Highguard SHUTTING DOWN on March 12th - Kinda Funny Games Daily 03.03.26

11:53Tim Gettys:I thought this was going to be scarier breaking news, so I'm happy that it's just that. Did you expect anything that they were actually teasing it? Iron Galaxy does not feel like the company that would be teasing things like this. Or they would have the ability to tease a remaster from their social accounts. Yeah.

12:15Greg Miller:like when I saw this yeah did I think it was real absolutely not yeah but I also said how fucking stupid can you be Iron Galaxy Iron Galaxy do we not exist in the same fucking universe is you. Are you so head down on all your games that you don't understand how badly we as a society as a fucking gaming people want a new Fallout? I gotta sit here talk to fucking Todd Howard no new Fallout. Show more successful than any Fallout. We can't get a new, we're going to remaster Oblivion. I say this loving Bethesda and loving my fellow gamers. Fuck you, Oblivion fans. You didn't deserve it. You didn't need it.

13:15Greg Miller:You didn't deserve it. You're all playing Skyrim for like the 900th time on fucking any platform. You still love Skyrim. You didn't need Oblivion. We needed a Fallout. And I know Todd right now trying to rise up over in Bethesda. so they will don't forget about 76 it's not a fallout Todd it's a fine experience I put 90 some hours into it two summers ago fine it was good I liked it I enjoyed it it's not a fucking fallout because I'm just wandering around West Virginia and it's like there weren't even people originally so just give me a fucking fallout like I just want to fall out and so back to you Iron Galaxy you're not off the hook what the fuck's your problem it's not your first day on the internet.

14:01Greg Miller:Dave Lang runs. He's a founder. He knows how the internet works. He knows how people get excited. That's just, that's just, that's just, I knew it wasn't real. Cause no, you wouldn't announce that. Well, you wouldn't tease that. It's too on the nose to be a tease, but God damn it, man. God damn it. You can't be like, Hey, all you fucking dogs, you're fucking really hungry. And we can see your ribs. You're a snake, but you can't, we're not serving steak to the dogs today. we need to fucking say because we're starving dogs Iron Galaxy don't get me started on you Todd Howard you're not off the hook either just fucking remaster let somebody remaster it and then oh my god okay it's never happened before there's a first for everything Asha Sharman this is your moment first order of business just announce it Just announce it.

14:57Greg Miller:We hear you Xbox first console. It can be exclusive. I don't give a shit. Just fucking announce it. Say, go over there and be like, listen, Todd, for a while here, the dog was walking the man, but now the man is walking the dog. All right. And I'm telling you, we're remastering the fucking games. And I understand the whole thing now is we need to make the bottom lines good. We need to fucking, how much could these 70 people at Bluepoint cost? Get them. Get them, Sharma. Bring them over, Ms. Sharma. Put them in a room and say, you work here at Xbox now, and your first order of business is fucking remaking Fallout 3 in New Vegas.

15:39Greg Miller:That's all. They'll be like, oh, I'm so happy to have a job. Ms. Sharma, everyone will say to you, oh, my God, she gave people jobs. That's great. That's amazing. That's good. She's fulfilling game requests. That'd be great. Will Todd be mad? Yay. will be you say Todd you shut up you go make the other fucking Elder Scrolls people want all right you get ready for that Starfield stuff to the fucking Starfield apparently getting content soon maybe April 7th we talked about yesterday but come on but then back to you Iron Galaxy what the fuck were you thinking you know what what the fuck were you thinking are we reaching

16:15Tim Gettys:out to somebody who I'm are we gonna get Dave Lang still works there right that's my thing yeah yeah yeah yeah i was gonna i was waiting for it yeah also they should take blue point and call it green point that's great that's great i thought about before everyone else did i was waiting and put it in brooklyn this is i used to be ceo and now i'm not magic

16:40Greg Miller:i'm not sure hello dave lang you're live on kind of funny games daily how are you hello best friends how are you doing today i'm fucking pissed off what the fuck were you people thinking. Do you not know how much we want a Fallout remaster and remake and you're just putting up loading screens saying ha ha.

16:58Andy Chalk:Yeah, that was an unfortunate miscommunication.

17:06Greg Miller:Dave, I've just ranted for like 15 minutes and that was the best response you could have given me. I love you.

17:11Andy Chalk:I love you too.

17:12Greg Miller:Alright, have a good day. Bye.

17:14Andy Chalk:Bye. Later.

17:17Andy Chalk:Misccommunication.

17:18Greg Miller:Everybody put up the articles. I was going to say, what you need to do is go redo the thumbnail and put an unfortunate miscommunication in where you put fallout tees or whatever.

17:27Tim Gettys:That's incredible. I love that he re-answered like two rings. Dave Link's the homie. He's the best. He's awesome. Well, he's still in the doghouse. Oh. I mean, because everything's just happened.

17:36Greg Miller:But I'm not letting him off the hook that quick. Ashish Sharma can right the ship, though. This could be the chance.

17:41Tim Gettys:This could be the chance.

17:42Greg Miller:I mean, I know this is a tale as old as time, but we are in a show where we have to talk. We do? We have to. when are we getting a fallout remaster when does miss sharma who i'm appealing to again miss sharma yes when does she go you know what that fallout fan london thing they made they made fallout london those kids let's get them let's get that and put that out officially

18:08Tim Gettys:this has to already be on the works though right like the fallout remaster remake it's just a matter of time.

18:14Greg Miller:I mean, you hope so? On our show, Todd's like, oh yeah, you know, we love we love surprises. I love Shadow Drops. It's like, great. But like, it's time to do it. Do you see what's happening, Todd? Do you see what's happening, Bethesda? You know what movie I'm about to quote? I don't. A fucking great one. Michael Douglas. All right. Okay. Ant-Man? No. What? No. the American president.

18:44Tim Gettys:Oh yes. And he's got, he's got the, he's got his,

18:47Greg Miller:a little right hand man there. Right. Yeah. Michael J. Fox. Yeah. And Michael J. Fox is urging him to swing back on Richard Dreyfuss. Cause he keeps talking and the American people. And it actually was kind of scary. Cause he, it was very much predicting where the thing we're in now. Right. We're like this guy who doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Just keeps talking. And the people keep believing them. And the president is like, I believe in the intelligence of people. And Michael J. Fox didn't believe in the intelligence. He's like, he's like, Mr. president the people are so thirsty that they'll listen to anyone talk and they'll drink the sand and this man is feeding you saying we want to eat sand right now we want the steak where the starving dog i need a new fallout wolf but just stop fucking teasing me with screens again dave lane you're not fully off the hook i appreciate your response but like this is where we're at right now okay okay just sati and adela wants all this money yeah guess how you make the money you fucking remaster the fallouts you remake the fallouts you put out the falls you say oblivion no obsidian it's been nice oh man avowed you got a fish person in it delete everything from your computers you're not making about to you're making new vegas to go just go or just import

19:56Tim Gettys:fallout new vegas.exe into avowed.exe it's that simple greg that's what i've been saying for years just put it in the avowage it's fine i'm tired do you not think that we're gonna get another remastered around April, which is when they did the Oblivion remaster. I feel like this might just be an annual thing. That was one of my predictions.

20:15Greg Miller:I would like that, and I would hope that, and that'd be very cool. It's just the idea of again, back to drinking the sand. Yeah. At what point have we just done the whole self-fulfilling rumor? Sure. We thought they were going to remaster Fallout. Somebody said they knew they were remastering Fallout, and then it's like, okay, well now they do Oblivion, and it's like, oh shit, they must be doing Fallout. is like, are they really doing it? Is that really along the way?

