#400 | My Computer Is Future Shockin'

16:04Colin Moriarty:if I'm looking at this correctly, you will have been on Mike for well over 10 hours in one week.

16:09Dustin Furman:Right.

16:09Colin Moriarty:Yeah. So the brain, I'm just saying it's,

16:11Dustin Furman:I just feel like it's different. I feel like we've had this conversation before.

16:14Colin Moriarty:I'm just riffing. Maybe Brandon Sanderson is too. He's just really good at it. Like you can riff, you know? Like I've,

16:23Dustin Furman:I write game stories and I've written, I guess, this will be St. Slayers my sixth. in seven years. So that's quite a lot, actually. But then again, it's not like it's a prodigious thing. But hey, man, I'm just spitballing. You know what I'm saying? Episode 400. It's a fair point. Patreon.com slash Last Day Media for early ad-free access to all of our shows. You guys know the drill couldn't do without you. You get early ad-free access to the show and all the other shows in our network, as you know. Defining Duke, the Xbox podcast, punching up the nintendo podcast and so on and so forth you also get discord access if you want to deal with those crazy people every so often dustin we got a dm of because i i i actually explained this to someone i actually came up with a term for it although it's probably a term someone had written in being like you know i'm sorry that i'm pretty hostile in the comments sometimes and i'm like I'm name blind like unless I am really like I used to be the same way when I used to read forums I would never even look at anyone's name unless you're like unless it's like oh this what is this and then who wrote this like you look to the left and there would be like a little name information sure I'm a I'm totally name blind um and we get these dms where this is so most recently and I put it in the discord to ask it's like this guy said he got banned from discord like three years ago and he wants to get on band and then you like have the receipts and you're like here's what he said right and it's like something heinous right it's we are we are exceptionally lenient

18:07Colin Moriarty:in the last and discord there are people that certainly without them the the greater good of the discord you know it would be a maybe a more enjoyable place but we try to be as chill as possible but there are people that just take it too far and uh there's always a receipt there's a record i think of everything ever said in our discord for the most part unless we have specifically deleted something which only really happens if someone says something that is against terms of service or or truly heinous uh but a lot of cases when we ban someone there's we make note in our moderation channel. So all I had to do was search that name and I was like, here it is.

18:49Colin Moriarty:That was a screenshot that Ben took when he banned the guy that I sent you guys.

18:55Dustin Furman:So. So that's what's going on on Discord. Yeah. But you can hang out over there. We have like, I don't know, 6 ,000 people over there. A lot of funny shit happens there. I'm sure I'm more in our staff Discord in the Lilymo staff Discord than the normal Discord. Although I do love the idea. Really, I do. I love the idea of like every year people just vote and they just vote five people out of the discord forever. Like who are the five most annoying people, you know, or like maybe you weaponize it. It's like an election. You're voting for someone, you're voting against someone. You have maybe like a little contingency of people and you vote, vote for this person.

19:32Dustin Furman:And then they agree to vote for the other person. I think it'd be very exciting.

19:35Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I could tell you three of them right now. Probably.

19:38Dustin Furman:I look for my name. I search for my name and every once in a while on the discord to see like if people are saying anything about me and then I realize it's the same five people always talking about me very scary stuff very very scary stuff there's thousands of people in there and everyone's having normal conversations about this and that but when I come up it always seems like it's these people very interesting very interesting those are names I've started to learn not so name blind on them although a little name blind because I get a little confused I'm like I thought this was this person and then I look and I'm like oh that was that other person it's a lot we should have id voter id discord discord voter id discord yeah like when we put election like when we put like different things for people to vote you got to

20:22Colin Moriarty:vote with a voter id yeah well wasn't there a thing you needed id on discord recently they're

20:27Dustin Furman:changing well you're going to i think to to have like adult access i i hear though that first of all i know it's annoying but i kind of get it it's like these places are becoming heavily bastardized in a lot of different ways with very inappropriate, often illegal shit. Roblox is dealing with the same shit. I mean, Roblox is getting fucked. Valve is getting sued by the state of New York for their own shit having to do with gambling, I think, or whatever. So you want to mitigate all that. I kind of understand what they're doing. And I've heard that it won't really affect the normal person on there.

21:02Dustin Furman:No. So it's like, I don't know. I don't care. What? I mean, I don't, it's not ideal, but it's not like I distrust discord or something. What are they going to do? I guess they could leak your information or whatever. Yeah. There are all these things where you take a picture of your ID sometimes for an app and they're supposed to like look at it and then like eliminate that data or whatever. And I wonder if maybe they'll do that, but they don't really do that. I don't know.

21:23Colin Moriarty:No one ever gets rid of any data, any big kind of big company. I mean, that's that's theirs forever.

21:28Dustin Furman:I was thinking about this recently, guys, like actually it was just last night in the shower. How are we storing all this stuff? Like, isn't there just an exponential need for ever increasing amounts of data storage. I've just been thinking it's like, think about YouTube and like the number of videos that are going on. Patreon. When I post, if I, when I post like two back to back things, or you probably noticed this when you post videos and video and audio and the numbers are all sequenced, like the URL numbers, it'll be like some eight digit number. It's like the, you know, it's like the 80 millionth, 500 ,000th post.

22:00Dustin Furman:And then you post the very next one a few seconds later. And it's like 25 ahead of that. And it's like, dude, there are 25 other people that just posted right now where's all this shit being stored

22:11Colin Moriarty:how could it be how could it be i wonder that like if you click a really really old youtube video that maybe like you have unlisted on your account i meant like someone's got to dust off that that hard drive it's just there somewhere it's weird don't you guys think that's like

22:27Dustin Furman:i i know obviously hard drives have gotten much more sophisticated much larger and all those things all these servers and all the rest but i just feel like the earth would be covered with this shit eventually we should start deleting things yeah i said probably i i think you and i had this conversation christian you were against it as i remember years ago but i was like we should they should just go and delete 25 of youtube like they're like there's so much shit on seriously it's like there's so much shit on there that like no one's ever seen that like just lives there and then you search for something and it just comes up and it's got three views from 10 years ago and it's like well why is this even here you know yeah i yeah i don't

23:03Chris Sullivan:I don't the gut. I don't remember how I felt about it at the time. The gut reaction I have now is that like, there's definitely like niche nostalgic favorites of mine that I would be kind of sad to never see again. And there's no way those are getting traffic. There's no way like those accounts have been logged into for like ever, you know, like it's been forever. So like, that would be a bummer. Like, I mean, I get it from like a logistical perspective and just from like a efficiency perspective, but like, I don't know. There's so the way that I feel about it genuinely is that like, Like there's so much that's already we're like efficiency maxing to the point where like every building is depressing to look at.

23:40Chris Sullivan:Right, right. You know, I'm just like, let's have if we can't spare even the slightest expense to make our buildings look less depressing. Let's at least have, I don't know, a balloon shop video from 2007. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I think you're right.

23:56Dustin Furman:I mean, ultimately, I think you're right. But I but there is something very it's like the whole thing about how I do love throwing shit out. like i love me yeah i just love throwing shit out it's one of my favorite things in the world it's very satisfying to just like it's very satisfying to like it's one of the nicest

24:13Chris Sullivan:things about moving into a new place and having a lot of space like there's like a there's like a key moment in time where you have every exactly everything you need and no more no less and then eventually like a trinket shows up and then you're like all right it's starting right like someone shows up with like hey it's a cute i thought of you when i saw this keychain here you go and i'm I'm like, all right. I like it. Thank you. But this now this is the beginning of the junk drawer. You know, the loose battery that I for some reason have not thrown away because I may need it.

24:46Dustin Furman:Yeah, I know the batteries. Yeah, the batteries are a problem. Rubber bands. Rubber bands. Menus. Not so much anymore, I guess. People don't really collect the menus anymore, but I always used to love the menu drawer. Yeah. Yeah. What do you want? Fucking Thai food. Then they were all outdated anyway. Right. half the places were closed um the fuck was i talking about i have no idea rss access

25:12Chris Sullivan:the patreon by the way yeah people are people people are gonna be in the comments that my dad showed up earlier that was my dad oh okay yeah this is i because i was looking at it on this on my monitor it's like is that my dad i was confused because people are gonna see like a a man's face just slowly hovering in this weird dark space behind me for like a solid minute minute and a half good good good good i hope he's well he's fine when you coming back

25:40Dustin Furman:or going back you're not coming back because you're not we're not in the same place anymore

25:44Chris Sullivan:uh i don't know at this moment um i don't think i'll be here for the next i don't think i'll be here by the time we record next time but it's also very possible that i that i am so cool i never got i didn't get my return ticket obviously so like gotcha i'm i have some flexibility but cool

26:03Dustin Furman:i hope to be back soon sacred symbols plus as i said earlier we've done more than 500 of these episodes these are the supplements to sacred symbols on patreon.com slash last day media so a major part of the perks over there uh we did our god of war sons of sparta review discussion and spoiler cast. So we got deep into that game. That was fun. Hogan and I got together to talk about the Ubisoft reorg. We'll talk a little bit about that later in the show today. We talked with Dustin's friend in his hometown about his retro game shop, which was a really fun episode. We had Jaffe on, of course, Kingdom Hearts conversation.

26:35Dustin Furman:Sacred Symbols is sponsored by BetterHelp, a convenient way for you to seek the talk therapy you may need. Learn more now at betterhelp.com slash symbols, where you can get 10 % off your first session. As an on again, off again therapy enjoyer for the last three plus decades of my life, I recommend it without reservation to just about anyone. It's useful to have someone to talk to, and while some people feel like they need it on a regular basis over a longer period of time or even in perpetuity, many others use it exactly the way I have, when difficult chapters in life unexpectedly pop up. BetterHelp is the perfect way to touch base with a professional therapist that you can, for lack of a better term, unload on and seek counsel from.

27:12Dustin Furman:Whether you're feeling down, having issues at work or in a relationship, experiencing listlessness and malaise or whatever else, these are all profoundly human experiences. Everyone deals with them, and therapy can help you navigate those choppy waters as you find your way back to shore. It's easy to shrug away your mental health, but it matters a great deal. Your mind is you. It's who you are. Why wouldn't you tend to it? BetterHelp meets you where you are with therapy over video, audio, or even via text, all with a legion of 30 ,000 licensed therapists whose sessions received a collective 4.9 out of 5 stars over more than 1.7 million client reviews.

27:46Dustin Furman:Accessible, affordable, convenient, the excuses are no more. Will you give it a try? Your emotional well-being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10 % off at betterhelp.com slash symbols. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash S-Y-M-B-O-L-S. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash symbols for remote therapy that can help you right now. With a mustache, a taco on one hand and ordering a ride in the other

28:11Chris Sullivan:means you're stacking cash back. With Venmo Stash, get up to 5 % cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Max$100 cash back per month.

28:21Dustin Furman:See terms at Venmo.me slash Stash terms. Naked Snake wrote in. Many people wrote in about this. But I went with Naked Snake. He says, hey, CDC, this one is for Cobra Commander. How can it be that we haven't gotten a sacred cross-defining Duke with the state of the industry seemingly in flux between Sony's continuous mismanagement of its studios? Failed live service push and a possible PS6 delay. and then on Xbox's side, Phil Spencer retiring, Sarah Bond stepping down and then possibly not even releasing another Xbox. Seems like a ripe opportunity for the realm of the Dukes and the Sacred Boys to assemble once again.

28:50Dustin Furman:That's the next episode of Sacred Symbols Plus. So you read my mind and great minds, of course, think alike. So stay tuned. And again, I was pleased to see all the write-ins about it because people are wanting, and yeah, it's been a while. This one will have a little extra twist though because Cog will not be able to be there. He has an appointment to attend but Brad will be stepping in and thus did I write it down? I was coming I was going to call it what was I going to call it sacred something I don't know defining sacred signs or something like that couldn't have been that good I guess

29:32Chris Sullivan:I don't know

29:33Colin Moriarty:defining sacred sign or defining summon symbols

29:36Chris Sullivan:yeah defining summons I like defining summon symbols

29:40Dustin Furman:that's so stupid but yeah we're looking forward to getting together because there is much to discuss and sacred streaming continues as well Moriarty Cross Jaffe big hit I don't know what else to say you know Dustin did you see the traffic for the last one I did this will be the biggest one yet

29:59Chris Sullivan:very interesting I saw people say that you're you're you're a Herman Holsting with Jaffe and you're like Jaffe's your horizon yeah my horizon he's my gorilla he's my decimate that's funny they're good though man they're good streams he's a good personality

30:18Dustin Furman:he is he is fun and like and it's silly but it's also insightful he knows a lot so you have to get him there but I like the adventure so some people are being like why are you doing these so much and I'm like they literally do about three times better than the game streams. But I also want you guys to know, and I also just enjoy them a lot more than the game streams, but I hear you and I listen to two things I want to say. First of all, the last episode of, so the third episode of Moriarty Cross Jaffe, the last episode of Sacred Streaming, we were actually supposed to do something else that day.

30:50Dustin Furman:And it just seemed like because of everything that was going on, of course. But I hear everyone. So this Sacred Streaming, unless something catastrophic happens that we need to talk about Monday. So what would that be that we're going to be in March at this point? I think March 2nd. So the day this goes live on free feeds will I'll stream Resident Evil 9. OK. OK. Is everyone going to be all right now out there? Relax. Take it easy. I hear the game's fairly short, which doesn't bother me at all. So I probably should be able to beat it this weekend. And then maybe I can do like one of the extra runs or begin one of the extra runs for the sacred streaming.

31:26Dustin Furman:And Dustin, you'll be there with me.

31:28Chris Sullivan:Yeah, I was so excited when I saw it. Like there was, I saw people complaining on Twitter about like, oh man, Resident Evil 9 is like really short. And I remember being like, oh yes, yes. It's like, I'm so much more, I'm so much more excited than I otherwise would have been. I mean, Resident Evil games are never that long, but.

31:47Dustin Furman:No, they're not. And they're also highly replayable. So, cause there's always like, you know, like the, the heelless run and like the hard run and getting all the collectibles. Yeah. I could go for, depending on how good the game is, a 15 hour Resident Evil campaign, perhaps but i don't need to go any longer than that and i hear this one is like 10 to 12 hours something like that maybe even shorter 8 to 12 or something i don't know whatever that's fine sweet spot that's perfectly fine it's good all right so please look forward to it and uh merch last day media.store jorkin the penis vance wrote in said hello ss crew i was at the nine inch nail show in Columbus last Friday.

32:26Dustin Furman:After the show, I was standing to the side waiting for my friend to use the restroom. I saw a guy walking by wearing a Sacred Symbols holiday sweater. Out of pure shock that I actually saw a Sacred Symbols fan in the wild, I ran up to him and told him I love the shirt, completely forgetting him to stand down. So I wanted to write this to apologize to that person and officially tell him to stand down. I hope you enjoyed the show, and if there is a hell, I'll see you there. Thanks for reading. I keep fucking that chicken. Love to see it. Yeah. A holiday sweater.

32:51Chris Sullivan:Yeah. In February?

32:52Dustin Furman:Yeah, it's very interesting. very interesting very very very yeah curious yeah at a nine inch nail show there's two

33:01Colin Moriarty:implications in this number one there's some kind of unwritten rule that sacred fans need to tell each other to stand down or it's like a level of disrespect right not something you know this isn't something we created but it you know we don't have control over that right

33:15Chris Sullivan:that's the zeitgeist that's culture baby it's a breathing it's a breathing organism at this point

33:19Colin Moriarty:the second implication is that if you listen to sacred symbols that you're going to hell Because he said, I hope you enjoy the show. And if there's a hell, I'll see you there. Now, it could be because you're at the Nine Inch Nails show. You're hell bound. Or is it sacred? Or both.

33:34Dustin Furman:Yeah, it could be. I never, I don't mind Nine Inch Nails. And there are some great Nine Inch Nails shows. Like, they were really big when I was in, like, middle school and high school. Or he, really. Yeah. Trent Reznor. I think, yeah, Trent Reznor, right. And I actually, didn't I tell you guys the story that, like, I liked this girl in middle school. Her name, I wouldn't even say her name. Her name was Gretchen. and uh she she like really liked nine inch nails which i just really wasn't very familiar with like i saw like a music video or two but it wasn't it's not really my it's like industrial and like it wasn't what i was listening to at the time i was really in the mid 90s i was listening like the offspring and green day and no doubt but i wrote people used to write on their backpacks like that was really i'm sure that was yeah yeah afterwards but i wrote like the nine inch nails logo on the back of my backpack to like to like try to get her attention or whatever this was like seventh grade maybe or whatever but i never i was never i always felt a little bit i don't know like out to lunch with like so many people like you know trent reznor and nine inch nails and i'm like yeah it's fine it wasn't really my thing it's like a very highbrow thing actually for a lot of rock fans comparable to the other things that they might listen to yeah that's it's like uh

34:43Chris Sullivan:yeah i'm i'm trying to think of like it's it's it's almost like opera you know what i mean versus like oh i'm going to see nine it's like sophisticated right right in comparison to like i don't know the offspring which i also love but oh i love you not a butler native but very very

35:01Colin Moriarty:close oh interesting with his hometown well i was looking he technically he was hometown is mercer pa which is just north of butler and he was born in newcastle which uh is not very far either like 40 minute drive but there's an urban legend though maybe it's not my mom told me this that at one point trent reznor was seen at the clearview mall in butler pa and it like the word spread quickly that he was there is this true i don't know maybe it's not impossible with him being you know semi semi local right i know someone that was like yeah i knew this guy in high school he's uh he's like end up being a real big musician uh trent i was like you mean trent resner and he's like yeah that's him like a guy i went to church with told me that and i was like

35:51Chris Sullivan:oh trent resner you trent resner it's crazy i mean aren't they um am i unless i'm misremembering aren't they doing the uh the the naughty dog game uh oh yeah he is right yeah yeah yeah that's right he that's a good point i totally forgot about that that's a that's one of the more exciting i mean obviously like a teaser trailer only shows you so much or whatever but that was like the the thing that was like oh this is gonna be it's gonna be something one nine inch nails performance i saw

36:21Dustin Furman:online because someone shared it to me um the guy gary newman the guy that wrote cars

36:30Dustin Furman:you know that's like that early 80s song which i which i love my brain autocorrected to rainy

36:36Colin Moriarty:Newman I was like that's what I thought too

36:38Dustin Furman:and uh no way it's N-U-M-A-N by the way but like he played with them I guess in like 2009 and they played that song live and dude it was fucking sick I was like oh my god this is awesome so I had a lot of respect for that but but yeah maybe Randy Newman in there as well doing a few things with Trent Reznor would be very interesting

36:59Colin Moriarty:I'm R.J. Decker the private investigator uncovering the

37:02Dustin Furman:Sunshine State's darkest secrets

37:05Chris Sullivan:Tuesday, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. R.J. freaking Decker as I live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder. It's someone bigger. And a public mass.

37:17Colin Moriarty:Trying to get sent back to prison today?

37:19Chris Sullivan:You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. R.J.

37:23Dustin Furman:Decker, series premiere, Tuesday on ABC and stream on Hulu. But we have something else to talk about with merch. dustin i've been i had this idea i don't know i wonder how people are going to receive it in my opinion this is a great idea and i want to see if if the people out there take to it or not last year we came up with the or micah and i were talking about allegheny hogs right and this is a term that i came up with randomly when i was watching a fight video it was in like the appalachian mountains or something i don't really remember michael might remember the story better but the woman's tits were flying around she's like some some fat chick and i was like look at them allegheny hogs that somehow find its way to the show right um let them oink and all the rest and people really loved this and then i was like you know what the allegheny hog sounds like a minor league baseball team and so what we did was we went to an artist friend of ours and i was like let's make a fake baseball logo let's back up a minute if you're a fan of of minor league sports like a ball double a ball the ahl echl shit like that like the the leagues that feed the professional leagues it is very common for there to be insane names and insane logos.

38:57Dustin Furman:They're always, there's like a shit ton of funny stuff. It's so good. And like some of them are awesome. And I was like, dude, Allegheny hogs legitimately sounds like an a ball team, like 100%. So we had a logo made. Maybe we'll show it on the screen now. Yeah, we do that. We'll show on the screen right now. And we're going to sell merchandise with this. And the thing is, is that nothing, because originally we were it was like oh do we want to like indicate like one of the one of the mock-ups had like let him oink on it and stuff like that and i'm like no just play it straight like there should be nothing sexual or weird about the logo at all i want it to be a real fake right a ball logo and we're selling t-shirts we're going to do a pre-order for these t-shirts and we'll maybe do more in the future depending on i don't know sometimes we buy this stuff outright right and we just sell it on the store but i don't know if people are going to enjoy this idea or not i feel like it's a fuck i i honestly feel like this is the best piece of merch we've ever done just to be honest with you just be honest wow because it's totally different it's not like it's it's not asking us to it's not like where our logo or whatever it's like it's made up no one benefits from this except for me a little we make a little money you know i appreciate

40:10Chris Sullivan:mercer doesn't look like merch or at least like like i mean i guess it looked it looks like baseball merch or whatever but doesn't give away like what it's from or like it's like sly or it's like if you know you know kind of thing um i haven't seen this design yet i just sent it on

40:26Colin Moriarty:the staff discord chris it's in the sacred symbols i tagged you oh cool see the shirt

40:37Dustin Furman:that's pretty convincing yeah i mean that's it just look and so the idea is you would wear this shirt yeah and then people like oh like what and then you could just make up whatever you want oh man yeah they play independent ball or whatever you know they're like a they're a

40:54Chris Sullivan:you gotta get this on a jersey is where you gotta yeah well that's the thing is like do we want to do sweatshirts baseball shirts you know yeah it would be cool to get like real jer like i mean

41:02Dustin Furman:that would be great like real button down jerseys with like allegheny written across it or something like that and like the hog logo on the arm but let's let's see what happens right sure sure you know you don't support this shirt nothing's happening but i'm i'm happy with this personally i think it's funny i think it's funny that is good and what was fun what was fun is that you know cog and i and micah are sports fans but no one else really and hoag too i guess no one else really in the company is and so i was trying to like explain i'm like no there's a difference between like the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Dodgers and their logos and their treatments and minor league teams.

41:42Dustin Furman:You know, like we got it. And then I started sharing the logos like here's some AHL logos. Here's some, you know, double A ball logos and stuff. And people started to get it, started getting the idea. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, like get get nuts with it. Get nuts with it. But make it serious. And so this is what we came up with. Allegheny Hawks.

42:03Colin Moriarty:Fake team. Yeah. shout out uh our artist for this was hodge he's done pretty much all of the art for our live shows and designed some of our merch um he does excellent work for us he's a at hodge baba 57 on twitter if you ever need any stuff from him but uh he knocked it out of the park uh with this one so this will be available on monday uh we're gonna launch it at the same time as the podcast on Monday when it goes public. And there will be a pre-order period, as Colin was saying. We need to hit the threshold in order to make the sale happen, as Colin was saying. So I believe with that, you can put in your pre-order.

42:48Colin Moriarty:You won't be charged until we actually go and order the shirts. If something happens where we can't order the shirts because there's not enough, then you're not out on anything, of course. But yeah, look for that on laststandmedia.store.

43:04Dustin Furman:monday because at first it's like oh you want like the logo to be a pair of tits kind of like that's like no you know i want people to be convinced that this is real you know and convince them we will and maybe we'll become like maybe we can even make a real

43:20Colin Moriarty:franchise one day yeah i like the idea like we have an agreement maybe i add this to the selling Like if you buy this shirt and someone asks you about it, you do not say, oh, it's an inside joke for my favorite podcast. We need to make it like where I mean, I guess the Allegheny Hogs have to be from Allegheny. Yeah, Allegheny, Pennsylvania. That's right.

43:40Dustin Furman:Yeah, that's where I can.

43:41Colin Moriarty:I know you're working a lot on Saintslayer, but can we get some time like we need a little lore description of the Allegheny Hogs, maybe some of their history? Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, like winners, like champions of, of, of Western Pennsylvania league.

43:58Dustin Furman:And then like all the dates, like 73, 81, 82, 83, 99.

44:03Chris Sullivan:Like just like, if we can, if we can somehow gas, like gaslight, I did this once completely by accident. There was a, there was, I made up, I can't remember if it was on a podcast or a stream or what, maybe even a tweet, but I, I, I would go around talking about this fake show called full metal sheen which was like after after jimmy neutron ended they were trying to get planet sheen off the ground they had this like interstitial kind of cartoon in between called full metal sheen and it was sheen and like world war ii or whatever he like got transported and enough people either believed it or thought it was funny enough to like for a while you could google full metal sheen and google would tell you like that it was real that like it it went from this to that like and people and so i could just tell people that they would look it up and they would be like oh it's real and they would just believe it and it was awesome i didn't realize you could even just do that but if we can just get there's got to be a community effort you know i there's got there's a way to do it i've seen it happen i don't know how but y 'all can figure that out yeah we'll get allegheny hogs we'll get the lore and the you know the uh the stats and all the players dude yeah we'll make what we could tell ai like i'll get make it make the box scores for every game for

45:18Dustin Furman:a fictional a ball baseball team going back in 1971 yeah there you go and then uh yeah get some

45:24Chris Sullivan:fun player names in there you know what i was thinking of too jack jack marius tech tech

45:29Dustin Furman:theatrics the funny thing is is that those skits are like not even accurate anymore because like they're even crazier in the real league still like well i hear names all the time where i'm like what was that there's a what what is there is a guy let me see if i can that's one of my favorite we're

45:47Chris Sullivan:talking about keem peel college basketball sketch there's a cat there's a i was gonna say a character

45:54Dustin Furman:there's a guy on the broncos name lil jordan humphrey yeah and when i when you watch and when you watch it they're like lil jordan humphrey with with eight yards you know like oh boy that's one

46:08Chris Sullivan:of my favorite sketches ever man it's excellent it's so good it's excellent those guys are such good names. What was it? Le Carpetron Duke Marriott.

46:17Dustin Furman:It's like amazing. Another great one. He played for the Lions, I think. Equiminius St. Brown. Is that a real person? Yeah.

46:28Dustin Furman:I love it. It's good shit. What was I talking about? Allegheny Hogs. Yeah, no. So I do see it as a baseball team. That's the one thing is that I do see it as a baseball team. And so with the one exciting thing is and i'm pretty sure you can do this is um are people going to integrate this in the mlb the show because i'm pretty sure you can make a fictional team and there you go and you know play in the minors or something something i'm pretty sure you can do that you can make your own players so i'm excited to see what's going on here with the allegheny hawks yeah make your own players dude i don't know we don't want to be cheeky i was like is

47:09Colin Moriarty:colon montgomery the head coach colon montgomery yeah it's not it's not caught like we can't but what they would call in baseball the manager the manager okay manager that's fine yeah do it manager colon montgomery colon montgomery yeah the current current manager you gotta have though

47:25Chris Sullivan:you gotta at least like 40 of the players have to be dominican if you want a chance yeah definitely definitely if you want even a remote chance and getting ahead sorry dude the rules

47:36Dustin Furman:we'll definitely have to i mean they've got to get i mean if we want to win we'll get dominicans we'll have a couple cubans yeah um we'll definitely be going all over central and south america and the caribbean to to find our uh to find our players and a few you know we want to find our hogs yeah to find our hogs we need our hogs in mlb the show i'm looking up can you make your own team and mlb the show yes you can create your own team by designing custom logos uniforms and branding primarily with diamond dynasty or by replacing existing teams in franchise or march to october once so that's pretty interesting you have two options you either can make like a minor league or whatever or you can just replace one of the mlb teams with the allegheny hogs if you're really feeling bold um because they're in western pennsylvania i think you would have to kind of replace the the pirates thus being in the nl you know um that's that's foreign ball to me by the way i don't know if you guys why would you see this they have now because baseball like spring training is going um they're testing this new thing where people like catchers and i think batters can protest balls and strikes and and and they're doing it and they're winning i think it happened three times in one inning and i'm like why do you even have an umpire it's just it baseball that's kind of crazy baseball is one of those things where i'm like you don't need any human umpires it's all zero or one all of it hit or no hit out or safe ball or strike like that like it's it's all just it is what it is like just have computers and yeah very funny so i'm like oh we're two minutes away from the empire umpires being out of baseball which i'm totally fine with it's so annoying it's like it's like the catcher like catches the ball in the strike zone the the Empire calls it a ball and then the guy like taps his helmet, which is the indication that he wants to challenge it.

