#380 | Don't Fall Away and Leave Me to Myself

47:10Yeah, it's coming back. I think you'll love Tokyo Game Show as well, because Tokyo Game Show is a lot. In my experience is a lot like. E3 meets PAX in that. Right. There's like a heavy merch element to Tokyo Game Show. There's like a whole floor. dude i was and since i was there only on media days when it was somewhat empty but everything was still occupied and stocked and you can go shop and stuff i was like this is nuts there was like a spike chun soft store that's where i got the my danganronpa shirt like with just his face on it and everything uh monokuma's face like it's just things that you'll be like oh my god like i can't even believe that's where i i broke it unfortunately or actually i didn't a friend of mine did but i i had that that sifter the slime that's like a bourbon glass it was awesome i was like this is incredible just take all my money yeah so that was the coolest thing yeah that was the coolest thing about packs that was always the coolest thing about packs was like the merch shit that you would get right exactly you'd find shit that's like i wouldn't even know where to find this elsewhere but i always wanted to go to japan i just haven't made the chance the time really i don't know also the travel the traveling is really like it's a long flight it's not it's much easier for you i know but it's really the ocean like the ocean freaks me out like genuinely like i don't like the idea of like like flying over the ocean it fucks me up i'll get over it at some point and my friends have been badgering me to go hey you should go i do want to go like yourself i want to just yeah i know i'll chloroform myself yeah it's a nice little chloroform rag before i get on the get on the plane i want to go primarily for the food like that's the big thing like i just want to eat in japan and it the funny thing is a lot of people ask me they're like dustin where do i eat in japan like anywhere pretty much anywhere as long as you're not going to like fucking and even mcdonald's has different food but it's like i didn't i didn't have a single bad meal there anywhere you go they just have like a food focused culture that pretty much everything fucking rules it's incredible yeah i um i agree i i found places that i would just go to I like lived in one of these ramen shops that I just found where I was like, I'll just eat here constantly.

49:20I was so fucking dried out and dehydrated. He probably spent like four or five dollars on a giant bowl of ramen, dude. Like I love ramen so much. Like I love real ramen. Ramen, some pork belly in there. Pork belly egg. Dude, I love scallions. I love fake ramen. So like I would imagine that like. Oh, yes. like real ramen is like real ramen is like next level stuff it's so good yeah i love maruchan creamy chicken ramen that shit is just but it's it but that was that was what ramen was to me for right when i was a kid i was like i thought this was ramen until i saw like a real bowl of ramen i'm like oh so it's like this is like the bastard eyes uh like spaghettios of ramen or whatever right i get it spaghettios i haven't thought about that in fucking forever uh eric smith we lost complete track of your question can you can you judge your friend sure you can um i don't know why it would take you so long to beat uncharted 4 it's so good but yeah but okay you weren't that drawn into it i guess that's fine i think i think it this is a tricky question honestly because popping a multiplayer trophy kind of implies that you you bought uncharted 4 maybe thought about playing it got sucked into the multiplayer and pretty much only played the multiplayer and then put it down for a while i don't know if you really started playing uncharted 4 until you've until you've started the campaign that's a good point you know i wonder let me look at the trophies because i wonder like i'd be curious to know the time stamp of a specific trophy, like the first single player trophy you would earn.

51:06Yeah, if that was not earned until earlier this year, then I would agree with you, actually. Yeah, I think that's that's it's fair to start the clock there, I think. Yeah, it's probably going to be one for like getting your first treasure. Yeah, find a treasure first. That's going to be your first one. So what what's your story there? More information needed. Don't send it in. Enjoy your time in Japan. Akihabara. I heard it's not a very well-kept secret anymore, unfortunately. So no, as far as finding things are concerned, being there and like, and vibing with it is probably still awesome. But like that was a legit place where you would go and like find cool shit.

51:47And now they know that they can just mark everything up. Yeah. You'll still find cool, cool stuff, but you're not going to get a deal. Nor should you. It's kind of like, it's part of it is like, you know, go to go some go to i know you can go to like random cities and towns in japan and find cool shit still for cheap oh you gotta go and do it and that's probably becoming more and more rare too as people are becoming more and more daring and going off the beaten path in japan yeah well maybe you'll go over there dustin you'll live over there you teach english yeah to get your visa yeah i don't know i can barely speak english so i don't know if i could teach it but apparently the the standards for that program are are quite low knowing knowing some of the people that i've known over the years that did it i believe it yeah yeah andy jennero wrote in and said hello sacred fellas when on a first date we are often asked what's your favorite color or what's your favorite movie while those questions are nice i'm here to ask the tough questions what's your favorite shape mine is the circle there's something about it that just does it for me why is it that we almost never ask people what their favorite shape is anyway hope all as well with the crew go stealers you must be one of your people must be uh that's an interesting question i don't know if i have a favorite shape that's why i was fascinated by the question i'm like i don't know yeah this is well this is why people don't ask it right i was gonna say let's answer the side question why is it that we almost never ask people their favorite shape because you sound fucking psychotic yeah what is your favorite shape on a date if that's what you lead with bro dude that's awesome to ask yeah like you're going out there dude beautiful woman she's all dressed to the nines and you're like so what's your favorite shape what is i'm trying to think though what is my i genuinely don't it's like favorite letter or something like i don't know like i mean yeah what is your favorite letter i don't have a favorite letter i don't think exactly but we have favorite numbers or at least lucky numbers yeah but i guess maybe yeah there's only there's only 10 of them though really yeah but the rest of them are combinations like my yeah yeah you're right though you're right yeah right it's actually more along the lines of colors because that's about how much that's about i mean you could get deeper i guess into like fuchsia and like vermilion i guess but like it's generally like red or you know blue or like whatever whatever primary color you want to choose i think the second it exceeds the second you're asking what's your favorite category of whatever and the category is something like shapes where there's like a lot or like letters where there's like more more than 10 i feel like it kind of gets like kind of crazy because they're just like i don't know does it matter i feel like if someone's asking these you know these dating questions are designed to get an impression of what someone's like right i feel like if you ask this question you're not necessarily evaluating what their answer is because i don't think there's i mean i'm sure some moron can just like be like oh you like trapezoid this means you have a fiery personality you know stuff like bullshit like that it's mainly to evaluate how someone reacts to the question astrology for mathematicians

55:07yeah yeah i guess so i get like i mean i genuinely don't think i have a favorite shape and if i do i don't even i i don't think i care enough in my own heart and soul to even find it in my own subconscious right right right which is even which is even stranger to me like i don't know what you guys are doing mentally right now but like i'm mentally like literally like with a flashlight in my brain looking for the answer to this question i can't find it my favorite shape is let me make sure this is what i think it is i haven't thought about this since i was a lad a rhombus yeah feel that feels like a pick me girl answer though i like the name it's a good name yeah rhombus a rhombus square isn't it a square kind of like a diamond diamond yeah if it's on its side right right right you know how about the rhombus a cone's good oh yeah 3d shape isn't there like a specific word for that that's like crazy there's like a specific word for cone i think that's like that's like really weird it's not prism because that's like a that's a pyramid but uh i don't know i think um yeah i don't know it's it's something weird that doesn't sound anything like it's supposed to sound but i feel like rhombus is more of like i feel like rhombus is fun specifically because of the name though right like i feel like if rhombus wasn't called rhombus it would have not nearly as much clout in the shape you know huge street cred yeah shape community dude this is the new community you know we can be adjacent to the aim community is there a reddit community for shapes reddit our shapes let's see is there a shape shapes reddit our shapes says post any and all shapes shapes shape our world founded in 2012 well there's very few shapes on this shape our world posting clouds and shit oh my god god bless um doesn't have to be this way by the way mike's parents are very friendly people they're very nice and they sent me this cool birthday card and it's a mario birthday card whoa it's official it's a nintendo licensee but uh you i think wait do i have to how do i make it work did i already break it oh press start right that turns the battery out yeah it makes a little noises and then you hit the dude that probably cost 30 bucks dude it's that it's 8 8 59 8 59 it's a hallmark card i at least feel like you're getting what you pay for because other cards are going to be like four or five bucks that one's got a whole gpu in it or something maybe not gpu it's got it's got you can run doom on that thing if you put a screen on it yeah run doom on it it's got a 980 in it that's cool yeah that was a really intense card yeah it's nice sweet that that would probably scare ben franklin oh my god you know they would they would fucking burn me at the stake in like five seconds if i had something like this um yeah i had to shout that out very very nice i like her parents they're very nice um okay let's get in the news yeah we can talk about this preliminarily i don't think there's really much to say about it because it actually came out came out today the day we're recording i did listen to it this morning though um playstation published a video that's eight minutes and 55 seconds long on their playstation youtube channel called from project amethyst to the future of play amd and sony interactive entertainment's shared vision it's jack win is that how you would say that h-u-y-n-h hyun hun hun hun maybe man i don't like it i don't know how to say it uh he's he it says he's the svp and gm of computing and graphics group at amd and it's with mark cerny who's obviously the art lead architect of ps5 and ps5 pro and working obviously on playstation 6 this is a there's a bunch of shit in here i don't understand and don't really care about but the one thing that i think was interesting in it and we could talk about obviously the contents if you'd like guys like but the one thing that i thought was interesting in it was cerny says that they're going to put this stuff into a playstation in a few years so is it does it seem that we might have a longer playstation 5 life cycle a lot of people i think assume 27 with maybe even showing it and are starting to talk about it more deeply in 26 now i think maybe we're looking at if what he's saying is true 28 right I don't know if you guys caught that but that was the big thing to me in this again a lot of it is gobbledygook otherwise for me so yeah you posted the link in our staff chat this morning and I was like this video is very boring it is delightfully awkward though it feels uncomfortable both of them talking Holly noticed they gave what did we say this other guys they gave Jack subtitles.

1:00:19Yeah. He has a very good speaking like English speaking voice. It didn't feel, it felt kind of like a diss. Yeah, yeah. They should, yeah. I noticed that as well. It's, yeah, built into the video so you don't have to use like the module to understand him. But I don't think it was needed either. Maybe they wanted to just be careful. What I liked about it was that they did this in Austin, Texas. So they made Mark Cerny fly all the way from Tokyo to Austin, Texas for this. That's the thing I couldn't get over. That's crazy. But maybe he had to be there for meetings and shit anywhere or whatever. But nothing else to really say about.

1:00:53Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead. The only thing I like, there's a lot of technical stuff that's way above my pay grade. The thing that I took away from it is that they are working very hard to use machine learning to make computing more efficient. Which reads to me, first of all, kind of plays into what Moore's Law is dead is saying about a cheaper PlayStation five. they can get more out of lesser hardware, not lesser, but less expensive hardware, but also more efficiency for a handheld, potentially. Yeah, it would be important. I'm so excited. That's going to change the travel game for me, by the way, the handheld.

1:01:32Oh, yeah, 100%. I'll be more mad. That's like what Vita did for me for a little while. I'll go anywhere. There's no new Vita game, so it's kind of boring now. Anyway, Chris, anything in here that you wanted to shout out? I know, again, this is an important video you guys should go watch, I guess, but it's there's nothing here I want to talk about other than again yeah yeah I mean that I would I would say that this does kind of again I would echo that it does seem like it's leaning more towards 2028 than 2027 or 2026 uh the one thing honestly that's really the only interesting thing about this as far as I've been able to decipher like a lot of this is like stuff that I just don't understand the only other two things I would like to say is that Mark Cerny looks like he's being played by dana carvey yeah and and the ghost of yote ps5 behind him is it's really funny because i i i only realized it was the ghost of yote ps5 after like i looked again because when i first looked i thought why is that filthy ps5 and like it looks like it's it looks like it's got like a stain on it you know like something on it yeah so it's like i don't know these are the only things that I noticed really about it.

1:02:38The thing I know, I've been wondering this for a while and I think I've kind of put my finger on it with Mark Cerny just aesthetically is, you know, he's lived in Japan for a long time. He's fluent in Japanese. His wife is Japanese, I think. He has a Japanese man's haircut. That's what it is. I finally put my finger on it. Right. He has a Japanese man's haircut.

1:03:01Yes. I feel like I'm not allowed to say if that's true. but like i think i see what you're saying japanese have very fine straight hair so they can do and so does mark cerney so it had like you can do different things with it and leave it longer and have it more styled i feel um i feel like that's what it is that's the distinguishing feature yeah i mean i see what you're saying he either has the haircut of a japanese man or an english teacher you know what i mean or something like that like there's like there's something of there's something about it where it's like it's not quite stylish but it's not it's kind of it's kind of cool that it's not like he wears it well but like if anybody else had this it would look really he doesn't wear well i have a question bangs almost which is interesting yeah good he does sorry i don't want to take us away from a fun conversation but i was thinking about i i saw this this is on playstation's official youtube channel um they made tweets about it and stuff like that.

1:04:04Why? what's the point of this you mentioned they probably flew Mark Cernie out to Texas yeah I was like successful you know console right now like what yeah i would argue people that saw this have no idea what they're talking about myself included i agree with you and i i but i feel like yeah you've kind of hit the nail on the head is that not everything's for us like some of it is you're you have all these different beats along the way you want to talk about things you want to solicit people we always ask the question like why show games so early and a lot of people are like well maybe to hire talent i'm like that's sometimes true maybe there's something about that here um i also feel like maybe sony is trying to hit back because doesn't amd also have a deal with xbox yeah yeah so maybe they're trying to just tout that more the other thing that they i forgot about this actually the other thing they said is that uh jack says this in late in the interview or this piece this which is not really an interview it's like you know all it actually reminds me a lot of the totally teleprompted interview that happened that we watched a few months ago it's the same thing this is not nearly as egregious as that but he says this technology will be on all of the consoles like all of the gaming hardware what and i looked at mark cerny's face when he was saying it's very flat affect on his face but um not that he didn't know that that was true but there is an agnostic angle to this technology as well and thus sony maybe wants to just be at the lead of showcasing that they're part of the consortium or whatever that is working on this technology.

1:05:46So I don't know. I just think the bigger thing for me is that if he means few by the vernacular, like what it means, that's three or more. A couple is two. And so he says a few years. I guess we could hedge it, though, by saying, could this technology be introduced by patch? If all of the hardware is there, I mean, that's what they did already, right, with some of the upscaling technologies with PS5. Am I wrong about that? there was a thing in the last few months that there was going to be a major PSSR update. I think what they're talking about in this video is hardware specific, though. Well, good, because then I because I just want to hedge about, well, yeah, maybe this stuff can be introduced after the fact.

1:06:33But it is my ideal that this PS5 lasts as long as possible. I don't we don't need another generation of game of consoles. We don't. I want to see it. I want to know what it is and all of that, but we don't need it right now. You got to let this generation breathe and let people sit with the consoles. I don't I think that the fact that tens of millions of people are still on PS4 right now shows that there's just not a massive appetite to move on. When you think about the old time frames in which people would get games out and hardware out and how a lot of consoles and hardware, there's hardware that lasted three, four, five years basically on the market.

1:07:11Look at Game Boy Advance. I always think about Game Boy Advance. Like, man, they just cannibalized that thing for no reason. Now, the DS was great. I love the DS, but you didn't really need it right away. The Game Boy Advance had no time to breathe. I think PlayStation 5 will benefit from time. So, yeah, I was really pleased to hear that because I think that they're very careful with their words. And sets a different expectation as well. Also, Dustin, it could be that a lot of the stuff's leaking or at least a lot of the details of the console. And maybe they just want to get ahead of it. right just get some of the information out there and kind of set and calibrate expectations for timelines specifically because right if what they're saying is true and it's something you can ask tom when you're on the show is like well then the timeline of this thing being expedited is not real i wonder how that's all rectified and i also wonder what xbox's schedule is because there's been a lot of hullabaloo about the hardware being up in the air i believe that in some way but i still think it's going to happen i think they're probably maybe pairing things back and setting different levels of expectations.

1:08:16But that was rumored for as soon as next year. So they also might find themselves in a Dreamcast like situation. Or a PlayStation 2 like generation if you situation if you compare it to Xbox and GameCube, which came later. All right. It's called From Project Amethyst to the Future of Play, AMD and Sony Interactive Entertainment's Shared Vision. You can go Google it or just look for it on YouTube. You'll find it on PlayStation's YouTube channel. He's got a great voice. Oh, yeah, he's Mark Cerny. He's awesome. He's like Mr. Rogers. If like he was more interested in tech and less interested in like making sure your kids grew up to be good people.

1:08:55Interesting. He's. He's great. I like Mark Cerny a lot. Very. As I said, I've said in the past, very I'm very intimidated by him. Why? When I've interviewed him because he's incredibly smart. Right. He really is the smartest man in any room he's in. there's just no doubt oh somebody in the comments actually wrote about like mark sardy looks like data carvey playing mark sardy that's crazy awesome great minds all right uh this was what i wanted to lead off with before that news broke which is not really news of course and this is not really news either but it's something for us to discuss matt piscatella over on blue sky he's of course the data analyst over it's a kind of that seems to deal mostly with games.

1:09:42He deals with mostly with games. He tweeted out this graphic. It says video game purchasing frequency. And it's a graph. It's a bar graph. It says approximately a third of video game players purchase a new video game less often than once per year, while about 36 % purchase a new game once a quarter or with higher frequency. So they ask players, how often do you typically purchase a game more often than once a month is 4%. About once a month is 10%. So therefore, 14 % of players buy a game at least once a month. About once every three months is 22%. About once every six months is 18%. About once a year is 12%.

1:10:24Less often than once a year, 33%. So on the other side of that, a third of all gamers are buying fewer than one game a year, while another 12 % are buying one a year. Just wanted to know what you guys thought of this. I think this is fairly eye-opening. Maybe not eye-opening for me because I've been beating this drum for so long, but certainly reaffirming into what I've been saying, which is this purchasing behavior is going to undo the AAA and AA market as we know it if this continues. It doesn't mean that those markets won't exist anymore. People like us sustain those markets. I buy a shit ton of games.

1:11:06We all do. and a lot of people that listen to this podcast do, but we are not the prevalent gamer on these platforms anymore. And so this just reaffirms that to me. I wonder if anything comes to mind, Dustin, when you see this graph, if you want to pull at any thread, I don't know. My main question on seeing this data is their survey process. It says it's from their Future of Video Games custom survey 2025 Q3. Because I see some data like this. I'm like, okay, but... who did you ask? That's like the, we've talked before on the show about how it's like, well, 50 % of gamers are women. It's like, not really, not what we consider, not in any kind of elitist way, but like gamer.

