's move on to a word from our sponsors what's up everybody it's greg here to talk to you about patreon pledge month if you enjoyed the crazy amount of sgf coverage we put out in june consider tossing us a few bucks this month with a patreon membership or upgraded pledge for that lovely month of July.

26:46We'll be putting up some of our favorite Gregways from the year publicly to give you a taste of what goes up daily for members. This week, why, you're getting me and Jen reflecting on nine years of marriage and teaching Ben about LGBTQ plus equality. Earlier this month, of course, we announced a new perk coming to Patreon. The person who gifts the most Patreon memberships on patreon.com slash kind of funny will receive a custom character in our Gamescast intro for the next month done by the one and only Andy Cortez. Our first winner is Alex. Andy will be working on this during a gameplay stream this week, and it'll be included in the slideshow between the shows as well as the Gamescast intro for the month of August.

27:29Congratulations, Alex. And congratulations to all you for supporting Kind of Funny all the time. We hope you go this extra mile by heading over to patreon.com slash Kind of funny where we get the best membership ad rev split and supporting us. Story number three. Splatoon Raiders is currently the seventh greatest game of all time. Come on. Metacritic. Come on. According to user score. This comes from Chris Scullion at VGC. That's crazy. This is user score. You can't trust the user. Well, I mean, but still. People are loving it is what that's saying. Yeah. Splatoon Raiders is currently the seventh best game of all time.

28:03According to Metacritic users. While the review aggregation site is mainly used for tracking review scores from verified critics and gaming publications, it also lets registered users give each game their own score out of 10. These scores are also aggregated by Metacritic and presented as a separate user score, similar to the way Rotten Tomatoes has a tomato meter for critic scores and a popcorn meter for audience scores. At the time of writing, Splatoon Raiders has a Metacritic score of 81, currently placing it 64th in its list of best-reviewed games of 2026, just ahead of Halo Campaign Evolved and just behind Marathon.

28:36Its Metacritic user score, however, is currently 9.3, making it the 7th highest-rated video game on the site, not just for 2026, but all-time. This should be taken with numerous caveats in mind, as this list is usually an indication of popularity or notoriety rather than quality. According to the same list, Disney's Nintendo DS title, Corey in the House, is the fifth greatest video game of all time, almost certainly because it became a meme and users scored it 10 in numerous joke reviews. No. It earned that spot. It earned that spot. Poodoo's were wrong. User scores on the site also have a habit of skewing heavily to either 10 or 0 as users attempt to make the biggest impact on the overall score.

29:14indeed while splatoon raiders has received hundreds of 10 scores from users it also has some zero scores from users seemingly trying to bring its user score down because users are fucking losers yeah which is why i don't take much uh credence to it however it is a sign though that people are really digging in this game yeah as they should because this game rocks yeah i listened to y 'all's review really hyped on it it's one of those things i wish i had more time in my life but i am interested in playing this one for sure it's really fun i it's i i don't identify it as a tim game but there's enough nintendo isms to splatoon raiders that i think you should you should give it a try the most is i'm like all right there's finally a splatoon for me and it's like okay but the fashion and music are our cons and i'm like well then what the fuck are we doing yeah but the gameplay rocks yeah the gameplay is so fun and i've always enjoyed the gameplay of splatoon I've enjoyed the concept of it.

30:04Like it is, there's a good game feel to shooting the ink, diving in it, popping out and like machine gun motherfuckers. I'm like, yeah. And one thing I think I've realized now after I'm at the end of the game, I still haven't beaten it. I'm saving it for a flight that I'm taking next week. But a thing that I have thought about as the reviews have come out. And as I played on the stream with Andy and Ray Narvaez, I think the streets yearn for a looter shooter, but a looter shooter. that's just like not as high pressure to play you know what i mean like i don't want a looter shooter that is going to be oh i gotta do all this skill tree stuff and get the big expansions and i don't like obviously people like destiny right i'm not trying to say people don't want an online game or whatever but a gear-based loot game that is very much i'm playing this in short chunks it's nice it's laid back i get the new loot feels good to upgrade my character like it's light and there's not a lot of like uh need to buy into yeah it's doing all the things right which i i think i forget who pointed this out it might have been uh the critical error boys or someone nintendo's been doing that a lot even with like the the star fox multiplayer they're like they're really focusing on like what is good drop in drop out either multiplayer or co-op stuff yeah it's like borderlands for people who don't have the time to play borderlands yeah you know it's just straightforward here's a mission here's a mission you can do in five to ten minutes nintendo saying other games doing too much yeah do less man i really respect it and they're nailing the loot part of it like i love dude whenever i unlock a new weapon i'm excited to like see what's up with that new weapon that's how a looter shooter should feel and like get me to that feeling faster they're doing they're doing everything right in my opinion um do you want to hear what the actual the full top 10 is for the user i would love to uh user scores here hit me so at number 10 warcraft 3 the frozen throne expansion and number nine metal gear solid number eight the legend of zelda ocarina of time right above ocarina of time number seven splatoon raiders yeah number six resident evil requiem see here's the thing like i i'm not surprised because i think that these are going to be heavily weighted towards newer games yes right yeah of course so yeah ocarina being lower than Resident Evil Requiem and Splatoon.