20:39Tim Gettys:I mean, yeah. It has to be. It has to be. It has to be. It's just a matter of time. It's a matter of when did this actually go? Did they, in the beginning of Fallout Season 1, be like, fuck, we should have done something. Fuck, we got to make this happen. We got to go. And maybe Oblivion was already going at that point, so this is a little later in development. But I still have hope, Greg. I hope. When is Starfield Day? I mean, Starfield, the alleged...

20:58Greg Miller:Yesterday, the rumor was that we talked about from somebody's site, the Polish site, was April 4th. Or I was going to say April 7th. April 7th. April 7th.

21:05Tim Gettys:Yeah. April 22nd was the initial release for Oblivion Remastered. Sure. So maybe by the end of April, we get a... Two. Why not? Starfield's old game. You know what I mean? Like, how many people are actually going to buy it on... You know what I mean? Like, you go over here, fallout 3.

21:20Greg Miller:I saw my Starfield no sodium... My no sodium Starfield subreddit yesterday. Somebody's like, once it releases on PlayStation 5, how quickly is it going to be? Man, this was a mis-gem that we all misread. And I'm like, I don't know about that, man. I don't know about that.

21:31Tim Gettys:You guys need to get a little sodium in your life. it's good it actually balances actually it's good some constructive criticism isn't all that bad that's incredible uh i'm gonna go to some super chats really quick uh we got hard hardle find uh super chat says birthday tax for me and the switch happy birthday uh alvro cn says after covid for a year i had a cough and needed to clear my throat a lot so hope you get better soon greg

21:58Greg Miller:thank you that means a lot to me i'm struggling through every day i wake up and i'm like i feel so much better and then somebody makes me laugh and it sets the whole thing off yeah yeah i got some idiot dressed like he's going to the olympic village and he says oh you don't cough anymore and then i fucking cough the entire show that was making fun of mike oh okay i thought your cough's gone and then i had a whole breakdown i thought that was the urgent care person you

22:16Tim Gettys:went to i was like that's a very specific why is he dressed like why are you over this place uh and then we had uh mad rocks who super chats and says you didn't you don't get to call them stupid when you spoiled kevin smith being on your podcast under no pressure that's not what it was

22:32Greg Miller:okay that's what Mad Rock said go read you can go listen to me in the comments on yesterday's buzz

22:40Tim Gettys:great episode everybody watch great episode great editing the editor great guy very talented

22:45Greg Miller:I'm checking right now to see if we can do this locally okay we doing checking if we can do this locally for what Rotwood remember

22:52Tim Gettys:the dream is done we're not playing fucking Rotwood we're going to play Rotwood right after this sometimes Rotwood happen it's not happening it's not happening today Greg We have everything set up over there. We're not doing that. It would be just you guys going, You don't know that.

23:07Andy Chalk:I know. You don't know that. I know.

23:09Tim Gettys:I know. I saw the absolute stream. Pokemon Pocopia is currently the highest rated Pokemon game ever. Wow. Metacritic. This is from Chris Scullion over at VGC. This is the second news story for today. Pokemon Pocopia, or as Mike would say, Pocotopia. Yeah, what's up with that? I think it's just funny. It's just Mike doing his thing. That's just Mike doing his thing, honestly. But he says it so much that I honestly was calling it Pocotopia, like in my personal life. was talking to Liam. She's like, what the fuck are you saying to me? I'm like, oh, Mike. It's currently the highest rated Pokemon game in Metacritic's history.

23:38Tim Gettys:The Life Sim, which many are describing as a cross between Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Minecraft, Viva Pinata, and Dragon Quest Builders, is set to release on March 5th as a Switch 2 exclusive. Pokemon Pocopia is currently the highest rated Pokemon game in Metacritic's history. The Life Sim, which, oh, sorry. I think I just went through twice there. According to Metacritic, the list of highest scoring Pokemon games is as follows. Pokemon Pocopia, 88. Pokemon X and Y, 87.5. 87 for X and 88 for Y. Pokemon Black and White, which is 87. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, 87. Pokemon Sun and Moon, 87.

24:16Tim Gettys:Diamond and Pearl, 85. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, didn't know that existed, 84. Platinum, 83. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, 82.5. And then Legends Arceus with an 83. every Craig as the number one Pokemon fan. Somebody who loves Pokemon. Yeah. Loved bookopia love and has played every single one of these games on this list that I just read. You nailed it. Does it deserve to be the highest ranking?

24:40Greg Miller:You know, I think as time goes on, it'll be interesting to see because you're talking about games that have so many, you know, reviews slotted for them and where it goes on. Do I, I don't. Yeah. Of course the joke is I'm the Pokemon fan of the new generation. So am I going to go in here and tell you it should be above heart gold, soul silver. No, because I know how much people adore those fucking games and whatever. But I do think what it speaks to is something I hope, even though this wasn't them, Game Freak and the Pokemon company in reality take to heart, which is people want something different.

25:11Greg Miller:Not throw it all away in the Pokemon, fucking smoke cigarettes or whatever, but like Pocopia is such an interesting take on the Pokemon world that I really hope and we pray that, right, as these Pokemon generations continue to go on, we see them do everything we like of voice acting, online MMOs, like maybe even like this doesn't affect gens, right? You, we still get the gen 10. We still do have the as normal, whatever. But for as many people have been screaming everything. When pal world hit so many people were like, this is the dream. I wish it was Pokemon. Like why they should hopefully be working on a spinoff game.

25:47Greg Miller:That is that, that is you running around playing with other people doing these things, but then taking an idea that is fucking weird. Today's Greg way, which I still have not uploaded to cool Greg. just brings from a question of why in this tumultuous video game industry is Nintendo the one that doesn't seem to be laying people off and closing studios left and right and really being affected by it. And I think so much of it is Nintendo's commitment to fun and making video games and making fun before profit. Luckily, they make a lot of profit and they make a lot of money and they have a war chest and there's a bunch of, I go into a bunch of different things about it, right?

26:20Greg Miller:But it is this idea that like, cool, let's make a game where you're fucking ditto. which when we first saw that trailer i remember being horrified by it it's disgusting it's body horror and now 35 hours into that game like i fucking love ditto man i fucking love ditto and i love what else can you turn into i love this ditto and i love these pokemon and what they're doing like there's such in they do such a great job here of taking you know dragon quest builders minecraft animal crossing toss it in and giving that pokemon shine and doing something different with Pokemon period that really, and not only doing something different, but pulling on the years and years and years and years of nostalgia and games in history to be like, man, yes, this is a sidestep to the main generations, but it doesn't feel like a side project.

27:07Tim Gettys:And it's so smart because Pokemon is so much bigger than the games, right? And I think the Pokemon company has, not that they've gotten locked in because they have Pokemon Cafe, they have, you know, MMO, they have MOBAs. they got they got a bunch of things that are outside of the traditional rpg but i do think that they forget sometimes how just cute and lovable these characters are so being able to take them and put them into a farming game that is all of these things that people enjoy uh is just such a smart idea and i yeah as soon as i saw this trailer i was like oh i can't believe this hasn't been done to this respect sooner and i also think it's so smart that they collabed with a team that was already making games that were like this right that were already beloved yeah it's kind of a match made in heaven right there.

27:48Greg Miller:Yeah, and I think, you know, even looking at what we just saw of DJ Rotom going and, you know, people, Jigglypuff dancing around, these guys popping out. Before I played it and I watched this kind of stuff, I was like, oof, this looks stiff. Like, you're going to pop out and stand there and be weird little animatronics. And, like, that's so not the experience. These Pokemon pop out. They have personalities. They talk to you. They wander around. When new Pokemon show up, they make relationships with them, talk about how much they like this. It's like, there's a real world thing going on where it's like I want to go check in on them and see what they're doing and talk to them and stuff.

