#370 | Guerrilla Warfare

33:43A listener does is my financial advisor, but you're not that listener unless he's going by a different name, like an alias. But I don't think he is. And hopefully he's not in like some. My guy's pretty established. Hopefully he's not in like a tutorial like situation at a bank because then we're in trouble.

34:03Colin Moriarty:Do you ever think about that? I know, calling you've had situations where like you you thought you've made a good connection with someone at a market and then they ended up being they said like last thing they're like oh i'm a big fan you're like oh great i sometimes wonder i'm like surely people recognize us and don't or maybe even interact with us and don't say anything yeah probably happens quite often because there's often like when i when i was at summer game fest or too many games i'd see people i recognize from you know other YouTube creators or whatever I see them but it's like I I'm not gonna say hi to them yeah or something I'm not gonna say hi to anyone I'll be honest with you uh in those situations good to see you though good to see you like literally see you right um yeah I um I love I love little things like this it makes me feel good that there are people out there connecting in some weird way through our show um shout out to you Victor Harrington good luck with your banking david il il delfonso wrote in and said colin i've been noticing you use the term rip in peace so you say rest in peace in peace the word in peace baked into the abbreviation why the extra in peace is this part of your upbringing a long island thing a new england thing or perhaps a colin original anyway i'll hang up get back to my fifth dynasty season of cfb 26 and listen we got ourselves a fake fan here don't we fake fan seems like it also well i mean if not it's just like a very little very low opinion of you right you know what i mean like you don't know that yeah no i i it's just i feel like r.i.p.

35:40and peace is the most over explained joke that we do where i feel like it's got to be peppered in there often enough that someone might hear it got to focus a little bit more on the show yeah a little bit less on your dynasty in college football. David, thank you for writing in. Headshot Juggernaut wrote in and said, greetings, gentlemen. I just wanted to wish the three of you a happy three-year anniversary. You see, it was three years ago this week that I discovered LSM on an hour and a half long drive to a doctor's appointment when I was looking for a good gaming podcast to listen to to keep me company.

36:11It was about 30 minutes into the episode Jawbreaker when I listened to a six-minute script read of a leaked upcoming Tomb Raider game where Chris and Dustin portrayed what I can only describe as Oscar worthy performances of Lara and a character named Tom V as Colin narrated with intensity in a way that left me at the edge of my seat. This was a true LSM lore moment, one that I don't think is referenced quite enough. Honestly, Chris's British accent is what I imagine everyone in UK accurately sounding like. Anyway, I knew right then and there I had found my mainstay gaming podcast network and I've been riding this train of ridiculousness and debauchery ever since.

36:40So again, happy anniversary, boys. I would hang up and listen, but I'm not using a phone to call in. Instead, I'll calmly close the app and go about my day in no way causing harm to myself. That's wonderful. First of all, I love the name headshot juggernaut. Good. Good name.

36:55Colin Moriarty:Sounds like a gamer tag that you would see back in the day. Yeah, definitely. The head, the O and headshot would be a zero. Exactly. And the and the E and juggernaut would be a three perhaps. That might be going a little too far, though. Well, I hope you're well. That is a that is a deep and fun LSM lore moment for multiple reasons, because it's not only the Tom V accent. Actually, it's the Laura accent. Yeah, because I remember specifically the only line. The other thing I remember from that entire script, because it was so long ago, was it Tom V. Why? Wait, Tom V. Tom V. But that's interesting.

37:34That's a deeper piece of lore beyond that, because that also got us served a legal notice.

37:40Colin Moriarty:Right. For the first and only time in my entire career by a publisher being like, you've crossed the line. Awesome. And I was like, oh, I like I totally understand, you know, like, but I'm like, I didn't really I didn't really think this one through, I guess. But so we just had to we had to delete it off of Patreon. It actually still exists everywhere else. Yeah, they were weird about it and only served Patreon papers, not us directly. Yeah. And then Patreon gave them through us. And then, yeah, they didn't care about the public versions. That's very weird. I don't think there was much they could do.

38:19Colin Moriarty:I mean, maybe, I don't know. Maybe I'll get hit now. I think I talked to my lawyer. I mean, because they weren't like, we're going to sue you. It wasn't like that serious. It was just like a kind of a cease and desist. And but I remember talking to my lawyer about it. And he's like, yeah, you kind of like can't do that. Like, you can say, you know, like I didn't think about it. And that's not that's not an excuse. Right. But I just didn't think about it. It's like, yeah, you're reading the verbatim script. That's unreleased, like back and forth. Like it's clearly, and I'm like, yeah, that's a good point.

38:53Like he's like, you can describe it. You can say what happens in it. You can like, and I'm like, all right, fair enough. So that's what, cause I was like, I was going to comply and we did comply, but I was like, do I have, is this worth like, you know, a quick, frankly,$500 meeting with my lawyer for an hour. And I took it and yeah, so I learned a thing or two there about, about things. Let's say, right. I'm sorry.

39:18Colin Moriarty:it's just even funnier that it's because it's our rendition of it that they were like oh that's our that's our property which it was it's just funnier that it was well whatever that was that's what we were saying is like it's just so funny thinking about them in like a conference room which is probably what happened or like on a zoom call or something listening to it like it's people people at square enix were listening to it you know like they were definitely listening that's what's that's the funniest part right but uh anyway we did we complied and it was all fine but that's to me the top so the tom like the accent the laura accent is and tom v white like that's funny as hell but like there's a whole deeper story behind it which is also interesting the meta narrative behind it is is quite yeah you're totally i totally forgot about that like serious people had to listen to that bastardization and like the idea is like this is what we think of their of their property it's hilarious uh i haven't thought about that in a while like is that clip out there still yeah yeah i think it's still in the pot like we only had to remove it from patreon because i remember they only asked us to remove it from patreon so we're like okay it's fine um weird and i think so i think we removed it from the edit on patreon how long ago was that by the way it was like before they even were i think they were like just i think crystal was just purchased by embracer so it was probably three years ago or so um we still haven't seen date was august 1st 2022 august 1st man do you think august 1st 2022 so it's literally three years to the date that this podcast goes live it's interesting because do you think that we just killed that game they saw they saw us doing the script they're like wow this sucks yeah this sucks scrap it because we still haven't seen it we still haven't met the illustrious the elusive Tormvi right or Tom V or whatever the fuck is we still haven't seen this character yeah I'm excited I'm excited to yeah I don't know I I assume that I probably got lost somewhere along the way with the or not lost but canceled or nixed with the company being sold and I don't know yeah my headcanon though is that they my headcanon is that they they saw us do the script and they realized that it just did not work right yeah this isn't working for us all right headshot juggernaut good to hear from you biggie missions wrote in and said guys my wife katie and i have been married for and i think it's katie it's katie that could be caddy no it's katie i know and i've been married for a few years and i've carried sacred symbols in my heart and on my phone i'll have it playing in the background and fill her in on the lore and nerdy playstation facts slowly but surely she has been getting into it and she especially enjoys the beginning parts of the episode where you're all spread your legs.

42:06I'll overhear her listening to episodes on her own and then she'll ask me about it. Tell me there's not a god. She even made her way through Astro Bot with a little help. With a little help, I'm sorry. Seriously, a dream come true. She's only ever played Sims before. Can you guys do me a favor? I've wanted to put my PlayStation on the top of our TV console. She doesn't like the aesthetic of how it looks, which I get, but it lives in the cubbies with a fan blowing on it to prevent it from melting into a puddle of magma. She said, if you guys read this inquiry on the show, I can move it. Would appreciate your assistance and attention to this matter.

42:33Thanks for being rock hard each and every week. Biggie missions. Good to hear from you. I think you need to. Yeah, I mean, you don't want to have happy wife, happy life. Absolutely true. But you don't want your PS5. It's an investment. And it's more expensive now. It's getting more expensive to buy these things. You want to protect it. Let it breathe. Let it air out on top of the console. It'll be fine. And is the PS5 aesthetically pleasing? No, not really. I mean, let's be serious. It's not the PS2. it's not the Xbox Series X in this regard, where it would just be kind of quiet and just sit there.

43:10No one will really notice it. No, you're going to have like a vaginal looking console on the top, you know, video game hardware on the top of your, your TV entertainment system, but it'll be better for the hardware. So, yeah. And you said, I mean, I was just reading this on you. You've won.

43:25Colin Moriarty:You've won, boy. You've won. Yeah. But one thing I would say is that like, it is loud and obnoxious. So maybe, you know what? to I don't know what what color your TV console is or whatever, but like you can get plates for your PS5 that make it a little bit less obnoxious. I would actually recommend that they look pretty good. Like I've seen people with their PS5s out in their living room and I didn't notice it because they had like a black that the black was it the plates or whatever. I was like, oh, that looks pretty good, actually. Mainly because I can't see it. Yeah. Which is camo. You get it in camouflage, digital camouflage oh my god be the stupidest gaudiest thing you've ever seen in your living room that'd be so a digital camo ps5 is outrageous i love digital camo so much i love that look unreal camo i think that's the apparently the most effective form of camo i could be wrong that sounds right yeah yeah finally um just an acknowledgement i guess brett d strobel and i guess somewhat of a correction or just more more information greeting sacred crew i'd like to offer a clarification on the name of the game section eight it was named for an old military regulation for discharging someone for being mentally unfit for service for reference see corporal clinger in tv show mash who for a large portion of the series was seeking a section eight so he could go home yeah i remember i used to watch mash with my dad and reruns obviously um so i remember what you're talking about but yeah um you got to think of a different name for your game that is interesting though that the that that's where it originated so technically they weren't crazy but at the same time that is like the more common understanding of like the modern term terminology of section eight so like you'd probably be better off thinking of something else also it didn't really have anything to do with section eight as far as i remember like it was i'm pretty sure it was just to purely or at least the first one because there was like a there's a sequel you know what the sequel is called yeah it's section eight prejudice which is even that to me is even crazier yeah it's awesome that's fucking hysterical dude but uh as far as i remember the first one didn't have a story mode i could be completely wrong on that yeah there's a campaign it's a campaign it says the section eight includes a single player campaign mode called cord story that allows the player to proceed as a character named alex cord the for the single player player consists of eight objective based missions on the same maps as multiplayer that serves a tutorial to the player for multiplayer play that makes sense yeah right yeah so it was like it was a primarily multiplayer game that's how i engaged with it it was pretty good actually for what it for what it was but um i never played i never played prejudice section eight but um but uh yeah probably rethink the name there's a million other better names for it too but i remember the one thing i remember about that game is that you you would you would drop onto the map it was actually early now that i think about it it's kind of like the format for a lot of like modern battle royale where like you kind of you start in the sky and you you drop and then you kind of like as you're falling you kind of choose where you're gonna touch down it was kind of sick it's kind of interesting that that's uh really common now actually well brett thank you for that get a different name not you brett Well, you could stand.

46:40You could stand and get a new name, too, I guess. Yeah. Is it raining? Hold on a second.

46:48Colin Moriarty:He's flummoxed by this. By natural weather phenomenon. It's just the weather is always fucking wrong. We don't need it. I just don't. Sorry. The weather's always wrong. I was opening the blind. It's just always wrong. It's really annoying. Like it's always wrong. It didn't say anything about rain right now. It says it's partly sunny on my fucking computer. It is. Yeah. And partly sunny. It's partly sunny somewhere. Right. Oh, we're doing like the it's five o 'clock somewhere. Well, the thing that I was like really old by the time I learned like what the percentage of what the percentage meant whenever you saw like a like a rain forecast is like eight like a 50 percent.

47:39Colin Moriarty:rain and you're like oh is that like what does that mean i was like like in my probably like mid to late 20s when i found out that that wasn't like a 50 chance of rain it was more like 50 of the area that you're in will be affected by rain oh is that i always thought it was probability so that's what it means that's apparently what it means it's like if there's a 10 chance of rain that means which by the way that's how they word it so like obviously i'm gonna think that but like if it's a 10 rain or 10 chance of rain that means like 10 of the area that you live in is going to be covered and you could be in that 10 oh i didn't know that at least that's how i understand that changes everything which makes more sense when i retroactively think about all the times i've read the weather and been like completely flummoxed by it i'm just like what the fuck there's only a five percent chance of rain today and i'm in rain what the hell and then i go i and then you can drive immediately out of the rain you're like oh that kind of makes sense interesting yeah i didn't know that all right let's get in the news it's time for us to go into the news not go away just a quick fyi because this will publish the day after the show begins is that twisted metal is back on peacock and uh i'm i'm looking forward to watching it i think i'll probably just let it all stack up this time so i can just have peacock for a single month instead of two months yeah um but they're rolling the episodes out like this the season is 12 episodes long i feel like the first season was 10, right?

49:06Let me look it up. I think it was eight or like, I don't know, actually. Yeah, no, it was 10. So this is longer. This is interesting. So today, July 31st, we're recording on July 31st. This will publish August 1st, but episodes one, two, and three will all be up for you. And then August 7th. So the next week, four and five, 14th, six and seven, 21st, eight, nine, and then the 28th, 10, 11 and 12. So five week rollout to get your two months of subscription time, which makes sense. from their perspective. And I'm looking forward to it, actually. I'm not looking forward to it enough to watch it beat by beat, but I'm definitely going to watch it.

49:42So it'll all be wrapped up by August 28th. And I'm sure we'll do, we'll probably do a single spoiler cast or review discussion for those that are interested. And because I think we did three last time. I think we split it into three, three different episodes of Sacred Plus. So worth noting that this is one of Peacock's biggest shows ever. So it's a pretty big event for them. And I'll be interested to see how it does. Dustin, will you watch?

50:04Colin Moriarty:uh probably i liked the first season i wasn't in love with it i'm just confused by this release schedule where it's like man just make one hour like the first one is one hour of content i'm assuming they're 20 minute episodes right um yeah i think so and then you could have for 40 minute episodes i don't know that the way they break up shows and releases now in the streaming era is so weird to me they're doing some weird shit with uh stranger things like oh yeah partial seasons and then like like feature length movie episodes and it's like what they're doing they're doing the mid-season kind of break for which i'm not the biggest fan of when they do i think they were breaking bad did that to be fair and it was fine yeah madman that like a lot a lot of places started figuring that out which was annoying yeah but that was like pretty rare and it was usually for like well i guess this is the final season so like fair enough but like i i know what you mean where like it feels like there's like a lack of consistency between even just episodes of tv where it's like oh this is a 30 minute episode and this one's an hour and you're like yeah it's hbo style especially um twisted metal episodes are about 30 minutes each by the way we just looked it up 30 minutes wow it's a lot of it's a lot that was the first season so maybe it'll be less this time but i don't think so interesting it is a lot of content it is i'm happy for i wonder i will the one thing i will say and i i've said this before i am confused about the lack of playstation branding more heavily in some of this stuff like even the last of us it's like why isn't there a playstation logo anywhere in this and i'm not saying in the show i'm saying like in the beginning why wouldn't you have that just something that kind of relates these but then it's like twisted metal i guess the you can play the old games one two three and four are all available i think black is available as a ps2 game on ps4 so you have some games you can go check out but nothing new to drive you to so maybe it's not even worth it all right so please look forward to it chris will you check out twisted did you watch the first season i don't recall no i mean i i think i i kind of essentially skimmed it i had i had paramount plus i had or what was it peacock for like a day when it came out and it was like about to run out and i was like I don't know if I want to renew it just for.

52:25Colin Moriarty:And it was like when it started happening. So I was like, ah, I'm good. Also, Axel wasn't in it. This time Axel's in it. I might check it out. But I'm going to do like what you said and probably wait for it to just stack up and just do a month. There's nothing on. Peacock really outside of that, and I don't I'm so sick of the amount of streaming services that there are. And how often I have to like get and buy a new one and then cancel it immediately. i tried to sign up for hulu so i could watch always sunny just for like a month and it was like it wouldn't let me do it it charged me three dollars and then it was like sorry we can't do it i was like oh cool and then i called them and then they gave me a refund but i was like what the what what is even happening with this shit oh you know what i realized this is a little different but it's a subscription is that i think i'm still paying like the 160 a year for soundcloud for sacred symbols many many years after we stopped using it and i have no idea how to even log in like i'm not i don't because i logged in with my name like i was like all right and it was fireside chats so i was like fuck that's right i had i had one for fireside chats one for knockback and one for sacred symbols and i'm like different accounts yeah because you had to oh man yeah you know and i was like different logins and i don't even remember what they were because we moved off of soundcloud pretty early in like 2018 because we had to for ads yeah and i remember being really nervous about it and then it ended up being like nothing at all was like totally fine um that's that's and so i've probably so six years i've probably paid like almost a thousand dollars sound kind of count and i don't want to shut it off i gotta go to you know what i really gotta do it and i think this works is i gotta just go to the bank and say like just give me a new card just and just like let's reset everything so like as you're pinged then you'll start getting emails like oh you gotta update your adobe thing you gotta update this and i was like okay i'll do that and then everything that i don't want will just go away but there's really nothing right i but i i forgot to tell you guys that i saw that the other day i was like what the fuck is this that should that's definitely what you can also i'm pretty sure you can call your bank and they can i'm fairly certain that there's a way to sever because i think i did that once for like an account that i although this was like 2017 so i don't know how the process still works you might it might send you to an ai bot that's not going to be able to help you at all right now right uh i'm pretty sure there's a way i bought that'd be fucking insane you really got to commit to the bit at that point it's surprising to me that you just saw this now because for the last it might be three years but it's definitely two years on the day that my adobe subscription renews i've gotten a text from you that's like we were charged this many hundred dollars what is this and then i say this yeah it is my adobe subscription i think it's happened two years in a row i'm never gonna remember you're on it you're like crazy on it but this is this is a blind spot yeah i don't know i don't know why i didn't see it we don't even have that many like debits and credits like in in our account we don't buy many things and we don't get we have like a very limited source of money you know it's like we get money from patreon get money from youtube get money from ad guys get money for merch so just not many inbounds and then outbounds is just everyone's payments and then random bills so yeah It just annoys me that we can't just buy this shit.

55:48Right. Oh, yeah. It's not because people like you run a subscription service. I'm like, yes, we're making ephemera. We're not making a program. We're not making a static thing you use. You used to be able to buy Premiere straight up. You still to buy it. You still to buy Photoshop. You can't buy sacred symbols because we're constantly putting out new things. They're not.

56:11Colin Moriarty:well they would argue they are though because they're updating it constantly in order to make it more buggy yeah well my favorite thing about premiere is is when i learn how to use it and then they change it yeah go ahead chris yeah no i i mean it's just like this is kind of i know it's i know it's rote and it's cliche or whatever but like this is exactly like the most valid critique of capitalism that there is is that like there's no there's no good reason for you to have to continue paying like dude adobe creative cloud is like 60 bucks a month and they don't do anything to justify it really it's in fact they actually add things to it to make you just to justify the fact that you're paying 60 and so it's just like oh we're gonna break it this time it's like oh cool i'm glad you updated this feature that nobody wants it's i miss when it was just like more like you could buy things static or or whatever choose to upgrade or whatever but that you know it's not gonna make the most money no of course i get i understand but also like how much how much do you need man like can we but why like my whole thing is like why does anything even need to change we're taught like you could add codecs and like and different resolutions and all these kinds of things you don't need to change anything else it's it there's nothing changing about the way videos are edited no it's about it's about the way they're rendered and all those kinds of things and that that should be updated for free as part of the cost of buying well that's the thing though it's that they change things they just change things arbitrarily to justify the fact that like oh we've changed something so that's that's why you're paying right it's kind of like how like website it's it's the same thing with like a lot of web web design where like a lot of websites will have like this like big overhaul of the ui and oftentimes it'll suck and then they'll have to and that's really just because they have a bunch of web designers and it's like well they're not doing anything so you got to pay them to do something and we got to justify like paying them and so they just change shit for the sake of changing and then it usually gets worse i feel like that's why every version of windows gets more and more fucking annoying yeah windows 95 was perfection perfection yeah i like windows 7 a lot i remember i remember windows 7 i really liked but that's because i can't i went from windows vista oh i had a vista machine too vista was i liked to be fair to vista great startup sound i think that might be one of my favorite startup sounds the windows vista one there's something about it's like nostalgic to me but everything else about it was terrible if you bought a consumer computer in like that in like the first two quarters of 2007 you got windows vista and that was when i bought a laptop in that space that's when i got yeah i think like there was a very short there was a very short window where part of the pun where like you had a had to do it yeah um yeah it's interesting because premiere subscription but apple's program final cut is pay once which is nice and they've updated it continually for free yeah i learned recently that people were so all of the macs in an apple store have a final cut installed on them and apparently you could go if you were like taking your mac into the apple store you could go on one of those demo computers and airdrop final cut to your computer it wouldn't update but it was the most recent version people were just like going in and airdropping themselves final cuts awesome that's that is that's absolute absolute cinema yeah yeah i'm wondering if they change that or they fix that that but uh how much is final cut though like is that a uh i think i want to say it's like i'm looking at a hundred bucks that's not bad at all i'm not even exaggerating this is a one-time purchase of 299.99 oh shit way more expensive i mean honestly that's not i'm i would for a good version of premiere and my favorite version of premiere i think was like 2017 2016 era i think like that's that was when it was like i think like perfectly balanced but like i would pay i would probably pay a thousand dollars probably for that just to have it and never have to pay again and like update it and not have to even though that's probably more than i would pay for like a year or whatever probably wouldn't be actually no you would get to that cost in like a year and change of cloud but i'm saying i would pay a premium just to have the software like i really would but like it bothers me that that's not even an option yeah apple when i bought it um holly was still doing like voice lessons and teaching so i bought the pro app bundle for education which includes final cut and all their audio software for 200 and they never try to verify if someone's a teacher so i mean yeah or a student or whatever just just get that pro app old dude 200 bucks yes you beat yeah i hate i hate adobe but i'm also captive to it i'm so good at using yeah i mean it's that's the only thing i know how to use i mean that's that's why people ask me like why don't you use this or the other thing like dude you have to understand that when nick scarpino taught me how to use premiere it was like one of the hardest things i ever did in my entire life and i i can't and i'm fairly efficient at it and i don't like with what i need to do i don't know any i know five percent of what premiere can do but i can i can use it to what i need to do with it and it's like i can't i can't begin to do this i used to be pretty proficient with after effects but i they changed that again they changed it so much that i'm like i don't know what the fuck i don't know what i'm doing anymore so it's frustrating i mean this even this goes in the games too like and the and the hesitance of a of an of a consumer base to react in a way that would change things that i think of ea sports and other sports games too it's like you don't need to make madden every year no you're choosing to do this and actually i'm surprised that madden isn't just a subscription where i think they would actually just make more money and just say we're going to update this package called madden on a constant basis forever and you subscribe for i don't know 9.99 a month or something and i actually don't know i i the i think you're probably right the well the sports games like the annual sports games began in the snes and genesis era that's like where it comes from and it makes sense in that era because the games were getting better and you could do so much more in nine months than you can do now like the jumps between like nhl 94 and nhl 97 or whatever on snes are pretty substantial um and they were updating the rosters which was really the most important part because the roster was kind of frozen and i told you guys that it was a very nerdy thing but people used to do this with ea sports games where you'd have like the game like ea nhl 95 has a roster it's the roster of nhl 95 but it was only accurate for like when they launched the game and then people start getting traded and moved around and there was nothing they could do about that and people like me used to go into the transaction section of the local newspaper and do the transactions ourselves to keep the teams accurate which was fun but then it's like no well now we'll release the next one it'll have an updated more accurate roster and that was but like you don't need to do that anymore now that's for 20 years they've been updating the rosters like daily digitally like when a deal happens and it's like so you're even removing like one of the major components of why it was important to buy the new one and i just wish some i they're never going to do it because it's a cash cow obviously but i actually think if you were really patient and built something and built trust and really made it great you wouldn't get more customers spending more money um on yeah i don't know i just i and i'm part of the problem because i bought every nhl game for fucking 20 years i bought shit ton of madden games and baseball games and like i was part of the problem So it's not like I was any different.

