VR Gaming Officially DEAD?! - Kinda Funny Games Daily 01.13.26

27:57Andy Cortez:know again to bring it back to the headlines of this week and last week as we talk about ram prices i think you're going to see a chilling effect on building the next great pc and i think it's going to be people who are sticking with their hardware longer and so i think it suddenly becomes that if i look at this and i'm you know i have of course the razor blade that's fucking awesome and top of the line right now right but i have a couple towers sitting around the house like you know old lenovo and then just one i think i bought up no i bought off anthony galleos i don't know if it's still that one it doesn't matter but it's that idea of like for those less powerful machines if i see this badge i'm gonna be like and this is what i assume are comparable to a steam machine i'm gonna be like oh okay then that does mean it can run and i think as you see people who are trying to figure out what they can still do with their machine i think that yeah this will speak to them in terms of oh okay cool this is able to run on a less powerful system yeah you think so what you're you know you you pc game a lot too um i think the steam deck is such a one of one thing it's hard for me to think that that will be as exciting like the great on steam machine page right like is that a thing that even needs to exist is that a thing that uh i think well i mean you know i think it does because there's going to be the this runs like dog shit on the yeah um but i it all comes down to the sales of the steam machine right like i i'm as we've had these ram prices uh and as we've had the overarching conversation around video game price video game hardware prices particularly i'm not sold that this is going to be as successful as i thought it was going to be when it was first announced yeah um just based on like they might have to sell this thing for way more than they actually want to sell this thing i think the ideal world would be this comes out for 600 500 600 that's not going to happen yeah and so if there's not a wide adoption uh for this thing and when i say wide adoption i'm just talking about like enough people have it so that there is like kind of an impactful oh we need to make a store page for it we need to do xyz thing for it because people like developers are going to use this as a marketing beat in the way that they're using the verified for steam deck thing as a marketing beat i don't know if we're going to get there interesting yeah okay i see that part i see that part yeah i don't i think it would be you're gonna what you'll get is the combo over steam deck slash machine verified i think that's the marketing beat right of what you put out there yeah combine the two yeah that makes sense yeah Greg let's move on and talk about Hellblade but before we do I want to tell you 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 and speaking of ads let us tell you about our sponsors this episode is brought to you by Rocket Money the amount of times Mike is signed up for something forgotten about it after the trial period ends and then been charged month after month after month is quite frankly terrifying.

30:44Andy Cortez:He didn't even realize he was paying for SoundCloud for 10 years until Rocket Money helped find and cancel his unwanted subscriptions. But he is not alone. So many people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings thanks to rocket money you can see all of your subscriptions in one place and cancel them within the app with just a few taps saving time and avoiding charges cancel your unwanted subscriptions and let rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster join at rocketmoney.com slash kind of funny that's rocketmoney.com slash kind of funny rocketmoney.com slash kind of funny this episode is brought to you by factor it's a new year which means new goals and even more things to take up our time that's why so many of us here at kind of funny love factor factor makes it easy with fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs so you can eat well without the shopping or cooking on many occasions factor has completely saved me and jen when we needed it most choose from a wider selection of weekly meal options, including premium seafood choices like salmon and shrimp at no extra cost.

32:06Andy Cortez:Enjoy even more GLP-1 friendly meals and new Mediterranean diet options packed with protein and good for you fats. Feel the difference no matter your routine. Head to Factormeals.com slash KindaFunny50OFF and use the code KindaFunny50OFF to get 50 % off your first Factor box plus free breakfast for a year. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. Hey you, join us in person for our live in review of Howard the Duck. That's right! Howard the Duck joins MCU in review Wednesday, January 28th at 7.30pm at Cobb's Comedy Club for SF Sketch Fest.

32:49Andy Cortez:You can come watch me do all the podcasts within a podcast you love. Andy will be going do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Nick will be shopping for pants during it, but everybody else will be there too for you to come hang out and see. All you have to do is go over to kindoffunny.com slash sketchfest right now to get your tickets before they sell out. Because come and watch a bunch of people talk about a very old Howard the Duck movie is really selling tickets fast.

33:16Blessing Adeoye Jr.:And we're back with story number three, New Hellblade that's more of a game reportedly in the works. Ninja Theory is no longer working on Project Morrow. This is from Tom Phillips at IGN. Xbox Studio Ninja Theory is working on a third major Hellblade game a new report has suggested, this time with more interactive elements. Two Hellblade titles have released to date, featuring Celtic warrior Senua in battles against monsters and her own mental health. Both have been widely praised for their visuals and story, though have also caught flack for prioritizing cinematography over gameplay. A new third Hellblade title in development at Ninja Theory will respond to that criticism by focusing on being more of a game, according to Windows Central editor Jess Corden, speaking on the Xbox Two podcast.

34:00Blessing Adeoye Jr.:At the same time, Corden said that Ninja Theory was no longer working on Project Mara, an experimental title announced by Microsoft back in 2020. Quote, from what I understand, the next game from Ninja Theory is Hellblade 3, Corden said, and it's going to be a bit more interactive than Hellblade 1 and 2. I don't know what the exact nature of Hellblade 3 is going to be like, if it's even going to be Hellblade 3, but it does sound like it's going to be in the Hellblade universe, and does sound like they want to make it more of a game, you know, and broaden the appeal to some degree, end quote. Project Mara was announced as one of the several titles being worked on at Ninja Theory back in 2020, alongside Hellblade 2, Bleeding Edge, and a separate R &D project described as an ambitious combination of technology, game design, and clinical neuroscience.

