#425 | Am I More Than You Bargained For Yet?

41:19Colin Moriarty:i can't even remember that's how how far we are i know we're all i mean i'm more shot than anyone has ever been shot you got to get your sleep that guy that's the k the caveman guy he doesn't understand you got to sleep yeah there are people out there that brag about not sleeping have you ever met those people oh yeah and i'm like i don't know how much you're gonna be bragging when you have dementia yeah now i might have dementia at some point too but that's gonna be for totally different reasons it will definitely not be for lack of sleep i assure you let's get into topics of discussion got a nice one to start things out with ron mk don wrote in and said hey boys i finally pulled the trigger on becoming a patreon member this week after three years of freeloading and i must say i am very pleased with the amount of sacred symbols plus content that's now available to me thanks for making my days in the office something i actually look forward to with my newfound ability to write into the show after all these years i wanted to give a special shout out to two fellow listeners who turned me on to sacred symbols long ago.

42:25Chris and Porter, my older and younger brothers, respectively. For a long time, I don't think either of them knew I would silently listen to the show after hearing them talk about it. And I wanted to say a quick thank you to them. I have many fond memories of playing games with my brothers, whether it was playing Star Wars Battlefront 2 with my younger brother 20 years ago, or whether it's playing Marvel Rivals. Ark Raiders and Marathon with my older brother today. Gaming has always been a core part of our lives. Luckily, it's something that keeps us together in the present, even though all of us live states apart.

42:50Now sacred is part of that connection to gaming. Thanks for all you guys do over at LSM and shout out to the bros for all the gaming fun over the years and for subtly indoctrinating me in the sacred cheers. It's nice. Brotherly love over sacred symbols. I love to hear that. It's wonderful. I'm very close to my brother as well when I can find him.

43:11It's good that brothers out there continue to play games after all these years. I like this Chris and Ron and Porter. It's kind of interesting, right? Porter's an unusual name. I like it. But the other two are somewhat conventional names. And I'm surprised by that a little bit. Usually you have either... My family has weird names, all weird names. But then you know families that are like, oh, this is Mark, this is Donald, this is Christopher. A little more conventional names. That stuck out to me a little bit.

43:43Colin Moriarty:Yeah, that's nice. It's funny. So all three of them listen to say, I wonder who found it first and did they did they find it independently from one another just because I remember like when I listened to podcasts beyond years ago I only knew one other person that even knew what it was and I don't know anyone who knows what sacred is outside of you know knowing I work here but so that's kind of nice little family affair. yeah I love thinking about how people find the show and I think it's probably just by happenstance often and that's how I find a lot of the things that I love and god there are some good shows out there you know you know we're the best gaming show I'm not gonna have like there's other better gaming shows but but some of the podcasts I always do like heed the call I always bring up like I found that you know that's a newer show but the guys used to do a different show and I just found them, you know, 10 years ago.

44:41Just, I'm like, I need something to listen to. And then, yeah, you end up just falling in love with the content. Same thing with the rest is history, which I've found only in the last couple of years. And that show is fucking awesome. So funny, so insightful, so many people doing so many good things out there. A lot of little micro communities in these niches of people that just exist and percolate more talent out there than ever and you could know anything you know the movie Good Will Hunting like what's so impressive about that about Will Hunting in that movie is that he had to like go to the library and like go out of his way to learn all this shit but now it's just like imagine how smart he would be today it would just be on his phone you can know anything it's amazing yeah