1:11:53Right. So did they ask this to people who play mobile games? What percent? I like, I just am curious about where the data comes from. Less often than once a year, it's like, well, Was this in a more hardcore enthusiast circles where maybe some of these people represent Game Pass people that maybe just use Game Pass but play many games? I just would like to know more in order to be able to, you know, then just take it at face value. I think Matt does bring up a good point in a follow up post where he says pro tip for applying. know that even seeing this post likely puts you in that hyper enthusiast bucket so the actions of you and your immediate cohort are not likely do not match those of the general gaming audience right so that's my question how wide was the net who was asked um because i think that greatly impacts how we should interpret the data yeah i i like this term the use of this term price and sensitivity as well um it's basically a way of saying like it doesn't matter how much something costs you're going to buy it and in reality with games i've been fairly price insensitive my whole life long before i had any money it was like things just cost what they cost unfortunately obviously you would have to hedge and and make certain bets as far as like what you wanted to buy or if you're going to rent something or borrow something from a friend but i've always been fairly price insensitive.

1:13:22So I guess I've always fit in that smaller, but more enthusiast cohort. But it is important. So Chris, I'm curious what you think about this, but it's like it just to me, it just clearly says that studios or publishers and platform holders that don't chase a certain type of gamer are going to be left in the dust. And I really feel like a lot of people are not getting it. They're still not really getting it. And I think people also conflate getting it with wanting it. So I get what's happening. I don't want it to happen, but I get it. It's not about me. What are your thoughts here? Yeah. I mean, it's a 2025 survey.

1:14:08I feel like that's actually kind of relevant because I feel like economically things aren't fantastic right now. I would suspect fact although you could attribute that to just the the passage of time like you would imagine that surveys in years prior would have been not quite so crazy um but yeah i mean people aren't willing to spend their money right now and it's that makes perfect sense i mean you saw like tourism i think in vegas like dropped like 50 percent um all sorts of everything and people only do those things when they have, you know, the income to do it. And I think games are getting, they're more expensive now, technically, you know, than they were.

1:14:52$80 is kind of like the new price point. There's new machines out. I'm not necessarily surprised by the fact that like such a large percentage of people really buy or engage with games less than us. You know, that's, that's not really surprising. i wonder less than once a year though seems kind of crazy i i i kind of don't know how i feel about surveys in general to be honest with you because it's people answering questions and i just don't know how i don't know how how accurate that can be because i think a lot of people probably be like oh have i bought a game this is probably not and then later it's like oh no i must have but they've already answered the question like i would i would be more interested into seeing like how this pulls out as far as like if they got this data from you know cross-referencing new releases to the total of accounts to like total trophies popped and stuff like that like that would be more interesting to me because it would kind of indicate that like okay you know this is how often these new games are being played versus you know elsewhere i don't know how valuable a question survey is really like fundamentally like this is kind of like my issue with surveys in general but the results here don't necessarily surprise me i would imagine that they're kind of off but like more or less on par with like what we would what we would probably be able to prove so i mean we are the hyper enthusiast space so this is going to look like alien shit to us and really anybody that we even remotely associate with because there are people that i know who play video games who aren't necessarily clued in they don't listen to podcasts they're they're definitely not going to see this graph they don't know what like the highest mpd charts are they don't know like what games sold like i'll ask them how much i've i've i've brought some like interesting trivia to them where it's like i want to i want you i want to ask you how much do you think gta 5 sold and they say like 5 million you know which is comically like like orders of magnitude off so even even those people buy games pretty regularly so that's what's kind of like interesting to me it's like i wonder where the dakota who the fuck is getting a machine who the fuck is spending six hundred dollars on a machine and not buying a game for a year people that play free i guess fortnight i guess fortnight really i mean that's like you you get it for the for the live service stuff well that's what i think chris is so interesting about this about this question and like why we we can't conflate what it doesn't say because it says how often do you typically purchase a new game?

1:17:29It doesn't say how often do you typically play a game or download a game or try something new. And there's just such a flood of those kinds of games, not even the big ones. It's like, there's just, I'm always surprised. I'm like, what is this game? And then I look it up and it's just free. Right. Oh, okay. Like, so I think this to me suggests that there are just people, the numbers the the math is such that companies are grossing more and netting more year over year over year over year over year as these games become more and more prevalent and as as we can see here no one is buying games comparable to the you wouldn't own an nes or an snes or a genesis or something back in the day and not buy games for it but they were also all those companies were making such like or like you're saying orders magnitude less than they're making now which suggests that it's all just free-to-play churn that is what it is and and this this ties to what we were saying where sony sony's psn makes half of its revenue from 10 games all of them are free i guess two of them were purchased right because one of them was the show and one of them is call of duty i guess there was like four apex legend oh yeah wars of warzone right that's free to play um you know e-football and all these different things that people love i'm just like damn dude this is people are just i i really feel like there's a lot of ignorance about where this is going and where it has to go if you want to satiate the demand of the player and this is why i said it on twitter where i was like you got to understand that this is just more evidence of why sony needs to chase these games like i don't know what you don't get like this is where the money is man it's where the money is there's rumors that maybe ghost of yote maybe is sold around two million copies who knows it's like that's awesome two two million copies of ghost of yote is like chump change though compared to what they're making here and they spent five years on it or more than that it's like come on why don't you see and i get i think people get upset about it because they think that when you notice it and this is what i was saying earlier when you notice it it's like you're wishing it to be or you want it to happen it's like dude I spend well over a thousand dollars a year on new games that's twice as much as the average spend on a PlayStation platform for its lifetime duration yeah I'm not the problem like if people spent like me or if like really like the people that listen to the show we would be in a totally different environment but that's not the environment we're in period yeah Well, the thing you said, too, about like the fact that like back in the day, like if you bought an NES, like you would not buy big games for it because that's what it was for.

1:20:20It's kind of a key part, too. Like, I feel like a lot a lot of machines like we see the sales of Playstations and we see the sales of like Xboxes or whatever. And we kind of I feel like there's an implication that things are bigger than they are because a lot of the time we all have we all know smart TVs. And we all know that they. They're terrible. i hate them for the for the functions that they advertise like they're not good they're slow they're clunky they're like really awkward and a console is kind of like i know people i know people with ps4s and they have like you know maybe they've played like stardew valley on it or something or maybe they've played like a couple rounds of fortnight on it like years and years ago they have like a handful of trophies but that's their netflix machine that's their hbo max machine that's their um that's the way that they engage with every single bit of their media that isn't games actually um i guess the same thing with a ps2 right like back in the day when it was like the cheapest dvd players like the the hundred and however what 155 million people who bought ps2s there's probably a sizable percentage of people who bought that machine who never played a game in their life yeah that's true and um i don't know i guess it's just important to kind of like understand that there's there's kind of an inherent misleadingness to like how well these things do and how prevalent they are in people's homes and and how prevalent the core functionality of that machine is compared to generations past when it was the sole thing that you could do on those machines i um i saw this with skate the new game now where did you see that you can get dead space remake for cheaper than the isaac clark skin in what wait hold on wait say that again that's like really there's like apparently right now you can get dead space remake for cheaper than the isaac clark skin and skate will cost oh my god god help us that's so crazy yeah it's 35 35 for the bundle it says this is ign dead space fans have reacted in dismay at the cost of cosplaying as serious dark isaac clark blah blah skates new isaac clark bundle which includes a homemade style class cardboard Isaac Clark costume for your skater a themed skateboard the Necro Stom emo and a bunch of stickers is priced at three thousand three hundred and fifty San fan bucks which is thirty five dollars Jesus Christ oh my god I mean thirty five that's crazy because even fortnight when I bought the gorilla's skin I got two skins emotes and all this other stuff and it wasn't thirty $85.

1:23:01It was like 20, right? I feel like I feel like that's the standard. I know that's a standard price for them as far as I know, which is also crazy. But let me just reiterate something now, because now we have again, Isaac Clark's a certain example. EA is a certain example. But if you're listening out there, understand that there are examples like this all over these various games and these publishers and developers are looking and saying, like, will we spend 200 million dollars in five years on a single player game that will sell five million copies and make us our money back? Or will we make a game where we can put fucking Isaac Clark skins in it?

1:23:35And with a straight face charge 30 or$40. If you don't understand what like the tension this creates in the games in games economics, come on, man. It's like obviously the big publishers. Again, I don't want that. And I also should be clear. It's not going to erase the existence of the single player games and the smaller and double a games and indie games that we love it's not it just means that there's gonna be a lot of losers and and that this whole glut of games has to let up because and and it's not it's gonna be just destruction on the on the market no one's gonna like voluntarily be like i'm out everyone's gonna learn the hard way and presumably we've already had losers like i mean like i mean i mean you and by the way not losers in the sense that these games are bad but losing the sense that like they just they're not capturing like i think chronos the new dawn probably is not i would imagine i haven't seen any hundreds of thousands like low hundreds of thousands i think it's sold yeah it's it's far it's far from like you know millions no and hell is us is another one um there's a lot and again these are good games like hell's us is really cool and um i haven't played chronos but i've heard really good things about it i'm looking i have it like i'm looking forward to jumping into it at some point but like yeah i this it's bad out there man 35 for an isaac clark skin that like after taxes is about 40 is insane that's that's crazy stuff yeah it's insane work it's you know i was thinking recently about the um oblivion horse armor yeah and how quaint that is that that outraged people mass effect two day one dlc where you got like a robust part of the game for like another 10 bucks wherever that like outraged people yeah and it's like oh just wait man oh if we yeah if we could only go back to that point because wasn't the horse armor like a dollar or something yeah it was like something ridiculous yeah like a dollar or something really inconsequential I get it principally like that is dumb but we'll take the horse armor back I'll take the horse armor any day Dustin the other thing I wanted to speak about before we move on from this as you were saying and Chris you brought this up too was like the nature of the survey like who are they talking to they do say here because this is in quotes like this is the question as presented but like it catches you in the moment no polling can I mean polling does try to scientifically mathematically account for people lying I'm of two minds with polling where on one hand, and it's from, you know, taking some poli-sci in college and just being exposed to polling in that kind of more academic sense, although in a very low level of like, there is a method to the madness and there are people that are incredibly good at it.

1:26:28And it's about sampling and margins of error. And I think we brought this up in the past on the show that because people are like, who did they ask? They only asked a thousand people. And it's like, actually, mathematically, it's better to ask a thousand people than it is often to ask 50 ,000. Like if you're trying to sample towards a certain group, there's like a very specific number you're going for. You can actually oversample and ask too many people and start to dilute the data or whatever. So there is a method to it. And some people are, again, really good at it. You see in politics, some people are great.

1:26:56Some people are really bad at it. The bigger question I ask is like, what is to what end are you polling? I would be much more compelled by this if it was an ESA poll because ESA works on behalf of the companies and they're like a lobbying arm and a representation arm and they're going to want good data. That's like really, really accurate. While you were saying, Dustin, we always knew the numbers where they're like half of gamers are women. It's like that's the most specious nonsense I've ever heard in my life. No, that's not true. Like you don't need to be anywhere near the games industry, although I was deep in the bowels of the games industry at the time.

1:27:30It's like who believes that? And you wonder why those, like, to what end are you even bringing these numbers up? Because they're so inaccurate. We all know that. So I look at the source and I don't know exactly where, Sir Khan is a data, like, they ride or die based on the accuracy of their data. It's not like, it's in politics, people always talk about internal polling because internal polling is like the real deal, where you just want to know what the fucking story is. You're like we're winning by this much. Actually, we're really losing by two. Our own polls show we're losing, but we'll keep spinning the polls that show us winning.

1:28:09So it's a whole information war. But I think that this portends poorly for not the vibrancy or health of the space, which is only getting more vibrant, but for the traditional way of doing business in our industry. But you can only... dude, how much can you bring the horse to water? Right. I mean, like you're on PSN, you're on steam. You're like, there it is. There's the fucking water. You have to drink it. And if you choose to drink the Fortnite and the apex legends and the rocket league, cool. But that's, and that's what people are doing by the many, many tens of millions. And then, and then another huge group of people only buy one game a year.

1:28:50So like FIFA, right. Or call of duty, grand theft auto or two games a year. So it's like, Oh, the show and Call of Duty. NBA 2K and WWE. Like that's we are just a vanishingly small group of people. All right. Let's see. Chris, I'll be. You both have interesting things to say about this, I guess. Marathon has reemerged. On the marathon, the game dot com website, which is the official website for the game. They write about a marathon close technical test and they say the following quote and this is of course bungie the developer owned by sony now quote since june we've run several closed play tests to gather feedback on marathon we're now opening applications for more players to join us for a closed technical test from october 22nd to october 27th this is a limited invite only play test for players in north america and europe on playstation 5 xbox series xns and steam as with recent closed play test, this test is under NDA.

1:29:55So you can go to the website and it'll have a big button, click to sign up. They write, fill out this form between now and October 16th at 4 p.m. Pacific to submit your application. If you previously applied for public alpha from April, the form may automatically submit. No further action will be needed if this happens. For players on PC, we'll also be enabling applications via Steam on October 13th at 10 a.m. Pacific, and they'll remain open until October 26th at 4 p.m. Pacific. This is an important checkpoint for us as we test our improvements since alpha, including three maps, five runner shelves, prox chat, retuned combat pacing, solo queue, deeper environmental storytelling, and more.

1:30:34That said, the technical test build is a work in progress and will only include a portion of what's planned for Marathon's full release focused on the early player experience. Chris, are you signed up? uh no because i'm not interested in playing a version of marathon that i'm not allowed to talk about right right right no the the nda kind of like i mean i don't really i don't care about that really and i already played like i already participated in the first one where there was no nda attached and i liked what i saw so like i don't really need more of it like i'm just i'm fine to wait for whenever it's like ready um to to be shown but the nda kind of like completely squashes any interest that i have and because what's the point like i would only really play this to talk about it you know uh i mean i'm sure i would like it but like even if i it would be even more frustrating if i did enjoy it and couldn't say anything so like um i'll pass on this wave i'll wait until it's you know ready or like if maybe there's a beta they do a public beta at some point maybe not they might just put it out but uh yeah i did not sign up there's something that feels ominous about this project i don't know i don't i'm not in the multiplayer space i don't pretend to know too much about it but there's just something about this game you because you can see the levels of excitement around certain games are obvious either obvious in the player count or obvious in the way people talk about them and i just don't feel like you know destiny 2 is dying it seems like and things are just not lining up in other words you can't really leapfrog off all we got this vibrant that's imagine just even turning on destiny 2 when it was at its peak and then you had like a flash ad for marathon i mean that alone would be huge but now you're kind of putting that into like the lowest possible player count and yeah this is coming out everyone seems to really like that game and true yeah you have this whole art controversy bungee is just not that cool anymore for a lot of people it's very interesting to watch everything that things just turn like that in this industry yeah yeah it's interesting i don't know i i would imagine that this is going to be out probably like what this feels like maybe like a february or like a march kind of game yeah i would say q1 i would yeah q1 like i would imagine that that's kind of where it's going to come out arc raiders looks i think arc raiders is such a fundamentally different game though it's so weird like they're both extraction shooters but i remember playing both of them like kind of like side by side they both had their technical tests and they're going for very different things to the point where like i think arc raiders is technically better but it's less i don't know i can't imagine here's ultimately the issue with arc raiders that it's it's a this is a this is a pvp loot based game where you can get all of your loot stolen and have entire runs ruined and it's third person like that kind of inherently like really fucks a lot because people are just going to be peeking around corners and shit like it's not there's going to be like a certain element of like hardcore players that are going to be playing this and they're gonna be like this is cool but like i don't know marathon also has that stink on it with like the obviously bungee in that in their position destiny in its position um the art thievery that happened which was like a handful of decals but it's still like it was a high profile enough case to notice and so yeah i i wonder i don't know i've been i've heard people talk about it internally that seem pretty amped about it but at the same time like i'm like it was wise to push it forward you know it was wise to push it forward i think getting it away from arc raiders and giving people time to kind of get bored of it and look for something else i think would be is wise um it seems like they're reacting in all of the right ways i guess i'm just curious as to like what the appetite for a game like this is i really enjoyed my time with it i think it's cool but extraction shooters are inherently a very difficult sell i would have almost imagined that you put this out as a free-to-play game you know because i feel like your your potential is actually pretty high in that sense because it is like a sony for uh you know first party experience that you're getting people are going to have less excuse not to try it out um i think there's a danger of walking into a concord situation at the 40 price point especially post concord pre-concord maybe not you know if this came out before concord or whatever and it was like in good shape like i don't think maybe it would be that big of a deal in comparison but like the situation where it is now especially in the destiny community where a lot of people um rightfully so or wrongfully you know a lot of destiny players are kind of not keen on marathon because they view marathon as the reason why destiny 2 is suffering they view it as like a lot of resources are being pulled away from destiny in service of this thing that nobody asked for in service of this you know re-ignition of an ip that is so far from what the original version of the ip was you know there's no single-player campaign in marathon there's no team deathmatch kind of like traditional multiplayer it's an extraction shooter with one mode and a handful of maps which is standard for extraction shooters but it's marathon you know it's kind of a sacred it's like a really old school like sacred IP in that in that in that camp where there's like a lot of people who care about it and so to see it represented in this way and then on top of that to have it associated with destiny to kind of crumbling under the weight of its own structure and a lack of support and you know X Y and Z decisions being made that kind of make the game worse it's been a while since i've played destiny too i don't i'm not really in tune with what those criticisms would be or what they are but there is an energy around this right now that is not good you know and that's by the way irrespective of how good i think the game's actually really good but like again that doesn't matter at a certain point you know and i wonder what the what the environment will look like in march when there is time and when there's proper marketing and when we get to see more of it and when it's not like immediate in immediate comparison with our creators because i think i remember seeing videos like a couple weeks ago or like maybe a month ago that were like souring on our our creators already and i'm just like well you can't you can't win anything in this industry it feels like any kind of win is immediately subverted by the next like loss like it's just gone it's a race as if it never happened and so i think our grade is going to be the big winner this year for a little bit at least but i don't know man 40 bucks it's a lot right now well speaking of that price it did there were um there were rumors before they confirmed that it would be a price but not fully priced game over at bungee that it would be for a 40 dollar game a la hell divers yeah we figured i think on this show that it would be 40 bucks right and now there's and i put this in the the um the document as well that over on the website the game post they kind of um got together a bunch of different leaks from the specific leaker in the bungee space that data mined marathon and basically confirmed that marathon will be 40 so by the way this leak has things that i consider somewhat spoilery and that it has like a fullest of all the weapons in the game and shit like that so i'm not going to include any of that here but the the stuff that i think is relevant and not spoilery at all is like what you can expect when you're buying the game and they say the standard edition will be 40 and the deluxe edition will be 60 and the deluxe edition comes with 30 worth of season pass tokens though it's they say here it's not even they're not sure what that means right now we don't have all the information the marathon season pass itself is expected to cost around 10 and will be cosmetic only um and they they know that these details line up with what they heard recently that the 40 price point is is all lined up i mean because this is basically what hell divers did where they had you pay like a high price a higher price coming in and then kind of subsidize the cost of the DLC or the different expansions or whatever that you would buy the options I mean cosmetics specifically but weapons and other things too and they also note here that there are pre-order bonuses that you'll get in Destiny 2 if you pre-order Marathon according to this data mine oh yeah but Hamstroker's Jackula wrote in and said, hey, Secret Colons.

