#387 | Price You Gotta Pay When You Break the Panorama

22:27If you think you might be struggling with OCD, go to NOCD.com to book a free 15-minute call. They are here to help.

22:36Dustin Furman:But we go live each and every week. We have since July of 2018, hence episode 387. You can find us three days early and ad free over on Patreon, patreon.com slash last day media we could not do without you um we appreciate your love kindness and support over there one dollar a month two dollars a month five dollars a month ten dollars a month twenty five dollars a month those are the various tiers five dollars a month is the sweet spot that's where 90 of you are probably and that gets you early at free access to every episode of this show all the other shows in the network that the various hosts do the xbox show defining duke the nintendo show punching up etc and so on um and that's on video and audio rss feeds discord access spotify access, the ability to submit your inquiries on the show or to the show on the news feed and the thread each week goes live Wednesday, deleted Thursdays, except for this week, of course, because we are recording early.

23:24Dustin Furman:A little bit of a different Wednesday energy, perhaps. I don't know. You tell me. Greg Dawson wrote in, said, good day, sirs. Can we get an overview of your plans for Christmas coverage whilst you all take a well-earned break? I heard on Sacred Streaming that you'll be doing some mailbags. Are there any plans to do multi-participant mailbags that would have a similar feel to super chat content during the streams would be an opportunity to have that dynamic on a prerecorded show. Any other shows to tease an episode of Jeopardy, perhaps? Will the Monday content drop as audio on the podcast feed, too?

23:54Dustin Furman:Or will you insist on us continuing the heresy of watching videos via the Patreon app? No one's asking you to watch videos via like if you're watching videos via the Patreon app, that's on you. Normal people just click the video into YouTube. Yeah, we've been doing this since 2018. Why is everyone acting like this is it's like it's like every once in a while where like there's like someone's like there's ads how long have there been ads in the videos i'm like since 2018 since episode one right when we were sponsored by east asia soft the only time we were ever sponsored by a game a game publisher i went out and got that subscription that i like sold that ad myself which was a weird thing but we quickly decided we don't want to do that anymore um so all right multi-user mailbags or multi-host mailbags actually a fun idea because that would give you a different vibe but that defeats the purpose of why we're trying to do it over the break because we need to divide and conquer to get everything done so that's a possibility and a pretty good idea actually for next year but don't expect that this year all the content will go live as it normally does people who have listened to our shows for years know we have like a certain style of doing things certain episodes like a reflection back looking forward um and so normal episodes will go live sacred symbols plus episodes will go live and there will be a second episode of sacred symbols plus for those weeks we will not be streaming on mondays and those will all go live on patreon so that's the plan so nothing will really change yeah and it'll be good to get some time off because um i'm fucking shot yeah the bags on my eyes just get bigger and bigger the weight on my shoulders just gets bigger and bigger all right sacred symbols plus goes live each and every week that's the patreon exclusive episode of this show where we dive deep into various games topics interviews i just did a really awesome interview with a guy from nvidia um in australia about cloud gaming and the technical aspects of it the ecological effects of it with power usage and water usage and will things live alongside consoles and what's the plan for this it's gonna be good i think people are really gonna like that one uh you guys just did an arc raiders conversation right that went live uh last week so people can look forward to that i conducted some interviews with people random uh recently we had jez cordon on from uh window central we had uh reese from alinea on who we're gonna talk about alinea a little bit later i had chris volpe on the ohio senate candidate who's a gamer and we also dove deep into ghost of yote for a two and a half hour conversation so all of that much more is waiting for you on sacred symbols plus kenneth bridges of spirit kenneth bridge of spirits i'm sorry i wrote in we haven't heard from you in a while it says hey sacred psychos insert some offensive japanese saying here i don't i don't know any offensive japanese sayings what i'm saying when i when i speak japanese is am i saying something offensive because it's unknowable quick one colin often talks about our friend sammy barker from push square could there be a sacred symbols plus episode eventually unless there was one and i missed it i'm a big fan but i also have shit to do i hope everyone enjoys the holiday except dustin i hope his is spectacular much love to all i'll continue crocheting santa hats for my kids and listen uh yeah that's totally possible sammy does listen to the show i think and i like him we talk behind the scenes every once in a while but um i feel like i have invited him on the show my vibe my honest vibe i mean we're honest here and it's not him but it's like i get the vibe that they don't really know what to do with sacred symbols closeness with that website because they are afraid of the bad reputation rubbing off on them i think and because like i've pitched them on like let's do like crossovers let's do like you know i think i said in the past like i went to them and said like why wouldn't you guys be like the official news outlet of sacred symbols and then you post sacred symbols on your site stuff like that um i've been rebuffed every time so i don't know what that's all about but he's very welcome on the show of course and i was just messaging with him recently because they're doing that really annoying ap style writing now where like every sentence is its own paragraph and i fucking hate it you guys know what i'm talking about i think i know what you're saying

28:00Colin Moriarty:i fucking hate it we talked about this with axios right right yeah axios does that too

28:05Dustin Furman:yeah but it's like um well they did more like the bullet points let me see if i can find a push square article just to show you what i'm talking about and i noticed this because this AP did this for a long time. Yeah, here. This is a good example. I mean, this is a random. I'll put it in the chat. It's a Lonely Mountain Snow Riders makes it to PS5. So you can just see there's the story is seven sentences and six paragraphs. Ass. Just letting you know, ass. That's not the way we speak English. It's not the way we write. Paragraphs are beautiful. I hate it. I hate it. so I messaged him that and he's like oh this is just kind of our new style and I'm like I just thought I gotta let you know I hate it fucking hate it I gotta let you know I hate it sacred streaming continues every Monday at 1 p.m eastern time on our YouTube channel we've been having a really great time and they're also off cycle ones as well so what is that the 11th of December we'll be doing the game awards that'll be fun probably have thousands of people for that which will be cool we recently streamed ball pit which was fun and basically just shot the shit me Dustin and Brad we recently did the Japanese state of play stream I streamed Lily Mo my studio's new game Saintslayer we are doing a bunch of Elden Ring stuff Symphony of the Night so keep that coming and we'll get back to Elden Ring in the next week again the reason I don't want to do I don't want people to be like oh it's an Elden Ring stream or they tune in every week and it's an Elden Ring stream I know that people want to see me play it I know people are enjoying it I'm enjoying it but we gotta spread it out or we're gonna become an Elden ring stream you know we got to do more than that got to do it it's got to be the case um lachlan and bronze brosnan wrote in said um by the way irish much says hey boys first off i just wanted to sing the praises of sacred streaming the life and times of colon montgomery is something to behold the coaching delivery from dustin and brad is both informative entertaining and entertaining collins rise to the challenge of elden ring has inspired me to begin my own journey into the game as well.

30:09Dustin Furman:Much like you, Colin, I am not a Dark Souls enthusiast and I have never completed one. Now I think about playing Elden Ring when I'm not playing Elden Ring. For me, that is a sign that I am thoroughly enjoying the journey and it's all thanks to Sacred Streaming. Thank you for your donation. Thank you for your donation. Glad to be rubbing off on people. I'm enjoying it. And Lockmore's edits have been really good too. Yeah. Really, really fun. So thank you guys for all your support over there on Sacred Streaming. Please enjoy and watch the VODs if you can. and finally merch at last damn media dot store dustin what are we doing we have a black friday

30:45Colin Moriarty:sale running so if you're listening to this it is friday so it's live it's a little different than last year just in a tiny way we're doing 10 off anything in the store your whole order 10 off last year we used a code and maybe the year before that i'm trying to maybe we that's right and then some people didn't use it right it involved micah a lot of people forgot to use the code and so then micah had to go and proactive like put on the code and it was a nightmare i really i don't know if this was available last year or or what but now basically you don't need to do anything as long as you buy from it starts at midnight uh so like thursday night into Friday at midnight, and it's running all the way until 1159 p.m.

31:33Colin Moriarty:on Cyber Monday. So if you're listening to this on free feeds, go get your order in today. 10 % off. That includes shirts, stickers, posters. That includes copies of Herboxia. Anything in the store, 10 % off. Go get it. Please do.

31:51Dustin Furman:Anton K. wrote in and said, hey, Sacred Saints, Colin, will there be a Saint Slayer merch? I would totally buy a shirt with the puking animation on it. Happy Thanksgiving and have a great holiday. Let's see how the game does. And then we can talk about doing merch. People have asked about physical copies. I've said this in the past is like we want to do a physical copy. We simply don't have the means to do that before we have a gold master. And then we have to enter the line. So like there's going to mean physical copies are going to be like way, well, well, well after digital launch. And I hope you guys just buy the game digitally for$10 on your storefront of choice.

32:22Dustin Furman:of course if you haven't seen slate's saint slayer spear of sacrilege that's my studio lily mo's seventh game and it's getting the best response to any game we've ever announced ever by far um which is pretty cool and intense i was worried that people would i mean some people have been negative about it but like people have all these different expectations of what games should be and i want to continue to make the games that we want to make and so we have like I want to say almost 5 ,000 wishlists on Steam, which is like huge. That's great. Yeah. And I think when we reach six or seven, I think Ben was telling us that like things start happening, like you start entering different lists and like people will start.

33:04Dustin Furman:It's very hard. I mean, there's so many things on Steam. It's very hard to be found there. And yet that's the place you want to be. And so you can download a demo and give us feedback on that if you'd like. And wishlist us on Steam and your wishlist list on Steam will eventually be everywhere. so it's not like it's going to be a steam exclusive or anything like that it's not so don't worry it'll be on playstation it'll be on switch we don't have switch to dev kit so i don't know what we're going to do about that um but ps5 ps4 xbox one xbox series switch one pc for sure and really really excited about same slayer i wonder when we'll show more of it too um or if we really is there more like should we show more of it i don't know i don't know that's up to ben i guess all right let's get into some topics of discussion and then we getting in the news, getting to what we're playing and so on and so forth.

33:52Dustin Furman:But let's stretch our legs a little bit. I scroll down too far. There we go. The Lord's Chips wrote in and said, hey, CDC, long time, fourth time. I turned 32 shows ago and I've been doing some reflecting. I feel directionless. I've been in an accounting firm for almost seven years now. And before I finished my degree, I knew the work was not fulfilling. My wife and I live off grid on raw land and a camper in a new barn. We are DIYing an apartment in the barn and eventually a homestead. The problem is with both our over full-time jobs in general life. Progress is basically non-existent. We wanted to vlog this journey as a way to quit our jobs but haven't posted a video in over a year and are sitting on tons of footage.

34:32Dustin Furman:Not sure what I'm asking. I guess it's just the birthday blues. Interesting inquiry. No death this week. Some people are like, why are people writing this stuff in? Like, I don't know. They just do. I didn't I don't ask them to. But it feels it feels awkward not to acknowledge. So like I ignore most of like that. My life is horrible messages because we simply can't go through all of them. So every once in a while, I have to. Pick one out of the litter, and this is the one, Dustin, that I picked out. Here's where my gut is on this one. The Lord's chips. It's all on you. Nothing's going to change until you change it.

35:10Dustin Furman:Status quo sometimes is good. you have a good job sounds like seven years is a good you know i'm sure you have many bills and all these different things but if you want to make a change there's only one agent of that change and it's you i'm you know like you got to do it or you don't i mean but and it's it i always tell people it's you're you're likely to fail if you do something crazy but at least you'll know you know um and by the way you're definitely going to fail if you don't do anything so um because i don't like telling people like yeah jump off a bridge and fucking and you know quit your job and become a youtuber it's like that's probably not going to work but it could so it's about like how much you know it's about your the size of your balls the the the hunger you have to do something different and ultimately you being the agent of of your own change and i want to say the opposite though it's okay for things to be fine as they are you have beautiful land you have a wife like i said a good job things are going okay so like it's it's not nothing to blow that up but the only way you're going to get that footage out the only way you're going to do this what you want to do is if you try so yeah that's all i wanted to say on that you'll figure it out for

36:26Colin Moriarty:yourself doesn't anything add yeah it's i mean dude i get it when you're working a lot it's hard to find time to try to figure out, you know, practice at the thing that you want to do. There was a point where I was doing my video editing job and then I was going and working as a bartender at the speakeasy. And this was also, I think this might've been when I was editing knockback. There was like a short period where I was doing all three of those things and it sucked real bad, but the hustle paid off and it was worth it. And so if you can find the time to start at this and the thing with YouTube, that's very important that I've been learning a lot recently is that if you do not post, you do not grow.

37:12Colin Moriarty:At least that's what I've noticed with my channel is that like last week, my schedule got all fucking weird and stuff. I wasn't able to post last week. Virtually no growth on my channel. Shocker. So content is king. So if you haven't posted in a year at all, it's like, yeah, nothing is definitely going to happen. but I want to throw this an extension out to the Lord's chips. I happen to live with an expert on someone who watches all of these DIY videos on YouTube, Holly. She loves these channels. She watches the, the ones that have like crazy 4k cinematic video quality of people fixing a convent.

37:49Colin Moriarty:And then she watches ones and she's like, Oh yeah, this person, their audio is not very good or I like it, but they don't post often enough or they post too much. so I'd love to see your channel and I'd be happy to have her look at it and give you some feedback. It's important. What's interesting about these channels, at least I've noticed from Holly, and this is just true, I guess with any good channel is that there, I guess a channel like this is that she's like, Oh, this guy, he's kind of a character. Like she knows all the different people in it and who they are. And it's like what we do here with last stand where it's like, if it's not personal to some degree, i don't want to say no one cares because there's lots of successful channels like that but you you gotta you gotta make it entertaining that's the whole point um so send me your channel either dm me or message patreon whatever i would love to check it out the by the way the only i was

38:42Dustin Furman:thinking about this too is like the most i mean this is kind of conjecture but the most likely path to like some sort of success or at least like reasonable expectations is like yeah you keep your job you keep doing what you do you grind on the side you have a youtube channel that's fun and you make a little bit of money on it maybe if you get monetized and then you use it as motivation to do the work you have to do on your homestead and instead of like so in other words instead of like going all in see that's what i think a lot of people are like i'm going all in it's like cool it's like that's a if you're willing to make that bet but there is a different i i feel like a lot of popular YouTubers don't do it full time like that.

39:21Dustin Furman:It's like extra money on the side. In fact, I know that's true with some of the people I watch and some of them have really big channels. So maybe that's the most reasonable thing. It's like you look at it as a hobby that you make a little bit of cheddar on. And that's it. Chris, anything to add? No, I think you guys covered a lot of it. I mean, honestly, I haven't even seen the back end of youtube in like 10 months i have everybody you're just like not even yeah i mean i've been are you retired do you think from videos no no i have a bunch of stuff that i like it's just a matter of time dude like the podcast stuff it's like this and star tank and like we're constantly doing stuff with that other show too like we're trying to do like a secondary we want to do like not exactly the mystery science theater thing but we want to do like cut up kind of watch along stuff that we want to do like voicemails kind of like call in type stuff right right so like we've got a lot of just i've got a lot of stuff that i'm like trying to plan and like work on with that stuff so like there's not a lot of time to i don't want to post anything on my main channel if it's not going to be like something that i think is great which is arguably like a really dumb thing to do but like i the benefit is i don't need it you know what i mean i could i have the luxury of making that choice i don't have to hit like oh i've got to make this video by the end of the month or else i you know i don't get paid i don't really have that issue right um but as far as like diy stuff like that's not even in the wheelhouse of stuff that i just i just genuinely don't have any advice for that you know one thing i will say is that like the advice of uh just be yourself is uh dubious i think i think there's an element of that that's true but like ultimately if you're going to make something like that and you're going to stake you know the idea in this ride-in is that you know we want to we want to put this stuff together so we can quit our job it's like i mean you gotta that it becomes a job at that point like you've really got to dedicate a lot of hours into putting that stuff together and also presenting it well and sometimes your default persona is not the persona that people want to watch oftentimes that is the case some people get lucky you know some people are just like like lex friedman who's like a human xanax where like it just doesn't it doesn't matter that he's boring like it works like ben stein or like uh stein what do you what do you call what's the other guy h john benjamin like you know like these people don't have to these people just naturally have a a voice or like a disposition that like lends itself to whatever it is they're doing the overwhelming majority of people are not like that and so i don't know it can be easy to make stuff that is like your authentic self and feel kind of slighted that it's not doing well but it's also worth worth understanding that most entertainers are not themselves on stage or at least not in the same way you know gilbert godfrey famously like have you ever heard that recording of like gilbert godfrey's like real voice no i don't think so yeah it's it's hysterical because just like hello i'm gilbert it's like what the fuck you're just doing this constantly holy fuck yeah it sounds exhausting sure but it's you know it's that's the job so if you're going to step into that territory like i don't know how entertainer focused the dey space is but i would have to imagine that there's some element of you know heightened um the heightened self involved in it like i'm not like when i make a video i'm not like i'm not making i'm not talking to the camera like i'm talking to a friend of mine right exactly insane i would have no friends if that were the case of course oh my god bro my yeah yeah i have no friends anyway um okay

43:10Dustin Furman:um i will say i i can i can vibe with a little bit of this too just in that when i when i found kind of funny we did it on the side for almost three years and it kind of sucked sometimes it actually sucked a lot it's like oh like we have to work at ign all week and then oh yeah saturday and sunday is all just 10 episodes of conversation with colin recording all of them in my house like although everyone's there like setting everything up and do it and then like oh back to monday and so i totally get it because like it is people don't think it's work but it is work it's a lot of work and especially now you're i'm i was just sitting there talking like and doing playing games doing that kind of stuff you're doing something in addition so i really think you have to use that as the carrot on the stick to say like if you want this done then either put your shoulder into it or don't it's on you you're the agent of your own change good luck to you lord chips by the way his name is the lord's chips it reminds me of demon souls because he has awards is like you know singular possessive and then chips right it's a reference to the movie nacho libre oh yeah i've never seen jack black i've never seen it i know i know it

44:21Colin Moriarty:but i've never seen it he's out and he's getting the chips and someone steals them so he has to report to the monk and he's like did you tell them they were the lord cheeps when uh yeah that is a crazy poll by the way like i can't how how long ago dude what was the last time you saw natural libre a long time ago but this line gets quoted in my house probably once a month oh okay like like did you tell them they were the lord cheeps like i haven't seen natural libre probably since it came out and i it was just not a uh for whatever i liked it but like it was not napoleon dynamite was more like the thing that like i remember like a lot of my family for whatever for whatever reason latched on to builder a cake or something it's a line i always remember builder a cake i always remember when when uncle rico's like how much you want to bet i can throw football over the mountains over the mountains yeah the sound that uh what's his john heater makes when that that meat collides with his face it's just like it kills me every time it's it's so real i think it cut him too like i was listening to like some like develop like developer commentary movie commentary of like them talking about how like yeah like that had a bone in it and it it cut him like right across the nose and we had to like stop and Pedro ran off screen because he couldn't stop laughing uh yeah I don't know the guy makes really strange stuff yeah he's interesting

45:45Dustin Furman:guy the Ted Wolsey translation which is a hysterical name Ted Wolsey was like an old square soft translator greetings gentlemen Colin I needed to thank you for the inspiration both Both myself and my dog, Benny, could be considered to be a bit on the chunky side. After hearing about your six mile walks, I came to a rather obvious conclusion that we could both greatly benefit from some lengthy walks ourselves. While I am not enough of a masochist to do six miles, we've been doing two to three miles every day before I leave for work. Thank you again, not only for your inspiration, but for the many great podcasts to listen to while I loop around my own neighborhood with my dog.

46:18Dustin Furman:That's wonderful to hear. Absolutely wonderful. I know this is usually the defining Duke's territory. Now, I take care of health as well. Right. Right. But you got to I like to remind everyone out there, you got to take care of yourself the best you can. You can obviously I mean, I eat like shit. I do. But you got to make concessions in your life. Right. You got to make some concessions. If you're out there and you're struggling with your health, just make some concessions. You don't have to stop everything, but like directionally go inside. So no matter, you know, I obviously do my my OMAD and don't don't eat for most of the day, but I eat like shit when I do eat.

46:52Dustin Furman:And that's the honest truth. and I just dedicate 60 to 90 minutes a day to working out that's like my concession I got to do it and if I don't do it on the like I do it probably 28 or 29 out of 30 days and if I don't I feel bad I feel bad physically and I both I feel bad that I didn't do it like it's like oh why you're too lazy to take care of yourself so I lift and do you know high impact stuff on the elliptical every other day and then every other day I go on my long walks if I can if not I'll do it on the elliptical and um six miles is not as bad as you think you can do it in about an hour and a half that i do it in about an hour and a half so it's not like too much time and you burn like six or seven hundred calories it's a lot so yeah i gotta take care of yourselves i'm sorry no i gotta go to the gym again i haven't gone to the gym in a while yeah it was like a traumatic place a while yeah for a little bit for like a hot like for like a month after the fight i was I was pretty I was in pretty good shape.