1:03:51All right. The big news of the week, as we had mentioned briefly earlier, is that Sony is suing the Chinese publisher Tencent over the blatant copying of Horizon and the Horizon IP with the game. And I don't know how to say this game. This is what we were saying on or I was saying with Hogue. It's light of motor room is what I've been saying, but I'm sure it's got some weird saying. It's light of M-O-T-I-R-A-M. And we talked about this game when it was announced, and I had said that this is insanity. In my opinion, now. I was interested in talking to hope because there's really two components of it, and I think it's fairly obvious.

1:04:34First of all, have you guys read deeply into this at all? I did put I don't expect you to necessarily read it, but I read the entire complaint. It's on script. You guys can read it out there if you want. yeah it's called sony um versus tencent and i guess the it says via aftermath so it must be the aftermath the website aftermath paid for this shareable scribd link i assume i don't know um so the website or i'm sorry that it's being it was filed in northern california and it's sony interactive entertainment versus tencent a cayman islands corporation and then a bunch of holding companies, including Aurora Studios, which is the studio that's making the game and Level Infinite, which is Tencent's Western publishing arm.

1:05:19And they demand a jury trial. So as I said earlier in the show, I did a very deep dive into this with Hogue from a legal perspective. And you guys should go listen to that on Sacred Symbols Plus on Patreon.com slash Last Day Media. So I have some thoughts I'll share here, but we go really deep into it there. but I did want to get you guys on the record about what you think of this the holy hand grenade of Antioch wrote in and said hey SS boys I'm curious what your take is on Sony suing Tencent for their Horizon ripoff light of motor room when I heard Sony was suing and that Tencent tried to license Horizon early on in development I thought yeah that's suspicious the game is obviously a ripoff but can Sony truly win a lawsuit like that but I heard this morning that Sony tried to do things behind the scenes by bringing their concerns to Tencent earlier this year and again Tencent tried to get Sony to license Horizon for their game with that new info this now seems like it could be a slam dunk for Sony.

1:06:05What do you guys think? Is Sony going to have a leg to stand on here or will Tencent get away with a blatant ripoff? Keep on keeping on. Dustin, what are your thoughts?

1:06:14Colin Moriarty:Yeah, well, I went back and I was watching the reveal trailer from eight months ago just to refresh myself. And it's like, holy shit. Obviously, we watched it back then and said the same thing, but it was just a nice reminder that's like, yeah, this is completely blatant. And while I did not read every page of this, the legal document about all this, I was reminded about how Tencent approached Sony about making a Horizon game. And they said, no, thank you. And they were like, OK, well, we're just going to do it anyway. Just kind of change some things around. It's like, yeah, well, that's pretty fucking obvious by the trailer.

1:07:00So, yeah, I don't know.

1:07:04Colin Moriarty:I'm curious about your conversation with Hogue. I haven't edited or listened to it yet, but so I don't know how these proceedings work and like what kind of definitive proof or whatever. But to me, in my limited knowledge, it just feels like a complete slam dunk. um the other thing that i just found interesting about this document is how they like snipped out things that people said on the steam page so just anything you say out there on the internet and on the internet a tweet a post on a steam thing it could end up in a legal document yeah yeah and be read by lawyers and and people uh it could be part of a trial like this one i was uh it's funny you say that because when i was reading it i'm like i wonder if we're in here um because we were definitely really critical of it too but we weren't um yeah all right well chris let's get you on the record what do you think about this lawsuit and the copying and um obviously we're not lawyers but yeah but i wonder how it strikes you because i have a lot to say about this actually um from a different angle than the legal angle which is the creative angle the bankruptcy angle um yeah but yeah what do you think i mean that's more the angle that i would come at it too because i look i don't know i don't know like legal shit i have no clue and a lot of these and a lot of legal terminology is specifically made to be confusing in the first place so you don't so you don't really understand your rights but this is pretty clear to me like it's it seems like an obvious to me it looks like a slam dunk kind of case like everything from like the promo imagery to like the the the cover art to um character design like it looks like even just looking at certain screenshots like it looks like horizon and it's it looks more like horizon than anything else that i've ever seen looks like anything else if that makes sense you know like i don't i don't know of any other more direct obvious kind of like that's clearly this in history and i have to imagine that even cases that were less slam dunk than this have probably eked out in favor of like yeah that's that's a ripoff so like to me it looks like a slam dunk and they're probably going to they're probably going to win in some way which which i don't know what that necessarily means i don't know if that's like okay well that's the project is dead or if they have to go in and like retool everything or if that's even worth it but to me i look at this as like almost so clear um there's it's fucking crazy it's crazy there's like this um there's a page specifically that i was like i'm trying to find it i think it's page 28 yeah in the document where it's just like damn dude like just there's a bunch of art side by side and it almost looks like it almost looks like they took like hey take this screenshot from horizon and reimagine it slightly because it's literally like even even the composition of these shots and the composition of the environments and even just like the color details of them the color palettes like everything is damn near identical and yeah if you scroll down and go if you go to page 30 you see like the tall grasses and shit like that like it they're both the same and then you scroll to page 31 you can see like the protagonists next to each other it's it's really yeah the it's actually great i'm sorry 34 too there's a top picture at the top like look at the color palettes of those two costumes like this is this is nuts you know it never ends so so blatant that yeah it's it's unavoidable like that they copied um yeah and and to be clear like this is because i feel like a lot of people or maybe it's because i'm just like minded in this way but like i feel like a lot of people are going to look at look at like maybe like the the bungee uh marathon stuff using the uh not the stolen art which is obviously stolen but like the just there was a lot of complaints about that game like stealing art styles or whatever but that's like that's a design language that exists like horizon isn't like an established design language it's not like what was the the design the uh the designer's republic right just like republic there's like an entire name for that entire aesthetic and that art style like the the simplified the monochromatic colors and the logos and the decals like that's a very specific kind of style that's kind of free form and you can use this is this is the horizon design aesthetic it's not it's not just the generalized idea like it's there's no question about it there's even character designs that are just like page 36 i mean every single page yeah the robots every single one the robots are damn near identical it's nuts dude um but what really gets me is like the color it's almost like like they didn't even try because i actually feel like they could have they could have probably had a case if they just didn't rip exact colored like at the very least like at a glance have it look different you know i mean harsher tone harsher colors that aren't in horizon or that aren't obviously analogous to horizon go stylize with like i don't know like have like a like a dragon ball like namek blue grass kind of thing and then you probably could have avoided a lot of a lot of this like change the color palette of like the the design the um what is it the outfit of the main character to not be like the the beige and blue and it's so clear yeah i mean it's i think they have him dead to rights and yeah i'll read a couple of interesting things from the i i went through obviously i read the entire complaint and here's a couple of interesting um pieces of information quote upon information and belief sometime in 2023 and unbeknownst to sony tencent started developing a video game called Light of Motor Room, which just like Horizon features a young, red-headed female protagonist and tribal groups fighting for survival among large robotic animals in a post-apocalyptic world.

1:13:00In March 2024, at a gaming conference in San Francisco, California, Tencent executives approached Sony with a pitch to develop its own Horizon game in collaboration with SIE. Sony rejected the idea and considered the matter closed. And then they say later in the complaint, quote, earlier this year, Sony had discussions with Tencent trying to informally resolve its concern that Light of Modern Room violated its intellectual property rights. Tencent again sought to license the Horizon intellectual property. Sony again communicated clearly and unequivocally that it would not license the Horizon assets to Tencent, objected to Light of Modern Room, and insisted that it be withdrawn.

1:13:33Tencent has since signaled that it rejected Sony's demands it would forge ahead, releasing a new promotional trailer for the game and announcing that in the near future, Light of Modern Room will commence global testing. Tencent has continued to release additional promotional material suggesting the game will soon be made available for playtesting. it's fairly obvious that they were building this under an assumption I don't know why they had the assumption that Sony was going to allow them to use Horizon there are a few things that are worth noting Sony has licensed Horizon there's the rumors of the NCSoft MMO but more recently obviously Lego Horizon and so maybe there was some expectation that they would get access.

1:14:19The crazier thing is that they kind of built this game in parallel. Like if they had permission to do it, they would have gotten all the assets and all the like the, you know, animation rigging and all the different things for the creatures. And so they like really, really went hard in doing it on their own. And I find it particularly weird why they why they even made the protagonist look like Aloy. Yeah, because if you read the complaint, what's clear is that they wanted to do a game that was based in China. like a Horizon spinoff. It says, quote, Tencent suggested that the pitch game could maintain Horizon's open world setting, but introduced Eastern aesthetics to the Horizon franchise and incorporate gameplay elements such as survival and crafting, pet taming, multiplayer game modes, etc.

1:15:00The pitch deck included mockups of Eastern inspired designs and settings, including one of Aloy, Horizon's lead female character standing on the Great Wall of China. At no time during this meeting, the Tencent disclosed that it was already working on a game that was based on the Horizon IP assets end quote um and on april 8th sony signaled of um 2024 signaled finally that like it's we're not doing this like this isn't happening and so they went ahead again i highly recommend and we had said that there's a lot of imagery pages 28 30 31 33 34 36 37 if you guys read the complaint all have a lot of imagery screenshots artwork and all these things side by side that really show how brazen this is um but i think the bigger thing that i wanted to say here oh actually there's one other piece of information people might be interested in which is that and it said this in the complaint quote tencent boasted that its aurora studios development team included die hard fans of the horizon franchise and provided screenshots of team members purported trophies earning earned playing horizon games and a photograph of the tencent team playing a horizon game at work together i mean i don't know how much more yeah i mean dead to rights you can get than this.

1:16:07But the bigger thing that I was saying, and this is not a legal issue, is how bereft of any sort of creativity do you have to be to do something like this? I understand designing something. We always talk about Sly Cooper 4 that was designed partially in secret at first and under an assumption that they would get the work and it would have been outrageous for them to release a game that was Sly Cooper if they didn't get permission at Sanzaru. And that's what they were planning on doing here and i'm surprised that people aren't more even aghast at this like this is so i felt like this about pal world to a degree i felt like this about vampire survivors to a degree in recent memory where i'm like this is kind of shameless and crazy i mean we're making a game of lilymo right now that is obviously and when you see it will be clearly and obviously inspired by a specific series but it's not that series right like everything about it's different it's the trappings that are different it's what makes it different it's all the stuff in the seems.

1:17:05This is just horizon and it's fucking lame, lame. It's not because I love horizon and I like gorilla and all these things. I had nothing to do with that. It's just fucking lame. And that's the way I felt about power world where I'm like, we all know what you did, whether or not you like are going to get away with it. We all know what you were inspired by and what you were copying. I mean, it's, you have to be a fucking brain dead not to see that. Right. And the same thing with vampire survivors but whatever this is way worse because it's everything vampire survivors is a totally different kind of game than castlevania right uh pal world is a totally different kind of game than pokemon it just borrows aesthetics of the creatures and in some ways i in my opinion steals them but this is just timu horizon and they can't get away with it and i would say this is about a fucking xbox game or an activision game or a nintendo game like you can't get away with it right um now i wonder what you guys think of this hoge has a theory that tencent is trying to basically force in some way sony to give them the horizon franchise like the ip that that there's a possible outcome of this that this becomes a horizon game um and i'm like i just don't think you can play around with terrorists like that like i think you've got to like shut the whole thing down you gotta protect like your ip they say horizon has sold 38 million copies which is a lot and that quote si considers its rights in the horizon franchise to be among its most valuable intellectual property end quote so i like that idea i like out of the box thinking like that and maybe that's the idea is like we come to an agreement and he was basically saying tencent goes to sony and says like listen you can make a lot of money like let's just end this but i think sony's got to be like we don't need your plus we have other horizon games in in development that we care about not everything that has horizon branded on it by the way as a hit i don't think call the mountain or lego horizon were good games to be perfectly honest so um i don't know man i just just from a creative point of view it's just like damn dude this is so brazen and fucked up and you are so dead to rights from my perspective on meeting with them and clearly trying to pitch this very game to them as a horizon game so it is a horizon game i i just wonder what's going to happen so yeah i don't i don't know the answer this maybe you do um maybe it's a question for hoag but like in the situation where sony takes

1:19:34Colin Moriarty:them to court and wins would that also apply in china like is it possible that they're like oh well we'll really you've you successfully blocked this game from releasing in the west but uh we're just going to go ahead and release it here in china where on steam they'll still sell millions of copies potentially based on other games that have, you know, like a seller blade, which sold insane in China and things like that. Yeah, that's a great question. I did ask a similar question to Hogan. I think his notion was they could do that and they might do that. But this is like when it starts creating really serious problems between the companies, because one of the things I asked him was Tencent has a lot more going on than just this game.

1:20:18And I was like, how legal would it be for Sony to say, like, until this is cleared up, like you're not publishing anything on PlayStation. Like the answer is no. And that would, we agreed. And I mean, he would know more than me, but like that would bring a lot of regulatory ire onto Sony by like using one part of their businesses leverage to kind of get something out of the other part of their business. But Tencent, it would really, I think hurt. My theory on this is that Tencent needs PlayStation a lot more than PlayStation needs Tencent because Tencent needs to proliferate their games in a major way.

1:20:48And PlayStation is going to be the biggest console for them to do that. So without PlayStation, they're screwed and this game wasn't announced for playstation but it was announced only nebulously for consoles because remember what at the time i'm like how is sony gonna let that i remember saying this on the show i definitely did where something to the effect of like how can sony let this on the playstation network it's the highest budget clone that they could possibly publish um onto the platform we we bitch about all these things all the time and they're gonna do with a hundred million dollar game or whatever it is it just seems totally nuts in my opinion so um definitely go listen to the sacred symbols plus episode there's a lot to get into with this markham wrote in and said howdy boys i assume you've seen the news about light of modern room going around but why now why not when the game was first shown off eight months ago it's a bit weird how this is happening now if you look at the gameplay from eight months ago you can see it's more than horizon that's copied destiny monster hunter arc how much trouble will this cause and will it how will it even come out at all i don't agree that it's i mean i did look at the gameplay and yeah there are other elements to it but it's so clearly horizon that i think there's And you're asking, why did it take so long?

1:21:51Because the reason that there's statutes of limitation is obviously to stop people from doing something far ahead of time, or later on, rather, from something that happened more recently. But it also gives people a grace period to figure their shit out, get their ducks in a row. And what's clear is that Sony was trying to solve this problem behind the scenes and getting their things together, utilizing the time that's at their disposal. It's very similar to what happened, the same exact time kind of period happened with Pal World. Nintendo didn't say anything immediately. They said something later when they were ready to go.

1:22:22So I don't look at the timing as anything conspicuous. They're a big company and they have to cross their T's and dot their I's. Michael Buffal has an interesting exit question. He says, hey, Sacred Crew, with the recent report, Horizon Zero Dawn as a franchise, not Zero Dawn, but Horizon, has sold 38 million units. Can we accept the fact that the haters of the franchise are just a loud minority? Is Sony flirting with oversaturation? maybe but i'm willing to bet the obvious third mainline game is going to sell several million copies then hopefully gorilla games will move on thanks and i'll turn the gas for the i'll turn on the gas for the stove and listen that's great michael um you're never going to convince the horizon hater so it's better not even to try 38 million copies is nothing

1:23:08Colin Moriarty:well i think a lot of horizon haters are part of the people that bought it you know what i mean like they bought they maybe even bought both of them and then we're like yeah these games are not well maybe ranging from hate to being eh because I mean I'm in that camp where I've well I've bought every Horizon game but Lego and I think they're they're fine they're good I guess I'm not in the Horizon hate camp though yeah you could still be in that camp and think that they're oversaturated or on the verge of getting oversaturated yeah I even question the oversaturation thing but I get it. I get that more.

1:23:48It's a series that only has four games in seven years. Eight years, actually. I don't know. It's getting there. Only two mainline ones. I'm very excited about the third one whenever you see it. Actually, playing Death Stranding 2 has only made me more excited about it, as I said, a week or two ago because it's all built in Decima and it's going to be beautiful. There's just... It's going to be mind-blowing how good it looks, especially because they're going to be only on PS5 probably for this next one, I would assume. I would hope. all right so anything else to say about this we'll have to chronicle this i don't know how the i mean i don't have enough knowledge to know how this is all going to play out but i'm sure this is a pretty serious thing um horizon is no small thing so i would uh i guess my closing

1:24:30Colin Moriarty:thought is that sony is taking it very seriously when someone copies their ip um i would hope that maybe they would start taking it seriously when rip-offs of other games are appearing on their store with no issues at all. Like whatever the latest Steam craze is, you're going to get some shit out version of it on the PlayStation Store. They don't care at all. It's not their idea. Not at all. I get it that there's a lot more at stake for Horizon than a Schedule 1 clone. one of the many schedule one clones or tcg card shop sim or repo or all these games that have all these clones playstation store and they just don't do anything so it is a i'll just say a hair hypocritical there but i get it at the same time yeah yeah yeah that shit bothers the hell out of me because that happened with mouth washing as well yep dude they they pop up fucking I bet you there's a peak club or announced or something that's going on the PlayStation store yeah it'll be called tip or something it'll be called peak P I Q U E yeah yeah or P E E K which would be stupid but whatever maybe it's a tongue tongue tongue Sahur fucking peak game God bless well we'll keep an eye on this little guerrilla warfare as it were oh that's a great name yeah that's that's what i'm gonna call the i already wrote it down that's what i'm gonna call the episode um and uh i hope they triumph not because i again not because i have any care for this i do i do love horizon but i just think the shape the shameless shit needs to be shut down like no way man and tencent can release their china slop in china if they want but and we went then you know we in the west might not be able to stop them but gotta do something about western markets and then if steam put that game up like how does that affect the relationship with Sony, like would they be willing to do that?

1:26:31There's like a bunch of very complicated relationships here that come into play and who's willing to do what for who and whatnot. I don't know. Okay. Another piece of big news that would have been the big piece of news this week, if not for the horizon lawsuit or the 10 cent Sony lawsuit is that there's this job opening at Sony that's listed on their greenhouse.io website. It's for senior director of Multi-Platform and Account Management, hiring in their headquarters in San Mateo, just outside of San Francisco. And it's for, by the way, remote, okay. West Coast preferred. Overview, quote, reporting to the Vice President Commercial Management as Senior Director of Multi-Platform and Account Management, you will play a critical leadership role in shaping and executing the global commercial strategy for PlayStation Studios software titles across all digital platforms beyond PlayStation hardware, including Steam, Epic Game Store, Xbox, Nintendo, and mobile.

1:27:28This role is accountable for optimizing title profitability, ensuring cross-functional alignment, and leading a high-performing team focused on multi-platform expansion, mid-range commercial planning, and platform partner management, end quote. And then they list out some key responsibilities. Multi-platform strategy leadership oversee the out-of-year mid-range commercial strategy for PlayStation Studios titles across all non-PlayStation platforms driving long-term revenue growth and audience reach. cross-functional planning lead the commercial contribution to playstation studios mid to long range planning ensuring siu leadership is informed with data-driven insights and strategic perspectives and so on and so on and so on um by the way this job will pay between 246 000 and 369 000 a year so not so bad a job they're they're you know treating fairly seriously and qualifications are high minimum 10 plus years of experience in games publishing and so on and so forth um this has created an enormous amount of chatter um obnoxiously so just because i think that people are vastly overreacting to this but it's really unknowable with hell divers 2 i mean lego horizon to a degree but with hell divers 2 coming to xbox and um anything's really possible so who knows what the plans really are.

1:28:44But my gut instinct is that, well, I'll save my theory. I want to hear from you guys first. Dustin, let's go to you first. What did you make of this? What do you make of the chatter about this? Will you apply for the job?

1:28:54Colin Moriarty:Dude, I don't have that 10 years of experience, but I mean, fake it till you make it for$246 ,000. Let's go. But yeah, there has been a huge stink over this. I've seen even people say that it's like the Xbox four games moment this job listing like comparing it to that which i think is insane um you are correct colin that we don't know what's going to happen and so i'm not here like saying like no absolutely we're not going to see the big playstation first party games on other you know nintendo or or xbox i don't think it's out of the realm of complete possibility but when we're looking at this job listing it's like dude playstation as it stands today is multi-platform and has been really i guess you could even argue since the beginning of the generation when they were forced to yeah with the show so they've been multi-platform there um of course you mentioned helldivers is the most recent example and helldivers is a big sea change there's no doubt about that like that's a that's a big mlb the show is different this is i mean mlb the show is huge um but it's different so it i just want to reiterate it is there's no doubt that anyone who acts like it's not a big deal that hell divers is coming to xbox it's that is a cope because it is a big deal right oh absolutely it's it's it's a huge deal um and we have other examples too um like pat upon and everybody's golf that are being released on nintendo switch as well as playstation so playstation is already deeply maybe not deeply but they have a strong presence in multi-platform and to the point where it's like yeah there's even a another game that's been announced that's going to be multi-platform with marathon is already announced for xbox and i would imagine that it's highly possible that other live service games will be multi-platform um just because that seems to be the nature of them and maybe that change starts with hell divers it's unfortunate we don't know what the details are behind the hell divers like the the reason behind it what they're thinking is whether it's something that arrowhead's pushing for or whatever i it's hard to know but a lot of people are jumping to get ready spider-man is coming to xbox last of us uncharted it's like no um my personal opinion is to take this job listing and then jump to that conclusion is crazy um is it impossible i guess not um because as you just mentioned colin hell divers 2 was something we didn't think that was possible so i don't want to say never on those things i'm just saying this evidence leading to that as as this is some kind of major strategy change doesn't make any sense to me this has been the strategy for a while now and yeah we saw a big jump with hell divers but um it's not surprising that playstation particularly in live service will continue to push multi-platform um and with those smaller titles on on switch and lego horizon and moving things to where they think they will make money from that won't hurt their core business as well right right yeah well said chris where are you on this on the whole reaction on the job listing what it means and take it any way you want yeah i mean i think people are jumping the gun a little bit but i think it's it's it's pretty clear that a playstation is in a place today that they weren't many many years ago that they're going to be publishing more games on more platforms than they ever have probably like i would imagine that that's the case um specifically just even just the way they licensed um you know horizon for nintendo uh and obviously mlb the show and now hell divers marathon upcoming um i just feel like they understand it's like okay well this is happening more than it ever has we should probably know our way around this uh or at least dedicate resources to to uh to this strategy going forward because this will happen again um whether that be and by the way like they're working with a lot of licensees and so like i i know i don't think last of us has any shot of ending up on xbox or any other platform necessarily i don't think uh you know um a lot of the first party so like god of war or anything but i do think i do think things like spider-man are kind of like i don't foresee that happening but that's kind of in some way that's not necessarily 100 up to them and so like i think they kind of have to be flexible in that way where it's like okay well there i could see spider-man demanding so much money at a certain point like i could see that hypothetical future where it's just like you got to put this everywhere i don't think that's necessarily going to happen at all really but i could see that being possible because that's not their ip and so i mean it's kind of what happened with mlb so i think they're just kind of looking to the future and being like okay things are getting more agnostic than they ever have been we should probably position ourselves to understand how this space works and have people dedicated to figuring out the problems that will arise.

