#384 | Everybody's Looking For the Same Thing

45:35Colin Moriarty:You don't want too much attention. Kratos. Absurd. He's like the worst. He's completely malnourished. He's got scoliosis. Scoliosis. Oh, that would be dope. Love that. Kratos, your EpiPen is here. All right. finally it's a correction from little rendler he says hey boys last week when reading off candy names colin said reese's when reading reese's this stopped me dead in my tracks colin is usually so oh i'm sorry good no you can finish it i just i'm gonna defend you after this colin is usually so eloquent in his speech and hearing him say reese apostrophes as reese's was wild please do better in the future they are reese's pieces because it rhymes thanks for all you do regardless you're absolutely right that's all i wanted to say in my opinion when i said it i knew it and i don't know why i said it because i usually don't i know why you said it oh okay because it was written that way i remember this i remember this distinctly whoever wrote in misspelled it and they spelled it in a way that you you would have had to read it reese's i remember it because i was like oh well we all know that that's not what it is but he's that's what that's how he read it and i figured you were just doing like a thing where you're like i do this sometimes too passive aggressively where I'll read things exactly as poorly written as they are right um and so I figure that's that's what you were doing and I think it is honestly I think you just kind of forgot but like I remember this distinctly because I was like hmm that's not how that's spelled at all but um yeah thank you for that because yeah I I knew like it I I knew it the second I said it I'm like why but you're right i probably was just reading it more verbatim and i rewrite i don't rewrite but i correct a lot of people's write-ins so that they read properly some people don't need them but many people do um so i'm i i should just start passively aggressively passive aggressively reading everyone's comments as they're written it'll be a lot of fun everyone got a fucking stroke half this shit all right so thank you for that little renler thank you for checking me i need that every once in a while but not too much not too much yeah now dustin we're gonna cut this back into the beginning of the news because i have a big piece of news for you guys oh so cut here grand theft auto 6 has been delayed oh geez it will now release on november 19th 2026 oh 11 minutes ago i just see that so i'm seeing it now rock star i'm hearing this for the first time i'm hearing for this yeah um rockstar says on twitter hi everyone grand theft auto 6 will now release on thursday november 19th 2026 we are sorry for adding additional time to what we've realized has been a long wait but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve we want to thank you again for your patience and support while the wait is a little longer we are incredibly excited for players to experience the sprawling state of leonida and return to the modern day by city sincerely rockstar games it's so funny because i just did an appearance on a podcast that we'll publish in a couple weeks um dan allen gaming and uh we were talking about grand theft auto 6 and i was like oh no it's not gonna get delayed i was saying like that is the delay so that's gonna look really great um november 19th 2026 so more than a year from now chris uh preliminary thoughts before i mean there's not much to say i mean i honestly didn't expect this i will say and own straight up i thought they were going to hit the mandate no me too yeah i thought uh i thought for sure yeah i had the same reasoning as you or it's like i thought i thought this was the delay um and i guess technically it was i don't know i think um i don't know we'll we'll see that's a bummer though like i i was kind of i was kind of getting amped that we were getting closer and closer to this thing and for it to be pushed a little bit further on is like ah that's that's a bummer but i'm always going to be pro delay if i don't think a game is ever worse off for having been delayed i'll put it that way dustin thoughts on the delay i mean i guess i feel bad for anyone that was planning on releasing their game now in november um it's gonna go ahead to head with call of duty which is interesting right yeah i mean it's i would if they're gonna delay it i would rather them do it now than do it in like march you know like just a few months out because then it stings more because your anticipation's really high uh yeah it's it's annoying but dude i was looking at releases for the early for early next year i was like we're never gonna stop drowning ever and so it makes a delay like this at least for me a little easier because i know that i'm always i'm always gonna have stuff to play so uh this this has given them time for the 60 fps mode on ps5 pro right oh yeah oh well yeah let's lock it in that's what the delay is for it's gonna come out with the ps5 pro 2 yeah um all right so yeah just wanted to throw that out there as the opening piece of news we have really nothing else to say but we have to acknowledge that that's happening it sucks but more power to you it just ratchets up the expectations in my opinion for me like okay yeah i mean you guys are really taking a lot of time spending a lot of money on this thing a delay of a year or i'm sorry six months into late next year is not a trivial amount of money for them so getting it right is important i think that's the strals delnick direction anyway of saying like you know good is the new whatever you know like you got to be you got to be great and i think it's going to be great it also gives me more time to catch up on grand theft auto since i want to go back and replay all the games again for no reason whatsoever it also gives more time for that gta 4 port that sometimes percolates to be released which would be sick that would be if we get that in the spring a pre-order bonus perhaps would be kind of neat all right all right let's get into the news only a few big things this week but worth talking about nonetheless and the big thing is um as rumored cloud streaming has officially arrived on playstation portal with new support for digital ps5 games in your library to coro fashimi over at the playstation blog the senior manager of product management that's an awesome fucking title by the way you're the senior manager of product management okay gotta do something about these names he writes at playstation we're always working to push the boundaries on how players experience games since the playstation portal remote player first launched back in november 2023 we've continued to evolve the device with updates like enhanced public wi-fi support and UX improvements.

52:25Last year, we also introduced the cloud streaming beta, which allowed PlayStation Plus premium members to access select PS5 games from the PlayStation Plus game catalog and classics catalog via cloud streaming without needing to connect to a PS5 console through remote play. Today, we're excited to share that PS Portal is receiving one of its biggest updates yet starting on November 5th. So already happening because we're recording this on November 6th. Cloud streaming for PS5 games officially launches on PS Portal for PlayStation Plus premium members, along with a variety of new features that enhance how you can play.

52:54PlayStation Plus premium members can now select a stream, select digital PS5 games from their own library. At launch, thousands of PS5 games support cloud streaming, including blockbusters such as Astro Bot, Borderlands 4, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Fortnite, Ghost of Yotei, Grand Theft Auto 5 and Resident Evil 4. And Habroxia, surprisingly, is in there. No idea how that got sucked in. In addition, it's the only one of our games that's in there. In addition, hundreds of compatible games from the PlayStation Plus game catalog and classics catalog, including Cyberpunk 2077, God of War Ragnarok, Hogwarts Legacy, Sword of the Sea and The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered are also streamable directly from the cloud.

53:30And there's a full list of games. I think it's 2 ,800 games. So this is apparently three times more than Xbox has in their cloud streaming, which is interesting. I didn't know that Sony was going to go this hard. Cloud streaming unlocks new ways to play. they write enjoy a game side by side with a friend who's using your ps5 under a separate account or stream your favorite game while someone else watches a movie on the console cloud streaming also makes it easier to enjoy ps5 games on the go at a hotel cafe friends place or anywhere else with a high speed internet wi-fi connection since you can keep playing even when your ps5 console back home is powered off or in use by another account as such they have redesigned the ui i so i went to play plants versus zombies in bed last night my portals at like 40 power so it got me stuck in this permanent loop where it's like download the update and then i download and they're like must have 50 power it's and then i hit the download later button and then it just freezes and then it goes back into the download so it just would not let me use it last night so i need to download this but when you do there'll be a new ui thing in the upper left corner and it'll show the console like a console icon the cloud icon and then a search icon the search icon is where you go to look for games and this will connect you either to the game if you're if it's on your library or into the cloud version of the game.

54:38And then you can obviously use your console or whatever else. They're also allowing you to lock your portal similar to a PS5, which is cool. And the ability to kind of interact with PSN stuff over the cloud streaming interface. So like if you're in a game, you don't, there's no obviously cloud version of the PlayStation store per se, but it'll allow you to buy if you're playing Monster Hunter or something like you can go buy shit in the game. So a lot, they did a lot of work here. And as we said, when Portal came out, it was obvious that they were starting slow and going to start to ramp this thing up.

55:10The portal has suddenly become ... It's the most value heavy, value rich, interesting device in the PlayStation lineup and is a sign of things to come, I think. But I also wonder how many people actually use this. It is locked behind premium. We can talk about that. Well, let's get everyone on the record first. So let's go to you first. 2 ,800 plus games streamable to your portal directly from Sony without having a PlayStation five. So technically speaking, you can play most of the important games on PS5 without even a PS5 or a PC. Right.

55:47Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Right on your portal. As long as you have the premium tier, you technically do not need a PS5 anymore. And that's pretty interesting. I would love to try this out. I tried the beta and I thought it was pretty good, but there was still like, you don't want to play Doom on that with that kind of latency. There's still certain games, at least for me, maybe it's my location from a data center. Like I have great, you know, two gig fiber internet. Actually, I have eight gig now, so I'm like really over here. But maybe it's just the data center. data center isn't close enough for me but certain other games absolutely you could play and like you know either a slower game like an rpg or something that doesn't require super fast latency but um yeah when i tried doom on the beta it was mixed i'd like to try it again usually my playstation plus just renewed recently and so i'm on the standard tier usually towards the end they give you the option to update it for the rest of the year at a reduced price like a prorated price and so maybe i'll do that at some point eight months from now or something but uh it's pretty interesting i wonder because right now this feature i mean of course if i'm understanding this blog post correctly is exclusive to the portal but i would imagine that they want to expand this to the phone app as well you can stream from where if you have a backbone and your phone or there's also the streaming app on pc that works right now exactly like the portal used to where it is purely uh streaming your home ps5 to that app or pc application whatever i would assume at some point they're going to want to expand that and then they would have to drop the ps plus stuff right if they did that for everybody not necessarily because to use those apps you still need to log in so it would still it would still presumably be for a PlayStation consumer then.

57:56Colin Moriarty:Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But then, I mean, you wouldn't even, that would be the craziest thing to me. As long as you had a phone in a controller or a PC or a laptop, that you could get access to this without ever needing a PlayStation or even a PlayStation physical product of the portal. I would imagine that's the direction it's going. We'll see. yeah i'll get i i think that that's a nice idea i think well we'll talk about my idea after we let's get chris on the record here chris where are you on this a 2800 plus games streamable directly to ps portal from the psn are you interested i mean it's cool i like that it has um i like that they're adding more functionality to these devices i think um i think it's just making it a lot more of a a worthwhile proposition for your average person but um because because i I think initially, like, because it was so limited to like, okay, this is something that you need in addition to a PS5.

58:56Colin Moriarty:It becomes a little bit less appealing. But now that theoretically you could just kind of bypass the console altogether, that is kind of cool. But it doesn't, again, for all the reasons that I think Dustin brought up, it's just like it's not really going to appeal to me. Because most of the games that I would choose to play in general are games that would probably require such low latency that I would just notice. We're not really there yet. I'm not sure that we will be anytime soon either, but adding value to the machine like that is cool. And it's interesting. It's different. It's weird. The flexibility of this being so that you don't need a console is interesting too.

59:39Colin Moriarty:I don't know what. It seems like a, it seems like kind of an un-Sony move in a lot of ways. So I don't know how to interpret it really, but it seems like a win. overall you know i suddenly am a lot more interested in this yeah for me i mean there's a few things to say well let's get some some listener inquiries here well one of them is specifically from pace says hey cdc does the ps portal have access does the ps portal having access to the 2800 plus cloud streamable ps5 games finally give ps plus premium validity i've been using the cloud streaming beta on my portal for months now and i found it more stable than the remote play cloud streaming only needs a five mega megabits connection versus remote play 25 playing on the go is a much more viable option now and to me that's much more worth the premium subscription thanks i'll sit back and listen as i stroll into oncoming traffic playing astrobot astrobot on that thing seems like it would be unthinkable um again because of the latency issues although like you're saying it works it works great and i'm sure it does work as well as it's going to work for now um the so a lot of people are upset about this being locked behind premium PlayStation plus premium, the highest PlayStation plus tier.

1:00:53I don't know that this will always be the case. My assumption is that it will always be behind PlayStation plus, but I don't think it will necessarily be behind the premium tier. I think, again, as I said last week, they probably are trying to throttle things a little bit and see how things work and also extract some value and see if people are interested. I think what people forget, and it's something that I really never considered too deeply until more recently and started reading about it and understanding it better, is that there is a cogent argument to be made that these companies don't want you to really cloud stream like that it's really expensive for them and the price of admission that's why the phone thing is interesting to me dustin because it's like do they really want to like disassociate from playstation plus like they don't want you to buy games and then they have to serve them to you they want you to buy the game and then you download it on your console or to like whatever home environment you have you use your electricity your internet connection they don't they want to like detach from you and i i didn't until i started reading about it i was like wow this is actually very intensive it's like the worst possible way for them to sell you a game and so i think there is a little bit like so in other words but they and they've known this when they bought guy kai back in the day and launched playstation now um they they've known that this was an eventuality for a long time and it's going to play some role in the future ecosystem.

1:02:11But I don't think it's the be all end all of the way people are going to access games. And I think there's a feeling of needing to be there, needing to have that option, needing to be able to flip that switch reliably. But at the same time, it doesn't really behoove them to push you in that direction. So they make it somewhat onerous to access it. You have to have the portal. You have to have PlayStation Plus Premium. To me, that says something about them trying to subsidize their own losses because somewhere in some server farm they own is a ps5 environment being run on a pc or something and they're just they're playing the game there and it's being sent to you and that sucks for them like it i don't think people consider that about the economics of it i also question the use case kind of for most people it'll make me want to bring my portal to the test and now in a hotel or something or like somewhere else where i know there's a reliable internet i can use it it'll be cool and it'll probably work pretty well especially for games like you said are turn-based or like less intensive i think that'd be awesome but i'll just continue to play locally and even and i love the portal i play it almost every day but it's running off of my local ps5 which is connected to an ethernet cable five seconds away from the fucking you know or five inches rather away from where i'm sitting so of course of course it works so those are the two things i wanted throughout there the first is like the economic reality of cloud streaming for the company and the second thing is the use case which i think is limited and i think somewhere in there they want to make it a little bit they don't want it to be frictionless because a future where everyone is using cloud streaming is a future where they're in big trouble yeah yeah and all of us are because like we don't make enough electricity to fucking serve all this shit that people want to stream from clouds and all this i don't know does that doesn't you're much more

1:03:57Colin Moriarty:technological than me does that make sense to you yeah i i guess i wonder if playstation plus premium is profitable enough that the cost of running the stream is not really that bad in comparison like they're they're totally fine with it if you're if you're on that premium tier they're making so much extra cash off you per month or per year that it's like yeah whatever you know And I think, too, I was thinking like with a server. In some ways, I mean, they make money off consoles now because if this was a few generations ago, they could cut out the loss of a console. But that's not the case anymore.

1:04:43Colin Moriarty:So it's certainly I wonder what the environmental aspect of it is, because instead of every in a in a cloud streaming world, let's say a post console world. where you have all of these servers instead of a ps5 being in every home it's like everyone's sharing a large portion of ps5s and i wonder if that's desirable from an environmental level of course servers are uh sucking up power at an alarming rate it's it's bad so but i mean this is i don't know i i guess i'm starting to speak about things i have no idea about like what is what's the power draw of a playstation 5 server versus an ai server that's running crazy shit it's probably a huge difference yeah definitely yeah yeah i just yeah there's got to be so it's probably environmentally devastating the cloud cloud streaming i mean we're going to talk later about just even physical games versus digital games because you're turning like a 50 gigabyte package that would be delivered once into something that can potentially be terabytes of stream data over the time you play it, right?

1:05:49I mean, it's... I don't know. It just seems... I agree with you in that they do make... Premium is probably a very profitable endeavor for them, and this probably does... I guess what we're saying is we're illustrating why it would be behind such a tier. Then again, I'm saying if they do a phone thing, it's going to be aimed at people that are already in the PlayStation ecosystem as opposed to truly spreading the field. The portal is as close as they've gotten now to spreading the field where they're like, you could actually just buy the portal now. I wonder if you could. Yeah, I guess you could just make your PSN name on the Internet and then just log in.

1:06:29Colin Moriarty:Dan, you can buy. Can you try to remember what the article said? Can you buy games directly on the portal? Yeah, you can. I saw our friend Sandy Bride tweeted out hours ago from when we're recording like this. like this is how you search for games and find them and then you can buy them like right on the thing so yeah well there you go so that's about as close as they've gotten to doing it to really doing it and it's interesting this is a the portal is actually kind of like i don't know it's it's so interesting how this thing has kind of erupted into and and created a sort of path for the future for not only handheld gaming but cloud gaming and remote gaming and all the rest go ahead doesn't just to clarify because i know i i felt the comment coming so if you're typing it delete it delete it if you search a game it'll give you a qr code that you scan and it'll bring up the playstation app or a web browser and that's where you purchase so you don't purchase it directly on the portal you purchase it it'll give you the directions to purchase oh yeah yeah for the right right right right right okay yeah because that's true right because i did they did make a video like of how it all works it's playstation did and they say that in there i rarely ever use qr codes they should use them more often it just doesn't even you know like you know when you go into stores now and you can just like this has been going on for a while you can like scan your chip now and just like hold it over the thing you used to swipe your card right then you would put your card in now you just hold it over i still like just put it in because i like oh because i uh that's like what i'm used to and i realized that i don't have to do that anymore qr codes are the similar way where it's like you could just use the qr code do you use apple pay uh yeah for a couple of things.