49:25Dustin Furman:And then they're like, and then they show the screen and it's a strike and they get it. And I'm like, okay, so like, why do you even have this person up here making wrong calls? What's going on with that? It's part of the game. Some people make that argument that it is part of the game that like the, you know, the personal strike zone and kind of like, yeah, like the interpretation.

49:41Chris Sullivan:I'm like, I'm just being like, I don't like this guy. That's a strike. Like, all right.

49:48Dustin Furman:Because it is episode 400, I have a somewhat extended early topics of discussion just to get into a few things so that we'd have some fun today. And then we can get in the news. We'll get into what we're playing. We'll finish with six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas about games from the audience at the end. We begin, though, the topics of discussion at the top with Serge, who says, greetings, boys. Can we take 15 minutes? I don't know if we have to take that long. I mean, we can take however long we want. But to look back and appreciate the finer details of the Sacred Symbols universe, the last 400 episodes have brought us little raisin how can that be the southern man sweet onky hogs a real life deli sandwich named in your honor and i haven't even mentioned the countless relationship breakups that we know about god willing there will be more to add to the list come episode 800 which according to my math should air on or around october 6 2033 of course i am a product of the american public school system so i'm sure i missed a digit somewhere in my equation as always i'll sit back and listen for another 400 episodes thank you for writing in surge a lot of lore but a lot of fun as well um i thought we would just reflect uh chris you have any any reflections about any memory i don't know nothing on the spot just you know what are your feelings here at episode 400 it's auspicious occasion yeah i mean i don't know i think it's

51:03Chris Sullivan:been I think the more interesting part of this has been watching how the audience takes things and just either blows them up or just like is there bits that I think during our show that I think are absolutely hilarious that nobody gleans onto and then there are just nothing like passing glances almost that somehow get like insane traction or like become bigger bits than i does and so it just kind of i can't i guess i can't really properly calibrate ever like i'm always going to be wrong in some way about like what works and what doesn't that kind of freaks me out a little bit but it's cool like i don't know yeah i'm doing this for so long yeah it's a bummer i mean you must feel experience that with with snark tank as well right like yeah i mean i have i have somewhat of an ear for like what works over but i am still surprised yeah you know like i think everything works but like the things that do work i'm surprised work as well as they do

52:09Dustin Furman:yeah consistently i've always been kind of befuddled by that and we've definitely discussed it in the past you had things that like i thought were really funny or really like memorable and then people i think and i'm sure we all feel this way every podcaster i've ever known who i've talked to about this feels this way it's like people are like oh what's your favorite episode what's your favorite moment i'm like you have to understand this is a blur yeah it really is it's not an insult to the craft it's like it would be like doing morning radio or something and it's like oh what was your favorite it's like i don't know lady i've been doing morning radio for 25 years or something like well you want me to pick a fucking moment it's like my job it's like what's your favorite what you ask a plumber like what was your favorite job

52:43Chris Sullivan:um what was your favorite uh what was your favorite uh episode of the news that you

52:47Dustin Furman:right exactly exactly so it really is a blur it's more about like the feelings and the trends and the inertia that's created by the show. I think like it's funny because I did sacred or I did podcast beyond for, I don't know, 250 episodes or something. And then I did PS I love you for a hundred episodes maybe or something before I left. And then this for 400. And it's funny how many people know me, especially from PS I love you was kind of a blip ultimately, but I mean, it was a big show, but it wasn't very long, but podcast beyond was huge. And like podcast beyond at the time I did, it was way, way bigger than the show ever, ever was, which is so funny, but that's because it was IGN and it was, it was propagated by a huge masthead.

53:37Dustin Furman:And like I told people, we had them over a million downloads a month, which is crazy, you know? Um, and that means it just finds people over time. And one of the favorite, my favorite things because of that reach that podcast beyond had, cause it's all been downhill from there. Let's be honest. um but the the thing that i find surprising is that people still pop up to this day and are like i had no idea you were doing anything i used to listen to you on podcasts beyond 15 years ago or whatever and i'm like that's so funny because we found this little niche or niche it's niche though for me because i'm american i speak english um and i kind of love it like i I love just kind of being just above the radar that people can find us, but below the radar where it's this unique special thing.

54:26Dustin Furman:Yet it's really one of the 10 biggest. I mean, if you believe iTunes. You know, the biggest the biggest podcast distributor in the world. Sacred Symbols is one of the 10 biggest. Video game podcasts in the world. I mean, it's kind of. Crazy. You know, and always even on a bad week in the top 20. and that's pretty and actually all of our shows are in the top 50 often and that's pretty fucking crazy we run this thing from our offices our home offices distributed around the country and it works and i am really humbled by it sometimes i think it's like what is this all about really like what's it almost feels like a joke I really feel that way sometimes like it's what I always wanted but never thought I could really accomplish and I think that that's kind of like my whole career as I always tell people like when IGN offered me a job when I was 18 to write for them they they they cracked the door open I just booted it off the fucking hinges I was like oh you're not gonna like give me a little daylight and I'm not gonna fucking seize the day dude but little did i know that 24 years later after i got that faithful faithful email in 2002 from them that was i was 17 actually at the time they had to wait until i turned 18 so i can legally sign my contract um here we are and the internet's changed a lot that was an internet where there were big brands big mastheads there were fan sites and all that kind of stuff in forums or whatever, but you weren't going to strike out on your own.

56:07Dustin Furman:That's what makes things like that's why I'm so impressed with certain things in the past. And I bring them up all the time and they're random, like the one up show where I was like, dude, they were doing podcasts before podcasts were a thing. They were doing video and VOD before that was ever a thing or angry video game nerd. Yeah, like that guy was just doing it on his website. It wasn't until I I think season three or four that he went to YouTube. It's like, or Sean baby back in the day, which was like a huge influence on me back in the day. Even things like something awful. And like, there's like so many interesting things out there, but now it's about a lot of micro communities.

56:44Dustin Furman:It's like an endless archipelago of content. And we're just one little speck in it. And yet I find more meaning in this than I ever did in my professional career. there's a different kind of pressure with this i always talk about the pressure of reviewing things on ign and like just millions of people reading it and how much how scary that was and now it's like we don't have we have a fraction of that audience and it feels so much more relaxing and it's it's better for everyone it's better for the creation it's better for making money it's better for i don't know man like it's it's been good and i have good teammates It's not only with you guys, but just everyone in the company, but certainly you guys.

57:31Dustin Furman:So, yeah, that's my kind of reflection on it is it's funny how this is all happened and it feels fake. And it always will feel fake. And I. I have always been one, and I think everyone that listens knows that I say this a lot is like, I'm very lucky. Like, I'm not one of these people that's like, I'm the best. I'm really good at what I do. There's no doubt. I mean, obviously, we wouldn't be able to do this otherwise, but like, that's not good enough. You have to have an enormous amount of luck. Yeah, just serendipitous timing. Or nothing happens. And I have to acknowledge that there's no there's no replicating it.

58:11Dustin Furman:It just kind of is a flash in the pan sort of thing that either, you know, lightning in the bottle and you capture it. so yeah that's basically it Dustin you have any reflections when did you join the episode

58:22Colin Moriarty:or the podcast what number was that one in the 100s my official uh first episode as permanent co-host was 150 150 that's right so that means I've been on the show 250 episodes now uh which is crazy uh I totally agree where it's like it it feels like it's been that long and also not at the same time. But it is my favorite aspect of it, I think is kind of with Chris as well, just seeing how the audience reacts. And it's been, I mean, over, I don't know how many years ago that was now. I think it was, was it 2020 when I joined when 250 was? That sounds right.

59:09Dustin Furman:2018 to 19 would be 50, 19 to 20 would be 100. 20 to 21 would be 150. So 21.

59:17Colin Moriarty:Okay. So right around there. That feels too late, though, to me.

59:24Chris Sullivan:You're probably right. That sounds weirdly like, you know, I feel like you've been here forever.

59:29Colin Moriarty:It was. I remember when we did our first live show in Butler. It was everything was clear on COVID. But I know that there were people that were still unsure. And which we were like, you know, that's cool. So but yeah, it's been. such a huge blessing on my life, this show, working for this company, both you guys, both our, you know, our work together and our friendship together. The things that we've been able to do because of this show, whether it's a sold out show in New York city or other places that we've gone have been all incredible. I made so many friends through this podcast, whether it's other people in the industry or people that were listeners that I now see at different events and stuff like that.

1:00:20Colin Moriarty:And I, you know, I don't take it for granted at all. It's a lot like Colin was saying where, sure, you get used to the idea of, you know, you're like, okay, I'm going to record this show. It's going to be listened to tens of thousands of people. But there's still like days where I wake up and I'm like, this is crazy. that this is what we're doing. This is crazy that, uh, I remember when I was at my old job editing a dance recital and I was like, I'm going to check out some podcasts. What about gaming podcasts and hearing beyond back then being like, this would be a really cool thing to do. I have no idea how I'm going to do that, but I'm going to try my best for a few years.

1:01:03Colin Moriarty:I mean, it took forever. And as Colin said, a lot of luck, but, um, so it's never, it's never lost on me and I'm sure it's not lost on you guys either. And, um, I will always be so deeply appreciative to the audience, uh, for sticking with us, being here with us, um, all, you know, through whether it's crazy news, boring news, uh, bad things happening in our lives or great things happening. The support is always felt, um, both from people that are vocal and it's, it's great getting messages to from getting messages or meeting people in real life. They're like, Hey, I've, I've never commented on a video.

1:01:39Colin Moriarty:I don't say anything, but I really appreciate this show. It means a lot. So thank you for, you know, these 400 episodes, 250 for me. And I'm sure there will be many more to come.

1:01:54Dustin Furman:Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, they will. I mean, people always ask like when, because I always joke about retiring and stuff like that. And I'm like, I feel like ultimately I'll just do this for as long as I can. Why wouldn't I? it's fun like it's not i i have to remind myself i've worked shitty jobs and i did it when nothing was on the line right like i had no kids or not that i have kids now but like no i had no responsibility so like when i was doing landscaping or groundskeeping and i was like fucking dying of the heat and sweating and freezing and doing the shittiest stuff it's like well i get to go home i get to go to my dorm room and get drunk later like i have to go to class tomorrow or something people out there have to like get up every morning and like do real shit and um for true purposes like to support a family and they grit their teeth and they do it and it's like i have nothing to complain about and i and i i try to i try to acknowledge that like i've been like this should change my life it's not like just some job like it's an incredible level of security that I could have never imagined and you have no idea for a person like me that like is so stressed out and anxious about everything all the time like what that did for me yeah you know because I if I was out there grinding and in the real world I'd be fucking nervous and then again I think about myself in the past when I had when I had the least and I had to do the most and I felt very carefree but I think that that comes from ignorance um so yeah anyway I don't want to get too philosophical here on episode 400.

1:03:28Ray Charlazard wrote in and said, gang, I am.

1:03:32Dustin Furman:Oh, did we? Oh, no, I'm sorry. We'll get to you, Ray. Austin Prentice wrote and said, hello, Sacred Boys, and congrats on 400 episodes. In the years since you've been doing the show, what's been your favorite part about the process? I'm sure there's lots of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we don't know about that makes the show run so well, and it certainly pays off each and every week. Been listening since the Beyond Days and eagerly tune in every week. Here's to another 400 episodes. Thanks for the memories. for me, it's just become very mechanical. Like I just dedicate Wednesdays to the show.

1:03:58Dustin Furman:We record Thursday, but Wednesdays I try to just dedicate to like just reading and watching things and taking notes and studying like everything that's going on, reading press releases and stalking people on LinkedIn. And like, that's like when I really, that's like when I really like, um, activate in terms of doing the show. And I try to just be really prepared. Um, it's funny like the like i have like just even just in addition to all of the notes we work off of like i have a bunch of shit that i i work off of just to be able to speak about things eloquently um and know what i'm talking about because there's a lot of things i know and there's a lot of things i don't and that's actually how i i think people are you know some people are surprised like with uh how well i know the industry and i'm like well part of that comes from being in the industry for a very long time but also i just feel like it's if you put in the work you just learn it through prosmosis, I think at some point you just know things after a while.

1:04:50Dustin Furman:And so I try to, I know people tune in for me to do that. And I try to do that really well. And that's the one thing that I hope in terms of our preparation is that like it show, I hope it shows that like I am prepared. I also think that you bring up a good point, Austin, in that it's, it's there's a lot that goes on that you don't see. A lot of it goes on with Dustin, frankly. So cutting the show up, which is not a huge deal it used to be a much bigger deal when we did audio cuts which i did personally for two years and it's like a horrifying thing to do it's like it's like literally the worst thing it's yeah it's well yeah it sucks like like it does i i'm i agree that i'm weird

1:05:34Chris Sullivan:i like i love editing a lot like i like the tedium of it but even with yeah audio is is a bitch to deal with one of the things that i would do on star tank a lot is like if we over if we talked over one another i would like i would like slide the conflicting audio files just to like give each sentence enough and i did that for you and i did that forever until i handed it off i was like i can't nobody gives a shit that i'm doing that was what we kind of discovered was that like i

1:06:02Dustin Furman:don't i used to do these really fine edits when you and i used to record in person i would overlap the audio obviously and then i would like go in and anytime we did uh or like two or like and i and i it would often like if so we used to do 90 minute shows or two hour shows that would be times three so like you would leave and it would be like all right so this is going to take six hours for me to edit this and it did yeah then i handed it off to dustin to do and then we handed it off ultimately to ben and then we realized no one cared we just stopped i i it's very similar to like we it feels a little mean but i just constantly not constantly but i've done i've conducted many experiments with the audience where i'm like let's just see if anyone notices and like just made changes and no one ever notices and we did that for the first time when we just started recording remotely and no one noticed and then like three weeks after like by the way we haven't even been in person the entire so like just disarming people and uh we've done that on on several on several different occasions and what and i think the audio edit was another one of those things where I'm like, let's just stop.

1:07:07Dustin Furman:And no one said a word. And I'm like, yeah, no one cares that like we're doing this very fine audio edit. It's really not worth it. And that made life a lot easier. But Dustin, you do a lot of the you do the thumbnails, which is a really important. I remember at IGN and it's true, like they really instilled in us, like don't even bother making content if you don't have a good headline and a good thumbnail. Now, headlines, we don't I don't care about that. But the good thumbnails are really important. and that always stuck with me like do the the little things it's like the maps and the huds

1:07:37Chris Sullivan:and games like that always stuck with me and then we name our episodes after like just nonsense yeah

1:07:47Dustin Furman:yeah but uh but yeah i want to i want to acknowledge you because that is a lot of shit and um i don't have to do it anymore and i haven't had to do in years which is awesome but so we i have to acknowledge that there's like a production pipeline that allows this show to happen and you are the central figure in that pipeline.

1:08:05Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Yeah. It's the, I mean, Austin is asking about our favorite part of the process. Certainly the production is not my favorite part, but making the thumbnails, I remember very vividly when we switched to video and if you look back and honestly, I wasn't very good at making thumbnails because I was new to it at the time. but the first few thumbnails are pretty generic and i think it was when uh it was probably like the second or third video episode where we uh it was like i think when james bond was rumored and i made i made a a very cookie cutter youtube thumbnail and then i made one with colin in it and i think it was you and you and chris um with like james bond styling and it was like kind of silly and i sent them both to you and i'm like which one what do you think of these and you're like oh do the silly one like okay and then since then it's just kind of been whatever dude the thumbnails it's so it's such a weird thing because sometimes i can have an idea for a thumbnail while we're recording and it's such a relief yeah and then there are other times where it's like dude what i have no idea what this thumbnail should be i don't know like for a while i think I've eased up a little bit.

1:09:25Colin Moriarty:I've always like, I was thinking like the thumbnail needs to be funny. Like it has to be funny. There's an expectation set. I've kind of let some of that go where it's like, it can, there are still funny, weird ones, of course. But I don't want to force it. Yeah. You know,

1:09:42Dustin Furman:the stupider, the better, I think. I mean, that's like my, my mantra in life generally. Yeah. But I like, I like stupid. I like stupid. Like, I think that, I think that's fun. And that's why, you know, I never really, the title of the titling of the shows, we, I could title them normally if that's what we want. I, I, I don't really give a shit personally. I just do it because I think it's funny. Yeah. I think it's stupid. And I, there's, I'm about preemptively disarming people. I like doing that. Stupid thumbnails, nonsensical headlines. You can never accuse us of, um, being clickbaity. at least.

1:10:26Dustin Furman:And that we do so well with those headlines and those thumbnails, I think speak. Now, we could we do better? Maybe. But like, there's something weird about the headlines and the thumbnails and the headlines feel authentic. Like, uh, it's not a serious show. It's a thoughtful show. It can go deep. It's informative, but it's kind of stupid too. And silly and weird. And so I think you kind of find your people. by leaning into that as it were. And I will say the headlines are always song lyrics or they have been for years now. They weren't always, but like for years they have been, but they're always associated with a subject matter.

1:11:09Dustin Furman:Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it isn't, but like someone always gets it. Like when I read the comments, I'm always like, oh, this is a reference to that. Or this is a, this is that band, which means this to that show, to the show or whatever. I'm like, that's cool. So that's, that's why I do it. It's like the anti pretentious. It's just supposed to be fun and and and silly. And this is a this is appointment viewing, in my opinion. It's not something you were like, oh, I'm going to watch this because it says they're going to talk about Nacon this week or something. It's like you're either in or you're out, I think.

1:11:38Dustin Furman:Yeah, I don't think it really matters. But every other show on our network doesn't title like that. And I appreciate that, too. Take a hint, bozos.

1:11:53Colin Moriarty:I'm looking through some of my old thumbnails to think like, what's the most out of pocket thumbnail I did? I really like the one, there's the one when Jim Ryan retired. And it's like his retirement party and it has the three of us. And then I took every image of Jim Ryan that I could find. So there's like 30 of him surrounding us.

1:12:12Chris Sullivan:That one was pretty fun. There was one that I think about. I feel like, was Colin kissing my head or something? Was it a Death Stranding one? Oh, Death Stranding. you're the baby i think that i think is my that is my favorite one i think yeah that's

1:12:29Colin Moriarty:that's so disturbing there's been a few times over the years where i've made a thumbnail and then i posted in the staff discord and i i'll usually say like too much because i'm a little cautious sometimes and usually colin's like oh no i love this there's like the one i think it was when i did the this is an xbox pod and it was for our podcast around that i was like is this too much and you're like no no no that's and you were right for sure yeah that's good there's one with uh dude the sega moment episode where jim ryan and uh phil are shaking hands which i totally photoshopped that um so i've you know we gotta i mean we gotta push it colin probably comes from a i don't know a similar

1:13:13Chris Sullivan:kind of lens that I come from now, especially with mine, because Derek does all of our thumbnails and stuff for our show. And if I just get so much as a nasal exhale from it, I'm like, good, because I didn't have to do it. Right. Like everything's way better. It's like getting food. It's like it's like the difference between cooking food for yourself versus like getting food made for you. It's like I could make the same exact thing and it's going to taste like 10 percent worse if I made it for whatever reason. So it's like, there's like an inherent, inherent boost to anything somebody else does.

1:13:48Chris Sullivan:Yeah, totally. It's like, this is a great thumbnail. I didn't do it. So it's way better.

1:13:54Dustin Furman:My, my buddy. It's so funny. You say that my, uh, Eric Kasher, my friend that comes up sometimes he's the, he's the bar owner in San Diego. A good friend of mine. Yeah. We met him, right? Yeah. Yeah. You met him, right? We went to, yeah, right, right, right. You guys know him now. That's so funny. It's so funny. My worlds have crossed over entirely now, which is wonderful. He, uh, he's a really great guy and he would say back in the day. and this always stuck with me. He's like, you can never, no matter how good you are at making cocktails, the cocktails you make for yourself will never be as good as the ones someone else makes for you.

1:14:20Dustin Furman:And I was like, yeah, that's so, it's true because I would always, I would always wonder, I'm like, I'm making this old fashioned to the T. I know I'm doing it right. Like, but it's just not quite as good as when someone else makes it for me. And he's like, that's just the way it goes. And it's true. It's very true. But I'm, again, thank you guys for every, you know, 400 episodes, just absolutely amazing. and we've never missed a week that is 400 weeks since launch like without any misses and i've been on every episode which is crazy chris you've probably been on 390 right something like that

1:14:53Chris Sullivan:uh maybe i feel i know i've definitely i know earlier on i missed more because i was just doing a lot more but i think i feel like i haven't this is this first one this is the first one the the most recent one is the first one i missed a while so i can't yeah maybe 385 or something something like that 380 to 390 somebody somebody somebody knows yeah so well we have i feel bad

1:15:18Dustin Furman:too because we people reach out to us not only james solar but like others are like oh i did this or i wrote this script for you to like do this and i'm like i just can't keep up with i appreciate the work you know to like yeah like and it's cool and we'll i'll get to it at some

1:15:30Chris Sullivan:point i'm very busy i can't oh that stuff's impossible it's like i i'm terrible about responding to people in my real life that I know in person. Yeah. Oh my God. So like straight, you know, viewers sending stuff. It's like you, I either see it or I

1:15:46Dustin Furman:won't, but like, I'm so, I'm sorry. I'm clown of the year, nine years running with that fucking, with not answering people in person. You know, like I have text messages from people and I'm like, oh, like I'll find it like a week later. I'm like, ah, fuck. And I read them too. So I don't have like the little

1:16:00Chris Sullivan:blue dot or whatever. No, I do that too. I get rid of it. It drives me crazy seeing right. And then I'll forget to respond because nothing's

1:16:06Dustin Furman:new on my phone and then it's a whole mess because i've seen phones where it's like oh you have 25 000 emails and um 4 000 unread messages that's and uh like and the the the gear icon has like 17 red it's like what like i've never even seen that i don't know what what that is how many updates

1:16:22Chris Sullivan:yeah my emails are pretty crazy i have a lot of emails i just love that's like a secondary form like text messages are like i can't have red dots on there yeah totally no totally i love emailing

1:16:33Dustin Furman:because I love the record keeping of emailing. And I don't email like normal people in my life, but I mean for business and whatnot. It's like everything's for email. So I keep that very clean, very clean. All right. What are you talking about at this point? Ray Charles R. wrote in and said, gang, I am glad we can finally move beyond episode 400 to get to the next true milestone, the 420 special. The dense fields of dank yarn and nugs called you. It'd be super unchilled to not answer them. I'll go back to working on my retro gaming setup and listen. that's not now I wanted to acknowledge this I wasn't going to acknowledge this at first because we had a lot of people writing in very nice things about episode 400 and you know remembrances and so on and so forth and I did my best to choose some representative ones but we got a lot of write-ins about the 421 where I'm like all right I guess I gotta include this this is a moment of excitement for people we'll all uh we'll all smoke yeah we'll all get out of uh get out the bongs and the bubblers and the bowls.

1:17:32Dustin Furman:It's all bees. And you know how I feel about alliteration blunts. Mm hmm. But then you have joints. So that kind of ruins it a little bit. Iron Lion 44 wrote in and said, hey, SS gang. At first, I thought Colin was just being a little bitch about his water bottle cap, but there may be something to this cap spiracy thing. I believe big plastic may be up to something. I noticed that my contact lens case had changed his design a bit. I felt smaller and slimmer. Then I went to untwist the cap, but I couldn't do it at first. After some time, I got it done, but it was definitely harder than normal. And the amount of threads to twist is certainly shortened.

1:18:09Dustin Furman:I don't have much else to say, except I apologize for discrediting Colin. Have you guys noticed any other degrading factors of the plastic industry? Thanks and be well. This almost sounds like something I wrote to the show. Yeah, I didn't realize what I read. I'm reading it aloud now.

1:18:24Chris Sullivan:it's like a sock puppet account right it's his john baron the you've got i don't know man i i really look i got i got smart water recently i no problem i don't know i i don't know i don't know what anybody's talking about i think people are just maybe like slightly weaker than they were a week ago that's entirely possible i think but you're deteriorating.