1:34:20Colin Moriarty:And it makes sense to me. I don't think it indicates God of War is going to show up on the Xbox Series X 2 or whatever. But but I think I don't know. We're still waiting on that Wolverine thing, and I don't even know what the hell is going on with Wolverine. But yeah, we'll talk about that later in the show. Actually, someone wrote in about it. I have it in the inquiries at the end of the show. So yeah, we'll get deeper into Wolverine. All right. So here are my thoughts on this is that I think anything's possible. I think that's fairly clear. Hell divers coming to Xbox is something I would have never imagined.

1:34:57And I think I understand the strategy. If it's going to be a games as a service based strategy, as I've said, when the news was announced, I think they should just do it right away. I think they have more to gain from getting a higher cumulative user base early than having the bump later of Xbox players. And I'm really curious to see how it does on Xbox. Yeah. Because I wonder, it's certainly in some way experimental. I think a lot of what happens in the future will be up to Xbox fans if they come out and support this thing. If you buy a million copies of Helldivers 2, which is in the realm of possibility, I think, then that's pretty nice.

1:35:35I mean, the money is irrelevant. They're going to make after cuts 30,$32 million or something. It's like not a lot of money, really. But they are going to make money on microtransactions, boost the player base, which is good for everyone. It keeps everyone around longer. So there are a lot of things to consider. But I think there are. So there are a few things that I was looking into about this. One is that there's an important piece in here. A few important pieces. If you read the. The listing. Quote, direct and develop a team of senior managers across multi-platform strategy, account management, platform sales and planning.

1:36:11direct reports include director multi-platform strategy and account management senior manager platform sales xbox and pc manager platform planning and performance pc and xbox these people are already working in these positions this is already the reality behind the scenes they're getting someone above them to manage it all because it's probably being managed within playstation studios hierarchy and it's becoming a problem for them not because they give a shit about the multi-platform stuff, but it's just a distraction. It's not what they really are focused on. So we need a different vertical of people, like a different silo of people that are going to deal with this.

1:36:45And those people need to be split off. And then they're going to have a person above them that is helping them work. So it says direct and develop a team, but these people are already working on all this stuff. And it's obviously true because games are already coming to Switch. Games are already coming to Xbox. Games are already coming to PC. Games are already coming to, you know, mobile is the one thing where they haven't gotten anything out, at least in any recent years at all. So that's one important piece is that like people are acting like this announces the status quo has changed. But I would say that the status quo is already clearly changed, not only by virtue of Helldivers and the Bandai Namco stuff, but also because these people are already working under these titles there.

1:37:21So I don't know that it's that big of a deal that they've announced this this job because people are already in the trenches doing the work. But there are other things that I want to kind of address here. I am having a really hard time squaring. Now, it's important to note strategies change. So the outcome of one strategy could be kind of going and a new strategy could be kind of coming up and that could be one explanation. But it simply makes no sense that Bandai Namco's licensing of Sony games explicitly excludes Xbox platforms. Freedom Wars is not on Xbox. Everybody's Golf is not coming to Xbox.

1:38:01Patapon didn't come to Xbox. They came to Switch. They came to PC. They came to the PlayStation platforms and so on and so forth. You have to square that with the idea that they're not going to give you freedom wars, but they're going to give you God of War. It's too much of a stretch to license a game to Bandai Namco and then let Bandai Namco themselves bring the game to Xbox, but they're going to do it with God of War or The Last of Us. That makes no sense. The only explanation is that it's simply not happening the way people are saying or the strategy has changed. And I've seen some reaction being like, well, so Bandai Namco doesn't see Xbox as a profitable platform.

1:38:42They're just not bringing the games voluntarily. And I'm like, that's not true. I'm looking at a list of games that they've published over the last five, six, seven years. They never skip Xbox. There are games, quote unquote, that you wouldn't expect for them to do well on Xbox and probably don't do well on Xbox that they still bring to Xbox. Tales of Grace's F remastered is a good example. You think that that's selling fucking you think that's moving units? They brought it to Xbox Series X or they're bringing it to Xbox Series X and Xbox one. Right. Sword Art Online Fractured Daydream came to Xbox.

1:39:17Digimon Storytime Stranger came to Xbox. Sandland came to Xbox. You know, it's like, what do we do? What are you talking about? you you don't you you think it's a you think it's bandai namp you think bandai namco licensed these games from sony and then they themselves made the decision not to bring them to xbox am i understanding this that makes no sense that bandai namco doesn't behave like that they do exclusives mostly for switch and mostly for ios or android or like mobile devices but when it comes to console they come to everything they've been like that for a long time they have been bandai namco was one of the first companies to really start prioritizing xbox back during like dark souls for instance um so that's not the explanation i don't think and if you can't square those two things then the only other explanation is that the strategy is changing which again is possible but does that make sense to you guys you can't possibly justify a sub licensing of your old of old irrelevant franchises which you are peddly keeping away from xbox clearly but then you're like, yeah, take the last of us.

1:40:24That just doesn't make sense. Sorry. Now, is that what's going to happen? I don't know, but that just doesn't make any sense. And I have not seen a good explanation for it.

1:40:35Colin Moriarty:Honestly, I initially did agree with that point until I realized it was Bandai Namco and their history, because there are a lot of companies that will choose to skip Xbox. And I think that's where that line of thinking comes from. But when you look at Bandai Namco specifically, they are not one of those companies that does that. No, not at all. And that's what changes the whole dynamic. So it's like, I get the line of thinking, but it doesn't, it just doesn't fit with Bandai. Captain Tsubasa rise of new champions came to actually know that that one didn't that one only came to switch windows. Let's see what else is on here.

1:41:13That's funny. So anyway, you guys can go look, there's a Wikipedia page list of Bandai Namco video games. You can see for yourself. They don't skip Xbox. So that's not happening voluntarily. That's part of the deal. now those deals were probably made a couple years ago because these are ports and they're coming out kind of staggered so again strategy could have changed but those two things don't make any sense and that's the one thing that really stuck out to me about this when people i and one of the reasons why i think people are really jumping the gun what's funny about spider-man is that i think spider-man could be one of the games because i think i explained this at the time it's like if you think about the core playstation franchises that are most important spider-man would be the most likely to get picked off because it's not really theirs and yeah as you said chris the licensing the leverage of licensing it's not like they have to pay so they probably pay for access but really they're paying for copies sold on each copy sold so it's not like they have this onerous bill that they have to pay but they probably look at it and say like well because of the license we're just making so much less money and so we actually need to spread the field to make enough money um so it's not even a satiate marvel as much as it's to say like we can actually make more income and that brings me into my next point which is like this entire idea like well they just want to make money they'll sell millions of copies of these games i'm like yeah they would sell millions of copies of the games i mean if spider-man came to xbox they would sell a million copies at least right if if uh the last of us or god of war i mean these would be huge games but it's not all about making money on game sales i don't know what people don't understand about this

1:42:31Colin Moriarty:yeah it's about establishing a platform and building it's yeah spider-man is weird because that was one of the games i remember initially like when spider-man was announced i remember thinking like oh it's weird that it's not coming to xbox like i understand i understand i understood that it was insomniac and it's a first party studio and all that but it's it is weird to have an ip that's so broad and so big that skips an entire especially at that time where it's not like today where you could make the argument that xbox is just objectively like kind of like a dying leaf on the vine um back then it was it was it was still not super it was they weren't there was no comparison between xbox and playstation at that point even still but there They were more robust and more of a serious kind of player in the space back then.

1:43:17Colin Moriarty:So even back then, it was just like, oh, it's weird that this big IP that, by the way, has been on Xbox for fucking eternity the entire time that Xbox has been a thing. I remember the first game that I I think the first game that I ever played on my Xbox that I got was the first Spider-Man game. That was the movie based Spider-Man by Treyarch and Activision. So that at the time, I remember feeling, well, that's kind of lame because that's. everybody wants to play spider-man you'll make a ton of money everywhere but i understood it obviously like first party and all that so that i could see um and other licenses i could see but last of us ain't the last of us is not coming next that would be that would really surprise me i mean i'll say i mean i said it on our episode or the episode i did with hogan maddie where i was like i'll be right with everyone if they do shit like that like or with a lot of people are being like you're making this is stupid and you're making a fucking huge mistake um it's not all sony doesn't make a majority of its money on its own games i mean everyone knows this already it you have to watch out for your storefront and drawing people and keeping people spending money on your platform it doesn't even matter about your own games again 52 of all revenue comes from 10 games none of which they own so this is all you know eating around the edges And that's where revenue, you know, you could find growth and all that kind of stuff.

1:44:44And it doesn't mean that these games wouldn't make sense in some ways on Xbox. And I've been very aggressive about Switch 2 and PC especially, which they're going to continue to pursue. But I don't see that. I personally do not see the logic in bringing your AAA or anything to Xbox. I mean, I think the Helldivers 2 and the games as a service stuff you can make an argument for. I think that's really where it ends. The reason I feel that way is because Xbox hardware is becoming increasingly irrelevant. All you have to do is wait a little while and you'll be able to sell games on Xbox through Steam.

1:45:16Why don't you just wait? Just be patient, like wait them out. You don't need to help them. That's the weird thing from my perspective is like these these are corporate rivals and you should see that what you're doing makes no sense when it gets to a certain degree. I think held Irish to again. Fine. It's like whatever. I mean, ultimately, any of it is whatever. What are we going to do? but yeah i do think that there's a different level of sense being made and as as laissez faire as i've been with them bringing games to pc and nintendo i don't think that translates to xbox i simply don't like i just don't think all these create competitors are created equally i think they have more to lose from engaging with xbox than they do the other places where they don't really compete with them that's why it's different doesn't make sense what do you think of the the the idea that i mean it's pretty clear that

1:46:08Colin Moriarty:xbox is kind of a dead man walking in a lot of ways and i think what do you think of the idea that's just like well they're not really a threat anyway even even in the even in the way that i think we're thinking of it in like an older lens because we've been there to see it but like i think just objectively when you look at just like their propensity to or that audience's propensity to buy games and the proliferation of those consoles on the market where like this isn't really a it kind of isn't that big of a deal for us to bring certain things over because it's it's not really going to it's not really going to materially help them that much at all the people who are still there i have to imagine that somebody who is on xbox today who hasn't bought the first spider-man already or who hasn't gone to ps4 to play the first spider-man for what was that 2018 that game came out were they ever going to it's kind of like the pc argument in some ways like were they ever really going to cut like what's the harm in in milking that audience for money also even if it even if it's chump change by comparison like 32 million dollars is not a lot for a company like that but it's not necessarily nothing um and i was looking just to make sure like there's the argument of like platform degradation or the idea of just like you're you're missing a you're giving something away that is identifiable to the platform.

1:47:34Colin Moriarty:And I was kind of just curious. And I looked at like, when did the Metal Gear, those Metal Gear games come to, and I know it's not first party, right? But that's like a, that's like a Metal Gear Solid is like deeply associated with PlayStation to the point where even still to this day, even though it's a multi-platform game, like people, that's a PlayStation IP that came to 360 in like 2011. So that was only like, maybe like 10 years, you know? I think Metal Gear Solid 2 came to the original Xbox. Yeah. and so like oh like a subsistence or something yeah yeah so like i don't know like i think there's an argument to be that like as long as you spend enough time being primarily associated with one platform you kind of don't really lose anything by bringing things over because ultimately even as even if xbox were to get a insomniac spider-man in this hypothetical reality like that would still ostensibly be a playstation game so i don't know yeah the spider-man stuff's interesting too because technically insomniac was second party at that time which is what made it more peculiar they weren't purchased till after spider-man came out so right so i think from that from your perspective it's like yeah that was weird um but marvel has had a propensity to work on exclusives with everyone i mean we just saw or disney it's like indiana jones although they ended up migrating that over blade was obviously always coming to playstation that was probably always the plan but marvel ultimate alliance 3 is a switch game which is weird um so so they they were willing to play ball with different iron man vr was a psvr game so um that's i don't know yeah i don't know man i here's like i think again i think that it's xbox is different than the others and you might be right it might be that actually none of them are really overlapping with each other much anymore that they're all kind of ping-ponging off of each other but i think we can be really confident that that's true with playstation switch and pc and i think the diminishing returns on pc ports is really just from a lack of novelty.

1:49:28I truly believe that because I think it was just more novel up front. Whatever game you released up front was going to sell the most or more than the copies that are selling now, even though the games are better now. So that's why I feel safe there or like Sony should feel safe where it's like, yeah, we have a lot to gain actually from doing that. I don't know about this Xbox thing. And to me, like, I think the strategy should truly be like, listen, rumors are pretty heavy that they're going to open up other storefronts on their next Xbox. We just don't have to play ball with them. We don't have to risk anything.

1:49:54and all we're going to do is leave a little bit of money on the table. Our split, you know, from their perspective is going to be the same regardless of who we sell through. They won't get any of the money if we just wait and further push people towards PlayStation. I think that's the obvious strategy and people acting like it's just chasing raw sales on games. I don't think that's the strategy. Like I because if that's the strategy, I've said it before. If that's the strategy, why the fuck am I not playing Mario Kart on my PlayStation right now? if that's like everyone's ultimate goal is like maximize money made immediately it's like okay we'll release the game everywhere literally everywhere but that's not the way it works it's never the way it's that it's worked because there's more there are more considerations for those platform holders and do you yeah well i was gonna say do you think the west

1:50:46Colin Moriarty:is in particular more susceptible to this because of the costs that it takes to build games here versus you know building games in japan where they could be like yeah you know we don't actually need to maximize we don't need to make like 400 million dollars day one for this for this game because of or even in just like europe and other places where it's like significantly less um the cost of making a game is significantly less than here where it's like a lot of multi-platform migration for previously assumed exclusives is just kind of more like this might be kind of necessary i'm not saying i think that by the way i'm just like kind of yeah i don't know i don't know.

1:51:22All I know is that, could I see a future where God of War, 2018, Spider-Man, whatever coming to Xbox? Yeah, actually I can. Do I think that that would be a mistake? Yes. But they might make a lot of money in the short term and they might get data saying like you're saying, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it really doesn't matter. Maybe it's just noise on the internet, which is true for a lot of things. But I think they have to be very careful. Sony, in my opinion, needs to start talking. I've given them a lot of credit for staying quiet, but if they're really going to make moves like this and start doing things like this, they have to give like, I'm even a little, I'm not perturbed, but I'm surprised that they didn't use hell divers even as a chance to announce it on a PlayStation blog, explain what you're doing.

1:52:08Like talk to the audience, make things really clear. You have to communicate. You have to have some sort of calm strategy around this. You can't just do it. And if they get into hell divers is one thing. If they announce It's the last of us or whatever. It's like they have to have a strategy around that. That's going to be a big fucking deal. It might not ultimately matter. It might be noise on the Internet, but it's a big deal. It's a really fucking big deal. It's a sea change. So I understand people's confusion about this. But again, I think I just all go back to squaring the strategy as it is now with the way the strategy can go in the future and like what they're going to do and why you wouldn't just wait.

1:52:40Colin Moriarty:Yeah. And again, exploit switch, exploit switch to exploit PC. Be aggressive in those spaces. I've long said that I've been saying that longer than anyone in the space basically when people thought it was crazy I was like no do it do it it's good but not with your direct competitor that's I think they need you you don't need them yeah it's weird it's like it's like you're floundering and you're like and you're letting them and you're like yeah well let's make a little bit of revenue for you huh okay okay if you say so like if they make to wit it's like if they make a hundred million dollars gross on xbox on a game microsoft's getting 30 million of it like they're getting 70 it's not that it's it's nice and maybe it just doesn't matter to them it's just raw dollars but there's a risk behind every one of those dollars being earned you want to push people to playstation in my opinion i mean i think that's fairly obvious um anyway yeah i do think people are overreacting i do think but we'll see what happens anything's possible i mean there's no doubt about that i do think that i'm a little disturbed by the lack of in like from what i've been seeing just clicking around looking at things on social media and whatnot like there seems to be a lack of real critical thought around this issue and i'm not gonna use any names but like there are some people out there that i'm like that i like even where i'm like what are you doing dude the basing yourself like this anyway we just cut real quick because uh chris is now on the clock maybe we'll lose him at some point with the power who knows what happens we wanted to cash everything we had it's a mystery um or bank it i should say yeah and from the cash um i had some inquiries here that i've already listened like we already talked about this stuff so i did delete it but one thing that someone wrote in about was fray dizzle said lads this one is mainly for colin with hell divers 2 coming to Xbox.

1:54:40How do you think this will work? On one hand, Xbox has trained their players not to buy games a la carte. However, putting it on Game Pass surely will feel like a bit of a kick in the teeth of PlayStation users who had to or will have to pay for it. Curious how you think they will play this. Do they just put it on Game Pass and PS Plus at the same time? Surely this will set a precedent for any future titles brought over. It's not going to be on Game Pass, or at least not now. They're charging a la carte for $39.99, and people are able to pre-order it now. if they put their games on game pass that would be such a massive kick in the balls to their own fan base that like it's unthinkable that they would do that remember mlb the show was on game pass for several years but that was through mlb as the licensor and publisher of the game of the xbox version of the game so sony had nothing to do with that because sony would have never undercut themselves like that that's what was so funny about that it was like the first sony game going to xbox is in game pass it's so strange but they had no power over that i think that would be nuts to do.

1:55:35And they themselves, we know internally don't believe that money is to be made there. So why would they do it? That doesn't make any sense. People are going to have to buy their games there, whether they will or not is another thing entirely. I don't know if you saw Final Fantasy 16 sales on Xbox were bad. I mean, we talked about that, I think a week ago, and I'm like, that's fucking bad. I don't if Helldivers does Final Fantasy 16 numbers, which I don't think it will. I think it'll do way better. But if it does those numbers, man, then they're going to see there's no reason for us to even do this at all.

1:56:09So yeah, you're going to have to go out and buy it. And it is true. A lot of their fan base doesn't buy games or at least doesn't buy many games. We'll see how they come out with Helldivers. I think they realize over there, and they should, that this is a moment to tip the scales in their favor. All you have to do is show out. You buy Helldivers that buy the millions, you're going to have their attention. you know, anything to say about this otherwise before we move on?

1:56:36Colin Moriarty:No. All right. We'll see who ends up in that slot for what is it? Senior director, multi-platform and account management. We'll see who's overreacting, underreacting, who's right on how the strategy might be changing or staying the same. We all agree, right? That the strategy, if, if they do start bringing Xbox games over then, or PlayStation games to Xbox in a greater way, then the strategy has changed. I will say that yeah fair enough I think what you said earlier about was about Spider-Man in particular is like probably not but if it was going to happen Spider-Man makes the most sense as opposed to like God of War Last of Us because of that license money yeah alright let's see here I'm trying to get my dates right here alright so the next thing we're going to talk about here is God of War the TV show um there's some interesting information going around about this are you guys interested in the show at all like just by the man not not even not even a fucking millisecond like i i i just can't imagine how this is going to be because this is live action right this isn't animated yeah it's live action yeah i can't i don't know man i don't know if i care at all well the show was first kind of announced or at least acknowledged but in 2022 that amazon prime video was trying to get this going and Sony obviously Sony interactive entertainment was on board and the series was ordered at the end of 2022 and then I think they kind of like started going in a different direction and so Ronald D Moore is now running it Ronald D Moore of course is best known as the writer of the Battlestar Galactica revival and he did for all mankind as well on Apple TV which is supposed to be excellent I still have not seen all of it it's like an alternate history space race show.

1:58:31They're starting to do the rounds, and I think that they were making some appearances at San Diego Comic-Con specifically, so things are starting to get pretty serious. He told Collider, Collider.com, quote, and this is Ronald D. Moore, we're in the scripts phase. We're still working on scripts. It's going very well. We've got a good team. It's been a fascinating thing to sink my teeth into. I've never done an adaptation of a video game, and the deeper I got into it, the more impressed I was with the breadth and depth of the mythology that's involved in this video game. And he says, he gives a lot of credit rather to Corey Barlog.

1:59:02He says, quote, Corey Barlog is a genius. That's not a word I throw around very much, but I've had several meetings with Corey and you ask Corey, well, tell me about the backstory of this or how this works. And he can just talk because he holds it all in his head. And I usually pride myself about as a showrunner, I can hold a season in my head. I know what the 10 episodes are and I can tell you about them. Corey can tell you the whole thing in every possible way, all the mythology, how it connects one to the other, what the puzzles were, what they, why they did this and what this artifact did.

1:59:26It's really impressive. I mean, it's like a gigantic novel, even bigger than the outlander novels, which is a lot to digest. And then he later says, quote, this world and this universe are really rich and it's interesting and it's really been fun to adapt. It's an adaptation. So it's an adaptation slash interpretation as you go into live action. And it's been really fun to sort of go, wow, there's a lot here we can play with. OK, we want to keep the story. We want to keep the characters in the spirit of it. That's all the stuff that you that you can keep turning for two for inspiration. It's really been inspiring.

1:59:53um so amazon is apparently according to collider already ordered two seasons of the show so they're pretty confident in it and he said about that quote i personally never try to get too ahead of myself whether it's galactico or outlander or this i just try to say our job for now is to get from here to there let's just get from here to here and let's not worry too much about what's next season or the next three seasons are going to be so we really don't talk about that really honestly at all at this point so we have a little bit more information about this god of war show that might premiere as soon as 2026 though if they're still working on scripts i don't think that i think that's a fairly ambitious timeline i mean i would this is going to require a lot of post-production i assume and so i think 2027 is probably safer but we'll see um what are your

2:00:37Colin Moriarty:thoughts here chris god of war tv show yeah man i i don't know i feel this way about a lot of Sony IP or at least modern Sony IP contemporary Sony IP where I'm this is kind of already a TV show as it is like with respect like it like God of War is very narrative focused uh Last of Us is also very narrative focused and so to me like even just the Last of Us TV show kind of felt a little felt slightly redundant obviously there's value in it it's cool to get people who aren't normally into uh these IP or even this space in general to be you know invested in it it's interesting to see people's 70-year-old parents talking about The Last of Us.

2:01:15Colin Moriarty:That's cool. It's interesting. And there is definitely value there, if not necessarily direct, just at the very least from a community standpoint. It's cool. And I acknowledge that. And I'm sure this will do that for a lot of people. But for me personally, I just kind of feel like I don't know if I... What am I going to get out of a God of War TV show that I didn't really already get from the game? And the answer is, for me, I can only imagine that the answer is really not much in fact probably less because i actually kind of like the way that god war plays um and i i really like the the modern god war games i really loved the first one and and the second one i actually thought was criticisms aside i thought like uh it was a pretty solid game as well like we have a whole spoiler cast where we're i'm i'm gushing about it probably more than other people are but um so it's it's not like a like a bad series or anything i just i question what the value is for me personally out of this and then also i question how they're even going to make this not look insane that to me is like i i don't know how you i don't know how you cast i don't know how you cast kratos convincingly in live action without Without making it look uncanny or weird or like, I don't know.