47:52I'm still fine, but I just feel like I should I feel like I should go. You know what I mean? It's been like, oh, man, I go. I go on like really, really long walks all the time. That's kind of the thing that I do, like that kind of keeps me like, all right, at least I'm not spending all day inside. But like, it's it's realistically not enough. It's more than a lot of people are doing because for whatever reason, especially out here, people don't like to walk. It's very interesting. like i've been i've i've more than once suggested like hey let's let's go to this uh diner or like this food place or this bar and i've said like yeah let's walk it's only like it's like a 20 minute walk and they're like oh my god we got to drive it's like i can't i don't get that either because i i love walking places mike is the same way where um i'll suggest there we don't we live

48:41Dustin Furman:in like a very suburban area but there is we live near you know our our hoa like our we live in an HOA and we have a country club and it's like a mile away and I'm like let's walk and get like and she's like I don't know I don't want to I'm like you don't want to walk a mile a mile's not a bad walk no the thing too look look I get it here sometime like in in June or something okay yeah right of course of course it's sweltering but like bro it's it's fucking it's it's about to be December like the weather's like pretty nice like what do we like what are you what are you doing she's like totally aghast when i even bring it up like it bothers her and i think if she thinks it's because like oh you lived in cities and you're used to it i'm like it's just a mile away it's a mile away we can just be on the sidewalk the entire time just walk dude i used to walk to the drunk right and then walk back that's why i used to do every fucking yeah that's almost every day when i lived in the city it's it's awesome no consequence no content no do you have to drive dude can you get me my water please i'll hit it by the bed oh oh nice god it's a great response oh my god oh man come on man come on come on but yeah i don't know i i should go to the gym again though and i think i will i think starting next year when i have a little bit more time i have like a we're hiring people oh we're hiring somebody to like manage our time a little bit better you can print so like that'll be good okay wait just a quick update oh oh okay i'm sorry i didn't see you okay um okay let's see an update real quick

50:22Colin Moriarty:the guy i asked the the guy that recorded the clip of me yeah he said want to play sometime he said sure wow all lowercase there you go sweet i'm not going to no i mean maybe i just we always have too many people to play we have to split up into groups but maybe sometime rude to ask him and then not maybe i will maybe i will i don't think anybody takes that suit too like i'm sure everybody has like that kind of thing going on where like like we have that problem too where it's just like sometimes there's like hey it's one of us will one of us will get off and then somebody will cycle on it's a yeah it's the nature of those kinds of games maybe i'll give it a shot i'm not one to normally play with a random like that but who knows it's maybe

51:08Dustin Furman:my new best friend awaits you never know you never know shard of odium wrote in and said colin are you aware of the insanity that is young colin on the snark tank happy thanksgiving guys i'm thankful for the endless entertainment you all provide me the snark tank of course is chris's comedy show twice weekly right support it's it's three times weekly technically but jesus christ three times weekly yeah you're doing a lot over there it's it's annoying yeah of course like whatever there's nothing more annoying than running a patreon it's yeah so that's your so you run it on patreon it's on youtube it's a people can go support it it's a audio video it's done with uh chris's friends and mutual friends of the show derek and sweeney um so yeah what is this young colin thing because i i there's caught wind of it but i don't really know i don't and i tried to like listen to one but i don't i didn't really get it it's impossible it's you can't find that we don't time stamp anything it's it's it really like we we have the the least approachable show in the world and i like that but like it's there's no way to describe this by the way because by the way your thoughts you're thus on the two most unapproachable podcasts on the internet so that's actually you're the common uh you're the common link anyway go ahead i'm sorry one one has uh titles that have nothing to do with the show and then the other one has uh titles that get it instantly blacklisted and demonetized so so it's it's whatever but like i think no there's no way to explain this because this is all audience shit like because at the end of the show we read we read uh there's a certain tier where you get your name right at the end of the show and we have to read them no matter what the name is basically and so the whole premise is just people fucking with me uh and and just like writing horrible shit for incriminating shit for me to say but for whatever reason someone started this like oh young colin uh i don't know slapping a dog off the broad side of a boat or something or like just doing heinous shit and that other people started so there's like there's like eight or like 10 like young colin committing crime there's like this obsession with like you as a young person being like it like a damien kind of omen child right right right uh just doing really concerning scary shit and eventually becoming a more mellow person i guess in the canon of of what they what they've written i guess but that's funny because i was more of like a like it's nonsense dungeons and dragons right um and then i just became depressed so but yeah there's nothing to it's not like a running bit for the it's the audience it's whatever crossover audience that we have likes to do this kind of thing that's fun there's one about jaffy for a while ago but i can't remember i can't i wish i could remember what it was that was pretty good oh my god he's he's a fucking character he's a he's a feller he really is like the definition of like a card like a like a total he's a card you know what i mean like yeah i haven't heard that i haven't heard that expression in a long time yeah i love that expression that's a guy's a real card Yeah, right.

54:10Dustin Furman:I love that. I love that. I love that expression too. All right. Celine Dijon wrote in and said, CDC first time, a long time. Do any of you have Black Friday memories? Not talking about the time you got a good deal. Give me all the fights, arguments or other insane behavior you've seen before. For me, I once saw a man leave Walmart with a bleeding arm attempting to wrestle a printer from a lady. The worst part, it wasn't even on sale. Walmart just kicked out the display to make room for more electronics. I have never, I don't think in person ever seen a black friday situation or even a commerce like commercial situation like that but i've also probably not gone to a black friday thing i think the last time was 98 or 99 was the last time i like went to the mall or something on that friday um so i what i missed was there was a solid 10 years maybe even a little longer of excellent black friday fight videos and it seems like black friday has migrated largely online or at least mostly online to the point where that kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore because there was amazing shit now you only see people fighting over pokemon cards that's like the only thing you ever yeah you ever see do you guys have any stories oh i yeah because i worked i worked retail you worked at sears so i worked at sears for for for one for one black friday and and working that black friday was the thing that made me decide i was gonna quit i remember that because i was like no fucking way am i no way am i doing this and i remember it was really the hours that they had us working because i can't remember the exact i can't remember the days and the exact times but it was something along the lines of like on thanksgiving night like i had dinner at my girlfriend's house and then like it was at like five o 'clock and then i left at like six to go in from 6 30 to 2 a.m oh no i think it was like 6 30 to 4 a.m actually i remember being like oh my god this is like this is not fun at all and then the next day i had to go from so it was 6 30 to 4 a.m then it was 9 a.m to 2 the next the same day basically so i went home slept for like three hours went back and then that night i had to come back again for until like 2 a.m and i just remember being like this is like and i fell asleep driving home and that was when i was like i can't fucking i'm not sounds vaguely familiar i feel like we talked about this yeah i've talked i've definitely told the story before but like i'm just like that was like i'm not dying for 7 25 an hour bro like under no circumstance is this worth it but i remember people getting into fights i remember on just the one black friday that i worked i remember i remember these people like fighting vigorously over this like lawnmower like they were just like no i talked to this guy and i had or like oh there was i remember once there was like a price tag there was like a loose so i was in charge of like doing prices there were other i was in charge of tools uh but we had two people doing tools i was doing like the the tool and then somebody else was doing like the the machines and stuff like so lawnmowers but like i was putting on the sticker prices and like putting on the sales stickers and all that shit stocking shelves whenever they were empty i would go in before the day started and i remember i guess the other guy had like because at the end of a roll there's always like a default sticker that says 0.00 like for the right price and so you'd have to peel it off it was insane waste i don't understand why that happened but you just people would just put them on whatever like they just put them on the floor or like behind like a cardboard display or something and somebody put it on like the tire of like a uh a lawnmower and somebody was like this this lawnmower says it's free and there was like a whole like altercation i was just like oh my god you can't really be like and they didn't have to it wasn't like some rule that like oh you have to honor the price it was like this was sears in 2012 like they were already like they were ostensibly bankrupt already right right like there was nobody cared so like it was just it was very stupid it's not and this this isn't black friday related but like i remember one of the funnier interactions i had once was like setting up for christmas i think it must have been like a week or two after that because that's when they start doing it but i was hanging a reef above the entrance to electronics and i and i go down i was climbing down the ladder and then one of my older guys i think uh one of the older guys i His name was Howard.

58:25He worked with me. He was like 60s. He had like a, he had like a Luigi mustache. I remember that about him. He was like, that reef is crooked. I remember being like. It's a circle.

58:41I was looking at it. It was like, it can't be crooked. It's like you're insane. And he was like, forget I said anything. And obviously it wasn't crooked. Nobody noticed anything. But like that came flooding back into my memory just now. That's awesome. It's a circle.

58:57Dustin Furman:What do you mean? I forget that you that would have been right in your wheelhouse in 2012 is like, I feel like prime. black friday that was like towards the end i would say like there was it was it i don't think it was as crazy as it was in the early 2000s but it was still like malls were still relatively populated now it feels like the mall that i worked in in upstate new york so like not like city malls are always going to be thriving like people are always surprised whenever they come here and they they go to the mall and like glendale or la and they're like it's fucking packed in here it's like yeah it's a city like only dying malls are places in like rural in butler where i grew up dude basically like um butler like those places like the malls are in pretty dire straits but when i was working it was like it was still more populated than it would normally be but it was nowhere near the videos that i had seen of people like smashing wrenches over people's heads just to get like a deal on a plasma screen tv that had a that already had burn in damage you know it's ridiculous like i've never i've maybe it's easy it's not easy for me to say like there were i had fucking i didn't have two nickels to rub together for the beginning of my career like i was never hard up enough to be like i'm subjecting myself to this like never yeah never i can't like i'm like nope i don't need it i'm good i don't think i ever i don't think i ever participated in it i don't think i ever like i think i went one year but then we hit a deer on the way there so we just gave up we hit a deer with our car on our way to black friday we're like this is probably a sign yeah that's an omen dude i mean yeah uh when i went i think it must have been 98 because i think i've told the story about how i went to the mall to get like a dual shock controller or something and i feel like i was in ninth grade at the time i feel like and i went with my sister and the mall was fucking packed but i feel like it was I feel like no one was really talking.

1:00:55Dustin Furman:I don't want to say no one was talking about, but Black Friday wasn't really what it would become yet. It was like the day after it was just the day after Thanksgiving. And then the people started creeping like door buster sales. And then, and that's how you get to like working at four in the morning and shit like that. Like, you know, like do it or like all day, like 24 hours a day. And then companies taking a stand and be like, we're not going to subject our employees to, to this and so on. I feel like, So I'm not even sure I saw it in its most. It's most pure form, I think. But strangely, I remember that trip for some reason to the mall.

1:01:28Dustin Furman:Like, I just remember it. I don't know why I just do it because it was so fucking crowded. Dustin, you're going to go save on a new TV?

1:01:36Colin Moriarty:No, did you say on a new TV?

1:01:38Dustin Furman:This goes live on Black Friday.

1:01:40Colin Moriarty:So, yeah, no, usually when I go to Black Friday now, it's like, I don't know, 1 p.m. So you get to see the remnants of the chaos. But it's as you said, Colin, like now the deals are they basically start started like last week. They kind of just run all the way through. So there's very few like you got to be here on this day to go get it. My dad and I would go out when I was in high school. And what's funny is that was even during the crazy Black Friday era. But I never saw any fights. just a lot of people like very chaotic situation my dad was all about going to staples because you could get a free power strip he's like oh you got to get the free power strip like why we have we have 20 power but he was all about trying to get the free power strip something like that i don't know i do i feel i i relate to that i don't know something about a power strip you see like i i must need this uh yeah like dude i mean my dad doing sound work and like for shows and stuff like that he was always like oh you can always use power strip you know so i haven't even really bought anything this year i i mentioned on sacred streaming i bought holly her rice cooker on a black friday sale but that was online so they still do cyber monday or no or is that like uh more or less it's kind of all just blends together because it's like the same i mean amazon will change their branding on cyber monday from black friday to cyber monday but now there's small business saturday it's like how about i just don't spend my money weekend how's that yeah thank you

1:03:23Dustin Furman:but it's good i mean people are looking for deals i mean we do a deal on our own stores we announced earlier so it's like it's kind of like the expectation and almost you have to kind of it's like a it's not a peer pressure it's like a social pressure of participating because otherwise you kind of look like you're out of out of it or like why would you buy anything on black friday if it wasn't for sale so it's good it's good for commerce but it's a fucking nightmare and i do miss those videos just people just like a pyramid of tvs and people just falling all over them it's like it's dude it's awesome people like running in the stores like waiting and like barreling over the employees and each other with like carts and all it's it's it's like so embarrassing it's like the most embarrassing essence of capitalism imaginable that was a period of time too where tvs were the issue is it's like now tvs are fucking really cheap like it's kind of insane like the the deal you could get on like a good tv uh like it's you can get a good 4k tv like a big screen for like 300 max yeah it's crazy and back then that was like back then that amount of money would be the amount of money that would be shaven off of like you know a 1300 tv for people to just jump into black friday and go like oh it's only 900 it's like no one's really doing that and there's there's no real sales like that anymore because i don't know i don't know if people just don't have buying power as much as they used to i mean that's definitely true but it's it's a different vibe entirely like i remember people fighting over tv it's not like it never came to blows but Like I remember screaming matches in the electronics department where my friend Paul was working.

1:04:59And I just remember being like, Oh my God, I'm glad I'm not in the electronics department. I wanted to work in the electronics department because I understood electronics more. I don't know why they, they put me in tools, dude. They put me like with the craftsman, like, like, Oh, do you know where this Allen ranch is? I'm like, no, it's not a big section though. I'm sure you could find it. I was garbage. I was garbage in tools. So stupid. But, uh, a lot of good stress that's where they put you yeah yeah i mean they didn't care they like i'm pretty sure they understood that they were like a shell company and so like uh or like a shell of a company i should say and like by the time i was working there my manager brian was just like i remember he had a lisp and he was like yeah do whatever you want it's just like at a certain point that the game was up like no one everyone was so checked out that rules do whatever you want it's very funny

1:05:59all right let's get into the news yeah it's time to actually talk about video games we've wasted

1:06:05Dustin Furman:enough time i think all right i start with this a lot of people wrote in about this and it's worth talking about but we'll go into it quickly because it's something worth saying john harlan wrote in and said hey fellas i got a laugh out loud i got a laugh out loud from the naughty dog headlines this week. Colin used the oldest trick Cunningham's law this week with the intergalactic heretic profit release date. The quickest way to get the answer is to give the wrong one. I think Sacred Boy should start reporting their opinions more often to get to the bottom of Sony news and releases. Thank you for writing in.

1:06:34Dustin Furman:So yeah, many of you wrote in about this and this is worth saying because it's kind of, it really annoyed me and I want to be pretty clear about the way I would break news and the things that we talk about. So for people that don't know, I was on the Dan Allen gaming podcast and I've never talked to him before. I thought it was fun. I don't really know him. And so it was fun to kind of chitchat with him. And he recorded it. Actually, it was recorded in early November and it just went live. So it was recorded like three, literally three weeks before we even went live. And so it went live. I didn't think anything of it.

1:07:07Dustin Furman:I promoted it. And then the days went by and there started to be like these bublings of like Colin Moriarty says, heretic you know the heretic prophets coming out in 2026 and we'll be at the game awards and all that stuff and i'm like actually i first saw it like woke up from a nap and i was like where's my phone like looked at it like to see if i got any tax messages and then i just went on twitter and you know the for you thing like it showed that was like what it showed me it was like my own name and like and i'm like what and so i went and looked at the story and then i and it was a it was an insider gaming story and that's gonna be important for this for what i'm about to say although they're not the only ones that reported it it's not exclusive to them and uh and i went so i was like you know in the dan allen gaming podcast uh you know insider colin moriarty i'm like i don't consider myself an insider i hate when people call me that i i'm often called like playstation insider i'm like i'm not an insider like i know a lot of people making games i know things but i'm not that's not my claim to fame but anyway um i went and listened to what they were citing and it was me being asked like what do you think about her you know the heretic prophet and went and i was like yeah i i i wouldn't be surprised if it came out next year they're hiring for localizers we're hearing a lot of that kind of stuff about like you know just look around the internet you know they're hiring for foreign localizers they're doing this they're it's obviously the game's obviously nearing some level of completion whether or not it's a year two years three years that i have no idea but like you don't start localizing text and localizing things if you're fucking moving things around and things aren't done that's not the way it works so um Um, and I was like, I wouldn't be surprised if it came out next year and I wouldn't be surprised it was at the game awards.

1:08:46Dustin Furman:Like I think it would be at the game awards. And then people reported this as like, Colin says the game will be at the game awards and it's coming out in 2026. And I'm like, no, I didn't. I didn't fucking say that. I categorically didn't say that. And I am tired of it. It doesn't, it doesn't just happen to me. It happens to a lot of people, you know? Um, so it's not just like a uniquely Colin situation, but it's like, it's just with wanton disregard hard people report things that you didn't say and then you will inevitably get blamed for it you know and i'm like it just seems so wrong like i there are a lot of people i don't like but i don't do that to anyone i try to cite my sources try to be fair and honest i always try to go to the root source too that's why i read press releases a lot on the show and do all that it's like just go right to the source like where do things come from and we've often talked about stories in the past of like i don't believe this story i don't believe the source this isn't what the person said how many times have we done that on the show where it's like yeah this person never even said this you know um like if you just like a there was like a strauss zelnick thing like that that i feel right right if you just trace it back and i've i've maybe it's my own journalistic background but i don't even consider myself a journalist really it's just like i'm curious like especially if things don't sound right like where does this come from it's why i listen to the investment calls it's why i do all those kinds of things um i want to be clear i have no problem with people having an issue with anything I say, making fun of it, taking the piss out of it, supporting it, but make sure it's something that I say.

1:10:13I don't think that that's too much to ask.

1:10:16Dustin Furman:And so this is, I felt a little bit vindicated about this because this story really came from like Reddit was the one that first started, you know, various Reddit started putting it out there. And so the gaming leaks and the gaming leaks, Reddit, which is a really useful place. I look at it once a week when I um prepare the show it's like one of the places I go to see like did I miss anything um because they report and show things that like no one else will host or show to their credit you know like yeah if there's like leaked images that push square is not going to host those they're going to get in trouble but like reddit will host them so um or like link out to them or whatever um and that place doesn't like me at all and thinks I'm like you know don't know anything or whatever so even they like people in the comments were like this is totally unfair and like a total bastardization of what he was saying and they marked the whole thread on that gaming leaks and subreddit um what did they market it was like it was something i had never seen before where it was like inauthentic or something right i'll look real quick and um and so even they and like people were downvoting people that were like making fun of me and telling me i didn't know what I was talking about all that.

1:11:27Dustin Furman:And they're like, he never, he literally, oh yeah, misleading. I have never seen that tag before where it's like misleading. And so I just wanted to throw that out there. Now, was it exacerbated by people that like to shit on me, like, or seem to come out of the woodwork to like, try to demean me when something I said is reported? Sure. And that's definitely the case, but I didn't report anything. And the reason I wanted to bring this up mostly is that guys, if I have something to say that's exclusive, I'm not going to say it on someone else's show.

1:12:04Dustin Furman:In other words, like it would be highly unlikely that you would ever hear a newsworthy item from me on someone else's show that, by the way, was in the can for three weeks. Why would I do that? When I have something to say that I feel like is newsworthy, I break it here on the show. So it was good for the news cycle in that we got some confirmation from reliable people that, you know, the game won't be at the Game Awards. The game will be out in 2026. But it's like, OK, I never said it would. I was just giving you my thoughts. And by the way, people are like, why would you think that? And I'm like, well.

1:12:39Dustin Furman:I don't know why Sony would announce any more games right now. Like, it seems like a good time to show the heretic prophet again, to show intergalactic again. why announce a new game when you have all these other games lined up, you know, but I never even, I don't think said that I was going to come out in 2026. I was like, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it did based on what people are saying about it. Yeah. The way they're hiring about it. It's just like, so the second part that bothered me about this is that like a lot of this, like the insider gaming, which is a source that we use sometimes and won't be anymore.

1:13:17Dustin Furman:Tweeted out intergalactic, the heretic prophet reported releasing in 2026. And they got an X note saying like, this is not what the source said and kind of whatever. And then they updated the story and like they updated it multiple times.