1:08:06Colin Moriarty:Apple Pay is awesome. It's connected to my credit card, though. So it's really just six. Oh, yeah, I have mine on my credit card. So all right. So cloud streaming on portal. I don't have PlayStation Plus Premium. I only have essential. I'm not going to get PlayStation Plus Premium, so I will not be able to do that. But I can I continue to recommend highly recommend the portal. I just think it's fucking exceptional. It really is. It always was a lot of a lot of naysayers when it came out. I don't I haven't forgotten. i'm still a little bit of a naysayer everyone called me a fanboy for loving the portal when it came out but i was like no it really works it really works yeah you are still a bit of a naysayer i think at 200 it's a fucking steal like as a as a uh like a compliment to your ps5 i can't believe it's still 200 feels like i feel like that's not gonna be forever they must have had a lot of these experiences just sitting around these tablets like we got to do something i'm sure they did we gotta do something with these fucking things i'm sure they had a lot of experience

1:09:13i still just love as we brought up a couple weeks ago like that like the early portals like would be connected would sometimes be read by your router as an experience tablet and that just gave the whole game away all right but it's it's comfortable to use i i really do highly recommend it i i uh i really really love it especially if you're if you're like if you're you have a wife or a husband or a girlfriend boyfriend whatever and you're like together but you're doing separate things and someone wants to use the tv it's like the perfect use case it's awesome all right guys i'm curious what you think of this next one um there has been some so there's a there's a twitter user that really is the source of all this named amethyst with an x in there somewhere and they I tweeted out that a series of symbols from the PlayStation store, some of which are familiar, some of them are not.

1:10:08So like a cloud gaming symbol and a touchpad symbol and all the rest. But one of these symbols is cross by. And the other one is PS5 PSPC. Now, the PS5 PC thing has kind of begun to show up with trophies already. So we already kind of know about this, but this could also indicate something from the store. And so people have been really writing about this over at. push square our friends over there wrote a mysterious new cross by icon has been data mined on the ps5 the symbol discovered on the console itself was first shared by amethyst on x who says he believes it has been added since march 2025 well and now that would line up because i think that's when the pc ps5 trophy icon started appearing while other icons discovered by the user are already in use such as for the power saver mode so the power saver mode is like a little leaf icon with an electric bolt over it um let's see where am i oh yeah the cross by and ps5 pc logos have never been seen before they match sony's overall design language and therefore are legit it remains to be seen how sony intends to use these symbols but our best guess is that it's planning to offer cross by between ps5 and pc purchases a little bit like xbox's own play anywhere strategy whether this means that japanese the japanese giant is also plotting its own pc Bay's version of the PlayStation store remains to be seen, although it will be difficult for the company to convince users to move away from Steam.

1:11:30Perhaps it hopes the lore of CrossBuy will achieve that. And this was later confirmed. So they have an update, a small update from Deal Labs. So Deal Labs is the French leaker and data miner that always has reliable stuff about PlayStation Network. Based on additional investigation, it confirms the new CrossBuy icon is indeed real and was added as recently as June 2025. This is important because it proves it's not legacy code attached to say the ps3 and ps vita but a new feature that sony's plotting it also discovered the cross by tag and css files further suggesting something is afoot here dustin what's happening here is sony about to launch a pc store because this is the only way it works and because just to be clear they could offer you they could offer you cross by on this This is an important caveat.

1:12:19They could give you steam and Epic games cross by on their own games. Like that's just up to them to, to, to want to do that. Right. Or would, would, would steam want their, their cut of that? I would assume steam would want to cut. The reason I say this is because like they could manufacture codes that would like give people free access. They just give games away or whatever. I wonder, in other words, if there's some way to circumvent it, because it just seems, I guess why when I'm, when I'm trying to find a, a way this would work is because it seems so improbable that they would want to make a pc storefront right just because it's not going to work it's not that it's that won't be cool or it won't be neat in its own way it's just it's not going to compete so anyway take it away well

1:13:03Colin Moriarty:and i think that the push square article uh i think it was push square that you're reading from makes the compelling point is that many have tried to make a competing storefront on pc Epic Games most notably was giving away video games for literally years. They might still give away games. It wasn't enough to sway people at all. People refused to be able to buy it on Steam two years later. It's so funny. They were locking down huge exclusives on the Epic Games store and it only pissed people off more than anything. so if playstation was to do this in order to do cross by in my mind they would need to have their own launcher but what like what is the compelling thing to get people to do it and it would have to be cross by because i in a hypothetical situation where certain games were crossed by i could see them getting this ready for marathon a live service game where they would prefer to make 100 of the money on it but when they sell it on steam they have to give a cut to gabe and his crew over at valve and so yeah they would much rather have their own storefront where they can sell it to you and then they make 100 of the money but no one wants to do that because they have their library on steam but if they offer the option where it's like hey if you buy it on our store uh you also get the playstation version and maybe that's not compelling i mean it's going to depend on each person whether or not that's something that appeals to you for me in a game like marathon i will play that game 95 of the time on pc because i'm playing multiplayer i like having my discord there i just like playing and i like playing first person shooters on on pc with a mouse keyboard but if they offered me the option that's like hey if you buy it you also get on playstation i would be super into that because there's some times where it's like oh i want to do a solo run i'm already sitting on my couch uh but i'm not i wouldn't buy the playstation version just to do that for the occasional use but if it was available to me it's like well maybe i will purchase it on the playstation store the pc launcher and then just set it up because you can set it to link to your Steam.

1:15:30Colin Moriarty:So you can still have it as an icon in your Steam library. Just when you click it, it's going to bring up the PlayStation launcher. Important to note too, now that we're getting a little bit into the weeds, if they do do a launcher, they're going to add it to all their games. And it doesn't matter whether you buy it on Steam or not. They're going to make it so when you buy a game like Marathon, if it does have a launcher, it's still going to launch the PlayStation launcher even from Steam. that's the way ea does it well maybe ea doesn't do it anymore but there are many companies that do that where uh you still gotta have their shit installed uh pc gamers absolutely love it when there's a secondary launcher that you have to do on top of steam but i would be willing to bet that's what they'll do what do you think chris yeah i mean i i think i i agree with most most of what doesn't start i think ultimately they just want to make 100 of the money you know from whatever it is that they're selling and so their goal doesn't seem as long as their goal isn't to necessarily compete with like you know oh we're going to build this like grand you know this grand steam competitor that's going to like really like go toe-to-toe with steam it's like no this is just an option so players who want to playstation 5 can get more value out of their game but then also we'll get the money for the things we sell as long as they keep the vision kind of focused I think it could potentially work.

1:16:59Colin Moriarty:Launchers like this are finicky. Like I've, I've always hated every single launcher that it, although to be fair, it's not necessarily that other launchers inherently are bad. It just seems to be that for whatever reason, every time you play would launch or what was the origin or all these other things, they would be on PC, but they would look like there's something about it. That was very like console or very like, I don't know, just not very like pc friendly in comparison to steam like steam feels like a proper like steam feels like a website you know i think discord in a lot of ways does too and i think that's why people like use it but yeah you play and even epic epic game store to a lot of degree like they hide a lot of things under sub menus because they want to have like a clear like clean like console ready even though they're not available on console it's very weird design decisions but if they if they have like a more like pc focused kind of game launcher that just hey you know you can buy your games here and you don't have to double buy them i mean that's that's going to be appealing to at least some people they're going to get something out of it i just wonder what i guess i wonder what the cost would be of even operating something like that and and whether or not it would be worth it for them i just don't i just can't see a world where they have cross by enabled and they don't have a their own bespoke launcher because i know what you're saying where it's like okay they'll buy like they can buy um let's say there's a cross by version of like god of war whatever and they buy it on playstation and then like your thing is i guess like they send you a steam code yeah yeah right like there's like some bullshit way because it just it just that like i'm trying to think of a more novel way that it would be done because it just can't be like its own thing so then like maybe it's what dustin saying is like yeah it's some sort of overlay could i don't know that's why i was just trying to think like how would you even do it like would could it even be like and again this is just these are just novel ideas i don't think these are really what's happening but it's like could it be something where Sony is basically just paying Steam?

1:19:14Because it's not all the money that Steam would get. Steam would get 30 % of the buy. Does Sony charge$10 more for these cross-buy games or something? Then that helps them absorb a lump sum monthly payment for copies given away for free on Steam or whatever. I have no idea how it works, but it's like... Because it just doesn't compute otherwise, pardon the pun, to me, just based on the guarantee of it not sticking. Maybe so maybe it is like something you know so it could just be a dead end kind of thing too and i don't mean that and once so it's a bad term but it's not meant to be this wider market it's like

1:19:50Colin Moriarty:this pc thing that playstation fans download right right i think that's probably what it i think that's probably what it would aim to be yeah you know i don't think they're aiming for like an epic game situation i don't think they're aiming to like lock exclusives into you know what i mean like i don't think they're like trying to lock down like a playstation pc store exclusive and it's not available on steam or nothing i think it i think it literally is for marathon and a couple of their live service games where i like i do think you know if i were to get marathon i would buy it on steam like that's where i would that's where i would buy it like unquestionably and so that's something to consider if you know if you can cross buy these things and like if i can access that on PlayStation and PC if I just buy it on the PlayStation store I would do that because why wouldn't I do that and I think they're because they're more invested or they're beginning to be with fair games maybe later on and and marathon more imminently that's something to consider although like there is an argument I don't know because then there is the double dip argument where you could make 100 % and then maybe get that 30 % ripped or the 70 % writ on the other thing, but like few, very few people buy things twice, I think in comparison to the overall market.

1:21:11Right. And steam has like, doesn't steam have like a much lower cut until you sell like a million copies to. So like there are like, I don't know. Dustin, I think your kind of notion of this, this overlay.

1:21:27Colin Moriarty:Some call it an overlay. It's going to, I would imagine it's going to be a PlayStation launcher. there was a article there was an article um in uh i can't remember where it was but playstation they when they were data mining the spider-man release on pc there were references to a playstation pc launcher in it so this is something i think they've been cooking yeah for a while yeah okay i got you i um it's interesting then to yeah so i guess people are looking at this through the lens of the xbox play anywhere thing um but maybe it could just be something yeah much more limited although those those play anywhere games exist on xbox's pc platform right too yes even if they're third party so i guess you would have to i think so i think not many games on xbox are play anywhere that are third party right if any like i i kind of don't i'm sure there must be some there are some i think yeah i would imagine though that it's mostly that's like a first party kind of initiative for for them yeah so yeah okay so so let me look it up yeah knowing that that's a that's a yeah i i wonder i wonder it might it might get me to mess around with pc gaming more not that my pc now can do it much but in the future but at the same time i'm just kind of happy on the console i i get their need to want to to spread the field here though obviously it's it's a necessity and really if you think about it logically and this is true for all the hardware manufacturers really is there is a logical continuity between having a hardware like a piece of hardware and a storefront on the hardware and then just having your storefront on pc ultimately it's the same business model in fact like you're removing a lot of risk by not having the console but you're leaving money on the table too because they are they are ostensibly a major just distributor of games just funneled through their own hardware so they're just kind of they're opening the aperture a little bit and i don't hate it i think it's necessary i think some people are going to really dislike this sort of thing but it's what you were saying chris too about the realities of the limited reality of what like this cross by initiative wherein it's it's really gonna be first and second party things and i guess maybe agreements they have with third parties but if they have so this is another interesting part so if they say like uh final fantasy 16 is like a play anywhere like a cross by game becomes a cross by game they would have to update upload a pc version of it to to the playstation launcher like this bespoke pc version that would that obviously exists on steam but it's going to be its version that runs that a few people are going to use off this place it just seems like such wasted effort it doesn't it doesn't quite make sense i guess but i don't know you're going to say something doesn't look like you were gonna well i was like yeah i think that getting the pc version to run on a you know it just is booting through and has drm through a playstation launcher so i don't think it would be a lot of effort uh for them to do that but i want i mean i i'm curious about what their what the scope would be of a playstation pc launcher i would imagine it's like you guys are saying where it's first party second party games pretty much exclusively and the other thing too to bring up this cross by element is that i wonder what games will be included in this cross by in the crazy pro consumer move when they launch this it's like hey if you own any of our titles that are available on PC, if you own them on PlayStation, you instantly have them on PC as well.

1:25:26Colin Moriarty:Just download the PlayStation launcher. If you bought God of War digitally, if you bought Spider-Man digitally, you can now access those on PC. That would be crazy and awesome for a lot of people. That is presumably what they're going to do, you would assume, right? I mean, I think there's a possibility where they could just have it be for select like live service games. Yeah. Like Marathon. Right. Or something. Okay. okay i see yeah so or just things going forward i would imagine yeah or going forward yeah because because what i guess the lens i'm looking at it through dustin is like what games are already on steam like you're saying it'll be somewhat of a technical triviality to mimic those games and bring them over in a suitable way on the playstation launcher therefore do we wake up one day with the days gone PS5 version where it's suddenly like, yeah, here it is.

1:26:18If you own it, there it is. And it works for Horizon and it works for God of War and Ghost of Tsushima and Helldivers.

1:26:25Colin Moriarty:That would be awesome. It wouldn't be awesome for me because it would not work since I don't own those games digitally. So it's another way to also probably kick people out of physical. Yeah, that's interesting. That's the way it goes, though, I guess. I mean, you have to kind of know what you're getting into it i suppose yeah but yeah they want to bully you they want to bully the fuck out of you guys at this point oh well dude when that handheld comes out the handle for playstation 6 if you want it to work on both versions i would assume that you're going to need to buy it digitally they could do a thing where like some sort of pass right like you could do a thing where it's like you can play is as long as the disc is in your ps5 or your PlayStation 6 and it's connected to the internet, then you can download it on your PlayStation 6 portable and then play it.

1:27:16But I don't know, man.

1:27:18Colin Moriarty:I think they're trying to get people out. They want to make it as annoying as possible for people like me. They will. They will. And yeah, so this is interesting. It's exciting to see. And so two things I want to say about this. One, I want to bubble up that I've said in the past several times. about the trophy situation is they started and that's what i'm saying is that the ps5 pc logo that people are like circulating alongside the cross by logo and some of these other like eco mode like things that they have going on is this uh this idea that they've already collapsed the trophy lists between the ps5 and pc versions if you log into your psn on steam and i feel like that was stupid i know this is not that not like a widely held or important thing to a lot of people but they should have kept the list separately because you would court people to play the games again and even buy them again if they own them physically or they rented or they borrowed them.

1:28:13I just think that that was stupid. And I understand where they were going because they want to make it tantalizing for you to log into PSN and feel like you're getting something, but you could have gotten something on PSN, the PC list of trophies. So that's just a mistake. That's neither here nor there. But I wanted to bring that up. The other thing is is it's just good to see cross by again sony kind of popularized that term i think a lot of people we use that term as just kind of gaming nomenclature now but it was the ps3 and vita versions of games that were literally called cross by that we first started really using that nomenclature in the console space and it went away for a while and it was awesome remember playstation all you had to buy the games some a lot some of the games separately but some of the games and some of the games you you uh got like upgrade paths for i think but like there were so many ps3 and vita launches of so many games and we kind of take for granted now and i think reasonably so because it should be this way that when i bought final fantasy tactics for instance and then i go to the download list i bought the ps4 version too they just don't call it the same thing anymore so bringing that that little bit of marketing back i think is positive and cool and I like seeing Sony be quiet but aggressive it's good they have to continue down this path of democratizing for lack of a better word their catalog and you don't want to be maybe on rival hardware but you certainly want to be on this ubiquitous platform that everyone seems to be migrating to we'll chronicle this as it happens again I won't have to worry about it because this PC won't play anything probably

1:29:51Colin Moriarty:oh no it definitely would would it it would it just wouldn't run it at like 4k yeah so like what's the point of not playing on my ps5 yeah yeah you won't get you'll get a better experience on your ps5 pro absolutely some games i would like to i it's funny to say this because it's it's very it's you people would think it would be like anathema to the way i play games and it really is but there were like mouse and keyboard games that i was pretty good at like when i was younger soldier of fortune is the specific game that comes to mind for me the pc shooter that i used to play online all the time and uh i wish that they would bring some of that like i like playing on a mouse and keyboard it's just not really the way i do it anymore and i'd prefer a controller but it would be cool to be able to jump back and forth and again i wish that those options were just available in the console versions of the games yeah like what's right what's what's really stopping you from doing that they should make official hardware like a keyboard a mouse yeah i know you can play battlefield with a keyboard and mouse yeah these are like new like there are a few other games too yeah but it should just be like a ubiquitous thing like you would think i don't know you would think you'd want to sell more hardware i i guess most people wouldn't buy their shit they would just plug in whatever they wanted but yeah i think that's ultimately like everybody has a keyboard you know all right anything else to say about this topic before we move on no good because it's over we're moving on to topic three we have a write in here from the diddler oh he's oh we heard from the diddler recently he's here again this is hi cdc what's going on with the inconsistent pricing on psn my friend and i noticed thanks to twitter that red dead redemption 2 ultimate edition is showing an 80 discount for some users and 85 for others we are both from ohio made our accounts when psn started and have ohio-based credit cards linked to our psn accounts The only major difference between us is that I usually buy games digitally, spend more on PSN overall and have a PS Plus premium subscription while he's on the essential tier.

1:31:48FYI, we both bought Red Dead Redemption 2 digitally when it was first released. Is Sony charging different prices based on user behavior and spending history? That doesn't seem right. Could this be a glitch? Has Sony always been diddling users with this type of pricing? Please help this make sense. My friends, it seems like it is happening. This is not the first time people have seen this, but Insider Gaming writes, PlayStation's rumored dynamic game pricing services again. They write, dynamic pricing continues to be a touchy subject across all forms of media, and PlayStation owners are seeing more alleged evidence of Sony utilizing the concept to give players different deals and prices for the same game.