28:19Greg Miller:So like, you know, is it the best Pokemon game of all time? Probably not, no. I mean, people want a very specific thing from Pokemon. But in terms of, I think what everybody says they want from the gens of pushing it into a different direction, like this is so well done. It really does sit and go. I think, you know, ZA is a game that got the amount of shit you'd expect of like, man, around the city is not that interesting at all. oh man, I don't know if I like this real-time battling and yada, yada, yada. Like, this one I think is in that side project vein, but it's so committed to its vision that I think even if you played it and it's not your cup of tea, you'd still be like, I see why it's so many people's cup of tea.

29:01Tim Gettys:Yeah. So shout out to them actually doing this and it being as good as we want it to be. I'm very, very excited. Very, very excited.

29:08Greg Miller:Very excited to, no, Thursday? Thursday. Thursday is the Gamescast play of me and Joey jumping into our world and showing some stuff out. I'm excited.

29:15Tim Gettys:to play it.

29:16Greg Miller:Yeah. Yeah. Leans is all about it too, right? Uh,

29:18Tim Gettys:not as much, not as much as I want it. Cause she's very particular about her animal. She likes animal crossing. She has animal crossing. She played what's the dream light Valley. She enjoyed that to a certain extent when she was starved for animal crossing content. Now she's in the place where it's like, this must be one of the best games ever. If I'm going to play it. So I'm going to buy it. I'm going to play it. And then I think it's going to rub off and she's going to look at me and be like, I'm buying it.

29:39Greg Miller:I am so fascinated for getting the wild because I, I'm an Animal Crossing fan. So many people are Animal Crossing fans, and so many people are different kinds of Animal Crossing fans. And I don't think this is one for one. Where you, oh, you love Animal Crossing, you'll love this. I think there's so much gamey stuff going on in here, and like quests, and like you have to do this to unlock that kind of thing. Which is what I love, yeah. I'm going to be interested to see how many people are like, man, too much busy work, or too overwhelming, or whatever. I just want to decorate the homes. Or how many people are going to get it, get in that first biome, and just do that.

30:14Greg Miller:Yeah. Because, like, you know, the professor is very clear of, like, all right, cool, you've done this, and you can run off and you should run off and check on the other thing over there. But you could also stay here if you want. And, like, how many people are going to sit there and be like, I am making this world perfect before I go anywhere else? Oh, that's breaking news.

30:29Tim Gettys:You want to go to ads and we'll come back to the breaking news? Yeah, we will. We will go over and tell you about our advertisers and we'll come back to some breaking, breaking news.

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34:08Greg Miller:And we are back with some breaking news. Before then to set it up, yeah. We yelled for Mike. He's come here. He does not know what he's about to see. What do you think is going to happen? Tell me what you think he's going to say.

34:18Chris Scullion:Well, I mean, like I said, my mind goes to Baseball Baby. So maybe you got a cameo from Baseball Baby, and he's talking to me about getting better. Is he like Baby Gronk? We talked about him yesterday on the show. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Okay, we'll talk about it a little bit.

34:29Greg Miller:Okay. Video game breaking news right now that we would call you out here for. Halo 7 is announced. Oh my God, so close. Roger, go.

34:38Tim Gettys:Okay, I'm just going to... Today, we're sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shut down High Guard on March 12th.

34:46Chris Scullion:That's nine days from now. Okay, wow.

34:50Tim Gettys:Since launch, more than two million players stepped into High Guard's world. You shared feedback, created content, and many believed in what we were building. For that, we are deeply grateful. Despite the passion and hard work of our team, we have not been able to build a sustainable player base to support the game long-term. Servers will remain online until March 12th. We hope you'll jump in one more time to show your support and get those final great matches in while you still can. The team is excited to release one final game update to enjoy the remaining life of the game. We'll be adding a new warden, new weapon, account level progression, and skill trees.

35:31Tim Gettys:Full patch notes are coming, and we're targeting tonight or tomorrow morning for patch release. From all of us on Wildlife, thank you for playing, for supporting us, and for being a part of High Guard's story. Oof.

35:42Chris Scullion:Okay. Well, a lot to break down, a lot to talk about. I mean, the simple part is, okay, High Guard is going to be shut down in nine days from now. That was very short-lived. Of course, this is the game of the year when we talk about just kind of unfortunate situation, fumbling the bag and the opportunity to just a really, you know, I don't know how to describe it, but an unfortunate bad situation for all these people losing their jobs. Another Games as a Service that comes out doesn't find an audience that closes down, and this one was very swift and quick. Concord-esque, of course, we can talk about that.

36:17Chris Scullion:But, I mean, we saw the writing on the wall since day one, really since the gamers got against it during Game Awards, right? That was a tough kind of hill to get over and win that sentiment back after the Game Awards. Of course, if you don't know the story, it closed Jeff Keighley's Game Awards last year. It's one of the better Game Awards with announcements. When he did have that as the final announcement of the show, people did not like seeing kind of a generic-looking shooter. The team didn't do a good job at describing what a raid-based shooter is at the same time. They had better trailers they showed later on in its life cycle.

36:54Chris Scullion:But that first one, the initial, hey, this is us in the world, did not go well. Of course, the big story was the team over at Wildland Entertainment wanted it to be a stealth job. They wanted to capture what they did with Apex Legends. There's a lot of members from Respawn that went off and did this, right? 100 to 200, I thought, was the number back then. And so then we go for a full month long. Nobody's talking about this game. Everybody on the Internet is talking about this game and dogging on this game. The team from Wild Light is not answering questions. They've gone radio silent because their plan was to stealth drop this.

37:28Chris Scullion:So there was no lead up to this, unfortunately. And they didn't switch gears to answer that. Then we get to day one. It comes out. It is a good game, not a great game, right? It is a game that you can find fun in. But unfortunately, it's a mixed bag of all these different first person shooter genres that just wasn't the master of all of them, right? They were just good and adequate at all these different genres for the raid-based shooting right there. And so it went from 190 ,000 peak concurrence on day one to quickly far less than that. By, I think, week one, it was less than 90 % of the player count stuck around.

38:07Chris Scullion:And so, yeah, this is a game that was going to live or die by the free-to-play model of monetization where it needed a player base to buy cosmetics, to stay involved in the game, to try to keep this thing alive. Unfortunately, the players did not stick around. High Guard, to their credit, and Wild Light did try to pivot. They came out with a 5v5 mode. They talked with the audience. They tried to adjust as fast as they could. Unfortunately, it wasn't fast enough. They laid off 80 % of their studio. They laid off like 80 out of the 100 people. There was 20 people left, and that clearly wasn't going to be enough to get them there, even though they said they had a year's worth of content ready to rock and roll.

38:45Chris Scullion:but we all know as the needle goes into the red, you can only drag it for so long. I mean, that is the story of High Guard. It just wasn't great. It was good. It needed to be great.