45:31Colin Moriarty:it really it really is a day i was thinking about like when you're a kid and you see like a cool toy on tv or like a kid at school and it's like oh i want that well good luck you got to find it somewhere yeah you gotta find it at kb toys and it might they might not have it right so it's like it just lost in the void things just got lost you couldn't look it up i used to love kb man it was more expensive right it was like it was expensive by a toy store standards because it was smaller and i think it might have even been franchised and stuff but it was always in places where you kind of needed the break the interstitial whether it was the shopping with your mom at the mall right there was there was a kb next to a supermarket that i my mommy's bring me to and that was like we're going to fucking kb dude or like you know when i was a little older i'm like all right i'm going to kb she would go you know shopping and then i would go meet her you know what i mean and i loved that and and the the what i remember especially during my star wars figures era was their star wars figures were expensive walmart was the place to buy star wars figures because it was it was four they were four dollars you can get them a toys r us for five dollars at kb they were seven but the thing that you wanted to do with kb was because there were so there were fewer people buying them there you would often find rare figures at kb and so you would gladly pay the seven dollars if you could just get your hands on whatever and that's why it's so funny i remember that and that was kb was also the place where i saw like the pyramid of jaguars and it's like in my mind yeah this day where i'm like oh man no one knew i should have just convinced my mom to buy all these and put them in a fucking storage unit i remember the wall of ps1 games behind the counter oh yeah the games of course i'd love to see i wonder kb toys like that's something that's like i just want to see a photo of that wall like what's on the wall what year was it you know yeah it's funny you say that because i have i have a very vivid memory of going to kb and seeing there were two different metroid boxes you guys probably wouldn't know this but there was like the original metroid box that was more you know the old style nes boxes with like the sideways that they all look the same they and then they re-released metroid later and it was in this yellow box that you might be familiar with that's a really beautiful yellow box and i remember seeing it behind the and being and thinking it was a new game because i was like what is that and then i think oh you found a picture yeah here's a picture that man this is just yeah yeah this is this is early because there's long boxes on the wall yeah with yeah you can see like crash one is in there during the tamagotchi ad is maybe one of the most oh yeah one of the most nostalgic things here yeah the n64 games or you can see the n64 games yeah um yeah yeah those were the those were the days also do you guys remember buying games at toys r us with the ticket i like that as well that's a very nostalgic thing too did you guys ever do that we didn't have a uh have one near us oh you never experienced yeah i never got to experience that we had one that was about 40 minutes away but that was like my parents thought that toys r us was super expensive so it was games there normally yeah i mean to be fair games were all priced the same at all these stores pretty much but i guess i guess maybe as like a normal consumer wouldn't necessarily know that because because a lot of things aren't like that games are for some reason yeah um mostly because i think they're low margin but the for the for the uh the retailer but yeah for people that don't know out there at Toys R Us it was so funny it was interesting what place to buy games because you would just go down this aisle but it would just be all these pockets with sheets in them paper sheets in them and it would be like pictures of the box art and then you would flip it up and it would be the back of the box it'd be like these photocopies did you ever do this uh Chris no I I have some experience with Toys R Us but it's not all that like Toys R Us is where I went to find action figures that i couldn't find really the real the reality of is like where i used to get my games was i used to go to cross count the cross county mall in yonkers and there was a place called software etc oh yeah and that's where i would go and i really loved software etc um and for my action figures for my normal toys i would go to a pharmacy there was a pharmacy I'm telling you there's a pharmacy that was like I think like three blocks down it was it was called Lemac Pharmacy on McLean Avenue in Yonkers and I remember specifically they had this one alcove with toys but it's weird because like I go to I go to Walgreens now or something or like CVS now and there's a toy section it sucks right this place this was this was an awesome alcove it had like Dragon Ball Z action figures it had like Spider-Man action figures it had like like bay blades and stuff and so like i remember like this is kind of amazing like but i remember like being made fun of because people were like you get your toys from the pharmacy it's like i have the same toy bro we have the same action figure it's the same but i remember i remember getting bent out of shame about that like but so i so i never really like i would go to i never got a game at toys r us because it was like the toys r us was always further than software etc and software etc i just associated with games so like i never i never did the ticket thing um i only went to toys r us for like more bespoke kind of like like the spider the spider-man web shooter kind of toy or like a specific dragon ball action figure i remember the dragon ball action figures used to have used to come with a set of dragon balls it would come with like maybe two or three toy dragon balls and you'd like try to collect all seven of them but yeah like i not no games from toys r us as far as i know i might have gotten a ps2 we might have gotten ps2 from toys r us but that was a christmas gift so i i didn't go i think i just remember the bag it's just like software etc it's funny like so that's like more like an eb or a gamestop they would all really become the same company babbage's um yeah but that that was an interesting experience because that was like when you would just go up to the counter and request the game right like you would just say like i want this back and i remember um back at some like mom and pop uh video stores you used to bring the tape up and then they would place it where the tape was in their like system and give you the tape so like it was like their like system of knowing what was in and out so there are all these little systems and then toys r us you would it was toys r us was it actually wasn't an incredibly satisfying place to buy games.