1:13:33Dustin Furman:And I just feel like it's like it's so irresponsible. Like, where is the apology? Like, no one no one is even the person that posted on Reddit that was getting like, you know, downvoted was like unapologetic about it. It's like you just why would you do that? it's just we like it's not like a it's not like it's nothing for the rest of my career now someone is going to bring up like oh remember when you said intergalactic was going to come out in 2026 it's like no i didn't say that but you made it real and i just think that's unfair we um we try to be we were said about danny earlier but like i don't like jason schreier at all but when his story when he's the source of a story we reported as what he said and that it's his story and give him credit and all the rest so i just feel like i i should expect the same treatment um yeah so that just bummed me out and so it's cool that we got information out of it and that it was useful to people but it was kind of a bummer for me because it just feels like wow i can't even speak freely on a fucking podcast now on someone else's podcast without being totally misquoted and misrepresented and most people will never see the corrections most people will never know that i didn't say that and that bothers me and i think i have the right to be bothered by that so what's crazy about it is that what's crazy about it to me is that like we've there is news that we have broken on the show and it almost never i feel like i never see it right exactly i mean i feel like i almost never see it picked up like we like there's like news will break like a year after we talk about it on the show and then like somebody else will get credit for it even though like you broke it here like a year ago and so that won't get attention but like something that you said on some random show will it's very bizarre i don't know it's i don't i don't well that's why i have to eventually like ignore like he doesn't have any connections he's wrong about everything or whatever and i'm like that's just totally willful ignorance like i can't do anything about your willful ignorance but the reason i wanted to bring insider gaming up is that not they're not the only culprit but i didn't like the framing of their story i didn't like their original what i remember being their original edit which said something along the lines of not verbatim but something like you know the recent hullabaloo it was it was basically saying like depending on how you look at it because basically saying like i said what i said and they're interpreting it properly as opposed to them just taking like there's no no apology no acknowledgement and then i saw one of their editors mike straw right on twitter the way he says it though it can be taken that way saying he believes it'll be there while also saying he's heard about how they're hiring people interacting with the game etc i have heard that it's been talked about for the last two months your interpretation of it is irrelevant i said what i said just no contrition.

1:16:09Dustin Furman:I just find that so embarrassing and cringy. And it reminds me of one of the pieces of news I broke about Star Wars, the Quantic Dream Star Wars game, where Insider Gaming relayed that and said, like, as we understand it, this is like a controlled leak. Do you remember this? And I was like, and I reached out to them and it was like, as a courtesy, like, I'm just letting you know, no, it's not like where I'm hearing this from and where you think I'm hearing this from are two different things. And they just never updated. They never acknowledge it. And I'm like, I know you're wrong. But you so like, we're just not going to use insider gaming anymore as a source.

1:16:44Dustin Furman:It's the first time it's ever happened on the show. If they have so little disrespect or so little respect, not only for me, but for other people that are also regularly misquoted and misreported at various outlets or whatever, then fuck you. And I didn't really know much about the way they've been interpreted recently. But in the comments, you see a lot of it is like these guys kind of fallen off or like are not like what we thought they were going to be. And I'm like, well, I'll leave that up to each individual, but I didn't appreciate it. Yeah. So and again, they're not the only culprit, but they're one of the only ones that like.

1:17:16Dustin Furman:That I saw that seemed to just like just double down and not acknowledge like you made a mistake. It's OK. You made a mistake. You know how many times I had to like I'm careful. So I never had to go back and be like, oh, I totally misquoted someone. So that's it. That's all I just wanted to say about that. Anything to add to this before we move into the actual news?

1:17:34Colin Moriarty:so if insider game insider gaming does have a big story how do we handle it i will just uh

1:17:41Dustin Furman:we'll just use someone that's writing about it and i guess we'll let them cite them i knew that

1:17:45Colin Moriarty:was probably the case but i knew that was going to be the number one question yeah worth explaining

1:17:49Dustin Furman:to people it's like and frankly i'm just being real it's like i'm when i when i when things don't pan out or like i always as i've said many times i try to explain where i come from it's like why did you think that why did you feel that way why like even if it was wrong i think that leads to a lot like a lot of growth of trust between the audience and the listener or the viewer and if you're not willing to do that and the allow these outlets were not willing to do that then it's like well why would i believe you why would i even believe future stories if i know that you're wrong yeah so i don't know just something to consider it's again it's not just insider gaming but they're the ones i'm kind of most signal because i feel like that that's what that tweet was just totally one of the catalysts towards this being a problem and i know a lot of people were like oh these guys just like as i said earlier come out of the woodwork to like demean you like not insider gaming but like you know the jeff grubs of the world and so on and so forth and it's like that's what they're gonna do i actually reached out to jeff because i never heard back from him but he did follow up his tweet being like i under you know like he was basically acknowledging that i was misquoted but it's like yeah you and but you but nonetheless you retweeted that tweet because you wanted to dunk on me i mean that's that's why jason posted in the reddit to dunk on me right i mean so but it is what it is i can only control what i can control, I suppose.

1:19:18Dustin Furman:So sorry, you know, sorry, I didn't say what I said. Didn't didn't say what I didn't say. Yeah, I guess that's what it would be. OK, John, thank you for writing in and for everyone else that wrote in about it. I saw your letters. I just, you know, we don't want to linger on it too long. I did want to bring this up, though. I thought this was a really interesting story. We don't really have to talk about it too deeply if we don't want to. I want to go around and see what you guys think of it, of course. But the website Aftermath wrote, and it's Alyssa Mercante, actually, the writer, freelance writer, wrote, two months after firing over Charlie Kirk comments, ghost of Yotei Dev blames harassment campaign.

1:19:53Dustin Furman:Not bad joke. People should go read this. It's the first time, and I think the only time this woman has ever really spoken since she was fired. We obviously covered this back when it happened. I was personally really put off by this article the way it was framed and I'm curious if I'm the only one Dustin did you were you able to read this story and what do

1:20:22Colin Moriarty:you think of it yeah I read through it it's um it's tough I think what you said on Twitter kind of summarizes it best where it's like um i think that cancel culture or whatever you want to call it um sucks but this is the environment that's been created and it was kind of started on one side and now it's kind of coming back around to haunt some of the people that maybe were encouraging this and that's how it goes yeah i uh i feel like i've been talking about this for years

1:21:07Dustin Furman:that like it should have just never really gotten to this point but you have to kind of lay in the bed that's been made now it's like we're years past the complaints about this being in my opinion super relevant um but it's a story i just wanted to chris do you have anything you want to say about it's a story that i think people should read i mean um but i don't know if you have anything I don't know. I'm kind of of two minds about it. I feel like, sure, there are harassment campaigns that are real. Like, I don't, I think that was like a thing that people were like kind of discounting. And even I think in the past, I kind of discounted.

1:21:38It's like, what's the big deal? Like, just, I guess, like a log off or whatever. But the internet is kind of infused with real life now. So I kind of get it, right? But at the same time, I don't know, man. I earnestly just think I think you can joke about literally anything. I've always had that opinion, like my entire life, basically. But I also feel like if you're in like an underling position at, you know, a studio where you're kind of reflecting other people, you do kind of you're trading some level of your ability to speak freely in a public open forum for the security of having a job at a very stable place in some sense right um is that how it should be maybe not but like i mean that that is just kind of how it is and so am i surprised or upset that she got fired like not really do i wish we could just kind of like be people i yeah but there's business realities to that like i i get it like there's people like oh there's there's a bunch of businesses who are headed by people who like speak openly and uh say kind of unhinged shit and that costs them business relationships and if a company wants to cut ties with somebody who makes that a problem for them like i get it uh so i i don't know i don't really know how i feel about it the cancel culture thing in general i think is just like overplayed at this point like every time a comedian goes on stage with on their like seventh comedy special being like you can't say anything anymore it's like you're making a lot of money saying anything i don't know what like i don't know i don't know what this is and this person by the way i'm sure though i'm i guarantee you they can find another job like a developer who doesn't give a shit about that i i i believe that you know so i i think you can only be canceled if you let yourself be canceled i really believe that and so i just don't think it matters that much to the degree that this is the environment that was cultivated like i agree and and don't agree i think it's this is something that's been cycling for decades at this point like i remember when i was a kid like always tweeting into fox news and seeing what the latest thing that they were trying i remember six days in fallujah the original six days in fallujah thing where like they were trying to get that game pulled from everything and it worked you know and and it worked so like in my view like the reason i started making political videos in this realm in the first place and and kind of coming at it from a perspective of like um you know criticizing left-wing people for doing this was because specifically that i felt like this is a particularly modern right wing thing to be doing.

1:24:15Like this is a particular like Fox news thing to be doing for you to like go after people for telling uncomfortable jokes or like, it just felt really stupid to me. And maybe it, and maybe it started even earlier than that. There's all sorts of arguments as to like where the origination of cancel culture is, but there is a reality of like, this has been happening for a while and this is kind of the climate and it's been built up by both sides at this point. and so like i don't really know what to make of it other than like this is kind of where we're at and you kind of you have to navigate very carefully in the space if you're going if you're going to be in a position that is subservient to like a larger corporate entity like there we are kind of in unique positions as independent kind of creators where like you know jaffe doesn't need to give a shit you know or like i kind of don't either i still do somewhat But like, I mean, if you're just a developer at like a renowned studio, it behooves you to kind of like.

1:25:17Keep keep your edgiest thoughts among among the group chat, you know, you don't need to broadcast it, I think. Right, right.

1:25:27Colin Moriarty:And before you jump in, Colin, because I know you have a lot. I want to be clear that I think people, even in this situation, someone getting harassed and threats and stuff like that. I mean, we shouldn't have to say it, but it's worth saying not good. Right. um i guess i just when i look at this situation where i feel like the point is like well i antagonized people that and and then suddenly that why are they harassing me and why am i not being defended it's like come on man like you weren't being harassed for something for like oh you made a character a lesbian because that we see that kind of harassment and it's like yeah you can not like that, but to try to find someone's personal number or like try to ruin their lives over a creative decision, totally wrong.

1:26:20Colin Moriarty:But it's like, and I'm, and still even harassing someone over being an antagonist, I would say is wrong, but don't be surprised that it happens when you do that. Right.

1:26:31Dustin Furman:No, that's exactly right. It reminds me a little bit of, again, we bring every once in a while. I don't really listen. I not even really, I don't listen to or watch his stuff but i just i'm familiar with him as that h3 guy and how he's suing we brought this up in the past how he's suing those three creators and yeah suing them like it like one of them into oblivion it seems like based on like the video she's posting or whatever and what i realized was there's like a schadenfreude that people really like there's like an almost it's like a vile level in some way of openly expressive schadenfreude in other words you can I think it's okay to like secretly feel a certain way honestly or like to keep thoughts to yourself to like try not to put the toxicity in the world but be like you know what you're kind of getting what you deserve you know but then like there's a difference between like openly mocking and celebrating and you know like harassing like you're saying all these kinds of things and I just think that like we've crossed a line into everything being a much more public spectacle and I feel like maybe this is what this woman kind of got caught into and what I was saying earlier was the problem I have with this is should she have been fired it's like I don't know man like we had to confront like the drama around you know open to open openly around like Chris's joke and what I realized was and we talked about it openly on the show and I think that was like an incredibly useful exercise and we got a lot of props for that from people being like yeah talk it out and like how everyone's feeling everyone's hot we only had like 12 or 14 hours in between the event and like when we had to record I wish we had more time and what I expressed to Chris privately and I think I said publicly is like I just wish I had more time to like right think about it and like ground yourself and realize like the life goes on and this isn't going to be like the defining moment of our product and all these kinds of things like you need time to get through that and I felt like we came out better for it because we went through it and we talked about it and everyone had their differences of opinions and we shed some fans and we've gained some fans and it's like it's okay it all came out in the wash and like whatever um and i kind of always knew it's like it's what we said on the show or what i said on the show it's like what do you expect me to do like what do you want me to do like you want me to blow up my whole show because my friend made a joke like do you ever you have any idea the amount of times that i've said things that like cost us you have any idea you know like it's it's kind of comes with the territory otherwise you have to be very guarded and stilted and you don't say anything and and you don't make mistakes and all that's like whatever man the reason i'm not crazy about the way this is framed is because she kind of doubled down on it and that's cool too but it's like if that's the way you feel that's what you believe she she had i think changed her name on blue sky to something about like punching nazis and she said something like i would do it a thousand more times or something like that or whatever after she got fired and it's like well you were talking kind of a big game.

1:29:27Dustin Furman:So it's not like you were contrite and went into a shell and all the rest. It's quite the opposite. And I'm not surprised that Sucker Punch wouldn't want to be associated with that. I think that it probably would have come out in the wash one way or the other. In other words, if they kept her and were like, she's on leave without pay for three weeks or whatever, or she doesn't get her bonus or whatever, something punitive, then people would have been upset on one side. And then if you fired her, then it upset a bunch of different people. In fact, if you read like the thread, Alyssa's thread about it on Twitter and the thread about it on Blue Sky, like just absolutely polar opposite responses.

1:30:07Dustin Furman:Right. So you're not going to please everyone. And I don't know like what it cost them, you know, to do it or what it would have saved them from doing it. But there was a thing in here. and again this is the framing is like she makes it all about her but it's not it was about the game and they say here that there was a message internally um from sucker punch that day it said quote due to a social media post by one of our team members many corners of our studio and sony organization are having to manage a developing situation we may have to pause a trailer release there will be some significant amount of work created now to ensure we keep the spotlight on the fantastic game we've all created please be mindful of how you represent yourself online and quote it's like dude they weren't happy with you right like they were pissed at you and they had a right to be in just the sense that it's a team sport you're not independent creators doing a weekly podcast whatever like everything you do leads up to this game you know and you've been working on it for five years and then you pull that shit when the game is gold i think it's just kind of so from i kind of see it from their perspective it's like you got to go you know like what are you thinking yeah she's also i mean the person also isn't like it'd be one thing if it was like a key like it'd be like look not that i'm saying this would go over well necessarily but it's one thing if like it's one thing if like a ken levine makes it makes a joke on twitter or something you know what i mean it that would be a different situation because it'd be like oh well this person's clearly worth keeping uh not to say that like the person i don't know what the person's work is i don't know how good it is or whatever but like it's clearly not like this um the benefits of letting her go clearly outweigh the benefits of keeping her on so it clearly must not have been that integral and i understand that this is an inherently diminishing statement but i don't mean it that way i'm just like the the reality was this was not like a key figure that was like depending you know the game depended on them and so there is an there is an element of that as well where i do feel like certain people can get away with more because they're just more valuable to the team uh and that's also worth considering like i don't know this whole thing is very bizarre i feel kind of all over the place about it because again if i was working for a device i'll put it this way if i was at if i was at working at a playstation studio or like any kind of big studio i wouldn't be saying anything on social media at all right in fact i would be i would be thrilled to not have anything to do with it in fact but unfortunately i chose this career path before that was a thing and now it's ingrained into it and so like now i have to be there but like i would be enthralled to be in a position to be like oh i'm i work at a sony studio and i could just make my game and make a lot of money make something that people are going to love and then also not expose myself to like random strangers who are clearly unhinged and want to harass me and then find then like dox me and shit like why would i want that i feel like you squat i feel like this person squandered a pretty good opportunity to remain anonymous in a time when in a time where that's so valuable to put that um to put it lightly dude i mean i did a little research on her her name's drew harrison she worked at sucker punch for 10 years and she was previously at ilm before that she went to scad which is a prolific art school my my uh best friend from long island mike pope went to scad they were actually there they had an overlapping time i wonder if they knew each other um and she was a texture artist which is an important thing and sure i it's just like she kind of in a way depending on how you look at it's like you kind of owned yourself like if you read the story she got she got fired with no severance and she missed out on the ship bonus dude i mean that's going to be at least tens of thousands of dollars especially for someone that was there for 10 years you know um yeah it's like you why did you it's from so i i can see it from all ways.

1:34:18Dustin Furman:It's like, should this be the defining moment of her life? I find that incredibly unfair. But you know what I also find incredibly unfair is that one of the defining moments of my life is a joke I made about women. Sure. And that's two sides of the same coin. It's why I always say I don't want to, I don't like meeting people and I'm very insular and I don't want people to know who I am is because I know they're going to Google me and they're going to get these ideas about me based on things that like define me, even though they don't define me. and I'm not saying she herself was part of the culture that did that to me although maybe she was I don't know but oh actually I should back up she's she is no doubt I think well I don't say no doubt it's likely she's part of the culture that did that to me and whether she individually did that to me and I would be surprised if they if they were aghast when other people lost their jobs for anodyne shit that happened that they agreed with and that's kind of the point i'm making is like you kind of sure i dude listen if if she was one of these like someone can find a million things i've said over time about how this shouldn't we shouldn't be going down this road and this is a bad idea and the shoe's gonna be on the other foot and everything and i said it for years and now this kind of stuff just gets a shrug for me where i'm like well i don't know what you want me to say you know it's here we are i my life was nearly destroyed over a complete tim allen joke so whatever yeah i mean and i want to be clear yeah and i want to be clear too that like i've i felt this way about pretty much like when gina carano got fired from the star wars i was like oh why why who cares like who or rosie o'donnell's like you hired rosie you don't know who rosie o'donnell is you hired her like she's it's not a secret who rosie o'donnell is and like what her humor is like you you knew this person was this so like i've always felt this way and oh you mean you mean roseanne bar oh yeah yeah oh yeah rosie o'donnell i was just thinking about rosie o'donnell recently for some reason oh yeah because i you responded to a call yeah only rosie o'daddle no the um yeah yeah rosanne bar sorry like but like you know who rosanne bar is you know like you know that you didn't hire her like in this vacuum where it's like oh i had no idea that she that she leaned this way or made these jokes it's like you knew what you were getting into when you rebooted the show with her name in it like come on like i don't know i've always felt this thing i've always felt these stories are very like bizarre, especially in entertainment and entertainment.

1:36:36I think it makes less sense because I mean, these are, isn't this kind of good in some sense because you're kind of getting people from everywhere. I don't know.

1:36:49Dustin Furman:That's what I would think. I recommend people go read the story on aftermath. Again, it's called two months after firing over Charlie Kirk comments, ghost of Yote dev blames harassment campaign. Not bad joke. You can check it out and kind of make your own decision and figure out how you feel about it. I like you, Chris, feel a conflicting ways where I'm like, I'm. There's orders of degrees, right? Like, I'm not entirely sure that should be your defining moment. Sure. I'm not entirely sure you were contrite when it happened and you weren't contrite probably until it went, you know, it's it's settled on you what actually the gravity of you losing your job at Sucker Punch, which is probably could have been some sort of somewhat permanent job for you because Sucker Punch is not going to lay anyone And often the game was a success and you'll move on to the next game.

1:37:28Dustin Furman:And it was you fucked it up. Should they have fired you or not? It's like, I don't know that they should have. And yet I don't know what you would have expected them to do. Right. Yeah, it's about a team of people and their game. And your timing was just bad and they never acknowledged it. There's like no real. She even says, like, I would have apologized. It wasn't the best time joke or whatever. It's like you could have just said that at the time. If that's the way you felt. I mean, don't apologize. Like I never apologize for my joke because I'm not sorry. Like, but if you but if you are really sorry, then then apologize.

1:38:05Dustin Furman:And maybe it could have gone different. But it just seems like I get the story becomes about the harassment she received. And I'm like, yeah, that's unfortunate. I know what that's like. Trust me. Believe me, you know, and it's not appropriate for people to be calling sucker punch and to be calling your phone and do it and threatening you. And none of that's appropriate. My life's been threatened many times. I know all about being harassed. I know all about it. I get it. But making it about you, you know, LGBTQ and women and this, I'm like, come on, man. Like, it's just about what you said. At the end of the day, you don't need to make it about all these other things.