38:56Greg Miller:The fact that there's another Concord, that's what's crazy is Concord happened, and I know we talk about, I talk about on the shows all the time, chasing trends and how that's just not the place to be, right? And that just doesn't work. To see PlayStation chase that trend, miss it, have this huge fuck foible concord everything that happens right and to see these folks doing the exact same thing and not learning from that and even to the point of we have a year's worth of content yeah remember that was fucking concord we have we're going to drop a new story trailer every week our new story segment every week we have them locked and it's interesting like i would

39:30Chris Scullion:push back on that right like learning from that this is a talented team that was coming from respawn and apex legends right like their goal was to split off and make a first person shooter We heard the early stories was, hey, we were playing Rust. We really liked this raid mechanic that it had in Rust where you invade each other's bases, and we tried to build off of that. So it's like I don't feel like this team was chasing trends in my mind of like that's a first-person shooter team. They were going to make this, right? But I do think of like looking at the marketplace and going, we're going to live or breathe and die on free-to-play model right here.

40:05Chris Scullion:Maybe that's not the way. And most importantly, hey, when we announce this game, We should probably have answers for people. We should probably follow this up. I don't like the excuse of, well, we were going to stealth drop, but that's why we went quiet for a month and a half.

40:17Greg Miller:But you changed your mind on that. Exactly. So you have to be ready to go.

40:21Chris Scullion:Jeff Keighley said, I want to show this off. And, of course, we all go, that's an opportunity of a lifetime to have the closing spot at the biggest award show slash gaming presentation. You have to then adjust your plan and go, you know what? Like, if we're going to do this, then let's roll out the marketing immediately. I don't care what it is. We've got to figure it out. And they didn't do that. They kind of dug their heels in and said, this is us. And they just let the gamers kind of dictate what this game was going to be before that. But the problem is, is the gamers dictated it, but you didn't answer.

40:51Chris Scullion:You answered with a good to fair game and it wasn't great. And unfortunately, they had their answers right away when it was like, ah, that's fine, skippable.

40:58Tim Gettys:They could have controlled the narrative here. I think that's as I look back on all of this, I think about if they shadow dropped it, not shadow dropped it, if they put out their trailer with Keeley, right? And then they were like, hey, we don't really have a plan right now, but we're just going to put on fucking live stream. We're just going to talk to the audience. We're going to be in our Discord. We're going to be responding to people, doing voice memos, whatever we need to do to be out there and show our faces and show what this game is and explain it. And you don't have to explain it into the detail that you were when you did the preview event, right?

41:24Tim Gettys:But you can still be answering questions and be there and showing them what this game is a little bit more. Having drops there, it's really unfortunate how they had a game that was good enough that I think could have succeeded in the right light, but they were unable to, in the biggest stage of the world, capitalize off of a massive audience of people that were watching and that were hungry for a game that was coming out in the next.

41:48Chris Scullion:I don't know if it would have succeeded. I don't know if it would have found an audience. If it was shadow dropped. If it was shadow dropped. I think there's just so much going on in this market space right now. Overwatch dropping the two, coming back with their 10th anniversary with so much energy. arc raiders being on top of the world just dominating the shooter market marathon just weeks away from you and having the title of bungee right like there was just so much going on in this pot that like even if this game came out as a stealth drop i will still stand on the hill that like it was good it was not great and that's the issue it's like good enough isn't good enough in this market and the problem is we would have seen this come out high numbers sponsorship streams whatever and it would have just slowly ticked away maybe it lasted another couple months but like this was not going to make it no matter what yeah no and it's it's also so interesting right because you have this this game that sorry i lost it you go oh okay yeah i mean yeah that's all right it'll come back to you right and so yeah it's interesting of like when we talk about hey we had a year's worth of content right yeah different thing concord that was like hey we have story content this team seemed like hey we have heroes week two we got ranked mode week two we want to come out every other month with a new hero we want they had this big plan and it was interesting of like this is a veteran team in my eyes right this is an indie studio but like this is a team of veterans who this is their second go they did apex legends they learned from that they should they were ready for that and i think it's just clearly the market was not ready for that i don't think the gamers wanted this at this moment a hero raid shooter that was just looking generic right like too many people pointing it's like we got a hero shooter like never before seen it's like well that character looks like hella from marvel rivals that character looks like the guy from overwatch like you're not bringing anything truly interesting besides this riding mechanic that fran and i talk about a lot it's like this was kind of check that frame this was kind of the defining factor of like there was a moment in between the game where you get on these mounts and the speed picks up and you shoot people off and it says capture the flag cat and mouse game that was like more of the most interesting stuff to this game and unfortunately it was also mixed with like a very boring mid game where you would just kind of either loot or you would scavenge for supplies and there would be minimal gunfights and they changed all that with 5v5 and tried to adjusting to that, but there wasn't much to hang your hat on in this game that would stop the world to play this.

44:21Tim Gettys:What I was going to say was that I don't think it's also impactful enough to say, hey, we're the team, some of the people that used to work at this studio now. Everybody says that. Exactly. Everyone says that now. I think if this was actually respawn proper, oh, big difference. Then you can do the shadow drop. As we're Monday morning quarterbacking this, looking back on what this could have been, I just don't think that this was the right call to be like hey we're the people that made apex remember that that worked for that it worked because it was respawn right it worked because it was the

44:51Chris Scullion:titanfall people and that was such well it was a different age exactly it was for multiple reasons

44:55Tim Gettys:but it also had the caliber of like hey this team works on amazing things and it's out now and it's and we're connected to the super bowl and we're doing this it had so much going for it i just don't think they them being like hey we're the people that some of the people have worked on a game that you liked back in the day that's not going to work out or be the thing that's going to get drive people to download it's such a competitive market space period let alone in

45:15Greg Miller:this very specific genre right and i think that's what's i think even to what i was speaking about a little bit more than uh you know bandwidth or quality or what you've done before i'm talking about like seeing this concord again right is the idea that i know how hard games are to make and i think it's so crazy that you could launch a game and be closed this quickly that you just don't have, like, they rode this thing on empty, right, across the finish line, and then needed such a huge return on players jumping in and buying stuff and doing things to justify keeping it around and keeping everything going.

45:50Chris Scullion:And that was that back-end stuff that we heard from either Jason Schreier or Paul Tassi. Somebody reported that Ned East was involved in this. Tencent, one of those two, was involved in the early backing of this and then pulled the backing as well, right? And so, like you said, Greg, this game, if this game is released under EA, right? If they all stay at Respawn, could they not have the conversation with EA and say, hey, we want to make a different kind of shooter under the umbrella. Maybe you can back us more. But like, this was a team when we went down, me, Andy, and Blessing, they were just like, no, we're funding this, right?

46:23Chris Scullion:They did not talk about Tencent. And then it came out with that. But like, it was very much, we're going to ride this lightning bolt and hope that it pays off. Free to play is the way to go. We don't want to have that upfront cost, which now we're seeing right now. Gamers are willing to pay the upfront cost of$20,$40,$60 if you have a great game, right? Let's see what they do about Marathon. Exactly. So, like, Arc Raiders is the perfect example. Arc Raiders and tell me who makes the finals in Arc Raiders. That group, Embark Studios, is on a tear right now, right? Like, that team has two back-to-back hits that cost money that people were able to buy and say, I'm in on this.

46:58Chris Scullion:And, like, there we are now, right? So, like, the gamers are willing to spend money if you have a good game. Free-to-play is great so people can come in and try, but if it's not great to good, they're not going to buy microtransactions for a game that they're going to play for a week or two months. It's interesting. There's no refunds. Yeah, I was going to mention that.

47:16Tim Gettys:I was like, I do think they should absolutely be refunding people. I don't know if they have the money to back it. You would assume not. But if somebody's playing this game and playing it for a month or so and putting in money to it and the game is dropping, you know going away completely yeah you got to be getting refunds crazy that we're having this

47:34Greg Miller:conversation now and five days ago bloomberg published a story that is uh the story behind high guard's failure right let me give you a few graphs from there it's what we're talking about in getting into this right when high guard came out on january 26th of course this is the try guy jason schreier the player count was impressive peaking at nearly 100 000 concurrence on pc platform steam with similar numbers across ps5 and xbox but early impressions proved negative and because the game was free to play, it only generated revenue from in-game payments that would require players to stick around.