1:39:18Looks like Barathon will be$40 when it comes out. The justification for the price is that it's a premium multiplayer game. My question is, what makes it a premium game? They will have very few maps and weapons, not very much customization, and will also contain microtransactions. Why would anyone abandon the other popular free-to-play shooters for a new, most likely buggy game for$40? The only thing I can say about the$40 price point is that I think if it's done right, it shows a little bit of a belief in the game, a buy-in for a better product. I think it worked for Helldivers too. It's just unclear if it really worked for Helldivers too, or if it was kind of the exception to the rule and that a lot of other games will fail.

1:39:54For instance, if Fair Games is really going to come out and it comes out at$40, I don't know what that means for that game. Fair Games, I think, would be cooked at$40. I mean, look at Concord. Yeah. I mean, these are, again, these, it's weird because Helldivers, the data isn't good, you know, for the$40 price point as far as, Sony games are concerned because we have Helldivers 2 which is a sequel to a game that existed already so there was already like kind of eyes on it it was an it was like kind of an existing IP it was a transformative version of that IP the first game was like nothing like Helldivers 2 at least in like the it's completely different genre of game and so that did well nobody expected it to do well concord is an overwatch ripoff with a completely new ip no no strings attached to it from any kind of community at all that fails fair games is kind of in a similar in a similar box as that marathon is is an existing ip tied to an existing studio with an existing hardcore fan base i don't know what that means because we just don't have data to show like would this is this going to be i don't think it's going to be close to hell divers but will it be more hell divers than concord i don't know we don't there's not good data to go off this price point right now um and it feels kind of awkward i i will say i think 40 is probably entirely fine i don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that price point i think it's probably a fair asking price for whatever the game's going to be it's just a matter of in a that's speaking in like a vacuum you know what i mean as 40 is fair for marathon probably i would imagine based on what i played i think it's probably fair will people be willing to pay that is a different story and again if the economy just gets worse into march of next year then even fewer people are it's it's an awkward time even for games at this experimental price point because $40 today is now it's now that's a lot now that's a lot to people to throw away on a game that like may or may not that by the way is coming out from a publisher in Sony that the last$40 game that came out from them specifically of any consequence which Concord died two weeks later so that's so in some way there's like a Concord stink on Marathon as well that it can't kind of escape I don't know it's a weird position to be in I feel like the Concord uh compare not that you're making a direct comparison but I can't imagine this being anywhere near a Concord situation simply because Concord had a very well maybe not a unique problem but the main problem with Concord is that nobody thought it was cool right it was it was actually lame uh from a almost every perspective and even the gameplay we've talked about that a million times I don't we don't need to rehash that but my I guess my response to our friend ham stroker is I think that we need to wait and see what this game is actually like with all these changes that they're making Chris I think they will do I think if the confidence is there they will do a public beta and that's going to be the make or break point where we can be like okay this is how this is gonna go i think the 40 price point all the other extraction shooters in this realm are paid whether it's arc raiders and i think you brought this up tarkov these are all paid games so i i think that the question more so isn't like is this game going to crash and burn i think it's more so like is it going to be a big enough Sony success because I think that it's going to have an audience that will maintain it for some time even if it's kind of middle of the road but I don't know if Sony's going to look at this be like this is what we were hoping for with a live service game and also I agree to totally that fair games fair games that's the game that i think has the concord like fair games right now is so is on the same trajectory of like uncool like everything people saw from that reveal teaser it wasn't even gameplay was anything in that cool yeah and yeah go ahead i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt i was just gonna say like and i know it's vague like what does cool mean but i think when we think about concord everyone understands it's like in that uh we talked about that podcast the life full wasted podcast um where they interview some of the concord devs and they were like that we found out there is something worse than making a bad game and it's making an uncool game it's like ah yeah so at least at least i think right now marathon has a cool factor it's funny the more i think about fair games too and kind of the strategy behind the bungee acquisition and obviously sony knowing about marathon and all the rest is they're kind of like the same game, right?

1:45:21Aren't they like kind of going into the same lane of seemingly of extraction shooter where it's like, why would you even want to have two of these games in the same lane? It seems they're going to have to make a decision about fair games if they haven't already about whether it's again, the reason that they refunded everyone for Concord and killed it so quickly was to write it off. And that's going to be the cheapest way to get out of it. And they're going to just do that before the game comes out this time. If they're smart unless they really do have a plan unless people behind the scenes are seeing this game and being like people don't understand this game is actually great and that's possible but I just based on the director leaving and the bad play tests again we talked to someone that played the game as Project Hearts in its closed alpha it's not looking good Jade Raymond out it's just not looking good for that game so it just seems like they have these redundant half cocked products that yeah and meanwhile I'm very I'm not I wouldn't say I'm excited because they're not really for me but I'm very curious about what the next they haven't announced anything in this space since everything went to shit they haven't tried to like get something to lift off but this isn't the end and I wonder what they're going to do obviously they have the team LFG gummy bears game the deviation dudes are working on some shooter as well They have to figure out some of the how to make these lanes work and the prices to pay or the charge, I should say, and the price that the audience is willing to pay to get in.

1:46:57I don't know. But I but again, I don't blame them for being in the space. I'm not one of those people. I said it over and over again, and I think people are even a little annoyed about it, but it's just good. You should try, but you just have to make better bets. Why couldn't you make an arc Raiders with all your resources and money? it's like if these independent smaller companies are doing these like vibrant exciting multiplayer games then there's really no excuse for you not be able to do it yeah i'm really curious about our creators i'm probably going to check it out just because like i don't really have battlefield as like a multiplayer thing anymore so i'm probably gonna yeah you're out on principle yeah well i mean yeah right which is cool it feels weird yeah i respect for me but uh yeah our creators is i think is i think it's this month I'll check it out for sure.

1:47:46Um, cause it doesn't look cool. There's like a cool factor to it. Uh, but it's definitely like, I will say like fair games being an extraction shooter. These games are deceptively different from one another. Like I felt really no similarity of any real consequence between marathon and arc Raiders, even though they were like the same genre, like the, the presentation and just like the, the camera perspective and just like how you engage with it is like surprisingly different. And I think there's probably a chance that marathon and fair games are fundamentally different. You know, I would, I would imagine that that's the case, but fair games does kind of have this, like, what the fuck is this quality to it?

1:48:28Like I would, I think it's probably third person. You could probably infer that from some of the trailers.

1:48:37But I don't know fair games. If there's anyone that I'm really worried about and not worried in like a, you know, you know moral concern kind of way but like worried about in the sense that like i really feel like that's probably got no chance it's it's fair games i think fair games at 40 in particular i think fair games may be cooked unless they show something that is substantially better than whatever that first uh trailer was and by the way that first trailer wasn't even bad it was just kind of like just kind of came and went you know well is there anything else that you want That's what we heard from you a little bit, but is there anything else you wanted to say?

1:49:16Are you going to try to get into this test? I signed up just because I was curious if I would be given the chance to. I don't know about playing. It's going to be weird on the show if I'm like, oh, I'm under NDA for this. But I am curious about it. And at some point, playing it NDA would inform opinions later on when you're no longer under NDA. but I am willing to bet they will not let me in. So we'll see. Well, for people that want to go try to get in again, marathon the game.com. You can sign up for the close technical test, which will be under NDA across all platforms, October 22nd to October 27th.

1:49:59Okay. I thought this was an interesting piece here from the game business, which is the Jeff Keighley funded or at least aligned. And Substack, that doesn't seem to get a whole lot of play, but I think they have some interesting stuff over there sometimes. And so basically what they did was they sat down and did an oral history of PlayStation 1's incredible success in Europe. And obviously in Europe, in mainland Europe and in the UK, the PlayStation brand is a dominant brand and has been since the very beginning. And a lot of it has to do with the kind of local angle towards PlayStation and how PlayStation almost felt like a European brand for a while, especially in the PS1 and PS2 era.

1:50:45So there's a lot of interesting stuff to read in here if people want to check it out. But I pulled out these three things that I thought were most interesting. And if you guys want to pull anything out, you can as well. The first one was that Sony almost acquired Bullfrog, apparently. For people that don't know what Bullfrog is, Bullfrog Productions is a famous game studio out of Britain that was acquired ultimately by Electronic Arts in the 90s. But it was Peter Molyneux's first studio. He would obviously go on to found Lionhead later on. And I was thinking they were, Dustin, for you, you're a theme park.

1:51:23You like theme park, right? Or isn't that? You like those kinds of games. I know about it, but I'm a roller coaster tycoon man myself. And they did Populous. And I forgot about this. They did the game Syndicate in the 90s, which I never played. But EA, because EA acquired Bullfrog, acquired the Syndicate IP. And then remember they revived Syndicate as like a almost like sim shooter that Starbreeze did on the PS3. That game kind of came and went. Yeah, I remember that. But it says here Sony almost acquired Bullfrog. and basically that Electronic Arts acquired Bullfrog because Sony was sniffing around and trying to get them.

1:52:01So it says here, quote, we asked all of our speakers to tell us something about the early days of PlayStation that not many people would know. And one answer that caught me off guard was just how close the company was to buying theme park and populist developer Bullfrog. Martin Alltimes says, quote, one of the best kept secrets is we almost bought Bullfrog, Peter Molyneux's company. One of the producers who was a friend of Peter's, I remember sitting opposite him when he was having the phone call. Peter pitched Dungeon Keeper, a game that never came out, called The Indestructibles and another thing.

1:52:29At the end of it, we decided that it was easier and cheaper to buy them, and that's how they ended up being bought by EA, end quote. All Times predicted that Bullfrog managing editor Les Edgar immediately called up EA, which the studio already had a relationship with to see if EA would make a counter offer. Quote, EA didn't want to miss out. They literally launched theme park together as well, which I think was Peter's fourth or fifth hit in a row, end quote. So that's just an interesting tidbit. We always talk about Sony's purchase of Psygnosis, which we're going to talk about in a minute was a pretty big deal.

1:52:56And it was really Sony's only example until recent memory, until this generation of them buying a studio that they didn't have first worked with. And that's kind of necessary. You have to get the chicken and egg thing going a little bit to get a first party. You need to buy a first party. And then you can kind of mature it from there. But it seemed like it almost expanded. And I'm fascinated to think about what that would have looked like. And I think EA made a fairly canny choice because EA was the publisher of all of those games anyway, that they were working on with Bullfrog. So they might as well put a ring on it but of course like all the other studios that ea fucked up um bullfrog ended up going away as well and that gave way to lion head so i thought that was an interesting little tidbit that that would have bolstered so like what would that have looked like because a lot of those games were so pc centric they all were ported to all sorts of consoles but um like snes had a bunch of these games so that's the first one and then also sony kind of making a play for the FIFA license I thought was interesting.

1:53:50They write here, quote, hot on the heels of the bullfrog revelation came another surprise. PlayStation's internal teams were working on a football game and held talks to secure the FIFA license. Juan Montez, VP of software development of PlayStation between 94 and 2000, says, quote, we were creating a football game at that time. The technology was there. It was pretty good. And we were very close to getting the FIFA license. Very, very close. But in the end, we decided not to pursue it in order to have a good relationship with a third party. We were very close to being in that space, end quote.

1:54:16so he's talking about how that would have fucked up their entire relationship with electronic arts that's an interesting tidbit too that they kind of like backed off because they didn't want to screw with ea who was such an important early partner for playstation um so i thought that was fascinating as well especially interesting because when i wrote the history of san diego studio a long time ago at ign i asked them um specifically christian phillips who ran the studio at the time if they had ever made a play for any of these um these exclusives we were talking specifically about madden and the nfl license and he talked a little bit about that so that never came up there and then um the third thing that i thought was interesting so they talk about psognosis and the success of wipeout but they talk about wipeout 64 now this game that came out recently because this game came up recently because we were talking about how sony actually owned a studio that was just randomly releasing games on other platforms willy-nilly while it was during the PS1 era.

1:55:12And it seemed like it was being done with Sony's blessing, but it might not have been the case. They write here, quote, Psygnosis is slightly rebellious, independent nature did create friction between the developer and its parent company. And an example of that is when Psygnosis decided to make an N64 version of Wipeout. Wellesman, who's one of the guys they talked to, says, quote, yeah, let's talk about that. What was Psygnosis doing on the N64 traders? He said as he laughed. And then O 'Connell added, quote, Psygnosis, while very much aligned with Sony, ran as an autonomous company. that was down to the founders.

1:55:41They love the Psygnosis independent spirit, so we carried on making games on other platforms. The first two wipeouts principally were on PlayStation, but they also appeared on the Sega Saturn, which I don't think was an issue for Sony. But certainly at one of the E3s when it appeared on Nintendo, it just arrived at the booth, and there were some faces that were going like, what's going on here? That was down to Psygnosis managing to retain an autonomy to make the games they wanted, but that Maverick spirit perhaps created some challenges later on within the wider Sony group. end quote so basically wipeout 64 was just happened and is was unendorsed by people at sony so i thought that that was pretty interesting too and that they didn't really give a shit about the saturn ports but i think they realized at the time that sega was done um right and at least the saturn was done they would later get out the dreamcast but sony's sony's fight with nintendo was very fresh at that time only five years old or so so they were probably like really pissed off I would love to know about that.

1:56:37And that's supposed to be a pretty good port. I don't think I ever played way about 64. So I wanted to throw those out there. Anything you guys want to say about these stories? I just think it's funny that they were at E3 and like, what are you guys doing here? You know, can you imagine something like that happening now? Makes sense that Sony has probably much more control over their own teams, but definitely an interesting bit of news. this article also has a video version which is like an hour and 10 minutes long i didn't watch it jim ryan jump scare oh in the video uh he's one of the people being interviewed so he's out there he's he's ready to speak about stuff maybe colin maybe jim ryan ss plus yeah i know you don't care but i think would be awesome no i would love to talk to him i mean that would be fascinating to talk to him for sure i've never talked to him on the record so and i never spoke to him anytime when he was like at the very very top but yeah i want someone to ask him does he know about the meat like not just the memes from us but the memes in general like have you ever seen this image of you crying thoughts thoughts you know what are your thoughts on this um yeah man it's interesting it's interesting to hear these little tidbits in these little stories especially out of europe such an important place for PlayStation's heritage.

1:58:01I'm fascinated by the bullfrog. It just makes you wonder like what studios kind of not slip through their fingers because I'm not entirely sure a bullfrog would have made much of a difference for PlayStation ultimately, but it makes you wonder like what could have been and what studios were attempted to purchase and what studios weren't. Again, I've always talked about how it's hard for me to believe that Quantic Dream was never a target. But of course, they did have some sort of I don't say acrimonious, but it didn't seem like the two sides were incredibly crazy about each other. So maybe there's something that plays into it like you're a working partner.

1:58:27supermassive was another one that i thought was on track for a while but didn't come to fruition all right another interesting news story this comes from the playstation blog we were talking recently about the lack of dual sense colors and then they announced this this blue control it's the bluest thing you've ever seen in your life they're right here first look at the dual sense wireless controller icon blue special edition launching this october so this month now this blue dual sense controller will cost$85 or your local equivalent and it will be exclusive apparently to Walmart. So there's that.

1:59:02I'm going to buy it. I need a new controller. I want a new controller. The last one I bought was the 30th anniversary one. So it's time for a new controller. I love blue. It's also it's not the same color. It's not the right color, but it's very reminiscent of that PS1 and PS2 era translucent blue that they would use in controllers and memory cards. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. And that's like what I bought. I was like kind of the color I want. I liked. So reminds me a little bit about a little bit of a heritage thing. So yeah, it'll be available on Walmart. They kind of bury that.

1:59:31It's a Walmart exclusive in the story. And then if you go to the PlayStation blog post, they have some other tchotchkes or whatever that are going to be available as well. Little clips for your backpack and other things. So a lunchbox, cute Astro Bot lunchbox as well. Yeah. Dustin, you were going to say something. I just realized this and I didn't think about it until now because I didn't realize you didn't. There's no write up about it, but it's interesting that this is paired with like all these products. They're going to be selling at Walmart dot com because they're closing the PlayStation gear store.

2:00:02I saw that, but I only could find links to the UK store, so I didn't know if it was only for them, but I assume it's for everybody. Yeah, but yeah, they are. They never really pushed. I don't think, but I also wonder if it's really worth it for them to be in the game. Like, are they are they? Is it is it worth it for them to sell this much? Unless you're really heavily pushing it. Why not just license it and let other people sell it? You make a little less doing that like fan gamer insert coin. They both have PlayStation licensing for their merch, and it's probably better than the PlayStation stuff.

2:00:39But yeah, let's see. The site will close December 31st. So all sales are final on the PlayStation gear store. There's some cool stuff on here and it looks like it's getting deeply discounted. So hell yeah. I think the problem, I continue to think that the problem with merch and maybe it's just me as a kind of a more of a minimalist in terms of merch where I just like logos and things like that. I just think the merch is a lot of the merch that comes up at these various for these various game companies and even bands. And we've talked about this. It's like it's just too much. It's overdone. Yeah, it's like it's not it's like something a designer's wet dream, but it's not something you want to wear or it's not something cool.

2:01:14Like I just think you have to have a better eye for what people would really want from you. And yeah, you know, I don't think running your own storefront, it's like PlayStation direct or whatever, where it's like, you should sell your own shit, but that should be like, if people want to buy it from you, really, you should leverage these partnerships with brick and mortar and other e-commerce websites that would sell items for you. And just because you'll make less money on, on a per item basis, but you'll probably be able to spread the field so much more that you'll make more money anyway and it'll be less for you to do and it's funny that this comes up because i i met recently with a listener who has a great idea for a licensed product and he wanted advice and i was like dude sony is readily open to licensing you have to just have the idea like they they made like a horizon fucking board game i think there was a bloodborne board game like all these random companies like they just it's not that they'll do anything it's not crazy it's just that they're willing to to put their name on cool shit they did that random run of figures i have from spin master or whatever it's like they'll just do it so yeah just do that and then have your playstation toys in walmart or whatever they have a four spoken denim jacket that's what i'm saying which is crazy.