1:18:51Dustin Furman:I mean, that's for sure. I feel it. I feel it. Believe me. Believe me when I tell you. Teeth Mummy wrote in and said, what up, Sacred Bros? Can we get a shout out to our boys bringing home the gold in men's hockey for the first time in 46 years? Woke up at 5 a.m. Sunday to watch history and still buzzing from it, especially beloved former Islander Brock Nelson. Obviously, big props to our women's team for also slaying the Canadian Dragon and OT and bringing back gold and all our American athletes who competed. It was a great Olympics. Stay patriotic, my friends what a big win did you guys pay attention to the winter olympics is going on for a couple weeks it's over now we came in second in total in cumulative medals and in gold so i'll take it norway dominated um did you watch any of the any of the events i watched quite a quite a

1:19:40Chris Sullivan:bit i watched a little something every day actually i i know genuinely next to nothing about the olympics like if i know i know way more about sports like general like like the nfl and the mlb and the nhl i know way way way eons of knowledge more than i have about the olympics i have no concept of what it is i don't like because every now every now and then i'll see like somebody do like a concept of what no i don't because it's just like it's all these like made up things to be i'm just like oh this person could like jump real high on a stick and i'm like okay i agree with that look it's it's cool like they're athletes i appreciate it i heard that they ran out of condoms because they were fucking like crazy i guess like all the most beautiful fit people in the world basically yeah it makes sense i mean like of course but i yeah i don't know i i've never i've never clued into the olympics every now and again someone will break through the mainstream and kind of like find their way on twitter or something like that like what was that guy that the the there was a guy who was like who he was like shooting right and he didn't have any of the eyewear or something right like with the uh yeah and yeah and like everybody else had eyewear or whatever and he just like and he's like one or something um i know about that but i yeah i don't know it's just a bunch of people doing stuff i've never seen a lot of it is

1:21:01Dustin Furman:like really really crazy shit where it's like how do you even get into this i always think about that like the luge or the bobsled a lot of the crazy skiing stuff like one of the it's like the one of the biathlon or whatever they call it where you like you cross-country ski and then you just randomly stop and shoot like right your rifle that's it that's yeah like you're basically skiing in a circuit and then like every round of the circuit you like get on your like you take a rifle off your back and start shooting shit and then you keep skiing so you're skiing with a rifle on your back yeah it's fucking fake yeah that's that's why i'm made up i totally understand what you mean yeah there was another one i saw where i was like so flabbergasted by i still i don't i didn't look up the name of it where i'm like what is this where micah was like laughing because i was like i was like i was silenced by it while i was watching it because it was like a skiing event but there was a they like get to a point where they have to take their skis off and run upstairs and then they put their skis back on and then they get to another part of the course where they like have to take like this ribbon off of their binding so they have to like take their boots off or something and then like take this ribbon on and then they put it in a pouch on their belly and then they put their skis back on and they keep skiing oh my god this is the

1:22:14Chris Sullivan:thing i what a nightmare this is sounding so much worse than i even thought i i'll tell you what i would watch you know those like slap competitions oh yeah i would watch olympic slapping love that

1:22:25Dustin Furman:have you seen that i would watch have you seen the newer one where it's dudes that just run

1:22:28Chris Sullivan:full speed into each other that's so stupid we're really running at it yeah they head but

1:22:34Dustin Furman:each other i feel like there's like full speed just like right at each other it's awesome i

1:22:39Chris Sullivan:we really are at a point where we're just finding like like create it's like brain damage in cursive right you know i mean like speed running to

1:22:48Colin Moriarty:brain damage like whoever wants to commit suicide first we're not meant to be this we're not meant to be this board no one has anything yeah there's a lot to worry about

1:22:58Dustin Furman:and yet when you think about it historically there's nothing to worry about nothing like when you think about it's like oh i'm gonna be warm in my house and then i'm gonna go to the supermarket and get groceries and i'm gonna go it's like you're our fucking ancestors are huddled

1:23:10Chris Sullivan:in a cave fucking i have a theory i have a theory that like i think uh i mean you colin you're an anxious person like me yeah oh yeah i have a theory that it all comes from like the awareness that not enough is happening to make the anxiety like logical and so that inherently is stressful yeah i am totally like that like i shouldn't be like like oh i'm nervous about an email i should be nervous about like whether or not a bore is going to skewer me in my sleep right like that should be like that's why i say like sometimes like people think like i'm talking shit or whatever but like i really do think like in a scenario if i was like dropped in like a really like life or death situation i would feel a lot better just because my anxiety is valid as opposed to just being completely arbitrary and bullshit like it is now which which bothers the shit out of me

1:23:57Dustin Furman:dude i love that you put that into words because i feel that way too where i i'm anxious about something and i'm feeling nervous and then i'm like what are you doing like what like what yeah what are you nervous about like why are you nervous right you say that but it doesn't stop

1:24:09Chris Sullivan:you being nervous you're still nervous as you're saying it's it's so dumb fucking garbage human brain dustin did you did you get into the olympics at all holly would watch it sometimes in the

1:24:19Colin Moriarty:morning when we're drinking coffee like she would just watch the clips on youtube and uh you know it's it's fine i would never personally put it on myself and you know the the hockey sounded interesting but on a sunday morning oh i didn't watch it i'm not getting up in the morning to

1:24:36Dustin Furman:watch that no no no i did when i woke up to go to the bathroom at like i don't know what it was but i looked at my phone i'm like oh we won and then i went back to bed which was good because i was curious like i was like oh i should look to see if like who won the game and i and canada was supposed to win that game i will say this i don't know if you've noticed first of all hockey is my favorite sport i mean i love hockey it's like it's what i played as a as a kid and a teenager and and it's a very important sport to me um canada this broke canada i don't know if you guys have been seeing like the one-two punch of the women's team and the men's team both winning and the men's team winning for the first time since its famous 1980 win over the soviets i don't know man i i it's like a spin out like they're just they're just i don't know what do They call it crashing out, crashing out.

1:25:25Colin Moriarty:I mean, like it's been going on.

1:25:26Dustin Furman:It's like going on like almost a week at this point. It's it's kind of their game. It is. It is. And I, I appreciate for that. I love it. I love that about, and I would say, well, we, I went to Canada to play and like, you know, in tournaments or the Canadian teams would come to play us and they were very good and you showed them an extra level of respect. Like it's a different level of game in a lot of those places. but um they're not they're not handling it well i'll tell you that no it's too bad sorry too bad sorry about that because the big thing is that they're like a canadian team hasn't won the stanley cup in 31 32 years i think it's the canadians the montreal canadians were the last team to win the stanley cup the canadian team in 1993 so it's not it's just not good right now for them but I never expected that this what I feel bad about the asymmetry of it because like it means something to us to win the gold medal we understate how big hockey hockey is the fourth biggest sport in the United States um you know football baseball basketball hockey and those are considered the four big sports in the United States so we have a big hockey culture here there's no doubt about it

1:26:38Dustin Furman:but 99.9999999 % of the discourse about that game in the United States has already occurred. And you're looking at maybe 50 % of the discourse in Canada about that game having occurred. So there's a lot left to go there. And so there's an asymmetry there that I feel bad about. Shout out to our boys and girls that did awesome work at the Winter Olympics. And I really enjoyed watching a lot of the events. myself the level of athleticism in cross-country skiing specifically is like so crazy it's like dude to the point where they finish their events and collapse like literally they just collapse like after the finish line and they just and it's a thing like i was watching it's a thing like everyone leaves them alone like they just in like a ball and they just like and they're like huffing and puffing for like 10 minutes and it's like damn dude it's just it's it's it's to the limit your body goes it's so fucking awesome i love it i love it so even the crazier sports i'm like this is like skeleton when the dudes are on like their backs going down the ice tubes or whatever like 80 miles an hour i'm like this is fucking insane this is awesome that someone does this and is like good at it like they're good at it it's very cool i think i think the skiers are playing it up

1:27:52Chris Sullivan:a bit yeah oh okay i don't know man like physics is doing most of the work for you well if you're

1:27:57Dustin Furman:going down if you're doing cross-country skiing that's skiing flat on flat ground or up going up and it's hard you know it makes me i was telling mike i'm like i can kind of want to cross-country ski it kind of looks fun have you been skiing i've never been skiing or snowboarding

1:28:11Chris Sullivan:never oh i i loved snowboarding i didn't get a lot of chances to do it but whenever i did like we used to go to vermont oh yeah that's the place only only like once or twice i did it but like i would i would snowboard elsewhere like when when we would get like good snow or whatever it's just like oh i love snowboarding it's so much so much fun yeah i've never it's like it gets rid of a lot of the fear of like like i was too nervous to skateboard because i always felt like if i skateboard i was just gonna break i was immediately gonna cave my face and i was gonna look like like an elephant man or something but uh something about snowboarding is like you're not afraid of falling at all because it's snow you know you've all we've all fallen in snow it's fine even hard snow is like way better it's better yeah it's better than the ground yeah better or like a or like a staircase you know like i don't know it's fun yeah i i don't know i've always been

1:29:00Dustin Furman:interested in it but it was just never accessible to me really obviously we have no mountains on long island but even being in new england all those years and in college i think it was just i was playing hockey and like we were just busy in the winter i kind of think that that's what it was because people used to go to like sugar loaf and they'd go up to vermont and new hampshire Maine upstate New York but the skiing is like fairly quaint in those places compared to like you know if you go to Colorado or you go to like California you know in the Tahoe mountains Daz Groombridge wrote in and said hey CDC I work as a freelance proofreader and editor and so I am accustomed to seeing all kinds of crimes against language on a daily basis today though I saw something that I knew would enrage you Colin not just the use of the double space after a period but a triple space it looked like the illiteracy problem was only getting worse anyways thanks for all you do each week is made a little brighter by all the work you guys do at LSM and I couldn't bear to deal with the so called writers I work with without you all keeping me somewhat sane here's to 400 more thank you so much as I hope none of your writers listen to the show

1:30:07Dustin Furman:triple spacing

1:30:11Dustin Furman:into the wood chipper like literally oh yeah yeah like not even you don't even get a trial it's weird it's weird man i wouldn't say it's

1:30:21Chris Sullivan:illiterate though like you know that almost sounds like to even be aware enough of literacy to even triple space at all implies like at least some level because there's no way if you're illiterate you don't know what the fuck triple right right you know what i mean it implies like you know you know that this is something that's done and you're either doing it to be cheeky or interesting or it's kind of like oh i know the rules i'll break it like know the rules so you can break it kind of thing i don't appreciate it i think it makes every sentence look odd and weird and even double space i'm not really double spacing is fine i don't want to get just space is fine we have spaces for a reason there's periods for a reason that communicates

1:30:59Dustin Furman:one space one space is all you ever need thank you for you did trigger me though and i appreciate that. I was curious what you guys thought of this, and then we'll move into the news. Simon said, questions for Chris and Dustin. Colin has claimed he could probably eat 100 chicken nuggets, to which I highly doubt. These kinds of statements need proof. However, does Chris or Dustin think they could eat 100 nuggies? If so, what strategies would you use? With or without dip sauce? Slow or fast? Anyhow, congrats on 400 episodes, and remember to keep fucking that chicken. Slow or fast? There is no slow.

1:31:32Dustin Furman:I mean, there's got to be some sort of time limit. I can need 100 chicken nuggets over the course of a day i mean that would be a joke right but by the way it's really not a joke i was looking this up this came from the q a we do on patreon for our 10 subs every month that i do and we're talking about this and i looked up that a a chicken nugget at mcdonald's is 180 calories thus making 100 chicken nuggets 18 000 calories um that seems nuts but from an intellectual level when i think about it it's like i feel like i could do it eating 20 chicken nuggets like so a 20 piece from mcdonald's is trivial you have to do that five times it's like could you do it like why wouldn't i be able to do that yeah if you can you be high because then it's over yeah i mean that's that would be easy at

1:32:28Chris Sullivan:that but that would be that would be i think yeah i don't know i think i could i could i think i could do 50 for sure i think i think no problem i probably wouldn't even need sauces for it like i think i could genuinely do like i could do 50 dry chicken nuggets probably wouldn't be great oh but i've i've i've been i've been so high that i think i told this story on the show like where I ate so much that I went to urgent care because I thought my stomach was going to explode. It's, and it was so irresponsible in retrospect. I can't remember exactly, like I definitely told it on the show before and that's that version of the story will be way more accurate than what I'm about to say.

1:33:09Chris Sullivan:But it was like, I think I ordered five guys and like a big bacon cheeseburger and a large fry. And then it was taking forever to get there. And so like my friends were like, hey, we're going out. It's like, yeah, my food's not coming. get me a crunch wrap supreme four quesadillas and whatever and then both of them came at once or whatever so like i got i had two five guys meals that meal from taco bell then a bowl of cereal then a fucking sandwich i was doing going crazy and i i wanted to keep eating the only reason i couldn't keep eating was because my stomach was starting to hurt and i was like and then i lied down i was like i can't sleep i can't even like breathe deeply because my stomach is pushing against my lungs that's how crazy it was and then i got into my own head i was like i'm gonna die

1:33:53Dustin Furman:i'm gonna like get sepsis and die yes jesus christ so i could i think i could do 50 if uh

1:34:00Chris Sullivan:in the right circumstance 100's a lot though man i don't know i was way off on the calories by the

1:34:04Dustin Furman:way i want to correct the record before we can move on or move forward with this conversation because i looked it up i thought it was an individual nugget but it was actually showing me four nuggets so at six nuggets it's 287 calories 100 divided by six times 287 gives us 4 ,800 and 4 ,783 calories i'm telling you i could i could eat 100 chicken nuggets like knowing that that's a lot i'm like that's a lot of calories that's way too many calories for that's like two days worth of calories but um i don't know man like that doesn't i don't i just don't seem

1:34:41Chris Sullivan:like it's that dustin i was i was having trouble with 3100 calories a day when i was doing oh yeah that's all i mean that's that was hard it's a lot it's a lot uh listen there's one way it is

1:34:53Colin Moriarty:extremely easy to find out yeah now here's when we started doing sacred streaming a lot of people were like oh i don't want them to lean too hard into streamer culture and do a bunch of bullshit and i agree with that but a a 100 nugget stream i kind of like the idea of it yeah each of us the three of us the stream starts at one o 'clock right at lunch yeah which is not normally when

1:35:18Dustin Furman:colin eats you might be at a disadvantage yeah we make it a special event yeah yeah it's fine i can

1:35:22Colin Moriarty:i can try to figure it out we each get 100 nuggets i don't think i could do it maybe though um i think it sounds like a quite a nice idea well i i like this idea i'll take note i'll take

1:35:38Dustin Furman:note of that now well we have to purge afterwards i mean like i don't know that i could digest like i don't know that i should be digesting that many chicken nuggets but i've never i've never purged in my life but like i feel like it's cheating if you know if you if you don't yeah you're right i

1:35:51Colin Moriarty:mean you're right you're right what would you deal with the consequences well i'm glad you brought up Joey Chestnut. I'm a big fan of Beard Meets Food on YouTube. And he's like, he does, but like food challenges at restaurants and goes around. Huge YouTuber. I'm sure a lot of the audience knows who he is. And so from watching him, I've seen a lot of his strategies. You got to save the sauce, save the sauce for when you have flavor fatigue. So maybe once you get in theory, I don't think, let's say I could eat a hundred nuggets. Sauce doesn't come out until 50 nuggets plus at that point the other i agree the other thing that he does is what he calls the tactical diet coke where there's something about the diet coke while you think it would fill up your stomach something about it you drink something like diet coke you burp and it feels like you have more space and that's what you do when you're in you know it's go time nugget 80 so i'm i would try this but i am a glutton you know like this this is uh thrilling the idea of doing this yeah you

1:36:57Dustin Furman:i mean i've never seen you so animated about something well dude i watch beard meets food

1:37:01Colin Moriarty:all the time and i always consider like i wonder if i could do that but i would never actually

1:37:06Chris Sullivan:do it but the thing to take into account too is like it's mcdonald's right so it's a gambit as to how like sometimes those chicken nuggets are come out like and you get like a nice fresh but then other times that's been sitting there man yeah you know it's been sitting there you get a stale if you get like i i'll say this the difference between the difference between like a completely fresh batch of a hundred fucking which i guess would have to right on some level and just like a significant portion of those being stale or you know old and you can tell your ability to

1:37:47Dustin Furman:do the complete hundred I think goes way down I'm gonna in my I'm gonna have Micah go to McDonald's for every 20 piece fresh and so like when I'm five to ten in she's actually just gonna keep she'll just be going back and forth you know yeah and and just delivering me a fresh batch of 20 because we I told you guys like I live what I would describe as a legendary McDonald's in my area like I've been a McDonald's consumer my whole life I've been to many many McDonald's bad good indifferent whatever this is a legendary mcdonald's and fattest thing you've ever said oh my god this is a legendary it's crazy they're just so good dude like last week we haven't gone since christmas we always go on christmas eve because my family does the seven fishes and i hate it so traditionally i just go and get fast food and i don't have a problem with them doing it as tradition it's i don't i'm not asking for anyone for anything it's just that that's what i go do afterwards so we hadn't been there since we i don't know if you guys heard about this five guys sent out a buy one get one free thing last week oh yeah and it like went haywire for them and we were in in that and so like basically like they ran out of food the app crashed like all sorts of shit happened and like we couldn't get in we were really disappointed because we're like oh let's go get five guys so the good mcdonald's is right across the street from the the five guys and we're like let's just go to mcdonald's and it was the first time i had had it in a couple of months.

1:39:13Dustin Furman:And I'm like, this place is just fucking, I don't know what it is about this place. Like, why are they so good? Like everyone, everyone that eats fast food knows exactly what I'm talking about. Like in Santa Monica, there was a shitty Wendy's. I would still go to it, but it was a shitty Wendy's, you know, um, the Burger King, of course I always talk about in Dover, New Hampshire, legendary Burger King. This is one of the great McDonald's. And I feel like this works into my advantage. If we do the chicken nugget challenge, the great McDonald's.

1:39:41Colin Moriarty:well that's actually that's actually something he would say yeah it's not even a joke didn't he didn't do the fine mcdonald's the best do that thing with where he weren't they feeding mcdonald's

1:39:50Chris Sullivan:to the hockey oh yeah yeah they always have like and i'm like i can't imagine that's very good

1:39:55Dustin Furman:no it's washington dc fucking mcdonald's maybe if they had like a mcdonald's like a special mcdonald's at the white house or something that would be different if i became president that's

1:40:04Chris Sullivan:what i would do you almost feel like it's it's a civic duty if you're managing a mcdonald's in washington dc around that area to to put as little effort as possible right fuck all the orders up you know what i mean it's like why the fuck would you're not getting a fresh nugget you piece of shit i always think about that not even just the president just the people

1:40:23Dustin Furman:who work there you know you know the pentagon pizza thing like the um like when like when there's a tracker yeah like there's the pizza tracker that like when yes bad things correlate to like when there's heavy traffic with pizza uh stuff around the pentagon i love that and if i were one of those pizza shops i'd be like oh that's interesting yeah yeah maybe for colin you

1:40:47Colin Moriarty:always say you want to do charity work with last stand and we've never done it i'm just gonna keep i'm just gonna keep saying it just keep saying it i think it's a good idea i would totally do it

1:40:57Chris Sullivan:although it would be fucking grueling because it would be 10 a.m for me oh yeah no we would have no special event yeah we'll do it later special event maybe we'll do it around we should do it around episode 420 that would be funny yeah that would be good i don't know if i'm gonna be out uh oh yeah you'll probably be out for that oh no for four 20 weeks from now oh yeah no i'm thinking episode 420 but i'm saying i'm saying 420 420 oh yeah that would work although saint

1:41:26Dustin Furman:slayer comes out that day as well but that could be fun to just do a potato all together do a pick that date on purpose uh well remember do you were you on the show when i when i i said the date in the chat i remember who was on that show with me and everyone no i wasn't there and everyone laughed and i said i'm like i didn't pick it but i i wasn't saying the date so people had figured out from that that it was that it was 420 but it was just the date that was open for us to slot it yeah um i had nothing to do with the day personally but i was pleased to see it yeah i like how people are like you know the 420 jokes obviously like oh yeah hitler's birthday

1:41:56Chris Sullivan:really cool yeah come on man oh that is i mean it is unfortunate yeah those two like that you couldn't you couldn't have two more diametrically opposed vibes yeah then let's then smoking weed and auschwitz oh boy yeah they're not compatible really oh boy no no not really chill man

1:42:23Colin Moriarty:it's just Auschwitz getting high and watching Schindler's list on 420 oh my god all right let's get into the news uh I want to start with an inquiry actually we rarely do this

1:42:37Dustin Furman:here but Chris was out last week so I want to give him a chance to first write a response here it says Brucey Thomas wrote in said Colin and Dustin I wanted to congratulate you both on the conversation you two had last week about the blue point closure doing it live without having time to digest and delivering a discussion that was well thought out it was like finding religion that's a little over the top but i appreciate it that's crazy you know how to butter me up there really isn't a better podcast to be found in the gaming industry the only downside was that chris couldn't be a part of it so chris can you please give us 15 to 20 minutes on the blue point debacle congrats on 400 episode here's to 4 000 more i don't know if i'll be alive that'd be nice if i was alive i don't think so though who knows yeah i don't know if that'll be that'll be so sad though

1:43:17Chris Sullivan:that's a depressing amount of time because then it's like it becomes the simpsons you know what i mean you hear like you're like oh colin sounded old chris doesn't have that pep no right right you know it's like i don't know about that but yeah like i yeah that was a bummer to to miss uh because that's rare kind of breaking crazy news but i don't know like the way that i felt about it when i first saw it i was like i i don't really know how to feel about it because i just don't know what the leadership at blue point is like really like I don't know I don't know really much about that studio and a lot of my opinion kind of hinges on who decided the live service God of War project was a useful way to spend their time was it Bluepoint leadership that pitched it or was it Sony that kind of either incentivized them to do it or you know was it a push and to be fair I've been kind of disconnected this last week I don't even know if there's an answer to that i think i saw some stuff floating around that that it was a blue point pitch to do that but i don't know if it's i don't know colin do you know if that's been

1:44:21Dustin Furman:like confirmed or anything so i was going to bring that up is like the the because it changes how i feel a lot this yeah sure the source is that guy i think he goes by the name detective seeds and I don't know if he's trustworthy or not. People that have proven to be trustworthy don't seem to trust him. And I know that a couple of them have sounded off saying like some of the things he was saying doesn't comport with the things that they know. So I don't know for sure because some of the things I was reading from him, I didn't read all of it because he's released a lot. Like, I think what he claims and I don't know, I don't like saying claims.

1:45:08Dustin Furman:It's like, why would I like to believe people? But he apparently went to LinkedIn and just messaged everyone basically and heard back from certain people. And so I believe that that's possible that a lot of people do. That's like, you know, like just journalism, like shoe leather journalism. But some of the stuff he was saying just doesn't make sense to me. Like where I'm like, I'm like, why would so I think one of the then he he wrote something about how like they they were one of the things they were spinning up was like a ghost of tsushima spinoff or something like that and i'm like i don't think so dude i'm like i don't think so like they're sucker punches made it pretty clear that if no no one's working on their ship with them yeah and so that didn't make any sense to me at all and he also said something about i believe us uh a um why can't i think of the name of the a shadow of the colossus like remake or like addition to it and i'm like there's just or not a remake like an addition like more bosses like newer like maybe a sequel or 1.5 version i'm like there's that doesn't sound like something sony would ever let them do to a yeah away the game it just seems unlikely uh i don't know so i don't know i don't i don't like calling people i don't like saying like oh

1:46:20Chris Sullivan:this guy's full of shit i really don't know but that's yeah that sounds like again i have no idea but like the answer to that question is pretty pivotal to how i feel about what happened you know like um they're saying that that's that that dude's not trustworthy and that's fine uh but we still don't have like a concrete answer as to like what was like why that kind of game was pushed on them i don't if it was them that pushed it if there was if it was them that pitched it um we don't know the talent drain that resulted from them working as a primary remake studio suddenly on a live service god of war project like who the fuck knows who left and who stayed i really just don't know the the composition of blue point enough in the state that they perished in to feel strongly one way or the other it's sad that they're gone but they haven't made anything in six years the stuff that they were making was a poor use of their time whose fault that is is kind of irrelevant um ultimately but yeah i don't know the way that i feel about it really is like if if blue point really championed a god of war live service game on their own and they just really wanted to do it then you know i i i don't feel that it sucks that people lost their jobs but i mean like that's not what you do you know like that's your and it's on sony also even letting them do that really realistically because i know that there's a an air of you know Microsoft has the reputation of or at least had the reputation in the days of the 360 of like you got to do this you got to do that they were kind of overbearing and PlayStation was kind of like let's do whatever you want right that was kind of the vibe that I got or that they were trying to present and so I get that they were they maybe didn't feel like oh we can't tell them not to do it and again a lot of this is speculation who the fuck knows but if if Sony made them if Sony was like hey we're gonna put you on this a God of War life service game to I don't know capitalize on the moment or whatever then closing them I think is crazy because you did that that's not really it's kind of reminds me of zipper in in a in a in a different roundabout way where it's just like well I mean it's not their fault that your systems collapsed for an entire month and fucked their game you know like that's not their doing totally so i don't really know how i feel about it really but uh those are my overall kind of thoughts i just want more concrete information of like what leadership led to them even doing a guy like it's it it is still so fucking crazy that they were spending any time at all doing a god of war life service game i don't even it's it's crazy that any studio would be doing that first off i want to make that very clear god of war is not a live service it just doesn't that does not compute dude so regardless of who it was it would have been crazy that it's blue point their premiere remake studio that's all that's twice as insane so i don't know that's kind of the long and short of it really how i feel yeah i mean we i need more information i i we definitely wanted to get you

1:49:31Dustin Furman:it's good we definitely wanted to get you on on the record with that i you know i jaffe and i talked about it a great deal on on on the stream as well and one of the things i was saying was i just um and it's what you were just saying and i totally agree with you i think the big thing is just the mismanagement of of of resources from like just directionally that they were comfortable working or having them work and they wanted to work on this god of war game because they were working on god of war ragnarok and it's like why were they working on god of war ragnarok what are you doing like and and you're using them as like a support studio like you you can just hire a support studio and and send that shit out to like South Korea or something you don't need to use one of your first party teams to support another first party team necessarily I just think it was all mismanaged from the beginning and it's an incredibly disappointing situation Dustin I was curious could could you look I feel like this detective seeds person deleted his Twitter account so if that's true I guess either the abuse got to him or I would say Occam's razor

1:50:32Chris Sullivan:is a lot of the shit is bullshit but i don't yeah i don't know i'm just i mean yeah a lot of it a lot of it from it's weird because people can make shit up and also happen to you know what i mean like it could be that they were made to do it but i but he just doesn't know when he's making shit

1:50:49Dustin Furman:yeah i don't know i just i just i don't like to necessarily that's the first i feel bad when people get dunked on or like you know overwhelmingly destroyed for things that i'm like i'm not so

1:50:58Chris Sullivan:sure one way or the other but yeah i mean i don't know this from what i what you were talking about how they he was told that they were working on in addition to shadow the colossus i mean that's

1:51:09Dustin Furman:that's clearly not well he was just saying like they were pitching this they he was saying like it was basically like they pitched everything you can imagine and i'm like i don't know about that dude like they pitched a resistance game they pitched a jack game they pitched it's like like there's that doesn't it just seems too undirectional non-directional it's like you would probably settle on something but maybe maybe he's telling the truth i don't know why

1:51:34Chris Sullivan:people would tell him these things either but yeah it's yeah it's why would you i guess but what do you find did you find anything doesn't uh when i'm searching like it's coming up on google like this is his twitter account i click it and it says this count doesn't exist yeah he's he's gone he deleted yeah right that's which is not a good sign it means you're probably

1:51:56Dustin Furman:like you know yeah like but what's what's annoying me is like no one seems to notice because like i was looking on twitter and like no one's talking about this yet i feel like this would be a huge story just because this is the source of a lot of that stuff to begin with but i don't know so i don't know that's where we stand now i don't know what's true and what's not but it is what it is and i wanted to hear from chris on that yeah and ultimately it does and

1:52:19Chris Sullivan:ultimately i want to close it out um the buck ultimately does stop with sony because even if they you know whether they pitched it or not they kind of let them do it which i think you need wise leadership to step in and say like you're not we're not we're not wasting blue point on a live service game they are a premiere remake studio i don't if they want to it sucks that they want to do it but like no like it's not so go somewhere i don't know it's weird i was hesitant about him

1:52:51Colin Moriarty:saying he deleted his account because something weird was going on i just sent you guys a tweet oh this is it he is oh okay what is this it's weird because i when i click the profile it says account deleted but this i can this is the account that the tweet is from so it looks like the channel has been or the Twitter account has been rebranded. Yeah, maybe it was a bunch of AI stuff called Green Zone Bites. Maybe he got hacked.

1:53:22Dustin Furman:Maybe.

1:53:23Colin Moriarty:I don't know.

1:53:24Dustin Furman:You know how they like hacking and they just like re, you know, that's what happened to Dagan.

1:53:29Colin Moriarty:Green Zone.

1:53:30Dustin Furman:Maybe. Yeah, but yeah, you're right. But when you click on it, oh, now it shows up for me again. Like it's it's no.

1:53:36Colin Moriarty:So he's the reason he followed me on Twitter this past week and I clicked on his profile and I saw he had a YouTube account and I looked at his YouTube account and it was branded to him. There's also a YouTube account now that is rebranded as Green Zone Bites and it has his same videos on it.

1:53:56Dustin Furman:Yeah, I don't know what this is all about.

1:53:57Chris Sullivan:So it's... Well, that indicates that it was intentional. What are these tweets? I've had nine deployments to the Middle East. What is happening? From Green Zone Bites?