48:03Greg Miller:Reviewers criticized a number of elements, including the large map sizes and tedious mechanics such as mining, many of which were vestiges of early versions of High Guard. Critics also pointed out that the game was so complicated that it was much less fun if you were playing with strangers and the mics weren't on, a problem that Wildlight might have identified earlier by letting the public try out the game before release. In the days that followed, High Guard's biggest problem became player retention, a challenge that wildlife management emphasized to the staff multiple times a week after the game's launch they'd lost roughly 90 of their players which was a scary number a hastily released 5v5 mode was praised but didn't bring people back still wildlife staff were under the impression that they had enough financial runway to keep working on the game and addressing issues for at least the next few months but at an all hands on and an all hands meeting on february 11th, just two weeks after the game's release, the company told its employees the studio was out of money, and most of their 100-person team would be laid off.

48:59Greg Miller:They would stay employees for another week and then receive a small severance. During the meeting, management said that Tencent had pulled the studio's funding according to people familiar with the events. Although the company didn't spell it out, staff were left with the impression that their financing was contingent upon hitting certain metrics such as retention rate, which they'd fail to even come close to achieving.

49:22Tim Gettys:Yeah, that's it's I want to can I switch over the to the marathon conversation really quick or we can come on a conversation.

49:29Chris Scullion:I mean, we saw the writing on the wall for this. This was unfortunate, right? The layoffs of 80 percent of your 100 person staff was clearly the we're not long for this world. Right. And this shows you video games are extremely hard to make. The costs are ballooning, right, like through the roof. And you look at that of like a hundred person studio was banking it all on free to play and hoping microtransactions would come in, loses 80 to 90 % of the player base. Add up all those salaries. There's not enough snow bike mics to give you$20 plus a day to keep that funding. Right. And like, that's where we were two weeks ago when it was like the website's down, right?

50:05Chris Scullion:The discord's not leading to the real discord. Right. Then we go on. It's like, well, there's 20 people left. Is 20 people really going to run this video game for a full year? and hopefully, as we know, these games are extremely hard to just change course on, right? They came out with a 5v5 mode, but there's not much more you can really course correct on with 20 people in the studio and money dwindling here. So it's an unfortunate situation.

50:30Greg Miller:And again, I hate to bang the old drum that I do all the time, but I think you turn to Tencent, and it's, I mean, don't get me wrong, every sign of the contract here, player retention rates, this, that, that, blah, blah. We're just talking about companies that are coming in just looking for a buck. Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm not saying this is the example that it should have been, but nobody coming in and being like, I believe in this vision and we're committed and we're going to do this and make it right by the players and make something great and make cool art. We're going to come in and get a high player attention rate and get you to fucking buy the battle pass.

50:57Greg Miller:Oh, you're not fucking plug-pulled. You're done. It's over that quickly.

51:01Tim Gettys:A few super chats I want to get to. We have simple super chatting. Oh my gosh, why the hell am I doing this? With all of the negative combos, High Guard should have put it all on the table. shouldn't plan for seasons because the studio might not even make it to season one uh so i guess they're mentioning the fact that they were like hey we have seasons of content that we're building towards but at the base level it was all crumbling right so oh so they're saying like yeah

51:26Chris Scullion:hey just put all the seasons out day one because you're not going to make or no or like even planning for it because like the base level of it is just well you have to plan for right we saw this with halo infinite halo infinite comes out with a great multiplayer suite people are excited to be back in the Halo universe, and they start yelling, give me more. And Halo, Infinite in particular, was built on a 10-year plan, right? That was a big pipe dream that we're all going to live. This is going to last for 10 years. We're going to make this a live service. And when we said, this is great, give me more, they said, oh, shit.

51:57Chris Scullion:We weren't ready for that, right? Like, now we're behind the eight ball. When you talk with this team, when I say, like, veterans, this is their sophomore experience. They've been here before. They knew exactly what the answers were. hey you can't just start making content after you release the game and think you're going to catch up with the players you got to be making this content while you're building the game so it's ready to roll out month by month season by season and if you don't people are going to leave there's too many things trying to get up my attention and my wallet and my gameplay time and so yeah like i don't agree with that i think if they were meaning like hey if you had season one through four planned and it was ready just drop it all like yeah i get that but like they They are still also fine-tuning all of that, adjusting.

52:39Chris Scullion:When you only have 20 people, it's hard to drop probably three new heroes and be like, all right, we got to balance that with the 20 people we got live and in person. I don't think that's how it goes.

52:49Tim Gettys:A Bud Superchat says, in terms of market failings for HG, do you think there are parallels for the future of skate? Sorry to switch topics, but it feels like a correlation. So in terms of marketing, just in general.

53:03Chris Scullion:I mean, is skate written for the wall for this?

53:06Greg Miller:Yes. Yeah. I talked about this at Game of the Year. When I gave Skate my Game of the Year, right, my number one vote, right, where it's like I adore Skate. It feels so good to play Skate. I like coming back to Skate. I realize that they've made all the wrong choices and had the wrong messaging, and I think we talk about early access as a viable model. We just had a whole conversation. I think when you're EA, early access doesn't help you and do things. I don't think it's so much the marketing failings of Skate. I mean, the problem with Skate for so many people are the core values of Skate, where it is like, it's not what people wanted.

53:37Greg Miller:They wanted skate for, they didn't want a cartoony skate world. They want to be counterculture. They want to be rallying against it. And then of course, to have people in the depth early on say stuff like, you'll never have to pay for new maps. And then here we are season three launches next week. And guess what? You got to pay to get to the Island one way or the other. And of course, reason being behind that. Well, I mean, it doesn't take a rocket science of like, I'm sure skate isn't doing well. I do have, you know, the steam DB for high guard, right? Right now there's 242 players playing. The peak was 460, right?

54:10Greg Miller:Skate right now. There's a little over 2000 playing 24 hour peak was a little bit above that by like 40 people. Yeah. So more people, but again, not great numbers, right? And you look at a chart all the way down. It'll be interesting with season three next week. Do we see a spike or is it down? But like, even if season three spikes it next week, guess what we're talking about? Tencent looks at high guard and goes, nobody's fucking playing it. You're done. You're telling me electronic arts isn't going to look at skate and be like, no one is playing this. You're done. Yeah. Especially with their new owners coming in eventually here from Saudi Arabia.

54:42Greg Miller:They're not here for art. They're not here to make like, Oh man, people really wanted a skate game. We can turn this around full circle. Just lay people off as well.

54:49Tim Gettys:But they also do love American culture and they love like putting their tentacles into all of it. Right. So I could see them being like, Hey, this is our in right. Like the fighting game was that King of fighting King of fury fighters. but they put so much energy and marketing into that game. Oh, the word Cristiano Ronaldo? Yeah, dude, Cristiano Ronaldo, we're in UFC matches. We're everywhere with this fucking game. And like in the grand scheme of fighting games, no one's playing this, right? So I agree with you, but also at that point specifically, I can see them being like, we like skate, we skate in culture.

55:18Greg Miller:Here's my thing is I don't think you'll get to it. Like that's the interesting thing with this buyout or whatever. Like I don't know where that falls of like, are you trying to clean it up for the new owners? You're just gonna let them come in and do it and whatever. but it falls in this question, right? Of like a super chat here from Jay for Ellie, who says what's, what's more dead free to play or games of service.