32:25Sounds crazy, but it's also like, okay, it makes sense, though. And number five, Cory in the House. Number four, Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater. Number three, The Witcher 3, The Wild Hunt, Blood and Wine expansion. And number two, Silent Hill 2. And can you guess our number one here? Silent Hill 2 remake or just OG 2? That's a good question. Let me see. I'll have to go to Metacritic to see. It just says Silent Hill 2. But yeah, what do you think is number one? mario galaxy clear oh shit okay yeah actually that makes so much sense um i this year for fantasy critic when we do it just for the memes we should also do user scores i don't know how hard that would be to pull off i don't hmm we would have to manually do it yeah we have to manually do it maybe i if i find an hour in the day i'm sure i can make that happen but yeah that That could be an interesting thing to do.

33:20I mainly say that. That only happens if you win and you add a rule, Tim, or your one big wish. Yeah, your one wish. That would be awesome. There's been a lot of hubbub in the last day about the one wish, because I think people forgot that you get a wish granted if you win as a critic this year. And I saw Roger and Mike commuting in a way that I've never seen them commute before, where they were sitting next to each other at Roger's desk, and they're going back and forth. And then I see them start arguing, and Mike walks away. And then they start arguing from across the office about, like, wanting to trade a certain game, but they don't agree that it's hype enough or whatever.

33:51Yeah, because, you know, Mike says, you know, he's recently he said he's trying to win it all, which, you know, this man's cooked. We all know that he's really trying to. What's on Roger's team real quick? He's trying to get Roger to win, and he said that before. One of the things that I think he mentioned, though, is that he wanted GTA 6 from Roger. i think he's trying to i think mike at one point said he's trying to win and then he'll pass on who as his one wish he'll wish roger wins i'm spoiling their fucking i'm spoiling a bit right now but i want to let you know i'm not gonna let that happen as ceo of fantasy critic that's not what i am commissioner commissioner interesting i yeah i just want the user score because uh Splatoon Raiders didn't do as good for me as I wanted it to, and I'll take it.

34:41I see. I see. Dog, you got zero company. I should have bid for that. I know. I'm so happy I did. Because I assumed I didn't realize how much money you had because I only have$10. So I was like, I'll probably be outbid for it. So I just didn't try. So where are we at right now? Because I'm looking at my list, and I don't feel bad about it. Like, obviously, I'm holding on to Kena until at least Gamescom. Okay. I know I'm being stupid there, but, like, I also don't have any money. What do I do? am i just fucked you might just be fucked because i forget if you can even bid for things without any money no you can't yeah oh that sucks yeah that's a that's a rule in the settings i'll check in a second but silent hill 2 it seems like it's the original 2001 silent hill 2 for user scores because that one has a 9.3 compared to the the new silent hill 2 which has a 9.0 for user score who's looking best right now in fantasy critic um barrett scroll up to the top it'll tell you like who's number one currently my uh is it mike mike's projected fifth oh barrett is looking best according to the projected yeah mike currently is in first place but i think he has the most games released so you can't really judge off that but for projected points it's barrett and then and then you you and yeah yeah and then me sucks i made a couple critical errors Marvel toke on me and my counterpick not good.

36:02Tides of Annihilation, I got locked on that. Yeah, and that's not coming out this year. Ugh. Yeah. Who is it? Jennifer English. Star Wars Zero Company? I know. Yeah. Mani Musha. Kanan's not coming out this year, though. Kanan's not coming out this year. They said it was. Last we heard, they said it was. Yeah, they're not denying that it's coming out this year. But that'd be insane if that game comes out. When are you going to come out, Kanan? I know, man. That's my thing. is Kena and Tides, fantasy critic aside, please don't come out this year. No, they shouldn't come out this year. Just wait till next year.

