Is Halo Finally Back?! - Kinda Funny Games Daily 09.30.25

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0:30Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Today's stories include Halo Studios teases a deep dive coming soon, a new Lord of the Rings game might take on Hogwarts Legacy, and a Peter Pan game is coming from the people that brought you the Lego games. We'll have all this and more because this is Kinda Funny Games Daily.

0:53Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kinda Funny Games Daily for Tuesday, September 30th, 2025. i'm one of your hosts blessing addy elia jr joining me is ww legend greg miller hello blessing how are you i'm doing well greg how are you doing i'm great i want to know in your head right now three o 'clock yeah on a tuesday doing games daily bizarre of course we had the call of duty stream live from call of duty next great job roger great job mike great job steve aoki who can shake their hands uh then we did games cast first because tim's got to run to some stuff are you worried about us doing news now that would have normally been the news tomorrow 1000 in fact so much so that for the last hour there's been like a silent hill one remake news kind of looming yeah and i've been kind of like waiting don't say anything yeah i'm like is it official yet like i keep like refreshing pages to see like all right is ijan reporting on it yeah and it's still in that air of mystery that i'm like thank god okay this could be a headline tomorrow thankfully we'll have something maybe to talk about historically i would be worried as well but i'll have you know about three hours ago i was pre-briefed on something so i got your headline tomorrow nice nice nice uh how you doing 3 p.m are you off your game are you ready to lock i'm tired yeah i'm tired i i think i you know i stayed up too late last night playing video games and then ben called me in his room in the middle of the night and then he woke up early so i was like i was already down and i got my my dad and his partner in town it's you know ben's birthday party on saturday you got to be there you know oh yeah i'm playing uh we got all this so it's like there's the the life outside of work is very hectic right now of suddenly having to manage two of the people and we took them to breakfast today and then i walked them you know my dad's always the what can i fix her on the house and i usually say nothing nothing this time i gave him a list so today i walked around like this is broken this is broken i don't know how to fix this so he's taking but it's like that then here then we did an awesome happy hour but that was an hour and a half then it was right in the meetings that was right in the games castle you've been Have you eaten lunch?

2:49I did, yeah. I ate over the sink out there for a little bit. Oh, my gosh. Over the sink. I'm ready to go. I don't want to sit back down. You know what I mean? If I'm up, I've got to stress these games. I've missed, I guess, only two days of work, right? But that's still two days of news. Did you guys talk about the PlayStation Magic cards that got announced? We did. Yeah, they were put into the thing. I mean, of course, you weren't here and Mike wasn't here. So it was Tim and Andy going through. They look cool. But, yeah, we talked about them. Are you stoked about those? Oh, I'm so stoked. I'm just stoked about Magic in general.

3:16it's been nice to it's just been nice to you know in 2025 i guess it was late 2024 like at first where we first learned how to play magic right and why was that because ghostbusters that's right yeah yeah yeah you got the ghostbusters secret layer uh coming into 2025 i've never had a i guess a new hobby dominate a year so much for you to where it's just like man this is all i've been all about it yeah yeah i've been all about it i've been to two magic cons in one year which if you would ask me back in december i would like no i'm not going to a fucking magic on yeah i'm not a nerd yeah now i've been to two of them um and they've been fucking awesome i obviously magic gets a lot of loose talk in the office and i've been so happy to see you take to it because yeah it was i remember last year at thanksgiving is when like you came over and we played like when we were you know cooking or whatever and we were both getting into it but i've been sidetracked by having a kid and yada yada yada my question for you in this year of magic and what's happened for you is have you formed slash found new friendships or did you just find new dialogue trees in the friendships you already had because i see you hosting the things here and then you're always in the weekend even at magic con there was like you did one like there was a story from 12 30 in the morning of you playing like it's it's it's both yeah so my friends had already been playing magic okay um my friend meg had just started dating a dude who was like super obsessed and so like for a year she'd already been into it our friend cassie had already been playing it right And so like magic was around me.