55:35Tim Gettys:Yeah. That's what I was going to get to. Well, here we are.

55:37Greg Miller:We're there.

55:37Tim Gettys:Thank you, Greg.

55:38Chris Scullion:Yeah. That's the fun conversation. I mean, what do you take from all of these lessons that you have seen, right? Like we've talked about this for years. You've talked about this since you started this company and back at IGN, right? It's like, you're learning from all these different lessons and we see the trend happening, but you can't predict five years from now. You can't predict 10 years from now. Also, all the money and opportunities are, like, quickly tightening up. They're not giving it out as much as they were. So you really got to pick and choose your battles here, right? Yeah. And you are going to start questioning, like, should I be leaving Halo Studios to make my own studio right now and, like, possibly risk it all?

56:13Chris Scullion:Or should I be at my stable job here where it's like, yeah, at any moment we could all be laid off, but at least we're making Halo 7. Where I go off here and it's like, we just did four years. You know you can get laid off making Halo 7.

56:23Greg Miller:Of course, but it's tough. Here's the deal. those i don't i'm not super uh briefed on high guard so i i feel i don't want to throw shade at anything like that i still think in this day and age your path to security in the video game industry or at least success is paved by independence i don't think being at a big corporation with a big thing like you know what are we at right now and where are we at with video games and etc and so on and so forth like where we are at is that you need to get these fucking business suits out of video games. How do you make a successful game? You have a fucking vision that does not start with monetization.

57:01Greg Miller:You have a vision that does not start with how are we going to, what is the business model for this game, right? Like that is what people are saying when they are trying to mimic Fortnite, when they are trying to figure that out. Those are not the conversations that should be happening at a pre-pro level. It should be that you are setting off to make a really cool game, which means you will make a much smaller game We are now back to the conversation that is always like nails on a chalkboard of High Moon Studios, Ascension Studios, right? The people who did the one that I always forget, the fucking one just up the road of like, we are, we have a pedigree in AAA games and we're going to make a quadruple A game with that.

57:40Greg Miller:Like you've never made a game as a studio. You do not know how each other work. You do not know the workflow. Start with something fucking small. Do a 2D Metroidvania with three of you and make money off of that. When you come out and you're like, we are going to come out and compete on the grandest stage of them all with free to play. It's like, bro, no. That just isn't a viable option. It's a possible option. But look at this again. The days of, I have a great idea and I'm going to partner with a big fucking firm company, venture capitalist, whatever. That leads to this. These people don't care about art.

58:15Greg Miller:They care about the bottom fucking line. And so we need to stop hitching our wagons to them thinking that, well, this, I'll be the difference. I'll do the thing and I know that like I'm so privileged I'm talking I've never made shit in my life except this company right but not a video game yeah so I'm not I totally get like leaving and then you find a thing but then they want a thing so then you do and suddenly you look back like oh this isn't really the vision but at least we're employed at least we're doing this thing blah blah but then we get here and it's like what was it all for I mean

58:42Chris Scullion:I like that Greg and like that's such a right nail you're hammering the nail on the head like that is exactly where we are and that's what it is I guess like when I look at the first person shooter genre, how many indie first person shooters are blowing up the market, right? Like it is a difficult, it's a different world over here on this side. What's like you're competing with Call of Duties, Fortnites, Halos, Counter-Strikes. Like it's not, oh, we're making an indie game anymore. It's like we are competing against the top dogs in the world. And if you don't have that industry backing, if you don't have that stability, you're not going to be long for this, right?

59:16Chris Scullion:Like there's like a.

59:17Greg Miller:But here I just tell me.

59:18Chris Scullion:name me five indie first person shooter games that look indie that like are withstanding the test of time, you know,

59:26Greg Miller:drop rogue. What was the one we just did? No, I'm serious. I'm serious. Whatever. The one was just the indirect. That looks like not great on switch. Yeah. But we went and looked at the, the, the steam page for it. And you're like, Dave, that whatever dead shot rogue, someone in the chat, help me. Like I look at that and I go there, but it's also the idea of like as a developer, right? Again, I'm not a developer. I'm speaking out of my ass to some degree. I understand. It's what I was talking about. we make carburetors here. Don't try to make a fucking window. But if I was like, I'm so fed up in my job and I'm going to leave, I better leave and have, and I'm going to make a first person shooter.

59:57Greg Miller:I better leave and know what that market wants and what that audience wants and what will separate us. It sounds like high guard did not have that vision. Correct. Or at least that vision got so watered down by the time they got out that you aren't there. Like, that's the thing. Like if the market is saturated, go to a different market, which I know is very easy to say. Yeah. Impossible. Right. Again, I was just reading. did it come by? What was it? Dead Zone! Fuck! Broke. I was reading Schreier's book again, you know, Blood, Silhouette, and Pixels, and the Destiny chapter talks about, like, them wanting to go over here and make something that wasn't Halo, and then they merged the ideas, and then suddenly they're just making Halo again, because that's what everybody knows how to make!

1:00:34Chris Scullion:There's very few that I can go back to. The most recent one that I can go back to, and they fell apart when they were getting towards the finish line, was Splitgate. That was one of the few games where it's like, we're an indie team and we're making something so good that people are stopping playing their Call of Duty to come here.

1:00:51Greg Miller:And there's no way we could fuck up all that goodwill, is there, guys? That team lost the plot, of course,

1:00:55Chris Scullion:but there's very few where you're like, oh, shit, because we're not talking about a PVE here. There's a whole different – there's so many markets here. We're talking about a PVP, competitive first-person shooter genre, that's the big dog table where you better come correct because you're not going to last. and we've seen too many of these games try to step up there and it's like, hey, you were good but you weren't great or like, you just weren't there. You never were there and it's an intimidating market to try to step into. It isn't like, hey, I'm just making an indie game and we're going to have some fun and it's going to be peak.

1:01:28Chris Scullion:It's going to be tome. It's going to be something like that. It's like, no, this is over here. You've got to come correct here.

1:01:34Greg Miller:But couldn't, and I know we're going long, but the question there I would offer back to you as a fan of the genre is, couldn't there be a peak? isn't the idea in this first person shooter genre you're talking about just that too many people aren't doing the small fun different thing they're just going and making the same fucking shit i mean

1:01:51Chris Scullion:that the when i go to i think of like team fortress something like that's like a little wacky and different right but like the problem is but that also isn't wacky and different because that's a hero ship exactly right like we've seen so many of them i'm littered with games like ubisoft where they just made x defiance right yeah i'm littered with games that are like oh we're just stepping into a hero arena or whatever and it's uh oh my god there was so many of them competing with overwatch battleborn remember that game there was another one as well paladins it's like there's just too many games stepping into that that just can't compete and like that's the one where it's like maybe you do need the backing maybe it is too difficult to step in and do that

1:02:31Tim Gettys:because not many teams make a splash can do that well let's go to something i think a general conversation is and then i will eventually end on the marathon conversation right there uh snaggletooth production says a snap super chat says games as a service have proven to be company killers no one will be fortnite and then i want to bring in this one which is a larger conversation but i do think it's it is what we're talking about here to a certain degree aaron lime super chats and says the attention economy is about being it is also being dominated by fortnite and roblox that's where kids who would otherwise be playing games like high guard high guard are now it's where their friends are and we have to we have to see it as a new null experience i don't know what i'm going to say there but yeah you get the point thank you for bringing that up because when we

1:03:13Chris Scullion:were talking about free to play versus live service and are those long for this world it's like unfortunately we at this table are not the people that really talk about roblox we're not in tune with that market but it is everything but that is everything everything right like roblox is everything this mobile market now clash of clans that's what the younger generation is playing right now, right? And so, like, will free to play stick around? Hell yeah, it will. Roblox is getting, like, 20 million daily players, right? There's, like, a freak amount of players playing.