2:02:36It's just like you don't like have a little bit of vision. you're like what are we doing what the hell is this it's just a png of abby on a shirt yeah i don't know some of these some of this is kind of you gotta dig i guess for the for the good stuff they did have some cool merch like during the psx era there was some cool stuff they had like that the cool merch op there where you could buy some shirts and i bought some socks and other tchotchkes but all right so anyone else getting this blue dual sensor is it too fucking bright for your eyes uh i i like it a lot actually i like the way it looks it does have like it it does have a nostalgic quality to me but also i i just i really don't need another controller i have four dual senses i don't i i'm good yeah yeah i'm getting to the point where i i don't really need any more either but i'm still gonna buy one every year.

2:03:35All right. Let's see here. What's next? Oh, okay. This is sad news, but predictable. This comes from Video Games Chronicle. They write, PlayStation quietly cancels remaining PlayStation The Concert 2025 tour dates in the US. And they say here, there's an update because they're kind of writing about this because people basically were getting emails that the shows were canceled. And then VGC got confirmation quote, organizers GEA Live have confirmed to VGC that all remaining 2025 North American tour dates for PlayStation The Concert have been canceled. Spokesperson said, quote, it is with a great regret that we have canceled the PlayStation, the concert 2025 tour dates in North America.

2:04:10Our team has spent a considerable amount of time developing this project and we share it in the disappointment of fans who will no longer be able to attend. We extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported the show and appreciate your understanding in making this difficult decision. So the tour dates in North America are done. They were supposed to play in like San Francisco, LA, and then there was going to be some in Toronto, 25 dates. They're still doing stuff internationally, I guess. And I guess some of the European shows might be up in the air, but they have a picture here of a show like where that was coming up where there was almost no tickets sold basically for it.

2:04:45It just doesn't seem like it was, there was any demand for this. Although I don't know, I don't video game music so big. I don't know if maybe they're just missing the key marketing component or some sort of magical thing. Cause like for instance, uh, not Harvest Moon. Why can't I think of Starry Valley? Yeah, they're playing here in Richmond. And at the Altria, which is a really nice theater. That's so much smaller than you would think the PlayStation stuff. So I don't know what went wrong here, but there's just no interest in it. I don't think. I just think you're missing. Yeah, video game music is great, but you're missing a broad scope of the industry.

2:05:26It's why video games live is cool because it's just like it's a bunch of shit but like it seems like even just from the marketing images that they showed of this i think we talked about this before it's like okay it's modern god of war it's the last of us horizon and ghost of tsushima and i gotta be honest like i outside of the opening guitar for the last of us and the oh you know outside of that i genuinely couldn't point you to a single bit of music from horizon or ghost of tsushima or really anything that would that would make me want to sit there and be like okay i'm gonna spend money and go to a concert and hear these hyper specific ip orchestrated or or orchestrally performed it's it's not enough variety and it's it's two things right it's it's both not enough variety but it's also if you wanted to go in the opposite direction it's not focused enough you know what i mean if there was like a god of war concert or something and they kind of scoped that out as properly as they as they they could like maybe not play in like absurdly large arenas but like kind of play relatively um you know in different places you probably could have sold that more successfully because you're you're clued in on like a specific kind of fandom or something you know what i mean there would be like more incentive to go whereas like let's say i'm a big god of war fan okay i'm going to go hear the theme and then i'm going to sit through a set list of a bunch of other stuff that i don't care about you know so you have to target these things very particularly or be so broad that you appeal to kind of everybody and this is kind of like a playstation ps4 onward oriented orchestra concert is just not it's neither of those really or at least that's how i'm looking at it um i don't know if justin has anything to say about it yeah well i totally agree with you it's just that it's not that playstation first party doesn't have good music but people do not hold the music of those games near and dear to their heart because it's just not that kind of music what i think is interesting and you were kind of touching on this chris it's like dude the layup for this is so fucking easy it is playstation's 30th anniversary do a 30th anniversary concert and celebrate games from the entire legacy yeah and maybe even go the a little bit extra and do games that you maybe don't even own get the lights like dude imagine a concert that's like we have music from crash bandicoot final fantasy 7 spyro ape escape you you know, shadow of the Colossus dark or demon souls, bloodborne, like, like just a whole, like a whole legacy of this, of the 30 years, dude, people would be going nuts for that.

2:08:20People would be absolute. I would, I would drive a far distance to go to something like that, but to go see God of war goes to Tsushima horizon. Last of us. It's like, and also I wonder too, just if the pricing on these tickets, I, i saw gene posted something about the pricing he has deleted the tweet so i don't know maybe he was off base or something but it's got to be more appealing than that and it's just unfortunate like man it would be so cool for a 30th anniversary concert and that's just not what it was like that's so easy i would have definitely gone if it was like something more broad like that um but then there's also like look there's also a fundamental side reality to this and i know it's it's going to be it's going to be annoying to hear about it constantly but there is also the reality that like people aren't going to be spending their money on frivolous shit like this right now like it's just not it's just this is not really the time to have a concert like this either you know a video game concert in a in the middle of a gilded age is kind of it's kind of rough so i feel like i feel like that also doesn't help but i think ultimately it's just it's not broad enough and if they didn't want to go in a broad direction it's not focused enough and it's just too middling in any direction you know it's focused in the sense that yeah it's playstation music from ps4 onward but it's also broad where like it's just it's just these specific games it's the 30th anniversary you'd think you would want to have like some kind of broader celebration of like playstation throughout the years i mean i would imagine that a lot of people would have been willing to do that i mean how else did video games live happen i mean video games live was a bunch of you know that was a that was everybody it felt like from what i was seeing from like the videos that i saw online of video games live they were like playing every goddamn game under the sun it was awesome people loved it um but yeah it's just it's an ill-conceived project and a poor time for it i think well sorry to anyone out there that was going you got your money back actually Sony's just taking your money yeah bye alright I'm very excited to see what you guys think of this next story which broke yesterday it's a really interesting scoop comes from Steven Totillo's game file sub stack he writes scoop Ubisoft canceled a post Civil War Assassin's Creed last year he writes quote in July of last year word began to trickle through Ubisoft that an ambitious new installment of the company's top franchise Assassin's Creed had been canceled the new game would have brought the history-spanning series to one of its most modern settings, the American Civil War, and more so the Reconstruction period that followed in the 1860s and 1870s.

2:10:58In this Reconstruction-era Assassin's Creed, gamers would play as a black man who had been formerly enslaved in the South and moved west to start a new life. Recruited by the series Assassins, he would return to the South to fight for justice in a conflict that would, among other things, see him confront the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. That's according to interviews with five current and former Ubisoft employees who spoke to... Can you hear the dog? No. Okay, good. No. that's according to interviews with five because this is like a bad time for the dog to be barking we're talking about something someone serious that's according to interviews of five current and former ubisoft employees who spoke to game file on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the project and ubisoft did not respond to a request for comment for this story the people were enthusiastic about the game but were also frustrated by its cancellation which they perceived as ubisoft bowing to controversy three sources told game file that word filtered through the company late last july that management in paris had stopped development of the game for two reasons.

2:11:48One, online backlash that spring to the reveal of Yasuke, a historically inspired black samurai as a protagonist in the company's then upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows, and two, concern that the political climate in the United States was becoming increasingly tense. There's more there if you want to check it out on GameFile. I don't have a subscription, so I can't read much beyond that. But there's much to say about this. I want to hear from you guys first. Chris, it seems like you're eager to say something. yeah i mean well first of all let me say it's uh kind of interesting that the mere mention of a black man sent your dog barking i know it's very i know it's it is it is strange i don't know what that's all about i'm sorry but no so yeah this whole thing is this is weird so like i i love this idea i just don't love this idea for ubisoft or assassin's creed i just don't think based on what i've played uh both of old school assassin's creed when i did like it and modern assassin's creed where i've just kind of fallen off and i just i don't really care anymore i don't get the sense that the writers who handle this franchise are are good enough to handle something like this i think this is a very uh particular kind of game there's very few people that i think could really get away i think maybe rockstar uh i'd like that's on twitter too like i i think rockstar probably could do it i think um hangar 13 maybe i think could probably do it i think they're like very like that that's a team of people who like write very very well um but an assassin's creed like a modern assassin's creed about fighting the kkk like i don't i don't think that would work um and it's not because that wouldn't be a cool idea i just i just don't think they would be able to handle it like genuinely i just don't i think it's too mature of a concept for them to do assassin's creed is also just kind of like it's a bit of a punching bag you know i know it's a successful franchise and it makes a lot of money but i don't know i gave it an earnest shot with assassin's creed shadows because i thought the stealth angle looked cool and i thought the the prospect of playing is two different characters seemed cool and it just kind of felt disjointed What was unfortunate about that game in particular, I played like about.

2:14:10I don't remember the exact amount of that, like over 20 hours of it was that Yasuke's story was interesting, but his gameplay was horrible. And then the ninja's story was horrible and her gameplay was great. So no matter what you were doing in that game, you just kind of felt like things weren't great. And it's mega unfortunate. So, yeah, again, great idea. like a Django Unchained video game sounds sick. I just don't think. Not them. You're not. You're not that guy. Yeah, you're not that guy, you know. Dustin, what do you have to add? Chris said exactly what I was thinking in terms of Django Unchained in that people that will to back up.

2:14:56They say the online backlash of, you know, Yasuke was part of it in the political climate in the United States. And it's like, I don't think people are against the story of a former slave taking revenge on either slave owners or KKK, whatever. Chris is exactly right that it's like it's it would be the Ubisoft version. So he, you know, be all, you know, whether it's like, oh, well, he's also gay, gay and he's also trans or like, you know what I mean? Just like they would definitely be gay. He would definitely be gay. Yeah. they would take it too many i'm not saying it's like it's too far to have a gay man in your game but you everyone knows how you really feel you don't know how to write well they just like just they can't handle a topic like that they just can't do it yeah i've seen it like i've played i've played the most i played a significant portion of the most recent assassin's creed that deals with some some element of of racial storytelling and it's it's fine but like i don't know that's too that's too good of an idea to waste on ubisoft i think and it's also just like yeah i think um maybe at some point you could have that game but god they're so ubisoft is so bad with storytelling i can't remember the last like consequence i really genuinely actually earnestly i can't remember and i understand that like ubisoft as a publisher i i get it but like i can't remember the last consequential maybe far cry 5 was like the last like kind of interesting because that was that was dealing with like somewhat kind of controversial territory like right-wing terrorism basically or yeah but like it seem yeah but even i don't remember hearing anything like particularly like enthralling about that narrative it was just kind of an interesting premise yeah people had a problem with it because it was like kind of MAGA but it was I thought I loved that game I thought it was it was yeah they're they're fucking French Canadian it's not like it's ever going to be pro right wing right and that's not and that's not what we're looking for yeah you know what I was thinking Chris is because you're saying they're so bad and they've become like this kind of watered down version of themselves like when you think about old Ubisoft it's like it wasn't actually bad.

2:17:21People really loved those first Assassin's Creed games. They loved Far Cry. Far Cry 3? People fucking loved Far Cry. Far Cry, people still love Far Cry 3. You think about the Tom Clancy games. They were such skilled storytellers in some way, as we've noted many times. They basically became Tom Clancy's, the owner of that whole thing, Ubisoft itself. So it's so... And that's where Red Storm and all that kind of stuff comes from. So it's so interesting that over time, they've kind of deluded themselves and fucked things up because it wasn't always like that even watchdogs people talk for like you know like what they were trying to do and this idea i like techno state and all that so yeah 10 15 years ago child of light valiant hearts like it's like damn dude it was crazy right now that you're mentioning it it is kind of it is wild but there were a lot yeah there were a lot and the term you use is perfect what they watered they very very much watered themselves down um which is a bummer because i actually think maybe maybe there was a point in ubisoft's past where like they could have done something like this and it would have been cool that's exactly what i'm gonna that's exactly what i wanted i was gonna get at now so it's perfect that you say that because donut suplex wrote in and said hey cdc news has been circulating that ubisoft has in development an assassin's creed game set during the civil war and the reconstruction period of the 1860s and 70s reports state that ubisoft canceled the project last July in response to the controversy surrounding the Yaskay reveal and AC shadows and the ever-growing tense political climate of the USA.

2:18:52Just to put a period here real quick. It's interesting that they identified the climate in the US long before Trump won. So they were feeling something some way about it beforehand. So a little bit of prescience there. Is anyone else confused if this is the true reason? I personally find that a game where you play as a once enslaved black man, she's barking again. returning to the South to fight against injustice and emergence of the KKK. Does she realize a black person lives in this house of the KKK? Sounds really fucking cool. It's a time in American history that has been explored in numerous films and books, but not so much in video games.

2:19:29You wish I was even tackled themes of slavery with their previous black flag DLC freedom cry. This is a little odd and comes off as very spineless. If that's truly the case, thanks for all you do. This gets into my whole thought, Chris, and it's what you brought up, which is there was a time and place where they could have gotten away with this and i really think that they fucked themselves through bad ham-fisted decisions that give that people don't take them very seriously anymore um assassin's creed 3 is a real and by the way this would have been an assassin's creed game where i'm like i'm playing that like for me personally it was the same thing with assassin's creed 3 now it was a little different with assassin's creed 3 because we had revelations in brotherhood and then ac1 and 2 which i did play but i never played the inter the interims but ac3's concept and setting was so compelling to me the revolutionary war that i was like oh i'm definitely playing that and i did and what i wanted to point out here was no one had a problem with that game you played as a native american right and there was a lot of like tough shit in there there was even dlc where like what george washington became like a tyrant king and yeah the mad king right washington and that's a cool idea Yeah, I love the I love the key art for it where he's like sitting on a throne or whatever.

2:20:41Yeah. No one gave a shit because it was heartfelt and accurate and paid homage to an underrepresented group that was very much there. Right. Like the Iroquois and all these different groups that played a huge part of the revolution.

2:21:03and I've gone into this before, but with Assassin's Creed, they made a choice with Assassin's Creed shadows that they shouldn't have made, which is like, we're finally setting a game in Japan. We've been people been asking for this since the very first Assassin's Creed game in 2007, and we've gone out of our way to tell the story of a black man in Assassin's Creed shadows. And I think that that is weird. I've said that since the beginning. I just think it's weird. It doesn't mean he wasn't historically there. He wasn't born. It's like you made a choice. You made a conscious choice. You knew what you were doing and people were going to hold your feet to the fire for that.

2:21:38So now it's as you were saying, Chris, you almost don't have permission from the enthusiasts anymore to tell a story like this because you kind of ham fisted this other situation for no reason. Why would we have any reason to give a shit about what you have to say about reconstruction? And it's a shame. yeah because i think in that assassin's creed 3 mold even that black flag mold i think they could have gotten away with it i think they would have i mean even something like syndicate which i didn't play but it's like that's about like the industrial revolution and it's tar and dark and gray and they were still trying to do something i just feel like it's very it's it's difficult for people to talk about it but it's just it's true it's like i just think it's that they were for lack of a better term there's like a virtue signal in assassin's creed shadows in my opinion and they didn't have to do that they could have just told a cool japanese story like they told a cool italian story like they called told a cool american story like they told all these different stories over time and i just think it's sure so i think that that that undercuts them personally yeah i don't know how i feel about that still because i really i really do earnestly feel like there's so many games like even go guys go see yote is assassin's creed shadows but i think there's like a weird i don't know i feel like there was probably an earnest idea there where it's just like there's a lot of games set in feudal japan right now that is just what what people are expecting us to do yasuke is a real figure in historical japan this could be interesting in comparison to doing like the same thing that sucker punch is doing or what like xyz company is doing i think this has a chance to set our game apart in some way and being able to you know multiple characters is kind of an interesting experimental angle as well it keeps people from saying that we're going stale i really do think the issue isn't so much that they chose yasuke so much as just they're not good at writing these stories like again it's they've lost a lot of that talent over the years i don't know how long it's been but like assassin's creed has for more or less become you know action schlock you know it's it's pseudo deep you know and and it's been that way for quite quite a while and so and a lot of other ubisoft properties have suffered a similar i think i think what is it the um oh my god what's that star wars game outlaws there's nothing there was nothing particularly strong about that story you know it wasn't like people weren't coming out of star wars and or star wars um outlaws as if it was and or you know where people are talking about like you gotta see this story like i'm curious about and or at this point like Like I've had so many people tell me about it.

2:24:16Yeah, me too. That normally would not be into it. And so I really like earnestly can't remember the last time in modern memory where Ubisoft has had a narrative like that, where people are outwardly talking about how good and how like, oh, it's so well done and so well written. And oh my God, I can't wait for the next one. Or I can't wait. I can't. The characters haven't like stood the test of time. I never see any Ubisoft characters brought up in the conversation for like best character of all time. And if I do, they're all it's always, you know, 2014 and before, you know, with Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed 2 and Revelations and whatever the other one was Brotherhood.

2:24:58So, yeah, I don't know. I see what you're saying. And I do think like there was probably some wisdom and maybe like not choosing to do that. But I also think there's a probably there's probably a good faith reason why they did that. That wasn't just Virtue Signal. I do think like there's an earnest reason why that decision could have been made. But again, they just didn't write that story well at all. I walked away from that game with no concept of or even a modicum of care for either of those characters. And that's a skill issue, quite frankly, you know? Yeah, it's it is interesting. I concede to you that it could have been something else.

2:25:35but i think that at the very least we can agree that they decided to eat a pr problem for themselves that they just make manufactured for no reason like it was these it was the assassin's creed game everyone wanted you know like that was the weird part it wasn't like some other bullshit you know like yeah yeah it was actually the one everyone's like oh you're doing it you know i just think it would have been a it would have been a different pr it wouldn't have been as bad because it wouldn't have been so like um you know racial i guess and more about a sensitive topic but people would have been like oh they're phoning it in you know what i mean it's like oh it's you know it's it's goes they're just making ghost of tsushima and it's like okay cool yeah there's something that's an interesting point yeah i do think it's like you either i don't think they had a really good way out of it really they waited my real issue with assassin's creed shadows and assassin's set in japan is that they waited way too fucking long to do it oh yeah they waited a long time so by the time it comes out and by the time they're like hey we're doing an assassin's creed game in japan it comes across less as like you doing what everybody wants and comes across more like breaking break glass in case of emergency you know like oh we're not doing too well let's let's let's do the thing that everybody wants but also we don't want to be too safe and do the same thing that everybody else is doing now that the thing that everybody wants is being fulfilled by other companies so let's let's do this experimental stuff which again i i appreciate i appreciate the experimental angle of that game where like oh two playable characters is interesting but they did not land the plane well they did not write the game well just a mess and they were too late they were too late to it even because because i feel like it didn't really pick up until like maybe sekiro around that time like maybe neo era where like you started to see this a lot more more often but there was they had a they had a huge fucking window between assassin's creed 3 and neo or like you know the beginning of that trend where they could have easily done the japan thing gotten it over with did the thing that everybody wanted and not had this situation oh well doesn't want to you yeah i i agree that i think with the story of yasuke it there is an interesting idea there about okay well there was this samurai or i guess that was the big debate is like what what actually was yasuke what degree yeah i think they definitely could have avoided um that and done something really interesting but it's as you guys are saying it's just too late it's too late especially when assassin's creed is just kind of i don't want to say it's just it feels like it's just existing to us because we don't care but clearly it's sold very well so it doesn't ultimately everything we're saying doesn't really matter yeah i get the whole show actually now that i think about it maybe just does not matter yeah um julio mendez wrote in inside cdc greetings from venezuela i have mixed feelings about the cancellation of the assassin's creed game on one hand reconstruction is arguably the messiest period in american history and was also a failure so you can really tell a very compelling story you can really tell a very compelling story set in this period at the same time i don't trust ubisoft writers to do justice to the setting and apply the levels of sensitivity and nuance that such a period requires colin you being an American history buff, how would you handle a game set during that time?