1:54:09Dustin Furman:I don't know what's going on with this guy. I don't know.

1:54:11Chris Sullivan:yeah i don't know i would like to know more is i'm sure we will i i will again i don't want to call people reputable or not reputable but i will just say oh again i was like on the fence because

1:54:23Dustin Furman:again i'm sniffing things out from what i know and what i i understand i'm like this seems to it's like when those fake state of play runs leak and i'm like come on man like this is like a dream list of things and they're and it's like i don't know about that but the thing that really stuck out to me was like a ghost of tsushima spinoff that doesn't sound like something sucker punch would allow uh yeah not that you know and the reason i say that by the way is from a specific we went over on the show at the time it was maybe two years ago now where they wrote that that blog post basically saying like if we're not working on infamous or sly cooper or ghost no one is kind of thing i think on based on rumors of something that was happening and i think also based on the fact that they probably feel a little scorned with slide four and that's not going to happen and they're in the driver's seat is one of the studios that's really valuable so um but yeah well so i think we'll learn more over time and i feel like a lot of the quiet at a blue point like even the people that work there are being very quiet because first of all i think they work through march but also i and i think jaffe agreed and i think it's interesting it's like there's a non-zero percent chance that someone acquires them as a group they're talented that happens once in a while it happened to fucking tango gameworks

1:55:34Chris Sullivan:so yeah do you think i guess the big question about that though is that there's comparative comparatively around that time like what is the investments in like what are the investments looking like in the games industry compared to you know what i mean like ai seems to be this this bubble that's kind of bursting and there's not a lot of room even just in animation not a lot's getting greenlit right now so like there's not a lot of investments coming in compared to like when tango was available so i don't know it worse time really for them it's a

1:56:05Dustin Furman:shitty time but i also think it's like an interesting thing and maybe not even an acquisition but just to come in with say you guys can stay together and here's an investment in a game that we want you to we want to contract you to do i think that like any publisher of scale that has an eye towards their back catalog might see something valuable in blue points say like well let's let them wander around our fucking archive and yeah at ea or take two or something like there's things that imagine take two says like remake spec ops the line or something you know well if they put blue point on like gta 4 that oh my god that'd be sick so i feel like i wonder if that's where like a lot of the disciplined quiet is coming from like you don't even see things being like this is my last day at blue point i mean again it's not happening quite yet but you don't even see that kind of thing because i wonder if internally they're like everyone shut the fuck up like we have interest like stay together yeah yeah i mean i hope so one thing

1:56:56Chris Sullivan:i will say i will say this uh the next time we see media molecule or bend show up with something that thing better fucking hit yeah i know because with respect to you know both of those studios i'm i'm not i'm not big on i'm not super huge on bend um but i i respect media molecule a lot um even with dreams being like a mess but like dude like i would have assumed just based on output and you know all sorts of different things that i just kind of thought and i'm sure you probably had similar takes on it where it's like i thought they were a lot more a lot safer than maybe those two oh i i didn't i didn't even consider them in any way up for cutting they that's like getting close to the bone and in my opinion yeah bend media molecule fire sprite although we really don't know about what they're like they're working aren't they

1:57:53Dustin Furman:working on a horror game or something like so maybe they're until dawn 2 maybe i don't even know like what they're doing but the those would be like the obvious because there's it used to be like london and and other things and like there is no there is no more obvious target anymore after you get through some of these though there's no targets like then wouldn't then it starts getting

1:58:10Chris Sullivan:weird at that point wouldn't you say though that like like those next two like really like given this happened right to blue point like there's there's kind of like wait there was already a lot of pressure on medium molecule and you know and ben to do something cool but like now i feel like from my perspective anyway that's like way oh yeah there's no more distraction like the uh

1:58:31Dustin Furman:the matador has no more red like cape to distract you with he's coming he's gonna gore you next you know um absolutely because otherwise it would be like you what are you gonna do like santa monica sucker punch you know a sobe naughty dog gorilla it's kind of absurd you know house smart i'm so glad housemarks got a game going and they seem safe because they're just doing their thing because that would be another studio i would be a little scared at if i wasn't about to release something that's probably going to do fairly well so and looks fucking phenomenal but all right well let's we uh to remind everyone we're going to do uh sacred symbols plus with the dukes um and brad from summon sign about this whole meltdown at both sony and microsoft so a lot of you wrote in about this stuff it'll all go there we don't want to cover the blue point stuff again this week in any deeper context and the xbox stuff we'll leave that for a more appropriate place the next i didn't mean for that to go on for as long oh no i don't i have nowhere to be i don't give a shit dustin probably has a hot date tonight but i don't i don't not tonight all right uh i wanted to announce that my uh studio the studio icon lily mo uh our next game saint slayer spear of sacrilege we've announced the release date as we said earlier it is april 20th, 2026.

1:59:48Dustin Furman:It's coming to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Switch One, and PC via Steam. We want to be on Switch 2. We just don't have Switch 2 dev kits. I assume that if and when we get access to those, we would bring it over, but we'll see what happens. It'll cost$10 digital, and we're really, really excited about it. I wanted to direct people towards a new trailer we have on the YouTube channel or on, you can just find it on Patreon if you want. It's free to check out, obviously. And we have an object as we have had since last year when we announced the game on Steam. We just surpassed 8 ,000 wishlists, which is pretty awesome for a game like ours.

2:00:24Dustin Furman:It's about converting those, of course, but we're really excited about this game. We were in NextFest, which is kind of cool. So we got a little bit of the Steam kind of demo thing where they have a barrage of demos to send your way, which I thought was pretty cool. And yeah, I've been playing a shit ton of it. And I'm really, really excited about it. So we're less than two months out. And so just a few notes about this. And I wanted to make sure that I didn't forget to bring these things up. The first is that like it is on Steam. So wishlist it there. If you're going to play it there, we appreciate it.

2:00:57Dustin Furman:And you can download the demo and play it there and send us your feedback. The games will appear on all the other network, like, you know, PSN and Xbox and all the rest as we pass certification. At that point, you can wishlist them. we haven't even entered sort of we haven't gone gold yet so we haven't entered certification but we will soon and then we'll i'll let you know on the show and on social media and you can start wishlisting things there if you'd like as well i don't people have been asking if they can pre-order i don't think that's even an option for us and i don't really know like what to what end just uh wishlist and on april 20th when the time comes we hope you buy our game we appreciate that and then um a physical copy i know people have been asking about this uh the plan is to do a physical run on PlayStation 5.

2:01:38Dustin Furman:However, we have to go gold certify, patch the game and then start the process with East Asia soft, which will co-publish it with us at last stand. So I can't even promise it's going to happen this year, but it is my hope that it happens later in the year, like for the holidays, that would be ideal. I already have Dagan on board to do all the box art and the instruction manual and all the rest of all the accoutrements that come with the special edition or the physical edition. And just to reiterate, we're not doing physical runs on Switch because the publishing minimum is way too high. We will not sell near enough copies to be able to justify that.

2:02:14Dustin Furman:I would love to be wrong. It would be awesome if St. Slayer sold 500 ,000 copies and we can easily sell 10 ,000 physical copies on Switch or whatever, but that's not in the card. So we can't do that. There's no demand for Xbox physical games, really. So we're not going to do that. And we could do PS4, but we'd rather just be on PS5. So just to answer those basic questions. But otherwise, very, very excited. And we appreciate everyone supporting us out there. So Saint Slayer, Spear of Sacrilege, please check it out. Jose Reyes wrote in and said, Colin, with Saint Slayer coming soon, are you ever planning to make a 32-bit graphics game or just focus on 2D, 8, and 16-bit titles?

2:02:50Dustin Furman:Some might feel 3D retro lacks the charm of classic 2D, but I wonder if you've discussed this. It seems there's an audience, but not sure if it appeals to Lilymo. There's definitely an audience for it. I mean, when you're thinking about like Mega Man X4 or Castlevania Symphony of the Night and things like these are beautiful games, Final Fantasy Tactics. A lot of like retro pixel art beauties out there. But we're going to focus on 8 and 16 bit and mostly I think on 8 bit, although I think we want to kind of evolve more into 16 bit stuff, get a little bit crazier with it. So that's all in the cards, but 32 bit graphics, maybe one day, but that's going to be a much more expensive, heavier lift for us.

2:03:22Dustin Furman:And I don't see that happening anytime soon. I don't want to do and oh, by the way, you say some might feel 3D retro lacks the charm. I mean, you don't have to be 3D to be, you know, to be 32-bit. You can be 2D, 32-bit. So I want to make sure, I don't want to make 3D games, if that's what you're asking. Daniel Czarney wrote in and said, hey, CDC, this is more for Colin and Lily Mo games. When releasing a game on multiple platforms, how easy is it to do an Xbox Play Anywhere play? Of course, if you can say playing on my Xbox and ROG Ally X is such a huge benefit, I would love to I have Saint Slayer on both.

2:03:59Dustin Furman:Thanks, boys. I don't really know how it works, but I don't know that we would, I don't know, I'd leave it off the battery, but I'm not crazy about giving away our game basically for free on a different platform. I think a lot of the Play Anywhere stuff is paid behind the scenes outside of the first and second party. Like big third party game X is available both places when you buy it once. Like that doesn't make any sense for most publishers. in my opinion, which is why you don't really see a great adoption of it outside of those who Microsoft can strong armor within their own ecosystem. So I'm open to it.

2:04:36Dustin Furman:I just don't know what the economics look like. If they if like if we knew the economics made sense, we need to make every cent we can on this game so we can move into the next one. We already have an idea for the sequel and everything, too, which is exciting. Should it just be, you know, should the sales and the response justify it? We're very excited about it. All right, let's get into the news of the week here, the bigger news. And it's that Wolverine from Insomniac Games long in development has a release date. It was revealed on social media by Insomniac as September 15th later this year. You could wishlist it now.

2:05:10Dustin Furman:It's available on PSN for you to do so. I did so. And I don't know. I mean, I guess that's it. Now, the leaks are renewed from the, and I want everyone to be careful out there if you care, that this news has reignited the contents of the Insomniac leak from 2023, which really did spoil the story. I don't know if they've rewritten or redone it, so just be careful, because I've seen some stuff out there where I'm like, that's going to bother someone if they find that out. Dustin, excitement level of Wolverine, September 15th. Nice little slot. I think they'll make that that date, too. They have to, because if they push it any further, they're getting in the Grand Theft Auto territory.

2:05:49Dustin Furman:And that's and sports territory and Call of Duty territory. You don't want to be in that space.

2:05:56Colin Moriarty:Yeah. September definitely feels like the perfect time. They if they do delay it a month and it's somewhere in October, that would be fine. Not as good. But it's really, you know, November with Grand Theft Auto six. I'm looking at game like Game Informer keeps a nice calendar of everything coming out. And right now, the big game slotted for September are on this list. It's the Halloween asymmetric multiplayer game on September 8th and Phantom Blade Zero on September 9th.

2:06:29Dustin Furman:Interesting, which is a PlayStation console exclusive. So they're going on top of each other.

2:06:35Colin Moriarty:Yeah, for my hype level, I feel the same way as I did. about spider-man 2 where i'm fully confident that this is going to be an excellent game and i'm going to enjoy playing it but i i don't feel excited for it i'll feel excited when it's when it's release week and it's like oh sick i'm gonna have a a cool game to play as where i can be a short man with claws and rip someone's throat out i mean that's that's exciting bub uh but it's not it's not fully my kind of game not that i don't like it or anything but i'll be excited when we're close and then we'll play it of course but it's not like a wow i can't wait for wolverine it's my most anticipated title or anything like that i have to say i'm really intrigued by it just

2:07:25Dustin Furman:because it's clearly a game that was supposed to come out a long time ago people have to remember it was announced in 2021 at the same time spider-man 2 was announced spider-man 2 came out three calendar years ago so there's just no way that wolverine wasn't supposed to be out around maybe a year later or something like that and obviously we know that i forgot about this i went and i was like what was that guy's name brian horton was the old director of the game and uh he was the creative director he i don't know if you guys remember he left in 2024 to go to the initiative to be the creative director of perfect dark and then they shut down so that that kind of blew up in his face although who knows the full story behind that and then um my a personal friend marcus smith who's the the director um of resistance and the director of sunset overdrive and um spider-man expansions and so on and so forth and did ratchet and clank rift apart he and mike daly who were the co-directors of rift apart are now the co-directors of wolverine creative and game director respectively and mike daly has a design background he was the lead designer of spider-man one and miles morales which are very well respected games and was one of the directors of Spider-Man too.

2:08:34Dustin Furman:So it's a good group finishing the game and it does seem like it's going to come together. I am very interested just from that level. I'm not like a big fan of the X-Men or Wolverine or anything like that. I just, I'm going to play the shit out of it. Also, I'm just an insomniac consumer as well. Yeah. Chris, you're much more a fan of, well, you're a huge fan of Spider-Man. I mean, this is, this is all in the same universe, apparently, which makes sense. So are you excited about Wolverine coming September 15th?

2:09:01Chris Sullivan:uh yeah i mean i'm looking forward to it i think i feel largely the same as dustin maybe a little bit more interested just because yeah i i like i like spider-man and spider-man 2 i thought was was good as well i thought it was weaker um but only by like a little bit and in the writing which is not really why i'm playing a spider-man game anyway um but yeah no i think i think their last reveal the last time they showed it to us i think it looked great it looked a little bit reminiscent of Origins Wolverine, which was a great game. It looks like it's bloody in the right way. It looks like it's gory in the right way, which was like a somewhat of a – I don't know if it was like a legitimate concern, but it was always on the table where I'm just like, I hope they're – especially with how – I don't know.

2:09:46Something about Spider-Man 2 feels very Weenie Hunt Jr.

2:09:53Chris Sullivan:or something. Like there's something about it that has like a, like a, like a Nick Jr. Kind of shine over it in certain places where I remember feeling like, I don't know if this really needs this. So going into Wolverine, I was a little concerned, but it looks like they're, I don't know. I don't really have any concerns about it now. I'm not clamoring for it. It's going to be a game that once it's around the corner, I'll probably get, you know, more into it and more excited about it. But for right now, I just expect that it's going to be very good. And I look forward to when, when it's playable.

2:10:21Chris Sullivan:Sony has a good thing going with

2:10:24Dustin Furman:first party right now yeah they have Saros imminent marathon even more imminent and then Tocan from second party into Wolverine it's a pretty good year it's a versatile year and stronger of a first and second party output than I thought they were suggesting they were going to have actually I feel like fair is fair and you kind of have to tip the cap a little bit. Should Marathon turn out? Saros is obviously going to be awesome. I think everyone knows that. Tokan is not a game for me to judge, but it seems like people are really high on it in that community. Although the fighting game community is a little it seems a little uneven right now.

2:11:04Dustin Furman:And then I don't think there's any doubt Wolverine is going to be something interesting at the very least. It looked I'll tell you it looked a lot better in the trailer than I thought it was going to be. Although I want to see like real beat to beat gameplay and all the rest as we were saying and there's more to see. But this is like a this might be like it is this like the best year of playstation 5 for for out of first and second party maybe i mean yeah i mean ideally so things seem to be turning around just to be fair of course cole smith wrote in and said hey guys congrats on the milestone 400 episodes in and i enjoy the content every week thank you was the wolverine post about the release date a way to try to get the news off of blue point or was this always planned seemed like there could have been a new trailer with a release date at the last state of play now

2:11:51Dustin Furman:I wouldn't I would imagine the exact opposite is probably true. Although who knows where they're like, oh, shit, we were supposed to announce this. Because they went quiet after Bluepoint, like they were just getting, you know, on all their social media channels. And it's like, oh, we have this thing planned. We got to come back out. Insomniac's the one that said it, not PlayStation. I don't think which is inoculates them a little bit from that response, I assume. And it seems to have when you look at the response there. But I don't know that that I don't think that that's the way they were operating necessarily.

2:12:21Dustin Furman:If anything, I think it endangered the announcement of Wolverine. But that would be my I don't have any information one way or the other, but. I'm looking forward to it. I'm open minded about it. Things seem to be looking up. I think we're all very pleased about that. This next piece of news is developing, and I don't really know exactly what to say about it yet, but I want to at least add it to the record for us to start examining now and then we can get back to it if and when we get more information. But there's this idea, this notion that's circulating from fairly reliable sources that Sony seems to be internally moving away from PC releases in at least the single player AAA realm and that their movement towards this multi-platformism might be actually going backwards.

2:13:06Dustin Furman:um and in fact i've noticed that on twitter nixes is trending not like just for me but like in the actual united states trends which to me indicates that a lot of people are wondering like well if that's true why do you have the studio although if i were nixes i wouldn't worry so much there's going to be multiplayer games that are always going to be on pc and they're going to need your help to do that so i don't really see the danger to them personally but the big stuff here is that there had been, I guess, speculation on a podcast Jason Schreier does. Jason Schreier is, you know, a well-known journalist for Bloomberg, used to work at Kotaku, and we talk about him on the show when necessary.

2:13:45Dustin Furman:He posted on a Reset Era thread about what he had said on a show about this idea that Sony is moving away from PC releases, this kind of speculation that they might be moving away from it. And he wrote in the thread for that on Reset Era just today, a couple hours ago from when we're recording, he says, quote, I mean, it's not speculation. So talking about Sony moving away from PC releases, but he continues. But sometimes topics come up on the show before I'm quite ready to publish a story about them. More to come soon, I'm sure. So that's interesting. And this seems to line up with some things that other people had been saying about PC releases.

2:14:31Dustin Furman:Nate the hate, kind of an unfortunate name, but he's a fairly well-known and reliable leaker of things. He said, quote, Sony is shifting their PC strategy. Absolutely as well. Okay, so I'm very curious to see what you guys think of this. This is surprising. It's somewhat justifiable because people are always like, well, they do things for money. And we've got into it ad nauseum. like how much I hate that. Like that's so reductive. It's like you do things for money then like why isn't Metroid on fucking PlayStation? Why isn't Uncharted on Switch? Why isn't everything on everything everywhere at all times?

2:15:09Dustin Furman:It's because it's not just about the dollars you make but about how that affects your ecosystem and all the other things that you can judge and measure. And I guess maybe what they're seeing is that they're not making nearly enough money to upend their console ecosystem I guess. And that's selling hundreds of thousands and maybe even low millions of copies on Steam is quote unquote free money, as Shuhei put it. And that's the way I always saw it for them too. But potentially comes at a cost. Or at least they've been able to measure that. Not unlike putting Horizon on PS Plus and measuring the effect of that and so on.

2:15:46Dustin Furman:Maybe they have enough data to realize this isn't working for us. I don't know. I don't. People are worried about Nix's. but and I think Nix is a great studio but I'm like there's no way the multiplayer games are

2:16:00Chris Sullivan:not coming to PC like I don't think I don't think that changes but certainly Dustin I guess we'll

2:16:05Dustin Furman:begin with you that this is totally the antithesis of what I was imagining they were going to do which was to kind of spread the field a little bit and maybe they just feel like they have to

2:16:13Colin Moriarty:protect the base what do you think yeah it has seemed like the novelty factor of these games coming to pc has has worn off to some degree and it i was kind of under the impression too that this was just easy money but while in some way because we've talked about this extensively like what if the next xbox uh is a pc and you can play playstation games on it um and i was always under the thinking like well they're fine just making that money as well maybe there's an element though where it's not just xbox and it's not just steam machine because obviously we've talked about that being a niche device but the possibility of a lot of different living room pcs becoming a thing, whether it's Valve or it's Microsoft or other third-party manufacturers that want to get into that.

2:17:19Colin Moriarty:And so they're looking at the situation. They're like, well, we're seeing diminishing returns on this. There is not a for sure, but a possible chance that the PC becomes more common in the living room. And that's kind of a different thing than when we started this. where we where a pc gamer was not using their pc necessarily as a console and the the it's shifting right now so i don't know whether a pc is going to become as competitive and specifically in the living room as a console it's hard to say right now but i think that there's kind of a point where and I know we've talked about this too, where it's like they could either, maybe they're looking at it's like, okay, well, either we stop doing this with that possibility or they have to lean in because there is an argument too where there's diminishing returns on these PC ports because they're not day and date.

2:18:24Colin Moriarty:But I think that with how important the console business is to Sony, that they wouldn't want to give that up where they could see that as a step too far and with the data they have so far on it they're like you know what there's a possibility that this could hurt us in the future and it's just simply not worth it anymore so it's very interesting just because i i have felt the opposite about it even with diminishing sales of these games not being as big as some of the early ones but clearly as you were saying colin they're they're looking at the data they're trying to read the tea leaves on what's next and they might see this as a threat so shifting back to console um i don't want to say shifting back to console because that's not the case either it's a shifting to a console exclusive uh will be interesting and there's their handheld involved as well so it's kind of going to have They're expanding back to having console and handheld.

2:19:35Colin Moriarty:And if that's the only place you can get those games, that's a very traditional way of looking at it in this world where Xbox games are everywhere. I guess returning to being more like Nintendo, which never swayed on this, other than there being a few mobile games that aren't even, you know, switch games or anything like that. They're exclusive IPs on mobile. So very, very interesting. And I'm curious when Jason's report actually comes out, because it is not a lot to go off of right now, like as far as reasoning, other than what we can just speculate.

2:20:16Dustin Furman:Yeah, agreed. I was going to say the same thing is that it sounds like he is, it's obviously on his mind if he's bringing it up on his podcast. And so he's obviously writing about it. And it sounds like there's going to be something imminent that maybe he's still clearing it with his editors or needs a little bit more time to research or whatever. So it sounds like we might have information about this soon. Where are you on this, Chris? We've said we've talked about this so much to the level of acceptance. In fact, later on in the show, we're going to talk about Death Stranding 2's PC launch date and its specs.

2:20:43Dustin Furman:So these things are still happening, at least in the second party. And it's hard to stop a moving train, I guess. But elaborate.

2:20:50Chris Sullivan:Yeah. so actually this whole time i've been thinking this doesn't really surprise me as much as i as i would have thought and i was thinking about like why is that and i think like i think what i've come to as far as like thinking about like why they might be doing this is there's kind of an uphill battle to be made uh for the next generation of playstation going forward. There's not a lot of hunger for PS6, even within the community. There's like people just got their PS5s, PS5 pros. You know, there's really not a rush to get this generation over. And so I actually kind of feel like in some way they're looking at not only, you know, the living room PC space kind of growing, but they're looking at we don't have a lot of reasons to come to our platform if we are just going to put our stuff on PC.

2:21:46Chris Sullivan:That's becoming a more popular stance now. And not only that, but we're also just losing... Let's say... I don't know, man. Let's say Spider-Man 3 or Wolverine or whatever comes to PC and it sells... I don't know. 300 ,000 copies on PC.

2:22:12Chris Sullivan:that's that's probably like there's probably a few of those people that we we could have got for for full price in our ecosystem and yeah there's not a lot of hunger for this next machine that they that they're kind of betting on um playstation is the dominant platform but there's not a lot there's not a lot pulling people to it and so i think they see that disinterest i think they understand that it's there and i think they need to make a move to make it more competitive again And I think they probably look at it and being like, well, we're not really getting a lot from putting our stuff on PC.

2:22:43Chris Sullivan:If anything, now we've made a case for ourselves to not get our machine going forward anyway. Maybe not for right now, for the people who already own the machines, but like going forward, like, yeah, why would why would you spend? I don't know how much the PS6 is going to be like 900 bucks based on like how the economy is going. i why would you spend 900 bucks on a machine that you know you're already going to get the games on your your your household pc um it's a different ecosystem now it's a different world now than it was when we started doing this and we've got to start building a case for our machines now in the way that we used to um and the flexibility of porting our stuff to pc has been good for data retrieval and all sorts of things and uh it's definitely opened us up to new audiences or whatever and maybe that's actually good enough maybe we've gotten enough people on pc where they're interested in spider-man and they want to see how it ends maybe we got enough people interested in you know death stranding to maybe jump over to you know or not just death stranding specifically because it's not a first party but you know maybe we've got enough people invested there that they would be more willing to come now you know for the next god of war both of the god of war games are on pc maybe maybe the next one maybe people will jump because they're invested and they've played it and we've made a case for the new machine that's kind of how i how i'm thinking about it it's the only thing that seems to make sense to me um because if it really what if it was just about like you know just selling copies on pc to just kind of squeeze a little bit more juice out of it i think uh i think they would just continue to do that so it's clearly about more than just that it's it's clearly about the ecosystem it's clearly about making a case for the machine and it's clearly a response in my opinion to i think a palpable lack of interest like people are interested in playstation but like when you break up the next generation like no one's particularly excited like it's not like it used to be like i was there i don't know i remember when the next generation when when next generation rumors started to come out people would would be fucking excited about it people would be clamoring about it they'd be like yes what's it gonna be what new things is it gonna do that's not really the case now um and maybe that'll change as the years go forward like i'm sure that equation will will lessen as we get closer to it i'm sure like you know people are gonna have time to fatigue uh it's going to be more imminent and it's going to be inherently more exciting like what's it gonna look like what's gonna play like what's going to be available but you know the amount of time that this machine's been out already is usually the entirety of a generation and you're not seeing that same excitement or hunger and they're planning to go super soon they already told they already uh talked about plans to delay so they clearly understand um that the demand is not quite there and also the economy is not great so like you're you're planning for yeah you just got to make a case for your machine and exclusives are the way to do that as nintendo is proven and as sony has proven before so i think that's the prime reason yeah like i'm it's i'm a little surprised by this but then when

2:25:58Dustin Furman:you when you carve out the numbers you realize like yeah this is a nice piece of the business but it's not really doing huge numbers so i don't know if you guys i i think we might have went over it i was looking it up um and sorry i forgot to mute when i was typing at one point um she probably heard me clickety clacking more than usual but um there's this idea that sony has made something like 1.5 billion dollars cumulatively on pc between everything they've published their single player plus hell divers plus whatever it's a nice amount of money but then you look at their fiscal year 24 report and their revenue for fiscal year 24 was 31.7 billion dollars for PlayStation.

2:26:38Dustin Furman:So the entire time they've been releasing PC games, which goes back like five years now, really in like a big way, they've made cumulatively 1.5 billion dollars. It's not a it's just not a big part of the business. And I think that they. Now, if I were them, I'd be like, we should try to grow this part of the business personally, but they might be looking at and saying, well, actually, we tried. And it's as you were saying the and I mean I was I said this very early was like there is a novelty factor that is obviously there that is wearing off because the games don't make any sense when you look at the games that were most played like Days Gone was a massive on PC compared to something like Horizon Forbidden West that doesn't make any sense except for the fact that it was first like way earlier and so So people are like, holy shit, it's a PlayStation game.

2:27:29Dustin Furman:And I really think that that God of War won in 2018. Spider-Man, Tsushima, these benefit when you start looking at the games that they're releasing. They're just falling kind of like Ragnarok is below something like, you know, I don't know, Days Gone, like substantially. And I just think they looked at it and they're like, this is just kind of dwindling for us. there's yeah it's nice money but what are all of the what are all the tangible things that we can measure now about how this might be affecting us and actually i think maybe some of the most interesting data they're receiving and maybe one of the reasons why they're so militant about playstation network ids and logins or at least were was because they want to see like well how are you fucking around in these spaces like what what is your behavior like we can send this to our data scientists and try to figure it out like you're doing a poll almost and so maybe they're learning things that are distressing them.