34:44Blessing Adeoye Jr.:the years since have revealed that the studio has been working on microsoft's generative ai model muse as part of a project that's that generates clips of simulated gameplay well you guys you guys shouldn't expect project mara to be a thing cordon claimed project mara was just a concept it's not a game and it's not a game that they're currently working on it might be something they work on eventually but project mara is not a game that's currently being worked on at ninja theory end quote

35:10Andy Cortez:I like how they're like oh you shouldn't expect I mean I know it's jazz or whatever but it's like why would we not expect that when you made a trailer and it was the whole thing is like you don't know what's real or not do you remember this thing I was about to show it I remember loosely I remember because I remember it was probably in the same drop where they posted I think an image of their office lobby exactly it was this one where and it's going to go back to those stairs and we were all like all right stairs like those are in game like what what the fuck are you talking about whoa yeah um I man Ninja Theory is in such an interesting place to me because pre-Hellblade 2, Sinuwa Saga, Sinuwa Saga, Hellblade 2, I was in a place where I would have even told you, even post-Bleeding Edge, I was like, yo, Ninja Theory, they got the stuff.

35:55They are one of the most innovative studios in the game. And I still stand by that from the technical aspect. I still do think Ninja Theory has so much good to provide. i get worried that they're not used in the right way because hellblade 2 came through i wasn't the biggest fan of it even though i loved hellblade 1 um the stairs stuff did actually kind of excite me just for like oh yeah i want to see what they're doing with with innovating on technology

36:22Blessing Adeoye Jr.:because hellblade 1 did a lot of that um but hearing that a lot of their work is being um put on the ai model muse i'm kind of like oh okay yeah this studio that's doing big things is now

36:33Andy Cortez:working on AI this is what happens I feel like when you have something hot like the original hellblade that catches people off guard put on the headphones we're doing this thing it's a deep dive into this it's a small team it's a small game oh my god and then you start going all right well what's the next one and the next one and I know ninja theory has been around for a while but in terms of this is the sophomore slump right it's the second one and it's like oh okay it's not that you're a one-hit wonder again they've made more games than this I'm aware but it's the idea like you did something truly special there and you followed it up with oh oh okay this wasn't it didn't take the lessons people wanted you to take from the first one and really apply to the sequel and so then you had to have them then pull the plug on project mara okay and it's like well we weren't we were excited when you were the studios doing random ass weird shit but then you had a sequelitis situation and now you're out of that and so now we're looking at the third one it's like well can i get i'm not gonna get excited for the third hellblade until i know what it is and why how you've changed it and what it's going to give me that the other one's it being more of a game do anything for you yeah i mean that was a downside to hellblade 2 for me like hellblade 1 i wasn't even a big fan of either i watched uh jen play through the entire thing platinum uh and then it was hellblade 2 came around and i jumped in there and reviewed it and i was not vibing i didn't feel like i was it was it's beautiful sure great performances sure but like what are we doing in this game like i want to do things in the game right i'm playing a video game i need to be playing it enjoying the gameplay loop yeah i i'm in such a weird place with it because hellblade one i don't look at these hellblade games and go these aren't a video game enough for me even even hellblade one like hellblade one didn't have the best combat by any means but i think they did something so good with the art of it and conveying senua's psychosis and even like the rot thing right of if you die too many times the rot will consume you and you lose your save file even though that's a lie and That's all part of the theme, the Matic element of the game.

38:27I thought that that was very cool and satisfying. And like, I even like the puzzle design, right? They had a lot of weird line up the room, line up the rooms and do the thing. Right. And for me, that worked for me. That was great gameplay. I just don't know if Hellblade 2 brought the same level of that for me. And it's not that there's not enough game for me. It's just the thing of, I don't know if you have as much more to say, like in this world, necessarily, I would be down for a new game, like a new IP. I would be that's my thing

38:56Andy Cortez:I'd be way more excited if it was cool we have a new IP we're doing a new thing we're doing a Hellblade 3 but it might not be Hellblade 3 but it might be in the universe but it's like no no no Hellblade but we have we have parries this time even though I'm pretty sure they had parries they weren't satisfying they weren't satisfying but yeah I mean

39:12Blessing Adeoye Jr.:I want good things for Ninja Theory I want good things for all these developers yeah story number 4 EA is getting more shit than they deserve split fiction director Joseph Farris defends Hayes Light's publishing partner this is Chris Skolian at Video Games Chronicle. Hazelight Studio founder Joseph Ferris has defended Electronic Arts, saying he believes the publisher has been vilified more than others. EA has published all three of Hazelight's games to date, A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction. And Ferris is adamant that his studio's relationship with the publisher is a strong one. In an interview with The Game Business, Ferris was asked about Hazelight's relationship with EA, given that the studio has a reputation for being rebellious and EA has a reputation as a large corporation.