2:28:51Please take care of yourselves. I actually, what's so fascinating about this is my mind immediately went towards, um, the end of reconstruction and this idea that because I, well, you guys would know better than me. Does Assassin's Creed still focus a lot on like the conspiracy angle of like the, of like the modern day stuff and like things, there's like these inflection points and things happen because I was basically thinking about the 1860, the 1876 election that's between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden. And it's a really interesting election if you read about it. And that was the end of reconstruction.

2:29:28Basically, reconstruction was ended as a result of that election and a deal that was made during that election. And I was thinking about that as being like the nexus point of like massive change or like this thing that happened. And that obviously shepherded in the Jim Crow era, which is a really dark time in American history. So from a story perspective, if they're still doing that sort of thing where there's like this this thing you're trying to observe or participate in or whatever, it could be cool to have a conspiracy around that. But yeah, I really. So it's funny that Django Unchained came up because that movie is so fucking good and like unreasonably good.

2:30:04And. even at this heightened time in race relations in political relationships and so in society kind of bubbling i really don't believe that anyone would give a shit about a black dude just obliterating hooded kkk members i just don't i think people would dig that um again i think it would need to be done right by the right people of course but this i think there's this idea that it's like, oh, they're going to people like relitigating the Civil War and people it's like, no, dude, everyone hates the KKK. Like I think everyone would want to kick the shit out of them. They're an irrelevant group today.

2:30:46But in the 1860s and 1870s during that and 80s during that era where, you know, the like where the Confederate soldiers were the ones founding it, you know, Nathan Forrest and all those guys, you know, old civil Confederate generals. That's the real fucking KKK. Those are like real bad guys. And so there would be a real cool way to I think explore that in a game, in a really violent game. And it reminds me of Django Unchained. Everyone fucking loves that movie. Yeah. You know, so I just think it is. It's a very amorphous thing to say it needs to be done right. We've been saying that over and over again, but that's what it's all about.

2:31:22I don't think any subject matter should really be off limits. And I'm sad that, again, my theory of the case is that I'm sad that Ubisoft spent so much of their social capital on so many things that didn't matter. yeah and now they have to deal with the repercussions of that which is canceling a game like this yeah so and and and you could do it like i'm yeah like you said like anybody could do it i guess but like uh to do it well is another thing like that's why i think i actually earnestly think like uh like hanger 13 could probably do a really good job on something like that like it would be more linear i guess it wouldn't be like the same type of game but like from what i've seen from their narratives it's like i think they they have a pretty good grasp upon a lot of stuff and based on even just some of the stuff that i've seen from mafia 3 that i find like mega compelling even though i'll never play that game because i know the bloat will kill me um i i don't know there's there's definitely something at that studio that i feel like maybe i i don't know why i trust them with more mature things for some reason but uh yeah not ubisoft it's unfortunate well someone will probably do something like this i assume at some point.

2:32:27I mean, there's just not enough. There's like strategy games and war games and stuff, but just Civil War era, post-Civil War era is rife for storytelling, in my opinion. And especially with, as I was saying, like alternate history things, such a cool time for. Because you could even, it would be cool to set it during Reconstruction. It would be, and that's why I was saying, like, you know, going and changing things and changing timelines and stuff. Like what if the, I mean, it's the most overdone thing in fiction, but what if the Confederacy, won or still existed kind of thing is also an interesting thing to um to get into so anyway nice reporting there from game file all right just a few quick things here to get through sales data and so on and so forth and um some release dates that i want to talk about as well so uh i just have a press release here that i put into our document claire obscure expedition 33 has sold over 5 million copies and it's getting a bunch of updates including a new playable environment taking the characters of Expedition 33 to a brand new location with new enemy encounters and surprises to discover challenging new boss battles for late game players to overcome new costumes for each member of the expedition new text new wide game localizations that bring supported languages to 19 and so on and so forth Neo JD wrote in and said those who come after Expedition 33 has now sold 5 million copies Sandfall announced the game is getting a free update featuring a new dungeon, new enemies, new bosses, and new costumes.

2:33:58Is this something you guys are looking forward to? Or are you still drowning in the ocean of game releases? Thanks. I'll go back and listen to Ben Star cry some more. I'm not going to go back to this game. I don't think anytime soon. I think one day I'll go back to it because I really liked it a lot. But these new additions are cool, but they often come too late for me. So now I'm on the fence on whether it's a good idea for them to be spending time doing this kind of thing at all. And I think probably what it is is that they're going to spool up a sequel, no doubt. And you'd want to keep your team employed and not lay anyone off.

2:34:30And that would be ridiculous after you just sold 5 million copies. But everyone needs to stay busy. So while people are kind of getting the new game off the ground and doing the work of not everyone's going to be needed right now. You can have kind of more of your gameplay centric people, programmers, artists and whatnot, while the concept people are doing their thing, work on stuff to update the game for free. I have no problem with it. It's a Sony has proven over time that it's a cool way to keep people engaged. You kind of release your new game plus later. You release a little expansion, a little online mode, a little this, a little that.

2:34:57So no problems there. Five million copies sold. Not so bad for a game that was also on Game Pass. So congratulations to them. Will either of you go back to Expedition? No, no, no. Way too late. I think I mean, someday I'd like to do a replay and maybe that's when I'll get to it. But it's cool that they're localizing the game in more languages. That's probably going to be the most significant thing so people in new markets uh can play it but i don't i don't need any more content from that game it's it's fantastic just the way it is if anything the mini map update should happen yeah oh my god yeah that would be a big one that'd be nice um all right so there's that expedition 33 congratulations to those guys great success we have data we brought up serkana earlier and matt piscatella is posting over on blue sky and And again, I just don't understand.

2:35:50I get the whole political problem with Twitter and all the rest, but you're just posting into a void. And then people are just copying and pasting your stuff and bringing it to other social media platforms. I just don't really understand the stubbornness if you want to reach people. But nonetheless, we go over there to find this. He released the August 2025 US video game market highlights. And he always does this in a thread. You can go look at how things are doing. The big thing we want to know, of course, is August 2025, top 20 best-selling premium games in the US based on dollar sales. and we have a lot of new games on the list, but not big surprises.

2:36:23NBA 2K26 was August's best-selling game. This runs from August 3rd through August 30th, by the way. Madden NFL 26 was number two, Mafia the Old Country number three, and Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater, only two days, I think. Number four, so awesome for them. Shout out to Konami and seeing the Konami up there on the publisher list on the right. Very nice, very nice. So all four of those games, NBA 2K26, Madden 26, Mafia 4, and Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater were all new entries. And then July's number one game, EA Sports College Football 26 is now number five. And then another new game in the form of Gears of War Reloaded, which is number six.

2:37:02And then Donkey Kong Bonanza, number seven. That's without physical copies, by the way. So that would be higher. Nintendo just doesn't... Oh, I'm sorry. It's without digital copies. Nintendo doesn't share digital. I don't know why. Like it does. They're not represented properly on these charts and it bothers me. They would be way higher there. um demon slayer Kemetsu no Yaiba the Hinokami Chronicles 2 up from 24 to 10 I know that's right up your alley Dustin um you were all over that and then Helldivers and then Helldivers 2 popped back up because of its Xbox release from 25 to 14 uh anything else your story of seasons Grand Bazaar which I think Mike is playing was on the list at 19 so anything here for you guys i want to get a little deeper into the hell divers numbers but nice to see mafia do so well at 50 and metal gear solid and again this is money this is dollar sales so really nice for them and then metal gear solid delta snake eater and gears of war on there so some good games there and of course all the dominant sports games yeah i'm so i guess i'm not surprised by gears of war but it's important to remember that most of the xbox fan base probably played that on game pass so probably a lot of that money from playstation playstation gamers i mean so microsoft must be thrilled with well i know something that's worth noting too is that like if you bought the ultimate edition on xbox like you got gears of war reloaded already like even game pass or not like it would kind of update right that's right that's kind of it's kind of double impressive actually that's um that's cool i mean i'm happy to see that bummed at the ultimately like what it is but you know i mean it's it's good it's a good spot for them we're about five weeks out of date now in real time because this goes through august 30th and it's october 9th we're recording but from the beginning of the year through august 30th these are the best-selling games in the united states in that cumulative of time monster hunter wilds number one ea sports college football number two the elder schools for oblivion remastered number three that's a 40 game isn't it uh yeah i believe it might be might be but not 60 or 70 check yeah go ahead no it's not yeah black ops 6 4 nba 2k 26 after one month is number five mlb the show 25 at number six night rain for all the dustins of the world number seven other interesting games here kingdom come deliverance 2 is at 9 split fiction is at 11 for the year forza horizon 5 based on its playstation sales 12 civ 7 is 16 and doom in the dark age is holding on a 19 although i imagine it's going to get bumped yeah um so pretty good performance all around here is oblivion is 50 by the way oblivion is 50 thank you um okay good to know and then if you're curious playstation platforms sales by playstation platforms the top 10 this is the top 10 best-selling games by dollar sales for august nba 2k 26 madden 26 metal gear solid delta snake eater mafia the old country so it's interesting it's inverted based on the on the main chart delta sold better on playstation but mafia sold better overall number five is ea sports college football 26 gears of war reloaded at six ea sports mvp bundle at seven.

2:40:25EA Sports kickoff bundle at eight. Call of Duty Black Ops six at nine. Demon Slayer Kimitsu no Yaiba. The Hinokami Chronicles two at 10. Again, Dustin's game, his favorite game. So nothing too exciting here, but I'm curious what you guys think about. And do we have? Oh, no, we didn't get a letter from this. This is the thing that people are circulating right now that are confused about Xbox platforms. So we know, of course, this runs through August 30th and And Helldivers 2 came out August 26th. So five days would be plenty. For instance, we just told it said that Snake Eater was only counted for two days and is one of the best selling games.

2:41:01So no excuses. You sell most of your games very early. If you read the top 10 Xbox games, no Helldivers. And I was talking to some people behind the scenes about this. And we even said I even said on Discord. It's like this has to be a mistake, right? Either. if this isn't a mistake, then that Alinea Analytics or whoever put the analysis out for the Helldivers numbers is totally wrong. Like Helldivers 2 didn't sell more copies than Demon Slayer, Kamitsu no Yaiba, the Hinokami Chronicles 2 on Xbox. How could that be? So I think that like I think Serkana had said they're going to go back and like check the numbers because they agree that it's weird.

2:41:48but this is a pretty interesting thing. Like, where is it? Yeah. It has to be there, right? You would imagine. It's like a high profile release. I would have assumed it would sold hundreds of thousands in the US, which would have been plenty to get it on this chart. Yeah. So something is going on there. I just thought I'd throw that out there. Did you guys notice that or think about that? I was confused about that personally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I saw I saw you and Maddie talking about it in the discord. It definitely seems like if something certainly seems wrong with the data or one of the two parties where someone someone is wrong.

2:42:29If you didn't report it, you know, because it would be up to Sony to report these numbers. But Microsoft would know on their end. But I think it would come from the I don't know. No, it would probably come from the publisher. And they must have some sort of back end access. because maybe these numbers aren't reported at all as much as they're like kind of relayed through the hardware manufacturers and the reason that there's no digital data for switches because that digital data is simply not available um publicly but i'm fascinated by that because there's something totally wrong and by the way i want to be clear my theory of the case is that there is an error here i don't understand how that could be and again if that's true hell divers didn't do shit on xbox and that all of the bubbling of like the player count was people kind of signing in that day or that week for anticipation over the sales but i just don't believe it and that would be that would be devastating to the analytics firms that got it so wrong as well but so i don't think that that's true i think that there's got to be a reporting issue.

2:43:30We'll see. Yeah. All right. What else? Oh, PlayStation Store download data. This is for September, so this is going to be newer data. The top PS5 games downloaded off the PlayStation Network for the month of September. NBA 2K26 was one. Borderlands 4 was two. EA Sports FC 26 was three. Silksong was four. Madden NFL 26 was five. so silksong higher than madden in their opening months which is pretty wild dying light the beast happy to see that at number six gta 5 at 7 nhl 26 at 8 silent hill f at 9 after a few days on the on the market ea sports college football 26 10 ready or not 11 hell divers 2 12 forza horizon 13 minecraft 14 metal your solid 2 delta snake eater 16 or that's 15 16 17 18 yeah sonic racing cross worlds 16 no man's sky based on the new dlc probably 17 gears of war reloaded slowing down at 18 final fantasy tactics the iblis chronicles at 19 and hell is us at 20 nothing really interesting here on the ps4 chart except for this hollow knight void heart edition which is the hollow night port from 2018 i want to say was the second most downloaded game on ps4 for the month so So that's not a huge surprise.

2:44:54Alien Rogue Incursion VR was the biggest PSVR 2 game. And Dragon Paul Geikishin Squadra. You know what this is? Have you ever heard of this? I looked, I looked, I saw it on the store and I looked it up. I have no concept of what the fuck this game is. This was so weird. This was the biggest free to play game across PS4 and PS5 for the month of September on PlayStation ahead of even Fortnite, Marvel Rivals, Roblox. And actually, number two is Delta Force. this is what i'm talking about about like there's just so much random shit out there it's crazy and skate by the way at number seven not a huge surprise yeah look at that this dragon ball geekish and squadron i'm looking at it on steam right now it's so it's like an it's like an isometric kind of i think i think it might be like a card based thing or something I don't know.

2:45:47It looks almost like MOBA-esque. Yeah, 4v4 battle.

2:45:54Yeah, I don't know what to make of it. I checked it out because I was like, oh, Dragon Ball game. Let me see. I immediately was like, oh, I'm never going to touch this with a 10-foot pole. That's crazy. The studio that did it is the studio that created One Piece World Seeker. Which was a game. Bad One Piece game. Yeah, you didn't like that game? I mean, I've never played it, but compared to

2:46:19what i didn't even mean that as an insult or anything i'm like oh that surprised me that you didn't play the one piece coming off constantly the joke about me being a demon slayer fan when i've constantly said demon slayer's ass i know but this is one piece yeah i know it's one piece but that one what my point was the one piece world seeker game people did not like one piece Odyssey pretty good right people liked that one so I didn't mean that I didn't mean to trigger you I'm sorry no I was actually saying I'm surprised you didn't play like did you play the one piece Musou no I mean a lot of these games came out before I was into one piece yeah like I one piece one piece Odyssey is the only one piece game that came out post me being into one piece so it's like why would I go back and play world seeker or whatever when it's not very good.

2:47:13And I mean, all those, I'm not, I don't know, anime games. I think dragon ball lends it. Well, it's a really well to video games. And if you're into fighting games, cool. But like, I don't know. I don't one piece. It's like, it's cool to see the characters do all these moves and play an RPG, but it's like, it doesn't, nothing that happens in the game really matters. It's not canon. Finally, two release dates to share, both column or already released dates that i got to put on the record power wash simulator 2 for my british friends over at future lab october 23rd god i thought it was going to be a december release or something it seemed like it was barely going to make it so this is a surprise because they were like refusing to put a date on it so it's like oh it's probably going to get delayed dude i'm so excited and i got to do the wallace and gromit dlc for the original one still you gotta do that man and i was but i was thinking like that would be the most boring stream in the world so i gotta like just do that on my own time um but dude i'm so excited for power watch simulator too it looks so good it looks so fun i know ben's excited about it too ben smith our old friend jesus christ what do you know it's just do you have any you have you know wallace and grama right you have context i have context for it yeah i just i've never really seen it i know who they are i know that art style and that it's like an other you know who that man is i know who that who's that man who's that man over there so i love i just love the idea i just i love it is so endlessly funny to me that you spend time in these like dlc worlds and you just have no no there's no through line of connectivity to any of you're just cleaning a giant pineapple underwater you're like a job's a job you know what i mean like i'm not here to get involved in your business.

2:49:03You know, I'm here to like you wouldn't you're paying me to do it, do something and I'm trying to get it done for you. Jobs, a job. You're actually technically having probably the most lore accurate experience. Right. For any anybody in that world, because you're like, you don't know these. Yeah, I'm just I'm just a guy who's like coming like I'm a I'm a I run my own little LLC and I'm just trying to make ends meet, you know, right. I just think it's so funny. it is funny it is funny i love i wonder how many probably not many people are like me because i'm a little disconnected but obviously there was um there was five dlc packs and i i think i had a connection to two of them because they did back to the future which i know and then um right and what is the other one that they oh um alice in wonderland which i know but but yeah they did spongebob which i didn't know and they did a warhammer which was probably the most intense one because all the little gadgets and gizmos and shit like that's like so annoying actually It was actually the one where I was like, this is fucking annoying.

2:49:59But the Wallace and Gromit one, I think I'm going to I'll get into that next week and then and clear the board and prepare myself. And I was just power washing the garbage cans. I look I power wash anything I can at this point. So it's fun. Oh, my God, it is. And Shrek. Shrek. So six. Yes, Shrek. I didn't I didn't know that one either. But again, it is. But again, a job's a job. Shrek. I know that Colin, you're a millennial as well, but you are an elder millennial for chris and i shrek is so deeply imbued into our cultural identity growing up when we did that it's crazy to me that you're like i don't know yeah i think i was a senior in high school when shrek came out so i was like it was it was a thing for people people saw it and liked it i just for some reason just or somehow just never saw it and then it was off to the races at that point well a job is a job the job right i mean i gotta i got kids and then the other so all right So October 23rd, was it for?

2:50:57Yeah. And then this is disappointing news, although not really because we have so many things to play. Yacht Club Games announced that Mina, the hollowers delayed again. It was supposed to come out on Halloween. So October 31st, they write, quote, this week, our team made a tough decision. We decided to delay me to the hollower. The entire crew has been working tirelessly day and night to finish development for release on October 31st, but we're just not quite there yet. This isn't a major delay. It's just a stretch of time to apply some final polish and balancing to make the game truly shine.