2:02:36Colin Moriarty:I'm curious to see how they're going to do it, but I don't. I think I would be a lot more into this if it was animated, just because I feel like animation lends itself a lot more to that. It lends itself more well to a lot of things like I think comic book stuff should be animated primarily. Like, I think it's always the coolest shit like Spider-Verse. i think it's fantastic specifically because it it can capture certain things about these like larger than life characters that like live action can't really do and it always looks kind of it always looks kind of weird um god of war is kind of one of those things where like i would like a genji tartakovsky like animated god of war series would be fucking sick something like samurai jack i would love it um but i don't know the live action stuff is a little but uh i'm sure it'll be i'm sure it'll be successful i'm sure a lot of people will be talking about it that's for sure well yeah it seems like they're into it if they're already recording or already um ordering two seasons yeah they must have a lot of um they must have an idea of who they want to cast and what what the aesthetic will look like it's important to note dustin as we go over to you it seems like they're going to go with the god of war norse stuff i think we already knew that and i think that that is a wise idea in an interview with ign also given with Ronald D.

2:03:53Moore from San Diego Comic-Con. He was talking about how he doesn't play games and that he doesn't play the games, but that he was drawn to this particular world. And he says here, when asked about the tone of the show, quote, the tone of the show is trying to emulate the tone of the game, which is there's this epic journey, this heartfelt story of these two men setting out on this thing to honor the memory of his wife, Atreus, his mother. So it has this emotional heart, but there's this sense of history of who Kratos is, this mystery about his past, what he represents, the emotions that he's going through.

2:04:20So there's a weight to it, but not so much weight that there's not enjoyment along the way and there's spectacle and there's lots of things going on in the world so it sounds like the two games 2018 and ragnarok what are your thoughts

2:04:29Colin Moriarty:here yeah um this ign article in particular i was i was impressed with ronald d more in like his responses to a lot of these because first of all they do ask the like the oh so you haven't really played the game and he's like listen i i tried to play it it's just i can't like i'm He talks about that he used to play arcade games, but when he tries to play modern games, he just sucks. But he's clearly, through the other questions, deeply invested in the source material. And I think that one of the key differences, I think, when we're in these pre-release periods of these adaptations is that there are certain keywords that can sound alarm bells.

2:05:14Colin Moriarty:where it's like if he was like well we're drawing a lot of inspiration from the original games red flag um but that's not what he says he he's talking about the tone of the shows to emulate the tone of the game i think later in he talks about we want to respect the source material of the game and that's that's a green that's like the complete opposite for me as far as like what you want to hear from someone who is adapting something from you know the game to to uh tv so that's a little encouraging i do agree with chris that there's a way from a visual standpoint in terms of kratos himself that this could go horribly wrong um i in order to do this and i think make it somewhat convincing is that you're going to need to make kratos a little more grounded in reality yeah um because kratos is as realistic as these games look he is still a character human right he's stylized he's larger than life beefy boy um and they're just they can't do that on screen or it's going to look ridiculous.

2:06:32Colin Moriarty:But at the same time, you still want to have Kratos look like this literally godlike figure who towers above others. So from my perspective, the adaptation in terms of its writing, if these interviews are any indication, appear to be in good hands. And I think that's great. The key factor is going to just be the presentation of these. And that's the real risk factor of them. So it's one of those things we're not going to know until we see like there's eventually either going to be like a set picture that leaked or they're going to put out like the first promo, like the Harry Potter promos recently.

2:07:18Colin Moriarty:They put out the picture and everyone thought that Harry looked like a lesbian mom or something. That's like, oh, those poor kids, man. Right. I can't even imagine. yeah so at some point we're gonna find out i i think in my most optimistic viewpoint i think there is a way they can get it right um but it's going to have to take an incredible amount of restraint and an incredible level of balance um in order to not make it look weird uh the other surprisingly positive aspect of this is that while i have have been and continue to be not really into live action adaptations because i don't just i don't immediately think like oh live action that will make it not just better but cooler like oh it's real life now man you know like that doesn't necessarily do much for me but i could see some of these instances from this game that would look pretty sick um in live action and particularly thinking back if they do flashback sequences of you know him before the norse stuff i could see some of the grand scale of these looking amazing and being really cool but again it comes back to that they it seems like they got the writing down hopefully from what we can tell it's just gonna be how they handle that presentation and honestly a big part of it too is if the money is going to be there but as you noted colin they've already signed up for two seasons and netflix i don't know netflix is so hit and miss with budgets and what you think they should you you would think they would spend money on and other things they don't um i don't want to spoil it there there's something that's cg in the new squid game season that is so it is a literal disaster if maybe not disaster but it's so bad i'm like why netflix this is me well other than stranger things this might be your biggest show yeah probably worldwide your biggest show and this is the this is the c the best cg that you could come up with i don't know if there were laws that required this cg anyway i don't want to but the laws that are like this i'm sorry but like we're gonna arrest you if uh the cg is too good no no no no no no no i that is funny i know what you mean yeah yeah i i yeah i don't want to get into i don't want to spoil anything for anybody but um so i guess what i'll say is these interviews in particular left me feeling slightly more optimistic than before surprisingly yeah and to be fair um because that's netflix is pretty pretty hit and miss with that stuff i don't really i'm not that familiar because this is going to be an amazon show right i'm not even really familiar amazon i'm not even really familiar with like i don't think i've watched really much of i can't i think maybe the boys is the only thing that i've seen and i don't remember if there was any like offensively bad cg in that show and that's a pretty cg intensive show i would imagine um just from passive memories of watching it so like and i heard lord of the rings uh that lord of the ring show for as flawed as that was i think i heard that it looked pretty good so maybe maybe they maybe they had their money spent like a billion dollars on it right yeah i think well like i think they might have quite literally spent a billion dollars on that show that's fucking crazy rings of that's so that's so insane but uh yeah i'm not i'm not familiar enough with amazon's output from a consistency basis um outside of like the animated stuff which is what like uh what's the superman show invincible but that's animated so it's a different thing entirely maybe maybe god of war will look fantastic i don't know it would surprise there is there is something i think to this idea that they want to do a lot of these they just want to do live action they just feel like people take it more seriously and i think there probably is something to it unless you're going to do something like sly cooper or ratchet something that's inherently cartoony i mean imagine a live action ratchet and clank or a live action um sly or a live action jack be fucking disturbing we'll see what happens they say 2026 maybe i think 2027 seems more reasonable for this but what do I know?

2:11:52I just wanted to acknowledge this. I saw Push Square write about this, that over at, in China, at the China Joy 2025 conference in Beijing, which is a big games conference, PlayStation has a big presence there. And that they kind of talked about China Hero Project phase four, according to tweets from someone on the ground there, Daniel Camillo, that they've tweeted or that they've linked out to. Just wanted to acknowledge that China Hero Project is kind of cruising along. I was doing a little bit of research in preparation for the show. So as far as I can tell, out of all of the China Hero Project games that have been announced, so there have been 27 China Hero Project games.

2:12:3013 of them are still in development. Lost Soul Aside is going to be the next one out. And that comes out within the month, I think. And then so 13 of those are in development. 11 of them have released. The most recent being Evo Tinction, I want to say. And AI Limit was a recent one as well. And then three of them have been canceled. And they're not going to come out. So pretty good track record. for people that are unaware the china hero project and you can read about it on playstation's own website at the just google playstation china hero project is just a really nice incubation program as we've talked about many times on the show that sony has going in china to kind of help chinese developers find their way to playstation fund their games get them the pc as well different platforms and ultimately they come to other platforms as well for instance i think fist forge and shadow torch which was a fairly popular china hero project game that was a metroidvania 2.5 the metroidvania i think eventually came to xbox even so um these games will migrate everywhere but i just wanted to continue to give them a a lot of credit and um they apparently called out two different games that have already been revealed but that they're really excited about one is exilage which is a high speed third person a shooting game and dabba land of water scar is an action game we've talked about both of those in the past so just wanted to give those a shout out saw the news about that didn't want to ignore it um crispy wrote in and said we always hear about how bad it is for tencent and other chinese investments in gaming but we also hear about china hero project games why is one bad but the other is not both are communist um the honest answer is that i i actually think that there's a point here but i think that i would rather i think china is an ancient civilization full of brilliant people their government aside which many of them support obviously i think they have something valuable to say in the creative fields whether it's film or books obviously you know three body problem is a major example of a chinese book series that became huge in the west um so for me i just feel like it's is is it both bad maybe if you look at it from that perspective but it's better that they work with Sony, a Japanese company, than one of their contemporaries, one of their peers in China.

2:14:40I think there's probably different gradients to it, but I don't want to like just alienate and isolate the creatives of China because of their totalitarian government, which again, they could themselves overtake, I guess, but don't. I don't want to get too political about it though. It's like, whatever. I want to see what they have to say. I want to play their games. And I thought Evo Tinction, which was one of the most recent releases, like I said, I really liked that game. And I said to Chris, I think he would really like it too. It's a good stealth game. And so I think they deserve a lot of credit for it.

2:15:11But yes, they are all communists, I suppose. You know, we wouldn't really know one way or the other because they wouldn't, I don't think, be really allowed to say whether they agreed with something or not. Maybe you can imply it in your games. I don't know.

2:15:24Colin Moriarty:I think it's, yeah, I don't know. I think it's safe to say that most people are not necessarily represented by other governments. right and isn't there a big thing about tencent being so big and having like actual government involvement in golden shares yeah they're called so it's a little different than smaller teams working with sony yeah this is the better outcome i mean the outcomes could be no chinese games or chinese games published through western entities and japan's not western but they're western oriented. That's the next best thing, right? I'd rather them and lubricating the wheels of commerce and gaming in Japan, I think is good for you want the Japanese interacting with the West, you want them playing our games and you want there to be discourse and dialogue and all these things that I do think break down in a road things.

2:16:15You always hear about how powerful pirate radio and television were in the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s to the point where in the 80s, when things were starting to thaw, people were becoming openly Western. I mean, Metallica played and Billy Joel played in Moscow and all these different things in the 80s. These kinds of cultural exchanges, whether done overtly or covertly, I think are really valuable to... It's what you always hear about on the border of North Korea and China. People smuggle a bunch of shit over all the time like usbs and you know dvds blu-rays and everything and like it's the way for people to kind of interact and understand the outside world in a way that they might not understand it otherwise and um so i think it's i think these kinds of cultural exchanges are not only good but vital to the health of the gaming all right we were talking about xbox earlier probably would have made more sense to put all these things together i don't know why i didn't matt piscatella who works at cercana which is previously the npd group tweeted out some interesting documentation that has been making the rounds just showing microsoft's sheer power on playstation so he tweeted out q2 2025 top 10 best-selling games on playstation platforms for the period from the beginning of april through the beginning of july so q2 generally here in the US.

2:17:39This is digital and physical sales. And it just goes to show that Forza Horizon 5, The Elder Scrolls 4, Oblivion Remastered, Doom the Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Minecraft are so six games are all in the top 10 showing a complete dominance of Xbox in the space. And that comes upon news from the website that we've been citing more and more, mpfirst.com, noting that and this is this is a really good find i mean this is this is real journalism in my opinion that it looks like gears of war e-day and state of decay 3 to xbox games are also coming to playstation whether or not they come at launch or not remains to be seen but the reason i say this is real journalism is because these guys went and found people's cvs that specifically and explicitly say that they're working on the game for playstation so they found someone working on Gears of War E-Day, it says type tools that they use or whatever.

2:18:33Then it says platforms PC, PS5, Xbox Series X and S. And then another person says like, what game are you working on in your CV? And it says State of Decay. And then in parentheses, PC, Xbox, PS5. That's pretty explicit. They would know better than anyone. And that's real just, you know, gumshoe journalism of just going and looking at people's CVs and just reading shit. So I really respect that kind of stuff. And it doesn't really ruin anything for anyone either because I think we all knew this was coming anyway. So well done. So Dustin, it's important to note Night Rain was the biggest game from the Elden Ring spinoff from Bandai Namco was the biggest game on PlayStation platforms for the Q2 here in the United States.

2:19:15And that's significant because these are ordered not by game sales, but by dollars earned. And Night Rain is a$40 game. So it's dominating all these other$60 and$70 games, which is crazy. actually Oblivion I think is also$40 and that being at number three is also a pretty big deal while it's ahead of MLB the show at 60 or 70 dollars Doom Death Stranding is number seven so we know that and then we know from this good journalism at mpfirst.com that looks like Gears and State of Decay are coming over what do you think I mean Xbox is starting to dominate PlayStation in a way that they're probably I think even surprised about although all of these games except for Forza Horizon would have been on PlayStation if not for Microsoft buying those publishers.

2:19:58They would have all been on there anyway. So let's not overstate it. They bought all the shit. But what do you think?

2:20:04Colin Moriarty:Yeah. So I think that it's funny seeing this because, yeah, Microsoft definitely currently so far this year, absolutely dominating on PlayStation. But I don't think PlayStation views this as a negative thing at all. No, We say many times on the show, every copy of Forza Horizon 5, PlayStation makes 30 % or Elder Scrolls or whatever, or Elden Ring. So game sales, a game sale is a game sale when it comes from a third party for a PlayStation. Obviously, they make more from their own first party, but there's also much higher investment. So this, there's no investment and they can just make the profit from it.

2:20:47Colin Moriarty:and it also erodes their biggest competitor uh their exclusive well what was once their exclusives aren't in existence anymore so it's like it completely solidifies their position in a lot of ways so i'm sure playstation has has absolutely zero problem with this um as you also said about night rain uh being a 40 game and still being at the top despite all that i dude i think it's so awesome in particular in that i think that some people would view night rain as a lazy release in some ways because it's like yeah they used all the elden ring assets right um but elden ring night rain is a complete i don't say completely a very different experience from playing elden ring um through and through like elden ring is this long expansive open world RPG.

2:21:44Colin Moriarty:Elden Ring Night Reign is this multiplayer focused sort of battle. I don't want to say battle royale but it has these battle royale type elements in it. It's feels completely different when you play it and it's just a really incredibly smart use of assets where it's kind of the best of both worlds where they were able to make this game probably relatively affordably. They were able to deliver something totally new to their fans that clearly they're really enjoying. And so I'd much rather see a product like this come out than a million new microtransactions and skins. This is like a way better way to extract more out of your assets.

2:22:27Colin Moriarty:So for that, I applaud them. It's funny looking because obviously Matt Piscitello also shared Xbox's charts. The charts are so different that it's so funny. like they obliterated their own sales it's whether or not it's working out for them through game pass obviously it's a different story entirely but the lists are so different um you don't see anything with you know you don't see doom on the list for instance and you see a game like split fiction sneaking into the top 10 assassin's creed shadow is 10 on playstation while it's 7 on xbox it just goes to show you the differences between the audiences that are buying behavior one thing i will say and chris we'll get you on the record here is forza horizon sales are just they're crazy i mean it's it's totally crazy and it and again it shows you the difference between the audiences a game like final fantasy 16 from 2023 that sold 3 million copies in a week on playstation 5 sells a hundred thousand units on xbox forza horizon 5 two years older than Final Fantasy comes to PlayStation 5 sells 3 million really crazy shit I mean I'm sure that's fucking saucer eye opening for both sides yeah as well because I knew Forza was going to be big but I didn't know I mean remember I guessed that they remember I picked it on our on our Metacritic score competition um so I knew that was coming and I knew that they were gonna it was gonna be good but I didn't think it was gonna be this big I mean this is huge news so what are your thoughts on on you know take it however you'd like with the sales and the rumors whatever yeah man i think um i don't know i think it's an interesting it's got to be an interesting place to be in for microsoft where you're like yeah this is kind of eroding um our platform in some way but also like man we're making a shit ton of money and like why would we not continue to do it and in some ways like it it's always felt weird i mean a lot about the xbox business plan doesn't really make sense these days but like it always it almost feels like there's a it almost feels like there's a specific interest in keeping console sales low because it kind of gives you like the ability to sell it on this other platform from an audience that's willing to buy shit while you have the people in your existing ecosystem kind of locked into a subscription service that is not as popular but because it's not as popular you're able to sell more elsewhere it's kind of it's weird it's like a i don't really know how they think about it um but i have to imagine that they're not too they're not displeased i have to imagine that they're probably like hell yeah go buy our games forza horizons kicking ass um i imagine they see that and they're like we gotta bring gears like why would we not um i'm curious about whether or not it's going to be day and date that's going to be the interesting thing to see because i i i don't even think that's impossible no i don't think it's impossible either unlikely in fact chris it's like it's funny man because i've been saying that a lot of the things that they're bringing over i just don't really care about or or a lot of the games that they're even making i just don't care about like i don't care about avowed i don't care about south of midnight i don't i'm not going to care about fable that's probably going to come to playstation i'm not going to care about that starfield i'm kind of indifferent on you know grounded sea of thieves the the few things that came over that i really cared about i bought hi-fi rush and i never played it i love pentiment as everyone knows and i'm gonna buy gears and you know and then there's like indiana jones and something from bethesda or whatever but like when i saw the rumor of gears e day and state of decay three i'm like now you're cooking for me like for me i'm like yes now you're getting more into like my zone where the only other game that they're working on that i really give a shit about that i want to play other than perfect dark which no longer exists is that clockwork revolution game which looks awesome um and that will surely come over as well but they've just so it's cool that this strategy is happening but with like forza and all these things i'm like i don't really give a shit about any of this it's cool that people are excited about it but when i saw that rumor i was like yes now colin's getting a few things to state of decay i think is a really cool game and uh i'd love they've been working on this one for ever so it's probably big i'm concerned about that one i really like state of k2 actually it's definitely like a double a kind of more budget experience but it's pretty that game is a really good way of getting you into resource management that i don't think any other games really got which is they got some good they got some valuable teams they're making cool shit i think obviously obviously not a lot of it's going to be for us necessarily like forza i really liked forza horizon 5 when i first played it but it was clearly like i mean the fact that i liked it at all speaks kind of volumes of it because it's really not my kind of game but i played it for a good like seven or ten hours which is way more than i would ever play a game like that um and there's other stuff too that's going to that's going to make its way over obviously but like gears is gonna that's a huge deal although it frustrates me because now it's like okay hey here's gears of war one and then the prequel

2:27:35Colin Moriarty:sorry the rest of it's uh rest of it's gone yeah uh and it's going to come out in a really fucked order i think they i really think they made a mistake not not making a collection like i really like i understand it's like money's made and all that but i think this is another example of just like you really i think you did i think you damaged the the potential onboarding for your series for not to not have all those games playable at the very least the first three i think it's really dumb uh even for like a volume one you bring like uh four four and five over later as like a volume two kind of like what they're doing with metal gear i think that would have been a way smarter thing to do but whatever uh none of their strategies don't make sense to me anyway so why would why would this uh but it's exciting it's cool i would love to play gears war on a year's E day on PlayStation.

2:28:15Colin Moriarty:Oh, my God. I'm I'm pumped about that. And I'm really. I'm really I'm genuinely bummed about. What is it? Perfect Dark, especially now with the game that I'm playing. I'm just like, oh, we'll get into it later, obviously. But yeah, very shortly. I am. Yeah, I'm disappointed about it, too. I was actually looking forward to it. I like Perfect Dark back in the day. I never played that. There was like a second one, wasn't there? Yeah, Perfect Dark Zero. Don't worry. Yeah, I never played that. That was a 360 launch game, wasn't it? yep yeah i never played that it's very clearly like uh it's very clearly like a tech demo kind of game you know what i mean it's just like okay like here's how here's how games are gonna look now it's like all right dude it was that was the game i got with my 360 i'm sorry i remember being i think it was in sixth grade and i was like oh yeah this perfect dark game it's awesome it's amazing like it's like you have to you're just like oh i think this is awesome right like it's like what else do you have i don't remember the i don't remember the first game i got from a 360 it wasn't good damn it wasn't a good one i know that one i know that um i'm very interested to see and i agree with you like well there's two things about gears really interested to see how gears one does um when it comes out on playstation um yeah i think it's going to be pretty big but again 40 so it's going to be hard to tell that's why again why night range success is so crazy because they're doing it at$40 a clip.

2:29:43I think that's actually going to hold gears probably back a little bit on the charts, but we'll see how it does. And then maybe some potential, I mean, Eday is so long in development and so kind of unknown. There might be time for them to get more of the games out, but there are what there are five of the core games. Six actually, correct? Because it's judgment.

2:29:59Colin Moriarty:Yeah, but nobody, nobody wants that. Yeah, right. Right. Nobody. I don't think anybody clamors for judgment at all. I think I really think they shot themselves in the front. I actually kind of... I hope I'm wrong because it would be nice to see the opposite, but I actually think Gears 1 is going to do softly. I don't know. I have a gut feeling. Because I'm not buying. I don't care if it's not... I've played this game a million times. I don't care about the first one at all. It's fine. Dustin, are you going to buy Gears when it comes... Or do you already own it on X? You're going to play it on Game Pass, I guess.

2:30:35Colin Moriarty:you guys have game if if i was to play it i would play it on pc game pass so i can um buy a month and then cancel it wink wink or the month is over and play play co-op with like brad or something maybe um by the way i saw xbox release like five they're doing five billion dollars in revenue in game pass and i'm like i don't know how that money actually comes i saw a math where it comes out to like if people are all paying an average of$15 or something a month it comes out to like 20 something million people and it's like damn this indicates that because I don't I don't think it's 20 something million people I think it's 30 something million people at this point and that means that a lot of people are just not paying for it you know like the money doesn't add up doesn't match up to like the amount of people we think are on or subscribe to it so people are getting away with fucking all sorts of shit I don't know why they do it I don't know why they're doing it I don't know why they're doing it.

2:31:34I don't understand.

2:31:36Colin Moriarty:To my understanding, it's because if you sign up, then you are considered a subscriber, whether you are paying or not. Well, of course, but I signed up. So you already have me. And then you charge me. I see what you're saying, but I don't. There's got to be some weird reason. Like they just don't want to deal with you if you have a problem or you're trying to get your money back or you're canceling. And in other words, instead of asking, like, why are you canceling? It's like, fine, just buy. Here's your money. Like, we don't have to interact with you. We don't really need it. But I I'm so fascinated when I learned because I only had Game Pass once when I canceled it.

2:32:19And obviously, we know that happened years ago where they gave me my money back. But I think it weren't you saying doesn't it's like you've done it multiple times. Like that's the crazy thing is that they let you do it again. Yeah. And at that point, you would think, like, you know what you're getting. like I don't know I don't get it it's fucking weird and I've said

2:32:36Colin Moriarty:this on the show before but I want to say this again I would be perfectly happy paying for one month of game pass to get what I want out of it for that month but when I cancel it gives me the money back like I don't you're not asking I'm not trying to game the system right it just does it so it's crazy you know in fact if they if they offered me if they if they were like do you if they were like, do you want your money back? I probably would actually have said, no, I feel like I got my value out of your thing. Like, I don't know. A lot of people would say yes, but it's like, I'm not trying to steal from you.

2:33:09Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Yeah. It's not like I'm asking like I'm canceling and then saying, hey, I actually I didn't want this. Please refund me. It's nothing like that. It automatically does it. That's that's on the level of like that's honestly on the level of AI slop on the PlayStation store where I'm like, I don't understand why no one's doing anything about that. I don't know. I don't understand why it's not understandable. Yeah, it it defies everything that I know about logic that no one's that no one at these companies are being like, oh, people are like charging back and getting getting Game Pass for free constantly.