52:15I mean, that's the honest truth because you didn't have access to the cases themselves. You had these like small photocopies of the cases and then you would take a ticket and the ticket would just have like the name and like a barcode and a price. And there would be like, so like some pockets would have no tickets in them. That meant they had no copies of the game. Some would have two tickets in them and that meant they had two copies left and so on. And then you would have to bring it up to the cash register and they would ring you out. And then you would have to go and wait at this counter, this like special counter that was beyond the registers.

52:42And then they would like take it from you and do all this and then give you the game it was quite the process yeah there was no other there was no other place that really did it like that but it is a little piece of nostalgia get your tickets now for the dog stars it's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear out there kill or be killed jacob alordi there are people out there they need our help. Josh Brolin.

53:07Colin Moriarty:Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley. Ow. Okay, tough guy. And Guy Piers. Arm up! The Dog Stars. Directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters August 28th. Get tickets now. Rated R. Under 17 not admitted without parents. The Southern Drinker says, Hey y 'all, I pray Dustin is on this episode because I have a question for him. How many more Dustin is Japanese jokes before you pull a Columbine 2? Thank you and have a great day. We're not even an hour into the episode yet. Is it too early for a school too early uh you know it's okay i i understand um i feel like brad's been getting it bad ever since the the brad cares jokes i feel like kind of have have have become the number one joke though maybe it's cooled off while i was gone i'm not sure not really no not really it i have read that like the the repeating of jokes that is like an autism thing i think oh yeah i mean if that's what you needed to figure that out i guess there that's your that you could use that as evidence but um but i was i've been watching uh here's another piece of it i've been watching episodes of mr rogers neighborhood before i go to bed on youtube really yeah like it just came up one day like you know like a week ago that's awesome and i was like oh and i'm like what is this and it's just fascinating Pittsburgh's very own yeah indeed indeed yeah legendary I loved the set that they brought out in the 80s where he had like the he had like the uh stoplight on the wall and the fish tank oh yeah if you watch earlier ones from like the 70s and 80s like he it's not like that it's a little more basic wonder where you got that from yeah Mr.

54:55McFeely the postman

54:58Colin Moriarty:they tried to do a new mr rogers thing called daniel tiger's neighborhood i've heard that yeah i so when i was working in my old job he had a young kid and there would always be daniel tiger on because we worked out of his house and i remember standing there and watching it once during when i was insulted by it you know that they would that they would try to use the mr rogers legacy for this bullshit yeah the the show itself when i'm watching i'm like this is just timeless oh yeah there's really nothing about this that at least the few episodes that i've watched it where i'm like this really speaks of a certain time or like a kid wouldn't get it i think that's totally fine it's interesting anyway doggy style with miss frizzle wrote in and said hey con what have you been drinking in the pool this summer i know you enjoy a couple michigan beers so if you're able to find it down there i strongly recommend the cheboygan brewing blood orange honey it's become my new favorite the last couple years have a good one that sounds too complicated for me i just like drinking i like ipas and uh yeah michigan i do drink a michigan beer all day ipa from founders uh it's really really good it's only like 4.1 which is really low for an ipa um because i would i mean i would rather drink like we have a local beer here in virginia called great return which i'm like a huge fan of but it's seven percent it's like it's like You got to take it easy.

56:19It's Wednesday. I can't be. But man, that's what's so weird. I float around in my pool almost every day and just drink one beer. I just have to do it. It's a total Pavlovian thing at this point. Like, I don't know how to go in the pool anymore. Now it's like, oh, I got a live eight. Only a few more weeks left, though. The days are getting shorter. I mean, they've been getting shorter for a long time now, but for like, you know, more than a month. But like, I'm out there at night and I'm like, wow, it's getting a little getting a little cooler at night. It's getting a little. Yeah, it's all starting.

56:58It's that it's that mid. I remember the way this time of year felt when I was a kid. And now it's kind of a little more meaningless. There's like something very melancholy actually about this time of year. In my mind.

57:11Colin Moriarty:Because summer's ending and like. Yeah, it's like everything's over. It's over and you're entering this next year. Every year is a new year for a kid. That's something you don't realize as a kid when you're an adult. It's like the years just blur together when you're an adult. It doesn't matter at all. But every year is this thing. That's this adventure. sure and the year starts in september right that's what's funny about it because like new years was kind of like whatever right like my my my my year is september to june right exactly around like the chinese new year or like something like that yeah like right and then summer is this like ephemeral kind of like like my summer like 2001 to 2004 like i don't really like i can't i I don't know if I can really distinguish those summers from one another, but I can distinguish the school years like very, like very, very easily and very vividly.