2:51:24With that said, we would like to apologize. Blah, blah, blah. We never waver on our commandment to quality. I totally believe that. I think it's. I've said before, I like Yacht Club. I know them. They're nice people. I go way back with a lot of those guys for my Shovel Knight coverage. I just don't understand what's taking so long to get your games out. It's disappointing. You're so great. You should be on your fourth or fifth game at this point. Shovel Knight came out in 2014. let's just be a conservative and say you should be on your third or fourth game and i just feel like it's disappointing because i want more and i i have this feeling that the new shovel knight game is going to be a 3d game and it's like oh we missed out on this whole generation of megaman like you know four or five shovel knight games i just would have loved that so it's just my selfishness now me to the hollower is more of a game boy color style game and looks more akin to a Zelda game.

2:52:18I'm really looking forward to it. I'm curious. I hope the spark for them is not gone with people. It's been so long. Even the Shovel Knight games that they released, they were iterations of Shovel Knight. It was nothing new. I hope people haven't moved on. I would have done things differently. Who the fuck am I? Are either of you looking forward to Me to the Hollower? or is this just a column game, I assume? I played the demo on Switch 2, and it was awesome. So I really am interested in playing it. I don't mind it being delayed just because I feel like I'm drowning right now. So it can come out whenever it wants to.

2:53:01It sounds like Yacht Club, I don't know, are they perfectionists at this point where it's like, man, this game has taken so long. You got to get it out. Hopefully, I mean, it sounds like this delay hopefully will push it over the edge of being something totally incredible because that demo felt awesome like i don't it's felt like when that demo released it's like yeah this is done this is very done and ready to go but it's like no they're still still working yeah i wonder like what they're seeing and because they're probably all playing it a lot now and so yeah they must have they must be something about it that they're not happy with i don't know um it could be a way to just get it out of October 31st, which was never really an ideal release date for it anyway, but I'm hoping it's this year.

2:53:47I think a December, like holiday-ish release, like leading into the holidays would be great for a game like Mina the Hall. In fact, I feel like it would lend a lot to the nostalgia of a game like that. Getting it for Christmas. So if there's some marketing play they can have there, but whatever. They made a lot of money. They can take their time. They're not like Team Cherry level, but they did well for themselves, those guys. all right uh oh drake heinhorse i didn't agree from you i didn't read it though it's too bad next time maybe delete bye it's almost worse for it to have been addressed

2:54:28all right let's get to what we're playing i'll go first and i'll go quick still playing puzzle quest immortal edition i'm gonna be playing that for a while nothing really new to say about it Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut and Iki Island DLC. So I beat all the Iki Island DLC. The Iki Island DLC was obviously released for people after the game came out. And so most people played it in the post game. However, that didn't sound exciting to me. And it becomes available after the first act. There are three acts in Ghost of Tsushima. So I played through the second act. And then because the game kind of warns you like it's pretty hard.

2:54:57You don't want to necessarily go here too early. So after the second act, so two thirds of the way through the game, I went over and I just did all of it. So all the story stuff, all the trophies, all the collectibles, all that. And then now I'm back in the main game and I'm deep in the third act of the game. I'm having a good time with it. It's really stunningly beautiful visually in terms of its environment, the weather effects, everything about it. The combat's fun. It's a fluid game. I'm really interested to see how it gets in, like how Yotei kind of plays around with that a little bit, all of it.

2:55:29But I liked the Yiki Island DLC. It's dark. I continue, I was saying this to Micah and I might've said this last week on the show. I don't remember, but I'm kind of struck by people being so upset about the female protagonist in Yotei and like, why do they do this? I'm like, dude, there are so many women in Ghost of Tsushima, like everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. And no one gave a fuck. so it's just i just i don't really understand like everyone like it's unrealistic i'm like dude there's Like, I don't think it's some, I think it's a very loud minority, you know, that care. So nothing new to really say about it.

2:56:21Oh, I'm sorry, Dustin. Were you going to say something? I just said, yeah, it's the minority that is annoying online, but has no actual influence.

2:56:31Billy Bong Baggins wrote in. Said, boys, can we stop with the touchpad slander? If developers were just to utilize it better, it could be a plethora of different buttons. For example, pressing in each corner, that's four. Swiping in every direction could be four also. That's eight prompts that could be used in button mapping. Some games to do this in accessibility options are The Last of Us Part 2 and God of War Ragnarok. Sorry for the long write-in. I thought about it for years, but never sent it. That's not a long write-in. No. Have you read some of the things that I've had to read? Billy Bong, thank you for writing in.

2:57:06It's a good point, and I bring it up here because I think Ghost of Tsushima actually does use the touchpad pretty well. The problem with it, though, is that it could just be a series of buttons. Like it could just be actual individual buttons that could be mapped to different things. It almost it almost again, I don't want it to look like the Atari Jaguar controller or anything as we brought up in the past. But what I've noticed is so like you're always like rubbing up. um i was gonna make a really inappropriate joke but i'm not it's like too much i heard it yeah um felt it we felt the and but like it's in it's it doesn't always just work it's not like a button it almost feels like why do i have to do this i could just press a button and make the wind go to bow to play my flute to do all the things you do in the game with the touchpad so it's being used as another as a series of buttons therefore why wouldn't it just be a series of buttons i'll tell you why yeah buttons are ugly yeah they are that's literally the only reason and i don't think i should be clear chris i don't think we really need more buttons no i agree yeah but but but i just i so i understand what he's saying but i just feel like the touchpad it hasn't it's cool there's cool uses of it this is a nice use of it it's very natural the wind just flowing your finger i get it but but then i'm like pressing square to swing a sword so who gives a fuck you really like the wind in japan this should make a spinoff game where you play as the wind and go i think that'd be great you had flour yeah yeah i was about to think i was about to say that yeah i don't know i mean the touchpad stuff is weird i feel like it's kind of gimmicky it's fine like it's not a great it's not aggressively annoying in most of the stuff that i've used it in but a lot of time i'm feeling like why why do i need to do i would almost prefer like buttons on the back um what do you call like kind of like on the like some controllers have it but like buttons here or something flaps yeah yeah or or something i would i feel like i would prefer that to a massive touchpad in the middle of my controller but you know we have what we have and it's and i think it works fine i think i think ghost of tsushima to be fair does and i guess goes to yote by extension also probably does the touchpad best of the games that i've seen it used in uh where it feels kind of superfluous the the actions that are levied or that are relegated to the touchpad are actions that probably should be you know you wouldn't want a dedicated button necessarily for this taking up the main face plates or the face buttons or the triggers or anything so in that way in that sense it's like it's well balanced and well done i think but yeah i like i like this controller i mean i think this controller is awesome personally it's good but um it's got a good weight to it and all the rest but yeah the the the touch function is okay actually you know shout out to sucker punch though and i'm sure it's even more advanced than yotei because they were just messing around with it preliminarily with the director's cut of ghost of tsushima but really nice use of the dual sense haptics like going over stone on your horse and shit like just like very specific feelings and rhythms and you play the flute in the icky island dlc and it makes you move your controller up and down.

3:00:43And when it, when it first came up in the screen, I was like, you know, like Jesus fucking Christ. And it just works great. It works perfectly fine. And you're just like trying to keep it in a line as you're playing the music. So it was, it was nice. So yeah, shut up. I'm enjoying it. I'll have the platinum soon. I wish it's taking way longer than I thought it was going to, which is always my problem. And I play a lot. So it's just, it's not even like, you're not playing enough. It's like, no, I'm just not carving out enough time. I don't know how to do math is basically the problem so i'll get to go see yote when you know next week at some point i'm sure and we'll follow that up i'm sure on sacred symbols plus at some point all right so that's me now let's get into you guys excessively heavy breather while gaming wrote in and said hello my sacred protectors of the symbols it's been a week now since ghost of yote has arrived and would love to hear what the three of you think so far personally it's hitting real good and i'm just over eight hours in and that's mainly with the side content i mean my god this game scratches just something in my brain.

3:01:40By the way, there was no period in that entire time I've been reading so far. I try to focus on the main story, but get distracted immediately by even a bird flying next to me. How has it been for you, my big boy Bakas? Anyway, I'll hang up and listen in my hot spring bath, bare ass, while my hog is floating to the surface. Thank you for writing in. Very buoyant. Alright, so you're both playing Ghost of Yote. I guess because, Dustin, you're playing other stuff too, we'll start with Chris. and then segue to you sure so hit us with your thoughts here chris yeah so i mean i guess my high level thoughts on it is like go see yote is good like i'm enjoying my time with it i think it's i think the open world does the same this it does it as well as goes to shishiba did i i do find myself kind of getting enthralled by like okay so here's a bird's flying past me and I get distracted and I'm always like kind of satisfied with what I find and it's good it's it's very pretty the combat's really solid um I am into the story I like I like a revenge plot like I'm into it like I don't I don't mind I know a lot of people talk about like it being like derivative or whatever like predictable and it's like yeah it is but like I don't know if I necessarily care I think it's it's handled well I you sufficiently dislike the bad guys I think like the game kind of constantly like it consistently reminds you why in like a way that feels kind of good and so you never feel like you're running out of steam narratively so that so in that sense it's all very good the the caveat to that though is that this is absolutely without a doubt in my opinion probably the least different sequel from its original that i have played in a long time i think ghost of yote feels so similar to ghost of tsushima that i i kind of wonder why it took so long in comparison like i i don't really i don't know if i get it fully because really the only differences are very slight gameplay things like i think uh what is it there's probably some stuff from the director's cut of ghost of shishima that's in here that i don't remember but a lot of the so the stances in the first game where like you would you would shift your stance to compensate for whatever weapon you were fighting if you were fighting a heavy you would shift to like some specific stance for that and you know vice versa in this game it's more about weapons so all the stances take place of like different weapons you have like a long kind of i think it's called a yari which is like a spear basically you have like the katana you have dual katanas and you have like a a giant heavy sword and then there's another thing that i haven't gotten yet because i don't know where to find it but so those take the place of the stances but it's still kind of the same situation you kind of like it's like a rock paper scissors kind of match up between like who you're fighting and what weapon to use and it feels good i have like literally no complaints about it except for like maybe like a locking on feels kind of awkward sometimes sometimes i sometimes i slash past people when i mean to go in their direction and that kind of feels weird but outside of that it it feels it it's all good i'm just kind of thoroughly unsurprised by it and i knew i would be like i knew this going in but i was kind of hoping like there would be like oh my expectations would be so minimal that there would be something in the game there would be something that the game does like fundamentally differently that that would maybe like catch me by surprise in a positive way and really so far there's really none of that um it's ghost of tsushima again and that's your mileage may vary on that really like if if you didn't like ghost of tsushima i died this is not going to change your mind there's nothing really fundamentally different here enough to to really win you over um and if you did like ghost of tsushima but maybe wanted something more out of a follow-up you're i don't think you're really gonna get it uh and i i want that all to be said with under the context of it's not bad like it's not necessarily a bad thing that this is all true it's not it's not necessarily a bad thing that's that it's an unsurprising game it's not necessarily a bad thing that it is so similar to the original but for me it is kind of like oh well i i do feel like i'm kind of going through the motions with it i'm enjoying it as i'm doing and i do find myself getting immersed and kind of getting sucked in and like oh my god it's been five hours um and so i am thoroughly enjoying my time with it i think the characters are cool i think maybe that's the biggest step up maybe is that i care more about like everybody around me in comparison to the first game where i feel like only lady masako i I think if I'm remembering her name correctly, Colin, you're playing it right now.

3:06:34So you, you might know who I'm talking about. I think that's her name. Yeah. She was compelling to me. I like Jim and his, Jim and his father, I think was like compelling, but like everybody else in that game, kind of like, I don't really remember. Whereas in this game, I do think there's story elements here where I'm like, okay, I'm remembering these characters. Like these villains are really sticking out to me now. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. But yeah, I mean, that's really my high level thoughts about it. I'm, i don't remember exactly how deep into the i think i'm about 20 hours in but i'm spending a lot of time doing i'm it is doing the open world thing to me where it is it is making me want to do everything like it feels approachable enough it doesn't feel like an assassin's creed level bloat where like i'm overwhelmed immediately from square one it actually feels like it it dulls your side activities out at like a reasonable pace to make you feel like oh this is like an achievable thing to do so i'm kind of doing my best to like kind of 100 each area um so i'm pretty deep into the game although i've only beaten one boss of the main of the main group can you fight them in any order i the so the first boss i think is always the first one because he's kind of like the tutorial um but i believe i believe you can fight i i think you have dominion over the order you fight them as far as like brackets go so So like, I think there's there's the first boss that is always the first boss.

3:08:01And then you have the choice between two to either two or three. Yeah, I think for me, for me, it's two. Like, I don't know if I maybe I missed something, but like for me, it's two. Although I think one of them is two people. So I think that kind of got so I think you can choose between those in whatever order. And then I think there might be another thing where you could. Yeah, I don't I don't really know fully. But so it's not like free form necessarily that you can like, you know, go for the final guy first. Yeah, you'll need to bring out a little bit of balance in. So that makes sense. yeah but uh the game would become unbalanced yeah but it's it's it's very good but it is be very well aware that this is ghost of tsushima again so if that's like a deal breaker for you then like i you know it is what it is but it's a really well done game it's very beautiful um it's uh you get the hot springs and you get ass i know that was a big that was a big that was a big conversation it's like are there are they is there going to be bare cheeks now that it's a protagonist you you get them yep good so so that's your rest so all you all the gooners can rest the gooners gooners stand down your complaints have been addressed but uh it's it's very good like i'm i'm liking it but yeah i'll pass it over to dustin since i've i'm kind of going in circles now but well before you answer dustin let's get forrest martinez on the record here he wrote in and said, howdy CDC.

3:09:25Is it fair for a game to be limited in how much praise it receives because it is considered a safe sequel? The online discourse I see on Ghost of Yotei is that it's pretty much the same as Tsushima. Sucker Punch polished a gem and turned a great first game into an amazing second game. If they changed too much for the second, it wouldn't feel authentic to what made us love Tsushima. Is it justified to judge a game poorly because it didn't blow us away with brand new features compared to its predecessor? Always amazing content for me. All have a great weekend. What say you? Do you agree with Chris's diagnosis of the game?

3:09:53I think overall I do. I feel like there's a pretty significant improvement across the board, but not in any one major way. And I think that that's kind of the distinction. It's like, as I'm playing, I'm like, this clearly feels superior to Tsushima in little small ways across the board. but in terms of uh just the playing the game if that makes sense it's just it's like yeah this is a lot more of that it's just better and part of what i was wondering it's like man i feel like when i'm playing yote the gameplay just feels so much better than tsushima i'm like why so i went and i downloaded ghost tsushima and just popped it on for a few minutes and i think it is tighter overall in yotei but i was thinking i was like i played ghost of tsushima at 30 fps on ps4 and playing any game at 60 fps i think just makes it more fun i've explained that before numerous times so i won't get into that again but playing at the 60 fps is really nice from a technical perspective there's like no problems with it at all i'm playing on the ray tracing pro mode me too which is awesome yeah and i am i'm really having a good time i'm finding i'm doing way more of the side stuff than i normally do in a game like this i am on i guess my choice of second area because as we were you guys were saying there are multiple ways you can go and i've gotten to the point where i'm like i i'm i can feel when i'm going to start burning myself out on this and for uh who was it in our our write-in excessively heavy breather while gaming um he was talking about how it's scratching that itch if you love these open world style games and you love doing all the different activities in order to like complete a map then yeah you are gonna absolutely love this i've never been that type of gamer i still appreciate and play these games where I do a lot of the side activities, but eventually I'm like, I gotta just I gotta go.

3:12:06I gotta mainline this stuff because I'm gonna get burnout on it. So they've tried to do some interesting things bringing up the touchpad stuff. They're doing some interesting things in terms of controller support where when you upgrade a weapon, there's this sequence where you literally take your DualSense and hammer the sword. And it's cool the first or second time you do it but after that i'm like this is lame i am this is immediately thankfully thankfully they give you the option to skip it and there's like a thing where it's like press the right trigger and blow on the fire to get it lit now cook your food and move around the dual sense and i'm like why why are we doing this it's see there's a level i guess from on a serious note there is a level to this game where it's so beautiful and so cinematic in certain ways i find myself playing it as if i'm recording a trailer for it like i'm like walking like super cool beside the sunset yeah there's like enjoyment to that i'm like this is kind of cool that it has this level of like i just want to play it this way every once in a while because it feels fun um i super appreciate getting rid of the stances and opting for the weapons instead i think that's a big reason why i think the gameplay is way more fun each weapon feels a little bit different they have different moves to them that are really cool so i like that another uh low-key thing maybe it's not low-key because they did a whole trailer for this you guys gotta try out the watanabe mode so watanabe he's the i believe the creator of cowboy bebop but more importantly in this case the anime samurai shampoo which i've never seen but i know it has a very distinct musical quality of like lo-fi hip-hop beats uh which normally you would study too but in this case you kill people too so i had this mode turned on and i played the first three or four hours without it and i turned it on like i'll check this out i can't play the game without it now it's so good this watanabe mode i haven't checked it have you tried it chris no i've been i've been too worried about like maybe those things are like really fun for like maybe like maybe a second playthrough i'm worried about it like maybe like being tonally weird is it cool is it like does it not fuck with the tone at all i don't like if i'm remembering correctly it doesn't do it in cut scenes okay yeah i should check it out then i don't know yeah check it out i think it's super cool there's another mode too that has like a tighter camera that has more blood and more film grain supposed to be like another director um like a japanese film director i turn that on for a little bit and i really like the increased blood but the it even warns you the tighter camera angle they're like this makes the game harder because you can't see as many enemies around you so that's kind of like the the kurosawa mode is still there and i would love to play some of the game with that but it makes the audio sound bad it makes it sound authentic to an old black and white samurai movie and that's cool but give me the option to play the game in black and white and have normal audio because i just do the audio aspect of it kills it for me but the watsunabe mode definitely check that out even if you don't care about the anime or anything it just adds a really cool feeling to playing this game um but yeah overall i'm finding that i i feel like i'm enjoying it a lot more than i did tsushima which i really liked tsushima but there's something about this one that i'm i don't know if the gameplay is more fun and the different environments and places you go are more interesting the characters you talk to uh it still is very much as I was saying earlier an open world game and you're either going to be super into that or you're maybe going to want to just mainline it at some point so I'm still having a great time yeah I'm excited to play more what about yeah I was going to say I'm sorry to interrupt you I was going to ask what about the other games you have listed here yeah so real quick about baby steps I mentioned this last week because we streamed it and we're at a great time with it guys I beat baby steps it was hard as fuck this game is very difficult but talking not talking that shit anymore i'm not dude i'm not later in the game dude maybe that that probably would have been the streaming gold actually was later in the game but i did a video about this and it actually kind of bombed which is kind of sad but my point that i'd like to make to you guys now too is that we had that write-in where someone's like this this is the sloppiest of slop why are you guys playing this game but it wasn't just on sacred that i heard that but in the comments of our stream and other people talking about this game was like a kind of casting off of baby steps and i can see that from just like if you watch gameplay of it or whatever see that it's like oh this is the game that queso and moist critical and other big streamers are playing it's that kind of game right after playing it i think it fucking rules and i highly i highly recommend it to a certain kind of player the game is like surprisingly tactile and i think the most impressive part is that the world design of this game is really interesting colin you may remember on the stream there was a part where i think you were talking about saudi arabia in ea and i was just playing and at one point i was like hold up i just went in a circle right right and the chat was like what like i was like how is that even possible the game somehow feels like a just like a flat plane but manages to be a full loop at the same time and so there are multiple ways up the mountain and so there were a few points where i made it pretty decently far and then had a catastrophic fall and it's initially devastating but when you fall it's a new opportunity to go somewhere else and try a different way that may be easier i'm sure there is like a min max path up the mountain that is probably really difficult but the game design allows for there to be multiple opportunities and ways to progress in a way that feels really organic it doesn't necessarily present to you like easy way hard way it does a few times but overall baby steps huge surprise for me i'm so glad that i played through it and even in my moments of the most frustration it had the the feeling once you get through it you're like holy shit i did it and you feel amazing after you do it so if you like that kind of game if you have the tolerance to be annoyed to be frustrated uh i i mean this is an awesome game i can't recommend enough it sounds like an authentic bennett foddy experience yeah and that's i dude i need to go back and play more i played uh getting over it a little bit years ago yeah but the thing about getting over it is that there is one way up it's a lot shorter though like it's it's you could you could win you could beat getting over it in probably less than five minutes maybe if you're really if you really know what you're doing uh baby steps would be like you did no shot you're beating the game in five minutes just just by the nature of like how you interact with it but yeah that's that was about to say that too it's like the catastrophic falls in baby steps like you end up in a place that you haven't seen and then it's just like oh well where do i go now and then there's like always some weird thing that's there's some dumb thing that you you didn't see before like whereas getting over it like you're back at the beginning it just makes and you have to do everything the same again yeah so but yeah I like I got to put more time into baby steps.