2:33:48Colin Moriarty:Should probably like not do that. Or like, oh, there's a bunch of AI generated slop on the PlayStation store, huh? That's not great for us. yeah right it's weird to me that that person isn't there like that that person isn't there at either of these companies who are the whatever that was about to be a 10 minute tirade no it's i sat myself it's all good it's all good um all right well yep so xbox is certainly helping out playstation and playstation gamers this year and i think we're all really appreciative of it we'll see how much it goes in the reciprocal direction as we were talking about earlier but yeah these gears i i again i think that it has been announced i don't think you even need rumors that people have that listed in their cvs is yeah they wouldn't just say that they would just make that up it's a pretty explicit thing especially if you're a programmer or something like that so yeah all right um a few more pieces of news before we get into what we're playing that we can go through fairly quickly i just wanted to bring this up this is from our friends over at Video Games Chronicle that discovered an interesting job listing.

2:34:55It says, following Suicide Squad's flop, Warner Brothers is hiring for another live service game. It says, quote, despite the high profile failure of Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, Warner Brothers is hiring for a new live service game. Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League was released last year and met with middling reviews and fan backlash. Developed by Batman Arkham Studio Rocksteady, the game's live service approach and take on the DC Universe left fans unhappy, leading to weak sales and small player numbers. Now a job listing for an upcoming project from Warner Brothers Games suggests the company isn't finished with its attempt to establish a live service title in the DC universe.

2:35:25The job listing for an executive producer says that the successful applicant will, quote, lead the development of all high-quality AAA game, a high-quality AAA game based on one of the iconic IPs from the vast Warner Brothers and DC Comics catalog. End quote. The job listing notes that the role includes, quote, overseeing all phases of development, from concept to post-launch live operations, end quote, suggesting a live service element to the mystery project. The project comes during a tumultuous time with the publisher, following a string of high-profile flops.

2:35:51Colin Moriarty:chris you seem distressed yeah no keep going let's let's get more of them let's do it suicide squad 2 baby yeah that's that'd be funny if they did another suicide squad game it'd be like the movie oh yeah that's right yeah they just were like oh that first one didn't work out do it again yeah i mean it worked out for them worked yeah we'll just get to get james gunn to make a live service game maybe that'll help i i don't know man i i i have to say if somebody was if somebody were to ask me like yo do you want a uh a wb another wb live service game for the answer to come out of my mouth to be yes it's unthinkable but whatever it's it's your money um do what you got to do i feel like water brothers is in like a complete i don't want to say it's like a ubisoft style like just baffling flail session but like uh it's beginning to feel that way it's beginning to feel like they don't they just kind of don't really know what they're doing yeah i mean i think it's i think i agree with you i think it's obvious and warner as a as a whole brand is is in trouble is in not trouble but just in a tumultuous period about maybe things getting split off and people sniffing around for different elements and obviously you know microsoft was interested in maybe even purchasing their gaming assets and they own some iconic studios so that kind of complicates things rocksteady is kind of lost its icon icon status of course i think we all understand that but um so i i just uh and they own some really valuable things and have access to really valuable things mortal combat harry potter but they really have mismanaged dc games and that's a real bummer um especially as people feel like I guess DC films might be coming back with a Superman movie kind of doing well and maybe there's a whole new you know obviously there's been great Batman movies in the past but I will disagree with you in that I think that I'll keep the same energy for them that I have for Sony like I do think you want to invest in the space but it is my hope that you are getting the things going that will reground you again a good single-player Batman game or a good single-player Superman game or something else like you and I assume those things are going to so I'm not quite as a gas where it's like oh of course you want to like be making one of these and if you're hiring a producer you're probably really early in the process you might not even chosen what you want to do yet so it's like yeah get back on the horse but be careful and learn your lessons and it's not so much about the projects like Suicide Squad would have been such a less of a tragedy if it wasn't rocksteady if it was just some random team then it wouldn't have felt like an opportunity cost and the game would just would have come and gone and would be like oh that was a fucking shitty game it's the same reason why anthem is such a tragedy it's not that anthem itself was bad or offensive it's that bioware making it was offensive to a lot of people when they could have been making something else so as long as they're managing their assets i don't know that i have a huge problem with it i guess it comes down to to whether or not you have faith that they're going to manage their assets you know what i mean like it kind of feels like because i i really feel like it shouldn't have taken anybody of any high esteem to be able to point out like hey we hey i know we really want to make a suicide squad game right like okay cool i think we should make it live service i don't even think i i genuinely i don't even think rocksteady making suicide squad was a tragedy so much as it was that rocksteady making a live service suicide squad game was the tragedy i feel like a suicide squad game from rocksteady would have been sick like if it was just like a single player game and it didn't have to worry about all this other shit i think it probably would have would have been a lot better than what we got um so that to me is great it's it's not just like you can make live service games fine but like the fact that they even thought that suicide squad would be a good fit for that like gives me great pause as far as like because it really doesn't take it doesn't take anything to know that that's a bad idea it's it's patently obvious and so the fact that there was nobody in the room for for years kind of concerns me because it makes me feel like they don't they don't even really know how to hire for this space so we'll see obviously they can learn their lessons but um i feel like corporations so so rarely so rarely learn the right things from thunderous blunders so we'll see yeah well what do you think about all this Dustin where are you on them returning to the trough the slop trough yeah

2:40:27Colin Moriarty:my I guess what I'm trying to think as positive as possible is in line with you Colin that maybe they've realized like oh we had the wrong team doing this project or we tried to force it to be something that it wasn't um i mean thing is they it's not even just suicide squad that they've had to learn some of their lessons because multiverses also was like this thing where they like launched it and then or it was they bought the team right before too it was a concord situation completely that was the weirdest part was how ignorant they were on the whole thing right yeah there was that and what was the there was also that cart racer oh yeah that i i uh broke the news about it was uh what what were we calling it uh it's like wb racers or something like that yeah i did we we covered that exclusively i talked to someone who worked on it yeah and not that that was like a live service but still just like well it was it was yeah like i think that the whole thing was that like they were like vacillating back and forth on what it was supposed to be and like where it was gonna be published and that was like the whole part of the story they had no idea what to do with it and yeah how to sell it i would have to imagine you would never make a a kart racer today that wasn't live service unless you're nintendo yeah you gotta you gotta extract every possible dollar you can out of a out of a genre that niche i say niche even though mario kart is huge but like kart racers are still not my biggest worry just because they've clearly done something this stupid so what would stop them from doing it again is they're like oh well avalanche did such a great job with hogwarts legacy why shouldn't the next hogwarts legacy game be live service look at all the people that bought that what if we could have all the people that buy that just continue to spend money on the sequel if it was live service see that's easy money you know what i mean like something as stupid as that i don't think that will happen but anything's possible yeah i don't i hope i hope that they understand that they had a golden have a golden an unexpected golden goose with that game and that someone would have interceded and been like you cannot we have sold so many copies of this game we have made so much money it wasn't that expensive to make comparable to what it is leave it alone i i actually think that they would be in real existential trouble as a as a publishing brand if not for that game actually and so hopefully they they because they would have been fucked i mean what else do they even have that anyone would have cared about at this point but they had not only a game that was hanging on but that was actually dominating the sales charts and so i think i guess like uh they had a piece of lego star wars and that would have been like another big one so and and what's funny is that the two the two games that they were publishing and finding success where we're single player games so hopefully again you you have a ceiling in that space with rare exception about how much money you can make and it's risky but you have studios that know what they're doing obviously travel sales another another iconic old team that you own you need to deploy the resources properly and avalanche is really coming to their own i mean i i had no idea that they could make a game like hogwarts legacy so i'm just being honest i didn't i didn't know that it's crazy um and that game succeeded so that game's success is so surprising to me too just because like my assumption of harry potter was that it was kind of like a bygone like the relevance of that series is kind of like in the past or at least at the time that hogwarts legacy came out it certainly wasn't like obviously they're doing that new show and that was known about for a while but even that's kind of like oh well i mean i don't know how many gen z or 10 alpha people are going to give a shit about that but they made a really good game for fans of that show and so like to me or for fans of that movie or those books so for me i'm looking at like i'm looking at anything that lands like that like it's almost like flipping a coin and it landing on the rim you know what i mean and it stands up and and immediately everybody's like whoa that's cool let's now fuck with it and it's like no don't even don't even breathe yeah right right do exactly the same thing again maybe slightly better don't fuck with don't fuck with the formula of what you've done at all or at least to the degree that it like undoes anything add on to it sure but um I think smart design is just understanding when not to fuck with something.

2:44:52It's crazy because with the access that they are in the leadership of Warner games is incompetent and. It's crazy because they have so many built in advantages. They're not like an Activision or. That's even a bad example. It's like more like they're not like an electronic arts where it's like you kind of have to make your own shit. You have a few IP that people really care about. You have licenses that really matter, but you got to kind of make things, which is why they do EA originals and all that kind of stuff to try to find things that work. But like when you're at Warner games, it's like you just have access to everything.

2:45:27Every like you have access to Game of Thrones. You have access to Harry Potter. You have access to Batman, to Superman, to the Justice League and Suicide Squad. And it's like, what are you doing? You know, and you can make new things if you want. You have access to Mortal Kombat. you have access to lego you know it's like hello it's it's like you know like

2:45:50Colin Moriarty:it really is like it really is like as if steve jobs was your dad and you're somehow broke like i don't know how you fail with that much of a head start you know what i mean like brother shut the fuck up and do like how are you not understanding what you have here it's crazy it's it's frustrating and all the new things they can do too and what's most exciting probably for a dc fan is like there's so much obscure shit and you should be getting into that into the weeds with that that's part of the way marvel had found so much success with the mcu is out of necessity because they didn't have access to any of the big things anymore from old licensing agreements and it bore this amazing fruit like i'm an outsider of comics and even i know growing up with people that love comics dagan was a big marvel reader and all this stuff it's like this is a lot of obscure shit that kind of became mainstream guardians of the galaxy you know that's james specifically like he but like i i know because iron man i remember like i'm not gonna pretend like i was like in the comic scene or anything but like i remember when i was a kid iron man was kind of a joke like iron man wasn't really cool like iron man was like ah that's it was kind of like it was like zordon or something or like what was what was the uh the old transformer voltron voltro it was kind of like all right i guess you know like it was more about spider-man and batman at that time and then they managed to like the mcu started with iron man that's kind of insane that is wild to imagine that like such an obscure character and like with like an obscure actor or an obscure actor but like an actor who was like kind of like at the time disgraced relatively right and they managed to make this billion dollar thing and so it's just like dc is kind of in that place now with superman james gun helming it he's pulling all sorts of weird shit cryptos in that movie and like you're gonna see a lot of weird shit coming out of that you know they're doing a cake a clay face horror movie which is fucking awesome but like they're in that space now we're like dude you could really you got to ride this wave yeah you got to sync it up too yeah try to sync it up you need a lot of time but they cancel that wonder woman game i would assume that it just wasn't panning out for them maybe over budget or whatever I don't know that game was in development for a long time and it happened in Marvel for Marvel too it's not like they're immune to Black Panther was canceled Iron Man there was an Iron Man rumored game right that was canceled I might be making that up maybe Iron Man VR did come out oh yeah that's true that came from uh Republic or whatever they know the studio that did Republic what the fuck were they called I can't remember oh camouflage that's what it was anyway we'll see what happens with this game just some interesting fodder to talk about we really don't know what they're hiring for specifically, but they're being pretty clear that it's a AAA live service game with access to the IP.

2:48:35And so it'll be something no doubt predictable. And hopefully Warner is smart enough to know that at least the future could be AAA live service fodder. And that's great. But to steady yourself, you need to get a few reliable games out, including a Hogwarts Legacy sequel, which is going to be really important. continue to explore things with Lego, although I think Lego might be wanting to do their own thing now because they're working with, I think, other publishers and developers and then maybe make something new. I mean, the only way Mortal Kombat is obviously going to be big, but at least make something new and see what happens too.

2:49:15I think you should invest in that. Big one here for us this month, PlayStation Plus games, new PlayStation Plus games that will be available as of August 5th. So for the initiated, if you have PlayStation Plus at any level, essential, extra, premium, you'll get access to three or four games or freebies as part of your subscription every month. This has been going on for many years, as you know. So the games that are being introduced on August 5th are pretty interesting, actually. And they begin with Lies of P, the 2023 Souls-like game from Neo Wiz. just had dlc release so actually a pretty strategic launch try to kind of get some people to buy the expansion perhaps this is great for me i'm definitely going to add this to my list because this is a game i've wanted to play and i've i've held that on buying so i'll definitely add it for me that's perfect and then daisy the hardcore survival game for 60 players and finally dustin this one's for you my hero ones justice 2 don't say that what is that i don't know what that is

2:50:15Colin Moriarty:it's my hero academia which i think is ass oh really you don't associate why is it not good i don't know anything about it uh i want i actually watched i think a season maybe two seasons of it and it just it's not good it's uh it's anime for marvel fans so that's that's a bad combination saying something daisy are do you ever played daisy obviously not a game for me no long long time ago i barely i barely remember anything about it it says here the the map is 163 kilometers squared interesting i believe that and then and then uh lies of p finally which is exciting right i really am interested in this game just thematically i think it's interesting the whole walt disney ending really gets me going so anything here for you guys i already have lies of p if i was gonna play daisy would be on pc and i already explained my distaste for my hero academia so unfortunately nothing for me but i can highly recommend lies of p is an excellent souls-like game and i i would say it is the best of i what i've played and what i know of other ones that it is the best souls-like game with a really cool unique story interesting yeah so and colin i think there's difficulty modes now yeah but i said this at the time is that if i am gonna play it maybe i would drop it down if i was really enjoying it but struggling with it but yeah i want to play it straight up yeah first and see what happens because people were saying things about like you know remember chris and i were talking about this recently too i think was like stellar blade and people were or maybe it was with brad or something where um talking about stellar blade and is it a soul's like and isn't it a soul's like and i'm like some people call it one but i i was able to play it pretty well so i don't know but i lies of p i feel like it's a more straightforward souls like um so i think it'll be a good challenge for me and i i so before i succumb to the normal difficulty challenge or whatever i'll see if i can play it as is chris anything here for you honestly just lies of p i have lies of p on xbox and i never finished it i was like i think three hours in or something so i might i might actually just like grab it on PlayStation and get back to it but it's kind of like I played Daisy a long time ago it's it's just not really for me um and yeah I don't know it's kind of a miss miss of a month not necessarily that Liza P is pretty big I think I think Liza P being here it makes up for a lot of the stuff that might not hit honestly but I it's not new to me you know so for me it's kind of like a whatever month but I think I highly recommend Liza P like I really liked what I played of it they just kind of got sucked away from other things or by other things, I should say.

2:53:02Colin Moriarty:So, yeah, I think this is a nice lineup. You have, by the way, until August 4th, depending on when you're listening to this, you'll have time to still get Diablo for the King of fighters, 15 and juice on as part of your offering on PS plus for this previous month. Remember, of course, add them to your game library. You can access them later. As long as your PlayStation plus subscription is active, you should absolutely be doing that. No reason not to, I will not add the, but I don't add games. I definitely don't want to play. And I guess that my hero one's Justice 2. I just won't add that one.

2:53:32And Daisy, I won't add either. But I'm definitely going to add Lies of P. All right. Oh, yeah. Nielsen Chapman wrote in. So what's up, boys? Colin, I believe you mentioned some interest in Lies of P. If you were to try Soulslike, it comes with PS Plus, so you don't have to invest anything extra. It'd be great for sacred streaming. Any chance this could happen? Yeah, maybe. That's actually not a bad idea. I don't think I'm going to do that anytime soon, but it could be a fun one for sacred streaming for sure. All right. A couple of more quick things then we can get into what we're playing we talked a couple months ago about how sony announced its own playstation fight stick and they said they would have more information on it soon we now have more information on it via the playstation blog it's called flex strike intercapt so capital f l-e-x capital s-t-r-i-k-e no space um available 2026 it was known previously as project defiant this is part of i think sony's kind of buy-in mild buy-in to the fighting community it's obviously become the de facto console and ecosystem for fighting games.

2:54:29And Evo is now owned by Sony. That's going on as of when this was announced. I think actually Evo is this weekend. So the weekend this publishes our show publishes. So project defined is indeed called flex strike looks pretty nice, comes with a cool little case, which is pretty sexy, and it will be on display. at Evo if you want to check it out. It will not be playable, but it will be on display. Here are features of it. Simultaneous PlayStation Link audio on PS5's FlexStrike Wireless Fight Stick offers a seamless fighting game experience. Players can use a single PS Link USB adapter to connect the FlexStrike Wireless Fight Stick and a Pulse Elite wireless headset or Pulse Explorer wireless earbuds simultaneously on PS5 for an ultra-low latency audio and voice chat experience in the heat of battle.

2:55:17FlexStrike Wireless Fight Stick will feature an updated PlayStation Link USB adapter that is compatible with USB-C ports. This is vital. And I think this is, by the way, in reading more about it, the reason why I remember when I was using audio, like wireless audio and it was dropping out is because I had the dongle in the back of the PlayStation because that was the only available USB port. And I think that was probably the reason that other people have been experiencing that as well. So that's why I just play wired when I use my headset. This seems like maybe they'll help circumvent this for if you have a lack of available USB ports.

2:55:53Dual FlexStrike wireless fight stick connections on PS5 connect to FlexStrike wireless fight sticks via a single PS Link USB adapter for couch competition or co-op. And then they say some other stuff, ergonomic design, dual sense controller connectivity. So you can keep your dual sense wireless controller on PS5 connected at the same time as the FlexStrike wireless fight stick. So if you'd like to use it as an additional controller for navigating or whatever, you can do that, which is pretty cool. and then adjustable controls and dual sense inputs the flex strike wireless fight stick features the same game control input found on the dual sense controller plus a touchpad there's also additional customization options you can switch between directional inputs with a built-in lever mode switch or lock in the layout and prevent accidental inputs during a match with a dedicated lock button so i guess you could perceivably use it outside of the genre the touchpad is pretty interesting so any well neither none of us are going to be interested in this but any anything to say about it i don't know i don't have anything else to say first of

2:56:44Colin Moriarty:including the case very nice i love it when hardware does that like steam deck comes with a a very nice case with yeah just a nice little touch and you touched on this when talking about that first bullet point colin but what i find kind of interesting about this is that um they are using their low latency um that playstation link you mentioned and talked about the audio but they're also using that as a low latency wireless solution for this fight stick where of course I mean any tournament is not going to use any kind of wireless at all but it's kind of neat that they went the a little bit extra in providing it's like hey we're going to put in this special dongle that's going to use for ultra low latency for you to use at home so it's going to have a faster connection than the standard PS5 wireless so that's kind of kind of neat i'm i'm not going to pay for this because i know it's going to be expensive i've always thought that if i was going to get into fighting games i would want to fight stick uh so this would probably be the one i would go for but it's probably it sounds like it's going to be nice with um what is it it said here like uh mechanical switch buttons and toolists swappable restrictor gates i don't know what any of that means i mean mechanical switch buttons i understand but um it sounds expensive it so yeah yeah you can go to playstation.com slash flex strike right now and learn all about it if you want as you said we don't know the price i would assume i don't know what i would assume edge is 200 bucks right yeah yes could it be the same price Please.

2:58:29I feel it's unlikely, right? I mean, I could see it, honestly.

2:58:32Colin Moriarty:I mean, that's a really enthusiast kind of market. You know what I mean? Like, like they're kind of willing to pay high. Like I've seen some fight sticks that people buy and I'm just like, that is an insane price to pay for that. But like that's that seems a bit high, but I could see people paying that for it. Oh, it seems high to you. I was going to say that seems like seems low, low. Yeah, I was going to say it's high to me. Oh, yeah, it's high to me, too. I mean, that's why I don't have an edge. you know i'm not paid 200 for a fucking controller go ahead that's what i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you yeah i was gonna say 200 sounds low i don't know the market of fight six very well i my gut says 300 but it honestly could be even more than that crazy people go hard for these things yeah we'll see it is yeah i love this is what i've been saying about proprietary i want sony to make a proprietary playstation keyboard a proprietary playstation mouse and all things like that like it's cool that they're getting back into this we really haven't had a whole flexing of official peripherals since PS2, I would say.

2:59:30So, you know, outside of Move and, of course, like the camera and shit, but like not like this whole eco. You'd have to go to like fucking buy all the third party garbage to get anything like that. So, yeah, I

2:59:43Colin Moriarty:I really I think the I think fight sticks are probably like the worst input ever ever imagined for video games. But like, God bless the people who can figure that shit out because I think it feels like irredeemably bad to use. yeah i i don't like it either i mean i get it because you i think i've said this before i i could be wrong maybe at the highest levels but i think you rarely see someone at fighting competitions using a controller otherwise it's yeah it's often a fight stick but when i i've told you guys in the past i thought i was good at fighting games so i went to ig and started playing real people and and they all used fight sticks and obviously were great on the arcade machine where i really was still best using a controller it doesn't translate well for me either i don't know why because we all learn how to play the games on fight sticks in the arcade and yeah but it just i just don't i just don't like it as much even a fight stick in the arcade to me seems like it just seems like it seems like intentionally like a bad control scheme because it feels like it's trying to make you worse at the game so you lose more often and spend more money on arcade sticks or like and playing on arcade like it doesn't feel like ergonomic at all i don't buy that it's superior like it doesn't make any sense none of it makes sense to me yeah but like it's a cool market yeah it's gotta be it's input speed i think in combinations that are easier to do with multiple fingers i would assume that's all about that yeah i mean i don't buy it but god yeah yeah i think i think that'll be the that'll be what people say but i i just don't see it okay one more piece of news dustin i wanted to kick it back over to you because i know you watched today how did your stream go for the nintendo um what was it direct nintendo direct much better than i expected being that i streamed on youtube instead of twitch um and a lot of people came out so thank you oh that's great it started early what started early oh yeah it was like 9 a.m um so i started streaming at 8 30 but the vod is on my youtube channel if you want to check it out if anyone wants to see it not that it was that exciting of a nintendo direct yeah what so what ended up uh happening i pulled up a couple of i have them up here here they are pulled over here i have a couple of press releases that i pulled up from games press about games that i thought were interesting both from square enix the adventures of elliot the millennium tales looks pretty cool and then um return to the dawn of the lawn with Plants vs.