4:44And then once I learned it, I think it did allow our bond to like deepen. Now we have this extra persona, right? We had this thing where it is. All right. I get to be obsessed with this, about this thing with you guys. And now we're planning trips around it. Now we're planning hangouts around it. Now we're trying to affect other people with it. And then, yeah, additionally, yeah. Like I hosted a magic, the gathering draft here that, uh, Jake Decker, uh, of game spot. He had like a, an unopened Lord of the Rings brand, like magic set from years ago that he had never used and was just looking for people to play with and so invite him over invite some other people over and it's like cool we're hanging out getting to know each other when i'm posting from magic on the other night that was me playing with people from games media who i had either like met in passing or hadn't really hung out with before now it's like oh damn okay i'm hanging out with tom from game spot i'm hanging out with joseph from um morpg.com i believe um hang out with kate from uh but why though you know like i am meeting these people and actually spending extended time because we're all like yo let's play this thing together awesome and so yeah it's been super cool for that if you're somebody who's a big fan of magic i highly recommend making it out to magic on it was a super cool thing it's just such a a deep and extensive hobby where i like there's always more magic to enjoy there's always new things being announced i signed up for and i'm sure i'll talk about this more with mike on a stream um but i'll um i signed up for a ticketed event which are basically like you pay money to play a magic set with people um and the one i signed up for was it's it's a secret layer thing so secret layers like they're cool exclusive sets that they release um and it's a like magic mini game called don don which is basically like exploding kittens if you've ever played exploding kittens where you and your opponent share a deck um and there's only one creature in that deck or like one type of creature it's like these don don fish that do like four damage or whatever and as you're sharing the deck you're essentially like getting cards that can make it so that okay no, we're going to shuffle this back type of thing.

6:39Okay, I'm going to look at the top three cards and then draw them or rearrange them and stuff. And so it's very much more of a casual outmaneuver your opponent sort of thing. And doing stuff like that and finding new ways to, I guess, enjoy this thing that I'm already into. It was such a blast.

6:54Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I'll talk about it later. For now, let's talk about video game news because remember, this is kind of Funny Games Daily. Each and every week, they will run you through the nerdy news you need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch, and our podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with The Kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. To get all of our shows ad-free, watch us record them live, and get a daily exclusive show. For a chance to be a part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube superchats as we go. Housekeeping for you, we're an 11-person business, all about live talk shows.

7:30Blessing Adeoye Jr.:KFGD is the final thing we're recording today. Before this, you had Mike and Roger streaming live from Call of Duty Next. You had our September happy hour that went live for Patreon subscribers. And you had a games cast, which is our Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 review. If you're a Kind of Funny member, today's Gregway is 15 minutes or more about when can Ben play teen-rated video games. Look at our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney the Psalm Twining. Today, we're brought to you by Kind of Funny Games Daily, episode 2000, and our new merch. but we'll tell you about that later for now let's begin with what is and forever will be the rover report it's time for some news we have six stories today ah bakers does starting with our number one halo studios teases a deep dive on what it's been working on at an October panel you won't want to miss.

8:29Blessing Adeoye Jr.:This is Wesley Yen Poole at IGN. Halo Studios looks set to unveil more of what it's been working on in October. In a post on Halo Waypoint, the Microsoft-owned developer said it has a panel planned for Friday, October 24th, at the Halo World Championship 2025, its big esports event. Quote, Back in June, we let the community know that we'd be continuing the conversation from last year's Halo WC and the A New Dawn video and sharing more about what we've been working on, end quote, Halo Studios said. Right now, Kevin is playing, if you're a video watcher, the new Dawn video from last year's event.

9:06Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Quote, like last year, we'll be on the main stage to talk about it, but this year, we've also got a deep dive panel planned for the community stage that you won't want to miss, end quote. During the same event last October, Halo developer 343 Industries announced it had changed its name to Halo Studios and confirmed multiple projects were in the works. In the same breath, Halo Studios said all its future games would be developed on Unreal Engine, leaving behind the Slipspace Engine utilized by Halo Infinite. The announcements were unveiled in a seven-minute video shown ahead of the Halo World Championships Grand Finals.

9:40Blessing Adeoye Jr.:This showcased the results of Project Foundry, an experimental project designed to show a Halo game built using the unreal engine and offered a glimpse at a fresh beginning for xbox's flagship franchise in the wake of 2021's halo infinite greg hi me and you of course are the number one halo fans yeah yeah yeah mike on the road you know that's bad tim had to go home it's you and me here to talk halo so super chatting with what you think this was going to be again not a halo fan by stretch of the imagination but student of the game with everything that halo has been through to this point to now have 343 rebranded as halo studios right this has got to be am i am i crazy chat that it's a reboot we're starting from scratch right you i oh like you start over the story yeah i am i wrong i feel like i mean i feel like we need a big page turn for halo And again, not being in the, the fandom, I don't know if that would piss more people off or do whatever, but I feel like halo used to be the crown jewel of Xbox.