1:38:43Dustin Furman:And if you didn't feel like you were apologetic at the time, I believe you, and now you are because of the results of your actions, then that's fine, too. I hope you move on and find a new job. The sad reality, and I think that guy Asmongold had said this is like the streamer had said, it's like, this is just going to follow you to the next job. You know, like this is the nature of the culture war now that has been created. It's really scary and crazy, but maybe with this story, it's best to just ingest what it is, realize there's probably a lot of, I don't want to say a lot of blame to go around, but there are a lot of conflicting opinions about how you protect the game and would sucker punch have made a different decision if they had a month to think about it could if they could quantify what it would have cost them would they have made a different decision these are just unknowns in the moment and you can't really and that's the big thing is like and i want to say this the most and it's you can't blame sucker punch i mean like what do you want them to do like what do you want them to do have have this haunt every trailer every twitter post every blog post at like all of it or just cut the loose person the person loose by the way their work's done not to be a dickhead but it's like we'll just hire another texture artist for the next game yeah yeah yeah i mean it's tough it's a tough one every company's gonna operate differently i suppose you know but it is what it is yeah i mean clearly she's in a bad way i feel i feel bad for her about that i'm just a human being i mean i don't really she never did anything to me so it's not like there's definitely schadenfreude of people's downfall that i appreciate but it's usually personal i haven't it's always personal i know i don't have anything personal with this person like she didn't personally offend me but um right it's a very interesting story and the way people are falling down on it but yeah i feel like this is a product of the culture let's put it this way from my opinion this is a product of the culture that people like her and the people that the person that wrote that story created the only difference is shoes on the other foot now that's it that's the only difference and i don't know but i would only say i don't think i don't think they created it i think it's i think they evolved it into something else yeah okay fair enough you remember that because we all well maybe we don't all remember but like i remember i remember the dixie chicks and and you know fucking i remember yeah people throwing away their albums and all that that was during yeah that was during the band off of radio and just like i don't know man it's all it what it really is is ultimately it's just like um it really is it comes down to oversensitive people not being able to handle that people think different things than them really and it that exists kind of everywhere across all sorts of societies and political persuasions and it really is just a matter of like how dare that exist i've gotta i've gotta stop this i gotta stop six days from infallusion from coming out i gotta do it like what why who who's doing this and uh it's the same thing with you know back in 2014 people trying to get people fired for stupid and same thing now it's just like it's this is a this has been a thing for a while uh and now it's just hyper now that internet is infused into like everything now it's like now it's just unavoidable and now it's just like it's like fever pitch now at this point i think it's even worse now technically in some ways than it was in like 2016 or whatever when this thing was like really kind of getting getting big because now there's like no separation like in 2016 you could log off actually right that was probably like the last time that was probably the last year you could log off realistically you know i knew people who didn't who didn't know in 2016 i vividly remember people not knowing what the news was every day you know what i mean like i vividly remember that like now it's like you wake up and it's like you know bob donnie's in the white house and he's like yeah just that's fine you don't gotta you know you can say yes i don't care yeah i love it dude did you see like people were making fun of him because he was trump was dressing like mom donnie like that is crazy he needed to swag up dude it is that is the weirdest thing i think i've ever because like he's only ever worn two outfits in the entire time that i've been aware of him in public life and it's been the suit that he's always in or the golf clothes right right i've never seen him dress in any different way so to see him dress exactly like him as wild it's so fun it's very funny you liked him yeah it seemed like he did like him yeah and he seems like a likable person it's just uh yeah you would expect there to be significant political differences between them but i guess not although populists are kind of cut of the same cloth in a way so that is true um so yeah go check out the story if you want dustin you have anything you want to add

1:43:34Colin Moriarty:before we go with this no i think i said everything i need all right cool so yeah go check out the story it's an interesting story certainly good journalism to get her side of things

1:43:44Dustin Furman:and how she feels about it. But I think it's framed around the entirely wrong thing. I think the article should have been about, or if I was giving an interview, I would have been like, I am so deeply embarrassed. Like maybe I don't believe what I said was a big deal, whatever, but I am deeply embarrassed that I fucked up the lead up to the game in a pretty substantial way that might have cost us. And I said this on that TJ Smash Guy's show where it's like, he like it probably this all this drama probably cost tens of thousands of copies which is not nothing yeah I like that you keep calling him TJ Smash that's his name right oh is it JT Smash it's Smash JT I'm pretty sure wait

1:44:29Colin Moriarty:this isn't a bit no he's been saying this for weeks I know I swear to god it's Smash JT I thought it was a bit. This is a great bit.

1:44:45Dustin Furman:Oh, boy. I got it. I got it backwards. It's good. It is what it is.

1:44:55Dustin Furman:That's kind of a cooler name, though, isn't it? It is kind of better, actually. It's like Smash is the last name. Mr. Smash. Mr. Smash. All right. Oh, what? the link's broken. The next story is about Death Stranding 2 on the beach coming to PC, but when you go to the ESRB page now, it's down. I wonder if they took it down because they were leaking it, but it looks like Death Stranding 2, according to the ESRB as of yesterday or early this morning, Death Stranding 2 on the beach, there it is. Yeah, only listed for PS5 now, but there was a PC listing on the ESRB for Death Stranding 2 on the beach.

1:45:34Dustin Furman:What was interesting about it was that it was being published by Sony, but That's not super surprising that they weren't going with 505 again this time for the PC launch, but you would think maybe they would, Kojima would have just published it himself on PC. They took it down, though. I wonder, what do we think, Dustin? You think that's a mistake? It's not a mistake. Things don't go through the SRBM by mistake, especially with that kind of timing. But I guess Sony was like, take that down.

1:45:54Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I think Kojima gave him the call, said, yo, take this shit down immediately. I don't. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. but yeah as far as Death Stranding 2 PC release I will say it's not surprising at all that it's getting a PC release I just wonder if we're if we have an ESRB rating less than a year turnaround

1:46:16Dustin Furman:I went look this up because this isn't I went look this up actually because it's not that unusual Death Stranding 1 on PC was an eight-month gap November 19th to July 20 the Death Stranding 2 came out June 26th. So a similar gap would be February.

1:46:35Colin Moriarty:Okay.

1:46:36Dustin Furman:So maybe the game awards. For a reveal. Yeah. Yep. So because my mind was in the exact same place that's where I'm like, that is quick.

1:46:47Colin Moriarty:Same one on a write that story up. Column, we already confirms Death Stranding 2 PC release at the game awards. You heard it here.

1:46:55Dustin Furman:You heard it here first. It would make some sense. I mean, that seems like a I don't want to say a safe bet, but likely, right? Based on his relationship with Jeff. It's Jeff's birthday celebration.

1:47:09So, all right.

1:47:11Dustin Furman:That's right. Are you guys going to play Death Stranding 2 on PC? Either of you or you had your fill? No, I did it.

1:47:16Colin Moriarty:Maybe in a few years. When I replayed Death Stranding 1, I played it again on PC. But I'm good for now.

1:47:26Dustin Furman:The director's cut of Death Stranding 1 made the game substantially better. I remember talking about it on the show being like, I don't even remember that. I can't believe this stuff wasn't even in the original game. And I wonder what they'll do to Death Stranding 2 in the coming years to evolve it, because it's pretty great. I mean, it's like it's my game of the year, I think. And I'm thrilled for more people to be able to play it. I am interested in Sony. Publishing on PC. That makes sense to me. They publish they publish Stellar Blade on PC, so it's not like unusual for them to publish And that's like an even more detached game from them, although they don't own either IP.

1:48:06Dustin Furman:But I we were talking earlier about stories and how I kind of like pass on stories that I don't feel like even if they're being reported that I don't believe in. One of those stories recently was like Sony slowing down their PC releases. I'm like, I don't think so. Maybe. I don't honestly, I don't think anything's really changed on their PC releases. And we'll talk about that a little bit later about how much money they've made on it and all the rest. But that's training to on the beach. ESRB did listed for a PC release that stuff doesn't really happen accidentally I've submitted things to the ESRB you have to do it like it's not they don't just fucking make it up so I would count on that yeah and so do we all agree game awards kind of reveal seems to make sense for a February March release would be a similar time and Sony doing it themselves I think it's funny man I think the 505 games deal was probably like ah fuck we didn't we wish we did that like sony was in a different place with pc releases when death stranding came around and what probably happened was they were to get kojima to do it they probably had to agree to a multi-platform release ultimately it came to xbox five years later but came to pc and sony's like oh we don't publish on pc so you can work with someone else and now it's just different now they probably have first writer refusal on it and again we saw that with stellar blade itself so yeah not a huge surprise there i'm very interested especially you dustin because you're more in this technical space, but we talked a little bit last week about this interview that our friend Mystic Ryan did with Bill Litzauer, who's the head of Implicit Conversions, the emulation studio that works closely with Sony on all of the and other partners, of course, but for PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable ports on PS4, PS5, available a la carte, also part of your PlayStation Plus premium subscription, depending on how you want it.

1:49:55Dustin Furman:I haven't got a chance to sit down and listen to this interview yet. I want to congratulate Mystic. It's I think around 100 ,000 views, which is awesome because this is a pretty niche thing. And he's done a good job of cracking the nut here. So he did an interesting interview with this guy. And I pulled out a couple of things that I thought would be interesting. And Push Square, our friends at Push Square, I think Sammy wrote both of these stories. Yeah, he kind of cut things out that I thought were interesting. So here's what Push Square writes. It says, quote, implicit conversions, the studio behind emulating some of your favorite PS1 and PS2 games as part of the PS Plus Premium catalog is quietly working on a PS3 emulator.

1:50:33Dustin Furman:While boss Bill Litzauer insists improving its support for PS2 is his company's current focus, he revealed in an interview with Mystic that he believes it will be feasible to emulate PS3 games in the future, potentially on the PS5 and certainly on the PS6. he said quote we believe it's feasible i don't think anyone expects it to run on a switch or ps4 but maybe ps5 and certainly ps6 whenever that comes out we do feel it's technically possible it's just a matter of devoting the time energy and resources to it end quote and then push square continues let's sour can explain that the ps3 is a back burner project for his team and that it actually hasn't had many requests for the console but it's something it's working on anyway he continued quote we're working with a third party to help us with this so we have a base to work off of.

1:51:17Dustin Furman:It's a backburner project for us that we're investing over time. To be transparent, PS2 is more of a priority for us just because of the demand, but it's a fun project for our engineers, end quote. Push Square continues, many believe the PS3 emulation may never happen due to the complicated nature of the console's architecture, but in recent years we've seen PC-based solutions like RPCS3 come on leaps and bounds. As Litzauer appears to allude, the biggest bottleneck here seems to be time and resources to get it done. Dustin, what are your thoughts? We kind of knew this. We reported on this. I mean, we didn't have information from the horse's mouth, of course.

1:51:52Dustin Furman:But you might recall, I went on Implicit Conversion's website some months ago, and they had like a roadmap. And in the far-flung, like, mystery projects future, PS3 emulation was in there. So we kind of already know that they were doing this, but this comes from the horse's mouth. What do you think about this? And I want to specifically ask you this. Is there a power? Like, why would you need the power of the PS6? and why wouldn't it be possible on PS4 or Switch? I'm kind of confused. It seems to suggest that the hardware is not powerful. Like, I don't understand what he's saying by that. So talk to me a little bit.

1:52:28Colin Moriarty:Yeah. So. Hello. You okay? I'm recording. She forgot. She might have forgot. Oh, yeah. All right. We'll leave that in. What was I saying? Emulation. Okay. um so in order to emulate something i'm just going to speak in base terms because i don't understand like the full technical ramifications of some of it uh but what i do understand is that in order to emulate something you need something significantly more powerful than what the hardware is itself so it makes sense to me that a ps4 being the very next generation wouldn't be able to emulate ps3 games i'm not saying you couldn't run a ps3 game that is converted into running on ps4 code certainly we've seen that many times with remasters or whatever um so is ps5 powerful enough maybe i haven't been following the rpcs3 emulator and there's probably comparable devices i think what a lot of people get confused or what i would just my theory about some of this is that it is true that rpcs3 can run most of the ps3 library and very very well i just wonder if it's like it's not necessarily perfect like like yeah you can play through this whole game but would it pass a qa test you know there's a big difference between oh yeah i played it on my system and it ran fine and like no we ran it through every possible scenario to make sure it was up to snuff for a quality product that we release on the store um so that's kind of where i would put that but i'm curious about you know if they end up doing it um playstation 6 yeah it sounds like it would be powerful enough and i wonder i mean i guess i don't want to step on the next story but But it really does come down to sounds like it's going to be a big money investment to make this emulator up to snuff.

1:54:35Colin Moriarty:And if people are that hungry for PS3 games to justify the cost of the emulation.

1:54:44Dustin Furman:Yeah, this was a Chris to bring you in. This was a thing that I was surprised about with this first story was them saying there's kind of a lack of demand for a PS3 emulator. I that must be true behind the scenes, but that's anything but true with the audience. I don't know what that specifically means, but people have been it almost seems like detached from reality to say something like that. Yeah, I guess I could see it meaning like there are fewer games of consequence on the PS3 that like I could see like there's more games on PS2 that people want to play probably than PS3 exclusively, I guess.

1:55:18Right, because there are a lot of games from the 360 or PS3 era that are playable now that are not exclusive to like, you know, that aren't first party games. so maybe that's what that means it's like because really if you think about it it really is only a handful of games like maybe like six big games ultimately like there's like Metal Gear Solid 4 which is coming which we assume is coming in that in that collection there's uh the Resistance Trilogy there's the original two infamous games and that's kind of really like of the big things that are missing like Killzone I guess but it's it's not it's not as big as I guess the overwhelming swath of like ps2 games that people want to play so i guess that that's maybe the lens of it and from that perspective i could see it but i don't know to me because we've had access to ps2 360 games uh for so long or at least them in like a remastered capacity the absence of those games from ps3 from first party is like particularly glaring and so the demand feels a lot more intense because it's just like how do we not have this i i thought the same thing by the way when i first when I first saw it, it's like, I don't think anybody expects this to run on PS4.

1:56:27It's like, what? I totally do. What are you saying? Yeah. Like I totally, I totally would. I totally would expect it to run a PS course. Me too. It's crazy. Me too. So yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, I think that's what they mean though. It's like there's, there's fewer titles overall that are not playable that people are demanding. But that's the, that's the only way that I could read it and have it make sense to me.

1:56:52Dustin Furman:The other story that push square wrote, about this interview and again um what is the interview called is it is this in the heart oh no mystic is splitting out clips now so i don't know but it's a it's a fairly long interview he did um it's about and i brought this up in the past about managing your back catalog and like why there just aren't more games available for like this classics catalog people are always upset every month i mean we talked dustin i know is upset about it every month when we talk about the new games it's like one game two games like what is taking all this time i do think there it goes back to what i've said many times about the old virtual console on we is like you don't want to release everything at the same time but you have to have it was what was cool about virtual console was like two games a week like just constantly coming out it was awesome and you get a turbo graphics game sometimes at an snes game sometimes or whatever but um the same guy built let's at bill litzauer from implicit conversions kind of shed some light on this about what we were talking about from a financial perspective too he was saying quote or this is what Push Square says.

1:57:52Dustin Furman:In an interview with YouTube channel Mystic, Bill Litzauer, the boss of Emulation Studio Implicit Conversions, sheds a little more light on just how difficult it is to get your favorite PS1 and PS2 games on modern hardware. The main thing is financial viability. Litzauer notes that it gauges interest from a variety of sources, including Reddit, YouTube, social media, and more. It then pairs that information with past sales trends to predict how a particular game will sell. But that's just the first hurdle. Even if a game seems like a no-brainer, it then needs to get a publisher's consent and clear legal complications.

1:58:21Dustin Furman:Sometimes the rights holder may have passed away or there could be issues regarding content or licenses. And there's also a question of financial viability. Litzauer points out that retro re-releases are often sold quite cheaply and that can make it difficult to make the money back. Due to NDAs, he wasn't able to elaborate on how his company's relationship with Sony works. So, oh, and he goes on, he says, Litzauer recalled one meeting he had with a high-ranking executive who pointed out his company turns over$3 billion a year. The paltry profits being touted for retro releases doesn't even register on the radar of some larger firms so it's interesting to get a little kind of again get this from the horse's mouth that there are the complications we've heard of a million times like there are games i know of games that are stuck in limbo or that were back in the day that's like no one even really knows who owns it like like literally no one has any idea like who who actually owns the ip or like where the master of like where the the game you know game code gets lost all the time but there are just a lot of things like that happening and to hear him say that like there are companies that own some of the shit where it's like who cares like why like why is this even worth our time 25 000 copies or 50 000 copies when we can just kind of hold it in our vault and maybe do something else with it later so it just gives us a little bit more insight into why i think these games are kind of slow to come to market although i think they're slower to come to market than i think they need to be still even even even under that those specific guidelines just knowing nintendo's experience back in the day with virtual console like they were they were publishing some of the most random shit right on the 3ds and still to this day where i see some of their updates where it's like this is now on the the subscription service and i'm like what like who even owns this and it's fascinating so if they can do it certainly sony can do it too but it is what it is my take on this because

2:00:08Colin Moriarty:so a lot of the conversation they are talking about sony playstation plus premium games uh Implicit Conversations also does other work. Like if you look at their website, they worked on the port of Fear Effect 2. And they're working with Limited Run on that. And they're working on like Fighting Force 2. And they worked with Digital Eclipse on the Mortal Kombat or the Mortal Kombat Legacy, whatever it's called. So they have some more front facing stuff. But I think my criticism still applies where I think when he's talking about that, he's talking about those more individualized projects. but it's like Sony with these conversions.

2:00:47It's like the money is there.

2:00:49Colin Moriarty:You are getting it from those premium subscribers every month. It's one of the main reasons to get the premium outside of the streaming is the classics catalog. So, and Sony, I mean, has maybe not some of the most icon. I mean, they have many of the iconic stuff from PlayStation one, but there's plenty of things they haven't tapped into yet. So, I mean, it could just also be that if they're the, if implicit conversions, the only one doing it, that they can only do so many at a time. So scale up.

2:01:23Dustin Furman:Yeah. Make it happen. I agree. And I'm also, I'm also, yeah, I'd like to see more as well. Although they're also mixing these games into this, this time culture that we talk about all the time where it's like, okay, so you're going to go play wild arms. Like, is that really what you're going to do? Now, the answer to that is for me is yes. But for, for most people, that's not, That's not what they're going to do. So I think there's that. I do think that and it's a great point. The cheap price. Is a killer. Five bucks, ten bucks. Can't make a lot of money doing that. When you're losing 30 % of all of it.

2:01:59Dustin Furman:So. We'll see. We'll see what happens with. It's confirmed here. PS3 games coming to. It's here on Sacred Symbols. We're confirming it. PS3 games come into PlayStation Network. Only kidding. okay where are we now oh i want to talk a little bit more about pc releases uh just saw our friend reese elliott who's been on our show before on sacred symbols plus posted on the alinea insight newsletter the top selling playstation games on steam they report that playstation has made over 1.2 billion dollars so far from games selling on steam according to reese 300 million dollars goes to valve for those sales pretty interesting again just making just sitting there doing nothing which we're doing something doing something for sure they say specifically sony is about 1.2 billion dollars overall on these sales 350 million dollars or so has gone to valve they list and again these are numbers from their own um their estimates based on their own formulas and whatever these aren't numbers from sony but they're very accurate firm has been shown time and time again hell divers to 12.7 million copies on pc jeez that's so many copies dude that makes hell divers let me let's so let's think about this is hell divers 2 one of the 10 biggest selling playstation games of all time you're you assume it's at what 18 to 20 for with ps5 spider-man's yeah so So there's some Gran Turismo games, probably more than that.

2:03:37Dustin Furman:Maybe The Last of Us Uncharted. Yeah, like it would be. Of course it would be. It must be up there. Yeah. That's so interesting. And based mostly on PC, two thirds of the players, I think they were saying at some point. So there's that. Now, the interesting thing that I wanted to say here, too, and this is something he writes in. This is something that I've been talking about recently. You can admit if you got the idea for me, I'll allow it is I've been saying for a long time that there's a diminishing return, that the novelty is totally worn off and that this actually works towards Sony's benefit in some way.

2:04:07Dustin Furman:Obviously, they want to make more money, but if they're selling fewer copies on PC over time, but still making a nice amount of money on it, then they know they're probably not leeching off of their console base. And so there's probably little risk or at least less risk from my perspective than they might have thought originally. And in fact, when you see games like Helldivers, you're like, well, there's no risk at all. We actually spread the field and made an enormous amount of money. But they show that there is a diminishing return over time and that it doesn't really seem to be it seems to be based on time rather than the quality of the game or the interest in the game.

2:04:35Dustin Furman:So that Horizon Zero Dawn sells substantially higher than Horizon Forbidden West. That Spider-Man Remastered sells, I think, substantially more than Miles Morales. That Days Gone sells extraordinarily high. Days Gone sold three and a half million copies on PC, according to this, which is crazy. And that is not even a Sony game of any relevance. And then yet when Spider-Man comes later, it sells 2.7 million copies. the only explanation and i think this is what recess kind of stumbled upon too and what i've been saying for a long time on here is that there's just a novelty factor it's actually not about the game and you saw this with the last of us and then uncharted and so on and so forth i find that really interesting so they have these charts that show like god of war one god of war well outsells god of war ragnarok spider-man one well outsells spider-man two really really interesting shit so i don't know if you guys have anything you want to add on that but definitely check out this article from the um from the alinea insight newsletter substack the top selling playstation games on steam because they have a lot of interesting data here and i think sony's settling this is why i was so confused when they're like sony's backing off pc releases i'm like why it's working out great you're making a little bit of churn 1.5 billion dollars in all these games is not that much i mean comparable to what sony makes on playstation but it's something and it's not enough for any of the naysayers internally or externally to say like are you hurting playstation i think you're just getting random customers by the hundreds of thousands in this the low millions and it works out so shout out to them and shout out to valve 350 million dollars of passive income off of the sony releases so far over on shifts up shift ups website they reported some of their financials in korean of course so we're working on google translates of these they're in south korea of course interesting note about about stellar blade that i'm surprised isn't making the rounds a little bit more specifically about the sequel they write here quote shift up ceo young tay kim announced that it will conduct a large-scale open recruitment to develop the next installment of the global hit stellar blade this by the way it's stellar blade when translates from korean to english i don't know this recruitment will be open year-round with no separate deadline starting on the 21st of this month, so that's already passed.

2:06:56Dustin Furman:It's November. And it will recruit a wide range of talented individuals across a variety of development fields. The recruitment fields are 3D background artists, 3D character artists, background concept artists, monster battle designer, PC battle designer, level designer, system designer, scenario writer, technical artist, engine programmer, client programmer, composer, etc. Through this recruitment, ShiftUp is seeking talented individuals to collaborate on the creation of a next generation multi-platform action game. A ShiftUp representative stated quote we welcome the active supportive individuals who will once again surprise gamers around the world with new technologies and creative endeavors end quote i love that bullshit quote that's a an amazing quote shift up to the next installment in the stellar blade franchise currently under development is a triple a multi-platform action game that expands upon the world view of the company's global hit stellar blade aiming for release on various platforms including consoles and pc the game will inherit the original ip's stylish action and narrative driven worldview from its predecessor delivering an evolved action experience.