3:20:12I've just I haven't had the time. But I love I love what I played of it so far. Colin, there's stuff that at the beginning that we totally missed. Like there's a shoe salesman at the beginning that there's this funny conversation between the two of them. And he's like, the shoes don't fit you. And it's clearly looks like they would fit. And there's all kinds of stuff that I found in this game. And that's what's actually drawing me back to it. There's a couple. I have this loose idea of a long term platinum for this game. I don't know if I have the strength. It's a very yeah, I was going to I as I understand, it's like a very hard.

3:20:45It's hard to get almost any trophy in the game as far as I understand. Yeah, dude. Well, I won't spoil it. I'll tell you after the show. There's one trophy in the game that is absolutely fucking hilarious to me, but I don't want to spoil it for anybody. I know that there's one for it to do it in under 10 ,000 steps. I think I read online. there's a pedometer that you get in the beginning of the game and i don't think your steps actually matter people were saying that as you have to just carry this pedometer oh interesting through the entire game what's important to know is that if you are carrying an object if you fall sometimes he just fucking yeets it just flies away and he's like good luck so the real challenge of that is just holding it carry one thing throughout the entire game can you save scrub i guess and kind Kind of like.

3:21:33When I was reading about trophy stuff, the save scumming is only through PlayStation cloud saves. Yeah. It's the hardcore. Yeah, that's the hardcore one. Hard. And I constantly upload and download. That's so annoying. Yeah. So it's a great game, though. I'm excited to play more of it. I think about it all the time, how weird it is. Yeah. Just how bizarre of a tone. I love how everybody's voiced by the same person. Do you guys see this came out? Well, I think there is two voices in it. uh because actually this perfect well it's the it's the main guy and then and then bennett i think yeah there's um they just released like someone found there's something that if you skip every cutscene throughout the game but then you don't skip the last scene or something i don't remember the exact mechanics there is a 30 minute long conversation that you can listen to and eventually it's just the actual people talking they're like man they should bring back uncharted like uncharted was great and then they started talking about like game of thrones and and like what they're gonna eat it's awesome they mentioned uh they mentioned intergalactic they're like what about that what about that new uncharted they're working the space the space uncharted it's like yeah it looks looks kind of cool it's like yeah it looks all right space uncharted yeah i saw that i think it's like if you skip every cut scene and by the way there's like a mini game to skip cut scenes in the game like you can't just you can't just skip them like you have to like play this like timing rhythm thing but if you skip all of them at the end they're just like yeah they they've skipped every they don't they don't have context for any of this yeah like they don't and then and then it triggers that 30 minute cut scene of them just talking it's awesome it's very very cool uh the last game that i've just been playing lightly in between stuff for maybe i don't know like 20 or 30 minutes at a time is mario galaxy in this collection that they just put out for nintendo switch on a switch to and a switch to update that plays the game at 4k it looks absolutely excellent playing this game on switch 2 i haven't fully replayed this game since it came out in what 2007 seven yeah 2007 uh i'm having a great time yeah i'm i'm mainly just mainlining mario galaxy because i really want to get to mario galaxy 2 which i have only played a tiny bit of and a lot of people think it's a superior gameplay experience to mario galaxy this game is great it's one of the best 3d mario games it is confirming to me that it is not my favorite just in that i kind of don't like the structure of the fact that you literally just need to get to the end of the level there's no collectibles or i like the odyssey or more open not even necessarily just odyssey but odyssey sunshine and even 64 to some degree you like blue coins the blue coins other things like that there are points where i'm i was like searching around certain parts of levels in galaxy i'm like i don't actually need to do this like i'll do something and then it'll give me a one up like a like i'll go down a ton or a warp pipe and then there's like a puzzle room or not like a big puzzle but it's like collect all the notes and then i get a one up i'm like oh cool i didn't need that but thanks so it's a little limited but i mean it's just an awesome awesome everyone at this point knows mario galaxy it's so good so i don't know how i feel about the cursor stuff honestly like it's really not that bad yeah in my opinion i tried it a little bit when it when the first collection came out that they arbitrarily had like a limit on uh where you could only buy it for like a handful of months uh and i tried it and i played like the first little bit of it and i was like it's good but like this this cursor is weird and then i just kind of fell off of it and played played other things i'm sure it's great though once you once you get over it yeah yeah so the cursor i mean it uses like the motion sensing in your controller in it yeah it's not as intuitive as the wii remote of course um thankfully they mapped the mario spin move so you don't have to jerk off your controller constantly or anything like that like on the original wii version but oh yeah uh it's very good and if you haven't played this game and you have a switch i mean what's wrong with you?

3:26:02As Reggie would say, what's wrong with you? So check it out. I forgot about that. What's wrong with you? What is that from? It's from like a, it's like a, one of their directs, right? I said, it's something like, it was like in playing, it's something about like, I really have an animal crossing. What's wrong with you? What's wrong? I totally forgot about that. That's like a, it's like an old nugget. Yeah. I was actually thinking about the, there was a circular going around from the fall of 2007 I guess it was or maybe the fall of 2008 from Target and Wii Music had like a prominent place in it and I was just thinking about the guy playing Wii Music at E3.

3:26:44The drum guy. Yeah. And I love the one meme they have of him playing and then it like lights up and then it turns into like a nuclear explosion. Oh yeah. Which is so funny. You think it was fun. Dude Nintendo had some I mean some unfortunate E3 moments like when they were demoing skyward sword oh yeah and it died oh yeah it was like i think it was probably just too many signals in the room yeah just didn't work poor miyemoto up there just he didn't deserve that my favorite one is uh what is it we music or whatever yeah that's what we were just saying the drummer yeah dude i i was watching the video of reggie it's really oh yeah what's wrong with you but what's wrong with you if you're an owner but if you're you have a 3ds or if you're considering it what's wrong with you that would be a great version oh man um all right is that all we have for what we played been playing then i think so you wrote down puzzle quest immortal edition and never talked about it but i i assume you just kind of well i i said at the very beginning it's like it's more of the same it's like it's nothing oh yeah okay yeah it's i just like to be be accurate about what i'm playing but i really have nothing to say about it other than what I've already said about it's the same thing over and over and over again yeah um all right six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas from the audience over on patreon patreon.com slash last day media you've heard your inquiries throughout the show you of course submit your inquiries into the thread on the news feed on patreon for all the various shows they're available uh for secret symbols ours goes live on wednesdays at 3 p.m eastern time and I'm deleting them around noon on thursday so you have a little less than 24 hours to get your inquiries in.

3:28:20So here's six more that I thought would be interesting as we wrap up our show. James Dutton wrote in and said, greeting sacred crew. I read that a trademark was filed in Europe for sort of the sea where the owners of the trademark were both SIE and giant squid. As the game was self-published by giant squid. Why do you think SIE have co-ownership? So I actually, I'll put this in the here. I'll put it in the chat. So you can have a story. This has been making the rounds, but I didn't think it was big enough to put in the news because I feel like people are misinterpreting it. So or at least what it means.

3:28:57So people feel like giants. So giant squid is the studio that made Abzu back in 2016. And then they made the launch PS5 game, the Pathless. And then they made Sword of the Sea. People love all these games. I've not played Sword of the Sea yet, but I played the other two. and as people might recall this was in ps plus extra and premium this game and the developers of the game had noted that sony helped them get the game out the door and in fact i believe sony is actually credited like there are sony employees and workers credited in in sword of the sea so the way i look at this is people are have been circulating this so i should back up and give credit where credit is due, by the way.

3:29:41Gamatsu, which we cite all the time, found this trademark filing on the European Union Intellectual Property Office website that was filed in just a couple of days ago, actually, because it says 710, but it would actually be 107. And it does have Sword of the Sea trademarked by Sony Interactive Entertainment and Giant Squid. However, while people are interpreting this as saying like, oh, is Giant Squid going to become a first party or is that like what's happening? It's like, no, I don't think that's what's happening at all. Mostly because I mean, anything's possible, but I don't know why Sony would be interested in buying that studio.

3:30:17Not that they're not great. It's just like, I don't know how that advances the ball for them at all. Rather, what I think probably happened, at least my interpretation, we'll see, is that as part of Sony helping them out, they're like, we're going to take a piece of this game. And there might be some IP potential for cross media play or maybe a cartoon or some sort of animated feature or I don't know. So that's the way I interpret it. But we'll see what happens. Did you guys see this news? Making the rounds, people were really anticipating that Sony was making a new first party acquisition, which could be.

3:30:46But I just don't think that that's kind of the acquisition they would need to make at this point, especially a studio that needed help from them to get their game out to begin with. But they could be a good replacement for Pixel Opus. Chris, you said no. Dustin, you did see it circulating. I saw it circulating, but I didn't sound quite right. Just because this isn't the type of team that I think wants to make giant AAA games that sell millions and millions of copies. I'm sure they would love to sell millions of copies, but they're not really interested in making that kind of game. Sony isn't really interested in having that in their first party, but certainly it sounds like they were willing to help out, which is cool and get the game across the finish line.

3:31:26And people really enjoyed it. I played some of it. I thought it was cool for such a short game. I didn't finish it, but maybe at some point I'll go back. Yeah, I'd like to get to it. It's on my list. Mentalist anyway. Moving on feet wrote in and said, do you actually believe that the studio that has given you effectively the exact same gameplay since 2008 across GTA 4, Red Dead, GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 is going to make running around and shooting enjoyable in GTA 6? Chris? Yes.

3:31:58What do you mean? it's like first of all i've enjoyed it in all of these games so like why would it suddenly not like i understand what people are saying when they talk about like uh rockstar's gameplay being like like dated or kind of weird i understand that but i to me i don't know especially in modern in in the modern landscape i feel like a lot of games feel kind of similar to one another not necessarily in the sense that they're designed in the same way but i've brought it up with a lot of like particularly a lot of action rpgs where a lot of games are trying to kind of model themselves after the the movement style and like the combat style of a lot of souls likes and again it's not to say that a lot of these games are souls like it's just like the presentation you play hell is us right and you can feel immediately like oh this feels like a 360 era kind of 3d third person game like this doesn't you don't move like you do in like a souls game or or something like that and so like i appreciate it something like a game like rock or a studio like rockstar that feels distinct you know like nobody's making games that feel like rockstar games and that might be for the better because really rockstar is the only studio that i've seen make those games feel good or justify why those games kind of feel a little bit off like red dead 2 i would argue genuinely is one of the clunkiest gameplay experiences that you could probably have like i think it it you feel heavy there's a lot of weight behind you it doesn't feel quick it doesn't feel fluid but it feels weighty and real and it works for the kinds of games that they make like red dead 2 with a with a cartoony movement style would feel wrong like it would just there would be something really off about it um and so do i expect grand theft auto 6 is going to feel enjoyable yeah i think it's going to i i think however gta 6 is going to feel it's going to feel just right for whatever it is that they're trying to do with the game i'm not that's not to say that gta 6 however it feels i would imagine it's going to feel weighty like red dead 2 that i would want that in like spider-man you know or like an action rpg of of some kind like no these are for different purposes and yeah i don't know i just feel like rockstar games are fucking cool like i beat gta 4 i think two i think maybe two christmases ago and i i loved it the entire time yes it was weird yes it was heavy yes mashing x over and over again or mashing a over over again to run was was tedious but uh i don't know it works it works for them in my opinion what do you think doesn't yeah i think i agree with chris rockstar is so dedicated especially at this point with like gta5 and then especially in red dead redemption 2 to a realism in their games and i think it's totally fair to argue that they sacrifice game feel for realism at certain points and not everyone's going to be into that and i wouldn't want that for every game but they're able to do it in a way that is so compelling and interesting and still fun like i think red dead 2 despite maybe it's like oh it's a little annoying how i hop on and off my horse realistically every time um but i am playing those games I mean yeah and particularly Red Dead 2 is immersion is such a huge factor in those games so as Chris was saying you expect different things from different titles and what you're looking for out of them and so GTA 6 and dude if the gameplay was not good in any of these games like do you think that GTA 5 Online wouldn't be the most successful online game maybe ever yeah um so no offense to moving on feet but i think this is a very it's it's not i'm not saying it's not a valid opinion but it's extreme minority opinion yeah i mean i think that outside of a car in gta 4 and 5 playing the game is not up to the most arcadey level of feel of great third-person shooters and action games but i think those games are older and um red dead 2 yeah i mean people have been very critical about the actual gameplay in red dead 2 which might really be the worst part of the game i mean it's just more of an experiential thing but i won't belabor the point other than to say that my expectations for gta 6 are through the roof and they should be through the roof for anyone if you're if you don't have expectations for it like what'd you spend all this money and spend all this time on if not something truly revolutionary That's the that's the position they put themselves in.

3:36:52And so I expect big things. 100 % across the board, everything about it better be big, better be awesome. And if I don't want to say better, like it's some sort of threat. It's just like it's going to hit you hard if you spend all this time and money. And it didn't it's not like how is it not a 10? It kind of stresses the point of like, if given enough time and enough money and enough staffing, can you make like not the perfect game, but the greatest thing that people have ever done? played and it's like well you should have an expectation that it's one of those kinds of games because most games are not made under those circumstances whatsoever so that it's just like yeah take time time time time money money money just over years thousands of people it better be good yeah jamby wrote in and said hello sacred gents i hope you are doing well i'm here to ask a more thoughtful question about the future of the industry as it currently stands many publishers are chasing the live service bag to chase massive profits and growth for fat checks and appeasing the almighty shareholders.

3:37:52However, what is the natural endpoint? In the event the live service bubble bursts, which I bet it will eventually, oversaturation, too much time commitment is players age. Where does the industry go? This exponential growth will eventually reach a point of being unreachable. Will the industry shrink? Maybe not in revenue, but a number of people involved will become a mature industry akin to film or books with a smaller, steady, but slow growth year over year. What say you? Everyone has been hanging themselves and forgot about the chicken. Please go fuck it. Thank you. I haven't forgotten. I want to check, Jamie, it's a good question and I appreciate it, but I think there are a couple of things that you say that I don't think are totally accurate or at least not positioned the way I would position it.

3:38:30The first thing you say here that I think is interesting is as it currently stands, many publishers are chasing the live service bag to chase massive profits and growth for fat checks and appeasing the almighty shareholders. Yes, but that's where the players are. they're not just trying to make something it isn't that isn't there. The evidence is clear. That's where everyone is. That's where the growth is. That's where the money is. That's where you can really squeeze incredible amounts of profit. And so I think it's kind of reductive and unfair to say it's just a squeeze profit. And of course, it's not altruistic.

3:39:09Everyone's here to make money. So they're going to go where the money is. They don't want to go where the money isn't. And it might blow up and probably will blow up in some of their faces. But to act like it's just chasing that without the money comes from the players. So we have to keep that in mind. And the other thing you say that I disagree with is in the you say in the event, the live service bubble burst, which I bet it will eventually, it's not going to burst that that there is never there is never going to be a massive volume of concurrent live service games that are all killing. It's about sucking up as much volume as you can in the pie chart as it exists.

3:39:48And so that pie is only going to get bigger and it might get bigger while getting eaten up by Fortnite and Roblox. And shit, I have no idea. But this style, in other words, this style of game is not going anywhere. The style of game is the standard now for a lot of people. And there's going to be winners or losers. and what we can only hope is that there's going to be an X amount of money to be made and whatever and all we can hope is that it's spread around enough to cover as many companies as possible and as many workers as possible but I think tech is getting ever more sophisticated AI is being implemented across the board like will there be fewer people working in games than there are now in 10 years?

3:40:32Probably. Yeah, unfortunately. But there will be more people playing games in 10 years. than there are now. So I don't know if you guys have anything you wanted to add, but I liked that question. I didn't mean to pierce it too much, but I wanted to throw those things out there nonetheless. I think the only thing I'll add in agreement is that he just puts too much time commitment as players age. I think that that's, it depends on the live service game, because obviously there's a game like destiny, which requires insane levels of commitment to get everything out of it but i think as players age and they're looking at their options like well i could buy ghost of yote and i have no way that i can beat that game or complete it it'll take me months or i can hop into fortnite that's free and my friends play that and i can just play jump in and jump out and i'm out no money potentially i mean maybe you get a battle pass or a skin or whatever but I think a lot of live service games they can be as heavy as a commitment as you want them to be and so I think that that's not necessarily an element of them eventually going down I think it's a huge strength actually yeah I think you're right and I think because there's no sunk cost like people are free to move on but it's it proves the stickiness of these games that they don't I mean that's we keep saying this about Fortnite.