10:53And it has not been that for a long time. And I honestly, I know this might piss off forza fans and it might piss off, you know, Oh, what about Activision call of duty? Like, I think since that's fallen, there really hasn't been one. like what is the xbox franchise that like you would pull the xbox community and they'd all be like oh 98 of us are all like it may be horizon maybe that's what i'm saying i mentioned that at the top right i don't think it's gears anymore i don't think it's halo i don't but i also don't think anybody stepped up to grab that baton and i think that's what xbox would love to have happen and love to see happen and i don't think that happens with halo infinite 2 i don't know if that happens with just another halo numbered game another halo with a subtitle i feel like you got to go cool it's been literal generations not of consoles of human beings it's been generations since this halo story and master chief and everything started let's go again like let's do a brand new thing and i guess like it could be i i mean if i was there my i am not knowing anything about you know i would be like we got to just let's blow it all up nothing sacred let's start again see i i think i feel similarly but less so about the campaign and more so about the multiplayer which is funny because i feel like halo infinite was kind of already that halo infinite felt like it was a new step it felt like it was a freshening up hey let's kind of start from scratch even though it is a continuation of what's going on here halo infinite felt like a new beginning right after what all what already kind of felt like a tumultuous time for halo and And so for them to, I think, have, if people to find, I think, light there for maybe about a few months.

12:34Right. Like I'm somebody who I came into Halo Infinite and fucking adored it. But then like so many other people, the updates weren't there. The content wasn't there. I fell off after like a month or so of playing. Right. But I really, really dug that month. My main thing is how do you bring back that fire? How do you bring back that flare and allow it to last over time? allow it to be something that you're able to update and keep up with which i hope and assume maybe you're gonna be able to do that a bit easier with unreal engine i'm hoping that the rebrand and all this stuff is trying to refocus and and do all that but it's tough because i felt like halo infinite was already that let me bring in two super chats all right mikey mogg says i think one of them i assume do we talk about multiple announcements one of them has to be halo ce remake and what's that uh combat sorry sorry sorry i want to say collector's edition combat I knew that I knew that remake and then I don't know what else they could be making but I'm very excited kabob says halo og trilogy remake for xbox series x and playstation 5 I mean does that get I mean and I think the first if you as somebody who didn't care about these games ever and I guess I no matter what they would would do I wouldn't care probably like I'm just not that guy I think the big thing for halo is that video games have changed so much in the last 20 years right since halo one you're talking about even 24 25 years it's been a very long time of multiplayer evolving online evolving live service evolving and i think with that you need to evolve with the times you look around at first person shooters you look around at multiplayer games and what are they all doing they're doing free to play they're doing extraction and i'm not and i'm not even in battle passes i'm not even saying that those are the those are the routes because i don't think those are necessarily the routes i think you can find things in there though that makes you that allows you to kind of fit and create a suite of halo i think halo kind of needs for a first person shooter multiplayer focused thing and something that microsoft and xbox wants to treat as their big ip because it is the most i guess mascotty halo or mascotty xbox ip i think the way to do that would be to have a suite i think that does include a halo combat evolved remake i think that includes a halo battle royale game and i think that includes a halo like the traditional halo multiplayer and stuff right and that's gonna i think you're gonna need elements of free to play there they had that for halo infinite right but i think you need to be able to meet people where they're at call of duty like even call of duty which is the most profitable first person shooter that has the paid all right you're getting the full uh single player plus multiplayer stuff but then you also have a free version with the battle royale right like you then you have call And I think they got to figure out how to do that with Halo.