2:28:22Dustin Furman:I mean, that's definitely one of the possibilities. There are a few things that I wanted to say about this. I tried to articulate this the best I could when I was talking to Jaffe, but I want to say it again because I think it's really important. The increase in component pricing affects all electronics. So, you know, at least sophisticated electronics. So the consoles will always be cheaper than the PCs. Everything gets more expensive. And so as we know now in computing, like PC desktop computing, it's like way out of line, like with normal people's ability to spend there. And I wonder if Sony saying like, yeah, our costs are going up too, but it's never going to be that bad.

2:29:05Dustin Furman:And our product, like there's a there's a serendipity to the situation in that PC gaming was becoming and reasonably so is becoming this dominant force, this, this undeniable force. And yet as it gets more and more expensive, people are gonna have a harder and harder time keeping up. And here we are, we have a PS4 and nonetheless a PS5 and we can keep, we can keep costs much more constrained. And I think that that is a and we've talked about this already today but it's it's an incredibly relevant part to it i think i think that that might be something where and it's a bet but it's them saying like it's it's gonna be real bad for them it's gonna be bad for us but it's gonna be real bad for them just like what's happening with steam and their steam machines they haven't announced like the pricing like or and like really any firm details because they're probably like oh no yeah terrible timing because legendary bad timing right exactly when they got this spun up internally three years ago whatever like this is gonna be great you know like these are the prices we're aiming for and that's what happened with the and that is what happened with the ps6 because we know from moore's law and other reliable people that they're trying to make a cheaper console so there's absolutely no purpose in releasing the ps6 if it's not cheaper and i think that again they were caught flat-footed not it's not even being caught flat-footed you're just the victim of circumstances It's like there's no way you can make contracts that can bear out the entire life cycle of your console.

2:30:32Dustin Furman:You might be able to make contracts to get manufactured for the first five or 10 million. But after that, the prices might double. You can't deploy a console in that environment. Can't. You can deploy like a niche thing like the steam machine in it, but you where the price vacillates wildly, but you can't do that with a console. And so I think they're probably just saying like, oh, we can reinforce PS5 and maybe even ride this thing the entire decade. and if we can get cheaper and cheaper and have a really tantalizing catalog of games i mean we almost we almost become a reasonable default certainly in like developing in third world countries but definitely in the first world too so there is something to that dustin you had brought up this idea of xbox and like how this is playing in i agree with you that my whole opinion and people know because i've been very bullish about going multi-platform with things especially with switch is that i i don't know that's it's unreasonable for me to expect that sony cares about that like i don't know that that's that plays into this like why the because it assumes that they're even going to sell a large number of these xboxes which again because of component pricing i don't know about that like i think xbox is less attractive as a as a hardware brand for a lot of people than ever and then you're going to release a box that's what if it's a pc what is it going to be a thousand dollars and then and then that's going to be a threat to playstation i think they just roll their eyes at that so i don't i don't think that there's that that's the reason i think there are two other things though that i wanted to speak on too maybe part of it is that they have really they have received a an unusual amount of hostility from the pc space i think and i wonder if they're like yeah we don't really need this it opens us up too much like look at all the drama with hell divers look at all the dry and although games like hell divers will remain but look at all the drama with this game's not running right and this graphic card not supported it's like we this is like the antithesis of what we do we have like the thing where it's like it works on your machine the machine's the same and so i wonder if there's a piece of it that that might not it's not an overwhelming part of it but like the icing on the cake where they're like yeah plus like we don't have to deal with these fucking people you know um and then the other thing i wanted to say was there was this rumor going around that and it comes from that guy hip-hop gamer who i don't have a problem with at all and a lot of people are mean to him and stuff and i'm not doing that because he obviously has connections and obviously knows people and things that he had that he has said has have come true he's been in the industry for a long time so i'm not disrespecting him at all but he was saying i think he was the one that had the rumor that like steam would be on ps6

2:33:03Dustin Furman:and this is that maybe a distinction without a difference but it's not that i don't believe him it's that i find it unbelievable if that makes any sense right it's like sure i don't think he's speaking out of his ass people are probably talking to him i just personally find that unbelievable like as in why would you ever do that and we've gone over all the reasons why that makes no sense and why xbox doing it makes no sense and it's ultimately going to kill their own ability to make money on games as you're going to find out if they really do it um this just suggests to me that that's not a thing i could be totally wrong i mean i have no information about it one way or the other but i know a lot of people have been talking about that about that level of openness.

2:33:43Dustin Furman:And I'm like, I don't see that. This indicates that they're retreating to their silo. And I will say this, and I think we can all agree on this. The PlayStation hardcore are going to be thrilled about this. You know, they're going to be amped about it. And I get it. I love the ecosystem. I love PlayStation space. To me, I just didn't, I don't feel like the PC space is a threat. And I think the diminishing returns proves it actually. but it brings in the question whether therefore it's worth if everything did as good as days gone god of war 2018 zero dawn they'd probably keep going but it's not it might be a different story although i don't know if it would be i don't know maybe i just i do i do feel like the demand is is

2:34:28Chris Sullivan:a key thing here but i do think uh what do you think about i mean you assume live service games will continue that has to be right i mean because you need it's just it's part of the recipe you got to be you just you just got to be where people are if you're going to guarantee even a modicum of success and even even games that are available everywhere fail so like you really do have you

2:34:49Dustin Furman:need that boon two-thirds of hell divers copies i think were sold on pc that means that hell divers would be would be massively successful on ps5 but on its own and it is it sold five six million copies on ps5 that's a massive success for a multiplayer paid multiplayer game on ps5 come on That's huge. Outside of the sports games, that doesn't happen anymore. But yeah, but the PC is what's going to keep it alive. And I think that they, in fact, like it's very schizophrenic because they released Helldivers on Xbox. So which is unthinkable, as I said before, I would have bet $10 ,000 on them doing that, not doing that.

2:35:25Dustin Furman:That would have been I would have. Yeah, it was shocking. So they are sending a lot of mixed signals. But I think what that sends, the signal that sends is like when something is alive we're going to keep it alive and so i think that we can at least bet on concurrent ps5 with pc launches they're doing xbox marathon at the same time because that was announced for but i don't think they're going to do that anymore and i think when a game sticks then they're like okay like now we'll move we'll even look into switch to maybe for some low fi we'll lower fi games but certainly xbox is a platform we want to be on and they won't have to worry about that much more if they really do this magnus pc build then it will just be on steam and then they literally don't have to play ball with xbox at all um yeah so i don't think that it's going to change direction on that so i would just so for instance like um hunter's gathering it's coming to pc certainly if they announced it like two weeks ago certainly if they were if they were going to change tact this has already been known internally and so they're they're reacting as such but fascinating topic i just wish we had more to really go on we don't right now yeah speaking of a horizon hunters gathering the the weekend we're recording this so it'll already be over but i just thought it was interesting that they're doing the closed play test um the same weekend that marathon is doing its play test so-called server slam i don't understand why they're doing this not for any other reason than it's like well just don't you want like attention to this someone does it have to be right now you have another multiplayer game launching

2:36:54Chris Sullivan:it's like really big very weird yeah i also i also feel like i don't know i i don't know maybe part of me is also like well marathon that's that's out that's for everybody this is a closed test we can assume that everybody who's going to be joining this thing is going to be pretty hardcore about it right like maybe that's the idea is that like you're getting hardcore people into the closed test because you kind of want that's the people that you're kind of catering towards in some way is the you know the the playstation faithful um so it's i don't know it's because they're not exactly competing styles of game so like maybe it makes sense i i would have regardless i probably would have not put this on the same weekend i think it i think it is kind of irresponsible um it's just like this one hand knowing the other hand is doing like

2:37:46Dustin Furman:what is going on here it almost seems like they didn't yeah in a way yeah i don't know it maybe there is some method of the madness but i'll be very eager to see i think it's nda but i'm sure someone will say something about this but i'm very eager to see what people think because i think it

2:38:01Colin Moriarty:looks cool personally my guess is that this is going to be a very very limited closed play test being the first one so it's kind of and like you said it's it's ndaid so it's kind of i don't want to say it's irrelevant it's irrelevant in the public eye and so i'm i would assume that the people they are selecting they're looking at their playtime on horizon games or other factors and so it probably doesn't matter it's the same weekend i mean this this uh marathon one is so it's it's to test the servers but it's also a huge marketing boost because they know people like chris are gonna get in and stream it and talk about it um so and that helps sell the game where they're not quite ready they're not they're selling you on horizon hunters gathering but they're not fully like in marketing mode for it yeah so it actually benefits in some way to have eyes elsewhere when you're doing a hardcore closed playtest yeah um you know especially if

2:39:12Chris Sullivan:it's like particularly unfinished as a lot of these playtests tend to be i'll be less eyes on the flaws yeah i will um i wonder i wonder if someone will say something to someone so somewhere

2:39:23Dustin Furman:probably about it i'm just curious because i think they need a i think they need a win obviously i think marathon is going to be a win for playstation studios but i also don't think it really hinges on them it's like bunchy's its own thing and it's got its own history and its own expectations its own fan base it doesn't this is really playstation like horizon and gorilla are playstation and i'll be very interested to see if they can figure it out because it will be the rare truly first party multiplayer thing that they're doing from a team that actually exists i mean what's the last time they had a success in that that realm i mean i guess you have like the legends would be in there but before that it's like factions or depending on how you look at like god of war ascension or something like that it's like that there's not not very much so all right speaking of bungee and marathon i saw this i thought this was really interesting and i was curious if you guys have any information on if this is normal but this was making the rounds that um cheaters on marathon so they right here they have a uh marathon security overview like how they're gonna go into like protecting your experience and making things fair and dealing with network issues and what happens if you get disconnected and everything because you know it's so high stakes and that's interesting i think that's really cool that they're dealing with that and i'm sure a lot of games deal with this it's just not my space but they say quote anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing marathon forever no second chances end quote i find that based i find that awesome and interesting but i don't feel like that's usual because i think i i say this over and over again um publishers hardware manufacturers whatever they don't want to ban you right like they don't want to so like they they don't want to have a problem they don't want to hear from the better business bureau they don't and all that but they also just like they want your money they want you to spend money they want you to feel comfortable spending money so they're going to like have the loosest possible interpretation of a lot of different things and so see someone like this so overt i actually think it's kind of cool and warns people about what they're going to do and by the way bungie has sued people that have cheated in their games so they take it very seriously uh chris let's go to you you're such a bungie guy is this typical for them um i don't know if it's typical for them necessarily

2:41:41Chris Sullivan:they do obviously they have a hard line on cheaters i don't know if they've ever been vocal about this kind of um like i don't know for instance that they've ever said this explicitly about destiny 2 which you know there's a lot of cheaters in destiny 2 and so i i think i think they've always taken it seriously they're obviously willing to sue but i think this type of game is just so different um you know in destiny if somebody cheats you know you get kind of robbed out of like a fun match and you you might be set back a little bit in a little bit of progress but in an extraction shooter to to deal with cheaters is kind of like you lose everything um it's not it's not like it's not like destiny where if you disconnect during a match like you still have your you still have your guns you still have all the stuff that makes the game fun for you when you come back in um so i think the stakes are a lot higher it's a lot more competitive it's a lot more serious and so i think they're you know they're taking it a step further um it doesn't mean there's not going to be cheaters like you're definitely going to have cheaters in marathon like be prepared like i mean it'll it's just like it's the cost of doing business as far as like games go but i especially online games but i am kind of i'm glad to see a strict stance because what the fuck are you doing cheating anyway like other games particularly arc raiders i think had like a three strikes policy but like if you're cheating like you clearly it almost incentivizes you to cheat in some way because it's just like oh okay cool i could do it twice and not and i could still have the you know what i mean like it almost it almost encourages some level of experimentation it's a little bit weird i think they've responded after marathon did a thing or after marathon said their piece about uh the no second chances policy i think arc raiders adjusted theirs a little bit I could be mistaken I remember reading something about that but yeah I mean this is important and it's definitely a W for for Marathon and for Bungie I think I think there's really no sympathy for cheaters when it comes to competitive online play it's like the it's like

2:43:48Dustin Furman:the worst of the worst man yeah I don't understand it like just cheating generally like cheat yourself all you want I don't give a fuck about that go play with like get your NES games with your game genie and shit like i don't care right yeah yeah single player is like whatever and and obviously unlocking cheats and all that that's fun in those kinds of games like we were talking about last week but so i don't want to make it seem like oh you know like and i love using you know and i wrote many strategy guides and i love strategy guides and you know i don't use them for most of the games i play but i i enjoy them and so i whatever but in affecting things in for other people really does bother me too like i i don't it's total degeneracy loser shit like imagine being a cheater in a video game online like what kind of fucking loser you have to be to do that and it's what it's the term i use a lot of my in my own life and ramon i've used it for many years and we got in and we get it from his brother as well which is a dbs dirtbag shit you know like that's like it's classic dbs like classic definitional dirtbag shit and so yeah i have no i have no sympathy for these people either dustin um this i assume will preclude you from playing

2:44:55Colin Moriarty:marathon since you're an unknown cheater yeah dude i've got all the 4chan uh tour you know all the all the cheats from all the secret places online so this is awesome and it's so incredibly important right now because i was thinking about this like if you played call of duty on i don't know years ago on a 360 every once in a while you run into a cheater and it's very annoying makes you mad but uh the next game more than likely won't have a cheater in it and so you kind of forget you're like okay well i can deal with this cheater obviously if there's too many cheaters then that's going to make you tune out um and that's happened to me with call of duty games like in i'm trying to remember which one in the last five or so years there was like definitely a cheating problem that was like i'm good but then you think about a game like a battle royale game where you have a lot more time invested the anxiety of the match is much higher and somebody cheats and that pisses you off way more than a call of duty match but there's always the next match no problem but then you get to an extraction shooter where not only is the anxiety high but you have a personal investment in each match and what you choose to bring in the tolerance level for cheating on an extraction shooter is has to be near zero because if you have all your best gear in and some dude snipes you with a pistol from across the map i don't know whatever kind of cheat would wear i don't know what kind of cheating would appear in marathon or someone that somehow knows your location through like a wall hack or something like that it's like yeah you're done so bungie as you noted colin has a history of being very hard stance on cheating the fact that they're already taking this so seriously and being like yo do this once and you're out is fantastic news and of course too the fact that it's a paid game also does a lot for cheating because a free to play game it's like oh just just make a new account or spoof your ip with a vpn or something like that um someone could still do that with marathon but they're going to have to spend 40 dollars uh it's good the hassle is going to be so much higher so i really appreciate it because it's it's very very annoying to encounter a hack a hacker in games so i mean god bless him i say fair enough not the hackers yeah i understand what you mean of course i understand what you mean

2:47:32Dustin Furman:um yeah i like the hard stance as well and and being aggressive i think i think it's it's like putting people in prison in real world it's like it it doesn't typically work for everyone but it's some sort of cautionary tale that it can happen to you and it does and some people think twice and i guess you could just make new names but you would have to i imagine on console they'll be able to tie your name to the game i guess and then on pc on steam they would be able to do the same thing so you'd have to like make a new or have a different steam account by the game again to get back in and that's not insurmountable but that you look like a fucking doofus doing that oh i want to buy marathon again so i can cheat and if you're a cheater you're you're going to be

2:48:11Chris Sullivan:realistically you are going to be gravitating towards free-to-play games anyway because purely because of that i mean i'm not going to spend 40 to get banned again like i could just go here and spoof my ip a million times so i think it's uh yeah it's it's good

2:48:25Dustin Furman:it's a good thing all right next story is death stranding 2 on the bitch coming to pc as we know via Nix's and Kojima Productions has a release date of March 19th, ironically, as we talk about all this PC stuff, although it is second party and the original Death Stranding, of course, came to PC2, where it found a huge audience. Additionally, there are, shared here by Kojima and Nix's, the spec sheet for your various settings for minimum, medium, high, and very high settings. And Dustin, anything here stand out to you that's interesting?

2:48:59Colin Moriarty:Not really. I was looking around. I mean, for if you want to play this game, 4K60 recommends like a 4080. But the thing about PC games is that they're so customizable. Obviously, a lot of the stuff they mentioned, the trailer is like ultra wide. This is kind of interesting. For the first time on PC, you'll find Pico as an option in upscale settings. This is oh, I remember seeing this. So it's going to have Gorilla's in-house upscaler. Because they didn't use PSSR for some of their PS5 Pro upgrades. And so the fact that you're going to be able to use their in-house upscaler on PC, I believe is a first.

2:49:47Colin Moriarty:Well, it says, yeah, for the first time on PC, you'll be able to use Pico. So that's pretty interesting to see a different upscaling solution on PC, specifically from Gorilla. I won't be checking it out just because it's Death Stranding is still fresh in my mind I don't need to go back to it usually what's been good about PlayStation 5 or just PlayStation PC releases in general is that they're good for me for a second playthrough five years later I played God of War again on PC I played Death Stranding again on PC I played Returnal on PC so maybe someday Death Stranding 2 will be played on PC for me, but yeah, these specs look alright to me, but

2:50:32Dustin Furman:it's a beautiful game. I believe people will be intrigued, and I feel like Death Stranding 1 didn't really hit its sales pace until it launched on PC, so I think this will be really, really good for the game, and it's a really wonderful game. I hope people do check it out if they haven't already. And there's ultra-wide monitors, or there's... You don't care about ultra-wide monitor stuff, do you? You care about... Chris, You care about field of view specifically, right?

2:50:59Chris Sullivan:Yeah. Well, which I mean, I guess it's technically the same thing, but like I don't care about FOV in a third person. Like a third person. The FOV in a third person game has to be really bad for me to for me to care and notice. I think there's like a Resident Evil game that kind of has like a I think Resident Evil 5 kind of has a rough FOV a little bit, but it's still acceptable. Like, it's fine. All right.

2:51:21Dustin Furman:So we don't have to linger on this next piece of news, but I did want to bring it up because I think it's interesting. The publisher, Nacon, and their French publisher, revealed that they are insolvent, basically, and are asking for their debts and all their business dealings to be renegotiated so that they can stay alive and stay in business, which I'm sure they'll be able to work out. So this is obviously a form of bankruptcy declaration, I guess, in France. I don't know for sure. But I just thought this was interesting to add to the record. Nacon, of course, has come to some prominence in the last few years.

2:51:56Dustin Furman:It's a newer name. They were known as Big Ben Interactive for many years. I don't know if you guys remember that name. And they were a smaller publisher for many years. And I think they actually got their start in France in the early 80s doing like hardware and component and accessory kind of distribution within France. So like they would distribute the consoles and accessories as they came to that particular market. And they began publishing in 2002 with some local games before ultimately founding the Nikon brand five or six years ago, I think. So some games they've recently published include Hell is Us, Test Drive, Solar Crown.

2:52:33Dustin Furman:The game, I don't even know. I didn't know anything about this game until I just looked it up. It came out right around now. Sticks, Blades of Greed, which is like some sort of stealth game.

2:52:44Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah.

2:52:45Dustin Furman:And they also publish like the fairly popular WRC racing series every year. and they publish a bunch of stuff in like the rugby and cricket um places they they were co-publisher of golem and they own that studio lord of ring they published that game steel rising which i never played but some people really like that game and a rogue city was was the first nakon game i believe i ever bought and they follow up to unfinished business they also own a series of teams they own big ant which is the australian team behind the rugby series cyanide which is like a really long time cycling studio, I think in France.

2:53:19Dustin Furman:Datalik, which is the Gollum studio. Klaihton, which does the WRC series. And they bought Spiders, you guys might remember. And so they're publishing Greedfall 2 imminently. But it seems like they are in decent amount of trouble. And when you own a studio that makes a game like Gollum, I guess that explains a lot. So we'll keep an eye out on that and see what develops from there.

2:53:42Chris Sullivan:Yeah, cut down on the

2:53:43Dustin Furman:S-card, I guess. Too much. Wee-wee. i don't know if you guys saw this we don't usually get into the smaller game announcements but i wanted to give this one a little bit of special shine for marvel games and limited run games they're bringing out the marvel maximum collection which is a collection of six games from the so called golden age of gaming that were on arcade in arcades or on pc or on console and handhelds and they're collaborating with konami to get this out although i'm fascinated that they call out Konami specifically because there are a bunch of different publishers involved in these games.

2:54:19Dustin Furman:So this will be coming to PlayStation 5. There won't be a PlayStation 4 port and it's unclear when it will be released, but I assume sometime this year there is no release date yet. But the big addition of the six games here, guys, and I don't know if you've played any of these games or are familiar with any of them, but X-Men, X-Men, the arcade game, Konami's 1992 excellent arcade game. Now, I don't know if you guys remember this, and I went and looked this up to be sure. that game was released on PS3 and Xbox 360 for like a few years. And a port. And then they took it down. So it was available very briefly.

2:54:54Dustin Furman:And if you own it, you might be able to still download it. I think I did own it. I don't know if I if I if I did or not. But so that's the big one in this. And I really loved that game as a kid. That's a classic four player game. So that's going to be in there. And that's where Konami comes in. But the other stuff is interesting, too, because there's a Data East published game from 1991. one Captain America and the Avengers this game was on NES but that was a different game like a shittier game the Genesis and SNES games are the ones that are going to be included here with this one from 1991 there was also Game Boy and Game Boy and Game Gear versions of the game but that's not included here Spider-Man and Venom Maximum Carnage this is a game I rented often when I was a kid I remember the red cartridge very well very unique and this is created by a British studio called software creations which worked on a bunch of marvel games at the time and was published by a claim on genesis and ljn which is a claim but but under the ljn name on snes in 1994 i remember that very well and then venom and venom spider-man separation anxiety this is also by software creations published by ljn and flying edge which is just a claim between 1992 and 1994 depending on the platform.

2:56:10Dustin Furman:That came to SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, and Game Gear, and I believe all of those versions of the game will be available on this collection. Let's see what else here. Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade's Revenge, also from 1990. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Separation Anxiety is from 1995. Arcade's Revenge is from 1992 or 1994, and those will be available on all those different platforms. And then the sixth game is Silver Surfer, also from Software Creations, published by Arcadia Systems, which is a defunct British publisher, from 1990. That's more of a shooter. Arcade's Revenge is more of an action game. As we know, the other four games are all kind of brawlers.

2:56:47Dustin Furman:So I'm going to be down for this because I love me some brawlers. And that X-Men game especially is quite tantalizing. Chris, will you give it a go? Have you played any of the games? It seemed like Maximum Carnage you were familiar with, which makes sense.

2:57:00Chris Sullivan:Max Maximum Carnage. I never played, but I was always jealous of people who had it because I remember I would go to people's cousins houses and they would have the red cartridge i didn't have an snes or uh n64 like i went from i went from i went from nes to ps1 so like i missed out on a lot of those games but i've seen maximum carnage i remember playing it a little bit but it was it was always alluring to me and i know that that's a pretty like that's a historically significant game in like the marvel space i remember maximum carnage comes up a lot um but i don't really know what to expect from it i don't think i've ever really watched much gameplay from it or familiarized myself with it but that's an alluring one for sure so i'm definitely gonna like that being playable i'm on a hardware conveniently is pretty

2:57:43Dustin Furman:it's pretty shout out to uh the powers that be marvel obviously they can command the they own the licenses and command the money but konami getting on board and and all the other like there's like i don't know who owns the rights to these games i don't believe konami is the only rights holder of consequence here so they did some hard work to get this going and i think that that's kind of cool some games conspicuously missing i think too although maybe maybe they'll be because there's like a wolverine game on nes that that studio made and some other things and i'm like why did you stop here um dustin i don't know if you have anything to add but i did want to ask you also do you guys know so software creations created a game on the nes called treasure master do you guys know this game have you ever heard of this game treasure man doesn't sound familiar there's a really it's a fascinating game there's oh i've seen the cover on this it's so

2:58:33Colin Moriarty:90s. Oh yeah. Do you know the whole story?

2:58:35Dustin Furman:I've never seen the game, but I've seen the story behind this game though. It's actually very unique. So these guys made a game in 1991 and released it on NES. And there was a promise that there was something hidden in the game. And that on a very specific date, MTV would play something about this game in like six months after the game came out and give you a password. And you put the password into the game and it would unlock a whole new stage that no one had ever seen in this in the game at the end of that stage you get a code and you had like x amount of time to basically use this code to get like a secret prize it was kind of a cool weird thing and i as a kid i didn't i wasn't aware of it at the time it was something i learned about later but when i was reading about this i'm like oh yeah software creations is the studio i believe that made that game and it's it's a whole weird thing about it about that about that game i i think that's such a cool idea yeah do something like that

2:59:30Colin Moriarty:I love stuff like that because I I never I haven't played it myself but isn't there a thing with like Star Tropics in the instruction manual

2:59:38Dustin Furman:like you yeah

2:59:40Colin Moriarty:and you need to like cool is it like light related or there's something there's some kind of light or something

2:59:46Dustin Furman:you have to like do something to the paper and you wouldn't know unless like and it gives you a code that you put into the game at some point and it was it was basically a way for Nintendo to Nintendo was really salty about rentals and i believe that that's where that comes from like their idea of doing that as a way to like kind of fuck with people and i think people are really upset about it so yeah and it probably got a shit ton of calls to like the nintendo power hotline which is exactly what they wanted

3:00:11Colin Moriarty:oh yeah they love that uh the only one of these games i think i've played is x-men the arcade game at some point i've definitely played that at an arcade and it's awesome i do recall you'll know that's called silver surfer doesn't that have an iconic soundtrack yeah i think that's the one like it's known as one of the best nes soundtracks ever it's an interesting game too because it's basically like an arcade shooter but you're just silver server so it's it's strange strange game but uh yeah it sounds cool i love like collections like this i don't know if this one's for me but uh unfortunately again limited run uh they got you by the balls in certain situations whether you like them or not they've certainly had me by the balls with uh tomba but this reminds me this is a bit of an aside but colin remember all the drama around croc the physical release yeah i have finally i have contacted rocket games and i said refund it i don't want it and do they do it so to my understanding i was trying to find the email uh okay they said i could process the cancellation of your order once canceled we can't reinstate it also depending on the age of the order the refund may need to go out as a check instead of back to the original payment method yeah i mean that's that may be that's how long it's been that's my order i want to say was in at least 2024 um and dude we talked about this on sacred streaming like they rocket games like they can't tweet anything the croc subreddit is obsessed with the i wonder what happened like what what is the croc subreddit is pissed uh apparently i think the main problem is that they just have not communicated and like well now i don't want to say anything they've done a very piss poor job of communicating at somewhere along the line croc didn't release with a platinum trophy and this made people mad so the company that did the croc remaster and i i think it was the original company that did it decided to do a platinum version of the game that was a free update and so they decided that they were going to put that version on the disc which is what physical collectors want they want the final no more updates disc but it wasn't communicated and for me it's at the point where between the lack of communication how long it's taken it's like I just am not giving you my money at this point like you've lost I do think that people will get delivered their special edition and their game and their plushie but it's like Not from me.

3:03:05Colin Moriarty:Not like this. You're not getting my money. So Rocket Games, do better.

3:03:10Dustin Furman:By the way, did you guys see the screenshot I put in the chat?

3:03:12Chris Sullivan:Yeah, Colin, I saw it.

3:03:15Dustin Furman:What the fuck is this? This is like the Game Boy version of one of those Spider-Man games from...

3:03:18Chris Sullivan:Is that supposed to be Spider-Man? It looks like a wall, yeah. A turtle. Yeah, it looks like a turtle climbing a fucking radioactive coil. That's upsetting.