1:03:43Tim Gettys:These games inside of it have millions of players, right?

1:03:44Chris Scullion:So it's like, yeah, of course they're going to be alive and well in five years from now because it is still that of, like, that kid that's 12 to 20 is not spending their mom's credit card or swiping the card. They can jump into a free game at any moment, play where their friends are at, and their friends are playing. They're going to be there.

1:04:02Tim Gettys:It's also the willingness to jump into this community, as Aaron was talking about, right? Because for me, when I was a kid, I, of course, had Call of Duty at Halo, but I was more interested in trying to find those new communities, trying to figure out maybe I can try this free-to-play game. Maybe there is this world. Now we're just, we are so oversaturated that getting your friends to fucking go from Counter-Strike to a free-to-play video game, that in and of itself is an impressive feat. If you're able to get five of your friends for a night, as we get older, video game time is getting harder and harder and harder.

1:04:30Tim Gettys:Connection time is getting harder and harder. To get, hey, download this new game and try it out with me. That's crazy.

1:04:35Greg Miller:But are we not also, and stick with me because I sound dismissive to everything, making a mountain out of a molehill. Is this not a problem we've had that's as old as video games, period? Because stick with me. We're back to Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft. All the kids are playing it. That's what they play. Yada, da, da, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. yes i agree but when i was a kid and i was playing video games and i would try to get poe to play spider-man on ps1 or genesis or whatever couldn't fucking do it but he would play madden with me yeah he would there's people who only own these things for call of duty are we not again giving into the fucking suits here who saw the success of fortnite roblox minecraft and said video games are bigger than ever.

1:05:21Greg Miller:Everyone wants to play video games when in reality take all three of those games and say playing outside playing the violin, sports kids have always been attracted to a game did you buy a console? I'd never buy a console I would never do this thing. It's just there I would hazard the guest that if you were to go back and compare my generation to me being a super video game fan and none of my close friends being a huge video game fan reading EGM consuming all the stuff, wanting to buy the latest thing, yada, yada, yada. I would imagine that's still what it's like for so many of these kids that are playing Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite with their friends, but then are listening to, probably not us, but IGN or whatever, and looking around and being like, excited for the next Insomniac game, even though they're not saying Insomniac.

1:06:06Greg Miller:Like, they're into video games in a way they aren't, the mass of people aren't, but the market read the wrong fucking lesson there. They looked at that and said, kids are playing video games more than ever, and they always will. And we can convert those kids to buy a switch to a whatever XY. And you can't because that's just not how they're built.

1:06:25Tim Gettys:Yeah, no, I think you're right in terms of, I was reminded by the chat, but also just like thinking through it. It's like, we forget that Minecraft, I mean, not Minecraft, Fortnite, and also Minecraft are just happy accidents, right? Like Fortnite did not, was never a battle royale originally. Dead on arrival.

1:06:39Greg Miller:Fortnite was dead on arrival.

1:06:41Tim Gettys:Literally, it was their moment of like, fuck, we are fucking up right now. What do we do right now? We did this thing. And that was a happy accident right there. So if I'm an investor, if I'm one of the big suits and I'm trying to find a game out there and then people are pitching me games and I am gravitating towards the games that are comparing themselves to Call of Duties, Fortnites, Overwatches, and not comparing themselves to weirder, nichier ideas, I think that that's the wrong direction. right if you are focusing on the call of duties the overwatches because you're never going to be able to do that in a way that isn't organic right you have to make something new you have to go for indie ideas weird ideas out there things that are that is what we're looking for right now it's the attention economy we need the hooks and high guard doesn't have the hooks right you look at it it's like okay it's all these things i like but at the end of the day it is just this mash of everything so it doesn't look like anything new right there isn't one thing that i can grab onto oh my god the character design is so fucking incredible so unique oh my god it has this mechanic that i can i run to my friends say hey you can do gobbledygook with this thing like oh my god i love gobbledygook i wouldn't think that that would exist in a first-person shooter right we just don't have those anymore that's sadly the original idea that sadly not sadly that is the the original ideas that are going to make the future of gaming but sadly the suits don't see it so i i totally get

1:07:55Chris Scullion:your point yeah i mean everything that you just say said roger is right right and like back in the day when video games were in their early development and infancy, yeah, that was an exciting time. It was all new and fresh. Now, how many investors are really out there clamoring for a new game to be the backer of? And then on top of that, it's like, when you said all that, Roger, that's great, but the people who have the money probably don't even care about this, nor do they know. They just say, where the money's at? Give me a call of duty. Go to call of duty. That's why they're all leaving the space.

1:08:26Chris Scullion:Because they're bad at investing. They don't understand it. Their eyes glaze over, and they say, just get the Fortnite, Roger. I don't want to hear this. I don't care about that. I want money now. Get the money is right. Money now. Yeah, unfortunately, that's where you're at. And yeah, high guard will be another giant lesson that we will point to. And unfortunately, in this day and age, there will be a lot of negativity, a lot of name calling, a lot of finger pointing when it should just be like, this is a lesson. Learn from this and try to be better. And man, oh man, it's unfortunate because that game just came with and hundreds of lives have now been affected.

1:08:58Tim Gettys:Yep. uh and now i want to have the larger conversation that i saw some super chats about uh jbc super chat says i don't think marathon is concord 2 let alone high guard 2 but its bounce bounce rate is very concerning and that's uh talking about the slam server server slam that happened this weekend and people were you know the people were showing like all that graph is going down pretty heavy uh and yeah i think that is it when it comes to marathon turn super chat what do we feel oh sorry Sandy Crane supertimes this how we feeling about Marathon now with mixed review shooters on the brain IMO I think Marathon was good based on server slam thanks guys what are you feeling about Marathon

1:09:34Chris Scullion:Mike you played some of it I played Marathon for one night and I was a mixed bag of emotions I really enjoyed the shooting I enjoyed the world I enjoyed the vibe of it all but there was just something about the moment to moment gameplay there was a lack of gunfights there was a lot of like man this is just an empty boring experience for 15 minutes before we extract that I don't want to spend a bunch of time in. It did not have the wow factor like I experienced in our graders, but I am the outlier. I am hearing so much positive buzz about Marathon from others that I'm like, oh man, I'm on the opposite side because I did not like this experience.

1:10:12Chris Scullion:I liked some of the experience. I did not like a lot of the experience. And so for me, I am very interested in this Marathon lead up to launch and afterwards of like, will this stick? Will this happen? What is up with Bungie? Most people will tell you if they listen in, they'll say, no, Mike, Marathon's got the juice and it's going to be here. I'm on the other side of going, I did not like that marathon experience. I will be keeping eyes on that one to see if Bungie has it in them. Yeah, we will see.

1:10:39Tim Gettys:And then final super chat here from... Paris wants to call in. Paris, you can tell me about Marathon. No, no, Paris. Don't call in Paris. Now we're into the podcast. Calizer says, you guys always smash it out the park with these breaking stories. And I want to thank Snowbike Mike for coming on here.

1:10:54Chris Scullion:Yeah, thanks for calling me. I was just getting ready for the Kind of Funny podcast. A lot of baseball kid clips that I was gathering for Nick. We got to talk about this, okay? We got a baseball phenom here. We got to be ready for it. And then, but Mike,

1:11:08Tim Gettys:before you leave, High Guard going out of business. Huge news.