1:32:22It's fair to say that dynamic pricing is nothing new. Although the concept has hit the mainstream in recent years due to the escalating cost of concert tickets, whereas all tickets used to be a set price, dynamic pricing means a venue or service can change the price of the same seats according to the market. This trend seems to have crossed over into gaming. PlayStation's dynamic game pricing was first spotted in 2024, and almost a year later, it shows no signs of stopping. So it all began on the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit a year ago, where people started noticing dynamic pricing, and now it's popped back up on the PlayStation subreddit, and they have actual pictures of, and this is what the person was referencing, Red Dead Redemption 2 Ultimate Edition, being sold for$20 to one person and to$15 for the other person.

1:33:05and the user on Reddit writes this with the pictures quote, was excited to finally purchase red dead two until I realized the price was lower on my wife's account, same region, same PlayStation, same currency. And now to the point of the diddlers right in, and he was saying like one person is on PS plus essential. One person is on PS plus premium. One person buys digital games. One person buys physical games and they're trying to use this pricing to court people to, I guess, economically behave differently. I don't, I don't like it because I don't like it from the perspective of knowing that I could be getting ripped off if I had just waited.

1:33:40This was the remember, this was the argument that people made about PlayStation Plus free games. I don't know if you guys recall that for most of the life of PlayStation Plus, you had no clue what was going to be on PS Plus until it was just announced. And you could have literally bought the game like two days before or two minutes before they back. Sorry. So they started warning everyone because people were getting so upset, like, don't buy this game. it'll be free in three weeks don't buy it and that'll theoretically happen still you know what i mean because you could buy it before they announce it you know even if it is an early

1:34:14Colin Moriarty:warning you could you know what i mean like you could have waited like a month as opposed to like sure instantly being like oh fuck i just bought this and now it's free versus like oh i just bought this and now it's going to be and now it's announced that it's going to be free in three weeks it's not really that different i think the bigger thing for me is and i appreciate this is that and they've done this for a few years now too is like when games are on sale they'll tell you when the game won't be on sale anymore so like there's a level of transparency that i appreciate that just it's probably a little economically painful for them to do but it probably stops them from getting i would argue more than half of the complaints that they probably get to there the people that have to tender all these things in their customer service departments so it's like worth it to just make it easier and more transparent.

1:35:00But yeah, I don't, I'm kind of like neutral on this. I don't really know exactly how I feel about this. Chris, where are you on dynamic pricing and have you run into it on PlayStation yet? I guess I wouldn't really notice. So I haven't seen it.

1:35:13Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I wouldn't notice. I just have my account. I, I don't like it like on a principle level. Like I, I don't, I'm not like up in arms about it in, in, in any real way but like i look at it and i'm like i'm not a fan of this just give me just give us a ubiquitous price i don't i'm not a fan of i understand why it's done like i understand like different players have different habits and different subscription tiers are technically a different value of customer like to the to the people selling you things like i get it but i just prefer sales to be pretty holistic and pretty like i don't want to be like i think from my perspective it's like oh if i recommend somebody a game right and i'm like oh you should get this game it's on say it's it's like 15 bucks and then they go and it's like dude it's 20 and i'm like well i when i feel like an asshole yeah i just don't like that aspect of it where everybody gets a different version of reality that's already a problem in a broad sense you know i don't need it i don't need it being manifested into some some schizophrenic pricing strategy like i don't I'm all right.

1:36:19Yeah. Yeah.

1:36:19Colin Moriarty:You know, Dustin, where are you on the dynamic pricing and how does it strike you? And you might, I mean, you and your wife both place games. So maybe you would run into it if you paid attention. Yeah. Well, she doesn't have her own PlayStation account and she doesn't play on PlayStation very often. She's more on switcher PC. Nerd. Nerd alert. Yeah. I think this totally sucks and it's why we should be skeptical of PlayStation being the only storefront to buy games from them. Because right now, whether it's physical or some other seller of being able to buy digital games online in a future where it's only PlayStation Network, it's like, yeah, they can do whatever the fuck they want.

1:37:08Colin Moriarty:and if they feel like they could charge more use specifically more for a game or they can try to convince you by giving you a little bit of a deal uh i think that sucks i think it sucks particularly if that's the only option um and you know even on steam there are third-party sites you don't have to buy a steam game on steam and i'm not even talking about necessarily like shady key reseller sites like g2a or something like that there are legitimately sites like green man gaming which offer a competition to steam storefront um you don't have that on playstation if you want to buy a game digitally on playstation network you must buy it through sony and so the more grip they have over it the more they can pull shit like this so that's why i've always said that even if you don't like physical games and you never want to buy one again, you should be in favor of them existing as simply another option.

1:38:07Colin Moriarty:So there is a little bit of competition in the space of buying and selling these games. So how would you work that out for PSN digitally? Would you, you would want there to be like a competing PSN enabled storefront or just a storefront that could sell codes that would be dynamically made by the developer or something? I guess I just, I understand what you're saying, but I don't understand how you could ever cut Sony out of selling games on their own store. So I gotta be 100 % honest. I don't know the business model of Green Man Gaming or how it works because clearly they are Steam codes that are legitimate and they're not like, so a lot of these sites like cdkeys.com or G2A, a lot of times they are selling you a worldwide version of a game.

1:38:58Colin Moriarty:And so that's how it's able to be a cheaper price is that it's taking advantage of different currencies throughout the world. So you may be able to get a game a little cheaper that way. I think it's against Steam's terms of service, but I don't know if they necessarily even do anything about it. So I'm honestly not sure how that would work. I just know that it does work on the PC front in terms of games. so that would be an interesting thing like let's see i'm reading about it now like yeah it seems like they buy like bulk codes potentially from publishers but i'm wondering like it does seem weird like that valve wouldn't do anything about that um right i guess they just they been steam benefits greatly from their libertarian reputation and i think the second they start fucking around with that even if it costs them they risk blowing their whole thing up and it's so good you don't want to you know it's like fine yeah right don't broke don't uh don't fix what ain't broken yeah kind of thing right so so even if it's not like there's another storefront to buy digital playstation games because i don't think sony's going to give up that grip and obviously the playstation store is a very different thing than steam but either way uh having the physical option at least to maybe if you don't interact with it but as a way to keep some of these digital prices honest because PlayStation Store is the most likely place that you're going to get ripped off on an old game.

1:40:30Colin Moriarty:Yeah, in my opinion. Yeah, like when you do what you bought Kingdom Hearts, it cost you 50 bucks. Yeah, yeah. Which is insane compared to like even a brand new copy of that physical is no way it would be$50. Yeah, you make a very compelling argument because I guess I'm a little more neutral on it in that

1:40:52the undercutting and the competition, yeah, it's not happening between corporate entities, but it's happening between customers. So it's almost the same outcome. In other words, if the MSRP of a game is$60 and a company decides to sell it for$55, they're basically eating into their entire profit. And so they simply don't because physical game profits are not high. So, so they, for the, for the seller. So they just don't do that. But then you start months later, as we're talking about, start seeing like vastly different pricing. And that is a product of the market, but the same outcome for the customer.

1:41:29So it does, it seems kind of like a company store. Like I always bring up that reference of, and, and, and a little bit manipulative. So yeah, I agree with you that there is a little bit more to it than that. But I also don't hate the idea of them doing this if they were transparent about it. And maybe they are transparent about it somewhere. In other words, saying, because the guy that wrote in was saying that that may be an important part of it, or at least he was outlining that they are at different levels of PlayStation Plus and that their purchasing behavior is different. And I wouldn't mind them saying two things.

1:42:05One is like, you could even say dynamic pricing can be a benefit of playstation plus premium or playstation plus extra where it's like if you're at playstation if you don't have playstation plus you don't experience any dynamic pricing you get the highest possible prices if you're on playstation plus essential you'll get a little you'll get mixed in sometimes and algorithmically or however they do it it'll really ramp up the more you're like in playstation plus and that's part of it i'm like and it's like you'll just benefit more from these like random deals that you might get that like our like computers are just spitting out every so often because this game's overselling this game's underselling in in the moment.

1:42:38Very similar to how Walmart always knows like you buy the fucking bottle of water and it tells the computer tells you like they need to send more water so that like when the next water is gone, they're already filling it back in. It could be like a very similar computer based thing that you benefit from the more you spend money. And I don't mind them saying that, but like just be true if that's the case. But I just think that you should just be transparent with it. And I think that that could be a really compelling thing for customers. You want it. You want to like the people that are spending the most money on your system should be benefit the most from the deals.

1:43:07Yeah. Right. I've said this a million times. It's like there should be no way that a person like PlayStation six, if there's like a run on them, which there probably will be. Right. It's like the person who spent all of this money on PS five and has like been with you and you have all of this data from them dating all the way back to the beginning of the PSN. It's like they shouldn't have any issues getting a PlayStation six period. Like I truly believe that like they should get an email and like a PS plus invite and all these things like are you first access to PS six? Do you want the ps6 of course they should get that so i have no problem with like a kind of un an imbalanced situation that benefits the biggest consumer so i guess that's why i'm a little more neutral on it but it has to be based on that yeah yeah the issue is that they don't do that

1:43:51Colin Moriarty:they don't they don't they only give a shit now because it's like oh well now it's it seems so inherently like self-advantageous you know like where it's just like all right well we can we're on these games and we're selling them at like different prices based on subscription models, because we're not sure if they want it or not. You know, you could argue that they might even, they might even look at your, they might even look at your, your buying habits and they might be like, okay, this guy only plays action RPGs and first person shooters or whatever, whatever. Let's give them a deal. Like, like 50 % off on Civ.

1:44:27Colin Moriarty:And then meanwhile, somebody else who does play civilization doesn't get that deal because they know that they're, you know what I mean? Right. I just I don't like the door that it opens up to that kind of shit. And because ultimately, you know, when the PSX comes out, they're not going to do that. They're not going to be like, oh, are you our best customer? Like they're going to be. No, they know they're going to sell a ton of them. So they're just going to have them. It's just going to be just as haphazard as it was last time. And so like they don't really have that. They don't have that mindset in the first place.

1:44:53Colin Moriarty:And they're not they're not attributing it to their consoles. They're definitely not going to be attributing it to their games. and it just kind of feels like a door that's best left best left shut in my opinion i don't know there is definitely i i don't think they would do this transparency would be amazing because imagine imagine an evil version of this where sony looks at colin moriarty's account they're like colin moriarty buys new games he buys them at full price sometimes he buys new games and doesn't play them why would we ever give him a deal yeah sure you know sure absolutely so yeah that's the that's the area where i don't think they're doing that right now but it's as chris was saying you're opening a door that is kind of gross because what was it in this article i mentioned like ticket master and stuff like that imagine if the more a game sold the higher price it went because the demand is higher i guess it doesn't make sense because there's not a limited amount of copies they can sell of ghost of yote anymore because it's digital but dynamic pricing it's gross yeah i i think you guys make compelling arguments yeah it could easily be bastardized and be like the evil version of it too and you're right the the hardware argument i make in terms of access to things is just i they're going to sell them regardless and that's true but you would think you would want to make sure the people who are like your mega fans and are going to just buy everything you want to make sure they have them like it just benefits you yeah i i would agree you know like as opposed to just some casual person that didn't own a ps5 or a ps4 and it's cool to get them in on ps6 that's awesome but like they're not as important to you actually like nowhere near as important to you so i want i do wonder like what they're going to do this time around because the ps5 was a bit of a shit show for a lot of people and yeah sony did a great job of trying to get them out there but um but yeah interesting conversation we're we've had about this dynamic pricing situation and and i do wonder where this will all go and yeah how it can be very focused you make a very compelling point dustin of like i'm the person you want to take advantage of i don't even care i'm asking you to do it so take advantage of me yeah the diddler thank you for writing in all right this is an interesting one uh dan hauser was on lex friedman i'm a huge fan of lex friedman so i saw that this happened i'm so far behind though i won't get to this anytime soon and they talk about a bunch of things lex friedman of course is like an academic and intellectual american in it like a public intellectual does a popular podcast it's kind of like rogan but like with very long form conversations but much more serious than that and much more high level, I think.

1:47:41And he's not a huge gamer, as I understand, but he does love very specific games and he loves like Red Dead and, you know, Oblivion and shit like that in Skyrim. So anyway, I think he was able to use his considerable heft to get Dan Houser on. And Dan Houser, of course, is a major player behind the old Rockstar and was the creative force behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead and a bunch of other things. And he was recently interviewed by my friend Ryan McCaffrey as well. But this is a much deeper conversation. And the reason that it's important to our podcast is that he talked about, of all games, Agent, which was the PlayStation 3 Rockstar exclusive game that was announced in 2009 and ultimately never came out.

1:48:25And Video Games Chronicle wrote about what he had to say about Agent. And I thought we would just add this to the Sacred Symbols record because this game is along with like, what was that game? Eight days and getaway three and a few others are like some of the most intriguing canceled PlayStation games. And I know people want to know more. So they write quote in an interview with Lex Friedman, Hauser explained that he went through multiple iterations of agent, but can never land on one that fit the open world gameplay. Rockstar was known for, he said, quote, we worked on a lot of multiple iterations of an open world spy game and it never came together.

1:48:58It had about five different iterations. I don't think it works. I concluded and I kept thinking about it sometimes. I sometimes lie in bed thinking about it. And I've concluded that what makes them really good as film stories, maybe make them not work as video games. We need to think through how to do it in a different way as a video game. And he's talking specifically about spy games. I think this is specifically very interesting, by the way, because of the 007 game that IO is working on and it's coming out next year. And they're going to obviously try to do this. Video Games Chronicle writes, quote, Rockstar officially announced the agent as a PlayStation 3 exclusive in 2009, saying it was set to be set in the 1970s in a Cold War setting.

1:49:33But Hauser said that was only one of the versions he had tried while others were set in the present day. Hauser conceded, quote, I don't know what it would have been because we never got it enough to even do a proper story on it. We were doing the early work where you get the world up and running and it never really found its feet in either of them. And I sort of think I know why. And he says, and this is what Video Games Chronicle kind of writes in synopsis, quote, Hauser continued that in his opinion, the geopolitical espionage and assassinations required for a secret agent game didn't really fit with an open world game because the commonly accepted idea of a secret agent movie has a tight fast storyline that doesn't work where the player is given more freedom this seems to be what 007 is going to do right by not making it open and hauser said to friedman quote those films are very very frenetic and they're beat to beat you've got to go here and save the world you've got to go there and stop that person being killed and then save the world an open world game does not have moments like that where the story comes together, but for large portions, it's a lot looser and you're just hanging out and doing what you want.

1:50:29I want freedom. I want to go over here and do what I want and I want to go over and do what you want. And that's why it works so well being a criminal because you fundamentally don't have anyone telling you what to do. We do try and create external agency through these people kind of forcing you into story at times, but as a spy, that doesn't really work because you have to be an agent against the clock. So I think for me, I question if you can even make a good open world spy game and quote Dustin more information than we've ever gotten about agent. And it's probably about as much as we're ever going to get.

1:50:55I think the most interesting thing is, as I remember, and I went and looked this up and it was true, is that Sony had first said that Rockstar was working with them on something which ended up being agent in 2007. The game itself wasn't announced until 2009. And it's so interesting to think about how loose and fast these companies are playing with this shit. Like he's basically saying, like we didn't have anything. Like we didn't even really know what the story was. We didn't, we had like, we were trying to figure out how to make it fun and like me now sony's on stage at e3 2009 in the midst of e3 like the phenomenon that was e3 2009 and they're literally announcing it that's the biggest thing that i'm how many games have come out that are like that a lot it's so interesting you know hon dude i always think about bioshock on vita when ken levine had the bioshock and he had vita and he held it up and he's like we're making and it's like that game never existed It's just it's just so interesting.

1:51:53So anyway, Dustin, take it away. What do you think?

1:51:56Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I listened to this interview actually when I was on the way to Cedar Point. So it's perfect. I had three hours. The interview is about three hours. I highly recommend people listening to it because there's a lot of really interesting insight to, I mean, Rockstar Games in general, Red Dead 2 in particular, some really cool stuff about the story and stuff that was cut or just some extra details. around it so i highly recommend listening to it i think i agree with this overall in that i think it would be hard to make an open world rock star game about a spy i think you still could make an open world spy game it might need to be more like mafia though where the open world is just a setting for the things that happen but in the interview uh dan hauser's talking a lot about how it was really important them starting with grand theft auto 3 that when people played the game it felt like a living world and that when they left and came back it's like the world existed you know it exists when you're not there because it feels so dynamic and so while i think you could make an open world spy game i don't think they could do it to what they want the open world to be if that makes sense but i'm curious yeah and i i saw people comparing this to the uh 007 game coming out next year and it's like but that's not an open world game in fact i think it's very clearly mission-based and it's like yeah of course you can do an awesome mission-based spy game but to make an open world that's rock star quality in terms of what you can do in it and how you can choose to spend your time i think he does have a point where are you on this uh chris was it interesting for you to hear more about agent and uh kind of get a bow put on that because i think a lot of people are curious about what happened in that game and it is just so funny there's so many playstation games from that era that just never materialized yeah yeah i mean i I think I think I'm in agreement with him, to be honest.