15:18I agree with you. I don't think you're wrong from a business standpoint at all. You make a lot of sense there. And I think the idea of to you and Kebabs remaking, well, Halo OG trilogy, I guess it was Mikey Mog, doing a Halo CE remake, having that be there and then have it offset with a free to play battle royale, have it offset with a multiplayer thing. okay it's just that i don't know again as an outsider it almost smacks of the same argument i always make to tim of like how many times are you going to fall for nintendo telling you third party games are going to run great on their system you know i mean it just doesn't happen and we go through this every time you launch system same thing with halo now like as somebody again not connected to it so i'm impossible to win the reaction to infinite being so tempted uh the the seemingly years of problems uh master chief collection had where it was just issue after you know i mean like it just feels like we've lived this cycle already oh yeah to be like we're remaking like who fucking cares anymore like i don't you know what i mean you tried doing something new you've published the old games again before and i just nobody it ain't moving the needle in the way you move the needle i feel like you know i in the ways that i'm talking about you need to of all the times and all this stuff right i think a lot of the ways that we talk about halo remind me a little bit of skate and that's where we are now skate or like when we were like begging for a new skate i guess like when we're begging for a new skate right and like trying to figure and i think even more so having the conversations of man it's been over a decade since the last skate like what are we going to do with skate like is skate's coming back but does this even look good like all this shit right i we look at the skate that's out now and we're having so much fun with it and obviously there's things they got to do there's things they got to polish up it's not a 10 out of 10 game by any means but i think early access is working well for it as far as give allowing it to exist in a space where people are going to give that feedback and it's going to build uh towards something that hopefully by that 1.0 is quality is what we're looking for is all that but what we have with skate early access right now at its very core i think they got one thing right and that's that skating is fun yeah i think they got to do that with halo i think right now you have to rebuild and i think start at the community level you got to give people whatever this unreal engine version of halo looks like i think sooner than later you got to put that into people's hands and really have it be a thing that we're building alongside the community i think you have to be you have to find like and i think halo infinite already had this which sucks right like exactly you have to have a game feel that feels great to play and then give it put it in the hands of the community and go all right how do we build this further what do y 'all want out of this like what are the tweaks and all the things that we need to do to make halo the halo that you want because i because like i think putting out a polished finished first person shooter in 2025 in the in a ecosystem where we're dealing with so with games that have already taken up all the air right everybody's already playing everybody's already deciding on what they're playing i think you then have to look at the audience and go all right we're gonna build this with you you guys are gonna help gonna help us decide this and i hear you and you're not wrong it just feels like groundhog day like i feel like this was the message of halo infinite like i feel like even 343 changing their name to halo studios is almost like let's just we we have never nailed it as 343 and i say this is an outsider who just sees the reaction from the halo community so let's start fresh and call ourselves halo studio it's like okay are we really turning over a new leaf are we really going to get something here that is going to satisfy and get halo back to that point is that even possible like again as as xbox if i'm there if i become filler whatever and i'm in these meetings and i i see so many at bats and again this is just me as an outsider seeing it not playing it not being in it seeing so many attempts to make halo relevant again and seeing them all flounder to some degree at some point you got to go okay well why are we still trying and make this happen right now we own call of duty what are we doing like what are we doing like we have the first person shooter but i think to that extent right like i know it's a it's a crazy comparison to a large degree but it's almost like you know if nintendo failed multiple times with mario mario is still nintendo like you still gotta figure out how to get that right right if playstation and you know it's funny because playstation has moved away from uncharted and I would kind of say the same thing, right?

19:41But you look at the, I guess, Naughty Dog identity in general. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if the next Naughty Dog game comes out and it's not great, you wouldn't then move away from the Naughty Dog, that style of storytelling and game design. I think you keep going to bat until you get a hit because that is what your identity is.

19:59Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I want to bring in some super chats here that we got. I mean, this is coming off of Kabob saying, Halo OG Trilogy remake for PS5 and plus Xbox Series X. I saw somebody else bringing in, here we go, Peaceful Warhead says they could pull a Konami and ship out a master collection of remasters slash ports on PS5, then have a brand new game come out shortly after. I think my thing is Halo Master Chief Collection exists and was also updated over time. And I'm pretty sure is at a place, chat, correct me if I'm wrong. Pretty sure is at a place that's pretty good. And so if you're going to do a remaster or like remake collection, I feel like you would just port that.

20:37and then i think the reason why i think about halo combat evolved remake is that i envision that envision that is almost like a reimagining sort of thing like we're going to halo combat evolved and we're giving this the full-fledged like we're same story same whatever right but we're turning this into a current gen new modern yeah that's the thing i forget what kind of funny day it was where we hit the milestone where i would play through halo and i did and it was like so not fun from modern gameplay mechanics and stuff. Like, if you're... Is it a remake or a remaster or whatever? This needs to be a remake.

21:09Yes. You keep... It needs to be a capital R remake. Go in there and we are fixing the path, critical path, and we are making it like this and does it at all these different things.

21:17Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah. Some unrelated Super Chats. We got a couple from Demetrios, who writes in and says, birthday tax for October 1st from down under. The best month of the year has come. Excuse me. Also getting married this Saturday. thanks for all kf does happy birthday oh i see they wrote that in twice or maybe it just came in twice i don't know what's going on we got two we got the money from that's all matters oh yeah um well can i give you one from here two familiar says halo maker lol give me forge mode but on steroids i know i heard a lot about forge i remember that having a thing or whatever halo trying to figure out what halo needs to be right now what your big announcement here would be and again i think you're there's two sides of the same coin but the multiplayer versus the campaign and how you do it halo maker could be a really cool spin on all this of like yeah hey we're giving you a multiplayer suite to go make stuff and it's standalone and it's free to play and it's just the other way to get in i agree i want to bring in one that just came in from mikey mogg who says you guys are both right i loved halo infinite when it came out but it fell off the multiplayer because my friends got bored but love to play it every so often i also here's my thing i still think it might still be worth bringing halo infinite to playstation 5 i know because they're talking about the new...