2:07:59Dustin Furman:Chris, Sony's out. What do you think? I mean, I'm a little surprised, but I mean, I think, I don't know, Celebrate's such a weird game to me because I really, I really wanted to like it. And I just kind of, and I think I did on some level, but it just, it didn't pull me in enough. So I guess I guess on some level, I kind of maybe see what's like maybe what they were feeling. But like, I am a little bit surprised to see no. I'm a little surprised to see this personally. Well, I guess my assumption, it would be different just in the way I'm reading yours, which is that Sony, they said no to Sony.

2:08:42Dustin Furman:You know, not that Sony said no to the sequel. Oh, well. Oh, well, oh, that's OK. Yeah. well i mean like in other words it's like why would we do we sold all this i guess so yeah you're right that doesn't make that doesn't make more sense i guess for me i just look at it as like uh because they would it not benefit them to have kind of like a place in in that region of the world to kind of like or at least like some kind of relationship there i feel like it would it would benefit them yeah i mean i my assumption here and why i wanted to bring it up is that i assume sony is kind of bummed about this i mean you would have imagined that there might have been some first writer refusal we we've talked about the the the increasing flexibility of these second party deals beginning really with neo and koei tecmo where like although those games have never migrated to other consoles but where sony doesn't own the ip and they really are acting just as the publisher and this has happened with death stranding which kind of happened after the fact with the ip transfer and stellar blade is another one of these games um and so my assumption is is that shift up was like we don't really need you and they're probably right i mean that's kind of the thing is no yeah they're i mean they're definitely right yeah but i don't know i guess uh i guess i would have thought i don't know i guess my thought was like they would have maybe been a little bit aggressive trying to i don't know i i guess i thought it wouldn't turn out that way in some way like they would there would have been like kind of like a sweetheart deal or or kind of something because it benefits them to kind of be active in in that in that area and in that portion of the world and not to not that they aren't in in other ways i'm sure but like this is the biggest one that i'm aware of or that i was aware of um as far as like a a collaboration with you know the korean kind of scene yeah i mean yeah we have the now we know about the the horizon MMO at NC soft, which is that's Korean.

2:10:34Dustin Furman:Um, but yeah, and, but that seems more based on it being running on purple and not coming to PS five and everything seems actually kind of maybe even for the West Asian market. Stellar blade obviously is a more as a wider global hit. I think it's over 3 million copies sold now between PC and PlayStation. Dustin, I, I am, um, I'm not surprised. I would have made the same decision if I was shipped up, assuming that's the decision they made. It just kind of sucks for Sony because this also happened with Arrowhead. Although they own Helldivers, Arrowhead's like, we don't really need you anymore. And that's just kind of, it's interesting because working with Sony brings you great security and the marketing heft of that, but you don't get to spread the field.

2:11:17Dustin Furman:So you don't get to see the maximal potential of your game. So imagine a Stellar Blade 2 that launches on PS5, Switch 2, Xbox series and PC at the same time, it's going to be, it'll be fine for them. So it kind of puts Sony in a powerless situation and it shows why they want to own IP and all the rest. What do you think?

2:11:37Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Let's throw out a hypothetical here is Shuhei Yoshida was the one really making this game happen for Sony. Like I was just reading this quote, Genki posted it. It's from the site mini map where he talks about visiting shift up in 2019 and 2020 after hearing about an outstanding console game um i wonder if now that he's gone and while i mean it was a good hit for sony if they're kind of like this kind of isn't our thing like the sexy asian girls in skin tight suits and if we we would we will publish the second one but also it's okay if if you want to go yeah you know take those it's totally different i'm sorry good it's it's totally different from anything else that sony published it's not really their kind of game they never really did games

2:12:34Dustin Furman:like that um yeah there is something to be said about that i also wonder if maybe it's just there's not that much money and being the pub you know the publisher and kind of sharing funds on a three million seller over two years also off platform and i also think that just reading a little bit more about shift up in their their plans with other games so like that project which is game whatever the hell they're calling it now is they're publishing they announced they're publishing that with um level infinite tencent and so they seem to be kind of playing it like platinum did at their height which is like why not just try to do a little bit of our own thing get in a bed with different publishers and maybe even get in bed with publishers unlike platinum sometimes that platinum under sega for instance when it's like you can publish everywhere and you kind of get out of those individualized console ghettos that i don't i know it's hard for people i think we all understand it like i'm a big fan of playstation but i understand i own a developer it's like i don't want to just release games on playstation i don't why would i want to do that so i think every game maker kind of feels the same way and i don't think it's necessarily as attractive as you might think um the other possibility is sony could have come in and tried to buy shift up but i don't really see why you would do that chris makes a good point though like they are they are not only do they have a foothold in south korea which is a great place to be especially for a burgeoning market but they're a pretty dominant force there so it's not like they're just some small shitty thing like they're a big developer in south korea so we'll see what happens but um I was surprised that like I saw that it took days for people to read it properly because I saw this going around like, oh, stellar blades financials and all the rest.

2:14:18Dustin Furman:And I'm like, dude, it says it's a multi-platform game. Like it's a multi-platform game. No one was reporting on it. It was right. I think it came out the day after we published the last episode. Otherwise, we would have talked about it last week. So shout out to shift up stellar blade. I like stellar blade a lot. I know, Dustin, you platinumed it. You like those jiggling Korean breasts.

2:14:37Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah. Let them jiggle. the alleghenies but the malaghanies oink there's a of there's a character there's a villain or not

2:14:48Dustin Furman:a villain like a monster in silent hill f that's just like a pile of breasts oh yeah yeah it's not really because it's like supposed to be like utters or something but i'm like geez louise man imagine playing that in front of your significant other oh too late all right this story is going around comes from Moore's Law, a friend of the show, although the game post wrote it up for us here. And it basically has to do with. RAM shortages and RAM pricing and how this will affect Xbox, but that Sony apparently has kind of seen ahead of the curve and accounted for this and might have even acquired some of their own RAM ahead of time to to stock up.

2:15:34Dustin Furman:So part of the quote over on Moore's Law's podcast. And this is again, related by the Game Post says, quote, on the other side, the insiders, that's Moore's Law says PlayStation is in a stronger position for now. His claim is that Sony bought massive amounts of GDDR6 when prices were low, giving the PS5 more breathing room for the next couple of months. And then he says specifically, quote, from what I've heard, Sony planned ahead, bought up gobs of RAM near the bottom of the pricing and dust should be fine for months. They have plenty of GDDR6, at least for what I'm told. Prices could go up eventually.

2:16:07Dustin Furman:I could see that happening next year, but there is a reason Sony is cutting PlayStation 5 pricing for Black Friday. They aren't going to just do this as some extreme mover because sales are bad. They can afford to do it. Apparently, they are not worried about the RAM shortage, at least in the short to midterm. That's a great quote. I would also say that they don't care one way or the other because they're not going to raise prices comparable to RAM and then make you eat it. They want to sell the console at the cheapest possible price. I mean, that's just it just is what it is jambi wrote in and said hello sacred gobblers i hope you're doing well is hardware cooked for the next two years with news of astronomical ram prices due to the ai data center rush console prices are expected to go up once again i believe this won't happen until the ai bubble eventually bursts but it'll probably take the aforementioned two years to happen i'd advise anyone that wants a console to buy one right now if they can afford it as things will get worse before they get better begs the question once again as to why sony is in a rush to launch the PS6 in late 2027, according to leaks and rumors.

2:17:01Dustin Furman:On the other hand, PC gaming might have it the worst. Seems that us gamers can't catch a break with all of these price increases. Have a great Thanksgiving and don't worry about your turkey being dry. I'm sure you will all be making things moist one way or another. That's not. Well, that's a nice thing to say. If I'm making the turkey moist, I want to turn someone on. Dustin, you're connected to this. What's happening here with the RAM and should we be worried? And will PlayStation prices go up again?

2:17:27Colin Moriarty:Yeah. so i highly recommend tom's video and basically anything i know about it is from his video but to my understanding um open ai uh and it's here in the game post article to open ai's huge long-term memory deal with um samsung and sk hynix uh they could they're buying basically 40 of the world's d ram uh which is just insane uh just buying up 40 and apparently what happened when this deal was, I don't know if it was like being talked about or when it got struck, but either way, what happened was all these companies started to go nuts because they're like, oh shit, we need to buy up as much RAM as we possibly can.

2:18:11Colin Moriarty:So you have the shortage, like the actual literal shortage that is coming, but then it just got exacerbated by chaos of all these companies not wanting to have to increase the price of their stuff because RAM is so expensive. And it is real bad with PC. PC's already been hit like crazy to the point where RAM is, I think I saw the other day, 250 % higher than it was just a few short weeks ago. Oh, cool. So, and I think in Tom's video too, he talked about like stores saying that like a computer store, like a Best Buy or something. If they order stock of computer RAM, they're not expected to get it till December next year.

2:18:52Colin Moriarty:Wow. Or something like maybe it's I think it was computer stores. But anyway, the point of the emphasis is that it's bad. And it seems like Sony did make the smart choice or knew at the right time when to buy. And man, if the price of the Xbox goes up again.

2:19:11Dustin Furman:That was the big thing that I didn't bring it up because it's not relevant to our show. I don't want to, you know, but that was the big heft of the story that people were really reporting was that he was saying that Xbox prices are going to go up. Right.

2:19:21Colin Moriarty:Even more. just like come on man um so yeah i i don't know man my advice much like the write-in because i know there are probably thousands of people that are on ps4 right now and they plan to buy a ps5 when gta comes out don't wait if you can do it now on black friday where you can get it at the launch price right do it now i'm just better safe than sorry i'm not saying it forever

2:19:54Dustin Furman:it's like you might as well just commit you know it's not going to get any better but make your own decisions of course i mean who knows maybe maybe everything the prices will fall out but i i just doesn't it doesn't seem like that's going to happen so and all of this chris in the chase of ai data centers no one wants yeah man i uh oh man i wish there was just the wave of despair that just washed over me as you said that it's intense i don't know man i look these are these are the pricing structures of uh the gilded age that we are clearly in but hey man look if you if the black friday if if the sales pitch is zero zero percent off from five years ago we're in a dire we're in a dire place uh but playstation seems to be at least in a good position i i don't i really don't think they're worried about what xbox does either way to be honest with you um i don't think that i understand that that's why that's like a big thing where it's like oh xbox didn't plan ahead and like they it's inconsequential just so i guess it's not inconsequential to sony in the sense that i guess they would be competing for that so it's it benefits them that they got it but i don't think that really factors into much of this xbox is already in a weird space i wonder how this is going to affect that valve machine yeah i mean they don't have my kind of scale like sony or microsoft even microsoft so true yeah but but i'm saying that's gonna hurt them even worse that's gonna be even worse for them right so it'll be like uh because that thing's already rumored to be like seven to eight hundred dollars so like now right so like you can imagine by the time it's like it's probably it's approaching a thousand i don't know yeah i mean seven eight hundred dollars way too high for that thing i i i would pay at at most 800 for it because i am kind of like all right i could i could see myself using that but like a found i don't know man that's you're reaching it's the same thing is like with uh with uh when game game pass reached 30 bucks it's like well now you're in gym membership territory you know like it was one thing when you were competing with other streaming services that i also kind of didn't use that much now it's it's a little it's a little different certainly certainly yeah i'll be um i'll be interested to see how this all pans out i will say you're right about the gilded age stuff just in things are so economically fucked up right now with that and it's not even that the economy is bad per se it's that there's like a growing inequality and a grow um not even inequality it's like a disparate nature between the haves and have nots i guess that is inequality of of in this unholy alliance of inflation and availability of goods just driving prices higher and higher and um it just it's all in service and it's all in service of ai right great exactly that's it's so bad i don't think people understand and it's like we're already so close to seeing guillotines be taken being taken out of the street it feels like that like i was listening to this uh this interesting this economist talk about the fed and everything and he was saying you know talking about interest rates and how they're probably gonna have to go back up because inflation is going to kick in next year because they're going to start printing a lot more money and everything like that and i'm like man how much capitalism is just so uh you have to shepherd it it's obviously a very vital important unbeatable you know economic system it just is what it is but it can't be this unfettered thing you have to just like you have to guide republican small or republican government or you have to guide you have to guide it you can't right it can't stop it can't start working against people like it is right now.

2:23:42It's just, I don't know how much more people

2:23:44Dustin Furman:can take, and RAM is irrelevant. It's like just the way that all trickles down to the realities of life. It's crazy out there, and I feel bad for people. Should I feel bad for me? We're all suffering from inflation, but many people have a lot less than I do, and so you can't afford the erosion of the value of your dollar. It's sad. It's sad. But I'm glad PC gamers are getting hurt by it. Hmm.

2:24:10Colin Moriarty:Yeah, 64 gigs of RAM costs more than a PS5 now. Oh my God. That's crazy. Let's just do a little experiment right now. Going on Amazon, 64 gig DDR5 RAM. Never in a million years. Okay, two Crucial Pro DDR5 64 gig kit,$424. Here's another one,$541. one. Here's another one. So G skill trident. I'm pretty sure that's a good brand. $570.

2:24:46Dustin Furman:It's so what's so funny about this though, Dustin too, is that there's just going to be a drive upward because, because of the disparity in what people make, which is, is what it is. It's like the reality is a lot of people can just afford that. No problem. So it's not going to like come down through the market forces like that. It's going to come down through the availability, you know because there's there's probably no almost no price that you can stop charging because like some fucking bitcoin miner will just buy it you know like yeah oh yeah yeah scalpers right that kind of thing there's just there's oh the demand is not going to be abated by by anything so you just have to flood supply some some bangladeshi bot is gonna buy like 5 ,000 PlayStation 6s.

2:25:31Dustin Furman:Dude, by the way, we said this on the stream, but I just have to reiterate on Sacred Streaming we said it, but the geolocation thing on Twitter is the fucking best update ever. Oh, yeah. It's my favorite thing. Oh, it's so fucking funny. And I totally agree. Now, what they need to do is they need to give us the ability to kind of geofence. You know? I'll just cut off two-thirds of the world. No problem. Oh, yeah. Easily. bye you know i'm i'm all for it we'll never hear from you ever again oh god bangladeshi patriot bangladeshi maga patriot there's so many from bangladesh so weird it makes perfect sense of course people are like it's a cultural thing i'm like no no dude it's an income thing you make you can make hundreds of dollars a month just shit posting on twitter people overestimate how much you make it's like not that much maybe you can make like a low thousands of if you're like you're really good but that's a fucking a lot of money in kenya right you know that's like making 500 a month is like a lot of money and in like what is even in india like what is the per capita income per capita income india what is the per capita income of india 2388 a year so you could be like a shit poster on twitter and make 10 times the per capita income surprise yeah they what they should really do is just get rid of monetization on twitter a good idea in premise a nice idea to experiment with not working the the experiment failed yeah it's okay to admit that way it's okay to admit when an experiment fails right it's like this didn't work let's uh let's not do that i mean a lot of people could have told you that it would because in some sense it's kind of well the profit motive isn't for everything dude and it shouldn't be for everything there are certain things where it makes sense this is one of those things where it's like attention on twitter isn't that enough isn't there enough of that right exactly do it for the love of the game incentivize more of it it's crazy you got a troll for the love of the game right yeah i respect that but um so yeah i just wanted to say i think that update is fucking hysterical like one of the funniest things a tech company has ever done actually yeah it's the first it's the first time i've been like i was like good thank you elon yeah right this is amazing this is an amazing change love that good all right a couple more pieces of uh news items that i wanted to get through and then we'll get into what we're playing um especially both of you very curious to see what you think of this there'll be another closed beta for marathon this one's running from december 12th to 16th you can go to bungie.net and sign up for any platform you want so playstation xbox or steam um and it runs from december 12th to the 15th 2 p.m to 8 p.m every day that's pacific time because of course they're in washington state you will know you're invited if you receive an official email from bungie and invites will be sent in waves throughout the test and you will not be i'm sorry if you've played in the alpha or other nda playtests am i automatically invited to the marathon december community playtest no so you'll need to sign up again if you've already been in some of these playtests um and i think this is strictly under nda although i believe the last ones were too and shit still leaked so i would imagine that's gonna happen i wonder how they're marking screens and trying to figure like they're doing something to your footage to try to track you yeah and i I wonder if people have figured it out and you can blur it out and not get in trouble.

2:29:02Dustin Furman:And really, like what I've never infringed on an NDA. But like if you infringe on an I never even really played in an alpha like this or a beta. But what is even the penalty? I have no idea. Are you guys going to play Chris? Are you going to check out the marathon? Community play test December 12th to 16th. Yeah, I mean, so this has been happening for a while and I haven't signed up purely because the NDA, I feel like kind of defeats the purpose. if i'm going to play something i kind of want to be able to stream it or talk about it or i don't know do something with it um but i've been playing a lot of arc raiders and so like i'm kind of like in this mode where i i do kind of want to play more of like i remember really liking marathon but i i think i actually understand it more now just from having the you know the availability of arc raiders being out and like available at my whim i think i kind of understand some of the systems that i uh maybe just didn't engage with as deeply when i was going into it so I did sign up I don't know if I'm expecting to be invited like these are kind of these are a little bit more tight knit but I just sign up and if I get invited I'll play and I guess I won't talk about it on the show because it'll be NDA'd but I do no man I look I maintain it like and we'll get into it with what we're playing but like I'm everything that I'm playing right now just kind of makes me more into and more excited about it because like It's good in a different way.

2:30:26And, you know, I'm I'm looking forward to seeing like what's different because I've heard from people who are obviously who signed these NDAs and don't care and will tell me whatever that like there's a lot of interesting stuff that they're doing and changes that have been implemented already. So, like, I'm keen to see them and then not relay them to you because I'll be under threat.

2:30:46Dustin Furman:But it's worth noting that this is only in North America, by the way, this particular play test.

2:30:51Colin Moriarty:Yeah. yeah i signed up for it one of the questions is what industry do you work in and i i'm not gonna lie on it so i put video games and i assume that just immediately is like

2:31:04Dustin Furman:yeah you're out yeah they don't want they don't want competitors looking at the game either so yeah yeah exactly and then i said i said insurance or something i don't know what i said i said i said i clicked video games at first and i was like well i don't technically work in video games not i definitely don't work in insurance well yeah i didn't click it i can't remember what there was like another option that like i could i could make some vague pretzel kind of argument

2:31:31Colin Moriarty:of like yeah i could twist myself into saying i this is accurate yeah but uh yeah the video games

2:31:38Dustin Furman:one is like it feels like a bait you know yeah um i also wanted to just couple this story about marathon with uh this story from push square noting that destiny 3 apparently is an extremely early development quote unquote this comes from a reliable leaker you might know colony deeks who's a destiny leaker and data miner he says on twitter he says on twitter quote yes destiny 3 is an extremely early development some of you may have seen a tweet early this afternoon that mentioned that and then they talk about how they got the info or like that they've been sitting on it but um i was just uh thus and all right chris we'll go to you actually because you're such a huge destiny fan or where it was is that or were is that uh very early development like what are you doing why is this very early in development well i mean we knew that in fairness like it because not that not that we knew that it was an early development but we knew that it wasn't in development so it could only ever it could really only ever be an early development if we if we start hearing about it sure that's true um but yeah it is it's a weird misstep for them in my opinion to and not that i don't think marathon is a worthy thing to try because again i do think it's authentically good and like it plays really well and it's cool and it got me into this entire genre that i probably wouldn't have given a shot otherwise but in my view to not also kind of bet on the future of this thing that seems to be so clearly the tentpole of what you're doing this intrinsic kind of built-in fan base that you have who are hungry for more like they they're actively wanting more destiny and in fact a lot of destiny people are annoyed about marathon because they look at marathon as an opportunity cost uh at you know at the cost of getting more destiny it's like oh well they're clearly not going to make more destiny if they're working on marathon and i guess i that kind of makes sense um but yeah like i i don't I don't know.