1:54:15Colin Moriarty:I do think it's just there are certain things. There are certain genres and certain characters and certain types of stories that just kind of fly in the face of the designs of certain genres of game. Like, I do think like upon hearing it, I never thought about it, whether or not there could be a good spy open world game. but like hearing hearing him talk about it was like yeah you probably kind of can't do that at least not not in the way that we think about spy movies and so i thought it was interesting because i say this like people get mad at me whenever i say this but i feel the same way about superman i really i really earnestly don't believe that there can be a good superman game like i just don't there could be like competent ones like like you know six out of ten on ign or whatever but like you're never going to get like a fully great one because like the the fantasy of superman kind of the whole point of superman is that like you don't like nothing is in front of there's no obstacles and so like you just like oh you can fly so like there goes level design and like it's it's it's it defeats itself in some way and so like hearing dan hauser talk about how like yeah this is an entire genre that's just like not really possible within the framework of how we do open world it's like yeah that's it's nice to hear that because i i feel like there's an argument that a lot of people have where like no if you if you just have the right amount of passion or if you love something enough it'll work it's like no you can't i really don't i really earnestly don't i think there are certain things that just don't work but um yeah i listened to like half of the interview i i scrubbed to this part because i wanted to hear it and then i i think i restarted i'm only like halfway through it but it is interesting i think dan house is like a really interesting guy um and so i do recommend listening to it there's a there's a part where he talks about like writing either gta or grand theft auto i think he was talking about grand theft auto 4 that like he went months without writing any dialogue like he would just like think of an interesting idea for a character or a mission or something and he would write a bunch of notes and then so like he talks about procrastinating for weeks and weeks and weeks on actually writing the story and eventually over a weekend he would force himself he would just have like stacks and stacks of notes and then write the story in a weekend or like the beginning of the story but really interesting creative process where he's like I'm just going to absorb and think of as many small things at once and then try to like you know sift through that in order to create something cool.

1:56:54Colin Moriarty:So it's, it's such a, it's a really, really good interview. Check it out. Sucking duck for quack wrote in and said, howdy Jess. I'm sure you guys saw that last week. Lex Friedman posted an interview with Dan Hauser. That's his second interview in under two months from a guy who has been a ghost for nearly 30 years in this industry. Any chance Colin can get him on sacred plus you said yourself that you're glad she had a couple of interviews first. So you could hear more. It could ask more of the in-depth nitty gritty questions that could apply for Dan too. Would love to hear your thoughts about this.

1:57:21p.s you guys have you guys are going on break soon and you normally pre-record a bunch of shows so we degenerates have content to listen to what happens with sacred streaming during this time just curious love the content so sacred streaming will do sacred symbols plus episodes for that instead um and we will figure out what those are when the time comes we have a little bit of time to figure that out there's no way dan hauser's going to do sacred symbols plus i appreciate the the support i would if i thought there was even an outside chance like i would ask but it's there's no chance and so like why even bother but yeah it would be fun i think i would be able to ask him much more probing questions and then lex could ask him about video games but i also think that someone who could also ask probing questions and ryan mcaffrey already had access to him recently so i don't know that'd be nice i'm also not like rock star mega fan i'm not entirely sure i'm the one that i would even if like you could if he could have access to a couple more people that would ask the right questions i'm not entirely sure i'm the best person for that right if i'm being honest i think i would give i think i'd be able to give a great interview i played all the grand theft auto games i played both red dead games um you know i'm very immersed in a lot of the stuff he's done but i don't think i'm the right guy All right, just a few more quick stories, and then we can get into what we're playing.

1:58:37Over on Game Informer, they have an interview that I thought was pretty interesting with Halic Mentes, who is the general manager of Marvel Games. And he talks a little bit about what they're doing with. And I don't know if this was an email interview or like a voice interview or what, because it's pretty well written. And I guess it's in the print issue because Game Informer is back, if people don't know. and so it'll be an issue 372 of game and former they probably shouldn't have game informer because they went away for a while they should have restarted the numbering i think i think that would have been interesting to do i mean have your own little thing going on but what do i know so anyway there's stuff in here about arc system works and the marvel fighting games going on um deadpool vr and marvel cosmic invasion and a bunch of other things but there is a little throwaway item here about insomniac that i thought was interesting and um they write here game informer writes marvel games has a number of projects in the works right now with several different developer partners what have been some guiding principles to those collaborations in particular as it relates to letting developers find some freedom to shape these familiar characters into new and interesting genres or variations and so mentes says so glad you asked this our north Star is deceptively simple.

1:59:56Make great games that are authentic to Marvel, whether it's on console, PC, mobile, or VR. The challenge is more complex. Authenticity doesn't necessarily mean one-to-one fidelity to source or reference material, whether it's comics or animation or movies. It's much deeper in that we allow our collaborating teams to reimagine familiar yet original incarnations of our characters based on their own creative DNA, whether it's insomniac games with Marvel's Spider-Man or Marvel's Wolverine, NetEase with Marvel Rivals, Motive Studio with the forthcoming Iron Man game arcane with blade and many more.

2:00:26We absolutely do not want to be derivative. Otherwise, what's the point of working with some of the best talent out there in full transparency? Our games can only achieve the necessary level of creativity when we as Marvel games have 100 % cultural alignment with our collaborators. And in fact, we seek people who have the same passion and ambition as us who dream the same dream as in, wouldn't this be cool if we made this character in this genre, in this style. So they're later asked after that about their relationship with Insomniac based on that. And they say, we also actively see collaborators that want to take on the same mantle.

2:01:01As it's usually the case, once we complete a project together, they too become Marvel. Marvel's Wolverine with our dear friends at Insomniac Games is perhaps the epitome of this philosophy. We've been working together for more than a decade and developed such a shorthand across multiple Marvel Spider-Man games that when the time finally came to bring Logan back in spectacular and visceral fashion, It was obvious to everyone on our team that Insomniac was the perfect choice. It was our shared culture and values that brought us together. And we're so proud to continue collaborating for many years to come.

2:01:29Now, Chris, let's go to you first. I know this is not a huge surprise if you know the Insomniac leaks. And in fact, some people had said that it's funny that they're almost pretending that those leaks never happened in this interview. I bring that up for people that are unaware is because in those Insomniac leaks, it was known that there was going to be an X-Men trilogy of games that Insomniac would do and that they'd be working together through the 2030s. However, Chris, I do think it's interesting just in that we know some of the plan has changed. The Spider-Man multiplayer game was cancelled.

2:02:00The Spider-Man 2 expansions were cancelled. This Venom game, I don't know what's going on, if it's ever going to come out. It obviously was real. Wolverine, much delayed, was already supposed to be out probably a couple years ago. so with all that said they still seem pretty confident with insomniac what do you think

2:02:22Colin Moriarty:yeah i mean look i mean i think it makes sense i mean spider-man one and two were pretty pretty fucking well received they sold a shit ton i i don't i don't see why they would lack confidence in insomniac uh i don't know like again just because we know just because the plan is changed doesn't mean that the core fundamental of the plan isn't the same which is to continue you working with insomniac for many many years to come at this point so i mean this doesn't necessarily change anything uh i am just my main curiosity honestly with with insomniac is this venom game because we know that they worked i mean spoilers for spider-man 2 i mean i guess vaguely but you i think if you wanted to play spider-man 2 you would have played if you're listening to this show and you wanted to play spider-man 2 and you haven't yet i don't know what the fuck's wrong with you but you you play as venom in that for like a little for a brief period there's like a brief venom vignette and it feels very fleshed out like it feels like very distinctly it's not like you can tell when a game does this when like it changes perspectives and you play as somebody else that like this is clearly like an afterthought or or like this feels really like really rudimentary so basically any other time in the spider-man duology of games where you play as another character like mary jane or whatever it's like oh wow this this feels terrible this is clearly not going to be its own game but then you get to the venom section in that game and you're like oh this is clearly like really well thought out really fleshed out the animations are fucking fantastic it feels good to move around it feels better to move around as venom than it really should if this is just kind of this one-off vertical slice of nothing and so at the very least we know that that game is real you know um so that's that's really where my curiosity goes like i i don't know i think at this point it's probably scrapped i would imagine because it makes more sense at this point to just focus on spider-man 3 but as far as the new light shed on their relationship with uh or marvel's relationship with insomniac i don't know if there's really much to glean out of this other than they're staying the course even if like the minute details have shifted a little bit dusty boy what do you think yeah i don't think i have too much to add it's not surprising as you mentioned the uh insomniac leak and they'll get wolverine out and then i imagine spider-man 3 is next and we would be looking at probably 2030 by that 2030 doesn't sound like a real year no you say it out loud it doesn't i think it's the first time i've said 2030 in a while uh it's gross but uh i wonder i would hope i guess my spin is that i would like to see them break away from marvel at that point where it's like oh come on We've done three main Spider-Man games, one spinoff game, and we've done Wolverine.

2:05:22Colin Moriarty:So I think I would feel different if I was super into comic book stuff and Marvel stuff. But especially now that we have a lot of other teams doing superhero games, like there's the Captain America game with Black Panther, the Amy Hennig game and the Iron Man game and stuff like that. Black Panther was canceled, right? supply which one one of those was canceled like it was like a i think black panther was canceled i think the world war two one is still happening yeah that's still happening iron man's happening okay yeah yeah i think black panther is in that world war two one yeah probably so maybe but there was there was also a standalone black panther game if i'm not mistaken yeah there was and that was that was canceled that was ea was doing that i think yeah so it's a lot it's a lot I want to see Insomniac.

2:06:11Colin Moriarty:They make such great games. And it's nice that they have been able to do some stuff on the side with Ratchet and Clank, but I want to see their full power into a new IP. Yeah, I'm generally with you. Obviously, we're going to get Ratchet, and I assume that will probably be a PS6 game. We've known about that for a long time, and it seems like they're just really slowly making it. And Ratchet's awesome, so that's great. But I agree with you, and I think we're all on the same page, that this seems kind of like a waste of insomniac at some point. Listen, I know the Spider-Man games have sold enormous numbers of copies.

2:06:47I get it. It's a complete huge moneymaker. It also is a major point of fusion for Sony between the film properties that they have the IP rights to, like Spider-Man and what's going on with the games. And so that's great. I'm not and I'm not even disputing that it's time well spent, even though it's licensed and they have to pay Marvel a shit ton of money to do this. So they have to, by virtue, sell many millions of copies, which they do. So it all works out. I'm not saying any of that's not true, but I just. I feel like it's a diminishing return kind of thing at some point, like. Don't you want to do something else?

2:07:24I'm sure there's a large subsection of developers that insomnia that love making Marvel games, and they're probably huge nerds for it. and they were hired to do this stuff and it's great but I don't know we're never going to get something new out of them like it's just never it's funny that this is the same Sony that kind of let them walk away for a moment anyway from Ratchet to make Resistance now they were back to Ratchet very quickly in 2009 but and they made Sunset Overdrive and it's like you got to give them room to create something new I don't and I wouldn't want that to come at the sake of ratchet if anything ratchet should be the survivor and I know that that's crazy from a commercial point of view but the ratchet is like original insomniac dna and I don't know it just kind of bumps me out that they're just gonna they're gonna be like just tethered to these fucking properties for the forever like and I guess it works it's a very reliable thing but doesn't it also feel like it's it's too long in the tooth in a universe where a black panther game can even be canceled like they don't think that that's worth it anymore 10 years ago that would have been a fucking slam dunk project and we actually kind of saw this with uh star wars outlaws where people are like yeah i don't know it's kind of too late right think about battlefront 2 would that really be the phenomenon it was now all these years later when star wars is kind of fucked up i'm not saying marvel is is in that situation it's not but it is long in the tooth and i just think this is ultimately this will be a very secure financial decision that's great that's business i get it but creatively because this whole the idea of wolverine was to lead into the x-men trilogy

2:09:12Colin Moriarty:so this is just the beginning anyway chris go ahead well i was gonna say like you do you think like um you said 10 years ago this would have been a smash uh like a like an obvious hit an obvious idea i mean knowing like modern development times like maybe that's when it was pitched dude you know i mean like it's very possible that this thing was pitched in a completely different fucking era and uh you know only started to fall apart towards the end it's it's getting a little bit it's getting a little crazy i'm sure these games will be great by the way like i know insomniac will will do a great job with them it's just like and i say that as somebody who is who likes Marvel stuff like I'm I'm not like against comic book stuff like I like most of it to be honest um even even MCU stuff like I enjoy it like I don't love it it's not like the you know the most amazing shit in the world but it's they're very watchable enjoyable ways to spend time and so like for me I'm like if I'm getting you know kind of sick of this like I would imagine your average person uh isn't too thrilled dude I I got I got an itch the other day to play like Marvel what is it um ultimate alliance like i got this like weird like craving and i realized i can't play it anywhere like it's just like yeah was that an xbox 360 ps3 the first ma marvel ultimate marvel ultimate mua it was it was also on ps2 i believe ps2 right but um oh and we probably yeah but there was like uh yeah that was that weird that weird era but like i wanted to play and it was like there's just no way to do it you have to own like an original copy on like original hardware i was like oh man it's bummer but uh but i was really itching to play it and so like there's there's an appetite for sure that i'm still exist i'm sure still exists but man it just sucks to because the the schedule is delayed so far now that like you have to imagine because what was that what was the date that was originally given in the leaks it was like 2035 i think right yeah 2035 i think was like the was that the end of the x like the last x-men game or something i don't i mean yeah so it's definitely not that they're definitely behind right and that's the whole thing it's like 20 40 almost why even get yourself that's the whole thing is i i wonder how binding all of it was some of it probably was fairly conclusive but it's like why even wrap yourselves up like this i guess you just want the short thing yes security but it made the assumption that this was always going to be the right choice and i don't think that that's true like i just yeah good you're right but it's it's it might not always be the right choice but there's a there's a higher likelihood than not that it would be more of a right choice than an original thing than something like a sunset overdrive or like a fuse which they have experience doing and that's kind of the thing it's like i we are in an era now where like uh it's it's not like it used to be where like you could take a risk on something you would spend very very little money making something and there's a pretty good chance you were going to make most if not all of your money back now it's like everything is expensive everything is like this massive sink of money and it pays now, especially when we were like years deep into thousands and thousands and thousands of layoffs in this industry.

2:12:23Colin Moriarty:It's like, all right, well, what are we going to do? Do we want to do we want to risk it all on another fuse? Right. Or do we want to keep the surefire thing that like, you know, it might not always be the it the it thing, but it's got a devoted following of people that are going that are always going to be perpetually curious about anything that that happens in that space and i'm probably one of those people to be honest like i'm curious about an x-men game i'm curious about wolverine i was always going to buy wolverine whether or not it was that interested in it or not just because wolverine looks awesome for sure yeah no but i mean like even before like when there were like doubts about it yeah and i had my doubts about it too i still have some like i wonder like how an insomniac game will play without that open world structure in the sense in i know we have ratchet and stuff but like i wonder how more ratchet style design philosophy will play in a marvel sandbox like it's it's interesting to think about but you know i i don't begrudge them but i also think like it very clearly is and i know this is going to sound um this terminology is almost never used with with any positivity associated with it but i think it i think it'd be disingenuous to not call it in some way selling out you know i mean you you are kind of like sacrificing some level of creativity and sacrificing some level of independence to uh to make things that are surefire hits that like are entrenched in an existing massive ip that many people will always care about and i by the way not saying i wouldn't have done it either in this environment if i if i'm like the head of a studio and i'm like i'm thinking about like i'm going to protect my team okay makes sense to me but that is kind of what it is yeah sure i i um i will say this to be fair two things wolverine looks great and i'm also the third second thing for so three things spider-man i'm excited about spider-man 3 i think spider-man 2 is underrated people pretty hard on that game i think that game was pretty fucking awesome um fun to play a little weird you know some weird story shit you know it's a great video game dei and all that dei dei dei man they're changing it to the x people the x people the x individuals can't have men the x fellers um so that was the other thing i was going to say was and this is just this is just serendipitous for me is that as far as marvel is concerned the only two marvel properties that i ever really liked as a little kid even long before the marvel you know universe was two of three really because i like iron man as well as spider-man and x-men and so it is like that granted is kind of like okay if you're going to go down this road those are the coolest things to cover the least corny the least annoying the most adult you know especially with the x-men in my opinion like i and i i so yeah okay i guess so if that's what you want we'll see how it all and these games will sell a million you know a billion copies so yeah and also dude shout out to that um i think it was crystal uh crystal dynamics uh that did the what is it um guardians of the galaxy that guardians of the galaxy game oh yeah yeah yeah i bought it and played it for a little while but i never never got anywhere in it really i i really i liked it way more than i thought i would and that's like a surprisingly solid game so it's like it's again it's not to say that things that are tied to this ip are inherently bad like they're they're they're probably going to be very very good a lot of a lot of my favorite video games ever are marvel oriented like i love those original spider-man games marvel versus capcom obviously um tokan looks sick ultimate alliance i was just talking about i have a real real deep fondness for that game um so it's cool but there is like you know the realities of of the world as it exists right now is that it's just like it's not it's not super tenable to uh risk it it's not super responsible either to be fair to risk it all on some completely unproven thing yeah that's true i get it you well yeah you don't necessarily want to risk insomniac on that i have no i have no problem with some other studios being the kamikaze like yeah sure yeah i like i'll put it this way insomniac working on marvel stuff it's fine by me if i heard like oh media molecules uh you know working on a i don't know a fucking flintstones game or something like oh my god oh man what a dire world we would be living in another excellent they should be doing they should be doing a very weird thing you know in my opinion i'm sure they are all right a couple more things we're almost through the news thought i just shout this out sony has released the playstation store download data for october 2025 so top downloads on the psn digital stores and not a huge surprise here in the u.s canada and europe both battlefield 6 best-selling game of the month across platforms and then ghost of yote is number two in both locations.