22:29They're going to bring Starfield. Yeah. I know we're looking forward. I know we're talking about the future, but I stand by Halo Infinite is a fantastic game, at least for the gameplay. That multiplayer is really, really fun. I think if you ported that to PlayStation 5, at the very least, you would find a community there that really, really fucks with it, even though it didn't have the stuff to keep people around. You got one super chat from earlier. I'm sorry. I know I waited in here and cherry picked some. Jersten says, since this is going to be the last halo esports event peeps expecting a new game maybe a few years down the line a lot of the halo pros are wanting to convert to other esports once this season ends oh yeah i could see that interesting and a few things i think a few things are important for this conversation one during the xbox showcase they talked about all the games that are coming out in 2026 and they said halo didn't they i know they said forza they said and phil said something in one of the classics that's been with us forever or something like that.

23:28Oh, yes. I think he said it in that kind of way. And so I would expect something that I think that's I would expect Halo Combat Evolved like remake based off of that. I don't think we're in the go for it. Go for it. You're crushing it. Windows Central. This is Brendan Lowry published June 8th, 2025. Quote, celebrate 25 years of Xbox with dot dot dot a classic that's been with us since the beginning. End quote. Did Phil Spencer just tease a new Halo game for 2026? Microsoft's big Xbox game showcase this weekend's largest game presentation show follow summer game fest yada yada the conference was capped off by this then before it began Microsoft CEO Phil Spencer came on the stream to close out the show and he might have teased the return of a flagship franchise Halo quote I'm excited to share that players will get to celebrate 25 years of Xbox with a new fable the next Forza Gears of War E-Day and the return of a classic that's been with us since the beginning he said he went on to introduce Call of Duty Black Ops 7 but I couldn't care less i was still focused on the last few words uh when thinking of a classic that's been with us since the beginning halo is the only series that comes to mind indeed 2001's halo combat evolved famously launched right alongside the original xbox console and bungie's hit was microsoft's biggest system seller for several years zov gm and chat is obviously crimson skies but also i'm pretty sure they i think phil spencer really likes crimson skies and so that'd be hilarious so that was really the implication yeah um but like late last year though it uh halo studios confirmed that halo is moving to unreal engine and developers were ramping up hiring for several in progress things i would be shocked but very impressed if it ended up next year for xbox ended up being fable gears forza horizon in tokyo and a brand new like round up halo game i i i think you're going to get those four to some degree but i i think that halo thing is probably either a remake or some kind of like contained thing because i because i also look at and this is the second part i wanted to bring in right i look at the quote unquote next generation of xbox they're working on whatever the new hardware shift is we talked about the pc ecosystem all this shit yeah i would think that you want to have an a halo thing at the beginning of that that is your big next step for halo gotcha and so i think that is that's the way i'm framing the strategy in my head of next year but even then and i'm with you on that if i was in these rooms i would say cool take your foot off the gas about talking about halo at all then yeah let people want halo i i feel like people want halo and they keep getting served twists on halo and they're like this isn't what i want and now i don't know if there's i think the appetite for halo could really be raging if people were allowed to want it.

26:11I think the thing though is that I think the easiest win though is just remake a thing that you know people love. Just remake Halo Combat Evolved and I say that even though Master Chief Collection launched rough and that's basically what I'm saying. Dean Brown super chat and says half the battle is launching a feature complete title. Infinite launched without a Slayer playlist that is criminal. Another Halo CE remake is meh. We'll see.

26:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:We'll see. I want to bring in some more super chats for y 'all uh jay ballin says love watching you guys thank you for the laughs thank you jay ballin um ty wilkins vo says we knew it's a big announcement for me i voiced the new monstrous grizzly oni skin uh in dead by daylight that came out today oh yeah i'm ty wilkins always doing cool stuff out there yeah all the roars growls and grunts thank you kind of funny for being an inspiration to chase dreams get him um buttery paul says what if we are rescuing chief not playing as him i think i mean that could be an option right like a spinoff we've had those before but halo odst you're not playing as master chief i'm speaking out as somebody who's not played every single halo um but like yeah maybe you get a non-master chief halo game next year that could make sense um and then graham man writes in and says we news but big announcement for me, I'm trans.

27:30Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Congratulations. Good job on owning that.