3:42:06It's like Fortnite is extremely high quality. You know, Genshin Impact is extremely high quality. I keep saying Roblox is the outlier for me where I'm like, this shit sucks. But a lot of this stuff, when I look at it, I'm like, I can see why people play this. If I was 10 years old or 15 years old or even 30 years old, if I had no money or little time or my friends were there, I would be up Genshin Impact's ass if I was 15 years old. Are you kidding?

3:42:35So I get it. Chris, do you have anything you want to add before we move on? Um, not really. I think you guys pretty much said everything that I would have picked on. Now, let's go to Big Devin Energy, who wrote in and said, say, sup, sacred slitties. I've got a warm up question for you all to stretch your cheeks to. Too bad. I put it here at the end of the show. I thought I felt better here. Too bad. My cheeks are already stretched. Yeah, my cheeks are feeling stretched out. Loose. We need to. Jesus. We need to have a serious conversation about fandom these days. If you ask me when I say I'm a fan of something or what it means to be a fan, it means to enjoy and support a product, IP, team, etc.

3:43:14on the work they do and production value they bring. Nowadays, fandom means to tear everything apart and shit on everything. Like if a sequel comes out and it's the exact same as Hades 2, it's garbage because it's the same. Or if a sequel comes out and it's far too different than it's trash, what do fans think they want? This really stemmed from the Linkin Park conversation and yesterday and someone signed complaining that it's just more Hades. What do fans want? He says in all caps. I don't get it. I'll go hang my cat by the tail and listen to the meows. Meow, meows. Love you, gents. Please don't hurt your cat.

3:43:45Big Devon energy. Let's tone down the big Devon energy to a medium Devon energy. Yeah. I think there's something really interesting here because I actually don't know the answer to this question myself about myself. Yeah. ghost of yotei is again a great example as we brought up of people saying it's just more of the same and it's been kind of clarifying that maybe a lot of this is just more of the same and yet i'm playing ghost of tsushima which i've played and platinum before and i know what i'm getting into with ghost of yotei next and i know it's just the same thing over and over again it's the far cry ubisoft check mark and then i but i love it like i just get lost in it i just enjoy it.

3:44:28I just enjoy clearing a map, taking over forts, and I don't know. I don't know. I think it's cool and it's stylish, honestly, for people to pretend, for some people to pretend that they always want something new because they don't want to play the same old repetitive thing over and over again. I feel that to a degree, but there are also series I love where it literally is the same thing over and over again. That's what I love about Mega Man. it's a formula. And then you just do it again. And you could do it every year like a sports game. And I would eat that shit up. Mega Man 2026. So who the fuck am I to really cast aspersions and judge myself?

3:45:15I really have no opinion on this. Chris, what do you think? What do fans actually want? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think there's a couple of different threads on this question. i i've i've been talking about this with some friends of mine about like just the the prospect of like were games always as similar as they are now from one game to the next and i remember like i was talking to a friend about specifically about ghost of yote and tsushima like i was talking while i was playing i was like yeah you know it's it's better it is better than ghost of tsushima it's like like five to ten percent better in every like small category but it still kind of feels like like the change between this this this game and the previous one feels like significantly less in the games that i remember growing up with which were made on like a way smaller timetable and and turnaround like i think about i think about the games that i used to play like in the early 2000s that would feel like pretty fundamentally different from each other like even just i think about like spider-man and spider-man 2 like spider-man 1 for the ps2 and spider-man 2 for the ps2 are like monumentally different video games you know like like they're not even remotely similar and that's a three-year difference and i understand that you know there's obvious realities that play into why it's different there's higher fidelity like there's bigger teams there's a lot more bloat like i get it but the feeling is still there like and and it's because I grew up in that time where like a sequel meant like a pretty if not a substantial change a change that would that would go on to define that game that would that would be almost alien to the even just the original halo trilogy with like you know dual wielding vehicle hijacking uh you know theater mode and and you know map making and shit like there was a pretty fundamental there are fundamental aspects added to these games in like a shorter period of time than what it feels like we're getting now and i think that's really kind of the the core complaint from a lot of people who are like maybe our age who maybe grew up with like more substantial shifts in a time where technology was advancing a little bit a little bit quicker or a little bit more substantially let's say not quicker but like more advances over a shorter period of time ps1 to ps2 or even you know n64 to snes like massive changes and it can feel somewhat disappointment or it can feel somewhat disappointing to experience something like even something like Hades 2 which for me like the thing that drew me to Supergiant particularly was the fact that they had never they don't make sequels I loved that they made Bastion and then they made uh Transistor and Pyre and and you know and then Hades and then and now we get Hades 2 and it's like oh well I'm I'm I loved Hades but I'm actually authentically like not super excited about Hades 2 like i'll definitely play it at some point i hear it's very great there's so much to play right now i can't even i can't even imagine playing that that game at the moment but i'll play it and i'll like it but i imagine i'll feel the same way that i do about ghost of yote where it's like yeah okay this is good but like it's i don't know i think fans want the core fundamentals of what they love about a particular IP or a particular game to also move forward in directions that they themselves didn't know they wanted it to move you know I think they they want that familiarity but they also want something to latch on to that that differentiates it from the thing they played before because otherwise it's just more of what they played before and I think there's value in just kind of understanding even just through a studio's legacy like you think about um what judas is going to be in comparison to bioshock infinite no doubt there's going to be no fucking doubt there's going to be a fundamental similarity a fundamental feel that is consistent you play you're going to play judas and you're going to be like oh this part feels like bioshock infinite but i assure you there's like a huge swath of that game that's going to feel nothing fucking like it i think that's what people want they want a a foundation that they know they're going to love with new shit to excite them because otherwise it's not exciting it's just good it's kind of like uh it's kind of like going to your favorite restaurant you know where it's like okay i'm getting this again and it's reliable and it's cool and i like it but it's not like it's not exciting i think people want to be excited what do you think awesome i wanted to kind of take this from a different aspect of the question where he says like what it means to be a fan and nowadays fandom is totally different it's funny because the internet is like was kind of the ultimate awesome thing where it's like you can connect with people that are interested in the same things of you uh things as you like um we were talking about on our silent hill have spoiler cast like the the silent hill community or fans whatever and how i don't know back in silent hill 2 you'd probably need to search out a silent hill fan site in order to interact with these other people it was much more niche but now literally every fandom including the aim community or the the shape community has their own subreddit and so the internet's greatest one of the best things about it um has also now become one of its most annoying aspects in that fandom has become this thing that is like all consuming of people's identities and i know on the surface it's like the three of us here we are doing a playstation podcast but uh obviously playstation is a core part of what our identity is professionally but like if playstation does something bad or you can kind of see this right now with the xbox community how certain people are melting down and reacting because it's like this is how what they've built their entire online identity around so it's like what are they gonna do now um so it sucks uh making anything that any like brand ip as much as you love it you know i'm i'm wearing an evangelion hoodie i wear a bunch of evangelion stuff so maybe i've made that part of my identity but it gets weird when you get into these community the fandom communities where suddenly there's like a dick measuring contest who's the biggest dave angelion fan oh you didn't you didn't watch this or you didn't like this name all of this yeah yeah and there's a whole thing right now in silent hill where it's like is silent hill f really a silent hill game doesn't take place in silent hill which i mean dude saying the saying it doesn't take place in silent hill and that's why it's not a silent hill game that's that's the uh the indicator fake fan you know i mean so so yeah i mean i'm joking about it right now obviously but there is some truth to that too where it's just like i don't know i guess i'm just kind of openly complaining about the state of fandoms online and how they often can ruin fucking everything i mean just look at the dude the undertale community dude i think that also toby fox i think is maybe not openly said but i've heard that he like openly dislikes his american audience from the game because they are just fucking cracked about undertale and make it literally everything about themselves just not healthy so yeah the internet it's done some great things it's done some horrible things just enjoy what you like to whatever degree you like you know I think of like when I was in high school And this one guy I knew He's like you see that girl she's wearing a She's wearing a Def Leppard shirt I bet she Doesn't know any Def Leppard songs You know and I was kind of at the time like Yeah you know what you're right Fuck that girl for wearing for copping A style that she doesn't belong to And now I think about I'm like I don't care Like if someone wears an Iron Maiden shirt because they thought The shirt was cool Great There's no reason to take it that seriously Yeah I don't take very many things that seriously, to be honest.

3:53:31And I would say that PlayStation, yeah, video games generally have been a huge part of my personality my entire life, but they don't dominate or dictate my personality. And I've just, I think I've said this before because I think I'm just so used to being criticized in so many ways, going back to being the youngest of four and all the things I like suck and the bands I like suck. And, you know, like I'm just so used to being, that I just, I don't care what other people, like I don't care if other people like the things I like. Like it's not important to me. I know that that's weird to a lot of people, but it's not it's not important to me that you like castlevania it's like whatever i like it it could literally exist just for me i think it's awesome if other people like it but it's i have no interest in being part of a community of people that like hype it up and talk about it and gatekeep and do it's like i'm good i like things for myself gi joe is very i mean it comes up all the time gi joe but it's like that's very much like a gate kept like very serious collector space with like a lot of stratas and a lot of clicks and about age and like what era you were watching and collecting it and stuff and it's like i don't know man who cares you know i think i think to some degree there it's not always wrong to gatekeep a community like i would imagine just a random example i see what like pokemon card collecting is now and if i was the same type of fan that I was in 2001 I would be really pissed about how the vultures have come in and taken what I loved and made it purely about money and having your slabs and all this bullshit I'd be like dude this this yeah scalpers stuff like that it's like this sucks we don't want you here you know so I think there's some degree of the gatekeeping bad actors in your community is absolutely important but the dick measuring stuff is like uh you can leave that yeah it's just weird like who cares who's the biggest fan of things um or who understands what real silent hill is you don't understand what a real what it really is yeah um all right two more trevor cannon wrote in and said hey fellas i check the playstation app almost daily and every time i notice that sad ass little playstation stars icon sitting next to my profile first off why is it still even there And second, when the program ended, I was only about 100 points away from earning a gift card, which just adds insult to injury.

3:55:55Looking ahead, I'm really curious about what's next for PlayStation's loyalty program. In my opinion, this topic deserves more attention than it's getting, especially considering what Xbox is doing right now to kill their fan base. A revamped loyalty system could be a major advantage for PlayStation further strengthening user engagement and loyalty heading into the PS5 and PS6. What do you guys think? What I think is that there's an Achilles heel to the entire idea of a loyalty program in the video game space. and I think it can work. But the reality is, is that the people, and I was trying to kind of figure this out with PlayStation stars, like, why didn't this work better?

3:56:28And I think a major reason for it, let me give you an example. I order dominoes once in a while and you order points, right? Towards like a, you know, an item and you get emails every so often, or I do saying like, you have two weeks left to use your to use your points or they go away and you eat pizza pretty often and maybe you know you order one once a month or whatever and so you're cool it's like all right yeah it's time to spend and i'll get this free coke or i'll get this free this free bread or whatever it bet in other words it benefits everyone and the heavy users are going to use it but it kind of encourages naturally because you have to eat and all that kind of shit to like use the points i feel like what they probably realize with playstation stars and what I think Microsoft probably realized over time with their loyalty system and how people were gaming it to get Game Pass for free and everything was the people that are utilizing and leveraging your loyalty program are your most loyal users but you don't need to do anything for them because they're going to buy your shit anyway and since it would be unreasonable for you to take away their points for not using them because unlike food, it's like, well, the games I don't need a game for six months or I'm on PS Plus or I just don't want to spend any money It's like this shit starts to stack up.

3:57:41Like I had a lot of PlayStation. I probably earned several hundred dollars on PlayStation stars just from buying shit. And you look at that and you're like, part of it's like, yeah, reward your heavy users. And part of it's like, you don't really need to do this. And so I think that that's kind of where they're at, where they have to calibrate what would be rewarding in a more permanent way for their player base while understanding that loyalty loyalty programs are really only leveraged by the most loyal users unless you force them to spend quickly a la dominoes so that's where my head is on this trevor i think that it would be cool to have some sort of loyalty program but i just because people always say like tied into trophies or tight it's like you can't like these systems are broken so you have to figure and i think they're figuring out some other way to reward people like the the physical goods for getting a platinum and ghost of tsushima that you have to kind of still buy i don't but i think what they were probably i i would imagine they didn't make very much i would imagine they probably lost money on playstation stars because when i look at it it's like you're just giving me money and i'm just buying and then i'm getting more money that i'm gonna i i so i don't know a loyalty program would be nice what i'm most interested in with the rumors kind of percolating recently is what nintendo is going to do because it sounds like they're about to activate something on switch two and some people think it's like an achievement system but it seems like it's gonna be more of like a reward system.

3:59:06I don't know. It's just a it's a paradox that your most loyal users don't need loyalty programs. then you don't need to give them free shit um finally i thought i would i was interested in this one with you guys jay wrote in and said hey crew i'm currently in nursing school on our campus we have a lab that's full of medical simulation models and mannequins that do everything from mimic bowel sounds to giving birth a few of my classmates and i have discussed how it can all feel a bit game-like and we are all shocked by how medical focused games there are and none of the high quality we can think of what gives medical dramas are one of the classic television genres why aren't there more any games outside of surgeon simulator putting you in the shoes of a doctor or a nurse or that you have you building and managing hospitals and trying to fix the healthcare system and if you could pitch a medical game what would it look like i look forward to hearing from you dustin something deep within my nintendo fanboy brain activated what was i thinking of trauma center that's right for the ds that's right when i and we that's right when i saw this inquiry that's it like it was like came back into my mind i'm like trauma center atlas of course and i was doing a little research on trauma center i didn't realize there's like quite a bit of crossover between the persona team and the people that made trauma center like the director of persona 3 i think created trauma center which is like was the designer of But Trauma Center was kind of like a visual novel.

4:00:35DS was awesome for this kind of these kinds of games. And it later went to Wii, which is also good with the Wiimote for these kinds of games. Not probably exactly what you're looking for, but there are five. Well, there's four Trauma Center games and then there's Trauma Team, which was the last Trauma Center game. And that was a Wii game. So, Jay, if you're looking for something out there, Trauma Center is kind of the melding very Japanese, of course, but the melding of the drama with some activities that were good with the little stylus on the ds and on the wimote so good it's good that you knew the other game that immediately came to mind because he specifically mentions manage building and managing hospitals as two-point hospital right right and beam hospital back in the day right yeah yeah two-point hospital there you go so that's another great but um we watch football obviously in this household so we see commercials for like all these different sitcoms and these dramas on the networks and have you guys seen the show i think it's on fox called called doc it's about the woman again we only know this because we see we think it's so funny too woman gets into a this is where medical dramas are woman's a doctor gets into a car accident loses eight years of her most recent memories but still knows how to be a doctor so she's like a doctor but she's also trying to find her way in life like her husband divorced her because she like was in a coma or something and so we could get a video game like that but i think that medical medical stuff fits best in the visual novel realm with mini games and stuff like that i guess you could have a very serious game that would be kind of cool i know there's surgeon simulator and then like a lot of the shitty like bootleg spinoffs of that or like you know spoofs on that but you could do something pretty serious i guess i don't know how well that would translate i just can't imagine it i can't imagine it the only when you said nintendo i was like i was thinking oh dr mario is the only thing that i know oh yeah oh yeah that's a good answer that was that's which is which solid answer yeah it's not really a medical game though it's it is tetris but or like some weird version so i i yeah i mean i i think it's um i just don't know how you would make doctor gameplay compelling in a scenario that didn't also kind of undercut the seriousness of it you know i think surgeon simulator works really well because it is that gameplay but it's so unserious and it is so like hyper like it's loony and absurdist yeah it's in the same room as like a Danganronpa almost or like Phoenix Wright yeah like it would have to be something like that you couldn't have like a third you couldn't have like Alan Wake but instead of an author he's a he's a doctor he's a doctor yeah because like what do you what would that gameplay even be they should do like a DS what is a dsv dsm five rather now or is it six they should just have a game where you diagnose people like like they come into your office oh like la like la noir yeah like right right where you're just like you you interview people and you're like you you're autistic right and then you flip through the you've digitally flipped through the manual and you try to find like yeah it's it's like uh it's like a medical it's like a medical fusion of uh la noir and like papers please right right get on it oh man i like the idea though jay good luck in nursing school it's tough went to college with a lot of nurses they were always studying i wasn't all right um that's it that's all we have for this episode of sacred symbols it was a good one a brisk one but for our standards but good nonetheless let's go around the horn and say goodbye to everyone Chris, goodbye to you.

4:04:12Be well. Have a good weekend. Any plans for you? Uh, nothing. I'm going to make some pork chops and then I'm going to just play some more go see. Okay. It's a chill, chill kind of day. I think. Cool. Nice, nice weather out. I might go for a walk. Yeah, I'm going to go for a walk. I think after this as well, um, cause it is nice out. Dustin, goodbye to you. Be well. Any, um, closing comments before we go. Closing comments. I already mentioned my hot date tomorrow, both with Tom and with Holly. Just two different dates. No plans for the weekend. So I think it's going to be in the cuck chair, I guess.

4:04:55Yeah. I'm going to record the podcast from from the date. Actually, I'm thinking, you know, so. So, yeah, this weekend is going to be probably all battlefield after that. So I'm excited to hop in. still not pre-ordering waiting for launch day let me see all those servers run first yeah essential decision yeah yeah i'll be interested to see how it does got good reviews um the campaign's getting panned but oh is it really yeah yeah so i saw it got like a i think igan gave it like a five or something oh wow which feels that's i don't know that's that's suspiciously harsh like i don't i can't imagine it being a five but yeah but the game itself overall is scoring very well.

4:05:41Yeah, like I said, I'll be out to Long Island, but I'll be back later this weekend. And then so just a quick trip in and out. And then my birthday is next week. And that's it. I mean, and then we're just kind of going into the fall season here. We're in the fall now, literally, but the fall season and then kind of wrapping up. I mean, trying to figure out when we can take off and all the rest for the end of the year. we can really get like three whole weeks off I think with maybe just doing one episode of Sacred for that 18th of December and otherwise just being done with everything so I think we're going to be good this year alright my friends I appreciate your time, be well be safe, have a good weekend thank you all out there for your love, kindness and support for all things last day media, sacred symbols etc patreon.com slash last day media for early early ad free access.

4:06:33Pardon me. And last day media store for merch. We'll see you next time for more until then. Goodbye. See ya. Take care guys. Sacred symbols. A PlayStation podcast is a product and trademark of last stand media and Collins last stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show was conceived by is written by and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia.

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