2:17:32That's basically a full month of ingestion for Gossiote. So not so bad. Sold more than NBA 2K26, which I'm pretty impressed with. The NBA season just kicked off, kicked off, tipped off. You don't kick off the NBA season. You tip it off. A week or two ago, I just watched a Knicks game, I think a day or two ago. And then EA Sports FC26 at three. Arc Raiders at five. Dispatch at number six. This is the superhero episodic game. And then Madden NFL 26. And number seven, Digimon Storytime Stranger comes in at eight. Little Nightmares at nine. And then some other notable ones. NASCAR 25 is at 11. Jurassic World Evolution 3 at 13.

2:18:14Borderlands 4 falls down to 14. The Outer Worlds 2 premieres at 15. Dying Light the Beast 16. Ninja Gaiden 4 premieres at 17. College Football down to 18. And NHL 26 rounds things out at 20.

2:18:28Colin Moriarty:so anything interesting there for you dustin um well ghost of yote i someone pointed out that ghost of yote beat ea sports fc 26 did it come out in the same did that game come out i don't i don't think so i think nba would be more impressive let me see ea fc 26 um september late september oh okay well ghost of yote doing pretty good battlefield didn't they announced like an actual number was it six six million i think a million after a week perhaps battlefield six sales this is why we need a young jamie battlefield six two days ago reaches 10 million copies sold dang damn yeah so battlefield absolutely killing it this is their year dude this is i in the years we've been doing this show together there's been a few different times where i'm like battlefield if you can get it together people aren't hyped about call of duty right now Now, you might not win, but you're going to take a major foothold and they never able to deliver with Battlefield 5 or Battlefield 2048 or whatever it's called.

2:19:37Colin Moriarty:And this year they've done it. They've done an incredible job and people are still loving the game, though. Arc Raiders, which we'll talk about in a bit on what we've been playing. it seems like a lot of people at least in my friend group we still love battle 6 but arc raiders has now dominated our our game time and there's a lot of a lot of hype around our shout out to embark the developers of course my beloved the finals killing it with our creators dork raiders dork raiders um yeah it says here battlefield 6 sold 7 million in three days so all of that would have been ingested in october right because this was an october 10 yeah so i'm just trying to do the math in my head so it would probably be like eight million for the month cumulative across platforms you would assume probably two and a half million for ps5 something like that puts go see yote numbers probably a little bit below that because i think go see yote is probably at i think alinea has him at 2.5 or whatever i'd probably in my gut agree with that number softer than Tsushima but doing really well I'll be interested to see its long tail and how it does you know will they drop the price for Black Friday and try to push more copies and people getting for Christmas and so on and so forth so I'm really rooting for Ghost of Yote because I think it's people are asking for these first party games and then they're nowhere to be found and then when one comes out everyone's like this this sucks and it's selling badly And I'm like, well, it doesn't suck and it'll sell as well as the market allows.

2:21:14So you want to support it, support it. If you don't want to, don't. What can you do? Arc Raiders, you had number five. Very impressive. And again, this is download numbers. This is not by money. I don't believe so. Right. Nice numbers there. And that would make sense because dispatch would not be up here if it was about money. And then over on PS4. Oh, Chris, sorry. I didn't ask you anything here. Stand out to you.

2:21:36Colin Moriarty:Oh, I mean, not really, honestly. like i think um i don't really have anything to say like borderlands 4 still kind of hanging in there i think the biggest thing is like just battlefield 6 like doing really well like this is the this is the stars aligned you know they they finally had like a real the right product at the right time at a time where a primary competitor is kind of not really hitting it and it's uh it paid off battlefield 6 is great you know it's uh some good stuff so happy it worked out yeah ninja kind seems a little soft maybe um yeah not surprising in my opinion i mean ninja guidance kind of a very i don't know like that's that matters a lot to us you know what i mean but like i don't know how much your average person is gonna see ninja god didn't care or even remember yeah the outer world you're gonna see the floor there they're gonna see the floor there and they be like oh shit what so once well yeah what's interesting here is the outer worlds two had three days ingested on the chart and was at number in 2019, 18, 17, 16, 15.

2:22:41Ninja Gaiden 4 would have been ingested for like 13 days and was at number 17. So you can kind of figure out interesting thing. Dying Light the Beast, it's its second month still holding on. So this is some interesting stuff in here. But yeah, Little Nightmares 3 is a new release that did okay. And yes, Digimon bigger than I thought. I mean, people still like Digimon. That's probably solid, what, across platforms a million copies or more for them so not so bad ps4 games red dead redemption 2 number one game of the month arkham knight number two which is interesting yeah why i don't know was it maybe it was on a deep sale yeah it could probably something of this nature it's always the same stuff otherwise like the forest is always one of the most played games which i always find really interesting some stuff on the trickling into the bottom mafia trilogy at 20 middle earth shadow of war at 19 god or remastered god or three i'm sorry remastered at 17 so a few few nice and the hollow knight obviously in there as well around number 10 psvr two games max mustard

2:23:37Colin Moriarty:number one i've i've heard of this at some point someone's either told me about it or i can't remember it looks really cute it looks fun yeah it's a flat platform yeah Yeah. Yeah. Sounds cool. Max mustard is a made for VR platformer with 40 unique levels for ridiculous bosses and eight powerful upgrades. No boring bits. It's the perfect combination of first person power ups and classic third person platforming. This is a VR platformer you'll find impossible to put down. So that's the number one bestselling game. Saints and Sinners, the walking dead games. Number two, Beat Saber discontinued. Number three.

2:24:11There were a bunch of VR games announced actually on PlayStation blog. I didn't put it into the news but they did discuss like uh yeah out on psvr2 this month vr racer hover bike audio trip roboquest vr shadowgate vr so they're like still selling there must just be a small i mean there is there's a small it's just a matter of how small is it but there's a small dedicated group of people that are buying this shit obviously and i wonder like how many copies does max mustard have to sell to get to the number one psvr2 game is it 25 000 is it 50 000 i don't know i have no no

2:24:49Colin Moriarty:concept initially when you said robo quest i thought robo cop vr would you be into that oh you should just shoot someone's dick off and oh my god and get your own dick shot off too which would be horrible don't want that to happen free to play across ps5 and ps4 combined battlefield red sec what is that is that like a real oh and that's free yeah and that's like suck people into the battlefield experience i guess right just like war zone is right got your very call of duty fortnight number two wizard 101 was number three and interestingly it didn't chart in europe at all roblox number four call of duty war zone number five marvel rivals falls to six skate number seven holding on delta force number eight Rocket League, number nine, and Rainbow Six Siege, free access, number 10.

2:25:40Over in Europe, eFootball charts, Asphalt Legends charts, but otherwise it's pretty similar. Okay. Finally, GamesIndustry.biz writes in, or writes in, they didn't write in us. Southern Gotham wrote into us about a story on GamesIndustry.biz. Says, hey CDC, can we discuss how Dustin is literally destroying the planet by buying physical games? Every time Dustin buys a physical copy, the Amazon loses another acre. What do you have to say for yourself, Dustin? Also, Greenpeace said if Dustin stops buying physical games, they'll name a tree after him. I will go hang myself on a redwood before Dustin kills them all.

2:26:14And listen, I thought you were going to say you're going to go hang yourself on the tree that was named after Dustin. That would have been dark, but you would have to let it grow first.

2:26:22Colin Moriarty:That would have been more narratively satisfying. Right. And we're consistent. Consider going and editing that letter. Thank you, Southern Gotham, for writing in. gamesindustry.biz writes manufacture and shipping of physical games is 100 times more carbon intensive than digital new study finds they write quote a new study has found that buying physical copies of games is 100 times more carbon intensive than buying the digital version the report the carbon footprint of gaming has been produced by the french carbon accounting firm greenly and examines the environmental impact of pc consoles mobile and handhelds as well as the production of games in different formats greenly found that the manufacture and transportation of physical games has a significant impact on the environment with the firm's Theo Niklau Gilmet, estimating that the manufacture and packaging of 1 million discs can emit 312 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

2:27:07In comparison, downloading the same number of digital copies of a game worth 70 gigabytes emits three tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. So that is literally one 100th. Stephanie Safdie, who's one of the study's authors, wrote to Games Industry.com and said this, quote, although cloud-based gaming can be detrimental as a result of its need for continuous access to energy-hungry data servers, we also cannot neglect the continued impact of manufacturing and packaging physical video games. Ultimately, downloading a digital copy imposes emissions linked to electricity use at home, as well as the energy use of the concerned data center, but it does not have the same impact as the emissions created by the industry in terms of landfill and excessive waste, which are primarily still accounted for by physical consoles and hard disk copies of games.

2:27:48As a whole, physical video games may still be less carbon-intensive than their digital counterparts, but their ultimate impact should not be underestimated. dustin ratchet it up yeah i'm buying more yeah buy more physical games if it takes a few years off the earth i mean great the only thing that will make that more attractive is they dump all

2:28:08Colin Moriarty:of the pollution in the ocean right that's where i'm sending my my physical collection when i die i'm putting in my will i need you to go out to see dump all the games in the ocean put so we get put each game in a plastic bag and then throw it and then throw it into the ocean coated in oil also just for good measure by the way we're obviously kidding so relax right go ahead uh i 100 believe that it is a hundred times worse um but i still feel like if i was concerned about my individual impact on the environment there are a million things that i think I could do that would offset that if I truly cared.

2:28:55And I

2:28:55Colin Moriarty:think there are way bigger issues if we're thinking about like plastic and shipping and stuff like I'm sure that not to pick on you, Colin, but Colin buying bottled water, even if you're reusing the bottle, the weight, the plastic, the weight of shipping it, getting that water manufactured, shipping it to somewhere call micah driving it home and you then eventually recycling it the recycling center driving the bottle away i'm sure that's a lot worse and i'm just using that as an example of like you know i everyone buys drinks or different things you're all your food comes wrapped in plastic that had to get shipped to you or whatever it's like um it's certainly true but i also certainly don't care if that makes some sense.

2:29:49Well, it's like, what do you want me? It is one of those, like, what do you want me to do about it? It's up to the people way above us to do things differently. And yeah, you're right. There are a million things that we do that are horrible for the environment. Chris, will you ratchet up your purchasing of physical games now that you know it can lead to the quicker demise of the earth?

2:30:06Colin Moriarty:No, I don't hate the environment enough to change the way I do things. Or love it, really. just thought you wanted to embrace death perhaps yeah maybe i don't know i it's too inconvenient yeah that is that is true it is inconvenient to die yeah i i just um for me i i like physical games i like my collection but like i don't i don't need to add to it for me like the only reason i stopped doing is because like i was moving so often and i was like i'm not gonna pack all these games every single time like this is such a this is such a most of my boxes were games i could fit all my clothes in one big box but like my my games and shit that was like three separate boxes i'm like i'm not doing this every single time so i just stopped and it's been like infinitely more convenient and so that to me is like where i that that's the value that i think about but when it comes to you know digital games i'm not really thinking about i'm not thinking about it from an environmental perspective i was like i'm wasting less plastic no i i just I don't want to carry this fucking shit the thing that demoralizes me about the whole environmental thing is like I am I actually am consider myself an environmentalist in a lot of different ways and I do care deeply about the environment and I want things to be better and I feel like locally and by locally I mean in our own country we're doing a great job like if if everyone were as decent modern stewards as the United States where we'd be in a much different place there are obviously countries that are way better than us of course saying that but really like you look at like all the co2 emission shit and it's like yeah shit's flatlined and we're doing a great job and then it's like china just like through the roof india through the fucking roof and it's like okay like what like it doesn't matter really like it's well i know what you're saying spiritually it does matter because it would be it would be that much worse that's true yes you know what i mean but like yeah i yeah it's it is one of those things where it just kind of feels like i i remember i think i was with you colin we were walking around santa monica and we were like looking at like the uh they used to have these trash cans i don't know if they do anymore but they used to have one side was for there there was like a so there would be a trash can and then there would be a lid with two holes in it right and one side would be recycling and one side would be trash and then you'd look inside and there was no divider yeah we were laughing about that like how funny that was i remember that it was just like it was just it It was complete placebo.

2:32:30Colin Moriarty:And I think to be fair, that's because I think California does. As far as I know, because it's not as enforced here as in other places, I feel like they actually like just go through the dumps and shit and they actually like maybe like separate it from like they do it on the other end, I think, as far as I know, because otherwise like I've not been told to like recycle anything. There's no like designated recycling place where I'm at. So like it just kind of feels like they just must handle it. well recycling is already separated like that anyway so yeah it could it could very well be that like recycling is often hand separated with metal and glass and all that kind of shit yeah so i mean i guess the point is though that like uh there's only so much that an individual really can do in the grand scheme because a lot like the overwhelming majority it's why it always bothers me when like companies try to off off shoot that shit on the on the consumers as if consumers have any real control over how much damage they do to the environment like compared to them like it's it's absurd it's your responsibility yeah it's way more than ours yeah i agree we need better like business stewards governmental stewards of of all these kinds of things the reason that i honestly i and i i do mean this is that i don't really worry too much about the the ultimate climate like um you know fate of the earth i just think technology will ultimately solve all this shit i do believe that like i i do believe that like we'll be able to seed weather control weather suck carbon you know scrub carbon out of the atmosphere and do all these kinds of things in the decades to come and like it's just it's not ideal but like we'll be able to do whatever we want we'll have complete dominion on like i think within 100 years we'll have pretty much complete dominion over all of it so i don't worry about it from that perspective yeah and on that note that's all we have for the news all right my friends let's get into what we're playing i'll go first and get out of the way quick i'm still playing the same three games ghost of yote power wash simulator 2 plants versus zombies replanted so ghost of yote i beat it uh i'm just kind of going through the collectibles you have to play your shamisen and get guided to all the different things that you've missed so it's just a little bit time consuming but um i'm probably a few hours away from having the platinum and i might even sit down tonight and do it um so there's that and then power wash simulator 2 I'm probably 30 hours or so into it now, maybe two thirds of the way through the game.

2:34:57I love it. It's fun. It's just power wash simulator. There's really not much more to say about it than that. Chris Merchant wrote in and said, hello guys, Colin is a fellow power wash entrepreneur. I was just wondering what your favorite washer is. Do you always use soap? What is your favorite attachment? The biggest question, how do you wash? Do you concentrate on one section at a time or do you just let your mind wander to different parts? personally I like to do corners and recesses first then fill in the gaps keep feeding that family I don't get too wet thank you I am doing my very I'm doing my level best to just take whatever jobs come my way and you guys get it you know like I'm not there to ask any questions I'm not there to know too much about what the fuck what why is this religious temple covered in shit I'm not here your money's green right and I have the I have the equipment to take care of this and so I do it What I'm using right now is the Prime Vista 3000.

2:35:54Thank you for asking. And it's a wonderful power washer. And as far as soap, so they've simplified the soap gameplay in Power Wash Simulator 2. In the original Power Wash Simulator, you had different soaps and oils for different, like you had like one for plastics, one for metals, one for, and that was annoying as fuck. And so with this, you just have soap. and when there's some stingy dirt and grime, you just hit it with the soap and then you hit. So yeah, you got it. You have to use the soap, but I don't always use soap. No, you don't need to get crazy with it. I just use soap when it's necessary.

2:36:28And then favorite attachment. I actually, I prefer not to use any attachments if I can, if I can possibly help it and just be up as close to the surface as I possibly can be to get, just get the dirt. But if you have, you're far away, if it's high up, you know, you use the one X, two X one. So I'm, I'm fine with that. I really just like using it straight up, no attachment. And then what else did you ask here? Oh, and so I like to just do section by section. I don't like, so I like to like clear out a little section, make that all clean, then go to the next section if it's rooms, you know, you do one room in its entirety and so on, and then you go back and clean things up.

2:37:00So I'm doing the best I can. The business is thriving and there's some sort of story, but I'm not following it. As far as Plants vs. Zombies replanted, I beat it and I'm doing the new game plus stuff now, which is just a much harder version of the same game. and I'm really enjoying that. Jacob wrote in and said, Colin, as seemingly one of the few other Plants vs. Zombies replanted enjoyers, I wanted to get your opinion on the hatred unleashed on this game before and after its release. Now that the AI and dynamic music problems have been addressed, it seems people are focusing their outrage on the fact that some of the original dev team were willing to come work on the remaster in EA and PopCap elected not to bring them on board.

2:37:34My question is whether developers or publishers have an obligation to hire original staff members when developing a remaster. Personally, while I think it would have been a nice gesture, if that individual is no longer working at the studio, it is not an obligation for them to be involved. It seems the PVZ community is dogpiling on this game just when the franchise is starting to show signs of life again. Yeah, of course they don't have a duty to do that. And it's preposterous to assume that a game that you worked on almost 20 years ago because they're remaking it, you have some sort of right to come on and work on it again.

2:38:03It was a pop cap game. EA owns it. And, you know, it doesn't make it like the most savory and right thing, no. But there does seem to be like something, People just have something out for this game. I don't get it. It's just true. And I'm not saying it's not even a big thing because no one really gives a shit that it came out. But those that do care, there seems to be like a lot of griping about it. And again, I've played it extensively. I'm enjoying it. I don't see the problem. So yeah, maybe the well was poisoned a little bit. Who knows? All right. Oh, and John wrote in before I kick off and says, Colin, given everything that's going on with the New York City mayoral election and everything that is happening across the country when it comes to snap benefits and the debate around it.

2:38:45It seems like you've been awfully quiet. And I feel like the entire LSM community needs to know something. When are you going to play Dying Light the Beast?

2:38:54It looks so good. I feel like such a scrub having not beaten Dying Light 2. Like I can't just jump into the good Dying Light again. I have to play the bad Dying Light first. I think Dying Light 2 wasn't bad. What'd you say? I think they did extensive changes to Dying Light 2 since you played it. Yeah, I think they did too. So I have to go back because I've lamented this before. I love Dying Light. Dying Light 1 is fucking awesome. I 100 % endorse that game. You guys have played it, right? I played a little bit of it.