27:35Blessing Adeoye Jr.:And then Peaceful. We'll do one more from Peaceful Warhead who says, could the new Halo be this year's Game Awards one more thing? I mean, if they don't got Half-Life 3 there, then sure, why not? Yeah. If you're Jeff Keighley, you got a Halo in one hand and Half-Life 3 in the other. What's your closer? Half-Life 3. Again, people have been waiting for that and wanting that. what if it's um combo halo versus half-life whoa halo life halo life what okay what if um playstation comes to you with another wolverine like a wolverine gameplay trailer another one not half-life but versus halo no i'd go halo there i mean if it's you get to announce the halo the next hey thing yeah you got it but and then in that same but this is in that same conversation nintendo busts down the door they kick down the door and they're like legend of zelda ocarina time remake jeff now what do you close with well again like well our so like halo studios is set to unveil what they're working on october so the game awards no longer is the first taste of it that would be true yeah you're right you're right in the fucking remake can you imagine it'll happen it better let's move on to story number two new lord of the rings game is in development this is mike straw at insider gaming a brand new the lord of the rings game is in development and has been for some time sources close to the game tell insider gaming that a new title is set to be at least partially funded by the abu dhabi investment office um aka adio adio that's the first half of my last name uh this funding should roughly equate to 100 million dollars give or take the deal has been in the works since last year and while not signed yet due to the number of moving parts is said to be made official soon and could happen as early as next week regarding current funding of the game's development and has been funded internally here comes the golem trailer as far as what the game will be sources didn't want to say too much what was said however is that it'll be a third person action game that is designed in a way to compete with hogwarts legacy in addition to the addio uh it was said that multiple parties are involved with the game including embracer revenge and other studios embracer has has had the rights to lord of the rings ip for video games since 2022 when it paid nearly 400 million dollars it has since licensed out those rights to other companies reduced titles including the much maligned lord of the rings golem greg yeah do you believe that we could get a lord of the rings game to go up against the hogwarts legacy yes like i definitely think you could and i definitely think that that's what the mood board the conference room when they wrote this out idea is i don't know if they're up i don't know if embracer is up to the task of making that actually happen uh i don't have much faith in embracer as a publisher and giving the teams what they need and desire for that uh but i do think that you the pitch of that's pretty simple right of like in the same way hogwarts legacy was live your harry potter dream of going to school learning spells blah blah blah the same thing here right of make a class choose a character run free in the the shire i don't know much about lord of the rings either you know we're out of our out of our depth this episode get out i mean call lucy james i mean yes i think all of that is a possibility but golem was a reality yeah and it's not to say obviously i mean you go back to shadow of war there are great lord of the rings games there are terrible lord of the rings games it's it's not you know one of the other but again embracer and then wanting to exploit this and then abu dhabi investment off it's like what are we doing here is there actually a great idea behind this one or is it let's make money off the ip we have and we don't you know we don't care what we're doing on the way there i know we're bringing in you know we're i'm bringing in numbers here right and numbers in this case can get weird and amorphous yeah um but the lord of the rings golem according to game luster.com uh costs 15.9 million dollars to make right so when we're talking about this game being funded for maybe a hundred million dollars give or take like it's a lot of money it's a lot of money a lot of money that's all that's really all i take is that that's a lot of money and if the obviously in these meetings sure you might say hogwarts like the words hogwarts legacy might come out of your mouth when you're talking about a third person action rpg in a fantasy world that's based off an IP right like you are going to compare it to a Hogwarts legacy because that was one of the more successful games in the last three or four years um when you're talking about I guess when you when I'm looking at the makeup of this story between the Adio funding this thing for that much money and you know embrace a revenge in other space and all this stuff I'm like I guess I could see I guess I could see it I just got to see it before I believe it that's the biggest thing yeah I think we with I mean how cynical you want to be I would say with any IP game we've seen so many examples of just fucking it up and not it doesn't matter right it doesn't matter how much you put into it but you can also say with any game you can see that going the same way so games are so nebulous that this isn't enough to go on it's a ray of hope if you're a Lord of the Rings fan but it's also I think in my opinion it's also a slam dunk of an idea i the fact that we haven't gotten more just straight up lord of the rings rpgs yeah people love fantasy people i mean people love lord of the rings as an ip yeah like i mean if you're if you're gonna compare anything to harry potter as far as fantasy that resonates with people lord of the rings is what you say lord of the rings is the other one um i mean to am i missing it it's not saying rpg right no it's said to be a third person action game right yeah at which point i'm always like yeah why again not being the biggest fan but like why aren't you telling aragon's tale or whatever you know prequels and side stories and you know whatever fucking bilbo was up to over there i don't there's a million things you could go do with any of these people any of these ip anything the gigantic timeline you have pick another shadow mortar i like that game a lot rest in peace another great video game developer took before their time didn't get to put out their wonder woman game nemesis system copyright is sitting on a shelf somewhere greg i want to talk to you about another well-known fantasy ip but before we do i want to talk to the audience about patreon.com slash kind of funny and youtube.com slash kind of funny games where you can go and get the kind of funny membership which allows you to get shows ad free speaking of ads let us tell you about our sponsors kind of funny games daily 2000 is happening on october 6th i can't believe it we are 2000 episodes into this daily weekday show thank you so much for your support over the years watching us live on YouTube, Twitch, podcast services around the globe.