39:52Blessing Adeoye Jr.:ferris replied that the partnership continues to work very well in his opinion and that he believes ea gets more criticism than it warrants at times quote there are a lot of great people at ea he explained they know how we work they respect it and they leave us be let's be honest there's there's not a publisher in the world that hasn't fucked up now and then sometimes i feel that ea is getting more shit than they deserve i mean come on nintendo microsoft sony everybody's done something that's not good but for some reason EA has become the bad guy or EA has become this bad guy for us it's a super good collaboration I'm very open about if it was bad I would have said that in this interview as well but we have a great relationship I'm not saying that they haven't done any mistakes like every other publisher all the all the people I'm surrounded with at EA are gamers they love games it's not like I'm sitting with corporate people with suits it's not like that and people should not worry because haze light will always do what it wants and the quote another one that leans a little bit non-newsy but i like the conversation yeah yeah i mean

40:57Andy Cortez:spoiler alert he's not wrong like it's not a popular thing to say if anything ea was just the first corporation that dropped the mask ea was the ea was light years in front of everyone you've seen recently pick profits over people like they was always they've always been that They've always been that. And so when it was, I was at IGN and they were consecutively getting voted the most evil company in the world. It was because why? You're not making another crazy taxi. You're doubling down on the sports games that make bajillions of dollars. You're putting in Ultimate Team and doing this stuff that now every game does.

41:34Andy Cortez:You know what I mean? Like the same thing people wanted to drag fucking people out of the goddamn EA building. Peter Moore. And Peter Moore was pretty good, especially with the unraveled bit we always talk about from 2015. But, you know, going in there and grabbing all these CEOs, right? Andrew Wilson drag them into the streets and just tar and feather them. Like that's 2k does the exact same thing with NBA and granted you can be, well, yeah, he started it. Well, sure. But inevitably somebody in the corporate capitalism conscious was going to figure this out of how to monetize every fucking thing out of a video game.

42:01Andy Cortez:And so, yeah, he's not wrong. And it, and I mean, especially where the argument he's making of like, yeah, I I'm in room. I'm in the room with gamers all the time at EA you a hundred percent are. And then you go up that fucking food chain to get to the top. and it's some fucking guy in a blazer and a blue collared sweatshirt, or I'm sorry, blue collared shirt, no tie, khaki pants, talking about all the acquisitions and the things and the synergies and the whatnot. And it's like, and I mean, like, obviously the thing I'm ignoring for the argument I'm making right now is Saudi Arabia. Yes, yeah, of course.

42:33Andy Cortez:Saudi Arabia, right? But I would say, let's take Saudi Arabia out of the conversation. Let's take Saudi Arabia. Well, because I mean, like, let's... Well, here's the thing. I was going to make the same argument as you because I was going to say pre-Saudi Arabia acquisition and Kushner, I would have been all the way with him. Because I make the argument that EA's been on an upward trajectory compared to where they were in the 2010s. And that's my thing. To take away the Saudi Arabia, because we will get to that. I'm not giving them a pass on it. It's the thing of, what are the horrible things EA has done?

43:03Andy Cortez:They fucked up Battlefront with loot boxes. Yeah, I was going to say loot boxes. Monetization in these games, of course. But again, this is where I'm like, everyone does that. Ultimate team. They were just the first people to really get there on that scale and do it like are we gonna look at for are we gonna look at fortnite that just fucking yesterday or whatever i mean activated in-game purchases and immediately in the games that the people are making and there's one like fucking 15 000 it's like here's the thing think about how much we love valve yeah think about how much we talk about not just me and you i'm talking about the gamer world at large look at counter-strike nothing is more egregious than the gambling that goes on at counter-strike absolutely nothing like watch youtube video i says y 'all that shit is fucking crazy we should be dunking on valve and hating on valve like maybe multiple times more than we do on ea but like i do think that comes back to kind of what you're talking about right of like ea was kind of they kind of paved the way for like this level of the biggest publisher in the united states right that was like their whole thing and why they got acquired by saudi arabia yeah so to bring that in which is a completely different ball of wax to bring in the pif right uh and talk about what saudi arabia is doing and they're coming in and they're going to own the midori like when i if you want to talk about that and then you want to talk about this quote from Ferris and the conversations he's having yes and this is why I feel so fucking terrible for the hundreds probably thousands of people who work at EA and aren't like first off going to get any benefit from Saudi Arabia owning them are just trying to make a living are just trying to make video games are just trying to do the fucking be the accountant for EA I don't care if you're like but like you don't want to fucking be owned by Saudi Arabia and now you just got bought by Saudi Arabia it's like what the fuck do you do because your whole you're the breadwinner of the family and you all live around the EA campus if they yeah they're forcing you work like you need that's your fucking job that just got bought that like that's now you got everybody fucking mad at you on the outside and on the inside you're like are we about to get fucked over who's getting laid off what are they going to do how long like there's so much turmoil to that to begin with yeah let alone then the the fact that Saudi Arabia fucking sucks right the PIF sucks they murder they were okay murdering a Washington Post journalist, Crown Prince Mohammed.