2:39:26Colin Moriarty:I didn't get too far into it because there's something about it. I liked it from what I played, but it didn't hold my attention for that long. Oh, dude, I loved it. I was like, wow. I had no idea Techland can make a game that like that, you know, like no wonder they didn't. Yeah, it's impressive for Techland for sure. Like, especially considering like where they like the perception that that studio had at the time. You know, it was definitely impressive. I think I think that game came out. When was Dying Light? When was the original Dying Light? 2015. 2015. Yeah, that might have been around the time where I was like.

2:40:04Colin Moriarty:Zombies weren't overdone, but they were recent. you know it was like recently kind of an overman thing and i wasn't looking to necessarily dive back into that place it's been a while though and i did like what i played of dead island too yeah dead island i i that's the funny thing is like i only played dead island one and i i didn't play it all the way through and i was just like damn i don't really it was very like lumbering and like there was so many things to open and grab and it was just like constantly collecting shit and i was like what is good like let me play the game yeah and i always remember dying light as just it's like damn you have this game has no business being this good like it's it's so i highly recommend it and when dialy two finally came out because to the techlands credit like they really supported dialy one for a long time and that game is a huge hit it might have sold i don't want to throw a crazy number out there might be something like 20 million copies or something um so like the first time lights a massive hit let's see yeah by april 2022 the game had sold 20 million units so not a small hit that's a big hit like a call of duty level hit once of course not every year and then dying light 2 finally came out and i just wasn't into it yeah i was like i don't know just i was expecting so much of it and so people are saying this beast game is supposed to be like the original one and i'm not even really sure what that means I know it's got the same Kyle Crane I think Kyle Crane yeah which is crazy that I remember that that is his name but yeah every time I see gameplay of it I think this looks cool and I think I would like it but like I don't know like I had the same kind of experience with Dying Light 2 where I started and I was like nothing about it was bad but I just was not I don't know maybe you had the same feeling Colin but I just wasn't into it like I don't know I was just kind of my eyes were glazed as I was like playing it like I just didn't feel like I don't know.

2:41:57Times are different.

2:41:58Colin Moriarty:Yeah. 2015. It's probably better now though. 2015 was interesting because that was, that was interesting for open world games because it was, it was like Dying Light, The Witcher 3, Batman Arkham Knight. One just came to mind. Mad Max is in there. That doesn't really count. I mean, that is an open world, but no one really played it. And a few others. And so, yeah, there was like a, there's like a feeling of, oh fallout 4 there's a feeling of uh maybe it's just 10 years later and things are just expectations are different now and we're it's not so exciting anymore um yeah anyway all right chris let's go over to you mega maddie wrote in and said hey sacred souls chris you succulent son of colin i saw that you decided to give dispatch a go which is interesting because i know these kinds of games don't always click with you i myself am waiting until all the episodes are out to play but how are you liking it so far it just recently was announced that the game had sold 1 million copies already pretty good for this kind of game and and for ad hoc thanks i'll go dispatch all over blonde blazer's chest and listen i mean do you have to yeah you can relax man yeah relax a little bit yeah um yeah i don't know why i i think i saw i saw clips of it and i was like this is really well animated like whatever this is like it's a telltale kind of game for just to set things up it's it's very much like uh you're watching kind of a show and you you choose dialogue options there's like some quick time events and there's like a like a mini game component to it there's two game there's two primary game components to it and by by primary game components i mean like gameplay oriented components that aren't quick time or dialogue choices there's this like kind of like hacking mini game that's that's kind of fun it's like very simple but it's it's it's it's engaging and it's got it's got a vibe to it and then there's the actual like dispatch gameplay which is like it's it's like resource management it's like you know you've got a team of heroes they have different stats and you know calls will come in that require you know there's like a burglary so this requires strength and speed with to apprehend the burglar or to catch up with them and so you pick the heroes that have the stats that are allocated to that best and there's like kind of like a random chance kind of minigame that happens and it really is just about the whole game is just that and it's it's held together by it's separated by a morning shift and an afternoon shift and then in between before and after are like story heavy segments that sometimes have quick time events oftentimes have dialogue choices and things like that i think the thing that got me to play it was just like i i kept seeing bits of it that looked almost too good to be a telltale game like i'm used to telltale games and telltale animation you know what i mean like that stilted like janky like completely fucked look that like it works because those games are written so well and i was like looking i was like this is kind of a huge step up i because i remember i really did enjoy the first season of the walking dead i earnestly really thought that was fantastic like when i first played it i'm not really into these types of games but and and and i've gotten into them since like i enjoyed detroit become human as well so like it's not that i don't like these kinds of games it's just that more often than not they they just kind of miss for me and this one kept popping up on my timeline and i was like you know what i'll i'll give it a go i'm i'm kind of in the mood for something like this i haven't played a game like this in a long time i'll give it a go and they're doing kind of like an episodic release structure so every week i think two episodes drop so it's not quite as grueling as like the one episode because by the time i'm done i feel kind of satiated and uh there is like a nice little break there but i think it's on episode five and six now which i and i think there's either there's either two more episodes or two more weeks so batches of two i'm not super sure exactly i think i think it said it in the menu but i didn't i didn't read it too carefully and So I'm pretty deep into the season or whatever you would want to call it.

2:46:08Colin Moriarty:And I like it. I think it's pretty good. I think the animation quality is like really high. I think some of the voice cast really nails it. It's really weird though, because I know some of the people in there, like I chart moist criticals in it. And I can't, it's like, I, I, I know you, like I've like, you're, you're, I, I cannot see you as this person necessarily. And there's other people like that too. But I think Aaron Paul, so like Jesse from Breaking Bad is the main guy. And I think he does a really great job. And it's weird. Like a game like this is really dependent on writing. And it is written.

2:46:44Colin Moriarty:The writing is definitely hit or miss. I've definitely had heard some lines of dialogue where it's just like I cringe a little bit or like, oh, that's not written too well. Or there's moments in particular where the game tries to really convince you that it's like a game for adults. so there's like there's like strings or there's just lots of profanity and it like i don't really care about that but it does feel like it's trying to be taken more in like it's trying to be viewed as more adult than it is in some ways because the more you use profanity the more like juvenile things kind of tend to feel so it's kind of weird like i get it but like it's it kind of misses for me sometimes a lot of the characters are kind of similar in the sense that like you're working with a team of super villains to try to rehabilitate them so like they're all they're all kind of written like ellie in the first last of us game you know where it's just kind of like fuck you like i'm not they're written like teenagers which is weird because they're clearly not they're like a lot of them are like adults but like it does it's this weird thing where it's like this this doesn't work because they're not teenagers these are adults they should they should know better but but on the other hand they are super villains so it like it makes some level of like i don't like that it makes sense that they're just complete dicks it's it's this weird kind of I'm kind of bouncing around how I feel about that.

2:48:14Colin Moriarty:But the main crux of it, like the main, like the main characters that you're meant to focus on and the and the the writing between them and the interactions between them and the the the relationships between them are compelling to me. Like I find myself at the end of every episode with like a bunch of really small complaints about like, oh, that moment was kind of forced or this moment was like kind of not well written. but at the end of it i'm always like looking forward to the next episode which i think says something about it um it's far from flawless it's arguably parts of it are barely a game but it is cool i think if you're a telltale kind of guy if you if you like these types of things i think it's i i don't think it would i don't think you'd be disappointed necessarily in checking it out because there is like a compelling thing here it is somewhat predictable it is built off of the bones of i would say like invincible if you've seen invincible it is kind of that vibe but it's good i think the cast looks like it looks like invincible it looks great like when you're playing it you're just you're you're kind of like damn they really did a really great job animating these things there's like there's there's some combat scenes that look great um and it's weird like uh a lot of games try to do this like 3d animation type stuff i don't know if you dustin are you are you familiar with like ruby you know like how like they tried to do like um oh yeah oh rooster teeth yeah like a lot of companies try to do this thing where there's like it's a 3d game but it's trying to look 2d and it doesn't really work that well but in but this is like the best i've seen at work where like it does feel like i'm watching an animated cartoon or like it like almost more of like an anime than it then it feels like i'm watching people fuck around in gary's mod or something you know like it feels more convincing and and polished so it's good i'm liking it so far i can't speak to it really because it's not over so it very well could like completely drop the ball in the last um in the last bit but the the parts of it that should hit for a game like this to work well i think are hitting well enough to the point where like yeah it's i don't regret my time with dispatch and i am i'm looking forward to seeing how it how it ends even though i think i have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen but that kind of remains to be seen i'll i'll follow up obviously next time which i think may very well be the last it might be the finale so i'll have more to say about it next week but i like it it's pretty good and then arc raiders yeah yeah you guys are both playing this so yeah chris what do you think of this yeah so i just i did play a little bit of the alpha and i I did play a little bit of the server slam while I was in New York.

2:51:00Colin Moriarty:I played it on my laptop, which is not capable of running it all that well. So I didn't have much to say about it when I tried it out. But I've put a couple hours in. I've played with some people. I've played some solo rounds with some proximity voice on. And it's good. It feels good to play. It feels good to move around. It's like a compelling space. I like the look of everything. like it looks very there's something to the look of it I don't even know if maybe Dustin will be able to put it better but like there's there's it's really rich in detail without being too busy like I don't know how to describe it like it's got like a really good balance of like high detail some really really good looking environments but like readability is still very high like you know where your enemies are and that sort of thing it's i enjoy it i like moving through through the play space and like fighting ai and working together with players like some of the most fun i've had in this game is actually in solo where i'm just like i'm on mic and i'm like hey friendly friendly and we're just you know we're just where you just kind of form this makeshift squad out of out of a bunch of solo people and you're just kind of working together and trying to extract with a bunch of stuff and i found that really fun uh the pvp is kind of where it loses me and i kind of figured this would happen but like i've already had like two experiences where like i've got some good shit i'm going to extract and then somebody pops out from behind a corner and kills me immediately and it's like oh well yeah you saw me you saw me from around the corner because it's a third person it's a third person game so i i'm realizing as i'm playing it like i enjoy the experience of playing this game i enjoy the experience of like running through and looting a bunch of stuff but i there's a wall in like built into this game preventing me from taking it too seriously and preventing me from caring about the stuff that i'm extracting with because i know that at any point it can be taken from me in a way that is completely out of my control and so that's kind of so i'm playing it kind of casually in some way like i'm almost just kind of going in with nothing and just like if i find cool shit cool but i assume it's gone like i just like the second i find something cool i'm like i i assume it's it's gone if i can't put it in like there's a pocket in your inventory that is a safe pocket so like if you have something the prison wallet yeah that is cool That's what we call it when we play.

2:53:39Colin Moriarty:Well, it is crazy. But yeah, so like that, that kind of, that does alleviate it a little bit. And there's certain elements to it that I think are a little bit overcomplicated for its own good. Like there's like, so there's different, I don't even know what you would call it. There's a term for it in the game, but there's like a combat version. There's a tactical version. And then there's a looting version. And this basically sets up what your backpack looks like and that kind of thing and what you're prepared to use. There are shield mechanics in this game. So you pick up a light shield and a medium shield and presumably a heavy shield.

2:54:17Colin Moriarty:I haven't seen a heavy shield. But if you don't have the right backpack, you can't use a medium shield. which to me feels like needlessly complicated considering the type of game it is and there's like a whole like build out your base mechanic where you got to like build a workbench and and there's a chicken battle pass thing that like you after every thing after every round like he comes back with a bunch of materials and you can train him and those aspects i'm significantly less interested in i don't give a shit about crafting i do it because you kind of have to in this game sometimes when you're out of certain things but like i'm not really into that aspect of it it's weird i enjoy it and i'm going to keep playing it i'm gonna get some get some people together to keep playing and i i do enjoy it but the more i play it truthfully the more excited i get about getting back to marathon whenever that happens because that was like when i was really like when i cared about the shit that i was getting because i just knew that it wasn't going to be some like oh there wasn't going to be some third person like corner peeking going on to to fuck me over in some way like you would still get fucked over it's an extraction shooter it's built into it but it would at least feel more competitive and a little bit more fair and i'm just more of a first person shooter guy so like i think it's it's getting me excited to get back into marathon but arc raiders is very good and i would recommend it as like if you're curious about extraction shooters i think this is a great one to get into because like there are complication there are complicated areas about it that are needlessly over overwrought but the the core game is like very simple and it is fun and the proximity chat is very fun like prox chat in this game is awesome and i'm a big fan of it i it should be in all of these games i can't believe marathon was even considering not doing it it's such a core part of the experience so yeah i'm sure dustin has a lot more to say about it too but uh so i'll kick it over to him and we can maybe go back and forth but it's good yeah i do recommend it especially for 40 bucks I think it's kind of a steal, you know?

2:56:25Colin Moriarty:Yeah. So I'm looking at my steam. I have 13 hours in arc Raiders and I like it a lot. I don't think I like it as much as a lot of people, but as I'm playing more, I am liking it more. I think what I've realized and Chris, you were touching on this is that. This is a game being this an extraction shooter that gives and takes regularly where and as annoying as this sounds, arc raiders is the most fun when you're winning and it's not fun when you're losing. Yeah, like that's exactly that's extraction. It's not like, dude, Battlefield. There's games where I've lost really bad or the team loses really bad and you still had a great time playing.

2:57:16Colin Moriarty:there are points in this game where you do either like there's a super powerful arc that's the name of the robots or the drones or whatever they're called arcs where you just are in a bad spot and you're like ah I had some good stuff this fucking sucks I gotta tell you guys arc raiders is bringing back toxic dustin a little bit and it kind of feels good feels good I was playing with Brandon and these guys came up and we try to be friendly like we usually we're like calling out we're like hey we're just doing our thing be cool like we're we're friendly sometimes people don't listen to that and they started shooting me i got downed and right as i got downed an arc the big i think chris you'll know that i think it's either the the rocketeer or the bombardier or something yeah yeah this giant arc drone that shoots rockets came rolling up and just fucking obliterated these two dudes so i'm on the calm i'm like yeah how does that feel you fucking idiot how did it feel how's it feel now i'm getting revived and then i i we executed these guys in the most wild taunting them because they didn't have to attack me right it's fun dude it's fun and that's the most fun part of this game and what i'm finding so surprising is that there are a lot of very friendly people in this game you you can technically play this game without a microphone but you are missing out on a huge part of the experience it might in particular my favorite part of the experience is that you'll run into people have a little friendly conversation you know maybe some people are even like hey are you looking for this i've got some or do you have this and you have a little trade uh there are crazy people where they'll act nice at first and then betray you but that's that's good shit that is an element where sometimes i i should revise what i said earlier sometimes you can lose and it is fun if there's a good social element to it and often there is i was playing with ben last night and this guy open ben was like oh i see a guy and another guy opened the door immediately started shooting so we were like oh hey hey calm down hey and the guy was like oh sorry we're good we're good and Ben's like my fucking kneecaps aren't good bro you just took out half my health luckily they were cool but dude in the clips of this game some of the stuff that people are saying in this game is so funny there was a guy it's like hey I'm just over here I'm picking olives don't bother me he's like oh no worries someone asked me to come fix a TV over here and just watch out because there's a pedophile back there that offered me a prickly pear and then just walks away so there's like there's people that are roleplaying and being weird in this game in a very good way so it is a little confusing a little complicated i think it's because i don't have a lot of experience with extraction shooters outside of i played a little bit of the call of duty one and i played a little bit of delta force but i've never played tarkov or anything like that yeah uh but i'm starting to understand the the flow and honestly a lot of these games, there's missions and stuff that you can do.

3:00:37Colin Moriarty:Some of them are there. It's like, go here, do this, collect this thing. They're not terribly exciting, but I'm mostly just in for the craziness of you'll, you'll never know what's going to happen in this game. It has a lot of emergent gameplay, whether it's with other players that, uh, could be cool, could not be cool or the arcs themselves that's the other thing this game the ai are not necessarily easy there are like basic drones that roll around or there's like these like little robot balls yeah they're around i think they're called yeah yeah they'll try to kill you and they explode but there are some stuff that it's like when you see them if if they sneak up on you're like oh shit run away there's sin it feels like cinematic moments where you're trying to get out you call the elevator there's a million drones on you you're downed you can still escape though if you're able to sneak in at the last second and it gives and takes sometimes you have the amazing cinematic moment that you just barely get out and everyone's cheering and you're happy i had there's i had one of those where i was like i was doing solo and then like i was like hiding behind a thing and there was like a lot of ai or whatever around this thing and there was a team extracting and i was like fuck i can't and then the thing started closing because there's like a basically like a kind of like a this weird building that kind of like you have to go in and then you extract and then the door comes up from the bottom and i like just i it was like just closing and i dove in and i made it in and i was like that was fucking mega satisfying there's a it's a really everything you're saying is is true it's just it's fun the people on comms are great at some guy shoot me and he was like you know i had to do this right it's a hard world out here i'm so sorry there's like i got kids i'm just i'm just trying to feed my kids let me out of here please please it's fun dude it's it's it's fun stuff um yeah again it's i have to play it casually to for my own sanity also i don't know if you felt this dustin like i don't know you you have more hours in the game than I do because I think I'm only like five hours and so I haven't there's a bunch of there's a couple maps I haven't unlocked for instance yeah but I haven't I haven't found anything particularly exciting loot wise you know what I mean like I'm extracting with a bunch of stuff that like it tells me it's important or like it's like a okay this is a crafting material that i can use for something but like i haven't found like i don't know a gun that does a crazy thing you know what i mean or like uh right that's kind of the thing for me where i'm like i don't know if i don't know if maybe that's just like later on in the game or whatever but that's kind of the only thing that i feel is kind of missing right now is like there's not really i haven't died and been like oh i lost something that i really regret losing you know yeah i have found like Like there's a few guns.