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35:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:kindoffunny.com slash store and we're back with story number three fantasy adventure game neverland a peter pan adventure to be first title produced by second star games what this is this is a very interesting one so this is from uh leo baraklo at variety writing this okay okay okay i'm glad i didn't look ahead on this one all the words you just said like what yeah fantasy adventure game neverland a Peter Pan adventure will be the first title to be produced by second star games, a new UK based game development studio and publishing studio. The Manchester England based studios headed by Tom stone, former managing director of TT games, whose credits include Lego star Wars, Lego Batman and Lego Harry Potter.

36:11Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Stone's team includes many key members of the former Lego games development team. Great Osmond street hospital, which has a perpetual right to remuneration for adaptation of Peter Pan. Lock in because it gets really interesting. And Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, which has developed the game's new world of Neverland, have granted Second Star Games a long-term, worldwide exclusive license to create a suite of video games around the IP. Gosh Charity will receive royalties from all sales of the game to raise funds for the seriously ill children who are treated at Great Ormond Street. J.M. Barrie donated the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street in 1929 after he was asked to sit in on a committee by the hospital but thought of a better way to make a difference.

37:02Blessing Adeoye Jr.:How fucking awesome is that? Yeah. Two months later... I don't want to do that, but I'll just give you the rights. I've made enough money. Here's the IP. Two months later, the hospital learned that he had donated the rights to his much-loved play and novel Peter Pan or the boy who wouldn't grow up to them. gosh charity senior brand licensing manager jenny martin said quote we're delighted to be working with expert partners uh expert partners second star games to bring the magical world of neverland to life for a generation of young gamers neverland a place of adventure and imagination provides an amazing backdrop to what we know will be a first class game what's more every game sold will help raise funds to support seriously ill children at great ormond street hospital we can't wait for the next chapter in our Neverland journey.

37:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:End quote. That's really cool. There's a lot going on here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is a lot, lot, lot going on here, which is exciting and questionable. Not questionable in a bad way. Like, take it with a grain of salt. We'll watch the rights and the hospital stuff. That's all really cool. but it's a lot to wade through all of a sudden on a random ass Tuesday afternoon. And I love just looking at your laptop and see that you're on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. I went right to the Tom Stone's page. I'm like, how long is the, I want to make sure. Cause obviously if you're not a Peter Pan aficionado and I am not, but I am, I do know second star is a reference to Peter Pan.

38:27So it's like, okay, this is a studio founded to make Peter Pan games. How long has they been around? Tom Stone on LinkedIn nine hours ago. Pleased to share some news today. We're officially launching our new studio, second star games alongside announcing our exclusive worldwide, partnership blah blah blah studios made up of basically repurposing what you just read there right and so yeah what angle do you want to take bless where do you want to start with this one

38:47Blessing Adeoye Jr.:so i have an article from gamesindustry.biz they had uh an interview with folks from uh second star studio i want to bring in the part where they of them leaving tt games sure because that was one of the that was one of the first questions that popped up in my head uh from reading the story it's like so people the people who made lego are making a peter pan game uh the excerpt from the article I'm pulling reads like this. The venture is staffed by some of Stone's former colleagues from TT Games, including lead game designer Andrew Holt, art director Nicola Daly, and head of engineering Chris Stanforth.

39:21Blessing Adeoye Jr.:The last piece of the puzzle was funding. Stone is putting some of his own money into the venture, but the majority of the investment has come from Graham Chilton, who helped fund 2005's Lego Star Wars the video game. The company is still weighing up whether to partner with a publisher or go at it alone. While Second Star Games definitely has an element of bringing the band back together stone wants to do things slightly differently this time quote i think we're going to take a breath and look up occasionally when we were making the lego games it was intense it was blood sweat and tears i loved every single moment of it but upon reflection we could have made fewer games slightly better and sold probably the same number of units we sold i'm going to put a pin there and see if i can find another part of the article oh no i can't find it there was another part of the article where he was essentially talking about the work environment of tt games talking about crunch talking about it was how it wasn't the best like place to work as far as like crunch and all that stuff sure sure sure um which seemingly has led to him and other people pulling away and doing their own thing yeah just how we end up here yeah what does that do for you so aside from a a new video game developer that's awesome aside from hey and ip we don't see that much from that's awesome aside from of course the profits of this are going to a children's hospital.