36:31Onimusha will get you... Two, three? They'll get you 13 points. Onimusha? I think it'll be in 80. It's above 70. Above 70? 70. Yeah. It'll be like in 82, 83. I think 12, 13, yeah. Yeah. All right. And what's Pragmata at? If it's anything like Pragmata... Who has Pragmata? Was that you? I think it was Andy. Oh, wait. No, I had Pragmata. 86 for pragmata yeah in that mid 80s range capcom's on fire that'd be nice it would be very nice man god of war sons of sparta had a 65 on metacritic i know but hey again has the god war game ever had that low of a metacritic uh what's ascension at oh that's a really good question i would guess 70 something i will take that trade though of getting negative five points for god of war sons of sparta instead of getting negative 12 points for pokemon winds and waves which is what i counterpicked like i'll take that trade off because i still got ocarina of time remake god of war ascension has an 80 by the way it's got an 80 oh wow okay i think people just didn't like that game compared to god of war 3 which yeah yeah the high bar yeah phantom blade zero hollow knight silksong sea of sorrow yeah barrett's probably gonna win this marvel's wolverine which andy think about it roger's in the chat saying that we're sleeping on his list can we look at it i think barrett has this in the bag actually this is roger yeah this is roger yeah i mean it's that that gta is like i would also question this one dragon's dog my darker of course there's so many questions oh they're counting it as an expansion pack all right yeah that's fair yeah you got castlevania i think that's gonna get him some points okay roger's list looks good this is real good orbitals yeah man this is there's there's a lot going on here but like there's a cap on what you're gonna get on metacritic right for gta six i guess the cap is kind of high because it's like 96 97 96 i guess every point above 90 is two points so gta will carry him i think gta is a safe locked 90 at least yeah oh yeah like that's a guarantee 90 is like your is your floor yeah 92 i'm gonna say i think it ends up at a 90 i'm gonna say 94 i feel a 94 as well 94 yeah there's a lot of video game reviewers out there nowadays you know yeah and a lot of people a lot of game reviewers these days like are going into not want to like gta 6 i don't believe that though i believe that i think i i think and i'm gonna count myself as a pretentious reviewer i think pretentious reviewers in theory don't want to do it don't want to like shed love on gta 6 but i think once you get there if you're undeniable enough you're undeniable like there's a difference though between pretentious and like obnoxious yeah but i think i I do know the difference.

39:16But I think there's more pretentious reviewers than obnoxious reviewers. But there's a lot of obnoxious ones. I don't know. I think there's only very, I think there's very few. The ones that get on Metacritic, I think there's very few obnoxious ones. I think there's way more pretentious ones. And again, I'm counting myself as pretentious in this case before people get mad at me, before reviewers get mad at me. We're also not on Metacritic, so we can do whatever the fuck we want. Yeah, exactly. I can be obnoxious if I want to. God, him bidding over me for Castlevania still fucking stings. yeah that's tough tough he would say lots of books here's my thing i think y 'all i think there are less video game reviewers than y 'all think there are in chat yeah but everybody got laid off whatever like half the reviews are ai now yeah i think like i don't think there's that many more game reviewers now than who reviewed gta 5 think about it like the amount of game websites that just aren't around anymore yeah that's that's true but i think there's like even more indie sites now though yeah but why the one or two person operations i guess yeah but i don't yeah you're right they're like the big dog ones or there's less but i just think so many people left like games but you know what that means though is that like with even less big dog ones the more there's even less oversight and like like sure the amount of sites that the amount of reviews that are going out with without even a managing editor looking at them you know but i think a lot i think you're gonna have a lot more like big sites that aren't video game site the video game sites yeah reviewing gta i don't know if that sentence made sense but you understand yeah like new york times is gonna is gonna review gta like gta 5 has 139 reviews on open critic and I just looked, I think it was where did it go?