3:03:30Dustin Furman:I love that. I love that they're including these like these gimp ass fucking Game Boy games in some of these collections. They're all some of them are awful. Yeah, I just I always remember that as a kid. I just had that knowledge as a kid. I'm like, oh, I don't want the Game Boy version of this game. Like if there was a game that had it was like, oh, Genesis, SNES, NES, Master System, Game Boy, Game Gear. I'm like, oh, I don't want that. Like I was like, who buys that? I felt that way all the way through like GBA and DS eras where I'm like, who's buying some of this shit? Why would you buy this version of the game?

3:04:01Chris Sullivan:yeah the ds was the the point for me where i was like okay you know you had some interesting stuff on there and you could get the relative console quality i remember the 60 super mario 64 port on ds i loved um and that was the first time i played it but i felt that way with mario land on the Game Boy. I remember playing it and being like... I don't know, man.

3:04:31Dustin Furman:Mario Land felt like a compromise. I loved those games as a kid. Like there's three of them, I think, on a Game Boy. And yeah, I played the shit. There is something compromised about them. Like I knew everything. I think especially the first one, it's so small. And I might even talk about the screen. The first one. Yeah, like it's so small.

3:04:49Chris Sullivan:He's he. Mario is so fucking. Please, everybody, look up how tiny Mario is in Mario Land. It is actually ridiculous. it almost reminds me of there's a game called I want to be the guy which was like this troll game basically that everybody I remember a lot of youtubers playing back in like oh six where it was just the whole game was it was like a platformer but the whole thing was like it would treat you really unfairly it would like unfairly kill you like platforms would move out from under you it was a complete troll game but the character that is also mega small and it reminded me of like Mario land I just remember why the fuck is this Mario even like this could be fucking anybody

3:05:28Colin Moriarty:absurd the second game is awesome uh mario land 2 and the six golden coins i only played the first one and i just wasn't i played that like a year or two ago and it was very good yeah they're i

3:05:40Dustin Furman:mean they're all good i don't want to hate but yeah like i just that's what i always remember yeah i'm looking up screenshots now and it's so much they fixed it by this one he's so fucking swole that's what i remember about that being a young man game boy had so many good games you just had a bob and weave a little bit you know what game boy game i love is the game alleyway very early game boy game i think you would understand why though um dustin this next one's for you jeff keely had tweeted out of a screenshot from a video that was in japan celebrating near autonomous near automata's 10 millionth copy sold which is huge for that game although it's taken a long time and a lot of them are probably cheap you can't hate on 10 million copies sold but he had a screenshot here it says near automata to be continued feelings yeah uh yoko taro fans

3:06:32Colin Moriarty:well assumingly are have had quite the week between it being announced that there's a new evangelion series that he is writing along with the uh and the composer of near is also attached to it and then this tease as well and let me tell you near fans stand down you're so annoying why is it i mean i've i've had to do self-reflection the last few months because i realize i'm consistently involved with the most annoying you are and i wonder what that says i that's the thing i don't know i don't know but in this case near fans because a lot of outlets are like is this near three which is very reasonable thing to say but apparently according to yokotaro in a tweet near reincarnation the mobile gotcha game he declared was near three well go try playing near reincarnation now go go try playing near three you can't it's been taken down so you know what i don't think so if i did i maybe played it for like 10 minutes and i was I can't do it.

3:07:45Colin Moriarty:Can't do it, man. Do it. Sorry, man. Can't do it. Sorry, man. Sorry. Sorry. So this is exciting. It's surprising. It's taken this long. It must be a Yoko Taro thing unless they finally decided like, fuck it. We're doing it without him. I don't. I would be incredibly unwise in my decision because he's so attached to why people love this series. so I'm super pumped for it I fell in love with the series in Nier Automata and went back and played the remake of the first Nier game and that game is also truly amazing excellent excellent game both of them I've not played Drakengard I'm not that nerdy about it I'd like to yeah I think those would be cool games to go back to there was a new Drakengard game recently yeah wasn't there I don't think so I think the last Drakengard game was on PS3 let's see Drakengard games

3:08:51Dustin Furman:oh maybe I'm thinking of like near replicant or something

3:08:55Colin Moriarty:Drakengard 3 May 2014

3:08:57Dustin Furman:yeah I thought that I could have sworn that they like re-released one of them but I obviously made that up entirely um alright well there's that I thought of you instantly and 10 million copies very respectable I'm sure Square Enix is extremely excited about that. I still hear people calling it automata and that really bothers me.

3:09:17Colin Moriarty:I think PR has said it both ways, but no one knows how you say that word.

3:09:21Dustin Furman:So that would, it's automata. That's a word.

3:09:24Colin Moriarty:Automata. I say I interchange it just so I, everyone hates me. Yeah, that's good. All right.

3:09:32Dustin Furman:I wanted to just get a couple of these things here out. We don't have to linger too much on this, but I did want to bring people's attention to a variety interview with Yves Gilmont of Ubisoft, the CEO and co-founder of the ancient French publisher that was founded in the 1980s. If you want to look it up, and of course, Variety is really an industry publication more for like film and television. Ubisoft's obviously going to go in a transmedia and multimedia direction. So they want to talk to this guy about all that. And it's called Ubisoft CEO Explains Three-Year Plan to Revamp Game Publisher Through New Creative House Strategy.

3:10:04Dustin Furman:More than$200 million in cost reductions. And then in all capitals, exclusive. So I broke down just some of the things that I thought were interesting in here. People should go read it for themselves, but I wanted to just call a few things up. We were wondering about their acquisition of March of Giants, that Amazon game, right? I thought that that was interesting because they bought that game and the studio from Amazon, and they're doing this while they're struggling. And his answer to this was that they want to be in MOBAs. So I thought that was interesting. It was very, very straightforward and obvious.

3:10:35Dustin Furman:but like he was just saying like we we want a MOBA and we feel like we need to be in that space so that's that and so they look at that as a wise investment they were talking about rainbow six siege is up to 2.5 million daily players that's crazy it's 11 years old the the they're entering their season 11 output now for the game and they're dumping a shit ton of money into two different things. A mobile release, which I think comes out imminently. And they're putting a bunch of money in China. And they say, and he says that they think China could be Rainbow Six's biggest market once they're done.

3:11:13Dustin Furman:So it's so fascinating to see like they're, they should be thanking their lucky stars. They'd worked hard for it, but Siege is a big reason why Ubisoft still exists. And at least in their current form about Assassin's Creed. He said that they have several games in development, both single and multiplayer I think we knew Assassin's Creed Hex I think we know about which is like the more supernatural one I guess and some other stuff that's not a huge surprise I don't understand Assassin's Creed

3:11:40Chris Sullivan:that's the same

3:11:42Dustin Furman:which one right and I think it just lost its director by the way oh cool but who knows what's going on behind the scenes there right now I mean there might be a lot of people there that are just not happy yeah true so I don't want to read too much into that but they so it sounds like they have at least three games in development for Assassin's Creed Far Cry two games of development. I'll take it. This makes me excited because it is my hope that they just continue a traditional Far Cry experience. Obviously, Far Cry has gotten crazier and crazier over time, but there is a way Far Cry is played and a feel for Far Cry that I think is continuous between all the games, in my opinion, as a mega fan of the series.

3:12:18Dustin Furman:But there was always this idea that they were doing this other thing. And that bothers me a lot less. And that was specifically the game that was rumored to be like a game where you have to beat it in 30 hours. and so you have like you have it's like death loop but like on steroids where you have to like make decisions and like you have like your family members are like strewn around the island and you have to rescue them in any way you can right and you have like x amount of time to do it which

3:12:39Chris Sullivan:sounds cool but that sounds like a so it sounds like a new dawn or like a you know what i mean

3:12:45Dustin Furman:like a new dawn or something like that yeah i totally agree so knowing that they have two of them that made me feel a lot better because it's like okay good like far cry we've said all the time Far Cry is one of those series where it's like how many copies of that game so what I love it but then it's like oh yeah it's like 15 million copies like what so people really love Far Cry for what it is and I don't think they should fuck with it too much just make it over the so what I'm

3:13:10Chris Sullivan:hearing from you is that you want an extraction right definitely yes please

3:13:17Dustin Furman:please right that's what I'm hearing that's what I'm hearing is you know what it's funny Chris we make fun of it but I think that they've come close so close to death that they're seeing clearly now. That's like my feeling on it. It's like they're seeing things for what they are now. I would love to see what some of the games were they canceled because some of them were probably like, oh my God. And I thought the other thing was they did ask tough questions. They asked him about the claims of nepotism, installing his son as the head of Vantage Studios. They asked about the six game cancellations.

3:13:48Dustin Furman:He wouldn't talk very deeply about it. They asked about the labor unrest, which is really significant at their French and Quebecois studios. and they asked about cost cutting because as they say in the title they want to do 200 million dollars in cost reductions those are fixed cost reductions that means like that's not like a one-time cut that's like cutting things in order to make truncate your entire you know footprint and it's gonna be very painful and i think he admits that he walks around it a bunch of times but it's like yeah we are going to have to lay people off and that's so there's not too much to say about that i just wanted to bring that up and i highly recommend people read it because it starts off a little soft and I'm like, oh my God, but they, it gets a little, they start getting into it and it's smart to do that.

3:14:26Dustin Furman:That's smart. Jennifer Moss, I don't know you're, you're the interviewer. You get them on the hook first, then you start asking them the hard questions. It's always the way you don't want to lead with that. You want to make them comfortable first. The other thing that's a industry happening. And the only information I could find, this is in Japanese. So I'm counting on Sal Romano over at Kamatsu, who is clearly fluent in Japanese based on all the coverage he does and translated it. But it seems like Koei Tecmo is rearranging some of their internal studios and other assets. Some of this has to do with their marketing and their business divisions.

3:14:58Dustin Furman:I don't give a shit about any of that, but some of it affects their studios. Two of them, and specifically Team Ninja, arguably their biggest studio, and Gust. So Omega Force and some others are not in here at all. But basically what's happening is Team Ninja is being split into three. And two of them are staying as Team Ninja. one of them is being ingested into Gust as a separate entity. Gust is the studio that Koei Tecmo owns that they bought back in 2011, but have been working with forever before that, I think as Koei specifically on the Atelier games. So those are a big series of games. And they do the fairy tale manga RPGs as well, which are pretty big.

3:15:40Dustin Furman:So they'll be working on that stuff. And of course, we all know Team Ninja and all the stuff they've done, Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden, Wolong, Rise of the Ronin. no one talks about Rise of the Ronin anymore. Stranger of Paradise, all the Neo games. So they're there. So I don't know what this really means, but it's something worth noting. And I wanted to throw it out there.

3:15:59Chris Sullivan:No one ever talks about gone,

3:16:07Dustin Furman:but not forgotten. It's weird though, isn't it? Like that game kind of just came and went, even by PlayStation standards, things are a little more sticky. People still talk about the order 1886, you know, Yeah. Yeah. I tried it. It's too hard. I was like, I'm not playing this. Waste of fucking money. All right. Two more things. New PS Plus games. Monthly games. So this is for everyone on PlayStation Plus premium, extra or essential. Your quote unquote free games really is part of your subscription that you get for free. And these will be available for you beginning March 3rd into April 6th. So of course you have until March 3rd to mark for download the other games that you might not have gotten from last month.

3:16:50Dustin Furman:Those games are undisputed Subnautica Below Zero, Ultros and Ace Combat 7. So get to add now. But the games that are coming up now, PGA Tour 2K25 on PS5. This is from HB Studios, the Canadian team that 2K had purchased to make the golf games for them a few years ago. It came back. It came out in February 2025. I couldn't find anything for a PGA Tour 2K26. and so this which would come out around this time if it existed and so i wonder if this is just going to be in a elaboration of that and so it's actually a pretty good get from that lens because when i first saw it i'm like oh they're giving you like last year's pga game but it's actually this year's pga game too i think so that's cool that's at the top of the list monster hunter rise is coming to ps5 and ps4 this is the spinoff that was originally on switch that came out in 2021 it didn't come out on PlayStation until 2023.

3:17:42Dustin Furman:Did you play these games, Dustin? Or this game?

3:17:45Colin Moriarty:Yes. I played it on PC, though. That was long before the PlayStation 5 version. And it's excellent. I highly recommend it. And in some ways, I like it a lot more than Monster Hunter Wilds. So it's just different. Each Monster Hunter game plays a little bit different. This is the game that I've had the most time in for Monster Hunter. So check it out.

3:18:11Dustin Furman:So Slime Rancher 2 from Monomi Park comes to PS5 as well. This was just released late last year and is the follow up to the original, which I think came out on PC in 2017 and on PlayStation in 2018. The original Slime Rancher was really big. I went and looked. It sold millions of copies. I feel like I speak. I hear no one speaking about this game, and that might be why it's on PlayStation Plus for all we know. So there's that. And then finally, the Elder Scrolls Online Gold Road Collection. I went and looked this up. It's on PS4 and PS5. This is chapter eight of the Elder Scrolls Online from 2024, as I understand.

3:18:50So, you know,

3:18:51Dustin Furman:obviously TSO has been going on forever and there's a shit ton of content. This is specifically, I believe, the eighth chapter of content. So not a very exciting month, in my opinion. I'll probably add Slam Rancher to my list. I'll never download it, of course, but I'll just add it to my list for fun. Monster Hunter, I'm never going to play. PGA Tour, I just... The funny thing about PGA... it's so funny seeing Tiger on the PGA, on the 2K PGA key art because he was so associated with electronic arts for so many years until his fucking meltdown. That was so funny. Remember all that shit that happened with him?

3:19:22Dustin Furman:With his wife? He crashed his car into a tree. Only barely. Like all that. It was like a very quick, like everything's fucked up for Tiger Woods kind of situation.

3:19:31Colin Moriarty:Yeah.

3:19:32Dustin Furman:He recovered. He did. He's like, I think a lot of, I'm not a golf fan. I think golf's a really cool game. I just don't follow it. but um i think a lot of people are like it's really a shame that he like missed a lot of like prime time where he would have been great and he fucked it up yeah i mean now that's the

3:19:50Chris Sullivan:the bar's low now you know now that looks like now that looks like oh my god yeah no one would

3:19:55Dustin Furman:no one would have blinked an eye if that happened today for him everyone like who gives people like oh tiger's sick you're like having sex with 25 different women good for you man you know like

3:20:03Chris Sullivan:I think he would have had Andrew Tan on his podcast or something I think often about that guy who is running in like 8 or something or 11 you probably know exactly what I'm talking about Colin is he the guy that went like this and made the weird noise or whatever Howard Dean right I think about that guy a lot I was thinking of John Edward because he got like one of his campaign

3:20:30Dustin Furman:advisors pregnant oh yeah yeah and i'm not talking about crossing over with john edward that's like a totally different guy long island's own crossing over to john edward i'm talking about that i think he was from north or south carolina but he ran for president he was fairly popular like maybe could have won a primary maybe could have been a vp candidate and then like yeah i think he ended up doing but it's everything everything seems quaint even the monica lewinsky stuff as inappropriate as it was is like so quaint you know the way yeah that's a nothing burger now I was going to yeah what else was I going to say I don't know it doesn't matter who cares let's move on to the next story the final story is just a 2026 or I'm sorry 2026 January 2026 is sales data from Serkana via Matt Piscatella who shared it on Blue Sky this of course tracks sales data for the United States digital and physical and some interesting things I thought were popping up here.

3:21:28Dustin Furman:First of all, Call of Duty Black Ops 7 back-to-back months is at number one. I don't know if that's just settling into a normal or if Battlefield obviously is fading a little bit. I don't know. I don't know what their expectations are for it or if it's going to rebound and whatever, but it doesn't. That fight, I thought, was going to be a little more. I was surprised by how much of a fight Battlefield put up, but once they put up that fight, I thought it was going to be more contentious. But it seems like Black Ops 7 has kind of really sorted it out. so there's that and then nba 2k 26 and madden nfl 26 are numbers two and three madden especially intriguing since the football season was in the playoffs at that time so people are that hungry for for football even at that moment that didn't already own men and remember this isn't copy sold this is money earned so it's not like they're it's not like they're selling copies for cheaper it's it's a lot of money still being made other important things here let's see gta 5 and number seven won't go away final fantasy 7 remake pops in at number nine i believe because it came out on Xbox Code Vein 2 at 12.

3:22:29Dustin Furman:Oh no 11. Shocking. Do you think

3:22:32Colin Moriarty:so? It's just it's not very good. It's not bad. This is one of the only games I've been able to do like an early review not a review but a video for my channel and it just it runs really poorly but you know anime games they can do whatever they want and still sell a lot usually and anime generally from in my

3:23:00Dustin Furman:experience kingdom come deliverance 2 at 13 hell divers 2 holding out at 15 pokemon legend z a how do you say it za yep 16 but not counting digital copies so way higher than that obviously i thought this was interesting too flight simulator 2024 at 19 it was at 16 last month but that's popping up because of its Sony release as well. So that's kind of cool. PlayStation 5 outsold Switch 2 in both monies made, not a huge surprise, but units sold in the United States last month. What do you think of that, Dustin?

3:23:34Colin Moriarty:I don't, I really don't know what to make of it because I've seen a lot of this stuff go around, like is Switch 2 plateaued and, you know, because it's coming off of the fastest selling console of all time for Nintendo. so there's clearly i want to say a sustaining problem but there has been a lot of there's been some complaints from very hardcore nintendo circles that just none of their like they had their big hitters at launch but since then it's been a lot of switch to additions of switch games and spin-off smaller titles like mario tennis and the musou zelda game stuff like that So maybe they just need some of their big mainline stuff now that Donkey Kong and Mario Kart have served their purpose.

3:24:28Chris Sullivan:I don't care what people expect out of those machines if that's disappointing to them. Like, I feel like almost you, you, what are you, what are you expecting out of, out of a Nintendo machine? If not to not get most things and to primarily focus on the first party stuff, that's obviously

3:24:46Dustin Furman:going to be sparse between release. I also think it's just hard to replicate that level of success. You know, PlayStation three sold half as many units as PlayStation two, like these things and PlayStation three was awesome and it did well. I mean, Sony lost money on it, but I love that console. I think if switch two sells half as many units as switch one that's a massive success in my opinion that's not what they want of course but it's just it's hard to judge things based on that because it's like you're not going to sell 150 million units every time you sell a console it's like really just unbelievable to think that you can do something like that that'd be awesome

3:25:20Chris Sullivan:yeah the novelty the novelty of the machine for the casual person is kind of gone

3:25:24Dustin Furman:I agree with that and I think they're happy with switch one for now they'll probably migrate slowly over but yeah I've been seeing a lot of that too Dustin in terms of the kind of the discourse around is this worrying and I'm like I don't know if it's worrying it's weird though yeah like it is a little weird like there doesn't seem to be very much excitement about it but I think it's just you're waiting for the right games people even point out though that like there was a major drop off in sales between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom which is like even though that the install rate the install base was higher and so there might just be a falling novelty with some of the games that drew people to the console originally like more casual people.

3:26:02Dustin Furman:In other words it might have had a Wii-like trajectory like Wii hung around for years but no one really gave a fuck about it at the end and I wish I used the letter someone wrote in saying like that I was being too hard was checking me and it was reasonable but saying like I'm talking about how Switch 2 is not powerful enough to run games look at the games that it's running at 60 frames and the games he listed were Cyberpunk Final Fantasy 7 Remake 1. And something else that I'm like, these games are six years old. Six. From the PS4. So, um, just wait. Just wait, my friend. Alright, let's get into what we're playing.

3:26:46Dustin Furman:I'll go first and get out of the way quickly. I Platinum God of War Sons of Sparta. Sparta, I was almost going to say. Sparta. Platinum number 202. took me like 40 hours. I see I saw people being like, you can do it like 25, 30 hours. I'm like, I don't know how you do in 25 or 30 hours, but I guess if you're really, really quick. I think the game gets better the more you play it. I think it's good. Recommend it to God of War fans. Recommend it to Metroidvania fans. I don't think you need to check it out if you're neither of those things. And we did an entire almost two hour podcast about it. So go check it out on patreon.com slash last day media.

3:27:16Dustin Furman:And like I said earlier in the show, I'm also just been playing our upcoming game, St. Slayer, Spear of Sacrilege over at Lillimo. So I've been spending just a lot of time on Steam, playing it over and over and over again. And seeing, you know, I wrote the game, obviously, and I wrote all the in-game text and all the lore and stuff. So I'm just seeing how it all sits and the dialogue and all the rest. So I'm still making a lot of changes. We'll be going gold soon and we'll have more information on that. Chris, let's go to you. It says you're playing Counter-Strike 2. Yeah.

3:27:44Chris Sullivan:Why? Do you know why? Because like I, so first of all, I have limited access here. Right. I have my PC library, which is not really where I primarily play. Generally speaking, I'm usually on I'm usually on a console. I don't have a PS4 or a Series X here. So my pool is a little bit limited. I'm like, all right, I got my what I have on PC. I'm not really in the mood to play anything that isn't marathon right now, quite frankly. And so like in the in the days leading up to it, I was like, I need to play something. I'm losing I'm losing my mind. so I figured out you know it's a counter-strike's a shooter I used to play a little bit let me see what's different about it and it's it's significantly different than I remember it's been a long time since I played a counter-strike game but I was kind of getting into it it's not it doesn't hit the spot for me personally that's a very aim oriented mouse oriented shooter that's really not it's not really that heavy on positioning or like managing health or anything it really is just kind of like one shot you're gone but i'm enjoying it like it's fun it's kind of fun to just run around and like and it is mega satisfying to get that one shot like that it feels really good to do it but it's i don't know i just needed like a pure simple kind of thing to play to get my mind off of waiting and uh counter strike was was it and you know to be fair counter strike's good it is really good there's something really pure about it that I quite like there's no sprint which was like immediately like nostalgic to not see your guns swaying in front of your fucking face as if as if that's what it looks like um but yeah I mean I like I like Counter Strike I don't know if I have much more to say about it it's a pretty well-documented game at this point um I will say I felt like an idiot for my first like match or two because i was like the game is set up in such a way that you basically you have a pool of of weapons in your loadout and you have a dollar value that you accrue over the game and so basically like you start off with like let's say like 100 bucks you can only afford like a pistol and as you move forward you get like a couple thousand i think it casts out a 10 grand but like a nice rifle is two thousand dollars or whatever so you spend money and buy them at the base or at respawner at the beginning of a match could not for the life of me find the buy menu on my first on my first so i was just running with a pistol the entire time and people were screaming i was like what are you doing i were like i don't know and then i found that you press b you press b to bring up the buy menu which is like you know i figured it would be like i don't know in tab or you know the pause where like your loadout is or like where everything else is it's a completely separate thing so that kind of fucked me up a little bit but yeah counter-strike is fun it's good it's it looks really nice i don't know if they i think they did like an engine overhaul to it or something because it doesn't look how i remember it looking i was looking that up earlier

3:30:46Dustin Furman:like counter-strike 2 is a newer release right based on on yeah mobile offensive whatever that

3:30:52Chris Sullivan:game's called because i saw screen yeah right so i played csgo and i was checking for csgo and it's not in my library anymore so the counter-strike 2 is so like i think they might have just like kind of like how overwatch 2 is now overwatch again because i've seen lighting like screenshot

3:31:07Dustin Furman:differences between them and stuff like where they look really good yeah it looks great like

3:31:10Chris Sullivan:it's they did a really good job kind of uh bringing it up but still kept keeping it feel it's like minimalist realism which is like i like quite a bit but yeah i don't know if i'm i'm not gonna play much more of it it's really just like a way to tide myself over because I just don't I don't have a lot here right now dude I had to go get a new graphics card for this computer because I have a which was fun oh I bet you were thrilled about that yeah it was I mean I don't need to eat I guess but the uh I ended up like running to Walmart and getting like the only one I had that they had available because it was like there's a bunch of time constraint reasons but I got a 50 70 in this thing now which is nice but I had a 980 in it before it's a very old it's not even that this machine is very old it's that like when i moved to a new place i just took the graphics card out of this one and moved it to my the one that i was going to be using in la so i just put my old ass fucking dinky one from like 2012 in this and it's just not i've ever tried to put i i remember trying to run hell divers last time i was here on the 980 it looked but i forgot that i had that card and it was just like oh man this needs this is going to need some TLC.

3:32:25Chris Sullivan:But, you know, my home rig is, at the very least, updated now, which is nice. I wasn't planning on doing that, but I was going to have to do it at some point anyway. But yeah, so that's really it. Counter-Strike. It's nice. I think it's a bit too hardcore for me. I'm not a mouse guy, really, even shooters. Like, I appreciate it as an option, but if I have to do it, it's like, ah, I'm not into it.

3:32:48Dustin Furman:Yeah, it's too intense. all of those those valve exclusive or like the valve shooter like they're all very intimidating

3:32:54Chris Sullivan:to me yeah they're great but they are in yeah we're like crazy people play them

3:33:01Dustin Furman:dustin dragon quest 7 super battle golf ninja gaiden rage bound take it away yeah so i have

3:33:09Colin Moriarty:finished dragon quest 7 reimagined i loved it this as i've been saying is the game to get me into Dragon Quest and throughout the whole game. It's just so charming. The art direction, the diorama approach to it. I love seeing all the Akira Toriyama designs. The monsters in particular are so cool. My only real complaint is even though the game has been significantly cut down, I still felt like it was thematically a little too long, particularly just the last act of this game, I was about, I was feeling done with it. And the last act is the least interesting in terms of what you do. So it put a little bit of a damper that the worst part of the game was at the end, in my opinion, but overall didn't, you know, change my full opinion on the game.

3:34:10Colin Moriarty:I loved it. Check it out. If you're interested,

3:34:12Dustin Furman:how you would have felt if you played dragon warrior seven, i can't even imagine dude i can't even imagine uh the net so ninja garden ragebound i put it on

3:34:25Colin Moriarty:here i really haven't played enough to talk about it extensively i did want to shout out i'm assuming this will still be the case when this goes live but uh the physical edition of this game is slightly cheaper than the digital version right now on amazon and it comes with a really awesome um, not, not exactly, but in an NES style manual in it. Love it. And I was like, dude, that's sick. And I think it comes with a soundtrack that you can download too, which is cool, but I won't ever do that.

3:34:54Dustin Furman:Ragebound is exceptional. It's an exceptional game. It really is.

3:34:57Colin Moriarty:Yeah. My, I need to get, I played like the tutorial and I'm in the first level. Like I said, I think I played it basically one time, uh, but the immediately, like the pixel art in this game is amazing like it's so insanely beautiful incredible i'm i need to get in the right headspace because i it's so different from shinobi and i just need to play it a different

3:35:23Dustin Furman:kind it's easier than shinobi i think it's easier okay in my opinion yeah it's much more action ranted you know like quick moving um right slash and go jump you know stick to walls stick to come

3:35:39Colin Moriarty:walls.

3:35:39Dustin Furman:I forgot that that's an old joke from there was a review. I wonder, I'm afraid to even look it up.

3:35:47Colin Moriarty:Oh yeah, search that dude. Go for it.