58:02Colin Moriarty:Definitely. So summer was summer. Summer always felt like this place outside of time. Right. It's the end. It's the vacation at the end of your year. Right. It's like you're going back to the world. Like this is like your this is your obligatory existence. And like now I get to go back into the world. it's like oh i get to you know ride bikes at the at the at the track or whatever um man this is like bizarrely wistful yeah it is because there was like there was a conflict in inside of me many years this time of year where you're sad and it's over but you're excited and you're eager and you got your school clothes and you remember that i don't know if you guys did that thing where it's like i gotta go get school clothes like and you'd buy like a few pairs at least for me i'd buy like i knew people that got a lot more than i did but like i'd buy like a few pairs of pants i get like a new pair of shoes get a few shirts and that was a later experience for me because i went to catholic school right right right i missed that i went to catholic school for middle school and i i didn't have that then which kind of sucked because i then like you had a kind of because my parents had to buy those clothes and then you had to justify like well i also actually need things to wear generally speaking um i i remember specifically in yeah because i i started in junior high i went to start going to public school and they're like so what do you want to wear and i was like i don't know like i've never thought about this ever every time i'm outside i'm coming from or to school so like i'm just in my school clothes i never once thought about like what my weekends look like outside because i was just like wear shorts and like a t-shirt like i never thought about style and everybody else had like formed their like identity or whatever by then so like i was just like i don't know what the fuck i remember thinking i remember thinking i would just wear my fucking catholic school shit and i was like you can't and then my parents are like you can't do that you're going to kill you you're gonna throw in a locker um it's funny man like i remember when i was in catholic school for those years i what i always found so funny was like seeing people outside of school in their normal clothes or like when you would go to like a bat like a school basketball game or things where you could be in like street clothes and then you'd see everyone in their net more natural style and like you got a little bit more of a taste of who they really were because they beat you that out of you you know and it stuck out to see them that way right way that it wouldn't wouldn't have stuck i remember that too that's a that's a really interesting feeling that i completely forgot even existed as like a separate thing to pay attention to right but like like paying attention it's like oh you wear this did you have the thing too where you wore different clothes on gym day yeah yeah me too that's a catholic school thing i think it wasn't super different i think we i think we still had the same shirt but like the it would just be sweatpants instead of uh you know uh slacks or whatever the hell it is yeah we would wear like we had options of shorts and sweatpants and then we wore like a polo shirt instead of like a button down yeah i'll never forget that that that polo because it was like it was like this gross yellow it was this heinous yellow that i hated it was like a blue like little embroidery of like saint matthews on it and i just hated it so much it's funny man to think about that that's a shared that's a shared thing you and i have where it's like that's a lot of people don't go to catholic school especially anymore so it's uh private schools are big i've said to that my school was catholic and it was like we had bible class we said a prayer before every class you probably did the same thing where you had to say like hail mary before every class or our father before every class um but it was also had a secular angle to it like where we had some Protestants and even a Jewish kid and they were able to just not do any of it we had a kid with the last name literally Katz k-a-t-z which is like the classic Jewish last name and it's and I remember thinking I'm like and I was so jealous of him because I was it was like we had to go to like confession or whatever or we had to go to like Wednesday mass and he would be he didn't have to go and I was like it's so funny how similar our experiences are because we have to say that I remember thinking like I remember actually going to public school and thinking like actually less free than the catholic school was like we were like it was more liberal in the sense of like yeah do whatever you want like they let us kind of just like after school i remember this distinctly because i loved it and i was so just so sad when it like went away when i went to public school they just gave us the school basically like at the end of the day a bunch of teachers went home there would be some staff that would stay stay later grading papers or whatever but it just became like a rec center basically and like we would just run around we were just like let's go into the gym and play basketball or like play dodgeball and in public school it's like you got to get the fuck out of here get the hell out of here go home if you can't stay in the cafeteria and study but you you couldn't just wander you know what i mean and like open the gym closet and like like fuck with the uh those like little scooters that were just like a oh yeah square with wheels you know i remember that distinctly it's like this is a weird this this this is not most catholic schools yeah it's that's cool i i um i have a weird i don't know how i fell into this like i just i was such an entrepreneur even as a young kid like my my my sister dana's youngest boy dash reminds me a lot of me and that he like just is like he isn't going in the ninth grade i think but he's he already has a job he like worked all summer like he just wants money right and it's not because he wants he wants to buy things like he wants access to the things he loves he's a huge nerd and when i was in catholic school i somehow found my way into this position in seventh and eighth grade where they would pay me$25 a week.