45:08Andy Cortez:You know what I mean? And he's the guy in charge of the PIF. I'm not saying anything about the people of Saudi Arabia. You know what I mean? I don't know you. I don't know anything about it. I'm talking about the PIF. I'm talking about the Crown Prince. I'm talking about this. And they're coming in to buy this thing to continue to use video games to wash their reputation around the world. So yeah, I feel really bad for EA in that sense. The people who work at EA. Not even to start with the Jared Kushner side of things, right? The whole other bag of worms. what if I was like well he's a pretty good guy he'll turn yeah so but it's like yeah like I don't know it back in the day when they were the most evil corporation I was like well this is very overblown yeah and so even now I think it's they've they're on the uptick and again minus the anger of Saudi Arabia buying them it is then just the thing of like for the longest time it's been like yeah they're just doing it and like I saw what I was like what are they doing people like buy where it's like all right well should we start going through every fucking studio Microsoft and Xbox have fucked up you know what I mean PlayStation.

46:04Andy Cortez:There's a million of these things and it's all chasing the almighty fucking dollar. How can we go make people make us money? We'll fucking make Anthem. That'll work. Yeah. So you don't file this under CEO say the darndest things? For Joseph? No. I think it might be that thing of like, you know, we've listened to, I've talked to Joseph obviously. We've listened to him on many things. I think it's that thing where he's just very casually talking about this and they're not getting in the week. I'm sure it's a side he threw out there. And it was when I, I don't know. I think he, I think he's got a real good argument to stand on.

46:37Andy Cortez:I just think it's not fun to say that you don't hate EA or that EA isn't evil or whatever. Well,

46:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:let's see about how you feel about this next CEO. Story number five, boss of stellar blade developer says it needs to use AI to compete with overwhelming manpower of China and us studios. This is from Vicky Blake at IGN stellar, Blake stellar, Blake stellar, Blake and director. I have a friend. He's stellar. His name is Blake. stellar play director and ceo shift up um young tae kim has stated that without the use of ai developers in smaller nations will struggle to keep up with studios in places like the u.s and china at first as first reported by game mecca and picked up by automaton kim addressed attendees at south korea's 2026 economic growth strategy event and said that countries like china have an overwhelming advantage due to the sheer number of staff it can throw at any video game development quote we devote around 150 people to a single game but china puts in between a thousand and two to two thousand we lack the capacity to compete both in terms of quality and volume of content kim said using ai will not result in job losses kim insisted but instead make employees more valuable as one person can perform the work of a hundred people this week shift up gifted its 300 staff, an Apple Watch, AirPod Max, and a$3 ,400 cash bonus.

47:57Blessing Adeoye Jr.:A sequel, Cellular Blade 2, is in development as well as Project Spirits to be published by Level Infinite. Those bonuses are awesome. If you want me to forgive you for your AI usage, tell me you're giving all your employees fucking Apple Watches and shit. So, CEOs say the darndest thing. CEOs say the darndest thing.

48:19Andy Cortez:things i i let's let's try to clinically take it apart and not get mad at each other chat is who i'm talking to right for what he's saying he's probably not wrong because it sounds to me of mr kim maybe shouldn't make a game that big you know what i mean like you know what i mean it's like that's the idea of like i have to use ai to make this fucking game well why aren't we making a smaller game that's handcrafted and doing this and obviously maybe the vision is to be as big as possibly we're talking on the heels of stellar blade a game people really liked and how they would want it to be bigger i'm sure and yada yada yada you get into that conversation but it's also the fact that i think when you talk about china putting out games between a thousand and two thousand people working on them and yada like are those games i i it's hard to talk about this because every gamer is different right yeah but when we get to those kind of games that are that mass produced that are that watered down that are that what is the vision of it don't we get into this blase like what what is this game like i'd rather it be 150 people are working really hard on this game and i i see their fucking thumbprint on it i see i know a person made that and that that's why it's quirky in this way or different in that way but it's got a personality to it that i think would resonate with more audience members than the giant whatever like we talk about these china games all the time that come out that are free to play there this that the other that are you know the hero the genshins and all that jazz which i know are successful but like yeah are they people's favorite games of all time what are we trying to create here i guess with shift up yeah i mean i think that's a really good question to ask right what are we trying to create here i i there's so much to talk about here right i i i think when he talks about like the china game that's like being that that's being worked on by a million people are competing right black myth wukong is the first thing comes to mind i don't know how many people worked on black myth wukong samson shouts out where wins meet which is what i was looking for and i don't remember that is a china game right i don't know i think so maybe not but that one i mean that's an action rpg and sell these things and like we got it in review code and i tried to get it and it's humongous and i was like uh whatever and then it's like it got sixes and sevens and like nobody's talking about that like i know the numbers were great because it's free to play people jumped in but yeah chinese thank you yeah i see i'm in the conversation i look at a stellar blade versus if where wins beat is yeah this is a chinese game right or black myth wukong i'm sure people would go either way on stellar blade versus black myth wukong fact maybe more people would lean on the black myth thing but i really really liked stellar blade for the gameplay aspect of it and kind of like the loose vibe of it i think a lot of the things that i don't like about stellar blade come back to i don't think i think they said they didn't use generative ai but some of it feels like generative ai some of it feels the graffiti on the walls i remember the graffiti on the walls the graffiti on the walls but even the the dialogue the music the aesthetic so much of it feels like they took near and dove may cry put it in a blender and said generate you know what i mean like that kind of is the the vibe which i think might lean to thinking like this even though