3:02:12Zombies replanted. This was already in the news because this had leaked actually. So we were going to talk about this. I had it on the games leaks Reddit a couple days ago or I saw it there rather. And so that skyrockets to like near the top of my list of most anticipated games. I fucking love the original Plants vs. Zombies. It sounds like there's a lot of cool stuff in there. So we'll get into that. But anything interesting for you. I know that there was Octopath Traveler Zero. True to Square Enix's word, The Adventures of Elliot, The Millennium Tales, and Octopath Traveler zero both of which would have almost certainly been switch timed exclusives are on everything so they are coming to playstation um what are your thoughts yeah you the the ones that you listed here

3:02:50Colin Moriarty:are the the main important ones whether they're on playstation or not those were the three announcements that i think were the most exciting i gotta send you guys real quick though they announced there's this game that's like wait what is it called chilling by the fire this is a campfire simulator okay and i'm sending you a link to a screenshot oh my god this is like an official screen or is this like they take this is an official screenshot on from the nintendo e-shop store um and it was like that in the trailer itself with these giant uh webcam heads so we're gonna have to do something with that on punching up without a doubt uh but i wanted you guys i wanted you guys to see that that's um that's wonderful plants versus zombies big hell yeah for me yeah i'm sorry yeah go ahead i'm already i'm desensitized to it at this point but um zombies very exciting i uh i played that game on iphone yeah so i'm curious about how a controller input would be on it i'm willing to give it a go oh the control i mean the 360 and ps3 ports are very well respected i think you'll like like it yeah so yeah i am in 100 percent um on that i don't know where i'll play it maybe the pc version would be i would do it if the switch version has mouse controls on it that might be kind of yeah the mouse would be nice for it yeah kind of sick um and then yeah this uh what is it the adventures of uh elliot adventure life of elliot i was calling it life of elliot on the stream but it's called the adventures of elliot

3:04:36Colin Moriarty:this game looks awesome i think it's really cool to see this like 2d hd style with an action rpg uh and it looks fantastic i don't really care about octopath traveler zero i haven't been into really any of the octopath traveler games um so yeah this adventures of elliot looking pretty cool if i forgot because i played octopath a little bit of octopath and i remember laughing at these item names if you pre-order octopath traveler zero you got a bunch of different things including consumable items set of eight nuts oh fortifying nut magic nut tough nut resistance nut light nut this is my favorite one critical nut sharp nut and slippery nut man that last which nut are you picking oh the critical nut for sure the critical nut always when you need it right at the right moment you got that yeah always go for a critical nut right right when you need it need it most sometimes you need the fortifying nut when you're down you know right right fortification nut this looks uh this actually looks really cool i'm actually really uh because i love that style of octopath traveler but like i'm just like i'm not really like into the genre or whatever but like this actually looks like really cool yeah I just don't like I it's Octopath I think I played the second one because the first one wasn't available on PS originally like it came to Xbox but not PlayStation and then they kind of traded I I remember saying at the time it's why I don't like Saga Frontier and games like that it's because it's it's too unfocused it's all about all these different characters and scenarios and I'm like I don't know man like this is it's it's cool I people love it I mean Michael loves it it's just like I'm not really into this it's too much Colin you played you played the second Octopath Traveler without playing the first, but you won't just play like Yakuza, like a dragon or something.

3:06:26Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Well, at the time, it wasn't available. We only had Octopath 2 on PlayStation. We didn't have Octopath 1 at the time. Right. Right. I don't think it's a good excuse. I mean, he got me dead to rights. I just don't know what else to say. That's fair.

3:06:44So there's two RPGs and then, yeah, Return of the... Yeah, I'm sorry. Plants vs. Zombies. I'm reading the fucking press release. Plants vs. Zombies replanted i like that name a lot yeah it seems like it's the original game plus some new uh additions which is really cool test your brains in cloudy day mode a brand new game feature limiting sunlight and planting abilities for a unique challenge enjoy classic mini games along with the series signature lane based defense mode discover a treasure trove of never before seen plans versus zombies archive content to understand how plans versus zombies took over the world in addition to the pvp co-op and all and obviously the single player campaign plans versus zombies i was saying to micah before because she said she was interested in it and she knows how much i love it i'm like it's an immaculate game it's one of those games where i'm like this is fucking this is a 10 i mean i think plans versus zombies is a 10 easy like easy easy 10 there's nothing wrong with it it's it was so playable and approachable and fun and easy and i wasn't a phone gamer of course so i lived with scott bromley at the time in san francisco an old friend of mine and he was playing it on 360 and that's how i became familiar with it and then it finally got ported to ps3 and people might remember and this is i still think maybe going to be the best way to play it until this is the vita port is actually really really good but people are i don't know if you remember i think the vita port was something like 30 bucks do you remember that when it came out it was like something crazy um sony itself i think did the port through through soe and i loved it i almost got the platinum but there's this there was that rng kind of heavy dynamic planting game where you grow flowers you know i'm talking about or did you remember this on the original and you have to like do so much grinding and at the time it came out it just wasn't as much in grinding mode like obviously almost 200 hours into death stranding and death stranding too i'm like in the grind right now so i get it a little bit more but at that time i just wasn't into it so be interested to see the trophies as well it comes out it has a release date october 23rd so really really really excited about that and ps5 and ps4 versions if i really like it tempting to do the platinum twice perhaps on that one we'll see oh so that's it for the news um let's get into oh actually before we move on i'm sorry i heard you put the time stamp in so i fucked you up i didn't hit enter yet okay chronos was at the nintendo direct right as well yes uh that game looks really great it looks a little bit like a team who deaths uh dead space which is fine better than no dead space at all um but i wanted to are you interested in that game i think that

3:09:09Colin Moriarty:looks really cool and it's pretty soon i like the idea of uh what is it the enemies that kind of like you gotta keep them far you have to keep them separated from fallen ones because they'll merge or whatever i think that's like a really neat idea i'm actually kind of surprised that something like that hasn't it feels like a relative not that it's a relatively obvious design decision but like it's kind of surprising to me that we've gotten this deep into video games as an art form and that hasn't really like i can't think of a time where i've seen that idea yeah i'm curious about it and to cue you up for this story colin and i believe i've said this before you a studio is as good as their last game and bloomer teams last game was excellent so yep for that reason i'm interested for sure yeah there's a um pc gamer the website interviewed chronos's game director jasic ziba and they had an interview chronos i think is coming out in september so it's fairly close and he said the following i just thought it was interesting to share he says quote we are we are starting to stop feeling like underdogs all the time after silent hill the silent hill era wasn't so easy in the eyes of the public.

3:10:12There were a lot of voices. Oh, no, Bloober is doing this. They will destroy that. It was very tough for the whole company to stick to our guns and put all our heart into that thing, even if most people don't want it. We prove people wrong, so that's nice. I just wanted to acknowledge that. I was one of those people, and I think it's fair. You didn't seem like the right team for Silent Hill 2, to be perfectly honest with you, but you were the perfect team for it. So not only do you get to do a Silent Hill one remake now, and now you're making your own IP and Kronos and people are truly excited about it.

3:10:43You've earned it. So keep the momentum going. I wanted to acknowledge that things can turn around really seriously for a studio. Again, if Kronos isn't good though, then people are going to be like, all right though. So maybe Silent Hill was like this one off. You had a big publisher behind you that was funding it and guiding you. But if this game's good, and I think it's going to be probably great, actually, it looks great. then it looks different than anything they've ever done so i just wanted to give them their credit

3:11:10Colin Moriarty:i think they deserve it yeah when they're talking about people saying that they're not the right team and they're not excited about it i mean that's there that's us i want it might have been us or is it one of the one of those voices of the many was us for sure and we were i mean when it came out we were all like yeah we were dead wrong and happy to be wrong so well yeah i'm sorry go ahead chris please well no i want to say like i was kind of i was kind of feeling like they would be a good fit for it the whole time but i also acknowledge that like and here's the thing right like i think that's valid where it's like okay cool like you're only as good as your last game i think that's generally true i really think this is going to be the this is going to be the proving point though because you're not base you're with silent hill 2 you were working off of a framework that was already like very very critically acclaimed and we like i knew that they could handle atmosphere and you know making something that felt like appropriately silent hill 2 or silent hill and that they they got the chance to work off of the framework of that story is a massive assist i think and so this will be i'm excited about chronos i think it looks cool i think the idea is really novel but that's really going to be the point where you that's going to be the you prove you prove people wrong point for me personally and i say that as somebody who always thought that they were a good fit for silent hill too is that i still maybe i'm not as skeptical as i used to be but i still haven't necessarily seen them build their own thing and have that thing be great the medium was terribly written um as good as that atmosphere was i didn't really care for the i didn't play any of their previous games before that but the medium was like really the medium was really bad like from like a writing perspective it was just terrible so this is going to be this is their their chance to prove people wrong really and have it stick because i see a lot of people even still making the same argument that i'm making now or it's just like yeah well of course you did sidenhold 2 well sidenhold 2 is already beloved and so this will be this will be the point i think yeah i'm looking at their history i mean i first became familiar with them they did the obscure vita games called amen like a dash men and amen too so that was the first time i ever became familiar with them and they were originally only available in europe as well i remember and they came out later but obviously basement crawl was the big thing that always stuck and i didn't even play it i just knew people that played it and it was like for people that don't know like an awful ps4 launch era game and so after that it was hard for me to be like i don't know i don't give a shit about what you do but then i did play that game layers of fear because of my old job we did a sponsorship for them and they gave us codes and i did play it and it was cool it's a walking simulator like horror walking simulator but i wasn't like blown away by it or anything and then they did that game observer that was supposed to be interesting and then layers of fear 2 they did that blair witch game that was a timed xbox game back in the day and then the medium and then another layers of fear so it was just a lot of like middling stuff from a critical perspective i didn't play any of them after layers of fear so i can't speak to that but then silent hill too i mean i just think it's fair for us to have been skeptical of silent hill too i just want to throw that out there as well like that that but now it's a new their new game chronos the new dawn it's a new dawn for them to to be able to and i'm rooting for them and i'll buy that game unless like it's like critically everyone's like horrified by it in a bad way if it's like a five or something right like but even then i think i've seen enough of it where i'm like no i think i'd probably just buy it anyway september 5th it comes out ps5 it'll be on switch 2 obviously as well which is why i came up to the nintendo direct i'll be interested to see how that runs yeah but um we'll see all right so that's it for the news now you can put the footnote in dustin there you go all right let's get into what we're playing i'll go real quick I'm still playing Death Stranding 2.

3:14:54I'm 80-something hours in. I'm just slowly five-starring all the places. There's a really cool... I don't know if I talked about this on the show, but there's a really cool search functionality in the game that at first seems really obtuse and annoying, but actually is incredibly useful where you can... Did you use it at all? If you go to your orders screen and you press R1, it brings you to the screen where it's all these search fields. And so you can search for like various... So you can search for like, I want something going to this place that I haven't done yet that is this kind of mission like and you can and it's really cool so so in order to find if you're like what's annoying for me is that like i've i've probably 60 through five starring everything and everything else is like three and a half four four and a half or almost five stars so you have to really go find things to pick off and so it'll show you like the one place that you haven't gone yet that has a mission for you here so i'm i'm doing it's just a slow process but I'm doing it once I'm through that I'll be so by the time we speak again I will have platinum that I think I'll knock on wood and then as I said earlier I'm gonna be playing ninja guy and rage bound but I'm gonna play that on stream and then I really gotta like I put so much time into that training I just gotta finish the last little bit of it and just be done and I'm enjoying the process like I was saying and I'm with Brad on summon sign this week it was a one-on-one episode with me and him and I was saying like I'm enjoying the story's great world's great love all of it but I'm enjoying the process.

3:16:15I'm really just enjoying the process. It's just a fun game to be in to play. I love it. It, it, it strikes all the right chords for me. So, but I'm sick of talking about that training to you. Next week, I'll have something new to say, Chris, you're playing, you guys are both playing older games, which is interesting. Chris, a Deus Ex, the conspiracy. Yeah. Tell me about this. Yeah,

3:16:34Colin Moriarty:man. So I saw it. I, and I, so Deus Ex, the conspiracy is, is a, the P a PS2 port of the original Deus Ex. i think i misspoke on like a star tank where i thought it was like oh the first game is deus deus ex the conspiracy that's not necessarily true um it's like a weird kind of ps2 reimagining port it's kind of mixed in between them it's very interesting because like the original deus ex obviously a pc game immersive sim kind of you know espionage like very very conspiracy theory i love the script of it it's hilarious because like immediately like the subtitle is so on the nose for the ps2 version because if it really feels like the first time you speak to anybody in that game the very first line of dialogue you hear it feels like they're putting chemtrails in the sky like it it's really fucking unhinged but it's awesome it like wears all of it on its sleeve so it's an immersive sim um ported to ps2 surprisingly just very very good um i know that the pc version is probably the optimal way to play it but i was feeling something a little bit more i kind of wanted to dive into something a little bit more retro i don't really mind a lot of the trappings of the the limitations of how this port operates versus the pc version i like i find it very charming um there's like loading screens in between like in the original deus ex apparently like these these big levels are like really big and they're pretty seamless but in the ps2 version there's like loading screens between every like small section but because it's on ps5 those loading those loading screens are really quick so it it doesn't really bother me nearly probably it would have bothered people on the original ps2 which i'm sure took five days to load a single a single room but yeah so it's an immersive sim it's you know you start off and and you kind of build your character and it's very cyberpunk but very it's weird it's very cyberpunk but it's very um contemporary it feels like it's it's it feels like a future you can touch in some ways where like there's augments and there's all this like sci-fi stuff going on but it feels like comparatively grounded and you know there's talk about it's weirdly prescient because it's about a virus that's been manufactured and there's all sorts of conspiracies about like quarantines it's really fucking cool and really interesting there's a lot of emails to read and a lot it's very dense but there it doesn't feel like there's a lot of fat feels like there's just enough like every now and then there's a computer terminal and you you'll find something interesting in that where it'll be a code for a door that you you might uh you might not have encountered yet you might have encountered already you might have hacked through it and i'm really enjoying it like it's it's a really dynamic game it always feels like for how old it is i'm surprised at how many like how how open it feels uh as far as like how you're able to approach things because you have this you have lock picks you have multi-tools which are like kind of computer lock picks and they each take you know you can upgrade them but they each take a certain number of things to hack it so hacking a computer terminal or hacking like a like something that's more electronic versus versus like lockpicking a door it's like a similar mechanic but because it's a different item it makes it feel a little bit more dynamic and there's a lot of it's it's just a lot and i like the way they handle the powers basically or like augments because it's i feel like in a traditional game and probably even in the newer deus exes i'm curious to move on to them actually after this but I haven't really played much of them.

3:19:52Colin Moriarty:But it feels like a lot of games that operate on this kind of thing. We're like, okay, I'm going to upgrade my character and I'm going to unlock this ability. And that ability is essentially going to be somewhat passive. Like, oh, I'm going to upgrade my strength as I'm playing through this and my strength will just be passively strong as I move through it. But in this game, it's like you have a battery and you have a health bar and you have to choose when to activate these abilities. So if you have like enhanced vision that allows you to kind of heighten your accuracy with weapons, you have to choose to activate that.

3:20:26Colin Moriarty:And that'll eat battery up depending on how uprated it is, which is like super interesting. I'm not normally used to thinking because you have to actually think about like, all right, I have access to super strength and I can use it to move. To move these like crates and these boxes to kind of build me a ladder kind of up over this thing that would normally take me. I don't know. Maybe I maybe I'd be able to hack it. And or maybe I'd be able to bash in a window, but maybe I don't have a melee weapon. Maybe my strength isn't high enough. Maybe I don't have any multi tools and maybe all I have is my strength, but I only have a limited pool of strength.

3:20:57Colin Moriarty:And maybe I don't have a lot of strength and maybe my battery is low and I don't have any recharges, but I have multi tools. And it's it's really I don't know. It's like it's a really engrossing game, even for the limited PS2 version, which, you know, definitely feels obviously it's old, feels dated a little bit. the controls are very weird it took me it took me a while to kind of get accustomed to it it's it's very strange like you click in the right stick to reload and you know it's it's it's it's very strange but not nearly as you know what it reminds me of if you ever played um bullet storm on the original 360 yeah we're like for a first person shooter that had like a really weird control scheme it wasn't like it didn't like ruin the game or anything but it felt like kind of unorthodox and that's kind of how this game feels but yeah man it's really cool like the music is like a real vibe like the the story the characters are really interesting the twists and turns are very very fun it just feels like very like it feels like a very fun like deep kind of world and i didn't expect that necessarily i expected deus ex to be like a really great game that i just kind of appreciated but like but didn't speak to me necessarily i expected it to be kind of like okay like i i understand the history of this and why it's important but it's just like the gameplay isn't for me um i feel that way about a lot of things i feel that way about a lot of movies and a lot of tv shows like like i get that the honeymooners is important i'm not gonna sit and watch the honeymooners you know god right but um and uh and i feel that way about a lot of things there's certain games too where i'm just like that that passed me by i get it um and i expect this to kind of be that just because it m sims are kind of intimidating even for me who's like kind of a big fan of them i i still have difficulty making my way through them because they are so deep and they are so enveloping and so overwhelming and just the sheer amount of choice that they give you but the asx the the ps2 port on available on psn right now is just it's very it's very good very very good and it's very approachable it doesn't feel like the hub levels feel like they give you a lot of goals and like missions to do but it doesn't feel like an impossibly huge list it all feels very like digestible as far as like the amount of things you have to do but the ways that you can the ways that you can engage with the limited amount of missions they give you is is very like broad and very deep and very deep and so i really highly recommend giving this a shot especially if if you're on psn and it's essentially free like or ps plus and it's essentially like definitely check it out if you're into prey or if you're into um you know im sims or particularly for me like the reason i even jumped into it in the first place was because i was kind of mourning um the loss of what looked to be that perfect dark game which which seemed like it was going to be a lot of this it seemed very im sim oriented and for that not to be happening anymore is a little disappointing and So yeah, I'm pleasantly surprised by how good Deus Ex is.

3:24:07Colin Moriarty:I know Deus Ex 2, the Invisible War is apparently fucking horrible. So I'm just going to not. That's the only one I ever I ever played deeply. I had it on Xbox. And yeah, what I was thinking when you were talking is like, it's not a huge surprise because there's like so much there's so much. Web behind all of these guys like. Deus Ex is Warren Spector, Warren Spector, yeah, Warren Spector was the producer. of a bunch of games at Origin Systems. Origin Systems was the company founded by the Garriott brothers, like the Ultima people. So he was like a producer for a long time on like Wing Commander and Ultima and all of those games.

3:24:47And then he ends up working with Ion Storm. Warren Spector leaves Origin Systems, goes and works with Ion Storm. Ion Storm is the studio that's founded by John Romero after, and other people after id. And then they create Deus Ex together. the connection here is that that i think is interesting is that he produced system shock yeah and so deus x is kind of like the splintered off is like the other is like bioshock's one of them and and like is more with the origin of the system and or of the uh ip and deus x is like the split and then you get into like thief and these other things because i remember him coming to some prominence in the console space for the first time really when Epic Mickey was released when he was with Disney and of course Epic Mickey 2 that was 2010 and 2012 but it's funny like my first interaction with anything he really made outside of Invisible or which he directed which I don't remember at all really to be honest was System Shock and I was just thinking about that as you were saying it's like yeah this guy actually has like his he leaves and then Ken Levine comes in sure for system shock two and so like they're kind of like mirror images yeah where they're doing the same kinds of games it's he's an interesting guy to read about i mean like he worked on a bunch of ultimate shit he was that he produced like all of the late ultimate games from 1990 onward so he's a real og sort of dude and he apparently is in some way um interact i don't know if he's directing it or whatever but system shock three is like something he's involved with in some way so that's exciting that's yeah i mean yeah no i i really think that

3:26:31Colin Moriarty:the design in this is pretty pretty fucking exceptional and and based on what i was reading it seems like although it's a ps2 port of the original days x i've heard like a lot of people say like there's it's not even really like necessarily you would expect that the ps2 port would be kind of like panned in some way or like look down upon but apparently like there's a lot lot of things that are kind of that people even who are big into days i kind of prefer like like the art is a little bit more dynamic or like a little bit better there's lighting changes uh some levels have been reworked to account for the the loading screens and some people prefer them it's actually like more split than i would have would have imagined um and one thing i wanted to shout out too is i'm really surprised at how well the inventory like the ui works in a game like this like that was one of the things i expected to be kind of fucked because i i just i've seen a lot of these games kind of make that transition and not very well and from what i heard about invisible war was that a lot of that game got compromised because they were designing it with console in mind primarily and so like they they wanted to simplify things and not have uh not have you worry about certain things and and have limited inventory and just a lot of it was like simplified and streamlined but it works remarkably well on controller like even the original deus x with all of its like flexibility like it's you put you press square to bring up your item inventory and then you press circle to bring up your augments and you choose to activate them based on that and it's like it flows really well to the point where like it makes me think like damn you really didn't have to streamline or you didn't really have to compromise on invisible war i don't know i don't know why you did that really um but yeah dude i highly i think this is a brilliant brilliant game i think i actually think colin like given um just the story being so heady and and you're kind of recent kind of uh i don't want to say recent maybe you've always but like the the system shock kind of um pull that you've been in i think you'd actually really like it yeah it's definitely a little clunky but like it's it sounds great i'm looking at the trophies actually right now to see them yeah i'm thinking about platinuming it right now um i don't know how i i can't imagine that it would be too difficult but yeah it's like it's got a very low interaction rate because on psm profiles because it's in ps plus so sure yeah the trophies are all deflated because people are just checking it out and probably most people are like oh i don't want to play this um yeah no it's totally i agree with you when you were talking about it i'm like yeah i really should play because and that's the other thing is like it's the other pieces i was saying of like our bioshock love it starts kind of or it this is like again an alternate reality of where it ends up as system shock but got the big gets bioshock ultimately so just a cool little industry thing all right yeah asx the conspiracy that's again available it came out just in june on psm yeah so you can buy it a la carte or as part of your ps plus premium subscription with access to the classics catalog.

3:29:25Dustin, you're playing another oldie from the PS2 era, Silent Hill 3. Talk to me about this.

3:29:33Colin Moriarty:Yeah, well, I have played because I am done with it now. So it's not a very long game. I think my play time was five hours. It's like a five or six hour game, really. I did not just because I know that one of the first questions people ask, I did not play the HD collection uh that's horrible to my understanding i've not checked it out myself um and it's unfortunate because there's not really a good way to play there's like definitely not a good way to play it on console other than that hd collection if you want to play let's say you want to pick up a ps2 copy colin what how much do you think silent hill 2 is complete on ps2 right now silent hill 2 or 3 3 complete complete just guess 100 dollars 255 dollars and rising why i feel like i have this game was it rare dude it's not i don't i would guess i don't know this for sure that it is not rare it is just highly desired right right right because that's how it always is like i was just saying uh on my stream on uh when i was streaming this morning this rollercoaster tycoon game on xbox i'm i would guess is insanely rare i never in three years of going to different shows i've seen it one time and i finally found it for 20 so very rare low value because no one cares about rollercoaster tycoon on xbox right it's just a weird thing that i thought was interesting uh but silent hill 3 market with pokemon yeah um pokemon games they are not rare no they're not i see the prices on them too and i'm like what is going on here dude i have all these games and these games were like flooding funko land and like red on the shelf would be like behind they would always put the cartridges and there would be like a little red line a little blue line like a little yellow line so on and so forth gold silver dude poke i know we're getting off track here but pokemon emerald loose this is a loose just the cartridge is 200 that's so stu i don't even i i just don't even understand that that's just so I know there's high demand, but there are millions of those cartridges.

3:31:40So you'd think that these things... I got to send you a picture, actually, because this is actually putting things in a different perspective for me. My cousin Junior, John, he had a whole small crate of Game Boy Advance, whatever, Pokemon games. Many, many, many duplicates of them. And I remember him sending me a picture of it. And I didn't think twice of it because I was like, oh, that's cool. But they must not be worth that much. I mean.

3:32:11Colin Moriarty:Oh, no. Yeah, that's awesome. He might be sitting on thousands that I should tell. Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. So all that to say, I'm not going out and buying a copy of Silent Hill 3 on PlayStation 2. I would love to have it because I have Silent Hill 1 and 2, but I'm just I can't do 250 on this. So there is a PC version that there is a very good mod for that makes it run on modern hardware. So I did that. And then in addition, I had to run another mod because the PC sound was all fucky. So you have to run another mod on top of that that injects the sounds from the PS2 version. So it was a hassle.