1:03:29So$5 a day. It was like, it was like fucking slave labor. And I would stay for like two and a half hours after school. And I had, and I just sat at this desk in front of this door to let parents in to pick up their children because the door outside was locked from like a afterschool program. That was like my entire job. And I was like, what the fuck is going on here? It was so weird. It's like, yeah, this kid, he's 12. We're going to post him at the locked door that we keep locked. So we don't have a situation in the school but when an adult comes to the door you just let them in

1:04:00Colin Moriarty:it's like that was the rule yeah it was the rule it's like if an adult comes just let them in yeah which is hysterical in retrospect but yeah like that's so funny yeah i used to sell comics after school i used to like draw and like apparently i was good enough to sell comics there's no way those comics were good enough to sell but people would give me their give me their money anyway I mean, I'll take it. But. I just always wanted and money always burned a hole in my pocket like crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. I like just couldn't I never had a thousand dollars to my name till I probably graduated college.

1:04:34No, it's like it was like it was certainly not. Yeah, it was like I would I would save enough to just buy video games. I would save just enough to buy, you know, later I'd buy beer and pot in college or whatever. It's like I just. I never I always was just living the paycheck to paycheck, basically. but it just didn't seem that dire because it wasn't because I wasn't really responsible for

1:04:53Colin Moriarty:anything you know what's funny about that it's like I remember specifically having that feeling too but like also like I thought of it's just like I'm gonna spend my money because like I don't know somebody's probably gonna shoot us because that was like because that was peak maybe not peak you know fear around that kind of stuff happening but it was like it was ingrained in your head like you did your school shooting drills and shit like that and I just remember being like i don't want to save my money you know i'm gonna buy my video game what i'm gonna have a thousand dollars and some size some idiot's gonna come in here with a fucking machete no i'm gonna play my goddamn games 100 100 i remember uh in eighth grade my last year in catholic school i had this thing set up in my room where i had like the things i wanted on like these pieces of paper and i so it was like i want this video game or the you know whatever i wanted an ad yeah you had a vision board yeah yeah like i had yeah i had i had an ad at like i wanted an ad at which i remember being like 75 bucks or whatever that was like a big vehicle that i wanted and a few other odds and ends and then i would like try to split the money between them and even then that didn't it didn't work i just had a lot of interest i think a lot of kids do yeah i wish i mean dude I've wasted so much money.

1:06:11I mean, when you think about all the money you got as a kid and then all the wasted, you know, thousands of dollars just on nothing.

1:06:18Colin Moriarty:What are you going to spend it on? Yeah, it's not a big deal. The Corn Rocket wrote in and said, hey, boys, long time, first time. Colin, I just wanted to let you know that you have a brother in arms up here in the wastelands of North Dakota when it comes to digital ownership fight. I recently emailed our congresswoman and both of our senators. I didn't expect much, but as luck would have it, my letter was forwarded on to our Senator Kevin Kramer himself. Not sure where it goes from here, but I had to do something. I appreciate everything you guys do and keep on fighting the good fight. It's excellent to hear.

1:06:44And I wanted to bring this up, guys, because I had my first meeting this past week. So I'll let people know a little bit about how that went. I met with the legislative correspondent. So every congressman has a certain amount of money to spend on staff. famously AOC hired a staff half as big to pay our people twice as much because staffers are typically underpaid so like it could be vacillate between whatever it is I don't know yeah I think you can have like six people you can have like 12 14 I don't know but there are all these different assignments people work at the home office in their district or the home offices there are two home offices in my district one in Glen Allen one in Yorktown where the American Revolution was one in case you're curious.

1:07:26And then, of course, they work in Washington, D.C. And so I was talking to the legislative correspondent who was a kid in his 20s. He was just promoted to legislative correspondent and really friendly guy, had a good rapport with him. And this is the guy that kind of fields outside inquiries about the congressman's potential.