51:16Blessing Adeoye Jr.:he doesn't they don't specify the kind of ai don't specify how they're using ai and so we can only really speculate a little bit here about what they mean by this that said um i would look at them and go hey stellar blade isn't a worse game than blackmouth wukong inherently because it was made by a smaller team or whatever right like i think some of the things they got right in terms of combat in terms of bosses in terms of some of some of those nuts and bolts of it even more right than blackmouth in my personal opinion fair keep on with that shit i think the problem to if i'm going to be charitable here right of course we're anti-generative ai we don't like ai being used in like the creative way to make our shit i i do think that people are trying to solve for how long video game development is how much how many resources video game development takes and we talk about it all the time about how hard video games are to make yeah and so i don't necessarily blame the thought process of well they got a thousand two thousand people working on it if we're gonna make stellar blade 2 it's gonna take us five like yeah i totally understand that i don't know if i guess i don't know it's really what i'm coming down to as far as like how do we get around these things.

52:26I get wanting to turn to AI for that shit. If you can find ways to use AI that are ethical and make sense and doesn't water down the creativity. You know, one of the things my brother-in-law works at Microsoft and during Thanksgiving I was having a long conversation with him because he picked me up from the airport Just boom the whole time. About AI. I mean, he is so like, his job is AI. That is his thing. He is like lead of his team. That is how much into this world he is. And he's asking me questions and I was very fascinated by how much he knows but how much he didn't know about like how audience receives this stuff one of the questions he asked me halfway through the drive because we were talking about video games he asked me like you consider video games art and i'm like yeah and that was like something that he didn't even think about and this is somebody that works he was like gemini do you he was having a conversation with me about how he sees the future of it being that we tell an ai the game that we want to play and ai makes that game and he's excited about this this technology he's excited about like we can you can go to netflix one day and just be like hey i want to watch a movie with this this this and this and netflix will just make the movie for you and i'm looking at him i'm like that doesn't sound good man like that doesn't sound exciting um i think we just gotta well one of the one of the things i'll bring into this too is one of the things he said to me that i thought was very interesting was the idea of like in making video games are there tasks that people do where if like you gave that same task to like 100 different people they would just make the same thing can that be an ai thing i'm like i guess like i think we just have to have

53:57Andy Cortez:the conversations and figure out where it makes sense yeah but it's so fucking complicated and yeah i obviously i don't have the answers here but i think there's room for conversation something i've gone around on thinking about in again way outside of my field of view and probably not with the actual answer yada yada yada is that uh for larian when we were talking about this last week and spend, you know, coming out and be like, all right, cool. We're not going to use it. We're not going to use generative AI for, we're not gonna use AI for any of the stuff for the creative stuff, but there's still, it might be processes we do, but we'd only feed it our stuff.

54:31Andy Cortez:And we were like, I don't know. That's how that works. I'm like, yeah, I'm interested to see if we can get it to a point where someone does make an AI where it is like opening a blank word document. And it is like, cool. Look at all of our games. You do that. You know what I mean? Like look through all my files. I don't know the fuck I'm talking about, obviously, but like look at our hard drive of all the files we made from our last game our lore we you do feed the ai the stuff you are it already know you know what i mean and then have it be of like again don't write the story for me but now when i know i ask you to make a template a thing i know you're pulling from my artist my writer my create you know and again i we as creatives go to the creative portion of it of the i shouldn't even say that because that's insulting the fictional narrative acting I don't know about building a project in Maya.

55:19Andy Cortez:So I don't know if in my example, somebody makes one level and it's like, all right, cool. Make a hundred variations of this for a procedurally generated, you know what I mean? And then they, you go through and you approve and deny. Like, I wonder if there's a future where somebody could do that. If that's what we're doing with AI. So it is that I'm selling this AI to every, not everybody, but people who buy it, but it's personally yours. It's personally your studios. It isn't scraping the internet and pulling some fucking art project off of boston university page from 20 years ago yeah there's so many if ands uh and buts about it right like i think we're far from finding a truly ethical way to go about it because with every new stuff there's so many questions of all right but how does this affect the environment how does this affect the quality of the final product like do we believe that this is like you know there's so much of that i hope we find a place where either there's a solution or everybody agrees like yo okay this doesn't work throw this shit out but i'm afraid that we've crossed the line we're not gonna i mean again the what i which sucks to throw out there but for me when you're talking about like i we're never i don't think we can force everybody to see it sucks by saying it sucks right i think it needs to be people that are the smaller teams being like no fuck that we're not gonna do that you go and make a game that is fucking awesome you know i mean i want to throw out clear obscure but i know they did use it at some whatever time right wasn't that the reveal after game oh yeah they had like a placeholder asset so it's like but something to that regard like you know we yesterday for a game of the year no spoilers if you didn't watch it i'm kind of funny yet but like the top five are all indie games right so it's like that i think starts to speak in terms of quality but then in terms of financial success as well where it is if we're seeing all these big bloated companies go and make ai and think that they can do it because they're giant corporation x and those games start falling and they are the drivel and they are the ones nobody gives a shit about and there are the ones we're not talking about inevitably you'd have to the pendulum would have to swing back to ethically using it or shit fuck people want that kind of stuff because they're gonna these companies are going to go where the money is so if we can decide where the money is yes we put our money we put our you know vote with our wallets