3:35:50Dustin Furman:There was a it was a Spider-Man PS2 review done by, I think by a guy named Doug. We used to work with at IGN a long time ago and I think in the plus minuses at the bottom of the review, it said it was supposed to say like stick to some walls or something and it's like stick to come walls. and it just became a huge thing in the uh in the audience for many years i haven't even said that or thought about that in so long but everyone anyone who was back then knows that crazy crazy with no context i know i just said it like no inner monologue anyway um the other thing which

3:36:30Colin Moriarty:i want to shout out real quick too with this you mentioned colin that uh saint slayer is on steam next fest so it's like all these demos are available right now i played two and one of them was the new vampire survivors game the card game which i wasn't immediately sold on by the trailer i played the demo for about 30 minutes and i this is this this happens to me with demos where i turn it off because i'm like dude this this game is awesome yeah yeah insanely addictive I believe it and I absolutely loved it I was talking to Ben and Jimmy about it last night and I think both of them have over two hours playing the demo and I was like dude I just I want to be able to play it and have my progress carry yeah I'm not even gonna bother like I saw it

3:37:17Dustin Furman:Vampire Survivors is just so fun there's no doubt that that guy knows how to make something sticky what's his name Ponkle that sounds familiar P-O-N-C-L-E I think that's the guy's name

3:37:27Colin Moriarty:yeah that's it so it's really good if you have a honestly any pc could probably run it so uh and i also checked out this game has been viral it's the uh it's the gnome oh yeah it's called berglin gnomes so this is the new this is a new popular friend slot game where it's you and your buddies are gnomes and you need to go into a guy's house and you have like tasks that you can complete like steal a can of soup put something in the toilet and your goal is to just steal shit from this guy that lives somewhere that's awesome and it's really cute and funny because your arms stretch out really far and it looks silly and if you fall too far your legs explode and you like crawl on the ground bleeding and stuff it's okay it was a really fun hour that we played it last night but i've had way better experiences with other friend slop games the most entertaining part was i went around a corner and i realized i was going into the bathroom and the guy that owned the house was completely naked taking a shit i was like holy shit this guy is naked he's taking a shit and he saw me and then he got up from the toilet and was walking towards me completely naked it blurred out his his you know his dick but so alarming to be a little gnome running from a that is alarming a naked man that presumably didn't wipe um so it was all right the main thing though is this game super battle golf which has blown up on steam i think i saw a wario tweet about that they've sold many many copies of this game i'll look it up and my best way to describe it and hear me out here because it's two very different things it's a it's like adding mario kart to golf so it's not quite like a friend slot game though it does have proximity chat but it's like you and your friends we were playing last night it was me brandon ben brad and jimmy and it's a golf game where everyone tees off at the exact same time and you have to run to your ball awesome in order to hit again but where Mario Kart comes in is that there are items that show up on the map and so you'll get like a dueling pistol or a shotgun and so if you're able to successfully shoot uh you're another player you get a speed boost so it's like a really fast chaotic uh golfing game where par for the most part doesn't matter i think if you hit par you do get bonus points when uh you finally complete the the round but it ends up just being total chaos there's like landmines so if you're ahead and you have landmines you can like put landmines where someone's golf ball is and so they'll blow up and stuff there's golf carts in it uh run people over and all kinds of crazy weapons and items power-ups currently i think it's like seven bucks and there's three complete courses we played all three each one is slightly harder than the previous one and it was so much fun we had a great time playing it it's a little content light i would like to see them add more items and more courses but i'm like surely with how many how much this game is sold already they're they're

3:40:59Dustin Furman:definitely working on more it's a brilliant idea it's 400 000 copies as of today after a week

3:41:04Colin Moriarty:400 000 yeah from no one even knowing about this game at least i didn't uh so i yeah i highly recommend it uh if you're on i believe it's pc only for now but with successful things like this they sometimes migrate over but uh it was it was nice it's been a while since i've been able to play a multiplayer game with the boys and so we had a great time just uh blowing each other up

3:41:29Dustin Furman:719 on the store 2.87 million gross probably 2.5 after the cuts because steam won't start taking crazy cuts from you until you start making more money so um that's sick good for them yeah i was looking to how excited they must be because their last game got it came out in 2024 i was just looking at it's a game called overthrow and i'd never heard of it but it has mixed reviews 200

3:41:55Colin Moriarty:mixed reviews um and they must have been oh yeah must have been so amped you know to have that hit

3:42:02Dustin Furman:yeah so congratulations to them good so it's a great idea yeah it's a game very very funny

3:42:10Colin Moriarty:there's been a lot of chaotic golf games like i think the most recent mario golf has a mode kind of like this where everyone tees off at the same time and you need to run to the ball and stuff like that but oh i i've never heard of it it's uh i i remember playing that mode and thinking it was just okay this is clearly a much better executed version of this idea of a full chaos uh chaos golfing with items so uh i recommend it a lot and for seven bucks dude what's the it's fully worth what's there i just it was so fun that once we had played all three courses like ah man i would really like there to be more play so i'm sure we'll play again even with just those courses and run through those again.

3:42:52Dustin Furman:All right. Well, that's what we're playing. Let's wrap up the show now, as we always do with six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts and ideas from the audience over on Patreon, patreon.com slash last stand media. You submit your inquiries on the threads in the newsfeed each week for the various shows. Cigarettes goes live on Wednesdays and are deleted Thursdays. So you have that brief amount of time to submit. And we begin with Alex Porto, who says, hey, CDC, we often assume PlayStation studios have full creative freedom. But are we really expected to believe that Gorilla, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, London studio Ben and Bluepoint all independently and coincidentally chose to pursue live service at the exact moment Sony decided to push live service.

3:43:25Dustin Furman:That's bullshit. This is deliberate and it needs to be explicitly said. The live service push is actively eroding what made PlayStation special in the first place. The results speak for themselves. Most projects are cancelled, years of top tier teams, especially Naughty Dog, wasted and multiple studios shut down. Yes, PlayStation needs to get into the space, but not at this cost. The closure of Bluepoint feels like Sony crossed the line, making me rethink how I support PlayStation. From now on, I'll only buy physical first-party single-player games on my PS5. Every third-party title will be on Steam.

3:43:51Dustin Furman:It won't make a dent of a difference, but it's all I can do as a consumer. If this is the direction Sony is heading in, as stated by Herman Hulse, then I'm fucking out. What do you think of that, Dustin? Pretty upset. We have an upset person here. I do think that people, I will say, the Bluepoint closure sucks, but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like the straw that broke the camel's back as opposed to it in and of itself being this meteoric thing. It's their they're great team. It's not the end of the world. It's just part of what it means. I think the people rather than losing them themselves.

3:44:23Colin Moriarty:Right. I'm thinking about his question about are we expected to believe that they chose live service? Because I do think that that is been an interesting factor where it's like, well, I think Naughty Dog did indeed choose that they wanted to do factions or Last of Us Online, whatever it was going to end up being called. Um, and in the, it's hard with Bluepoint right now too, because of like, we were talking about the reporting earlier, like what's true, what isn't true. I wonder, could it be a case where maybe teams were incentivized to be like, if you have any live service ideas, uh, we're able to provide a lot of funding for that right now.

3:45:09Colin Moriarty:And so it's like, maybe there was an incentive. so it's like yeah they picked maybe blue point did pick to do a live service but they were heavily encouraged to i don't know does that make no makes perfect sense i mean that's what i was

3:45:24Dustin Furman:gonna that's what i part of what i was gonna say was if you have a boss that walks in and says i'm looking you know this is really important to us anyway you guys figure it out and then you just ignore what he just said was important yeah it feels like like so i think that they probably could have done whatever they wanted but it's as you said like there's a why would you ignore this directive if you have the option right don't you want to be in the good graces of your bosses be where they want to be and try to contribute towards the new goal as opposed to being this antiquated thing it was that they didn't know the direction that it was going to end up going in where it's kind of a dead end in a lot of ways and this is why i think that there should that weak leadership is really at the heart of a lot of this problem a lot of these problems because as I've said it a million times, I know it's repetitive, but Sony should have simply invested all this cash outside and explicitly told the studios that do whatever they do to be like, just focus on the games you make, like why we bought you or why we acquired you to begin with or why in Santa Monica's case, why we started you up to begin with.

3:46:27It's like Bluepoint,

3:46:30Dustin Furman:you make remakes and remasters. Where are you going there? Naughty Dog, quadruple A level. story-driven action games, you know, and so on and so on. Stay in your lane. It's good to stay in your lane, but they never were instructed to do that. They got, it's not, it's not hard to give artists and entertainers and creatives tons of rope. And before you know it, like they've, they've hanged the entire studio with it. Like that's not new. You have to have, that's why I'm, when people are like, oh, uh, with the new CEO of Xbox where they're like, she's not even a gamer. and it's like who cares it's a it's a matter of like who you surround yourself with to make the decisions that matter when it comes to games and it's just clear that the games tastemakers are not who they should be at playstation i think that's just clear um do you have anything you want to add here chris about this um honestly i feel like everything that i would have said has been said

3:47:27Chris Sullivan:already but i think yeah i think ultimately it is it it's a little sneaky right because it's a way of to imply right that oh yeah we're we're looking in this direction uh you don't have to do it but we're pretty much going to guarantee you funding if if you come to us with something like this as opposed to a single player game, which would be, I guess, maybe a little bit harder. That's forcing without forcing, and it is kind of like this nebulous kind of space.

3:48:08Chris Sullivan:Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to make of it, really. I think it's still ultimately... I mean, I think you just have to have some level of intuition to know, especially as Bluepoint. It's one thing if you're... and this might sound disparaging in some way towards blue point i don't really mean it to but like it's it's one thing if you're santa monica or naughty dog and you're like you know we want to make this thing okay well your whole thing is that you build shit from the ground up and you build new you know what i mean like you steward things blue point your whole thing is is remakes and you know recreating things that have been created it's not to say that you can't do anything you want but like i mean this is your strength and so even if there was like some kind of fear of of seeming antiquated i don't i i just feel like your gut should tell you that like no we're blue point we're gonna make we're gonna do a remake of something that will absolutely

3:49:12Dustin Furman:fucking hit right and i also think that because some people say like well it seems like they wanted to do this you know and it's like well you just have to have leadership to say like too bad right like the yeah like you're talking about the foresight to say like stay in your lane and even if people are eager to say like it's like we didn't buy you for this purpose we don't want you for this purpose we should and if we do want you for all these purposes we shouldn't want you for these purposes it doesn't make any sense yeah it's like a sign that everything's off to begin with you know blueprint was never going to print money like i don't know what sony thought they were going to really get involved with where they what do you think these guys are going to make a 20 million unit seller like a zero dawn or a god of war they're not that's not what you bought them for that they're first of all there's like fewer than 100 of them like 70 right yeah 70 or 80 and they and they they are what they are and and they and people that work there have to understand that they are what they are i understand they made blast factor in 2006 other than that they've done remakes and remasters and they're good at it and that that should it should it's what i was telling jaffe it's like it's so disappointing because at the embryo of sony's movements over the last few years with something smart it's just botched really steward it correctly it's like yeah buy bungie for the games as a service you know rat you know the rationale of games as a service expertise that obviously blew up in their faces and that was the biggest investment that they made but it's like yeah nix is to like get to offload the pc stuff so that they these guys shouldn't be porting their own games to pc or worrying about like who cares about any of that like offload it valkyrie as an internal services studio so you don't have to you know go to third parties and get help and go on the market and potentially pay more for artists and animators and all that kind of stuff.

3:50:49Dustin Furman:Neon Koi didn't work out, but it's like, yeah, go make mobile games. And like the idea was it was right. Even with Housemarque, go make small arcade games on an affordable budget, you know. But they just in most of these directions, they just they just fucked up. So what? Yeah. As I understand it, it's like and I think this has been has been relayed. It's like the God of War thing with Bluepoint, it's multiple levels deep because it's like they were purchased after Demon's Souls and then put on God of War to help them ship Ragnarok. And it's like that was the first bad decision. And then since you gave them two years working on God of War and they began an expertise on it, now you're like, well, what if we leverage your knowledge in God of War?

3:51:33Dustin Furman:And then it gets the ideas going. It's like they should have never been working on God of War at all unless they were remaking the God of War games, which is probably what they should have been doing now we know it or it seems like they're remaking those games internally and it's like are you serious are you fucking serious like you wouldn't take blue point and be like the next 10 years if it's necessary are going to be spent on god of war one two and three that's a fair use of a time of an austin-based texas studio of 70 or 80 or you

3:52:01Chris Sullivan:rally them up to 100 whatever it's like yeah what were your expectations that you bought four remakes it is it's what another thing too is like they really skipped a step too like it's one thing for housemark to go from like independent games independent single-player games to like more polished like triple a single-player games like that's still in the in the realm like that's the natural progression right but like you have a remake studio that's then going to build a live service game like that's so you're skipping steps they haven't even made their own thing yet and so like it's just yeah i don't know that all of it is so ill not ill conceived because as you said like the you know the the beginnings of these these relationships make sense but it's so poorly managed and poorly handled and poorly thought out and any fucking idiot on the street could have told you not to put blue point in in in the trenches on a god of war live service anybody

3:52:56Dustin Furman:right of course and then and then chris you also say like well there's like well we can more profit out of them than if they're making more remakes and it's like well then why did you buy them you should just let them alone you know like or contracted them as needed i it's it's very it's crazy i'm yeah i'm very bothered by it like it and the thing that bothers me the most and i think that this is undersaid is not like sony execs greenlit a god of war multiplayer game at a studio of fewer than 100 people after shutting down a years in development multiplayer game at a studio with 400 people and telling that studio that they don't have the manpower to support a multiplayer game.

3:53:43Dustin Furman:Yeah.

3:53:44Chris Sullivan:Multiplayer of a multiplayer mode that they've made some version of already, by the way. Right, exactly. It's like, it's fucking nonsense.

3:53:52Dustin Furman:Like, I don't even understand. And you can't even square those two things like that. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

3:54:01Chris Sullivan:Dude, I would even argue that like if, if they were making last of us factions and they realize like, oh, we don't really want to, we don't, we don't have the manpower to do this. Okay. Is there a way you can shift that over to blue point then? That, that, that wouldn't be the ideal thing. But like, I mean, dude, like, cause certainly the last of us factions would have yielded a better result than like the God of war life service game that, never happened so i so i don't i don't know it's just i'll always lament the last of us online and factions and all that like i just feel like they the the calls are so bad that they don't even

3:54:38Dustin Furman:know which games to release they don't know what studios to invest in they don't like firewalk haven bungie blue point now is a ridiculous purchase they bought it four fucking years ago yeah so they didn't even release any like the funny thing is is that between being purchased and being closed they didn't even release anything so it was just a complete waste all of it not only the money they dumped into whatever project but just buying the team i'll never get over like how bad the tastemaking is or was maybe it's just different now and i continue to look at herman holst but jaffe and jaffe brings up the point he's like well it could be other people and i'm like yeah but like where does again where does the buck stop like who's the guy who's supposed to know better whose fault is it I would be like, I would want to know whose fault all this was.

3:55:28Dustin Furman:If I was an internal, I would be cracking fucking heads like coconuts, dude. Yeah. You know, like we wasted all this money. All the time is the bigger shame. The money would be the shame. And of course, they're sad about the money, but the money would be a shame if they were in bad shape. They're fucking lucky they're not in bad shape because none of this matters. And as I keep saying, I would go around and be like, we could be we could be we're doing so well. We could be fucking killing it if we had these these various cannons, first party cannons firing at the same time when they're supposed to be.

3:55:54Dustin Furman:You guys fuck this up. Who's responsible? Who's going to go? And by the way, there are plenty of people that can do this job. I know it's difficult to make bets and be like the guy who signs off on the two or three hundred million dollar game. I get it. Or like the 50 or a hundred million dollar acquisition. But someone's got to have the balls to do it and someone's got to have the balls to do it right. And. Haven's on bar. We were talking about first party studios being closed like Haven. We don't even consider them because everyone just kind of assumes like, well, that's got to be on borrowed time.

3:56:23Dustin Furman:How much money are the deviation cancellation? All the other internal cancellations, as I said, were kind of hard on Sony because they canceled these games. Most of them were never announced. So it's like you can kind of forgive them that they never even got to that point of like marketing the game. But it's not like a scale bound or like a right. Or what do you call perfect art? Even God of War. It's like it's a little rough because it's like they didn't announce it. But still, you can be critical of the fact that like you've just been spinning your wheels like that. You wasted that by all rights.

3:56:52Dustin Furman:They should have a game out right now.

3:56:54Chris Sullivan:but they don't but then dude it would have even because that that leaked right the the god of war life service game so so there's a reality where just like we didn't know any of that and they just they just vanished yeah and we would have no idea

3:57:09Dustin Furman:it would be especially perplexing because i think the assumption if we didn't know about that god of war game would be that they were making the god of war remakes um right and people would probably and then that would have made the whole story even stranger but i i don't know, man. It's disappointing. I feel like the ship is being righted. I feel like a lot of the proof is going to be in the pudding in terms of second party. They're even spending on third party exclusives. Again, I think Townfall being exclusive is weird. It's cool if you're a PlayStation fan, you get the game, but it's like they're really trying to differentiate things and spreading the field as much as possible as they heal in a way.

3:57:44Dustin Furman:Again, the money out the window is bad, but the time man what a waste what a fucking waste of time it's a bummer everyone's basically missing a game from their catalog now each of these studios that got you know and i still am not convinced that we're going to see games from all these teams we'll see and then of course there's the new teams and how they all fit in team lfg and dark outlaws both going to be games as a service it seems like we'll see we will see Andrew Walsh wrote in and said hey CDC first off hope all is well with your family Chris you were definitely missed on last week's episode thank you I gotta say though boys I was a little shocked last week when brainstorming Corey Barlog's next game none of you mentioned uncharted just think about it Corey is definitely someone Neil would trust with the IP now imagine a scenario where Corey went to Neil and pitched his idea for a Cassie Drake story your game.

3:58:38Dustin Furman:Jason Schreier did say it wasn't a new IP, but it may feel like one. It all adds up. One last thing. Can you imagine when they show the trailer? They don't mention the studio right away, but just the game. And then they show the title, the Uncharted Cassie's Fortune, then Splash Green Santa Monica Studio. The reaction would be wild. Could I be on to something here? Congrats on 400. When I first read this, I'm like, no. And by the way, I still feel like that's probably not true. But there's something interesting there. The thing that interests me the most about this is that naughty dog and santa monica are both in the same place

3:59:13Chris Sullivan:they're a couple miles from each other i think i've been the both many times and

3:59:20Dustin Furman:that level of interoperability makes it so that those two teams could even be working together on something which would be which would in itself be dynamic and interesting and wild like a naughty dog and Santa Monica production of uncharted or something.

3:59:35Chris Sullivan:Yeah.

3:59:35Dustin Furman:I feel like that would be interesting. I, I, the thing is, is that I'm so disappointed that Corey isn't working on something new and knowing that it's like something that's old, but feels new. I'm like, I don't know what the fuck that means, man. Well, to be fair, he's, he's established himself as, as being pretty

3:59:51Chris Sullivan:good at that. You know, that is kind of what God of war 20 is.

3:59:55Dustin Furman:Yeah.

3:59:56Chris Sullivan:Yeah. And so, I mean, it's, only one it's not necessarily a trend but he's he's clearly got some because dude on paper god of war 2018 should be a fucking disaster like everything about that game is kind of like it's i'm kind of amazed that it got even past the planning phase because just the premise of it and it's it's easy to like pretend like that that's not the case now when we have it and we're living in a post god of war 2018 world where like it's it's it's beloved and accepted but like i don't know dude like think about any other protagonist from that time like imagine they like there's a new gears of war game and you play as marcus phoenix raising a kid and it's like sent it's like purely sentimental you know like it's a completely different vibe type of game like it's not the same it's not a hack and slash game with like you know a high camera anymore it's like this personal kind of over the shoulder like it's that's a risky fucking thing to do and they kind of nailed it and so maybe they look at that and be like you know Corey's he's only done it once so like we don't know if this is a trend or if it's like a skill set or whatever but like I mean that's a pretty that's not nothing maybe he could do something with Uncharted to make it feel like crazy interesting and different and unique because God of War does feel like a new IP like it does not feel like God of War no no not at all not at all

4:01:22Dustin Furman:you're absolutely right I am. I know it's a joke with the audience. Like, I'm convinced that there's an Uncharted game. Like, I just I refuse to believe that Sony is not investing in an Uncharted game. Like, I. It's just unbelievable. Not only the way Uncharted 4 ends, as we all know, but because. It's huge. Uncharted is fucking huge. And it's been a long time, dude. It's been it's been 10 years. It'll be 10 years this year since Uncharted 4 came out. I mean, I think that almost anything can go away for 10 years in games and come back. and feel fresh again like that's enough time it's a little hopium i guess for me to feel like that like that if he is working on something established and we aren't going to get it from naughty dog itself then the next best thing is to get it from santa monica or some other studio and so i'll take it but again being if i'm a if i can pick it would just be something new but i again it's just it's clear based on on reliable rumors that it's not something new and so we do have to figure out how it it blends in with what we know exists already and i guess uncharted could be one of those possibilities dustin how do you feel about this are you can are you compelled by the the locality of santa monica are you compelled by like chris is saying the the cory's ability to make things shine are you compelled by the live action trailer that

4:02:38Colin Moriarty:clearly showed cassie drake yeah there's a lot of compelling elements initially when you were reading this and when i was looking at the notes i'm like you colin i was like no no because i I think my gut reaction was like, why Santa Monica, why wouldn't you have them be making a new IP or refreshing something else? Because initially I was like, well, you could have another team that isn't as big as Santa Monica do an uncharted game, but it doesn't really make sense. Uncharted is, even though you're right, it has been gone. And there hasn't been a new uncharted game for 10 years. Of course, they did the Nathan Drake collection on PlayStation 5, but there's also a major movie that came out for Uncharted.

4:03:30Colin Moriarty:And so Uncharted is an extremely important IP still to this day, I'm sure, to Sony. They understand the potential within it. and so what it initially sounded like a wasted opportunity but it's like no you probably want one of your most prestige teams working on a new uncharted game and um you know at this point i i think you would agree with me colin it's like i really i don't want nonny dog to make an uncharted

4:04:00Dustin Furman:game ever again i i do i just don't know how it fits in with the other things that i want them to

4:04:05Colin Moriarty:do as well you know yeah i just feel like they've they've done four games in that ip uh obviously with different people at the head of it but i feel like it would be it would be way create more creatively boring to me to see a new uh naughty dog uncharted game but as chris brought up to have Corey do it, who is able to take new spins on things. I'm pretty, I'm pretty compelled. I think I'm like you though, that I am still leaning, like probably not just because nothing ever happens.

4:04:41Dustin Furman:Yeah. In other words, you said, you said it, it's right. Exactly. Nothing ever happens. And that is true. But, and I love that whole mantra, but at the same time, because it keeps you grounded and it's relatively true, but things do happen every once in a while. And it, would be exciting. I would want Naughty Dog to make another Uncharted. I just don't think it fits. There's an order, a pecking order for me. It's like Intergalactic obviously is a big thing and that's probably going to be big enough, I would assume, where they would probably investigate a sequel immediately. You have to assume The Last of Us is going to come back with part three at some point.

4:05:13Dustin Furman:I think that's inevitable. And then something new even beyond that. And then Uncharted would probably slot fourth. So there's no room and that might be why. Because I was kind of compelled and we've talked about in the past this idea that they had a secret team working on it. And maybe it's just Santa Monica. Yeah. But it seems like such a well-kept secret that it would be surprising that no one would say anything to anyone about it for all these years. The other thing that makes it intriguing, though, is that it sounds like it's going to be revealed this year for launch next year. So it's been in development for a while, and maybe it was intended for an earlier time.

4:05:44Dustin Furman:You know? I am, Andrew, I appreciate you writing it. Very thought-provoking idea here. Yeah. And we'll see what happens. and maybe and how will be different to will be very interesting. Like, will it be a more stat driven equipment driven? How do you like what do you do to Uncharted to change it? Does it is it not Uncharted anymore if you do things to it? But it is interesting how much time has passed just because we got all of Uncharted. So the PS3 trilogy, Golden Abyss and Uncharted 4 in a 10 year period. And now it has been 10 years. So it's we got all of that in a 10 year period. So it's time.

4:06:22Dustin Furman:and I feel like Uncharted is such a guaranteed hit as long as it's done right and what's interesting too is that people would be upset they were kind of upset with Ben doing Golden Abyss but I thought Golden Abyss was pretty good but it's almost like Santa Monica is one of the only teams where I would actually it would get a huge pop if it was them doing it that's that's

4:06:40Chris Sullivan:how you know by the way that it's not happening right right exactly because everything that is true is shit that we never would have it's shit that we never would have done because it just doesn't it doesn't sound cool in premise and it just objectively isn't it reminds me too of what

4:06:56Dustin Furman:we were saying when stranger things the last season stranger things came out and there was like everyone thought there was gonna be that secret episode and it's like it's too cool that's too good of an idea you have to understand that that's a too good of an idea that's too good of

4:07:08Chris Sullivan:an idea and so that's why it's not it ain't happening you're gonna get i wouldn't be surprised at this point if that uncharted game is just not real like or what is that trailer dude what is they were making it or they were making they were like ah because that's also possible that that

4:07:26Dustin Furman:trailer haunts me and i know people roll their eyes at it but i'm just like well why is everything

4:07:31Chris Sullivan:else in the trailer real except for that it is mega strange that doesn't make any like i'm sorry

4:07:36Dustin Furman:that that's simply nonsense to say like no that doesn't mean anything and it's like but but everything else in the trailer means something what are you talking about like of course they

4:07:45Chris Sullivan:they casted and shot that so it means something obviously like obviously it's crazy and to me

4:07:54Dustin Furman:it's obviously cassie drake like i feel like it's it's so who else could it it has to be some wild

4:08:00Chris Sullivan:that would be a wild thing to do though in the first place at all to even reveal that in that

4:08:06Dustin Furman:way but i want that's what i'm saying earlier i wonder if this was just supposed to be ready a while ago and yeah and that's why there's so much confidence that it's going to be shown this year and going to be launched next year because like it is late you know long in the tooth as it were yeah internally maybe we'll see because cory didn't direct the second god of war game no this has been going for a while and if you're going to do an uncharted game you're going to want to make sure it's right especially if it's not an audio dog yeah neil talks about producing another game. Is this the game he's producing?

4:08:44Dustin Furman:He makes it seem like it's an internal game. That's why I wonder, like, are there Naughty Dog people working on it? Certainly they would produce it and probably write it and stuff like that or help write it. But yeah, I don't know, man. Look at what Andrew Walsh is unleashed. Pro Pac-Man wrote in and said, hey, boys, curious if you guys saw the recent rant from Kind of Funny's Blessing. How do you say it? Do you know how to say his last name? Ado? Adio. Adio? No, Adiole. Adiole? Adiole Jr. Regarding Windows Central's interview with new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma or Aisha Sharma. I'm butchering everyone's names.

4:09:20Dustin Furman:Blessing called it a softball appearance in quotes softball and criticized Xbox leadership for choosing an internal leaning outlet and Jez Corden for their first major sit down. Blessing is catching a lot of heat online for this take and I know Colin hates softball interviews himself. Where do you boys stand on this one? What would Chris ask Asha if he had the chance? Why Chris specifically? That's interesting.