2:33:35It's very odd to me that that wasn't at least that there wasn't at least a plan in place for Destiny 3 to kind of pick it up and start running with it. And that it's only starting now is a little weird, but I don't know. Assuming Bungie is still around in the time that it takes for Destiny 3 to get out, it kind of does. It kind of makes me a little bit more excited because I know that, oh, if they're starting now, then there's a higher chance of whatever we end up with. feeling like an authentic leap in quality like if it really is like a temple ps6 game that kind of is a lot more exciting to me than if it was just like a you know a more ps5 oriented although it still will be i guess because it will be backwards backwards compatible undoubtedly um that would be kind of exciting and interesting if they managed to hit that in time and if they managed to deliver something cool and and different the main issue with destiny 2 that i feel right now is that they delivered it they delivered an ending to destiny 2 that feels like it's a perfect they gave a lot of people the perfect jumping off point which a lot of life services don't tend to do um they tend to kind of keep you keep you on the line for as long as humanly possible and i think people want to play more destiny it's just a matter of like destiny 2 feels like it's done and any attempt to continue it feels kind of forced or it feels like it doesn't feel cohesive it feels like the game is being held back in some way because it's built off of this ps4 tech that doesn't allow them to do as much as they probably could if they leap forward a little bit and so like yeah i i'm down for a destiny 3 in the amount of time that i would assume it would take for that to happen like in three years from now i would probably be like yeah i'm down to i'm down to jump back into destiny for a little bit and i probably won't take it as i probably won't be as into it but a fresh start i think is wise it's just it is also wild to me that that was that that's only just starting but that's not also that's not new

2:35:36Dustin Furman:information technically well yeah they gotta they gotta salvage things at bungie it all starts with marathon they gotta they gotta get marathon right even if it doesn't matter the marathon has the but any good multiplayer game with the provenance of a bungee making you know studio with the provenance of bungee making it and the respect that they have will create some sort of community attracted to it so the game has to be good they have a huge advantage in this in this environment of not being some unknown they have yeah i mean it it does also have to hit like there is we've i know we've talked about this before but like it marathon is good already it's just a matter of like whether or not like when it comes out will it will people care will it capture people in the same way i i think arc raiders is kind of like we and we've been over this too before it's kind of like a double-edged sword because like it is growing and it is introducing people into this genre and there could be an argument there that like it gets people into marathon actually more in some sense but there is also the opposite is also possible it's just like well why would we go there if we have this um i don't know i'm re i'm really fucking curious to see because like everybody that i seem to meet online uh strangers that i meet online they're like yeah this is good but then like pvp happens and then i hear like i i hear the complaints like from the people in the game it's like oh oh corner peeking nice great and you're like i hear it and i and i feel it and so like i wonder if there is like this big wave of of people getting into this extraction genre and getting like a feel for it but also feeling like i want i want something a little bit maybe i'm ready to get a little bit more hardcore but not quite tarkov level you know not quite that tarkov is like i think i saw somebody explain like tarkov is like an unemployed game and our creators we should play tarkov on stream one day that i would oh my that's that's You're asking for it, man.

2:37:36That's so bad. I would never. I would never stream Tarkov.

2:37:40Dustin Furman:I'd get immediately destroyed. It'd be so ridiculous. I'd be totally out of my depth. All right. We'll keep an eye on this. Obviously, marathon coming in hot, I think next year. Yeah, we'll see what happens. What's your guess? For March for released. I don't I don't even conjecture, I guess. I think some of it may be flexible based on what they the feedback they continue to get. but they're testing it repeatedly like you said so it seems like maybe they're trying to stress it now um and so maybe that suggests that it's more complete yeah march could be could be right summer i thought might be interesting too out at a track the younger crowd a college crowd out of school oh yeah but i don't know i don't know it doesn't matter none of you are studying anyway half you can't even read right you're just having chat gbt write your essays for right yeah and that's why we can't by the way that's why the ram's so expensive you see what you're doing to yourself yeah two million gallons of water just evaporated forever because you you had to fucking cheat on your uh your goddamn edgar allen poe essay for ridiculous thanks thanks a lot thanks um this morning from when we're recording they announced december's playstation plus games for essential so that's at all tiers this is of course the monthly games that they give out and have given out every year since or every month i'm sorry since the year 2010 this is a fun one a little bit of a Thanksgiving slash Christmas celebration, as it were, because there are five games instead of three this month.

2:39:07Dustin Furman:And it's a pretty nice catalog of games. All of these will be available to download free of charge as part of your subscription, of course, starting December 2nd. And they'll be available until January 5th. The big game of the month is perhaps Lego Horizon Adventures on PS5. This seems like a perfectly reasonable game to give away about a year out from when it came out. I platinumed it. It's nothing special, but I do recommend people play it. See what you think. nothing to lose at this point. The way I interpret it as it's a little bit of a love letter to Horizon kind of, but it feels like a half ass Lego game to me.

2:39:37Dustin Furman:Like it doesn't have all the trappings that really make Lego games, Lego games. It's more of like this spinoff feeling game. You play the same stages over and over again and you level characters up, but it's there's something I love. I love Horizon, as you guys know, and I wasn't crazy about it, but it's free as part of your description. So check that out. Will you guys play it now?

2:39:56Colin Moriarty:I'll probably play it for 30 minutes and then decide yeah i'm not really into this yeah that's probably what's gonna

2:40:03Dustin Furman:happen fair enough who knows though yeah it's fine it's no better than fine i'm not even gonna bother yeah i i there's just there's games that i really want to play that i i have a tough time getting in the mood to sit down and actually finish so like i can't even i can't even imagine starting up lego horizon being like oh yeah this will be the one i finish this will be it no way it's it's not it's not very good um killing four three is another one only on ps5 this isn't a great sign for tripwire this game just came out earlier this year as i understand this is not a very well received game but yeah i could be wrong about that killing the other killing floors are very popular so there's something went wrong with this one but um for people that don't know it's kind of like a it's a co-op shooter um outlast trials on ps4 and ps5 this is from red barrels this is the the outlet outlast of course is two of them i think they're horror single-player horror games this is like a multiplayer game in that universe certainly not for me but a lot of people really this game is well received have you guys played this one

2:41:08Colin Moriarty:i don't know anything about this i mean i've heard of outlast of course and i remember that

2:41:13Dustin Furman:game but i loved the original i don't think i've even seen gameplay outlast one is a great game freaky yeah i have a camera camera mechanic i thought it was a really neat idea the aesthetic like what the camera does to like the look of the game is really cool I remember being impressed by how like whenever you show something through like the context of like a camera it makes things look more real somehow it's like really a really clever trick that they use I've only seen friends of mine play this like out of the corner of my eye you know what I mean like their name will pop up on Steam it's like so and so is playing Outlast I was like what the fuck is that and a multiplayer Outlast game didn't even see that that wouldn't I would have never even thought that that would make sense but um apparently people like it yeah it's supposed to be pretty good I mean people can go check it out if they want as part of their ps plus subscription the original outlast is a ps4 launch game which is interesting so oh yeah which is why I played it played everything basically at launch I remember there were some like totally random things on there like some weird what was that there was like a I've reviewed it there was like a weird like digging game what was it called I can't remember don't even write in because it's not that important well yeah what's let's just look it up digging ps4 it was a little important apparently yeah this is there's dude there's so much slop when I type in for launch games this is an article I wrote let's see no it's a wiki

2:42:48um super mother load oh i would have never guessed that

2:42:57Dustin Furman:yeah i'm looking at the launch lineup now yeah yeah dive kick was like a launch game that game contrast from compulsion which is now an xbox studio that was a uh a launch game warframe was a launch game it's crazy that game is still mega popular all these years later yeah uh the fourth game available so again not three games this month but five sin duality echo of ada which is i understand is a pvpve game which i uh i'm hearing it's not very good either so i don't know bandai namco um publish it though and then neon white which is supposed to be pretty good it's like one of those very kinetic fast moving yeah like first person games it's a little too much for me i i don't those games give me an idea that looks cool like that game goes runner i think it's one of those things like that game looks really great i think i even bought it but i'm like i just i'm too old my bones are too fucking fragile for this game they're very yeah i don't this is the kind of thing like i'm normally like a controller guy for most things even like pvp first person shooters and stuff but like ghost runner and games like this it's kind of like yeah this is a mouse and keyboard kind of game uh i played a little bit of that i played a little bit of it and i really liked it but like it's very it's also it's weird it's got like this ghost runner quality that i really like but it's also got this anime kind of tinge over it that like it kind of rubs against it in in a way that like i'm not that big on but i did like what i played it i think i just got distracted it's a solid game i think like from what i've played i remember it being like pretty good if there's one thing that i would say people should try from this lineup it would probably be this one.

2:44:38OK, although you're although your results may vary if you're on a controller, I'm not really sure that might

2:44:42Dustin Furman:be the legit the best game of the bunch. Yeah, in terms of like, you know what you might look at a Metacritic score or whatever. By the way, hear me now audience, you have to December 1st to download November's games. If you're a PS Plus subscriber, you haven't done so already. So just add them to your list if you want them that they're stray WRC 24, the racing game and totally accurate battles battle simulator. So they are available for you if you'd like until December 1st and then they're gone and you'll have to buy them again. All right, two more pieces of quick news. I thought this was interesting, and I wonder how this is going to do.

2:45:12Dustin Furman:We don't usually talk about individual games of a smaller variety unless they're relevant to PlayStation generally, but Splitgate 2. People might remember this game from, what is it, 1047 games. It came out earlier this year. It's a sequel to Splitgate, which was like from 2019, 2020, an online first-person shooter free-to-play. and they were in beta for a little while in may and then the game launched in june and then they went back into beta in july not a good sign although not unprecedented for it to come back from this this was of course the game that had a lot of drama because the guy wore like a maga style hat i think right or said to like make oh yeah it was like make fps is great again right whatever that was yeah so and then he and then he went on stage and he was like oh he talked shit about call of duty yeah we're tired of the same old stuff so here's a so here's a battle royale and then they had like i think like some imagine dragons ass song playing in the background it's like it's very just it's a very tone deaf kind of thing i don't even think the hat was the biggest deal it really was just like the combo the one-two punch of like the played out hat and the yeah you're sick of that boring stuff here's a another one of these and it's like it didn't land super well i remember playing i played a fair bit of split gate though like or split gate 2 it's pretty good like i mean it's a solid arena shooter i don't know if it's necessary it's not going to kind of catch the world on fire or anything but it's um what i played was pretty solid and enjoyable so it's launching to a very unfortunate market i think which makes me surprised that they're bringing it back out already i guess they need to start making money again.

2:46:53Dustin Furman:I mean, it's. They're on the clock. So it's leaving beta. The servers will go offline on the 4th of December and they will relaunch later in December, which is an interesting time to launch. So they must be up against it, but they're going against. I mean, not that they're the same kind of games necessarily. Of course, the perpetual competitors in Fortnite and Apex Legends and all of that. But then, of course, you have Ark Raiders killing right now, Battlefield killing and Call of Duty is out there. It's not a not a great time. I don't know how it's going to go for you, but we'll see. and then uh finally far cry is getting a tv show or at least reports of another tv show this comes from deadline the website deadline.com says fx orders far cry anthology series based on video game franchise from noah hawley and rob mac rob mac of course is one of the players in our beloved always sunny in philadelphia and he's a gamer yeah it's very odd isn't it yeah it is like he it is it is odd it's awesome because he did mythic quest which is right and what's so the connection here i went and researched a little bit of this just to kind of figure out the connection mythic quest is produced by ubisoft ubisoft obviously likes him they have a production house that has existed for more than 10 years but has been generally quiet and they um probably made a connection with him to get this done now i'm a huge far cry fan everyone knows i absolutely love far cry i don't know how far cry works if it's not a game otherwise it just becomes like generic action schlock.

2:48:19Dustin Furman:That's not what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be fun to play. So I just think it being an anthology is smart because it means that they don't have they're not going to tell the story of Far Cry 5 or something, which would be interesting, but you don't need to to do that. So I'm a little skeptical of this, but I do know Rob Mack is a bonafide gamer and understands the space pretty well. And I totally forgotten about this. Two things. I forgot about the 2008 Far Cry movie that exists. What? U-Bowl or U-E-Bowl, whatever his name is. Oh, my God. Uwe Bowl. Yeah. Jesus Christ. I forgot. And I looked this up.

2:48:53Dustin Furman:The movie had a$30 million budget and made$743 ,000 at the box office. So just a huge failure. And then in 2013, there was word that both Far Cry and Watch Dogs were licensed out for TV shows and or movies and nothing ever came of that. Watch Dogs would make a lot more sense, actually. A Mr. Robot style show than what they're doing with Far Cry. And of course, Ubisoft is spinning up some successful stuff. The Splinter Cell Death Watch series that I think you're familiar with, Chris, is very well liked. Oh, is it? Yeah. It was nominated for the award at the game Awards. I saw that, but I thought it was just because like there was there was no other slots yeah i might be i don't um i thought it was yeah i don't know it was well regarded but maybe not well i don't know i mean it everybody's got an opinion about everything i guess right because i i saw the last of us part uh season two there and i remember that being kind of like mixed you know so i'll give it a shot i guess i've i've not heard anything about it and i assume that if it was good people would have like i would have heard about it because i'm like i'm probably like the only splinter cell fan that a lot of people know about uh especially like amongst my friends like nobody i nobody i know gives a gives a flying fuck about splinter cell i remember i remember it's asking it's like oh is michael ironside gonna come back and they're like who's who's that it's like okay well that's a problem that you don't know who that is but yes he's pretty integral god damn it maybe i'll check it out yeah let us know what you think it's uh it's what we got it yeah might not be a bad idea Lord knows I'm not getting any other splinters.

2:50:37Yeah, I mean, that's about all you're going to get.

2:50:39Dustin Furman:Dustin, which Far Cry game should be made into an anthology feature? I mean, everyone would say Far Cry 3, I guess.

2:50:45Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it's got to be Far Cry 3. You at least got to start with it. Yeah, because I think that would be the most appealing to people. But I'm good. Yeah, I just don't understand.

2:50:57Dustin Furman:Again, I am a Far Cry stand, like unapologetically. And there are lots of us. There are many, many, many of us. The game sell millions and millions of copies. So it's popular to hate on the series, but obviously it's well liked. I'm telling you, like, I don't understand how this is going to work. It's about the insanity of playing. It's always been.

2:51:16Colin Moriarty:Kind of the same thing with definition of insanity.

2:51:18Dustin Furman:Oh,

2:51:20Colin Moriarty:I knew something here.

2:51:22Dustin Furman:Killing it.

2:51:26All right,

2:51:26Dustin Furman:my friends, let's get into what we're playing since the news is now done. I'll go first and get out of the way. That's my guy's least favorite thing I ever did. Right. I'm doing that just because I'm talking about the same games over and over again. So it really doesn't behoove us to linger on them too long. I'm at the very end of Silent Hill F. I think I'm at the last boss. Actually, I just stopped playing. So I was getting kind of tired and wanted to enjoy the ending and all the rest. I'm not crazy about the game, but I want to see the ending. And then I want to begin the new game. Plus, and I know that there are like different avenues and outlets to understanding it.

2:51:58Dustin Furman:It's certainly a very dark game. And I appreciate that domestically dark, let's say. and um i think that's pretty cool not unlike other horror i suppose but i'm still questioning what's silent hill about this really and um not that i'm like really the expert and arbiter of all things silent hill i'm certainly not but yeah i'm a little soft on it right now and then uh ball pit i've been playing ball pit i beat the last stage yesterday but i guess there's more because i didn't get the trophy for beating the game so but i i beat all the stages that are available to you and so now I'm just going through and beating them all with the different characters just to complete addiction love it one of the great games of the year no doubt so that's where I stand I did talk extensively about these games on the most recent episode of summon sign so you can go check that out I go into depth about both silent hill f and ball pit Chris let's go to you for arc raiders what do you have to say yeah I mean I'm kind of a get out of the way thing too this week it is more arc raiders I've put about um let me double check here just to make sure I've put about 60 hours into this game what i have noticed by the way is that like i have 60 hours in game playtime on steam and that's accurate but then if i look uh in the player stats in the game itself it says i've only spent about 35 to 37 hours top side which is like in the game which means a good half or almost half of the game is spent doing like inventory management and like you know sitting there like sitting there on the screen deciding like do i take this do i not oh like upgrading like workstations and crafting stuff um not an ideal split but i guess it kind of artificially somewhat extends the it kind of prevents you from getting bored of the game i guess because there's that kind of built-in kind of break in between it doesn't become like monotonous where you're kind of doing the same thing over and over again because you you do have that period in game and then you have the period of resource management it kind of keeps you constantly engaged which is kind of good it might be a secret cheat code for it um but i've done so there's quest lines in the game i've done all the quest lines uh i have nothing left to do outside of just collecting good shit finding blueprints so that i can make the good shit and not have to craft it or not have to find it out in the world um i guess i haven't taken on like the big bosses i don't know if dustin's done it like i haven't i haven't taken on like a matriarch or like a queen i don't even

2:54:21Colin Moriarty:think i've seen a queen but i got loot from a queen but i'm not the one who killed her that's crazy that's what that's why i'm too scared to do because i'm just like i'm gonna i'm gonna kill this thing and i'm gonna loot it and some guy's gonna shoot me in my back like a dog yeah me so like yeah that's what i did it's crazy but look i'm like i'm liking our greatest a lot like i think there is like a there's a special sauce here and um and to be fair i think i don't know how controversial this will be but like i actually think very i shouldn't say very little i actually think a lot of what's really great about this game isn't necessarily isn't less necessarily tied to the game itself and what i mean by that is like i really do think that the special sauce of this game is the the social interaction it is the fact that people are on mic pretty much all the time i've seen some people say like that's a streamer thing uh people are never on their mics like no dude like in my experience like a good like 80 percent of the matches that i'm in i run into people and i speak to them and they talk back to me and sometimes it's a threatening situation sometimes it's a it's a it's a cooperative situation but it's it's it's really cool it's really nice to have this again and that's not to say that there aren't like people who like there aren't of course there's a lot of multiplayer games that have in-game voice chat and and whatever but the overwhelming majority of the time you're not really incentivized to use it because in this game it actually behooves you to be able to communicate in in a really clear and direct way in ways that like in destiny or like in call of duty like there's only really one way i'm going to interact with you i'm going to kill you like that's the whole thing that we're doing maybe there's like team coordination but we can do that in a discord like we don't need to be in game for that but this game like if you're not in game it's difficult for you to communicate your intentions clearly and those intentions could be deceptive but at least it's something and it's just nice to play something that is so focused on that after so many years of just kind of not really having that be a soul like a primary focus of video i think really since like xbox live party chat that kind of environment's been sort of dead and so it's it's been like about like almost 20 years it feels like since this has been like a consistent thing and so like seeing it in a game like this is really cool and i think a lot of what's special about arc raiders is that is that interaction the pvp is in my opinion somewhat it's somewhat dog water it's like it's like it's a lot i've spent so much time corner peeking and just like waiting for like oh somebody shot me let me hide behind this corner and wait for them to lose their patience and then they run out and then i kill them and it's it's not all that satisfying and i've seen some takes where it's just like oh well this game will be better as a pve experience exclusively and i'm like not really because although like pvp in and of itself is not as satisfying as it as it can be in other extraction games and certainly not as satisfying as in other pvp focused video games like purely pvp focused games um i really think it's the possibility of that happening not it happening but like the possibility that it will happen lends a lot of tension to everything else that i think justifies its existence and it's i don't know it's it's it's interesting like i do have more fun in this game when i am just engaging in pve and when i am linking up with other players to like take on like a boss or whatever and like we're delineating like who gets what like what do you need oh i can give you this you have this and like we're bartering it's cool i like that environment but if that was the only environment that you could engage in i think that would become a stale very quickly i think what lends a lot of strength to the game is the fact that anybody can shoot you in the back and there's like an l there's there's an interesting kind of social experiment thing going on with this game that i find really it's really addicting and again it's not really about the game i think a lot of games could do this if they wanted um particularly extraction shooters i think shine in here and this is the first really big major mainstream game of this type to really hit um but it makes me excited to see more people getting into it and and going to other things too like i'm curious to maybe even jump back into hunt a little bit because i'm like now now i now i kind of know i i certainly know a lot more about the genre now than i did when i first but when i first played hunt i was like this fucking this is this is obnoxious um and it very well might still be it's obnoxious in arc raiders as well but but there is there is something cool about it uh there's an argument to be made here that i mean ai stuff notwithstanding and the ai stuff is the least engaging part like i don't i i still have yet to feel like it was justified to have ai voice like it really doesn't make any sense to me but um ai stuff notwithstanding i think there is a pretty good case to be made here that even with like some of the jank and even with some of the um the design quirks that i think make it a little bit questionable even with like the somewhat cumbersome ui of having to go to workshop and craft and like like it's a little bit all over the place there's a pretty good case to be made that this is arguably a game of the year contender you know just just from from the phenomenon perspective in the same way that overwatch was in 2016 where it's just like there were there were clearly better games than overwatch in 2016 i think but that was the cultural zeitgeist game of the time that was like this this big kind of phenomenon that kind of took over everybody and i think there was a case of me that that kind of applies here um but i really like i like our creators i i'm i'm kind of a an extraction shooter guy now which is interesting i didn't expect that to i didn't expect that to happen really but i dig it i think it's a really interesting it's a really interesting multiplayer design space to inhabit and so yeah but that's all i really have to say about it i finished the game ostensibly like i anything now is just kind of playing for the for the love of it which uh i I plan to keep doing there.