57:23Blessing Adeoye Jr.:we always talk about 100 let's close out with story number six backyard sports animated special reveals first look at voice cast i'm pulling from variety and i should add the author name Jennifer Moss at Variety here. This was originally We News, and I started reading through this, and I was like, this has to be a real news story. Real news story. Backyard sports fans are going back out to the 90s-era ballgame this month with the release of a new animated TV special starring Pablo Sanchez and his iconic ragtag team of kid athletes. The special stars, Tiffany Haddish as Keisha Phillips. Chris Mintz-Plasse as Dmitry Petrovic.

58:02Blessing Adeoye Jr.:That's Mick Levin. Donald Faison as Dante Robinson. my guy from scrubs Eggo Nwadeem as Stephanie Morgan and Justin DeSmith Ashley Crystal Harrison as Sunny Day Adam Pally as Pete Wheeler that's my guy from the Mindy Project oh okay Utkarsh Ambutkar as Ahmed Khan Arturo Castro as Pablo Sanchez Lindsey Barnett who is the CEO of Playground Productions as Vinny and the Weber Twins Debra Barker Jr. as Jimmy and Michael Vlamas as Tony Del Vecchio. Per the official description for the animated special, quote, It's opening day at Steel Stadium, but team superstar Stephanie Bubbles Morgan is in crisis.

58:47Blessing Adeoye Jr.:She's lost her gotta-have-it, never-play-without-it lucky bubblegum. With just 30 minutes until game time, the Backyard Kids embark on a wild mission to track it down and save their season, end quote. The Backyard Sports animated special will launch later in January on YouTube after first debuting at Dave & Buster's as part of a new partnership with Backyard Sports IP owner, Playground Productions. The exact release date for the special will be announced soon. What a thing. We're going to Dave & Buster's, brother. I'm so down to go to Dave & Buster's for this shit. Of course, so Mike is our Backyard Sports super fan.

59:25But I think to some extent, multiple of us here dig Backyard Sports because I played a lot of Backyard Soccer. And I love these castings. these castings are way more insane than i would have ever expected here good shout out donald fason that's dante robinson chow's maddie i think they said phase on phase

59:42Blessing Adeoye Jr.:on sorry i'm not saying his name out loud that much uh greg this backyard sports tv special some big news i'm going to dave and buster's watch this thing live but if i wanted something

59:54Andy Cortez:smaller say the tiniest news i need to know about where would i go you'd go do you remember when the time the old kind of funny story when we went there and then nick had that giant cheese crisp and shit his pants he got so sick i mean i don't think he actually pooped his pants he's just like but he was he was sick uh you'd go of course to our last story the we news channel where we cover all the small news items you need to know about it happened to me at what's the bookstore the famous barnes and nobles yeah where i walked into barnes and nobles one time to like buy a board game in two minutes into being there i was like i gotta shit yeah and had to like rush home to drive They got nice bathrooms at Barnes & Noble, though.

1:00:27I don't like public bathrooms. It's a thing. But I learned it's a phenomenon.

1:00:32Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Yeah. Or a bookstore where people want to poop. So number seven, Wii news from gamesindustry.biz. Ubisoft has announced SAF cuts at its Swedish studios with 55 jobs expected to be lost at Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft Stockholm.

1:00:45Andy Cortez:Ubisoft Definitive Edition.

1:00:47Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Oh, no. Division Definitive Edition. Battlefield 6 Season 2 has been delayed mid-February. Season 1 is being extended. Resident Evil Requiem Showcase is set for January 15th at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Oh, dear. I missed that. From IGN, Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios has released update 1.11.0 along with its patch notes. It adds the Abyss Cosmetics set along with some fixes and balancing changes to Trigger, Nade, and Kettle. Arc Raiders has also sold 12 million copies in under three months. From VDC, a UK judge has denied a request from a group of fired Rockstar employees to continue to be paid while their legal case is ongoing.

1:01:29Blessing Adeoye Jr.:The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain alleged that the employees were fired by Take-Two Company because they were part of an IWGB Game Workers Union channel on Discord and were either union members or attempting to organize a union at Rockstar. Of course, we talked about that story in previous episodes of KFGD as it's been breaking. um but yeah they've been denied um getting paid one punch man world shuts down on february 27th star trek voyager across the unknown launches february 18th uh and finally major nelson i don't know i said finally there last part of we news major nelson has been laid off from unity whoa he posted this today uh on twitter quote as many of you as many of you have been with me during my career in gaming i'd like to share personal news like many in the gaming space recently i've been laid off from unity wow crazy that's crazy um he has like a small thread talking about it a little bit i'm trying to see if i can open it up on my yeah after leaving microsoft i

1:02:31Andy Cortez:joined the unity team in 2024 i am proud of the goals my team and i accomplished in just 18 months and i am grateful for the creators and teams i have the chance to support now i'm excited to explore the next chapter i've had in i've had invigorating conversations over the past weeks with companies in tech and non-tech spaces to discuss partnerships. I love what I do, but I also believe change is necessary. I'll let you know where I go from here. Connect with me anytime at herb.co. Wow. We bring back the X-Cast. We bring him back. Wow, as a permanent host? Part-time permanent, yeah.