3:03:36Colin Moriarty:They're not like crazy, but they are. I've never seen them before and I'm not able to make them or buy them. Like I have a sniper rifle with a scope that I found on someone's body that killed me or was trying to kill me. And then I like threw a grenade and took him out. And of course, I was taunting them as I killed them. But I extracted with this sniper rifle and now I'm too scared to use it. Yeah, that. Yeah. I'm like, I'm not taking this in. But what am I? I mean, at some point I just got to be like, OK, well, I'm taking this in. If I lose it, whatever. but that is part of the experience man like i do i got that a lot in marathon where i was like i found a shotgun that i never found before and it was like a crazy cool fucking thing and i was like i am never using this i'm not using this until i find another one basically and that's kind of that's kind of built into the gameplay i guess but yeah i'm still waiting to find like because i've just found the same weapons over and over again i'm like damn i really want like a i would love a sniper rifle dude a sniper rifle in a game like this is yeah i gotta go in and like diabolical level like just snipe people and piss people off greatly so dude it is funny who you who you play this game with and you read how they play it says a lot about them i played duos with lock mort and lock mort was actively encouraging me to kill people and he's like oh well we could tell these guys that we're friendly and then just kill them like lock he's uh he's the crazy one so beware is it any surprise though lock wants to actively murder innocent people yeah we gotta that would be a fun um stream idea oh yeah we should definitely be fun to i know it's not colin's kind of game he doesn't want to play multiplayer but i'd be curious for the colin's experience in the social environment like like talking to these people we get stream snipe maybe yeah is that possible yeah it's possible um all right let's cut back into the show now we're back to the end of the show six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas from the audience over on patreon patreon.com slash last day media we put up the thread for this show and all the other shows every week you submit your inquiries to those threads in the news feed on patreon we go through them you've heard some throughout the show here are six more We begin with Eugene Acca says, good day, SS crew.

3:05:56Looking back about 10 to 15 years ago, are games about where you expected them to be now or maybe behind in some ways and more advanced than others? What types of advancements would you like to see in the next 10 years into the next generation? Thank you. Thank you all for the subpar show. I'll slip my head and listen. Thank you for writing in. It's funny. I was thinking the biggest thing that I want added to games over the next 10 years is dynamic pricing and so I hope that that's what they add into it this is a really interesting question Eugene are let's go to you first are games where you expected them to be like looking back through your previous iteration self

3:06:43Colin Moriarty:I think so because i'm thinking i remember when like before mag came out and it's like whoa this multiplayer game has over a hundred players in it stuff like that it's like 256 oh it's 256 okay so i guess that's still pretty monumental because i i think now like oh we've got we've got multiplayer games now like it's i don't say it's standard but many games that do 100 plus players for battle royale um and it is cool to see that kind of innovation and i get i mean it is there's obviously a technological aspect of it but we were just talking about a game like arc raiders and just telling someone about a game like that uh from a lot like being like oh yeah there's a game where you have to collect materials and here's other players on the map and you're there'll be standoffs and stuff.

3:07:40Colin Moriarty:It's like, whoa, that's pretty cool. So I think in that way, it's like, yeah, there's been some cool innovations in other ways. I think some things are still set in the same way. Maybe this is a little on the nose, but I still can't stand. And I know that developers have argued there's a gameplay reason, but it's like, why am I going through this tight space between two rocks again and again and again or something like that that's like uh I know the game not isn't even necessarily loading but there's some some way where I'm like there's got to be a different way to do certain things from a tech perspective we the 4k era is mostly here we're not running games natively in 4k and I guess one area we have seen a lot of progress in a way that I'm super happy about is that people just care about frame rates so much more than they used to.

3:08:46Colin Moriarty:Where we're now, we're getting console games that are beyond 60 FPS. Of course, that's been the case on PC for years, but you can run Battlefield 6 at, I think it runs at like 80 or 90 FPS on PS5 Pro and the unlocked frame rate with TVs that support 120 FPS. And so I absolutely love that. And in a way to, I guess to cover all of our different bases, like we have games like Baldur's gate three, which, you know, whether or not you're into the gameplay or not of that game is probably one of the most immersive, make your own story adventure games that has been created yet, where it feels like it's limitless and what you can, in what direction you want to take the story.

3:09:32Colin Moriarty:Obviously, it is limited. As far as what I want to see in the future, that's a much harder question to me. It's obvious that we're going to start getting a lot more AI stuff in games. And I think we need to be partially more open to that. so to be 100 clear i'm not talking about generative ai assets and stuff like that i that's going to happen i think we should continue to resist that but i've said this on sacred before that i'm open to the idea and i don't want this for every game of ai characters in games that can respond to you in in theory an infinite amount of different ways i like the idea the way that my compromise in my brain is like you can have a writer who writes the character writes their entire backstory writes insane amounts of dialogue and then and a could and like an ai you know a large language model then take all of that in and then when you're in an rpg that character can react to exactly what you're doing or what you say back to it kind of interesting idea i think it would be an interesting way to have that medium where it's like this is still very much a character that is created by a human and even maybe in the main story parts of the game has dialogue written by a person in the way that we've always done things, but could be more immersive at some point.

3:11:22Colin Moriarty:I'm open to the idea of it. I think it will probably be extremely clunky for a while, but, uh, I think that AI is going to play a much bigger part in all, whether it's development or how we interact with games or even just smarter enemies in games through AI could be pretty interesting. Chris, anything you want to add about where are games where you thought they might be? If you can look back through your previous self. Certainly not. Certainly not. I definitely didn't think, you know, oh yeah, it's 2007 and these games are getting there pretty good, but oh boy, you know what? I bet in 15 years, games are going to launch with one mode only you know like that's certainly like there's an argument to be made like look there's a there's a lot of cool things that have happened i'm not i'm not gonna like pretend like that's not the case there's a lot of fantastic games that just could not have existed before um but as far as like the multiplayer space goes like i do think there is something to be said about like you know in the 2000s or even in the early 2010s something like i don't know a battle royale or like an extraction game like that would have been a game mode in a far larger pie you know like even even something like um like halo infinite release releasing as a free-to-play game but somehow not launching with the Prime playlist, which was like Team Slayer at the time.

3:13:00Colin Moriarty:I remember specifically it launched without Team Slayer and everybody was like, why would you why the fuck would you not launch with this? And they're like, oh, we're trying to figure out how to get it in. And it's like, what? The Team Slayer? That's insane. And I think about that a lot where it's just like, man, this even Marathon or Arc Raiders, like, man, I'm paying 40 bucks or whatever price for like one game mode, really. like that's kind of incomprehensible when you think about it from like the framework of like you know the original gears or uncharted or or any number of other games that we used to play back in the day so in some ways i think we've fallen far short of expectations um and in other ways i think we've exceeded them i think uh you know just the the realities of hardware i think again the hundred player lobbies is cool i think you know proximity chat and a lot of these places are cool although proximity chat used to be here in the 2000s and then it left arbitrarily for no reason so like that's another thing where where it's like um because i remember halo 2 had proximity chat and it was awesome so like i don't know um it's it's kind of a mixed bag i feel like uh in more cases than not though like i am i am somewhat disappointed with the evolution that the industry has taken in the sense that i i think we get far fewer unique feeling experiences i think we get a lot more games where there's they're really bloated uh there's not a lot of fat trimmed from these things and then also like a lot of games are starting to feel the same largely because engine consolidation is starting to happen you're starting to see fewer and fewer bespoke engines out in the out in the wild now you're seeing like you know witcher is going to be an unreal and halo is going to be an unreal and you know all of these different things where you're not going to get red engine you're not going to get the the blam engine you're not going to get uh for uh or i guess marathon is is still running on tiger which is uh you know the destiny 2 engine so there's there's that but i mean you know you're seeing a larger consolidation of these things which is ultimately going to make a lot of things look and feel a lot more similar than they ever have you're not going to have these weird like quirks that are unique to the hitman engine that are that are unique to the havoc physics engine that are unique to you know whatever naughty dog's using and even even gorilla with um um oh my god what is what is the i'm I'm blanking on the name of the gorilla engine.

3:15:16Colin Moriarty:What is it? That's branding. Decima, you know, Decima has got its own quirks and you know, that's, that's nice and that's cool. But like what happens when Decima is deemed too unruly or whatever? Like, are we, are we going to, are we going to see that go to unreal eventually? I don't know, man. It's, it's just, um, there, I, I have, I have concerns and, and some disappointments, but generally speaking, I think things are, things are in a decent place. You're still getting really, really great games. I think in the last couple of years in particular, like since 2022 and onward um arguably 2021 as well like we've just gotten i would argue like really generationally like fantastic years like kind of back to back to back and so that's cool and i can't i can't shit on that really as far as like where games are going to be going i definitely think ai is going to be a huge part of it i wonder i wonder if vr or ar particularly ar i wonder if ar has a future augmented reality um i wonder if that can pick up pick up the slack in areas that if vr has particularly stagnated in um i wonder how compact those will eventually be if investment in them will continue um i wonder how the economic realities of free-to-play will impact the industry like i wonder if we're going to be in a race to the bottom or not or whether whether or not we'll we'll have the sense to kind of pull away from that i i don't know the future is going to look weird i do think we are going to be in a place though in 15 years where we're going to have kind of if not a single screen experience something damn near damn close to it where i don't think we're gonna have necessarily bespoke console boxes i think if anything it'll be like equivalent to like a dongle is today or like like a chip is today or like a or like a subscription is today it's like you'll subscribe to playstation or you'll subscribe to xbox or whatever um and you'll get your you'll get your shit i think nintendo will still somehow be selling consoles though even when everybody else has maybe left it in the back.

3:17:26They're certainly going to be the last ones to change. Yeah. Pinecone Steve wrote in. Pinecone Steve said, Hey, my big beauty babies. Greetings from Madison, Wisconsin. With the days getting shorter as we approach the holidays and work piling up, I'm in retail advertising. I've been thinking a lot about time as a resource and how that affects the kinds of games I gravitate towards in today's attention economy. Lately, I've been hooked on Ball Pit, another roguelike survivor like and i realized that most of my favorite games this year hades to ball pit absalom all scratched the same quick hit dopamine itch meanwhile the big blockbusters like death stranding 2 and ghost of yote while undeniably impressive leave me feeling kind of empty at first i figured i just preferred instant action and gameplay over story i get my narrative fixed from books or film but ball pits casino style lights and sounds made me wonder if my brain has just quietly rotted from dopamine loops so i'm curious what do you think this shift means for the industry as free to play in smaller scale games capture more attention and giant blockbusters that demand your time and patience get riskier and more expensive where does that leave both players and developers anyway i'll keep searching for the light in these dark days keep on keeping on thank you pinecone steve for writing in um you could be brain broken i talk all the time and again on that recent podcast i did an appearance i did i talked about how brain broken i think i am about a lot of things like and i've lamented many times in the show i'm not really lamented i'm glad it's like man if i was a kid today i'd be so fucking broken i'm very very lucky i had to like use dial-up internet and shit even like when it was the best time so people are broken in different ways now and i am not amongst the immune i am definitely one of the broken people but i'm fascinated by this cycle of games that are coming and going and my one of the new thesis I'm working on, or at least like this thing I want to focus in on more is this notion that everything is temporary now and games have always been temporary, but like even the biggest, most anticipated, hungriest kind of game, you know, game with the hungriest audience rather just seem to come and go.

3:19:35You know, one of the things that I find really interesting is what's going on with Hollow Night Silksong. A game that has both sold an enormous number of copies and is a smash critical and commercial hit. And also a game that is completely out of the zeitgeist. Like not widely discussed, not even in the top 20 downloaded games on PSN for PS5 in October. Things still do well, but it happens quickly and then it's over. And that seems to be the biggest problem for games of all sizes. And in fact, might hurt the smaller games more because there's less on the bone and they go away quicker. So I think Pinecone Steve, this is a complicated issue.

3:20:29And I think it's up to personal taste. I personally find that for me, I'm playing games more deeply, longer gameplay sessions, all the rest than I've ever had in my life. But at the same time, I'm also attracted to the quick hits. And I get it. and that's kind of where Plants vs. Zombies is fitting into my game schedule right now as I play something. Like Powerwatch Simulator, if you want to do Powerwatch Simulator 2, if you want to do one of the bigger maps, it could take you three hours. Like legit, three hours will just go by. And that's a lot to ask for a person. And then of course, all these other games that we were talking about, Arc Raiders earlier, and games that kind of suck up your time.

3:21:02The thing that I'm thinking about right now, guys, and I don't know if you have anything you want to add, but the thing I'm thinking about right now is just the conveyor belt. it's so fast it's like lucy here's another timely reference for you chris it's like i love lucy when she's in the chocolate fat like the chocolate you know all and the conveyor belt keeps going and she's shoving the things in her mouth and in the pockets and all it's like it's it's crazy and that's and and nothing's immune to it grand theft auto might be one of the very rare games that will be immune to the churn, but everything is getting churned into oblivion.

3:21:38And games that would have been huge 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, ubiquitously are just gone. Even think about games that are like, so like the dominated, the perception zeitgeist this year, like Expedition 33, even that's kind of tamped down a lot. So I don't know. That's where I'm at on that. Do you have anything you guys want to add before we move on?

3:22:02Colin Moriarty:I definitely understand the pool to the dopamine hit games because this is happening to me where I guess I should have talked about this earlier in the what you've been playing section, but I am still playing Ghost of Yote. I am so bored by it, though, and there's nothing wrong with it. When I play it, I'm like, this is well, my problem actually with Ghost of Yote recently is that I feel like there's the cycle of every mission where it's like, OK, I go here. I talk to this person. We have to walk and talk for about five minutes. Then maybe I do a little stealth thing. And then we get somewhere and there's a battle and then the mission's over and repeat that process throughout the entire game.

3:22:48Colin Moriarty:And I'm at the point where I'm satiated. And so when I sit down to play, I'm like, ah, when I start the next mission in Yote, I got to travel somewhere. I got to talk to someone, sit through the cut scene. then we got to walk and talk for a little bit maybe climb up the side of a cliff for a little bit do a little you know it's just this process i'm like ah i'd rather play ball pit and then immediately get as a pine pine cone steve mentions the uh i think he mentioned like the uh the quick dopamine hit it's like a it's like a slot machine you know so i understand that draw and it has affected my gaming habits to some degree where me and maybe it's just a case with ghost of yote where maybe i've taken too long to play it and so i'm just losing general interest that's a huge possibility but i try to balance it out uh and i i've talked about this call of duty where i hit a point where i can play call of duty and even though i'm having fun I feel like I'm wasting my time which is funny because we're talking about video games which I don't think you know you know what I mean in general but I get to a point of Call of Duty I'm like I should be playing other games right now because I could just sit and endlessly feel the dopamine of getting a kill streak over and over and over again so it's it sucks we're dying and we are slaves to our own brain

3:24:25Colin Moriarty:i i don't know man like i think i i get it i get where i get where this guy's coming from but on some level i it always makes me laugh when people are like oh man you know like i'm not playing the big stuff and i'm only playing these like these dinky little things and it's like yeah but i mean like i don't know i i've always been like a narrative last kind of person anyway because narratives are the least unique thing about video games like they're literally an emulation of other media like it's emulation it's an emulation of a book a tv show a movie or whatever and they're really cool in the way that you interact with them because like no other medium is interactive in the same way but i would really argue that like the prime differentiator of something like a video game compared to a book or a movie is something like bollocks pit or the feeling that you get out of something like like a hades 2 run or something like that it's like it's it's so uniquely distinct from any other feeling that you're going to get from any other medium and so it's weird to me that those are treated as like the secondary kind of less important things in comparison to death stranding 2 and ghost of yote both of which i like it's just like i get it because it like it seems more serious or it seems more legitimate because it's you know it's got x actor in it and you know it's got like you know high fidelity graphics but i'm like i don't know man like i think i think having an interaction with like some random stranger in arc raiders through the comms is like a far more satisfying far more unique and far more distinct feeling than anything i'm going to get out of a narrative based game because that is something that will only happen in that one moment like you will in battlefield in battlefield you will only engage in a gunfight with that other player once in your entire life and then it's over and then by the way that game will die eventually and then you'll never be able to play it again that's why i think like i think about like if you if i missed out on alan wake right when it came out to play monday night combat or something i can play alan wake today monday night combat is dead and buried you know and i remember it And I remember the, like the experiences that I had, like in that game with like other people and like coordinating and like playing against other people and how weird it was.

3:26:46Colin Moriarty:And so, I don't know, I think, I don't think you are, you should feel bad about spending your time engaging with gameplay heavy story last kind of experiences, because in some ways I really, I really feel like those experiences are like quintessential video games and like the key reason why this medium even matters in the first place or why it's distinct in the first place. place it's cool to have those like those dopamine loops and and those types of gameplay loops transitioned into things that also fulfill uh you know the goals of something like a feature film or like a like a a novel or something something like death stranding and go see that those are those are cool and interesting and you know not worthless by any means but you shouldn't feel bad about not having the time to go through them in exchange for you know these smaller titles it's good shit bollocks pit is good enjoy your time with it dead rodent said hey colin game facts turns 30 this week we all know played a massive role in your life and career but do you have any thoughts as it celebrates this occasion i saw that um i wouldn't be doing this without game facts it's amazing the website still exists for people that don't know it, it's game GAMEFAQS.com.