3:00:22It's fun to stream as well because you get those interactions, but I'm sure they'll, they'll add a ton of content. I mean, I'm sure they're, Oh yeah, I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's a, there's a pipeline there. I'm actually surprised that I made it through all the quests. And although I will say, I have to say this because this was a point of frustration that I was kind of surprised by a baffling oversight. And maybe Dustin has encountered this as well, but there, this game is built, built around cooperation in such a, in such an obvious way like the game wants you to be in game and talk this game wants you to kind of like link up with people like it initially didn't even have like a duos queue so like it really only was for solo and three people now that now they have a duos queue for a game that is so focused on cooperation it is baffling to me that there are quests in this game where you and two other players are going to complete it and there's an item that you have to pick up and only one of you can carry it and then when you go out to like turn the quest in only you have to only you get it and so like now you have to run that if you're doing it with three people you have to run the same exact quest three times which you could potentially do pretty quickly or you could get completely screwed and you could spawn on the exact opposite side of the map you run halfway through you get gunned down in cold blood you have to req so like that's weird to me that you can't as a team turn in quests and by the way it's not like a bug or anything this was like a consistent thing like the entire game there are certain quests that you can but if there's an item that you have to pick up and put in your inventory and turn in your team doesn't get credit for you doing it even if you all do it as a team it's very weird um i get that that's maybe like a way to extend play time or whatever but I don't know.

3:02:14As a co-op focused game, I thought that was like really fucking strange, especially because my memory of Marathon was that that was not a problem in Marathon at all, even though that game is actually less co-op focused because there was no in-game chat originally. It was more PvP oriented, so that was a glaring thing to me. But it's really my only major complaint with Arc Raiders. And so, yeah, I'll keep playing it, but that's really all I have to say. I guess I had more to say about it than I thought I did.

3:02:43Dustin Furman:cool and yeah we did an arc raider sacred symbols plus episode as well so you can check that out on patreon patreon.com slash last day media at your leisure dustin you like micah my lovely wife

3:02:53Colin Moriarty:playing kirby air riders kirby air riders so we talked about this on summon sign uh that is out for our patrons and i guess on it'll be out for everybody very soon but i don't didn't have any experience with the original kirby air ride i don't think i've ever played it ever yeah on gamecube on gamecube so this was totally new to me but i am a fan of sakurai and super smash brothers and i loved watching his youtube channel when he was doing that and so it's like yeah pretty much anything he does i'm interested he strikes me as extremely thoughtful and creative and i mean And clearly the success of the Smash Brothers IP is maybe not just him, but largely because of his dedication to it.

3:03:44Colin Moriarty:And this game is weird, like not what I expected, because I think when when this game got announced, I was like, you already have a racing game coming at the launch of Switch. And now you're launching another one so quickly after. But very, very quickly after I started playing the game, I was like, oh, this is very different. it is only played with one sometimes two buttons and so your cart or your machine in this game just automatically goes forward and you use the the your single button i think i use the a button when i do it but it like slows your cart into a drift and then you boost around corners and the game is like super combat focused like you're picking up uh different uh like sucking up enemies very you know kirby style sucking them up and then you'll turn into like swordsman to take out other players and that gives you boost but the most interesting thing overall to me with this game is just how how much stuff is in it where there's the main racing mode there's a top-down racing mode there's this like larger map i'm trying to remember it's called like city rush i think or something like that where you go and you're like trying to level up your cart as soon as possible there's an online mode there's a single player light story mode to it you can customize all your carts you can unlock different outfits for your characters there's just it feels like a very complete package and anyone who's played super smash brothers uh i guess really since melee onward these games just kept expanding and adding more and more and more features so to get this Kirby game and it's it's so Smash Brothers in its presentation in the way its menus work the way you unlock things there's an announcer that's like Kirby when you select it just like Smash Brothers so uh I've I've been playing it and I've been enjoying it I feel like it's so simple on the surface and I'm starting to figure out some of the different strategies on how to even really play this game effectively but i'm uh i'm surprised by it it's fun i think a lot of people are gonna pick this game up though and not like it i think it's it's so different from mario kart that you're like oh cool kirby it's it's not kirby mario kart you know it's it's its own thing uh and it's a yeah it's a neat game i'm a rick man though do you guys know about rick no i don't think so what is that rick is the is ker is a hamster he's just a hamster named rick i think he was introduced in kirby's dreamland 2 oh i don't know my kirby war very well to be honest and yeah rick is just a straight-up hamster holly's a big fan dude you should look chrissy you should look look at the complete character list because there's like here's a fucking rock and I think his name's Rocky is this Kirby Air Riders 2 or it's called Kirby Air Riders the first one's just Air Ride

3:06:45Dustin Furman:I'm looking at the characters that I know Kirby Air Ride Kirby, Day to Day, obviously Meta Knight of course, Waddle Dee

3:06:55Colin Moriarty:what did you say his name was? well there's Rick the Hamster and then they're like here's Susie and Susie's some kind of robot here's Knuckles Joe this sounds like a smiling friends character roster rick is crazy rick rick next to that picture is fucking sending me dude i love that is crazy

3:07:16Dustin Furman:rick is the best oh yeah he's awesome i don't even i don't remember this character at all there's joe lola so the game boy game yeah i believe so oh i like this one da roach dude da

3:07:30Colin Moriarty:roach how could you and you can't forget gooey who just looks like a fucked up slime from dragon quest oh we got marks here too m-a-r-x yeah great carl marks where's angles angles the beetle yeah this is uh certainly waddle do huh this is a fucking smiling friends there's all of these names and then all there's just this guy and his name's chef kawasaki like like a very Japanese chef Kawasaki. That's Holly's favorite. Oh, I see gooey here.

3:08:09Dustin Furman:No one will ever be DDD himself. He's the greatest. King DDD. Fucking psychopath. But yeah, it's a fun game. I love him in Smash Brothers and he like he wins and then the camera just zooms in on his face. Yeah, he just looks like a fucking crazy person. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I interrupted.

3:08:29Colin Moriarty:I don't know if I really have much. It's weird because if you have a chance to I wish there was a demo because I feel like I said I think some people pick this up and be like I hate this but there's something to it that keeps bringing me back to it and I've been playing the single player mode quite a bit and it's not very good the single player mode it's like do this 30 second race and then go back to the menu and you're on a road trip so then you get to the next stop then you do something you play for 30 seconds and then it pulls you back out it it's that mode's not very good i wish it had like a mario cup mario kart like cup system where it's like play these four matches in a row you need to do well at all four of them but it doesn't have that also online i'm too old or maybe i'm not old enough it's funny i was thinking about this with nintendo games i'll play a game like arc raiders hardcore i'll tell someone to fuck their mom.

3:09:28Colin Moriarty:No problem. These Nintendo games online. I'm scared. Like imagine the type of people that play Mario Kart seriously and they're the ones playing online. Yeah, it's like I can't compete. Yeah. Yeah, it's not not an ideal, not an ideal roster to enter. Yeah, the people I mean, I told that guy in our graders to fuck his mom. Some of these people playing Mario Kart, they're like Christian. Yeah, they might be the ones doing that.

3:09:58Dustin Furman:well that's what we're playing find plenty of time to play more uh in the weeks to come leading up to christmas i'm gonna i want to knock some of this stuff out and then get into final fantasy tactics perhaps a few games that i missed that i got to get into that well maybe not have to but i'd like to that that gave me alters i definitely want to check out at some point that's been catching my eye as well yeah i had it on my my cross media bar for a while and then i it was just sitting there for so long and i hadn't played that i was like this this I should delete this. I should. I'll get it. I'll figure it out eventually.

3:10:30But like I heard really great things about that game. Yeah, it's supposed to be cool.

3:10:33Dustin Furman:So we'll see. All right, boys, thank you for letting us know what you're playing. And now we'll get into six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts and ideas from the audience over on Patreon, patreon.com slash last day media for early ad free access and all the rest. One of the perks you get over there is submitting inquiries to all the shows we do on the threads on the newsfeed for the various shows. Sacred threads typically go live Wednesdays, Wednesday afternoons, deleted Thursday afternoon. So you have that 24-ish hour period, a little less than that, to get your inquiries in. You've heard them throughout the show.

3:11:01Dustin Furman:Here are six more. David Kratisberg wrote in and said, hey, Sacred Boys, just wanted to shout out Sektory. Saw Colin tweet about it. And what a wonderful surprise. Have any of you checked it out? Happy Thanksgiving to you all and keep eating that turkey. So what he's referring to is that house mark, the Sony owned studio behind Resogun and Returnal and upcoming Saros and Dead Nation and Super Stardust, et cetera, tweeted out a video of a game called Sektori from an old employee of them. And I tweeted, I responded to it. I'm like, this looks, you know, this gives serious Super Stardust vibes. And Super Stardust, of course, is a classic housemark game that really put them on the map, especially with PlayStation fans.

3:11:40Dustin Furman:Sektori comes from, I did a little bit of research about this. Sektori comes from a studio called Chemo Factor, which is just one guy, Chemo Latinin. Chemo Latinin is a Finnish game developer, and he's a programmer that worked on a lot of earlier housemark games. So he worked on Super Stardust, Dead Nation, Outland, Rezogun was his last game. And in 2014, he actually left the studio to go independent. So he's not been there for a while. This game is supposed to be excellent. However, I haven't downloaded it yet, and I don't know if I'm going to play it for basically the major reason that it's supposed to be fucking really brutally hard.

3:12:13Dustin Furman:And that's not really what Stardust was. And of course, this isn't just Stardust. A lot of people are referring it to kind of a Stardust meets Geometry Wars, which it is. in its own way. It looks beautiful. It's a very fluid, old school, like housemark arcade game. So if you're into that sort of thing, it's definitely something worth checking out. But I can't speak to it beyond that because it's just it's supposed to be very hard and I'm not looking to get my fucking dick kicked in at this juncture in my life. So that's why I haven't checked it out. If I didn't read that about it, I probably would have downloaded it and played it and then found out the hard way.

3:12:47Dustin Furman:Pardon the pun. Have you guys heard about this game or seen it? I saw you tweet about it,

3:12:52Colin Moriarty:but I didn't look at gameplay till now. I immediately thought Geometry Wars, which was an amazing game on the Xbox 360 Arcade. Yeah, it was awesome.

3:13:03Dustin Furman:One of those early hits that they had.

3:13:06Colin Moriarty:I respected this game. Like, I'm looking at some of the gameplay. You can't even see what's going on. There's so much chaos on the screen. I actually think it's kind of cool. But if it's super hard, I don't know. Might be too much. I got ball pit to be right now.

3:13:24Dustin Furman:Yeah, ball pits a much more manageable game. So you have sectories out there if you're interested in a game from a house mark veteran. And since house mark has clearly moved on from making these kinds of games, you're not going to get them from them themselves, obviously, nor should you. They're on to bigger and better things. Marker wrote in interested to see what you guys think of this. This is howdy, boys. My wife bought me a PlayStation portal for Christmas. I was not supposed to know, but I saw a notification on her phone show up about it being shipped. Do I tell her I saw the notification and just act surprised?

3:13:56Dustin Furman:I'm really looking forward to it as I want one for watching football, soccer. Much love from Ireland. Why were you on your wife's phone?

3:14:06Colin Moriarty:Could have been laying beside him.

3:14:07Dustin Furman:Yeah, no, I'm like on a couch or something. I feel like the move here is to not say anything. Yeah, it's makes her it'll make her feel good. maybe but then again do you want to put it on i guess you know your wife better than we do but i would hope but uh yeah yeah what do you think chris i don't know i think this is kind of one of those things where it's like this is almost like surprise party type light deception where it's like it's okay i think there's no real this isn't like your this isn't like your uh i don't know sociopath or something you know putting on some kind of crazy front i think um i think it so it's for christmas oh well that's a while huh that's like it's like a whole month yeah but you got to pretend not to know i mean you probably i think i'd say just just let it go pretend you didn't see it yeah i think that's the right move unless you shouldn't if you shouldn't have been on your wife's phone you should definitely not let her know um i i guess that just strikes me the wrong way because i don't mind if anyone go you know people go on my phone i'm not doing anything on my phone but right um it's very private you know like i just it's like it's my phone i don't want you on my phone don't ask to use my phone don't ask to look through my phone like that that that i just i've never been in a relationship like that before i don't want to go on my spouse's phone i don't want her on my phone these are like your kind of private areas yeah so it's very but then again different like i parents are always handing off their like phones that are kids and shit like that i'm like how are they not like calling and texting random people and doing all sorts of shit like here distract yourself with this little billy dustin what what should uh markham do here about the the ruined surprise of the playstation portal the christmas present the key christmas present this is tough and as colin has pointed out uh

3:16:01Colin Moriarty:i'm not very good at lying and i don't lie as much as i can so you can just not say anything then you got to pretend to act surprised and then she might know if she asks you if you know you got

3:16:17Dustin Furman:to say yes yeah i would say that if she confronts you with it yeah yeah i'm i'm an awful liar as well like i don't even bother it's just it's just i i it it just stresses me out more when i lie you know because then you got to keep track of the lie then you're lying it's the whole adage of like you have to lie to keep the lie up and you just you just gotta let it go yeah just got to let it go you can't get the now we have another inquiry this was written in a couple weeks ago and then last week too and i was ignoring it but people really want to talk about it because i thought it was kind of a little bit more mild but people are upset about it and frankly i am too sexy saxon wrote in and said hello children i just wanted to discuss the portal for a moment i love my portal it's great but am i the only one upset about how an update changed the functionality of the ps button on it now when i press it it opens an annoying side menu instead of my quick menu.

3:17:06Dustin Furman:And when I earn a trophy or a notification, I can no longer press it to see what it is. Why does PlayStation have to fool around with things that work? How can it be? Thoughts? Thanks for all. Have you guys know? Well, you guys, neither of you use the portal. So you probably have. I tried it the other day. Okay. So did you notice this? Yeah, it sucks. But I understand why they're doing it because there's now like an overlay because of the cloud streaming functionality. So like you can select like different icons now, whether you're like trying to just use it as a remote play device you're trying to fuck with your settings or you're trying to cloud stream and yeah i wonder if and it is annoying because you do get into a rhythm of hitting the i do the same thing like when you earn a trophy i hit the playstation button what is it called or if you just want to like go to the menu you quickly hit the playstation button and you go to the menu but it doesn't work like that anymore now it brings up this other menu then you have to select going to that menu and have to do it over and over again so the playstation button never works the way it's supposed to work i feel like they can probably do this in system settings in a future update where they're like, just shut this off.

3:18:03Dustin Furman:And then if you want a cloud stream, which is probably a minority, a deep minority of people that own PlayStation portal at any given time, then you have to go in and set it so that it's like this so you can access that menu. But otherwise, you don't need access to this menu. And yeah, I was really, really annoyed by it, but I just didn't bring it up on the show because I didn't think anyone would really care. But then we started getting more and more write ins about it. I'm like, OK, I guess I'm not the only one that is annoyed by that. here's two ideas number one give people an option on what it does like if you can change it to be

3:18:36Colin Moriarty:like oh well when you're already actively streaming playstation button does this because i think you the way you got to your menu settings before is that you touch the screen you like slide on the screen or something like that there was a way to do it before option two make it so when you put press the PlayStation button once it acts as it did before and a long press brings up that menu that it does now yeah seems simple enough yeah yeah I like that I like that because it is it is annoying and you have to just kind of stop you have to stop yourself from doing it I did it so

3:19:10Dustin Furman:many times before I was like oh yeah I can't I can't do it like this anymore so sexy Saxon and others that wrote in about this I hear you loud and clear I agree I do wonder if they're getting this feedback. I expect they are. So. And they are now. We're giving it to them. The Who fan one wrote in and said, hello, sacred crew. I find myself wondering whatever happened to the One Sony initiative. Sony is a large company with myriad different divisions, which rarely seem to work in conjunction with each other. Yet there was supposed to be a corporate strategy called One Sony, which would encourage the different divisions to act more in alignment.

3:19:42Dustin Furman:However, as Colin has pointed out, 100 line Last Defense Academy is published by a Sony company, but not on Sony hardware. The anime, The Fragrant fragrant flower blooms with dignity created by cloverworks a sony-owned studio published by anaplex a sony-owned publisher was recently streamed on netflix and not sony's own streaming platform cruncher roll which is co-administered by the same anaplex that licensed the show to netflix to top it off sony music publishing threatening legal action over a song used in the anime dan to dan which is co-produced by anaplex and whose soundtrack is licensed by sony music entertainment what a tangled web they created with that when their when their company became inflated.

3:20:17Dustin Furman:This is a problem. It's always been a problem. You're right. About a decade ago, they were talking about one Sony that the one hand needs to know what the other hand is doing and all sides need to work in conjunction with each other. It's clearly not working out to that in that direction. Although I think there are other considerations, not unlike PlayStation publishing games on Switch. It doesn't really make any sense when you think about it, you know, but they did it. But then again, those games were also on PlayStation that when they come to PC, that's true too the the last line defense the last line defense academy thing is really annoying what's going on with anaplex generally is really annoying with some of the anime stuff in the games because it's like why wouldn't like why wouldn't that just be automatic and maybe they're just going where they think they're going to sell the most games and the money is the most important factor but you would think that supporting playstation would be the most important factor considering playstation is the biggest single component of sony um so i can't explain it beyond that have you noticed dustin you're a fucking weeb and a nerd have you have you noticed any of these uh thank you have you noticed any of these uh these are like you know stuff with crunchy roll um and so on and so forth like you'd think that there would be a lot of symbiosis between these

3:21:24Colin Moriarty:you would think the only example that i'd heard of that uh the who fan one list here is that the 100 line defense academy game not being on playstation my theory about that is and i'm not this is just speculation is that the director of that game on twitter at one point was like please buy this because if you don't we might not be able to make any more kodakas or whatever so i'm wondering if it was just the budget on that game was already pretty low and being that it is an anime focused game primarily intended for a japanese market that they were just focusing on switch where it would definitely sell the most copies in japan but uh at this point now it's like why definitely why isn't on playstation because the game was uh received very well and i think the director went and said like oh yeah we're doing great now thank you so it does seem odd in particular this one with dandadan definitely seems weird but i i don't honestly know enough about them to be like oh this is it sounds clearly stupid from the outside to be like oh why would a company sue itself fucking money laundering yeah it's weird it's it's a whole weird i'm like trying to look up like if there are any other obvious like misses here on the one sony initiative and i guess i don't i guess i'm not really seeing anything like

3:22:52Dustin Furman:too obvious i think the biggest question i want to ask now though for for uh chris is uh chris are Are you going to check out the flagrant flower blooms with dignity? You know, the second I saw it, I was, uh, the second I saw that name, I was like, this is, that sounds like something I'd like to get to know. You know, Dustin's looking it up. I think I've heard of this.

3:23:11Colin Moriarty:Surprise. I did. Oh, because there was a little bit of controversy about it being, dude, anime fans fucking hate Netflix. Uh, for a multitude of reasons that I could explain.

3:23:23Dustin Furman:Is it like localization stuff? And no,

3:23:26Colin Moriarty:it's like they, hold stuff like it'll be airing in japan somewhere else and they'll hold it and then release it later on netflix so basically a lot of anime fans who for years pirated a lot of stuff are like listen we're giving you money now for these services like whether they're subscribed to netflix and crunchyroll and you're not releasing it in the way that everyone else does so you're encouraging me to go watch it on some you know uh black market website when you could just release at the same time like everybody else yeah i don't know this this this whole all this i don't know my my head always gets twisted up into knots whenever i think about all the corporate like uh the weird mixing like what was that company that like bought like it was like what was it a pepsi that bought like pizza hut and yeah yeah taco bell and all those right and taco bell and like and combine themselves just because because they couldn't compete with coke and so like that it's there's only like three companies at this point and what was that isn't there something isn't there something happening too like where like warner brothers is uh there's something with warner brothers happening where like they're they're merging with something else yeah i think you're right let me listen so it's getting i don't know it's getting crazy out there man it's getting ridiculous if you're suing yourself if you if you start suing yourself you know that things are maybe maybe things are a little too complicated if you can accidentally sue yourself

3:25:02Dustin Furman:warner right now there's a bid on for them paramount comcast and netflix are the bidders right that's what i think was i think i think i heard that the paramount thing went through but like maybe maybe they're still talking about it but it's just mergers and mergers guys it's just everything's we're going to end up with like two companies it's just it's surprising i mean i i'm not i'm not a fool and i i understand that the heft of a large company and the power that it brings to the market but at the same time i feel like companies start to act so inefficient we talk about this all the time like ubisoft with 20 000 employees it's like 20 000 how the fuck do you employ that many people and i just feel like things just get out of control like it's so wildly inefficient.