41:09It was like the latest big game. That's what I brought up. Not even James Bond. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resync has 195. Compared to what was the GTA 5? 139. Now wait, is this Open Critic versus Metacritic? No, this is Open Critic versus Open Critic. I'm just saying this is for a remake of a 13 year old game, right? Wow. Okay, so you're probably right there then. wow yeah that's crazy what is this forza under 63 people okay dang what about splatoon raiders yeah how many people splatoon raiders 84 on medic on open critic probably exactly exactly right i got nothing wrong with that score yeah if it had like a good story or something like that like in more of mission variety i could see it being higher do you think gta 6 crosses 100 or 200 200 reviews i think so yeah i think it'll be around there gary the third says it's crazy that y 'all aren't on there honestly that's by design and choice we do not want to be part of this because then like who affects people's lives and whose score gets chosen for that like too much responsible that's not what we do here yeah we give our opinions and talk it out if friends if if for our starfield review we just decided that greg was the starfield reviewer i think i would I would probably try to get a meeting going and be like, we can't do this.

42:33We can't do this. We just can't do this. Elden Ring got 218 reviews. So yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Then GTA is going to get more than 200. Let's go to story number four. Ben star to host a new indie gaming showcase from the studio behind phasmophobia. This comes from Kaylee partleton at pocket tactics, whether you enjoy the horror genre or not, there's a good chance. You at least know the name phasmophobia with it remaining a popular team based game in which you need to solve paranormal mysteries. What you might not know is that the studio behind it now has a publishing label, Kinetic Publishing. It's hosting a showcase next month to give you a look at what's coming.

43:07Taking place on August 12th, 2026, Kinetic Publishing's inaugural showcase will let you in on the games it's releasing in 2027 and 8. Surely there has to be at least one horror game in the lineup. Beyond words from developers and exciting announcements, clear obscure fans are in for a treat as the homie Ben Starr is narrating the presentation. You may also know him as Clive from Final Fantasy 16. you may also know him as just a great guy yeah i miss him a lot he sent me a really nice message on my birthday and i've been meaning it like i just want to give him a call just a cold call you know what i mean how you doing dude ben how are you doing let's hang out sometime how you doing come stateside yeah and don't visit lucy james yeah come here come here come on uh speaking about the label director of partnerships and marketing asim tanver also the homie uh kind of funny best friend i imagine he's listening right now you are the best launching kinetic publishing is about creating the kind of support dan would have appreciated when starting out since announcing kinetic publishing earlier this year we've had hundreds of submissions and had the pleasure of meeting some of the most passionate and creative indie teams across the globe we're so excited to show off the incredible games that we've got coming up at our debut showcase next month oh yeah very cool really really cool stuff i love seeing indie studios get into publishing because they have a passion and want to help people get their games out there in a way that's going to be good for those games yeah um you know more and more nowadays we're seeing indie game creation and you know double a game creation all this stuff be more and more difficult from i think pretty much every facet whether it's discovery whether it's you know finding a publisher we saw we've seen this in the last year of how many publishers pulled out of certain deals because of the financial landscape of the video games industry so to get more people out here that actually care i look at them i look at outer sloth i look at um you know devolver has been doing this for a very long time thunderful as well like there's so many examples of indie publishers that are publishing really cool creative different types of games yep also if i can cuss out there's somebody in earlier in chat their their name was rev 247 i think they said um are you ladies man 217 they said game showdown behind a paywall now rare l no this is what i'll say you go to youtube.com slash kind of funny games and then just look at the top look at the banner there's a banner on top of there that circles it it says live video is available in the live tab because all of our shows are live and so because of how youtube works we don't show up on the video page wait i don't get it where's the live tab the live it's right there circle i've got no i've got home it's right it's between shorts and podcasts i don't know why they do it this way I talk to people at YouTube and they're literally like, yeah, I don't know why they do that either.