3:32:55Colin Moriarty:But once I got it running, it was great. um so and i gotta touch back on a few probably a few like when they announced the silent hill the next silent hill blue routine project i had said at the time that i had wanted them to do three instead of one um and some many people in the comments rightfully pointed out that that would make no sense uh because silent hill three is a sequel to silent hill one like a direct sequel to silent hill one um and i guess to get into it lightly silent hill one and three involve a much more direct story about a cult within silent hill that's causing a lot of this crazy shit to happen uh where two is obviously very different and not is only loosely connected to uh one and three and uh it was fine um i like i really like silent hill 4 it's you know the atmosphere i love how when you play the levels and you're like man this place fucking sucks and is creepy you know sucks in a good way and then it's like you go into the next layer of hell and And you're like, holy shit, this place is actually horrifying now.

3:34:09Colin Moriarty:I love that. And so this game had all of that in it. But to me, there's something about the cult aspect in Silent Hill 1 and 3 that makes it less interesting. Like, oh, there's an explanation to why things are the way they are around here. Whereas Silent Hill 2 is much more loose, I guess. in some different ways um it's weird because silent hill 1 and 2 the originals and for silent hill 2 remake involve a lot of traveling around the town uh obviously very foggy can be kind of annoying so 3 there is one small section where you go to from point a to point b in silent hill and that's it everything else is much more closed off corridors um and so yeah it was i'm glad i played it and I'm now really considering playing Silent Hill for the room which I know is very mixed for people but I feel like that will kind of complete that slice of that IP for me with playing those four PS2 games so yeah it was it was cool I would I wonder with Bloober team if they will remake Silent Hill it would be really cool if they just remade Silent Hill 1 and 3 at same time uh just because those games are so closely interconnected um so yeah it was it was interesting um not amazing and i think when i posted my tweet about it that was like i now having played all three of these games i understand why two is the the silent hill game through and through just because in terms of its story i think is so much better uh but i had a good time with it and it was fun going back and like Chris was saying like I have a ability like you kind of get this muscle for going back and playing old games and I played Silent Hill 2 before the remake came out and so man the combat in these games are just not good like these games are not when it comes to gameplay these games are not very good to go back to yeah I know but if you can get over that there's still it's cool to go back so I'm glad I did there's if you are interested in playing it the pc version is the way to go there are plenty of guides on reddit to get that those mods installed that i would recommend so technically it is you know it's a little bit of piracy i would say even though it's on a website called my abandoned where i have no idea a little bit of piracy just a little bit of piracy i mean if they if they offered me a good option to buy it i i 100 would um yeah of course of course this is what we talk about about the different the difference between if you have no option i'm gonna be a lot less angry at you for doing what you got to do yeah i could if i wanted to be and this still wouldn't be legal if i went and bought the hd collection still wouldn't be legal because it's not that i didn't buy it for right right you see as a platform so it's like whatever um so yeah silent hill 3 okay i would say cool man yeah it would be nice to have a for for those games to be more accessible it would be interesting because one is one has to be so thoroughly remade because of the nature of the console it was on silent hill one it would be interesting if they just put them together like you're saying um i never really considered that until you had noted it um maybe that's the whole idea but i doubt it because you could even if that would be easier and more coherent, you could still sell them twice.

3:37:48So you wouldn't really want to do that, I don't think. But it would be kind of cool.

3:37:52Colin Moriarty:I think I'm going to watch the Silent Hill movie, the 2006 movie, which I've heard very mixed things about. Some people say it's absolutely terrible. Some people say the first half of it is very good. And then other people are like, it's not it's not perfect, but it's actually surprisingly decent. So I'm going to give it a shot. OK, yeah, make your own decision. And then you put your review, your fanboy review on your, what is it called? Letterboxd? Oh, my letterboxd. Dude, yeah, as soon as we mentioned on the stream, I was getting followers. I'm like, dude, I'm sorry. It's your curse to follow me on Letterboxd.

3:38:29It's a blessing. You're welcome to it. Blessing and a curse. All right. Well, that's all we're playing. Let's get into six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas from the audience over on Patreon.com slash Last Day Media before we go away for a little while. You guys know we always wrap up with inquiries from the audience, and that's one of the perks you get over on patreon.com slash last day media in addition to supporting us there and getting early ad free access and a bunch of other stuff sacred symbols plus you can use the different threads in the news feed for the various shows each week to submit your inquiries you've heard them throughout the show here's six more blue moose wrote in said hey ss studs what are your guys thoughts on the increasing influence of advocacy groups like collective shout and credit card payment processors and shaping the content we see or don't see in games particularly when it comes to censorship or the removal of titles from platforms do you think this growing pressure from outside forces poses a threat to creative freedom in the industry or is it just part of a maturing medium finding its ethical boundaries love all the amazing content and stay sexy my friends good question this is one of the things on sacred symbols plus that hoag and i discussed at length and it's an interesting conversation i'm curious have either of you guys been keeping up with the the collective shout this australian advocacy group pressuring payment processors to remove games from steam and itch.io hoag and i were having this conversation is it itch.io yeah because we both we both agreed that we want to say itch you bad like real bad and it just that's not the way you say it apparently so and there's a lot of conversation around this because it's kind of like this extra legal but somewhat reasonable way to nip things in the bud without the participation of an elected it official or some sort of rule set or some level of consistency.

3:40:15On the other hand, I don't think the storefront should be selling these kinds of games. I think that they have no, I have no problem. I mean, I don't think I don't want them to exist, but I have no problem principally with these games existing. We're talking about games that are the big game was this game about rape that these women were going after in Australia. Reasonable enough. Should the game exist under the auspices of freedom of speech? Sure. And expression? Sure. Whatever. But does Steam need to sell it? um no when the the group claims in australia that when steam and itch.io and these other platforms didn't listen to them like or what weren't listening to them they just went to the payment processors and they wrote an open letter which you can find on their website that paypal and visa and mastercard and all these different places internationally and uh succeeded and got a bunch of stuff removed i think that the what happened on steam is fairly reasonable if you look at the games that were moved of steam they're pretty bad um a lot of it is like incest and like all and a lot of them hoke was saying like a lot of it is visual novels he's a kind of a he's kind of a freedom of speech extremist um where he really believes in like a maximal interpretation of it which i generally do too in i bring up the example all the time there's that there's like the the white supremacist book, The Turner Diaries, which is like really was a major inspiration to like domestic terrorists and mass murderers and stuff like that.

3:41:39The book has the right to exist. But I wouldn't I wouldn't be mad if I didn't find a copy of it in Barnes and Noble, you know, right. The problem is, is that and this is what Hogue has been kind of saying is the problem in my example is Barnes and Noble isn't making the choice. Actually, Visa is making the choice by saying, if you don't do this, we're just not going to process payments. And that would just hamstring the entire organization. They wouldn't be able to operate. So with all of that said, for people that are not familiar, I wanted to just lay it out. Dustin, do you have any thoughts on this?

3:42:10Like what, how do you feel about what's going on? This is a pretty big issue in the industry right now. And I will say from the political point of view, because I read and watch all this political stuff is it's bleeding over into because it's, it's becoming a thing about like expression and the power. It really has a parallel track with the debanking, the idea of debanking someone. of using financial pressure that is not really legal, but allowed to unperson someone or make them change their minds or do something. So it's kind of in that line and that's why it's crossing over. So take it away.

3:42:42Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's a complicated one for sure. I it's tough because I've seen a lot of different things about this where it certainly sounds like there were some games that maybe were not acceptable like um you know the game that you mentioned that involves rape and stuff like that um as far as some of the other like extreme gooner material um i do find it a little weird where it's like yeah it's not something for me but we get into a weird spot where the payment processors are the arbiters of what is acceptable and what's not. I can't... My gut instinct is probably more with Hoag where it's like it feels like an overstep even if some of these things were not something that we would consider morally okay.

3:43:47Colin Moriarty:I don't like the overstep from the payment processors because it gave them it's like okay well they did it for this and there was a large amount of pushback and then that kind of gives them a clearance that's like oh we kind of do have some power here so maybe they are the arbiters of what is okay or not okay to sell and I don't like that that feels gross I think in some sense It sounds like Steam maybe should have been a little more responsible with some games in particular that maybe their vetting wasn't good enough. But I have seen examples. And the problem is, and to be fully transparent with the audience, is that a lot of this I'm just seeing online, but I'm not really interested in going and investigating some of these insane Gooner games.

3:44:42Colin Moriarty:but I've seen people say like this game had no right to be removed because it doesn't involve a sexual assault or whatever it's just like something for a gooner that would be interested in and it's not illegal um and it was removed either from twitch or not from twitch from steam or itch.io so it seems like there are other games that are caught in the crossfire of this that doesn't sound good either so i it's tough it's it's like the they well they came for the gooner games and i said nothing and then they came then then they came for my anime games and they came for me you know what i mean so i i it's hard for me to to go to bat for these um so i don't i don't see myself becoming an advocate but i will say that it something about it feels very off to me yeah i totally agree with you i think that was you know hogue made a lot of really great points people should listen to the sacred plus episode but one of the things he was saying and it's a tough it's a tough thing to say because it it could be misinterpreted and we don't misinterpret with him or us or whatever but it's like when you're it's like you're saying you're going to bad for shit that's really unsavory and he was saying that like you don't want it he's like i was describing one of the games like one of the descriptions he's like and he said something really funny he's like this is not one of the games that you really want to be going to bad for or something you know but it's like yeah but his point was that i think we're talking about incest or whatever and he's like it's not illegal to write about incest and the characters and the characters are not real so like because i was saying like one of them are about like underage incest or whatever and it's like he made the i think he made was making the argument that like they're not real like it's really unsavory and tasteless and you wonder why anyone would sell it, why anyone would play it, why anyone would make it.

3:46:33But like, and it's, it is, I love what you say about the, the line and like, will, will the line encroach further and further into reason? And I think one of the major things is like, I was always under the assumption until the last 10 years that the banking institutions and like the payment processors wanted to know as little as possible. And it was only, and I use this example in the sacred plus episode, it was only when marijuana became legalized and you started seeing stories about how the marijuana dispensaries and like the grow houses in Washington and California, whatever, could not deal with banks.

3:47:07And they were literally paying their taxes by the millions of dollars in cash with like armed guards and shit like that and all these crazy things. And you realize like, wow, there's this whole way to like keep ostensibly legal businesses out of the realm of banking and payment processing and Swift and all these kinds of things just by the power of those unelected, bureaucratic, powerful companies. And this is kind of a similar shade of that where these guys are not like a cardboard manufacturer or something like that. If they don't want to work for you or they refuse to operate for you, you're done.

3:47:45Like there's, what are you going to do? And we were talking through like what would have been a solution because I think a lot of people are disappointed steam is big enough to have maybe held the line and i'm like yeah but it becomes complicated because this is what the solution i was thinking of was i was like steam we don't know anything about steam's finances for sure because they're private but they probably have many many billions of dollars in reserve and what they could do was kind of create their own bank or their own payment processor where like they were the individual conduit by which money went in and out.

3:48:23And they basically sold, it was almost like a company town. You know what that is in like the 19, like you'd work at a factory and then they would have like a whole like general store and clothing stores, whatever. And it was just being sold to you from the same people that were running the store. And there was like internal money that was being circulated, not ideal, but that's maybe a way around it, but very expensive and unprecedented and frankly unnecessary so that's the level of power they have over and i think that's why itch.io like maybe even went overboard in some way because they're so much more even more vulnerable and i think when they saw that steam wasn't going to fight and valve wasn't going to fight they were like well we have no way of fighting against this behemoth if if paypal cuts us off and visa cuts us off like we can't be paid you'll have to use like cryptocurrency it's like it's like yeah anyway

3:49:10Colin Moriarty:yeah what do you think no i mean i i'm i'm in general agreement i i just uh i think it's too much power i think it's a a deep overstep there's very few things there's very few things in this world that i feel are very are like off limits i think i think really the only thing that i would even argue is that like probably like anything involving like underage that that should that should there should be like really no place for that i think um but anything else generally if you want to express it in art or like in a game uh i i think it's totally fine um and i don't think that i don't think that people that handle basically like the sole way that you're able to even make a life should should be determining that stuff like the payment processes are like really important and so like i don't uh i don't think they should be involved in any of that shit personally.

3:50:04Yeah. It's interesting. Hogue makes the argument that maybe we should start teaching, treating these companies the way that we treat the electric company and the phone company and shit. Legally, I don't think, certainly not the landlines, but I don't think the sell companies either can say like, oh, we don't like your politics or we don't like that you're a white supremacist or we don't like that you're this or that. Something that's unsavory, but within the bounds of legality, they can't deny you service. You can't get the electric company. You could have like a swastika hanging outside your house and the electric company can't withhold your electricity.

3:50:38Right. This is to protect some level of expression. And maybe they, so being treated like so-called common carriers to be like, it's actually not up to you to decide like what you process. As long as it's legal, you process the payment. And maybe that's going to require legislation and a lot of arm twisting. These companies are super. The thing that I'm confused about is that I look at it in the other direction where I'm like, OK, these companies have massive power. You also have massive power to just say, like, we don't care. What are you going to stop taking Visa? Go ahead. Go ahead and stop taking Visa.

3:51:15Go ahead and stop taking PayPal. Good luck. I mean, they could like they could respond like that and be like, you have no power over us. We'll get bad press over this. No one's going to stop using Visa. No one's going to stop using MasterCard. No one's going to stop using PayPal. So we'll ride it out. And I would like to see if that happened. Instead, these guys capitulated like that.

3:51:40However, I want to be clear, and this is, I'm telling you guys this is vulgar out there. So if you have people around like mixed company and shit, the game that Collective Shout, this organization in Australia was focusing on was a game called No Mercy. Have you seen anything about this game? Or know anything about it? it's pretty it's pretty rough this is the description as it was marketed in this game you'll either become every woman's worst nightmare or rather the best dick they'll ever have your goal is simple leave no pussy non-fucked since that's the only thing they all want never take no for an answer fuck your mom fuck your auntie and even fuck your friend's mom why not take what's yours and show no mercy so we're not dealing like so when that comes across a 60-year-old CEO's desk at MasterCard.

3:52:25They have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. And obviously, they're going to want to tamp that down and not deal with it and just be like, fine, whatever, just cut it off. It doesn't matter. But the sad reality is that that also has the right to exist. And the question is, how should you be able to access it and get it? And this is why I go back to my Barnes & Noble example, where it's like, you just got to choose what you're selling and what you're not selling. It's up to you and you need to pay attention like that. That shouldn't have been published on Steam. Like that's crazy. I'm not saying that I'm going to come after you with the First Amendment and be like, you don't have the right to make the rape game.

3:53:00It's like, OK, if you're fucking, I guess, do that. It's fucking crazy and it's disgusting.

3:53:05Colin Moriarty:Yeah. But like the companies need to take a little responsibility too. And I think they're starting to use volume as an excuse. Steam didn't know that game was on there because no one is paying attention period yeah they're not paying attention they're not looking at every game that's going on there they don't care and that's a problem and this is an early 90s esrb like moment or even late 80s with like parental guidance and all that kind of stuff where they better be careful because the government's going to start sniffing around this shit and then they're going to be their own worst enemy not only with the payment processors but with the government.

3:53:39The ESRB is what kept the government away. If, if, if, and if games are just being published outside of that and above and beyond that, then you gotta be, you just gotta be careful. Um, the, the companies like PlayStation and Xbox that where you really have to deal with ESRB ratings and simply can't publish there without them, like they're kind of protected because this game would never have been on PSN, right? Although who knows? I mean, no, no one's paying attention there either, but there's just no way that this would have gotten through. People would have seen this. It would have gotten flagged.

3:54:09so I don't want to put it all on the payment processes and I don't want to put it all on the organization because I think Hogan, I agreed to it's like collective shout is kind of doing what the collective shouts of the world do. They appeal to companies to listen to them, appeal to organizations and people to make changes. So these companies have to take a little responsibility for themselves and maybe the easy answer is to say like, maybe you go sell your incest game or your rapey game or whatever on your own website and uh we don't need that here it's okay to say that just like i don't want the racist white supremacist book on my bookshelf but you can read it go ahead so so that's where i stand i i'm um i'm a little concerned about this just because i think that people are bending too soon too quick without asking questions.

3:55:04I think the obvious answer is to just not sell this game. But what is the outcome and why are people overreacting? It's so funny, dude. It's not really funny because I don't want anyone to be abused online. But the collective shout people are arguing that they're getting an enormous amount of abuse because itch.io specifically has gone so what they call, I think, overboard. Where they're taking down games we didn't even complain about. We don't want down. They're going nuts.

3:55:29Colin Moriarty:Yeah. And it's like, we didn't ask for that. I think I saw I think I saw mouthwashing was affected by or at least I saw a lot of people saying that, which is like mouthwashing is not even remotely. And I think the theory of the case there, Hogue was saying, was that they might have just done like a really drastic. They're a small company and they're probably scared in some way. So they're like anything with an NSFW tag or anything with like suggestive themes, right? Whatever, like just take them all down and then we have to like go through them one by one. And so I think that's probably what happened, but it's making it really bad for those advocates in Australia.

3:56:00And hey, dude, you live by the sword. you die by the sword say it all the time so yeah you're getting involved with a fucking crazy group of people video game people you have to know that going in i'm not even being in any way sarcastic like you have to know what you're dealing with like it's not it's not some other like weird malleable group of people there we're crazy people anyway dusty go ahead just to save you chris because

3:56:25Colin Moriarty:i also saw that thing about mouth washing because it actually made a tweet because people were talking about it that the game hadn't been indexed since October 2014 since it doesn't meet some criteria because they were like just linking out to Steam so oh I see I see it didn't have to I saw that so wildly I was like are you fucking serious they removed a lot of people washing so that was I appreciate it yeah just to save you but the point still stands overall that it went crazy. By the way, there's a I don't know if you guys saw Steam's policy has now changed. Did you see this? No. I'm not sure if I can find this.

3:57:16As a response to this? Yeah. This is the most, I should say that this is the most concerning part. It's, so there's a, there are 14 clauses in the Steam guidelines and policies. and they're like no hate speech things that have existed for a long time so like no hate speech you know discrimination nude or sexually explicit images of real people adult content that is an age-gated libelous or defamatory things number 15 content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks or internet network providers in particular certain kinds of adult only content wow so it's like all these different things and then says like number 15 anything that violates the rules of the payment processors it's like damn dude that's a pretty wide open door and hoag was saying that it says may violate doesn't so it's so then even then you don't even know what you're getting it's

3:58:16Colin Moriarty:the pretty pretty bad situation yeah the one positive thing to lean on i guess is that it i mean a payment processor i mean they they just want money that's their whole business so like i don't imagine them necessarily at like going on the hunt for things to i i don't i don't foresee the payment processors going out of the way to be like how can we make less money you know what i mean i think uh that's really the one kind of saving grace is that it's in their best interest to actually like not look at all um and so it would really heavily depend on like people like making a big stink about it and i do think like the big stink that they were making about this one thing is probably valid considering what it is versus a lot of what's available i don't foresee this happening with like i don't know grant the thought or something you know or like something that's more like arguably just well this is just this is video games this isn't like a rape simulator um so i don't know we'll see how that shakes out that is a wide open door though Oscar writes in and says, hey, sacred sickos, I needed a place to publish my grievances towards MDS1, so here I am.

3:59:25I've been playing the Master Collection Volume 1 and going through the first game, but I can't figure out what was so revolutionary about it. I guess if I had never seen a cutscene or felt a controller vibrate, then I would have my mind blown as well. However, seeing this game for the first time with my 23-year-old eyes has me both frustrated and annoyed. The game's controls are obtuse, the intuitive nature is at zero, and the story is trying to be interesting, but how many times must I hear how bad war is? I say all of that to ask what makes this game so beloved i don't even know where to begin abusing you oscar yeah

3:59:54Colin Moriarty:i almost feel like what say he openly admits he's 23 years old and saying this shit i know it's like we don't need a 23 year old's opinion on metal gear solid but the the bigger thing is is you said it in your letter oscar i guess if i had never seen a cut scene or felt a controller vibrate then I would have my mind blown as well. Well, you know, We had never really seen or experienced anything like that at all in the fall and the winter of 1998. Years before you were born. And is some of it nostalgia? Yes. Does it hold up? We were saying games from this era just don't hold up very well. I don't think it's hard to see why people were into it, though.

4:00:42It's an incredible game. But it's old. It's really old. It's coming on 30 years soon. so right it's not going to hold up specifically but you don't see you don't see it that's

4:00:53Colin Moriarty:interesting well he does and i want to know has oscar played any other playstation one games has he played any super nintendo games any games in and around that era because that would maybe make you understand a little more yeah if unless you've only played modern games but then you played death stranding years oh everyone loves metal gear i'm going to go back to that that's your first experience that maybe but uh this this line of thinking of someone that's like man 2001 a space odyssey sucks the the ships don't even look real why did people like this it's like yeah is it possible at all for you to put yourself in the context of the moment at all i do think that's a hard for people it's crazy as i get older i i i realized that that's actually like a skill like to be able to like place yourself within the within the with the context of being able to observe things as they were like is um it's probably not a common thing and even just like if you meet with just normal people like no no one's speaking like that you know what i mean like nobody engages in conversations about like oh man for the time like it's like it's it's usually like enthusiasts or people who like really think deeply about these things that engage in that kind of conversation and so like i mean i even say look as i'm 31 i miss metal gear solid like when i when it was out like it just wasn't one of those games that i had come across on ps1 i was more into platformers like things like crash bandicoot spyro all the all this other stuff and so metal gear solid completely passed me by when i went back to try it it's rough it is it is definitely like the least playable of the original metal gear solid games like by by a wide margin um and yeah like i and i understood that but it's it's pretty clear that even as you write this question like i mean colin said it already let's it's if i had never seen this if i had never experienced that then i would have my mind blown and there you go you kind of answered your own question with it so like i'm not gonna harp too hard on it and i understand where you're coming from because i also was like when i first played it i was like damn i i i want to like this but i just kind of don't it's like runs at like 23 frames a second and it's like mega inconsistent and it's it's blurry and and it's and it's fucked on modern displays um it's just not a game that's been treated very well either quite frankly from from a porting perspective and and elsewhere so i don't begrudge you for finding a metal gear solid one like not that enjoyable of an experience but also like it's important to just kind of even when you're writing out this question or when you're thinking about it just kind of take into account the context it's like i don't think there's anything i really don't think there's anything impressive from a personal standpoint like when i watch citizen k and i'm like i don't i don't care like i i don't i don't give a shit but i understand like what it's doing and like why oh this is even you can just observe like a shot of just like a camera like panning through a window pane and not cutting and just like whoa that's kind of for that time and given the context of everything that surrounds it like that's a that's a really impressive thing to be doing and that's not something that people had seen before I don't give a shit about Rosebud I don't give a shit about this story I don't even really care about these characters really but like the you gotta be able to observe things from the context of their origin and the surrounding environment because without that I think you're going to miss out on a lot of things to appreciate not only in like media but just in life in general I think requires a lot of contextualization and yeah just think more widely about these things i think would be the only thing that i would say but i get it i totally get it i fucking metal gear solid one on original hardware and and even just the ports it's like it's it's not been served well um and it's because i think they what is it they they couldn't really i think it was like a lot of the animations are like locked to certain it's something something really mega specific about like the coding of that game and like how it was built that like doesn't allow it to be like you can't make metal gear solid one like 120 frames as far as i remember um so yeah it's not gonna be for you but you gotta show some respect oscar back to fortnight with you thank you for writing in michael lamaro wrote in and said hey boys what's up with wolverine should we expect to see this game in the coming year and a half or so do you think there's a chance it could be canceled i'll eat some chicken cutlets and listen oh you're so lucky um i don't know i mean i think the game is going to come out i think that it's clearly taking way longer than they anticipated remember wolverine and spider-man 2 were announced at the same time and that was in 2021 and we really have only seen that one it's like him at a bar or something isn't it yeah it's the trailer the teaser for it that's all we've ever really seen except of course that we saw way way more of the game than they ever intended because the insomniac was victimized by a hacking situation the game was leaked to such a degree that it was playable um if you knew how to like fuck around with the files and stuff like that and um a lot of people did and a lot leaked and there were videos and concept art and writing and i mean a lot of the game i i told you guys that i read like the like one of the things that that leaked was like a synopsis of the story and i read it understanding full well what i understand right now which is that I won't remember any of this because I don't know what any of these people are.