3:25:43Dustin Furman:That's why I know we talked about this and we had a disagreement about it when Elon bought Twitter and then laid off 90 % of the people that worked there. But it's like, you didn't really need all those people, did you? It just seems like you would want to be as efficient as possible by keeping these companies totally separate. So if a company owns all of these different pieces, you'll keep them loosely organized enough not to sue each other perhaps but um there's just such a massive level of inefficiency with even being bloated that way that's why when i see it's like when a company like amazon can have hundreds of thousands of employees and then just lay off like 30 000 people and it doesn't affect anything it's like that's just such a level of inefficiency that only a corporation or a government can like a big organization things shouldn't in other words it's unnatural to be that big you have to force it together like by like gravity and it's i don't know it's just another problem with capitalism lewis94 wrote in and said hey gents this question is for colin you guys can answer too of course i've heard you often talk about your love for retro games especially 8-bit and 16-bit references and i want to know what drives this love most for you does it bring back nostalgia from being a kid or do you genuinely cherish a particular aspect of those games that can't be replicated in modern gaming also as a side note on your last episode of sacred symbols i heard you talk about the tales games and was wondering what's the best game to start with and how would a beginner get into this thank you for all you guys do and have a great thanksgiving i mean i think a popular answer would be symphonia have you ever played tales of symphonia dustin no it seems like a game you might enjoy it's a gamecube game from 2004 and it's been re-released many times since then including on ps3 and there's a ps4 ps5 port of it as well that's a very friendly very popular very accessible tales game and a good place to get into it's not one of my favorites personally but it is a it is a crowd favorite no doubt about it um so hold on a sec yeah there we go so i look at old games like i look at chess and chess variants chess is a perfect game to me it's been the same with you know the cast the castling came in at some point like on passant but the rule has been or the game has been the same for like a thousand years and there's nothing you can really do to it to make it better and there are a bunch of chess variants like a shit ton of them you know um you can play like fisher randomized chess you can play blitz and you can play bullet and you can play chess with various handicaps and randomization and you can play displacement and like there's a bunch of different ways to play the game on different boards, huge boards.

3:28:34Dustin Furman:But the reality is this, that to this day, no two chess games are ever alike on a regular board. None. It's that dynamic. Even after all this time, all of these people, all of these matches, sometimes things don't get any better than that. And I think the 8-bit and the 16-bit era, but really the 8-bit era, represent a sort of gameplay purity that can't be exceeded. that it's not to say that all the games are better than modern games. That's not true. It's just to say that there's a, like when we played Mario three, right on the stream, it's like, this game is perfect. Perfect. You don't need to do anything to it.

3:29:18Dustin Furman:And there isn't even enough to it to see the flaws in it. There are no flaws. It's perfect. And I think that that those eras and maybe from like the mid to late eighties to the mid nineties, there are an inordinate number of perfect games because it's before things got kind of out of control for better or for worse certainly entered more of a reliable 3d realm analog sticks and dual analog sticks and shit tons of buttons and online functionality and all the different things that bring dynamics to games but yet nothing will feel better than megaman 2

3:29:54Dustin Furman:nes tetris is still considered the perfect tetris

3:29:58Colin Moriarty:i disagree well you like tetris effect well i just like tetris that has uh a hold button oh yeah that's nice that's like a yeah i like the hold button as well and i think they changed the order in which it spits out pieces what do you mean so like i'm trying to remember i watched a video about this years ago but like it has a different algorithm in which it decides what to give you a piece so that you're it's more even instead of like oh i really need a long piece but it will just it could go a very long time without giving you yeah like it doesn't know it's not it's not a

3:30:35Dustin Furman:smart enough or active enough i mean i saw i think it was uh summoning salt but i could be wrong did a really great piece about like the perfect tetris score and like people getting like it was all through the NES Tetris game, maybe the Game Boy Tetris game as well about being able to like basically break it. Yeah. But anyway, my point is, is that I'm very attracted to games that are simple, not easy, but just simple. And like Castlevania, jump, attack, up and attack is your special weapon. That's it. Mega Man, jump and attack, go into the menu to use special weapons. That's it. Mario, jump, fireball, fly.

3:31:18Dustin Furman:i don't know there's just something that's always going to be very attractive about those kinds of games to me and that's why i make those kinds of games so um you guys are clearly not as attracted to that era as i am is it nostalgic sure it is i grew up in that era i mean there's something definitely there's definitely something formative about growing up with an nes yes for sure yeah you know i was in elementary school and into you know fourth fifth grade when the nes went away and the SNES came on the scene or whatever. And it was a big fucking deal. Yeah, no doubt. And that's always going to stick with me.

3:31:47Dustin Furman:I will always be a Nintendo fanboy at heart. I've said that forever. Like I loved Nintendo. Like without Nintendo, there would be no Colin Moriarty in this industry. Period. Without the NES and the SNES, no way. So yeah, of course, there's something about that. But I even think about the sports games that I like. Like not even you actually brought up Blades of Steel when we went to the Steelers or the Penguins game. Dustin and one of my favorite sports games of all time if not my favorite sports game of all time is Baseball Stars which is an NES baseball game and surprisingly deep baseball game but it's very simple so yeah that's my attraction to it I hope that explains things and I love the limitations and how even with crazy limitations people were doing extraordinary shit with atmosphere and environmental storytelling and music and cut scenes.

3:32:43Dustin Furman:Look at Ninja Gaiden. Like the Ninja Gaiden trilogy had legit cut scenes. It wasn't that something that really anyone was doing, you know, and they did it all on this really primitive hardware. And I love that people still make games for it. They often release them elsewhere, but they're games that they'll put on an NES card or run on an NES. And it's like, that's fucking dope. And it's impressive. Guys, they were doing this with like fractions of a megabyte sometimes of space. yeah it is it is crazy it's like when you think about it's like what like how is it even possible you know um and even snes games got to like what 16 megabytes or something something ridiculous like it's just it's just it's actually like wild when you think about it it's very sweet

3:33:29Colin Moriarty:yeah so that's that's the answer there's something about okay chris no no i was just gonna say like for me it is like tetris i've talked about constantly like where i just feel like i think tetris is a perfect video game i think i think there's very little that you can do to tetris to improve it outside of just making it feel slightly like the game boy tetris is like you know it feels like a game boy game you know but tetris in all of its iterations has been more or less the like the only things that have changed are like the the surrounding accoutrements and like maybe and the hold button i guess you know or like the the way that it looks when you do the thing but like everything tetris effect is beautiful dude like it is just a perfect feeling video game and it's not really that different than the original tetris outside of just like how it's presented and miss pac-man is another one where i just think it's like miss pac-man feels perfect although that's like more miss pac-man is more like arcade oriented like i would never i would ever play miss pac-man on like a d-pad or something you need yeah the stick pac-man you need this you need to stick to like oh love it it's it's good shit so like i i i didn't so like i had an nes until like i was like i think about i was playing primarily on nes until i was like about like six so like a lot of my earliest memories are that it's like duck hunt mario uh shadow of the ninja which i've talked about which got that remake uh last year i think um and there were some other games that i had for it too i think i excite bike yeah excite bike and uh i think I think I had pole position, but like that might be a miss.

3:35:03That might be I might be misremembering that. But like I have a lot of big affinity for that for those old games, particularly Tetris and Miss Pac-Man, I think are just like.

3:35:14Dustin Furman:I hazard to guess like it would be difficult to improve those games. Yeah, you really. I agree with you. You really you really can. And that's why I brought up chess is that like there are all these variants of chess for people that are bored with chess or want more out of chess. And yet you'll never really improve chess. Yeah, improved in a thousand years. yeah it's like so and that's just the way i feel about like mario 3 or super mario like super mario world it's like okay you're not making a better game than this it's all it's all in the accoutrements it's literally just how it looks like sometimes you could have like oh the knight is like a different character or something you know what i mean like that's the only thing that which it was just like tetris effect where it's just like the game is the same or like monopoly where it's like it's spider-man monopoly right no but it's like but it's that's monopoly dude yeah it's just the same game you're you're putting sugar in your medicine in some way to try to make it into something else but like that's that's fucking that's monopolated like unmistakably i like how no matter what the monopoly board is no matter how stylized it is every monopoly board i've seen always has the same cop oh yeah like that yeah the the weird looking cop you like go to jail it's a good show i love it i love monopoly um dustin you were going to say something i don't if you remember what you're gonna say uh i think what i appreciate so much about retro games and

3:36:25Colin Moriarty:you touched on this colin was just the the limitations create were what bred so much creativity i always think it's funny now that anytime there's a new console they're like we went to developers and talked about what was limiting them and of course like i want newer crazier games and stuff but you think about like some of the iconic uh games or right now i'm thinking about music like thinking about the music from donkey kong country and it's like amazing it didn't need they needed to go that hard they didn't need well like the soundtrack didn't need like a higher resolution or like cd quality audio uh worked well within those constraints there's a lot of things like that like thinking about uh this is i mean super millennial cringe of me but thinking about vine versus like instagram or tiktok where it's like you have six seconds to tell a joke yeah there's something really cool about that and now it's like someone's like story time let me tell you about how i ended up in the hospital with a light bulb in my ass fine edits yeah oh and it's like a short that's five minutes long it's like no it was like built-in captions and it's like yeah i the thing that i hated about tiktok initially was that like i didn't i didn't know what i was in for when everyone started but like vine i knew what I was in for.

3:37:47Like, even if the joke was bad or whatever, it was like a shitty video. There was only six seconds. So like I could be like, ah, whatever. Now a TikTok starts and I'm like, what is this going to be? Right. It's going to be three seconds. It's going to be 10 minutes. What are we doing here?

3:38:02Dustin Furman:By the way, I looked this up just to be sure. NES games, the smallest NES game was Mario 1 at 31K. The largest game was three fourths of a megabyte, which was Kirby's Adventure. that was a late NES game. SNES games were typically between one quarter of a megabyte and four megabytes. The biggest games, which were both Japanese, were six megabytes, Tales of Fantasia and Star Ocean, the original Star Ocean on Super Famicom. It's fucking crazy. It doesn't even, it literally doesn't even make any sense. Like, I don't even understand how that's possible. But there it was. Yeah, that's like less, that's, I feel like our document for Sacred Symbols is more than that.

3:38:47Dustin Furman:it's so it's it's so wild dude it's just so funny i love it so yeah the limitations are fun anyway lewis 94 i hope that answers your question finally riley riley morgan wrote in more of a story than a question but we can comment on it says howdy boys i have a story to tell as well as a psa so please do not chastise me for it being so long about a month or two ago i was listening to one of the podcasts and colin was talking about how before micah came along he had never dated anyone who gamed and how he can never go back to that once he knew what it was like to be married to a gamer like himself.

3:39:17Dustin Furman:My wife overheard the episode and that night she asked me if it bothered her. If it bothered her, I think you mean yourself, that she had never played a game before. I told her as long as she respected my hobbies, I would never look down on hers either. Yada, yada, yada. She starts playing Fortnite with me on my stinky Switch and we've been playing every night since. This past week I got a bonus from work so I went and bought a portal on sale and she could play on a system that runs faster than a turkey about to be fucked by three podcasters. That's disgusting. Here's where the PSA comes in. I've been having a blast on the portal because I pay for PS plus premium.

3:39:46Dustin Furman:So I have access to the streaming benefits. My wife, however, does not. If you're looking to buy a portal this holiday with them being on sale, just know that your shared premium benefits on PS5 do not transfer over to the portal. Each person in your household has to pay for premium. I would assume that that would be true. But I wanted to talk more about Riley. I'm just imagining how that conversation went, like your wife feeling sad about it. You know, bad about it. I'm like, I think most people are probably in that situation that they don't, you know, women. I mean, I'm just being honest with you.

3:40:19Dustin Furman:We've said it before. It's like the 50 50 percent of all gamers are women. It's like, no. You're going to that's just not even remotely true. You're going to be fairly hard pressed to find. Enormous amounts of women that play games like Micah does or like Holly does, right? And I think that's normal and that's OK. It's about respecting. You always see those those memes going around or like those things are like the most the biggest turnoffs for women are like gamers and yeah bitcoin miners and trollers and stuff like that's so funny you know it's crazy that those are in the same yeah that's so it's so insane um so it's cool that your wife's into it and it's cool that you made her feel like it wasn't important and it's not important but i i did realize i've been in relationships where women didn't care and i've been like what i and i've been in relations where women showed an interest and I thought that was cool, but it never mattered to me.

3:41:10Dustin Furman:I, it just makes it much easier for me to be with someone that gets it. It's very lucky. I'm very lucky in that regard. Like I don't have to justify anything. I just play games. I play more games than I probably ever have in my life. Like more time. And I don't have to justify it because she wants to do the same thing. So it works out. What do you think? How do you picture this going? Dustin with Riley?

3:41:32Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting that she's immediately hooked on fortnight. Because Fortnite, I mean, it's easier now. They added bots and stuff. And I can see the appeal of there's a lot of pop culture skins and stuff like that. Like you can play Sabrina Carpenter, I think, in Fortnite now. So I can, you know, I can see the appeal there. But if she likes that, let me tell you, there are many games you can suggest to her that maybe she'll like even more. And that's kind of the fun part is someone figuring out if they're new into games, like figuring out what they like. So it's a pretty fun journey you have ahead of you.

3:42:14Colin Moriarty:And you can try all kinds of different co-op games together. And maybe even you can show her some games that are single player that you can kind of play together. That's what Holly and I've done that a lot. Like she wasn't there with me the whole time, but she knows the whole story of expedition 33 because she was wanting to watch and was interested in the story. Cool.

3:42:34Dustin Furman:Yeah. I recommend your wife plays Landgrisser 1 and 2 Remastered.

3:42:43Oh my god. It takes two, man. I gotta say, like, yeah, there you go. Fortnite is a crazy... If she's never... She's either lying or like... Fortnite as a first game is crazy. In my opinion, that's like a really... That's not like a... I mean, I guess from a certain perspective, kids can kids can play it but like i remember giving my parents like uh what is it uh oh my god medal of honor like rising sun or something yeah or front lines or one of them it was the p it was the xbox era they couldn't figure out heads or tails of what the fuck was going on like they were just looking at the sky and it's and it's wild so for her to be able to engage with like a a third person shooter with that many make fortnite is not a mechanically simple game like on the surface i guess it is but like there's a lot of depth to that so if she's playing that and enjoying it there's like um like the floor for her is pretty good like you've got a lot to to potentially introduce her to but i would recommend genuinely like both of you it takes two is just like i mean i think i think it's like an immaculate fucking video game and so like if she can play fortnight she can certainly play it takes two and uh i think you'd i think that would be a good i think that'd be a good time he comes home from work and she's already playing fortnight and

3:44:03Dustin Furman:he sees her playing on the screen and she's building like one of those psychopaths oh my god that was the only reason the only reason i got into fortnight in the first place is because they released the mode without that bullshit in it they had like no build come out and i was like oh cool i've seen i've seen video of it i'm like what is even going on dude like what is this even what is even going on it's crazy it's incomprehensible but i love the idea of her just being a master like mastering that mode a master builder well riley congratulations to you and good luck to you be well let's get the hell out of here it's time to go it's the day before thanksgiving we're all ready to be done for the week i think everything's locked and loaded basically from a recording standpoint i think right oh no i guess brad still has to go nor did brad already go too with the summon sign i don't know he'll record monday oh monday that's right i was thinking he records fridays for some reason so yeah we're done for the week That's exciting.

3:44:57Dustin Furman:You're done. Right. I'm done. Not me. Yeah, we're all done. Not me. Slaving away. We're all done. Let's go around the horn and say goodbye to everyone then. Chris, goodbye to you. Be well. Have a good Thanksgiving. Anything to share before you go? Anything you want to say? No, you too, man. I don't know what I'm going to do. See, this is the thing. It's 80 degrees now. It was so manageable earlier. And now it's like a full 15 degrees hotter. So like I was going to go on a walk. Maybe not. Maybe. But I got none else for the rest of the rest of the day, I guess, is just I got some editing to do because I want to edit some shorts.

3:45:43I've been streaming art creators a lot. So I'm trying to cut some clips out. Cool. But low key day before the festivities, I suppose.

3:45:53Dustin Furman:Cool, man. We'll be well. Enjoy. Dustin. and chain chomp goodbye to you both and uh any so all right so what's going on with you going

3:46:04Colin Moriarty:to your parents tomorrow well i'm actually going to go to my parents tonight to get things ready holly's gonna be cooking up some sides i'm gonna prep the turkey get fist deep inside of it really hell yeah gotta get it you know get the giblets out and throw that shit away don't cook anything with it oh it makes good gravy no no just throw it away you gotta go it's gross it's nasty so I'll be getting the turkey ready and then I'll probably be there it's going to suck I'm probably going to be there at like 8am to get this thing this bird cooking for a afternoon meal so should be fun looking forward to it and tonight I'll be doing my I'll be watching the Gordon Ramsay turkey video that I watch every year to the point where I can like quote it now at this point he's always like just a touch of olive oil

3:46:56Dustin Furman:you know just a touch my boy gordon he's wonderful gordon um cool yeah i gotta go to my mom's tomorrow i'm just priming i'm getting mentally prepared for the thank you game um so i'm just trying to get that going and you know the right time to strike and uh looking forward to watching football all day that's gonna be nice and just hanging out just relaxing and tonight uh the islanders play the bruins so that's our micah's team the bruins so enjoy that after dinner and uh just play some games so it's good to be here with you guys today but we'll see each other next week for more sacred symbols, sacred symbols, plus sacred streaming and all the other things we do on Patreon dot com slash last day media could not do without your support.

3:47:32Dustin Furman:So thank you so much for over there for supporting us and getting all the perks for doing so, including early ad free access to this and everything else in the network. Last day media dot store for merch. 10 % off until the end of Cyber Monday on all merch. So check it out. We'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 Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show was conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman.

3:48:10Dustin 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 lastdaymedia. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

3:48:52Dustin Furman:Cam Wallace, Benjamin Michalko, Donald Difford, Alex Gates, Michael Gates, Josh McKinney, Adam Nix, Throw7, Phil Crone, Mr. Tom, Cannonball Jones, Jorge Pal, Anthony Vasquez, GhostStorm672, Simon Conception Jr., Peter Dreher, Alex Cabrera, Chris Ritchie, Shane Miller, Tony Zuniga, Jean-Francois Forze, Ryan T. Mandel, Alan Tremblay, Anton K., Spencer F., Robert Byers, Jamie Fraley, John Schultz, Betty Ann Moriarty, Geek Aloud, Jonathan Cortez, Qualia Freak, I'm the Silent Minority, Dennis Usel, Christopher Moore, Stove, Gary Cavallo, Joe McPartlin, Nathan R., Jerome Ferreira, Gavin, Martin Beck, Turbo Makes Games, Joosh, David Castanez, Miranda Grubba, Michael Vecchio, Sunny Sides Up, Carlos Algaret, Organic Produce, Joseph Lopez, Josh Gravelick, Sean Mason, Jonathan Coates, Roto24, Johnny Waffles, Mark Liberto, Aaron Betke, Chris Morton, Christopher Devayo, Azan, Cody Benin, Conrad Pennyfarthing, Stewie108, Toby Ryland, Daryl E.

3:50:01Dustin Furman:Naaman, Colin Love, Morgan Ashley, Kyle Hagel, Saqib Alam, Robert Schultz, Ali Fritz, Mason Bouchard, Chris Galvin, Dave Alvarez, Jimmy Rodriguez, Kendrick kaius joseph baker matt flowers who is stephen day i come on my toys just in case toy story is real nick amato saul balkazar ross maranca wesley s alex lapierre dan nolan mr molf boots john zyle ticos remington james gus gregory slavinsky zainal uichi treyland weary son jeff mercado Bjorn Campbell, Captain Verde, Jay Getter, Stefan Hackett, Alan Niner, Antonio C, Jeremy J. Roberts, Trey Woodward, Jake C, O, Tyler Tremel, Electric MD, Sketch McGetch, Josh Godfrey, William Holbert, Randall Halsey, Christopher Morgan, The Shady Mailman, Vitra, Asak Paredes, Neil Amon, Dan Root, Michael Buffel, Peyton Stone, Zach Cohen, Double Duty Dirk, Terry Tip, Jad Rita, Dustin Klingman, Matt 20, Alan Tiniak, Relentless Rex, Corey Beacom, Whiskey Sin, Electric Soup, Grayson Maxwell, Frail Cabbage St.

3:51:17Dustin Furman:Matthews of the Diocese of Brig, Jason Arzon, Eddie Medina, Umcart, My Name is Mayo, Donald John Vaders, Josh Sullinger, Albion, Ellis, Nate Izod, Lizard King, Sweaty Magic, Aaron Temple, Michael Mash Potato, Shane Brekke, Will Williams, Dustin Spruill, Collins Mindhole, Adam Refriended, Rallo, Vance Cody, Jorge Padua, Brian Williamson, Zachary Wood, Brandon Runger, Kyle Jay, Emmanuel Perez, Brano Bezzera Bloom, Logan Little George, Wesley Mullins, WTF, Uncharted Shinobi, Denny Woodnever, Eddie Smith, Hugo Delegia, Blackjack, Anthony Arcure, MattMGS24, Keith Richards, ZenRed, Jiraiya, Orchard, Sweet Jones, J.P.

3:52:06Dustin Furman:Lynch, Isaac Claiborne, Brad Lohman, Saltab, Ray Elijah, Zman8601, and Adam Balm.