1:03:01Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Okay. And that is it for Wee News. Let's hop into some super chats before we get out of here. Mr. Hawk says, it's tonight the night Snow Mike Mike finally shows up for Story Motors. Let's find out together at 7.30 p.m. mountain time over on story motors twitch stream we'll find out we'll find out mike did promise him on that episode of happy hour so happy hour altered rain writes in with the birthday tax birthday tax for me and nick i'm now 30 and i first meet host of kf oh fuck it's nick's birthday happy birthday nick first met them at kf uh or first met kf at let's play live chicago So, Greg, I was the guy who picked your pepper.

1:03:45Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Oh, thank you. I had it during hot pepper. Oh. I thought it was like a, I don't know. Yeah, euphemism. Sasquatch Oni says, Greg, been aware of you for 15-ish years. Sometimes I hate you, but just wanted to say I tune in every day and realized I kept watching because of you. Happy 11 years. You're welcome. Fuck you. Yeah. Backhanded. Norm Chacho says, saying EA is the worst company in the world where Nestle and Exxon exist is crazy. Like Nestle, like the... The water and chocolate people, yeah.

1:04:19Andy Cortez:A lot of slave labor stuff. Yeah, they're not... That's why you're always doing the ethically sourced cocoa and stuff. Gotcha.

1:04:26Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Openness Prime says they need to abandon the Hellblade IP. It's so boring. It's all flash and no substance. Make something with more personality and good gameplay. Okay, first, that's too much. No, we're not going to say that it's all style and no substance. Play Hellblade 1. It's almost too much substance in that game. It's good. That's crazy. Muggle Prince says, first time watching live this year. Happy 11 years. You guys make my days that much brighter. Happy to be here. Sergio says, it's kind of feudy permanently on Mondays.

1:04:59Andy Cortez:It is. We've done a really bad job of messaging that, but there's just been so much going on. Yeah, feudies. And I believe when Showdown comes back, they go to Mondays. Yeah, but Mondays we thought were better than we are all winding down for the weekend.

1:05:09Blessing Adeoye Jr.:and go jeff bowl jr says so sad a note there are still vr studios out there working well with little profit and passionate fans reminder to support independent businesses you love if you can heart emoji last night you sent me um a link to the dreams reddit yeah and like it breaks my heart when you have people that are so passionate about a thing like doing the good work creating and they're creating really good stuff but like you know they're just stuck on a platform that isn't getting the support that it deserves real quick speaking of independent developers don't say anything uh-huh i just got codes for this i'm very excited oh that's cool uh we got another one from dexter schwarzer who says my heart goes out to all those laid off hope they land on their feet when do we stop seeing mass layoffs and is there anything we can do oh that's a large question

1:05:57Andy Cortez:probably for a longer show right uh will you ever see stop seeing mass layoffs i mean yeah when all the big companies are gone and have set their profit margins and projections appropriately so when will that happen probably never uh what can you do i think the easiest way of court is as we already talked about it vote with your wallet and support who you want to support remember supporting you know independent developers is the easiest way in the most direct way wishlist games like we're always talking about obviously there's tons of big games that need your support too if you want that kind of thing but it is about buying that thing you know it all goes back to that ubisoft quote right when are you gonna stop manualizing assassin's creed when you stop buying it people stopped and they stopped and they brought it back and yeah yeah but it's the same way for like if you're fucking mike out there who i love obviously but like oh yeah 2k they rip you off it's such a rebel yeah i dropped 200 extra dollars on the game every year it's like well no you know no you can't be like yeah that sucks but i still do it you gotta if you're buying something you gotta say i i know what i'm doing and i want this and that's why it's gonna happen Yeah, and when you see people who do get laid off or creators that you have a passion for, support their work.

1:07:02Yeah, of course. Support their work. Follow them.

1:07:06Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Nightlife says, meta earnings on February 4th. You will find more reports of layoffs slash Microsoft Sony as earning season approaches. Big headsets are dead. Wearable the future. Yep. We got a lot of people talking about VR in here. Yeltsin says, if VR was more affordable, would it have taken off?

1:07:24Andy Cortez:I mean, I think that is a good question. If my grandma had wheels, would she be a bicycle? What are we talking about? I don't want to be John Cena about it, but we don't live in that reality. That's not what, you know what I mean? Like, that would be part of it for sure. Yeah. But I also think it would have inevitably ended up being the same. We don't have the vision for what VR wants to be. There are the people like me who liked it and thought it was cool. And then just, I expected it to progress and grow a bit more than it did in terms of the, not quality, but types of games. The fact that what I could play right now on a PlayStation VR 2, not quality-wise, but in terms of what I'm doing is so similar to PlayStation VR 1.