1:11:12Chris Scullion:I was looking for something smaller. Where would I go? Roger, I take you to our last news story, the We News Channel, where we cover all the small news items you need to know about.

1:11:19Greg Miller:Is it always this bright? Always bright.

1:11:23Chris Scullion:My skin reflects it. All the lights seem a little brighter today.

1:11:26Greg Miller:I don't know if that's just my eyes or something.

1:11:27Tim Gettys:I haven't been here well.

1:11:28Greg Miller:Because you've been looking at so many great indie games. No. Is this story to teach you anything?

1:11:31Tim Gettys:Support indie games. Support indie games, everybody. Buy games. Story number six. Weenews. A lot of stuff to go through really quick. Scott Pilgrim EX Review Roundup. Metacritic is at a 77. VGC is Chris Scully and gave it a four out of five stars. Scott Pilgrim EX takes everything that was great about the first game. the combat the music the beautiful pixel art and throws it into an all-new adventure rammed with great game references the open world structure and relatively short length won't be to everyone's taste but if those aren't a problem to you it's a must-have did not know about the open world

1:12:05Greg Miller:structure i didn't either me and ben started it over the weekend the review code didn't get super deep into it but i was incredibly thrown by the open world oh i was like all right ben go to the right we're just beating the shit out of everything then we just got to the end and i looked at the Apple's like, oh, this is open world. Very interesting. Gameplays, it's tribute games. It's, you know, cosmic invasion devs. They know what they're doing. If you like the Scott Pilgrim world, what I played, I can see you getting into it.

1:12:27Tim Gettys:Hell yeah. A new RPG from Bandai Namco. There is a YouTube thing that is.

1:12:34Greg Miller:Yeah, there was a YouTube post up about this new thing they're revealing. The description reads, a serenity soon to be disturbed. We're to come March 5th at 1500 Pacific Standard Time.

1:12:45Tim Gettys:Yeah. Do your mouth on that one, everybody.

1:12:46Greg Miller:It's 3 o 'clock.

1:12:47Tim Gettys:What? Xbox Game Pass Update. Today! Xbox Game Pass Update. Today, Final Fantasy 3. That's going to be on the Cloud Xbox Series X and S and PC. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2! Cloud Xbox Series X and S and PC. Coming soon, Tua T is also coming to Cloud X, S and PC. Love Tua T. Play that game. It's a fun little time. EA sports f125 uh planet of lana 2 yeah that's coming out yeah soon uh construction simulator

1:13:22Chris Scullion:yeah we talked about that and then the big one people are excited cyberpunk 2077 that's cloud

1:13:28Tim Gettys:and consoles hollow night silksong uh cloud console handheld and pc was that already there that's weird uh and dreamworks uh gabby's dollhouse ready to party cloud xbox i bill games daily at

1:13:41Greg Miller:the kitchen table today and ben was looking at my shirt and he goes there's a gabby's dollhouse game like you want to play that he's like yeah i'm like a march 17th buddy big dog hell yeah mike

1:13:49Tim Gettys:you're here so i'm glad we could talk about it charlie intel reports we met charlie intel it's pretty cool uh new black ops royale is coming to warzone black out inspired no loadouts drop in and loot up start with pistol and wingsuit no buy station no gulag deploy redeploy is available tiered armor vests played on Avalon 100 players March 12th at 9pm PT

1:14:14Chris Scullion:yes a lot of people were down on me I said it's back I'm so excited you're down on you just crazy I'm so excited for this this was the dream of as we continue on with Warzone what is next how do you keep that fresh how do you get the player base back in we knew with the changing of the garden going back to Black Ops that Avalon was out there, that a blackout was rumored of like, hey, how do you go back to blackout now and like bring in something new? And I'm very excited to try this. I mean, come on, no loadouts that I got to worry about. Just drop in, loot out, have fun. That's the dream, right?

1:14:51Chris Scullion:It's like, let's get back to basics. We have gone five plus years since COVID of like, hey, you got to know the meta. You got to have the meta. You got to grind the meta. Grind it. You know what I'd like to do? I'd just like to drop in and show you how nasty I am. and that's all that matters. Is this what you want? Fuck yeah. I want the gulag. No, Roger, I haven't played Call of Duty Warzone in a year now. You don't know what you want. We haven't played Warzone since Call of Duty next. I need a breath of fresh air in the Call of Duty Battle Royale space because Call of Duty is still one of the top dogs in the first-person shooting market.

1:15:24Chris Scullion:It's so much fun to play. It is a blast. Multiplayer is good, but I want that Battle Royale experience and I need something fresh. Warzone has had its time. it is time to build something new. Is this new? This is just on Avalon. Yeah, but we're going back out to the Blackout. Did you play Blackout? No. Yeah, so Blackout was the earliest Battle Royale. It was much different than what Warzone became. If you've had a taste of that, you're going to want to try this. Mike's very excited about it.

1:15:51Tim Gettys:Tune in on Thursday, March 5th at 2pm PT for a 30-minute Capcom Spotlight livestream. 30 minutes featuring games such as Monster Hunter Stories 3 Twisted Reflection, Pragmata, Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection, and Street Fighter 6. Following the success of the sold-out 2025 premiere in Japan, the official concert tour of Metaphor ReFontagio embarks on a world tour spanning three continents, six countries, and eight cities across the globe. The concert presents a carefully curated selection of pieces that bring the game's epic fantasy world to life, all composed by Shoji Maguro, renowned for his work on the Persona series.

1:16:35Tim Gettys:So it's coming to Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Kaohsiung, Singapore, Bangkok, London, and Paris. Boo, boo, boo. No San Francisco.

1:16:44Chris Scullion:You think that one's making the distance? Uh, what do you mean? What was the last big one that didn't make the distance and it canceled halfway through? The PlayStation one.

1:16:55Tim Gettys:Oh, that's the PlayStation one. And then we have the first poster for Life is Strange. The TV series showing off who's playing Chloe Price and Max Caulfield. And who is it? Tatum Grace Hopkins. Sorry, they read it in the text there. And then Maisie Stella.

1:17:15Greg Miller:From the hit TV show Nashville. That's right. Daphne herself playing Chloe Price. I don't know if the show will be good, but we got one of the Stella sisters, and that means I'll be watching. Woo! And everybody, that is it for

1:17:31Tim Gettys:WeNews. We killed it, everybody. I think we looked through all the super chats right there. I'm going to go to you're wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong there. Don't worry about that. Oh, Jesus Christ. People are talking about that. No release date for Marathon. That's not true. Oh, this is from yesterday. So I think we did everything. No, yeah. No, you're wrong.

1:17:49Chris Scullion:Nice job.

1:17:49Tim Gettys:We killed it, everybody. Yes! Great job, everybody. This has been Kind of Funny Games Daily, where each and every weekday we run you through the news you need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch, and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad-free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. Enjoy the Kind of Funny podcast right after this, and you're going to learn all about baseball, boy.

1:18:14Chris Scullion:It's going to be an Internet Explorers episode. We're all bringing different things from the Internet together to share with one another. So, yes, I have Nick will also choose his starter Pokemon for winds and waves. What? Yeah. Wow. You guys have a good show. Yeah. We got some stuff going on.

1:18:29Greg Miller:It's too bad Kevin Smith can't be there.

1:18:32Tim Gettys:Well, it's crazy that you broken Bargo, but until next time. You forced me to. It's been a pleasure to serve you. Yeah. Fucking you fucked up. You came with the wrong hand.