4:06:21And I don't remember a goddamn thing about it. So I read it at the time. I wonder if it's the games and it's probably a combination of two things. The game's obviously not coming along. It's lost a lot of people along the way. Remember that guy, Brian Horton, who was originally directing, I think was the second director of the game left to go to the initiative. And then that obviously didn't go very well. Meanwhile, the guys that directed, including a friend of mine, Marcus Smith, The guys that directed Ratchet and Clank, the most recent Ratchet game, and one of the guys that did Resistance are now in the directorial roles of the game.

4:06:55So it's in good hands now. But I can't help but think if the leak and the reaction to the leak might have had anything to do with it. I think it's really unfair to see things. It's the same thing that happened with Grand Theft Auto 6. You're seeing a bunch of shit that's not meant for anyone to see. It's not done. They're messing around with things. Who knows what's final and what's anywhere near being final and like what is even going to be in the game. But nonetheless, people played with it and saw it. And I think we're really critical of it, regardless of where it was. And I wonder if they had kind of an unforeseen, like if you could get a silver lining of the situation.

4:07:30It's like, well, the silver lining is we got hacked. Everyone saw our sales numbers, like everything like that X member. I mean, we haven't even started talking about like they're supposed to be doing X-Men games, right? Like we've just not even talked about that in two years because there's so much like other things to talk about. But like there's like, they have a deal wrapped up to the late 2030s to work on Marvel games forever so they're in this thing yeah I think canceling Wolverine would be a huge mistake because it doesn't portend well for what is happening in the future and I think they're probably taking their time to get it right and maybe using the unfortunate silver lining of the situation to say like well people didn't like this this this this and this we can maybe fix it so I don't know what's going on with Wolverine but they have, I don't, I think there was some official stuff like they acknowledge that they're going to put, that's going to be, you know, a pro enabled and all sorts of stuff.

4:08:23So it just, the things they say about it sound like it's happening when it'll appear, you know, like one, one day at a state of play or something. And, and then we'll know, but I don't think it's canceled or anything when I would say next year, I don't have any information to work on, but you got to shit or get off the pot. Yeah. So you can't be wasting so much time on this. If you're going to make a seven and release seven, just get it out. But make sure it's not a five or a six. That's where I stand. Chris, where are you on this?

4:08:55Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's anything's possible. Who the fuck knows, really? But like my gut tells me it's not canceled. It's just it's they suffered a huge data breach. And so that probably isn't great for morale. Obviously, they're having a difficult time finding a direction for it. Like I think ultimately insomniac shines insomniac games tend to shine for reasons that I don't think have anything in common with Wolverine. Quite frankly, like a lot of a lot of insomniacs games kind of live and die by their weapon selection system and their and their traversal. And Wolverine as a character kind of has none of that.

4:09:31Colin Moriarty:You know, like so I think they're kind of out of their element a little bit. I think they really only have one framework to go off of as far as like a successful Wolverine game goes. And that X-Men Origins Wolverine game from 2009 or 2010. I can't remember exactly which year. That was like very, very good. Uncharacteristically good, though. It was like kind of like a surprise. And I think they're just trying to make it work. I like I don't see Spider-Man's gameplay or like Spider-Man's design philosophies translating well to Wolverine in the same way that I could see. You know, you could see Ratchet to Fuse.

4:10:08You could see Sunset Overdrive to Spider-Man.

4:10:13Colin Moriarty:You know, you could see that very clear if you have any kind of understanding of like game design and like how to analyze those things. But like I don't really see that big of a I don't really see that big of a connection between Spider-Man and Wolverine, really. as far as like playable characters go and as far as commercial goes and as far as overall game design goes they're very very different games and so i i really do feel like they're just kind of having a a harder time figuring it out than they normally would um i think it'll still be very good i if i had to predict how i'd feel about it i'd probably feel like okay that was fine like that was good like i don't think i'm gonna be over the moon about about wolverine in the same way that i was about spider-man ps4 or i mean even spider-man 2 kind of left me disappointed which is kind of crazy but not that it's like bad or anything it's just definitely less it's lesser than spider-man ps4 in my opinion and so we'll see how it goes i i think next year is probably pretty likely as well um it's been long enough and i don't think they're going to come out with something that's tragically terrible well i can't imagine that who knows even what their schedule is like now because things were probably even outdated in the hack but they are so out of schedule now if this not only with like what was supposed to happen with Venom and Spider-Man 3 but Wolverine and then you have to get into these X-Men games like you gotta get going or this thing is gonna go into this no joke gonna go into the 2040s you know so and maybe at that point they just want out of it I don't know who knows like what's going on at this point I don't know yeah that schedule might even be completely not even what they're doing anymore and I could see that pretty clearly I don't think Venom's coming out that's one thing I'm pretty kind of I feel kind of bullish about that like I think I think they were just like no well we're not good Tony Todd right the guy that's the guy's name did he did he do all the mocap for it and stuff I mean I wonder if they just didn't even couldn't even finish it or what the deal is with that or maybe they're realizing that these interstitials are just a waste of time but then again Miles did really well I don't know man that's another game you could imagine just appears one day but it's like how much can they really have going there because spider-man 3 has to be in development as well and you don't want to have these games so close to each other unless you want to do a metal gear um ground zeros kind of thing which would be kind of interesting but dustin you have anything you want to add about the state the status of wolverine which is now turning a little bit into vaporware but probably not in reality yeah well between the two of you guys unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to give my full, you know, classic 15 minute.

4:12:47Colin Moriarty:Yeah, give me a good 15 minutes. Yeah. So the only thing I will add is just that despite the setbacks on Wolverine, I think it's also important to remember that Insomniac has delivered three times on PlayStation 5 already, which is much more than most of the, in fact, probably the most of any PlayStation studio. No doubt. So far. so yeah it's clear that Wolverine something fucky is going on but I'm sure they'll figure it out and I think you're right that if it's not if we don't at least hear something about it next year then something's really fucked yeah then I wonder if it's like what are you even doing now because you're setting an expectation for this time spent you have to balance the thing is what we were saying when Justice League was delayed or kill the Suicide Squad rather where it's like no kill this justice league suicides quite kill the justice league where we were saying like they've put so much money and time into it that that year delay you can only do so much but you kind of have to release something um you could cancel it and write it down you're gonna lose a lot of money but you're getting to this point where it's like all right how much are we really spending on this what are our resources like again i just feel like it might be best for them to just get something out as long as it's not anything less than good it might not be insomniac great but we'll see what happens i mean it's all i don't know anything about the game to be honest all right ed h wrote in and said hey cdc i hope you guys are doing well and last week's episode you discussed a listener inquiry about why game development takes so long these days i think you missed a big part of the story which is the general disavowal of so-called crunch in the industry this was cheered on by the gaming media and engaged hardcore gamers so more and more studios stopped crunching their developers to attract and retain talent and also gain positive pr among the gaming audience at the end of grounded to the making of the last of us 2 documentary various people at Naughty Dog discuss how hard it was crunching the first game and how they've committed to not doing it anymore.

4:14:42Or to finish that game and how they're committed to not doing it anymore. And Rockstar have apparently reduced their crunch culture after Red Dead 2. If your people can get up from their desks at 5 o 'clock regardless of how development is going, then it's inevitable your game development is going to take longer. And if all the AAA studios are reducing crunches, they compete in the marketplace of talented devs and the big games will get fewer and fewer and further between. It's a great point. I don't really know that I have anything to say about it. But it is a great point. I mean, we have understated or not stated much at all the role that anti-crunch culture has played maybe the other way to look at it is that games were coming out much quicker than they should have back in the day or could have two years could have been two and a half years um or three years and they and crunch culture was there and people were proud of it at one point to crunch and that became something that they weren't proud of so i think that's a very relevant point but you said the thing that's most important, Ed, is that this is done to attract and retain the most talented developers.

4:15:42And if they have their choice of what shop they want to go to, which the best of the best always are going to, even in a truncating market, then you're going to have to treat them pretty well. And I don't think that's a bad thing. And if that means like a nine to five and it takes six months or a year longer to get the game out, then so be it. But it makes the financial risk greater and, of course, the distance between games greater as well. I think the bigger thing I'm confused about, and it's easy for me to say, is like if I was really passionate about a project, I've said this many times, it's like I would put in extra hours voluntarily because I want to see it through.

4:16:14But like if you have to cater to the lowest common denominators on your team and the weakest links, then they're the ones that are not going to want to go hard and you're going to have to all slow down. So it's a very complicated thing. I don't have much more to say about it, but you guys have anything you want to add?

4:16:31Colin Moriarty:um i mean i know what you're saying and i i agree to some extent i think i think all of us have crunched because we cared about the things that we were doing um but i also think like i don't know you look at an industry that has like what like thousands upon thousands of layoffs that's getting more and more tumultuous. And if your thought in that kind of environment is, how do I lose even more of my precious time and break my back even more for a company that's just going to toss me away? Yeah. Or that has a, you know, like, I don't know. It's not that, I don't think forced crunch is a good thing.

4:17:17Colin Moriarty:I think creative people are naturally going to crunch on the things that they care about I don't think that's something you can even regulate I think people are just going to do it regardless because it's just kind of how that works but there is something to be said about just like you can't expect that of an employee base if you're not offering them some level of stability in the same way that we used to have it or at least we had it more so than now which is another part of it as well. I think morale is kind of down everywhere. I think because even when at games studios that succeed, like there's always like, all right, time to lose, you know, 100 people.

4:17:59Colin Moriarty:And it's like, well, I mean, fine. But you're definitely going to get worse work out of it. So that's also part of it, too. I think it's a good ride in, though. I think that's probably true. Yeah, I think there's also multiple facets to it. That's anything you want to add before we move on? Nope. Yeah. Give me 15 minutes on it. 10 to 15. I'll give you 30. That's too much. Never mind. That's too much. Leatherneck Jedi wrote in and said, fellas, I need your help here. I've got a question. You guys are the only ones I trust to give an even half educated answer. After listening to someone signed last week and specifically Reese Elliott's comments that goes to Tsushima sold more than The Last of Us Part 2, I went down a sales rabbit hole.

4:18:39Long story short, I did not realize that every modern PlayStation exclusive sequel sold so much less than the initial release. god of war ragnarok spider-man 2 and especially horizon forbidden west all sold noticeably less than their predecessors my question is if assuming this is normal why are developers so quick to make a sequel over a new ip i thought it was common knowledge that sequel sold better than the new stuff i realize that the originals have been around longer and thus have had more time to sell but this doesn't seem to match out with the disparity please make sense of the upside world down i found myself living in the past week or so so i can feel safe again going outside and knowing that gaming gods are indeed good thank you for writing in um i don't think it's not always the case, but there's there we actually on Sacred League.

4:19:18One of the questions was the best selling original Xbox game, which is Halo 2. So it outsold obviously the original Halo, which was an extraordinarily high seller. And so and Empire was bigger than Star Wars and whatever. But I do think the factors are somewhat different around some of these games, like The Last Last of Us, for instance, launched to a saturated PlayStation 3 market with a lot of units out there and then was re-released again on PS4. And The Last of Us Part 2 was released once and then again more tepidly. And I don't think we would even have access to those numbers at this point.

4:19:57So it's not a huge surprise. And then the same thing with God of War launching late in the PS4, Horizon launching somewhat midway through the PS4 generation and then later. But those games were both cross-platform as well. it could be something about lack of interest especially with horizon or maybe an overblown sense of interest in a franchise i also think purchasing decisions have changed people have gotten more involved in permanent games forever games games as a service online games they're simply not buying a la carte games as much and um i think maybe even even bigger point that is worth making and again you say you understand some of these things about like how there's time and and access and all the rest but um you don't have to sell as many copies to make it worth your while you've already done so much of the work so you're getting to the end point and maybe you sell 70 as many copies but it only costs x amount because you have the foundation of the game it's a i think a lot of developers feel like it's a waste to not do more with something that is so intensive if you spend five years with something it seems kind of a shame to throw it away so yeah so even if there are diminishing returns, which there are, those returns can still be very valuable.

4:21:07The Last of Us Part 2, as an example, might have not sold as many copies as The Last of Us Part 1, but it's like a massive financial success.

4:21:17Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I know that for a fact. So don't read too much into these things, but it's a fair question. Dustin, you want? Oh, I'm sorry, Chris. Go ahead. Oh, I didn't mean to jump in. I just I think it's worth noting that like I yeah you're talking about like the the asset the ability to really like get the most out of your assets I think that's that's that's yeah and even understanding what a game is gameplay yeah just like proving proving a formula basically to the point where it's like okay this thing has found success uh let's do more of it he's talking about like oh certain sequels sell less or whatever and that's true because in in a lot of these cases a lot of the sequels depend on having played the original like i mean you're not going to almost by it's almost the rule that you would you would expect that the sequel to something will always or at the very least like generally speaking have fewer people because a lot of people a lot of people are going to check out the original thing and it might be a massive success and then a lot of people are going to try it out and then they'll be like oh because it's a massive have success let me try it out and then they're not going to feel it and then they're those people aren't going to jump on the sequel because they know that it's not for them but they've still established a huge you know player base of people that do like it and it's a lot less riskier even if you're going to sell more even if you're going to sell less than your original version with your sequel it's still way more of a risk to make something like concord or something you know what i mean which was just tragically uh tragically a huge failure well i don't know about tragically but like well for them i'm glad for them and so yeah i mean you're ultimately betting on a proven formula that you know is successful and even if it's not going to reach the same heights um you're going to reach a fuck ton of people like the last of us part two sold millions like it's it's very very it's it's very well received as far as that goes indeed and so yeah I don't know that's really all I wanted to say Dawson anything to add?

4:23:25Colin Moriarty:Yeah well I think that this he you know he mentioned that he says about the external like having more time on the market so a game sells more I think it's important too that so much has changed obviously Xbox is huge with how they've changed what sales and player counts and how they make money with Game Pass but even PlayStation has like you mentioned god of war ragnarok my friend jason my normie friend jason though he's not really a normie um because he's he beat like this ultra hard boss on expedition 33 but he's not listening to gaming podcasts and like in the space constantly like we are um when he played god of war ragnarok he never bought it uh because he has playstation plus premium and i believe that's on there along with some of these other sequels.

4:24:14Colin Moriarty:Is Spider-Man 2 on there yet? I don't think so. Maybe at least Spider-Man Miles Morales is. And also Horizon, it may not be on there anymore, but it was on there, which they went and said that that lost them a lot of money. So there are quite a few situations too, where these games are just, their selling point is not to be sold as a unit anymore. anymore they're existing on playstation's uh service so there's a lot of factors i think despite yeah maybe in a lot of cases it is true overall that game sequels do sell less but um there are so many factors to consider yeah halo 2 i remember was just an anomaly because i think halo 2 sold more copies than there were like i think there were more copies of halo 2 than there were xboxes like people bought halo 2 that didn't own an xbox just to have it so they could bring it to people's houses um so yeah i don't know it's it's a weird environment for sure the j1 one wrote in final inquiry says hey hello cdc what are your thoughts on skill up aka ralph making a video game website the site is called this week in video games.com he hired a former game spot editor edmund tran to run it skill up wants to have a website to break news not just copy and paste work as well as not being covered in ads or ai generated content i appreciate his approach to this goal.

4:25:35He wants the website to outlive him and Chris stop killing celebrities.

4:25:41I went and looked at this website. You have to actually subscribe to and be a supporter to really use it, which is fine. I'm not going to do that, but it's totally fine. I understand. I think this is a cool idea. I just and it's this week in video games dot com or TWIV but this week in video games dot com. You can go check it out. It's a cool idea. I just don't really see a future for this sort of thing. And actually, it reminds me of a website that already exists which is called sifted s-i-f-t-d which is basically and i know they say they want to have more original content and stuff sifted is not original um but it's made by a guy that used to work at g4 like the original g4 and uh or actually no i'm sorry game trailers game trailers yeah um what was his name shane right the guy i'm not sure about i was on a show once i can't remember like i'm sad to say i can't remember but when i saw this and i was looking at it, I was like, yeah, this is a website like this kind of already exists.

4:26:32But so do many other gaming websites, many other video game podcasts, many PlayStation podcasts or whatever. So that's not really a preclusive thing, but I just don't, I feel like there's like, there's always going to be a niche for everything, but I feel like people are chasing, continue to chase the old ways that are just not going to come back. It's why people, one of the things that when we were kind of figure out what we wanted to do moving forward. When I had my meetings with all of you this year, Maddie was one of the people that said to me, he's like, what, what about making like a hub for content and doing more of that kind of stuff?

4:27:04And I'm like, I wish it was 20 years ago, you know, like I remember when one up was created and made itself something right. And like, you could start something like that and really do it. It's probably going to fail, but not necessarily. Now it's like, I just, people don't use websites like that anymore. They don't absorb news like that. I don't absorb news like that. I read the video game websites when I write sacred symbols every week to make sure I didn't miss anything on social media, which I typically don't. So it's a cool idea. I appreciate putting their people, their money, their time, their effort there.

4:27:38But I just. It just seems weirder and weirder to me to kind of pursue these kinds of things at the same time when it just seems obvious that the audience doesn't even want to deal with the websites that exist now. So that's my take. I hope I wish it well. I hope it does awesome. But I don't know. and that who is at skill up i don't know anything about skill up but he's pretty big right so he has like a huge group of people that will support it so i mean how much does it cost let's see be a supporter remember casual visitor free forever so you can just sign up i guess and then founding supporters ten dollars a month and then founding benefactor at twenty dollars a month there's all sorts of different perks so they'll probably make it happen there's annual too

4:28:21Colin Moriarty:as well but yeah not for me yeah yeah i think uh i like it a lot i think uh i think because i i actually saw this um when what is it uh what were we all in town for the hell was it summer games summer game fest summer games fest uh when you guys left i i met up with because ralph was there we were he showed it to me he was talking about specifically specifically uh mobile where like a lot just the sites on mobile are just like on horrible usable horrible and i was like and i was like oh yeah that's like something we we talk about that on sacred all the time or like that's something that's like that's just objectively true and he was like yeah this is we're trying to do something that to to alleviate that and that i appreciate like a great deal and uh yeah i like ralph he's a he's a good guy um i i like the the idea of the site i like how it looks i like how it functions on mobile in particular because that's how that's where i saw it but yeah i i don't i don't really know enough about that space i think as long as they can keep the the cost of it reasonable i don't really see a reason why it couldn't work i think there's enough people who are into this stuff and especially websites don't work anymore just because i don't think it's because people don't like websites i think i think websites don't work because a lot of websites have made themselves unusable and if this can make a big enough case for it's like okay well hey look look we're not going to penalize you for going on this website on the thing that most people use the internet on which is their fucking phone um it's astounding to me that other websites just don't care to alleviate that problem um then i think it's it's reasonable and with a guy like ralph kind of signal boosting and i think it's i think it's got more of a chance than whatever i i've never heard a sifted in my in my fucking life i guess yeah it's a small thing it's a small fan funding but i just know that that existed like it exists like a drudge report style yeah yeah you know um video game website that just is a is an amalgamation of everything everyone else is doing but it sounds like they want to do their own original content as well if they have one person monitoring it basically and doing it it's easy enough to kind of break even at least i think yeah i i wish them well i think it's a cool idea i visited it a couple times since um but uh yeah i i like those guys i wish it all the best i just don't know enough about the the market really or the behind the scenes especially like now i might have had a better idea like many many years ago um as to how this stuff worked but like now it's like i have no fucking concept so good on them for trying something i think it's uh admirable and it's very um ambitious i think um in this modern day and age to do it so like yeah props to them hope it works yeah i'm wishing the best anything you want to add dustin before we wrap it up yeah i i hope it works out i um yeah and i have no ill will or bad feelings towards skill up at all I don't understand how this business model is going to work out just because the whole thing is that it's supporter.

4:31:13Colin Moriarty:I mean, there's a whole section that's supporter only. So it's like you are asking people to pay for something that they can get for free somewhere else. So it better be pretty damn desirable. Right. I think people are way more interested in people interpreting news than just presenting it. I mean, that's how we survive. right um and so i i just i'm sure there will some people that will support a clean version of the news and be willing to pay for that um i don't see very many people wanting to do that so yeah we'll see i don't know it's an interesting experiment and like i said i i hope it works out for them um i just know that like i i would never find myself paying for any kind of news site i I think ever for any video games or not.

4:32:05Colin Moriarty:Like, it's just I'm not. I think that era is over. Yeah, I agree. And I want to be clear. I don't think I could do it. It's not like I was like, oh, I'll do it. And I was like, no, I don't want to do it. No way. All right. Well, that was fun. It's good to be here with you guys today. That's what's over. Let's get out of here before Chris loses electricity again. Chris, goodbye to you. Be well. Any plans for the rest of your day? Yeah, I mean, I'm probably going to play a little bit more Deus Ex, make some dinner, and then I'm off to see the naked gun tonight. I hope I'm not going to get overhyped for it I still ultimately like I'll wait to see for myself but feeling positive about it seems like it's going to be cool I'll let you know please do but that's really really it maybe do some cleaning Dustin goodbye to you be well any plans any plans no plans tonight really at all which is nice other than getting the show ready of course as I do tomorrow I have a haircut so that's exciting and then no plans this weekend it's weird like I've had like I've had a lot of plans recently so I'm just gonna be chilling and hanging out and I gotta figure out what I'm gonna play next now because I'm done with Silent Hill and so I have a bunch of things I could play it's just trying to figure out what's most desirable right now.

4:33:29Colin Moriarty:You know, I was almost going to start Final Fantasy nine. Oh, that's interesting day because there's a really good PC mod like I was. That's basically like a remaster. Maybe that's the move. I don't know though. I'll figure it out. All right. Fair enough. I'm going to work out and then I don't know. Do something. Eat. Hang out. Do a little work probably. That's basically it. I appreciate you guys today. It was good to see you. thank you for your time thank you all out there for your love support kindness etc couldn't do without you over on patreon.com slash last day media for early ad free access and a bunch of other perks last day media dot store for merch and we'll see you for streaming on YouTube as well every Monday afternoon Eastern time thank you so much for supporting us there as well it's a nice new initiative and I'm quite excited about it all right let's get the hell out of here guys be well be well out there goodbye see ya Take care, guys.

4:34:52As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

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