1:08:04Andy Cortez:And it's like, I just don't want the floaty hands and the disembodied thing and the bop in my head. Oh, am I low enough? And I'm like, it's just not the game I want. And there are tons of people who do want that. They just want to play VR and love it. But I think VR, VR reminds me so much of what, and I know I've used the arcade analogy. It's an arcade machine. it also reminds me so much of what i think so many people's experience were with nes and well nes i wasn't gonna throw the master system in there but hey i bought this toy it does this very specific thing called mario brothers or it does these other things here and they weren't buying a million games maybe even the wii is a good example you're not buying a million games for it you bought this thing to do that thing and it's like that is what it does it could do so much more but people think that's what it does and that's all it does and that's why it's stagnant in terms of what it's doing yeah i also in that same thing i for me it's the evolution of the headset as well i think the conversation we had earlier about like getting vr to a place where it's easy to put on right maybe it is a wearable thing you just put on your glasses and now you're in the vr world yeah at a certain point yeah we're kind of transitioning that from vr to ar or whatever but i i just don't think the hardware improvements have been meaningful in the right ways to me they've been getting more powerful they've been adding like eye tracking and things like that which is cool but not cool on the consumer level for me which will make me go oh everybody needs to buy vr there's nothing headset wise or hardware wise that makes you look at tim well maybe tim that makes you look at a friend and go you should get this sure you know i would look at tim and maybe michael haim to be like hey played gran turismo 7 in this but that's such a it's such a limited thing so exactly yeah not to be dead horse but to put in it like uh tony the pasta man who you know does the kind of funny pasta and whatever all that jazz yeah uh he got he dusted off a headset to play with his girlfriend's son or whatever and he's like oh man i haven't used it forever like what games do get and i gave him like the five games he's like oh my god these are awesome it's like now they're satiated they're not like on the store crawling for more stuff nor are they expecting i think a lot more great stuff coming um meta 318 says got

1:10:04Blessing Adeoye Jr.:a quest 3 over the holidays and i'm having a blast flight simulator half-life alex asgard's rap batman and resident evil 4 just name a few yeah um faint aphid says both death-draining soundtracks are so good talking about licensed soundtracks yeah that's a good one to shout out that's draining the licensed soundtrack incredible loyal freak writes in and says the eidos guardians of the galaxy soundtrack was amazing okay good examples sure good examples they just don't hit

1:10:28Andy Cortez:the same way anymore and it is because of like exactly what you said like music's everywhere everything is on your phone yeah like i'll think about that every so often when i'm on the car and i throw some cd on you know that i remember owning and it's that idea of like man i remember like i had to go to the record store i had to buy this thing i had to bring it and then i just listened to it non-stop because it's all you know i mean i had like 12 albums or whatever so this is what whereas now it's like anything you fucking want you can go get the difference so you make such a good point i think when i think about my death training to experience in regards to music and even in regards to the music player they have in the game that i kept talking about during the preview period one of the differences between how i played that game in that 30 hour preview that i did when i was at kojima productions and they wouldn't let us even have our phone at the desk right it's just me in the game for 30 hours straight versus playing at home when i was in when i was at kojima productions i was so into the music player right i was so into listening to the soundtrack and taking all those sounds in when i played at home when i was walking from point a to point b and there's not much going on i was listening to my own music i was turning on like podcasts and stuff and it's just inherently different now yeah it's just inherently different and that's an us thing right i don't need that i don't that's not on the fault of the video game absolutely that's just the way that we play and the way that we've transitioned into just having that accessible accessibility when it comes to music um the postman says uh the campaign for

1:11:51Blessing Adeoye Jr.:blessed to play trails begins today i think i'm gonna go with final fantasy 10 i think that's the move uh dragon quest 7 reimagined i don't know that one doesn't it i like the art style except for when they have grown men in that art style. There's one character that's supposed to be like a big brawny man. I look at him all like, you looks fucking stupid, dude. I'm a stupid puppet. I hate it. Let's hop into kindoffunny.com slash you're wrong where you write in and let us know what we got wrong as we got it wrong so you can correct it for those watching later on YouTube and listening later on podcast services around the globe.

1:12:25Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Jepo, we're going to ban you. All right? Stop talking about Yakuza. Oh, wait. Is this the same person I'm still waiting for? Yeah, no, that's him. Yeah, no. Or them. and then we're gonna ban you stop talking about Yakuza um Jepo I forget I don't know if this is regarding anything Battle of Wonderland wasn't made by Sega it was made by Yuji Naka who was still in prison

1:12:45Andy Cortez:yeah it was made by that remember I referenced when you were like that one game that everybody loved and I was like Battle of Wonderland

1:12:50Blessing Adeoye Jr.:and that is it for kindoffunny.com slash you're wrong and that is it for this episode of KFGD if you love what we do remember support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free and get a daily exclusive show So after this, me, Tim, and Roger sit down to talk about our top 10.

1:13:07Andy Cortez:Roger's taking you to the woodshed. We all hung him out to dry. Yeah, we kind of did. Kirby and Ryder. Yeah, we're going to have a lot to talk about. We'll see, though, because Roger could have jury duty. Tim could have a baby. It might just be me soloing on this podcast. It's a small chance.

1:13:24Blessing Adeoye Jr.:Enjoy the games cast after that, or after this, and then everything after that. K-Pod? Yeah, we're doing a kind of funny podcast today. Tim's last kind of funny podcast. Until next time, Game Daily.

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