45:41And I'm like, okay, fix it. I mean, I guess even if I go home, I can see that I can click on all of these videos. We have playlists on the front page of our YouTube channel that you can find the thing. No, but I want to go to the videos. I get it. Nowhere else. That's what I do. You know what? Honestly, I'm not blaming you for being confused because it is a bit confusing. It's the rare L part that upsets me. Yeah. Because it's not a rare L. It's rare, though. you know but yeah no go show support the show it's great yeah getting better i worked very hard on this yeah it was great really and you know what because of you it's now all behind a patreon wall all right you gotta get the kind of you gotta pay for this now ten dollars for game showdown a couple things about game showdown one shows phenomenal we all know that of course two if y 'all haven't seen insta coin to continue you need to it's who wants to be a millionaire and it's awesome it's so fun three show gia last night and she's like goddamn you guys are good and i'm like oh yeah fuck yeah but she's like this is so so damn cool i'm so impressed and what's awesome is like she clearly doesn't fucking know the stuff like and we didn't watch the whole episode you know what i mean but i pulled mine up and i showed her just like me thinking through a couple of the uh questions she's like you guys are so good at like making this entertaining even though i don't know what the things are she's like but what when we watched who wants to be a millionaire most of the time i didn't know the answers to the questions either that's a good point yeah so it's like the it is just such good content it's very well presented so that's awesome did you see cliff blizinski yes i did i did see this and my favorite part so for context cliff blizinski posted a screenshot of a question about about him i had a question about cliff blizinski on the greg episode of insert coin to continue he posted screenshot and was just like somebody sent this to me i forget the full name was like what the fuck somebody sent this to me and somebody replied to when you were like and you replied to that person saying i think it's who wants to be a millionaire yeah and like obviously i don't think he like literally thought it was the actual show but it looks close enough it looks close enough it looks like it's presented as if this is a real thing and i think because it is i think he might think it's the actual show and this is what i want i want nobody to correct him i want nobody because nobody and when i saw the tweet nobody had responded to him saying oh this is kind of funny yeah they were just like he knows it's greg though maybe he thinks greg was on wants to be a millionaire i'm pretty sure he knows who you are too and you're you were in the screenshot maybe i'm wrong maybe no it was just Just a solo on Greg?

48:02Yeah, it was just a screenshot. So that's why it wasn't this set, which is obvious. If you see that one, it just looks like who wants to be a millionaire. So nobody tell Greg. Also, nobody tell who wants to be a millionaire. Because I like this. Don't tell Regis. I like this game. Don't tell Regis. I don't know if he's on it anymore. There's no way Regis is on it. Is Regis 100 years old? Shout out to Regis, man. That man gets it. Oh, he died. Yeah, he died six years ago. He died in 2020. damn damn well shout out to the goat shout out to the goat you know you know and like i wish i could say the same about bob barker because i was about to be like and shout out other game show hosts like bob barker and then i learned that man oh man that stuff i don't even know oh were we not on the show together when we're talking about this man you think fucking the new two made oldish horrors no oh no bob barker was not great no that's bad that's bad yeah uh strong gaming He says, Regis dead, rare L.

49:02I don't know if I can respond to that. I mean, real talk, Regis being dead is big news. But if I was tired of that, I wanted something smaller, where would I look? You'd go to our last story, the We News Channel, where you cover all the small news items you need to know about. Doesn't Wayne Brady host a game show? Or am I making that up in my mind? I mean, probably, right? Does he do deal or no deal? I feel like Wayne Brady might do deal or no deal. Chat, let me know. He seems like a stand-up dude. he does yeah he seems like a good dude that i don't want to hear anything bad about i feel like we can get wayne brady in the in like this office how we how we even know this stuff before he's also done dropout stuff then oh yeah yeah i think we're like we're right there we're we're the cousins you know what i mean we're definitely not cousins of dropout we're like the little cousins yeah like nephews we're like we're like cousins third removed or like we're the ones playing the weird games while they're playing the the real games because dropout we used to be college humor right yeah so we're like what's it what do you call it when you're like you have a son and then that son has a cousin and then that person has a child i feel like that's us

50:16great grandpa grandpa once removed twice removed no great because isn't great like a extra generation. Yeah. And I don't think we're in X. I think we're like, we're children. We're just removed a few times. It's like the space. We're related though. It's the space. We're related though. Yeah. Rooster Teeth, I feel like we're cousins. RIP the cousin. Yeah. Rooster Teeth, I would say we're more like. Because we have more of a relationship with Rooster Teeth. A direct relationship. So that's the thing is like, in some ways I'd say that we're, the sons. I'd take sons. But I guess technically... And I think Rooster Teeth, you can say Rooster Teeth is the cousin of Dropout.

51:00R.I.P. Are we the sons of IGN? We're for sure sons of IGN. It's like if IGN and Rooster Teeth made a baby together. Well, that's how that works. Oh, okay. You're right. You're right. If IGN and Rooster Teeth bang. Rooster Teeth's daddy. No. I feel like IGN. instead. Because IGN gave... IGN's father. Yeah, IGN was the ones that provided. Yeah. Roosteeth had the ovum. That IGN was able to nut into. Sorry. Holy shit! We're already here. We're here. We had to do it. We had to do it. Oh my god. Anyway, your parents' cousin is your second cousin. Yeah, I hate all this first and second cousin shit. I never understood.