4:09:39Chris Sullivan:um i would probably ask crazy i would probably ask pretty good questions because i don't give a shit about my journalistic career right exactly that's exactly right i'd be like uh so you plan on making everything with ai huh yeah kick that immediately yeah i have a lot to say

4:09:55Dustin Furman:about about that but i also don't really think about like i don't i she's like a steward that doesn't matter um i i'm surprised have you guys been seeing the discourse about this I saw a little bit of it yeah I'm surprised it's like become a thing actually and people can go look it up I watched it and then I looked a lot of the reactions to it I see both sides to be honest I think the thing that the men I want I want people to say things that are men in the or women in the arena right I think I'm critical of journalism a lot because I do journalism I was a journalist really a journalist and then I still do journalism and try to hold myself to some sort of standard um I feel open and I feel how do I put this I'm trying not to be like mean or an asshole it's like I put a lot of work in and I've done things that really mattered in terms of games journalism over the years, not like so much recently, but like go and look up any like PlayStation franchise or PlayStation game and look how many times I'm cited in a lot of these things in my research and like my, my interviews and the things that I've done.

4:11:08Dustin Furman:Just look at Naughty Dogs. Like I'm, I'm the most cited thing on that, that page. So I feel like I come from a place where I can be critical of journalism because I've done it. And I feel like I want to, I would rather hear from people in the arena. Like as far as I understand, I don't know this blessing person at all. I kind of funny, but like, he's not a journalist. He's never really contributed in that way. And so it's easy to say like, what are his big contributions? In other words, to journalism, the games journalism. And I think that there should come a level of understanding that when you're getting first access to a person like, like Jez was to these Xbox executives, it's like, you have to kind of lay the groundwork before you get into anything crazy.

4:11:56Dustin Furman:And unfortunately, when you get this level of access, and I know this from my own perspective is like, and my own experiences is like, they often make these interviews, especially these preliminary interviews short so that they just say what they need to say and then they're done. And there's no time for follow-ups, but there's nothing to follow up on and probe about until you get that shit out, if that makes any sense. So like you have to let them say their piece first then you start probing and penetrating the piece you know like the various things that they're saying does that make sense in other words jez probably literally got 10 minutes or 15 minutes it's in 90 minutes you can like get all the shit out and then get into the nitty gritty but until you get the shit out and you can't be like what are you doing it's like well we haven't even said anything yet like so here's like the plan and here's what we're going to do so when i think of kind of funny and the people over there it's like i would i would take the I would take that feedback much more seriously from a person like Greg.

4:12:55Dustin Furman:Then I then I who is a journalist who is a trained journalist who went to journalism school who knows how to do it and has an eye for what is and what isn't. But I'm not so interested in hearing from and it's not I don't know this blessing person. So I'm not trying to be mean to him, but just generally because you see it with a lot of different people. It's like you're until you know what it is until you've really done it. I feel like I'm less interested in what you have to say. And I feel like that anyone who has interviewed these executives before, and I have interviewed many executives before, you have to like give it a little bit of leeway before you get into the nitty gritty there.

4:13:28Dustin Furman:In other words, there needs to be a narrative that exists before you destroy the narrative or before you question and pierce the narrative. That's all I wanted to say about that. But I also so that's one side of it. The other side is I think people are vastly overreacting to this. And I do want to throw that out there as well. People are mean to each other all the time in this industry. it's always it's shocking to me how like certain things bubble up it's like that's probably not even the 25th meanest thing that was said by someone else in the industry to someone else in the industry last week so it's a little you know what i mean it's like yeah so i i when i watched it i must admit i expected to hear much worse i have been critical of jez publicly and privately in terms of some of the things that i feel like some of the i i do agree that he has given a softball or not a good in a softball interview.

4:14:17Dustin Furman:I don't want to say that that that's putting that's like putting meaning into it. Not ask. I've asked him, why aren't you asking these questions? So I've been critical, too. And people have been critical of me, although I don't I feel like people are critical of me in my interviews where I'm too hard on people. And it's like, well, I don't know what you want with that. I don't think anyone's ever accused me of having a softball interview. But if we're going to have a limited interview, by the way, you should frame it as such that's what we did with neil last time he was on right it's like right they they are making him available to speak about the show i could ask him all these things about the games not only is he not going to answer and isn't allowed to answer but we'll just never have him on the show again because we we we even tried to pin him down when we said we wouldn't that stuff's fine yeah you have to make that clear though that that to me is the difference right what what's what what's up

4:15:07Chris Sullivan:nothing i'm getting jesus christ no i'm sorry i'm getting my friends i have terrible friends and so they're like they're they're spamming my my steam and they're like when you get non bro and it's just they're kind of it's they understand that i'm working and so they're just they're evil i'm always i'm always nervous when someone starts when you start laughing or smiling

4:15:30Dustin Furman:even though i know it's probably nine out of ten times has nothing to do with me and yet oh 100 yeah it could it has in the past and yeah like maybe like a percentage of the time yeah it

4:15:42Chris Sullivan:happened kind of recently i feel like did something i feel like something like that yeah

4:15:44Dustin Furman:like you guys did i said something like where i said a name and you and then you didn't jump in but it was funny and then i ignored it because i'm like oh they're laughing about something that has nothing to do with me so i never really know what i'm supposed to be doing but um i didn't mean to derail you no that's not fine it's totally fine so i i wanted to say both of those things It's like, I think journalist on journalist crime is fine, you know, like because it's like we should be critical in trying to hold each other up. I don't think Blessing is really a journalist from my perspective, as far as I understand his role.

4:16:15Dustin Furman:He's a podcast host and a media critic. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, media pundit or whatever. I think you from that position show a little more grace to someone who does do the leg work of doing those kinds of things. Maybe I'm wrong. maybe I mean I don't know anything about this person maybe he does have this huge array of products but on the other hand in Blessing's defense and the defense of this argument it's like I don't know that it was that crazy you know and I do understand people's skepticism but I don't know that that's Jez's fault as much as he's like the messenger and you're shooting him now that all that stuff's laid out the next interview you can simply point back to all this stuff or quote it and you're off to the fucking races you know so that to me is like kind of how I saw it and I think it was a little you know so it's a little it's a little overblown and a little

4:17:07Colin Moriarty:unfair to Jess I think yeah I think it's important to look at the context of an interview like this was a as you said Colin probably short and clearly a with an intended message behind the interview if Jez had like a live 30 minute interview where you can really get into it and they're on the spot and it's kind of like do or die like you have to answer the question or else you're going to look like an idiot then yeah absolutely and to kind of funny's defense I think that a lot of the interviews they've done with bigger people have had some interesting questions because I saw there was people like well look at kind of funny has done these which i don't think they're being critical of kind of funny they're being critical of blessing which i don't know um what interviews he's done i'm not saying like what interviews i literally don't know yeah i don't either like when um to be honest like when greg interviewed someone posted a clip when greg interviewed todd howard and was like that you said that this was the game that you wanted to make for so long and now it's extremely polarizing how does that feel you know or something along those lines it's like that's that's a that's a pretty hard-hitting question um just be like yeah a lot

4:18:29Dustin Furman:of people think your game sucks yeah i mean it's but that's what i'm saying like i i i greg's an og you know and and some of those guys are more in that vein in my opinion um and that's why i was like yeah maybe this this criticism would come better but maybe greg doesn't even share that criticism. I don't know. I just think that like, it's okay to be critical, but at the same time, I want to hear it from the right people. The people that, you know, have done the work, like a lot of it. And I've done a lot of that work. So I feel like I can say something. And I think that a lot of other people have their own things to say, but I think it comes off as mean spirited and to a lot of people too.

4:19:05Dustin Furman:And I understand that I'm just surprised by that because like, are you fucking kidding? Like, are you like, look at the way people talk to me every day.

4:19:14Chris Sullivan:like look at the way people talk in general like that that was the thing with me where it's like i saw there was a big thing and i like jez jez is really nice he actually he reached out to me recently and he's a good guy i like i like jez uh i don't really have really anything negative to say about him i don't follow everything that he's done but people were saying like oh man this i saw this this thing trending and i was expecting i feel like what i saw was like is jez even bothered by this you know what i mean well he probably is because i feel like he's taking

4:19:43Dustin Furman:a lot of heat lately which i as a friend i feel bad about you know like i i like jez and i right

4:19:48Chris Sullivan:but like i've heard i've heard worse things like infinitely worse things about jez oh yeah sure then was in that video oh yeah yeah definitely and especially with the context of them they're they're on a on a podcast they're kind of talking off the cuff they're not put this dude at least from what i understood about the clip wasn't positioning himself as like i'm a better journalist or whatever they're just giving their like kind of take on you know their perspective of an interview which is like it could be uneducated or whatever but it's like it's I don't know it just it didn't strike me as it surprised me that it was news

4:20:24Dustin Furman:it's just one of those pieces of niche industry drama I think at the end of the day um yeah so hold on a sec

4:20:36Dustin Furman:oh sorry I just got an email from Barry I just want to make sure it was not nothing blowing up because we're just like we're so close now and I know he's like eager to enter certification so if I'm standing in the way I want to make sure I'm active yeah I don't know I I actually saw a clip of Jez going around recently and I want to have him on the show in the coming weeks we've had him on the show many times again I consider Jez a friend like a personal friend not just like a you know someone in the industry but he it was really reflective he was saying like I in so many words like I understand why some people think I'm like a shill.

4:21:10Dustin Furman:And I think a lot of it is lost in the, and I understand his position a lot more now because I kind of agree with him in a way where it's like, he's like, I'm trying to be an advocate for the fan base. And that's a tough line to walk, but I understand what you mean. Like you want to do right by your people and you don't want to be like the bearer of like bad news on a constant basis to people that rely on you to maybe uplift and inform them in different ways. And it's a tough position to be in. Like imagine if Sacred Symbols was the podcast that was about the thing that was kind of going away.

4:21:44Dustin Furman:What would that look like? It could become really dark and ridiculous. It could become really fanboyish. It could become a lot of different things probably. And in a way we're kind of able to do, that's why it's always funny when people criticize me or us or Sacred Symbols, you can tell who listens and who doesn't. because like there's no one on God's green earth that would think that like we don't criticize Sony or criticize Sony enough. Some of the most common feedback we get is that we're too hard on them and that we don't like anything. So that's not going to be a point of confusion here, but it comes from a place of benefit that we can kind of do that and not get away with it with the audience, but things just kind of have a trajectory and we are just commentating as the fucking comet flies through the sky.

4:22:25Dustin Furman:There's no, nothing's bouncing it off course. And so I'm sympathetic to people on different beats. that have a different, you know, the Dukes are dealing with it right now and find Dukes doing better than ever, really. But it's funny, like, I don't know. So I just try to look at it in a more human way. And again, I think the biggest thing is just the surprise that it became an issue at all. But so, yeah, anyway, I think people being like, blessings, God, apologize. And like the mea culpa capitulation is like, I don't know, man, about that. Like, it'll be all right. It'll be fine. Everyone will move on.

4:23:04Dustin Furman:Buffalo Bill luring Fat Princess into his pit wrote in and said, hey, gents, reviews are coming out for Resident Evil 9 and like clockwork, I am already seeing outrage for the games reported 10 to 12 hour runtime. I understand $70 is a lot for people, but can't they see that longer does not equal better? I personally feel like this is the perfect sweet spot for an action horror game. What were you guys expecting from this game? I'll be listening to your response while I work on speed runs and challenge runs on re9 this weekend we talked about this a little bit earlier and i know chris and i are into it dustin i assume you are too the shorter 10 to 12 hour play time i think this is a special like listen i want sometimes i want to spend 50 hours with the game i'm not saying i want every game i ever play to be 10 to 12 hours long survival horror is kind of perfect in the 10 to 15 hour range it kind of loses its luster if you if you stick around too much so i have no problem with this and i'll also reiterate dustin resident evil games are replayable there's meant to be played again they're meant to be played multiple times how are you feeling about this i just feel like

4:24:04Colin Moriarty:it's like oh did you know that you can eat for only ten dollars a week by only eating bread and peanut butter it's like yeah um you know 70 is a lot for if you're only viewing from an efficiency of hours for a game it's like well yeah i guess i guess 70 is a lot for a 10 to 12 hour game um go play fortnight you'll never have to spend a dime and you can be entertained forever uh but i i get it on one sense that you know there's only people only have so much money to spend on games and so maybe a and how long you're going to spend on a game is an important factor and if that's true where you're looking to get a bang for your buck type of thing then that's fine um i totally get that uh that i i've talked many times about how the only game i had when i had an xbox 360 for like a year was oblivion and it was great yeah because i was the only game to have that was the only game i had played for so long i didn't have any money for any other games, that's great.

4:25:15Colin Moriarty:But you're right that a game like this, 10 to 12 hour runtime, it's perfect. It doesn't overstay its welcome. And clearly the reviews, I mean, I'm sure there's some that talk about having a shorter runtime, but there isn't like an overwhelming consensus. Like, oh, it's just a little bit too short or something like that. So I have no problem with it. And as you said, Resident Evil games, so replayable jeans jeans review on the Washington Post is all about how he played Resident Evil nine nine times. So I guess even from a value perspective, too, which not all those you're most of those playthroughs after are not going to even be 10 hours.

4:25:59Colin Moriarty:They're going to be much quicker.

4:26:00Dustin Furman:A lot of them will be quicker because they have to be, too, because of the trophies and whatever you're going for. like that's the thing with me with our resident evil games and just survival horror in general is in my in my experience long experience 30 years of playing these games it's like every first play there was this clumsy mess you're wasting ammo you don't know what the fuck is going on like you're backtracking when you don't need to you're wasting i mean it back in the day with fucking ink ribbons which i loved i love ink ribbons i think that's such a cool idea to like limit how many times you can save um and then you play it through a second time and you know what you're doing and it's like much cleaner and it's fun because like now you're like oh i i there's not so much tension now i can really play then you go after the collectibles and you try to do the herbalist run and you try to do the run where you don't use guns and whatever i like it personally i think and that stuff's not overwhelming when you know the game is 10 12 hours maximal so uh where are you on well chris i know where you are we don't need to yeah yeah i love it i

4:26:53Chris Sullivan:think it's great i don't think i don't think any of these things like i i don't want i like to spend hundreds of hours in video games but i don't like it's one of those things where it's just like i would love a game that takes me 10 to 12 hours to finish that i want to spend triple that amount of time playing you know give me a short incredibly replayable really dynamic really like you know never the same never the same outcome twice kind of game which is not that difficult um and dude i can't even tell you i can't even tell you how many times i've beaten and I don't know, like the Halo 2 campaign or something.

4:27:31Chris Sullivan:It's probably literally like 100 hours. And that's a five hour, that's like a five, 10 hour game max. So you don't need to overstay your welcome,

4:27:40Dustin Furman:in my opinion. And again, I'll just reiterate that I think survival horror loses its sharpness if you stick around too much. I agree. Apollo wrote in, said congrats on 400 episodes, fellas. Thank you. Thanks for countless hours of quality content. I've been listening since episode one and been a patron for a few months now, but this is my first time writing in. I started playing Claire Obscure over the weekend, and after hearing Colin talk about how he uses guides often, I decided I'd give a spoilerless guide a try to get all the trophies and see as much of the game as possible in one playthrough.

4:28:08Dustin Furman:What is the best way to use digital guides? I currently have a tab open on my phone browser, but that is not convenient at all since I have to want to lock it with my face every time I pick up the phone. Do you print out guides? Use a laptop or tablet whose display is always on? Guide overlay on AR glasses? Please show me the way. I will say, man, and we've We've discussed this a lot in the past on the show, just in different references. But the. The web experience on a phone is so bad that it's unbelievable. Horrific, like unbelievable. We were talking earlier about like not believing someone versus something being unbelievable.

4:28:46Dustin Furman:And like I go on some of these websites like I use IGN. Sometimes I'm like, this is unbelievable. This is unusable. so I learned long ago that the web is not the way to go on your phone and and so typically your phone is it's not great you know it's not I do two things um and there's it depends on like what I need for the guide so if I need like more active help what's a good example like a god of war goes sons of Sparta I was like running around looking for all the collectibles and I found everything I could naturally and I'm like I don't want to spend any more time with this game so like whatever 10 % I was missing.

4:29:21Dustin Furman:I'm like, I'm going to look up what I need. And I had a laptop with the browser open and I was just using like a guide, like a video guide and just clicking the different timestamps. It's like, I'm missing this. So where is this? And so on and so forth. That's a really useful way of using a guide, but it's distracting because then it's like, oh, what's going on on Twitter? Oh, I got an email. It's very unimmersive. And I try not to do that. And I don't typically use guides very actively like that. So it's not usually a problem. Printing guides out is ideal. And this is especially great with you were bringing up a spoiler free guide Apollo like I typically use spoiler free guides too which is why I always laugh when people bust balls.

4:30:00Dustin Furman:It's like I don't know like I remember I should well we had the argument over what is that fucking role playing game from the from the persona people I can't remember it doesn't metaphor metaphor. Yeah metaphor but And we were having the argument on whether I was spoiling the game for myself or not. And I was literally reading out loud what the guide said. It's like, go talk to this person.

4:30:23Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah, I remember that.

4:30:24Dustin Furman:And then like three days later, it's like, it's just telling you. And I'm like, this is not spoiling anything for me personally. I have a little, Mike has it actually. I use it. It's like a clear pink clipboard. And if your guides are like 20 pages or less, I don't really mind doing it at home. It's like a kind of a waste of ink. That's a really great way of doing it with those spoiler free guides where you can just kind of check along as you go. You just keep it nearby for when you need it. I love the physical guide thing, but digital guides have obviously been a huge part of my life. And I think that's a great way of doing it too.

4:30:52Dustin Furman:When I was at Northeastern, I used to go to the school library and print out guides that were so heinously long that I would often get yelled at. Like they would have people manning the printers and like flipping out. If you print it out more than like 10 or 20 pages at a time. And so I would do it like really slowly, like over many batches. And I'm like, dude, how much do we pay to be here? Come on. I'm going to print out whatever I want. And I would do it in the middle of the night. usually too because I've always been a night owl because they would often not have anyone or the person who was like supposed to be minding the shop like didn't give a shit and I would just be printing out like all sorts of shit expensive Damon veteran wrote in the tear says hey CDC I've been playing love ish based on Collins recommendation and I've really been enjoying it I'm on my way to the platinum but the RNG for filling out the friends list has been a slog how do you feel about RNG in games what's a memorable experience good or bad you've had with RNG in a game keep up the amazing content best podcasting gaming by a mile let's go islanders thank you for writing in and thank you for the kind words lovish does have a little bit of rng stuff but i must admit that it took me like an hour less than an hour to manipulate the game to you know i just play basically you you get random scenes in between stages and so you have to just solicit very specific scenes from happening and so you just have to keep beating stages over and over again until they happen but there are stages you can beat in the game in literally five seconds so you can just constantly chip away at the rng until you finally draw and i did it and it wasn't a huge deal, but I understand it's a little frustrating.

4:32:17Dustin Furman:Dustin, do you have any RNG memories that you want to share? This is obviously the bane of many, many a gamer's existence. And yet, if the RNG was not sophisticated and complicated enough, it wouldn't be that fun. Sure.

4:32:29Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I think good RNG means you won't think about it being RNG because it's fresh. It's when you know that you're dealing with a situation where you're just waiting for the right drop that you never get it can make you go crazy I see Chris smiling because I know he's probably thinking around the same lines and I was mean Destiny specifically in Destiny 1 this is like an iconic and I'm sure many people dealt with this is that there was the best weapon in the game for a while or the best heavy weapon in the game was the Gjallarhorn and it was very hard to get the drop you could only get it at the end was it Crota's end

4:33:13Chris Sullivan:i don't even think it had like a way to get it like it was just you literally just had to luck out and and get i don't think they added a way eventually to get it right and it zur that fucker he never had it he had it the first i remember this he had it he had it the i think so this is getting a little bit inside baseball with but like basically once a week there would be a dude

4:33:37Colin Moriarty:who would go who would be in the social space this slimy dude in a cloak with like a tentacle face

4:33:44Chris Sullivan:yeah it's clearly a resident evil 4 merchant callback like clearly yeah um but he would be he would be in the tower the social space and once a week he would be there i think on the weekend he would be there selling an exotic of some kind so if you had enough coins or you had enough money it was expensive but you could get yourself an exotic from him and on the first week or the second week i think he had that gun available but that early in the game no one knew what the fuck anything was and everybody was just hoarding their money so they missed it yeah but that ended up being that ended up being the big thing like where like if you went into a raid the people would always ask like do you have gallarhorn and if you didn't have it they would kick you yeah it was like a class system it really was it was really i remember being like when it dropped for me it was so exciting because it was like winning a lottery ticket i was like i'm not one of you fucking urchins anymore i have this weapon but yeah yeah that was that was the one that dude

4:34:45Colin Moriarty:i was so mad the other situation i can think of is the dark souls 3 platinum i can't remember exactly i think i needed to get all the rings and you need to be part of some faction or something and you need it you needed to farm a specific type of item for part of the platinum and i remember reading guides at the time they're like oh just farm these three enemies at the steps of anorlando and just do that until you get it and i remember brandon got the platinum trophy he's like yeah that took me about six hours of rng for that drop i'm like you know what i'm good i'm good i've beaten this game i've basically done everything i needed that you can do in the game other than get this these trophies i'm moving on so dude rng trophies like that maybe a little rng is okay you want items to feel rare certainly for the excitement of when it does drop but oh yeah it was too much for me so no dark souls 3 platinum unfortunately yeah destiny was all mine

4:35:58Chris Sullivan:like all the negative and all the positive because i remember getting my debt getting that gala horn was like amazing and then i remember and it took me months of just just playing constantly and i remember specifically i think a friend of mine he was kind of into into destiny but he kind of wasn't he was just he was doing other things and he would play with us every on on occasions and we we went into a pvp match and he did the worst on our team the word by a mile like it was i think he had like maybe 15 deaths and six kills maybe something you know what I mean like a lot and then the game ends and then the post game screen comes up and he gets Gallahorn as a drop for being like after having the worst performance I've ever seen and that I think I turned I think I went to bed I think I remember being like there's no way you just got that did you get that and I had him confirm it's like yeah Gala you couldn't even pronounce it I mean like okay I'm going to bed ain't no way that just happened and I think it was before I got mine too so it was just like he'd played like maybe one two days max awesome infuriating that's chance classic it's memorable and it's I have a fond memory of it now but

4:37:14Dustin Furman:I don't encounter RNG too often in the single-player realm because I you know you do once in a while if you want like a rare drop or something from a in a single-player role-playing game or something but the most memorable RNG for me still is really one of the first times I ever became aware of it as a function in a game which is in final fantasy 4 there is a rare drop do you know this doesn't call the rat tail have you ever heard heard about this before and it's extremely rare no um so in final fantasy 4 i think this is how it works there's a one-eighth chance that the fight will end with a drop so you have one in eight chances of just getting a drop and then when you fight the right enemy they have a one in 64 chance of dropping the item which brings it down to something like one in 500 um and this is like a but you use this item the rat tail as part of like getting excalibur i think like a sequence of events that bring you to like the most powerful sword in the game and now i remember being a kid in battle and grinding those battles out to get it and how annoying it is and i love the things with rng though as you're saying chris where like you every once in a while you stumble upon like really good rng like unusual rng where it's like oh i I don't you're reading like horror stories online and then you and you just get it.

4:38:30Dustin Furman:You're like, all right, I'm good. And then other times where I'm like, I'm convinced the game's broken. This is working so badly. But honestly, I don't really encounter it very often because even in games with loot and drops and stuff, it's like a lot of stuff is just fine and good enough. And so I don't give a shit. But interesting question nonetheless. And yeah, Lovish does have a little bit of an RNG component, so be aware of that. But I don't I didn't find it ball breaking by any stretch of the imagination. and those were the last trophies I needed as well. Damon, thank you for writing in.

4:39:00Dustin Furman:All right, that's it. That's all we have for this 400th episode of Sacred Symbols of PlayStation podcast. Good to be here with you guys. Thank you for being here. Chris, goodbye to you. Any plans, anything to share before we go?

4:39:10Chris Sullivan:Yeah, I'm going to get myself some food and then immediately jump on the marathon. Oh, good. Yeah, exciting. Been waiting for this for years. And so, yeah, I'm really pumped about it. I'll be streaming it a lot too on my, on Twitch. and it's by the way that's like a at I think it's just Chris Reagan on Twitch but if you're curious I'll be on there probably an absurd amount over the next during the server slam and certainly on launch so yeah I'll be all over it but I need to eat oh my god alright well be well

4:39:41Dustin Furman:good luck to you stay alive because you're hungry I don't want you to I don't want you to faint hit your head you're walking up the stairs you hit your head you hit your head Dustin Furman executive producer

4:39:55Colin Moriarty:goodbye to you anything to share before we go uh well i'm hoping maybe i can play marathon a little bit tonight before resident evil this weekend tomorrow morning holly has a baby appointment check-in and i realized driving to this appointment last month that we passed a taco bell that said it had breakfast no have you ever had taco bell breakfast no god dude it's amazing it is shockingly good the breakfast crunch wrap supreme 10 out of 10 and i said last month i'm like next time we're here if it's a morning trip we're doing it let's go time so i'm looking forward to that you know it happens to me every time with uh big release weekends tomorrow i'm happy to do sacred symbols defining duke it's during the work day i can't always you know play a game during the work day but sometimes i don't record so we have that saturday big family event for holly's family her grandma's birthday i love her grandma dearly i just wish it wasn't the weekend resident evil yeah it's unfortunate maybe she'll understand it's like it's a hangout it's a dinner it's a whole it's a whole evening i'm like did you explain to them that resident evil 9 is coming out

4:41:11Dustin Furman:no no i didn't no i don't i just feel like that wouldn't look that wouldn't look positive for me

4:41:19Chris Sullivan:well they might understand that's all i'm saying they might understand i love resident evil they

4:41:23Colin Moriarty:might so i gave it i love that leon kennedy that leon yeah he's so sexy that's the big thing that kataku article dude what what the fuck you talk about that jesus wasn't the thing about like i'm

4:41:40Dustin Furman:on prep which is the h but is that the medication you take to not get hiv so is he suggesting that

4:41:46Chris Sullivan:leon kennedy has hiv i think he's they're suggesting that uh that he's clearly got something yeah you spend a lot of time around like i don't know man if if if you knew everything like from the perspective of uh of a woman you you meet leon kennedy and you're aware of everything he's gone through you think he's not contaminated with fucking something yeah impossible right yeah

4:42:11Dustin Furman:you're probably right yeah you're probably right that's that's a wild headline though he's gotten

4:42:15Colin Moriarty:super aids or something from the t virus oh my god yeah or he might be the anti-aids at the same time you might never be able to get it he can heal them yeah good for him he's like et but with aids uh but yeah that's it thanks everybody 400 episodes thanks again cool we did

4:42:34Dustin Furman:yeah for me yeah I got a so midnight tonight I'll be able to start playing Resident Evil 9 and I think I'll do that so I'll probably I got to work out I got to eat shower and do all that kind of stuff and then I'll probably do a little Saint Slayer stuff leading up to midnight and then and then it'll be go time time to get into them into the role of Leon Kennedy and whoever the other chick's name is all right time to go thank you guys out there 400 episodes couldn't do without you appreciate you patreon.com slash last day media for early ad free access. Last Stand Media dot store for merch, including beginning Monday, your Allegheny Hogs t-shirts up for preorder.

4:43:11Dustin Furman: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 is conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia.

4:43:50Dustin Furman: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.

4:44:26Dustin Furman:Thank you.

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