40:33That's awesome. Yeah. I recede back to the let's wait and see on this approach because how many times have we seen this story? We have left the big developer we were at, medium-sized developer, whatever you want to call him, and we are coming out and we are starting a new studio and we are going to make our own games, right? We always go to right here in the Bay Area before they got bought by the Laszlo, Dan Houser thing. Not Ascension, Ascendant Studios. and they made for Immortals of Avium where it was like, oh, this was a flat game. There were some good things too, but it wasn't amazing, right?

41:10Striking distance with the dead space. That wasn't dead space. Thank you. Yeah. And apt to this comparison right now, another upstart studio from the ashes of TT Games, 1010 Studios who made Funko Fusion. And that was Arthur Parsons, personal friend of mine, who was the, if you ever saw me interview anybody about the lego games it was always arthur at ig and comic cons right and all this stuff and he was it went off and made the 10 10 games and made funko fusion and funko fusion is not a well-reviewed game it is a 54 right now on metacritic right it is and i don't do that to make fun of them i do this to point out it is so fucking hard to make a video game period end of statement when you look at game developers who are incredibly successful in their in the studio structure it is rarely their first game i think you can even i would even point to games that are great out of the bat and look at super giant and how good bastion was but look at how good hades 2 is yeah and that comes from working together having a workflow understand you make those mistakes on games one one and two so game three is even better you learn all these different things we see so many people leave these different studios leave the publishing arms they knew and we're talking about this one not having a publishing angle just yet right not having money really coming in in a certain in a meaningful way if that's not too mean you get there and it's like they are going to be in bootstrap mode they're going to be doing something but they're they are going to I would bet dollars of donuts they're going to be trying to make a game as if they were still at TT with the resources of Warner Brothers and it's easy to say oh we know we don't have the resources of Warner Brothers but do you know what that actually means when's the last time you had to want for that this is not to be clear I'm not talking shit I'm not wishing them ill I'm not saying maybe I'm completely wrong like no we got this but I think they're still in such a nebulous place that this is a I think two fold of we're shooting off the flare gun of come work with us if you want to make a Peter Pan game and also come talk to us if you want to fund a Peter Pan game which to me goes cool Neverland colon a Peter Pan adventure is nothing right now and so what is that actually going to shape up to be that is you know i'm sure they are somewhere on a whiteboard hogwarts legacy but for peter pan and it's like you won't get to that you're not going to get to that especially with game one so what are we really talking about here what are we actually making yeah i mean i do wonder if it is the if on that board they have that written down hogwarts legacy or if they have written down lego gameplay but peter pan because i i immediately

43:46Blessing Adeoye Jr.:envisioned this as a kids game yeah i immediately envision this as we are in i think here they mentioned somewhere uh the peter the charity folks talking about uh you know making something great or making something special for uh children right like or young gamers right um the magical word of neverland to life for a generation of young of young gamers so i i think that is them looking at their lego expertise and going okay we can make a great 3d platformer or like a great like you know great action 3d like you run around yeah exactly you have your hub of i don't know peter pan that was the lost boys i know all that but i mean whatever they called their treehouse hangout right you have that the lost woods that's not right and you go out and you're fighting captain hook on a ship and you're going off and doing this like you go off these levels you come back to your hub world you build it out you eat the invisible food yeah we're talking hook now was awesome yes i think that's the kind of scope that you're working with and to your entire point right like you got you're gonna have that and then probably have that scaled back yeah based on budget based on not having the resources of uh of harry potter and star wars and warner brothers and all this stuff right like you're gonna be looking at all right it's us and we're making a peter pan thing and peter pan i don't know where we're at with peter pan as an ip how much money are people spending to like buy like show up and buy the peter pan thing yeah i I have no idea, but I would venture to say like, that's not a, that's not in the top, you know, 10 top hundred IP that we're talking about as far as like, maybe about that.

45:18I think, although if we were to go to Google trends and put in Peter Pan, I don't think it's like fucking going higher than La Boo Boo, but I do think that there is a baked in. Oh, I like Peter Pan. Like, I remember reading Peter Pan books as a kid and I, not like golden books. Like I remember checking out a book from library, like the actual movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like yes so i think there's a hey we all like peter pan enough that if you put out a game that was a seven five and eight and it was you know priced appropriately and it's going proceeds are going to a hospital i can see people being behind playing that and trying it peter pan if you had told me that peter pan was in the pinocchio realm of being like a not a free agent being like in the domain yeah royalty free i would have believed i would have believed you i'd be like oh yeah the people who made Liza P are probably making a Peter P.

46:07Dude, when this came up, that's immediately what I jumped to, too. I was like, oh, I thought they were in, like, Dorothy next or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.