3:28:06And it's the original owner of the site who ended up selling it to, um, I guess what would become CBS interactive. It was seen at the time. Um, Jeff VC, CJC was his tag. I actually, he was a very secretive, very mysterious person. And I did meet him, uh, at E3 in 2004. And we took a picture together. I don't know where that picture might be but we definitely did because I remember he would even turn his badge around so no one knew his name like he didn't want any and when he got an exit from the site I think that he got maybe made 10 or 20 million dollars nice payout he was like I'm out and then like no one ever heard from him again he used to update the site but like game facts is funny man because it's so quaint and it's so interesting that it still exists and it's so much more now than it used to be to the point where I feel like it's actually kind of lost its soul a little bit but I understand that they had to stay modern and with the times like when they started using html guides and all that it was all just text and and then they added the forums later on that was in 2000 i want to say when they added the forums and it was a great community and it's where i spent a lot of my time as a young person on the internet from 96 97 98 all the way through 2005 2006 and uh i really really loved it and And yeah, it's funny.

3:29:31So I was saying it was quaint. Like back in the day to get your guides on, you would have to download an FTP client and then upload your text in this very specific format to an FTP client. And then it would just get absorbed into the site manually. And you would like check the updates. They would update the site and put everything like manually that they updated and uploaded to the site. And it was so interesting. And I met a lot of really cool people and a few people that I still talk to to this day became pretty good friends with a couple of them in real life. a couple of them i even ended up working with at ign one of them a good friend of mine devin morgan who grew up in he was in new jersey when i was on long island he ended up being the administrator of the site for many years and worked for a game spot and i spoke to him pretty extensively last year i was good to catch up with him so game facts was a major part of my life it's cool that it's still going it is a little different though and i've said this in the past one of the things that i love about the internet are the old relics of the internet you know how like the space jam website famously still works that kind of shit oh yeah and game facts has really old shit on it from before the worldwide web even existed because the way that cjc would seed a lot people used to on usenet share like these documents about how to beat all these games whatever and he took a lot of those and uploaded them so if you go deep into some old games on like apple 2 or pc and spectrum and all these different things, you'll find documents that are literally dated from the eighties.

3:30:54And that's like crazy old in the digital world. And those things exist in the same with these weird email addresses and, and even my shit still exists on there, but it's, and it's old, but it's not as old as a lot of that stuff. And I, that's the stuff I really, really love. Um, and it says here actually, cause they posted this thing today, the top 10 legendary game facts contributors and some people were like why isn't colin on this i'm like dude you have no idea like there are people that that's why i always say i was i was good and i was i was i was nimble and all that but i was lucky too there were people that were really really prolific that i don't even know what the fuck they were doing other than writing on game facts just incredible amount of shit but they say here the oldest guide with a recognized date and author is game master's guide for the pc adventure game hollywood hijinks which was published on may 7th 1987 i mean you know I don't know if anyone agrees out there or feels it, but I'm like, that's so cool.

3:31:50That that thing has just been that thing percolated around for like for years. It's just it's exactly what it was. Who the hell even knows who that guy is? Game master was his title was his name when you can have basically any name and it wouldn't have been taken. So, yeah, shout out the game facts. Do you guys have any experience with it? I know you didn't upload things to it, but did you ever use it either to read old text documents or the infamous forums?

3:32:16Colin Moriarty:I'm sure I engaged with it a little bit like in the early 2000s, but not to any real. Like it wasn't like it wasn't. It wouldn't autofill. You know what I mean? Like it wasn't like a frequent thing. It was like occasionally I would be stuck on something and I would like I would Google like a fix for it. And GameFAQs would be like one of the first things that would pop up and I would read it. but I didn't have like a real relationship with the website in any, in any serious way. I think by the time I was old enough and paying attention deeply to this stuff, it was kind of things had migrated more towards social media and like YouTube stuff in general.

3:32:57Colin Moriarty:Like I found a lot of, that's how I found a lot of stuff was like YouTube guides or like people would, a lot of people in like comment sections and stuff. And I think there were like certain forums elsewhere. Maybe. I can't remember, man. It was so long ago. But I know I've had brief interactions with it. I know I used it quite regularly because when I was a kid, we were always looking up cheat codes on the Internet. And a lot of these sites were dude that we talked about ads earlier. It was like you might get a virus going to cheat code central or something like that. But GameFAQs had like its cheat lists, which was cool for if you want to do like big head mode or something in a game.

3:33:40Colin Moriarty:or we were always just, you know, screwing around to different games that had them. But and then, of course, I mean, the FAQ section is awesome. We use that regular or the not the FAQ, but the the guides is what I would say. Yeah, we're a huge resource. And I every once in a while will still search and find and use a guide from game FAQs for sure. It's a really, really important. it's like the most important thing to my like childhood online experience for sure it's cool to see it's still going on but again it's not the same it was like such a weird and interesting place for a long time though all right rob kvazner wrote in and said dear sacred men ghost of yote has an interesting feature where you can sensually blow into your controller when starting a campfire hypothetically who would lsm would surprise you the most if you learned that they preferred to use this feature can i i know what this question is asking yeah it's asking who at lsm wait is the most likely to be gay is that what they're asking blown on a controller why is it gay to blow on the controller i think you know the answer that okay fair enough i'm not blowing on would you blow on controller no i did blow on the i think i blew on the vita things before yeah i've blown on a few thing in here and there but blown on a thing or two in my time i think uncharted golden abyss required you to blow into the microphone on the vita if i recall i think did astro's playroom do that or no maybe oh yeah maybe there was there an option you got to do that you had to blow on astro for sure yeah i've blown astro yeah he's a robot it's fine by the way can i say something about about these like speaking of these features in in uh goes to yote the campfire cooking shit i skip it every time oh yeah me too me too i skip it every single time which begs the question why put any effort into making this at all if a sizable percentage of your player base is just going to skip it every single time i said uh i said on the spoiler cast that it's one of those things that um reeks of playtest where like that wasn't the case and then they did all the work and it was in the game and then they played it over and over again and it was normal to them and then when people started playing it they're like i don't want to do this and then they just put the x over it and that was that's my theory of the case there's another funniest part in the game i won't i won't it's not a spoiler for like the specific section but there's a part where you have to like shoot explosive barrels and it's like shoot these barrels you know and it'll help you escape from this this dire situation and dude i was hysterical on the talking about on the podcast and because everyone knew exactly what i was talking about on the podcast i was like there are so many barrels that you could tell that when they were playtesting it people kept failing over and over again to the point where it's like dude there are it's like every explosive like piece of uh speck of gun powder in all of japan is in this map and i was like dude it's so funny it's definitely like a playtesting and we were talking about the last of us waving you know in the beginning of the last of us when sarah dies and it's like oh you're walking and it's like there's all the shit pointing you in a certain direction because you can tell that like when they were playtesting and no one knew where to go it's like insane yeah it's like we get it people complain about like yellow paint I'm like oh my god it's like way worse than that um Chris who would blow into the controller who would enjoy it the most you think who would enjoy the well the well it's technically not the question no oh yeah I'm sorry you can still answer it but who at LSM would surprise you the most okay I was surprised you the most who is the least gay yeah optically opti who's the least optically gay i think maybe uh i can't imagine cog doing this i was gonna say cog cog he's not he he's gonna strike me as a controller blower no i imagine cog as that that image of the guy yanking his headphones off you know and yeah that's the fifa president i think people say i don't know i'm american yeah i imagine that but like cog with the controller it's like oh blow on the controller to do this it's like no way i'm not doing any of this shit why you gave for me rob perzglove wrote in and said hello sacred trio boys what makes a good video game map the kind you want to stick on your wall is it only older video games you would do this with there's there something more recent you appreciate the looks of thanks for thanks you thank you for the show i was gonna say rob purz glove two robs back to back it's the back-to-back rob show um to me it's more about what makes a good in-game map and yeah again with yote on the mind i feel like yote has got a like a rock solid in-game map with crazy levels of intricate detailed quick travel options and it shows you multiple layers of information that you need to know and zooming in and zooming out and placing waypoints and there are so many shitty maps in games where they don't let you do half the things you want to do on them and so to like encounter a map where it's like oh nice it actually works like you actually did the small thing this time as opposed to the god like god of war where it's like this map is fucking useless yeah the worst the worst thing a map can do in game is is make you notice anything about it you know like a map it should be like a frictionless kind of like experience where you're just like you don't even think about what's right or wrong with it but then sometimes you play a game and you're like i why can't i zoom in more than this or like why can't i do like xyz i love by the way i just i love that you were like fuck your question

3:39:35i want to talk about in-game maps well as far as like a map i'd want to put on the wall the only i mean there are a few of them but the only map that i think is like role-playing style map i guess that would be visually recognizable to me truly visually recognizable to me is final fantasy seven just like the shape of the world and whatnot because we've all done it probably when we were little kids or you're playing dungeons and dragons or something and you're making something fake it's like you're just making a fake map and it's literally you just like yeah yeah it's like it's fun it's like oh there's an island here i guess and all the rest but a lot of them are not i'm not like captivated by like the in-game cartography of a lot of different games and i don't find the layout necessarily iconic in and of itself so fuck your question

3:40:23Colin Moriarty:i don't know like i think um the only map that i ever hung anywhere was the skyrim map because oh yeah it came with it right yeah it came with it which is always cool like i love i love that shit whenever like a game comes with like a nice hefty manual and like a nice extra thing i remember halo 3 came with like a really sick poster that i really loved like hand painted what the paper poster wasn't hand but it was like water it was like paintbrush strokes it was really nice but the skyrim map i remember like i would know it a mile away like i recognize the shape of it i remember hanging that up on my wall and being like yeah i don't mind this but there's that's very few and far between you know like i wouldn't hang like a grand theft auto map you know right like care that i had it dustin anything you want to sound off on you want to also ignore the question um well let's okay i'll start by ignoring the question the best experience in a game that i've ever had with a map is probably elden ring and colin you we experienced this on the stream on monday the crazy part is and i i don't this is not a spoiler because people know how big elden ring is now but i remember first playing the game where you get a new piece of the map and you're like whoa this game's bigger than i thought and then you get another piece and you're like whoa this game's bigger than i thought and it just kept getting bigger and expanding and also it looks cool i like a good in-game map that looks like it's makes sense within the context of the world elder rings like that i also thought of the red dead redemption 2 map which is pretty cool so uh yeah those that's probably my answer is those two but i'm trying to think of like i can think of some bad maps like there's the meme of the assassin's creed does the assassin's creed two map it's like the icons everywhere yeah it's a busy fucking mess drowning dude all right final inquiry brady vm says look fat how have your genre preferences changed over time i find it interesting to reflect upon life stages in the games we played along the way it helps condense a life story into a memoir of distinct epochs for example i started out on ps1 playing a wide variety of genres thanks to my dad modding my console to play burned cds As a teenager in the 360 era, I shifted heavily towards competitive shooters.

3:42:46In college, I broadened my horizons to explore indies and offbeat experiences. And now as an adult with limited time, roguelikes are my most played genre, keeping me in touch with friends while offering the satisfaction of high difficulty and build crafting coming to fruition. So how about you? What are the epics of your gaming memoir? How have you changed as a person and how has your gaming changed alongside you? Chris, have things changed for you over time? I assume they have.

3:43:08Colin Moriarty:Sure. Yeah. I mean like ps1 early to early ps1 which and like that kind of time was more like for platformers I remember playing a lot of like obviously shadow the ninja was like my early like that was Nintendo entertainment system but I went from I went from NES directly to ps1 and so like it was a lot of platformers side scrollers fighting games 3d platformers that kind of thing and then I stuck with fighting for a while like through the dragon ball z kind of ps2 era then i got into shooters got really fucking into shooters i still am to this point like that's one thing that's been the second i and you know what it was i didn't think about this until recently but i but i was wondering like why is it that like shooters like specifically or just think that that i still like fuck around with and i think it's earnestly because the feeling of synergy between pulling a like pulling a trigger on a controller and pulling a trigger and like on a gun in game is so satisfying to me like i think just that level of like cohesion because i feel like that doesn't really exist with any other with literally any other action in any other video game like if you swing a bat at somebody it's not pressing x or like pulling a trigger if you jump it's not like you know pressing a button or doing x y but like pulling a trigger in a in a shooter is pulling a trigger on the controller and there's something about that that just feels fucking good um but so i was on shooters for a while i got into rpgs probably into maybe late 360 uh early ps4 and then that's when i started to do more like indie stuff i was doing some indie stuff on the 360 arcade with like limbo and explosion man and and vamp dishwasher and then things weird things like that but and i think now i'm kind of in a space where i'm more interested in like i don't even like now it's more immersive sim kind of territory like that's the most recent evolution that i've gone gone through because i remember playing dishonored back in the day and really liking it but not really understanding what it was and the same thing happened with like prey back in the day and and system shock i tried i didn't get it but like eventually it all clicked and now i'm like now i'm really into that that kind of stuff but it's it's shifted but shooters are like a constant for me.

3:45:25Colin Moriarty:I love a good shooter still. What about you, Dustin? Anything change for you? I think that my my change of preference is somewhat similar to the write-in where like early days. I mean, I played a lot of like platformers and stuff like that when I was a kid, but also got into games like Metal Gear Solid and things like that. But in the 360 era, it was and I was in sixth, seventh, eighth grade. It was all shooters all the time. And now as I've gotten older, I continually, and it's a big problem for me is that there are more and more genres that I am into. And so there's just more games that appeal to me.

3:46:09Colin Moriarty:There are genres that I am burnt out on. We were just talking about Ghost of Yote and I am burnt out on a lot of types of open world games. And so that comes and goes. and it's been cool to see new genres pop up that i think are really cool and really interesting and doing new things particularly uh the what is now called friend slop genre of games like rv there yet and repo things like that i i love it i love the idea of like spending five to ten dollars on a game that you play for some of them as short as like three hours other than 10 20 hours that you just get together with your friends and usually they have proximity chat and are a nice little casual experience to hang out they're like games made for the discord online play era that we're in and there's a lot of cool things being done there's a new one i just saw that's a found footage game uh it's called don't scream together it's not out yet so i don't know if it's gonna be good but everything each person is like they're recording the event uh and i think eventually like one of the people on your team can become the monster and so it like uses a stupid voice changer to make them sound like a demon stuff like that real fun i'm into it so i think it's cool how uh things can change and adapt but my main problem is just being into too many genres of games and having too many games i want to play yeah i will say i've been pretty consistent over time i think things have vacillated a little bit i played more role-playing games at one point in my life i always love shooters action games i will say that the major thing that that i don't play anymore that i spent enormous amounts of my childhood teen years and even in my 20s playing as sports games.

3:48:08And they just don't even compute anymore for me, mostly because I couldn't imagine fitting it in to the schedule, the gaming schedule I had. The thing about sports games back in the day where, first of all, especially with Madden and a few others, they would start to trickle out in August, which was a complete fucking dead zone. And you were so excited about the upcoming football season that you would dedicate a lot of time to Madden. And then NHL would come out in September and you might play a baseball game in the spring or whatever. Obviously, everyone loves soccer or a lot of people like soccer.

3:48:43It wasn't really for me, but I played FIFA quite a bit as well. And it just felt like a compliment. Not that you needed it, but almost like you needed it because there weren't enough games, interestingly, or you didn't have access to enough of them. You had to do like a value-driven proposition of like, I need to buy Madden for 60 or 70 bucks on snes and it'll and i'll spend hundreds of hours with it and i did so that's like the one i think the biggest change in my gaming behavior over time is like no sports games anymore simply not because there's no time it's academically like intellectually very satisfying to think like oh i could play like a really deep madden franchise or something but like what am i going to do that when's that going to happen and like at what cost like so i'm not going to play anything else i think that's why there's been such a huge divide in some way between sports players and others is because it's just so all-consuming and annualized you can never get away from it so good question though thank you for writing in all right it's time to go that's it that's all we have for this episode of sacred levels playstation podcast let's go around the horn and say goodbye to everyone chris goodbye to you be well any big plans for the rest of your day

3:49:47Colin Moriarty:uh thursday nothing crazy probably gonna do some mark raiders tonight uh i've got nothing really nothing it's a slow week thank god good slow is good no complaints dustin goodbye to you anything going on with you that you want to report let's see well tomorrow we're going to be doing the elden ring part two stream so i'll see you shortly for that this weekend uh on saturday night at nine i'm going to be on the spawn cast from that spawn waves podcast cool so if you're on patreon and hear this uh check me out over there that should be cool that's really about it gonna be playing arc raiders of course i'm i'm dude i'm pulling a chris right now i'm desperately hungry at this moment and i can smell something something is wafting upstairs and i think that's part of it that always makes it worse yeah oh it's made it's made it so much worse so hopefully go say Food is in my near future.

3:50:50Colin Moriarty:Very good. Including the pie. I'll have to report back on that. I think it's already dark out, but I want to go for a walk. I'll just walk in the dark. Who gives a shit? I look like a weirdo. I hate the way we've set this shit up. Where it gets dark so damn early now. I know. It's 5 o 'clock. It's already dusk. I got to do that. Maybe I'll walk the dogs or something and watch football tonight, hang out. But and then we'll stream tomorrow. So looking forward to that. All right, boys. Appreciate your time today. Glad all as well. Thank you all for your time out there and your support as well. Patreon dot com slash last day media for early ad free access and last day media dot store for merch.

3:51:34We'll see you next time. 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 is 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.

3:52:12The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

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