1:07:51I don't know, interaction with any legislative priorities that he might want to take. And it was a very constructive conversation. And I think that we moved the ball down the field. I actually, I worked, I worked entirely off. This is the document that I was working off of when I was talking to them about, I, I was talking a little bit with, with Brad on summon sign, I think, where I was saying, you know, I was starting to get in my head too much where I'm like, I'm overthinking this. I'm a natural communicator. And it's one of the things I'm good at. I think I I'm likable for many people. A lot of people don't obviously like me, but I think I can I think I'll be fine.

1:08:28Just start a conversation about this, answer the questions, try to lay it all out. So I think I did a pretty good job. um where we left it after our meeting of a half an hour was uh the guy that i was dealing with was like all right this is very interesting he asked a bunch of questions like what what what the goal was like what we'd want to see happen and what the problems were and who the companies were and some strategy sort of situations and then he's like all right like we are let's see like how we want to do this like this might be something that we want to play with and help with ourselves.

1:08:59I want to see if that's one. So that's like one possible route. However, he did say to me, and I said this when I was preparing, and we talked about this on the stream last week, where I'm like, my guys really, you know, my congressman, I live in a Republican district, a safe, like Republican district. So he he's very, I think, into armed services, and natural resources. So that's kind of his thing. But I was asking them. Certainly, you're in all these different caucuses. who's the guy, like who, who's the one to speak with? And, and so they were like, yeah. So like, you'll hear back from us in a couple of weeks and here's like, either we will help, like we will proceed to run the ball down the, down the field with you, or we will get you in touch with the appropriate people that we think might be able to help you even better.

1:09:44But we want to like, he was like, I want to research and like talk and figure out. It seemed like they were, you know, somewhat compelled. It felt like more than just a placation to me. It was a lot of time and a lot of inquiry and like i appreciated it you know these guys i just know i know people that work for congressmen and have worked for congressmen and people that work in washington and they get bombarded with shit so it's it's no joke like think about like the annoying karen next to you in your neighborhood like who gets it there's like people like that like that are complaining about everything and bring everything up and bombard them and call them and email them and every day kind of shit so like there is some sort of selective process about what's going to go in front of these people and that we made it that far to a half an hour i'm just saying that like in my experience and talking to my friends about this especially recently and trying to get some some advice like this isn't a bad this isn't a bad sign that they actually sat with us um i will also say that i feel like i made me being on rogan those years ago a couple times is like one of the best things that's probably ever happened to me for for like all these random reasons right but professionally of course but at the end of the conversation the guy was like uh i so we were doing a little bit of research on you and we saw that joe rogan follows you on like x and instagram and i was like yeah i was on rogan twice i mean i'm like friendly with him you know we course we have i haven't talked to him in years but we correspond behind the scenes wherever we've done that and i think that that was like that's like an extra little thing that you know they'll remember and that might and that might be so so we're i feel like we're so i'm gonna leave them alone i only emailed them once and they got back to me in a few weeks so i'm gonna give them another few weeks and he did say to me like if for some reason you don't hear back from us you can reach out to us but you'll hear back from us in a couple weeks about next steps and he's like this might be something more for like it was interesting he's like this is maybe a congress is for people i don't know if anyone really cares.

1:11:41But Congress is constructed under the layers of like all these different committees. And so like when there's a piece of legislation that's coming up and it has to do with the military, it goes through like a series of committees that are attached to that, like ways and means and armed services or whatever. And then it's presented to Congress, like the whole Congress. And that's how they all play with each other. So they're like, this might be something for like people in ways and means. This might be for something people in like the tech caucus. They want to research and figure it out. But balls and play as far as I'm concerned.

1:12:16You know, cool. Whether we're going to score any runs, I don't I don't know. But but I got the ball and play.

1:12:22Colin Moriarty:That is cool. Yeah. Yeah. So you're going to say something. No, I said it's awesome. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you really needed it. I apologize. So we'll wait to see what happens and and go from there. All right. Let's get into the news. I want to start the top sad news. It's kind of getting buried, unfortunately, with all the crazy shit that's happening in our industry right now. But Hayden Panettiere. Oh, that that. Oh, this is where the audio was coming from before, too, was the I opened this story and it autoplayed the ABC News. Oh, the story about it. Full circle. Hayden Panettiere is deceased 36 years old of cardiac arrest really really sad news this is of course relevant for us on our show and the reason we're opening of this of course is because she stars in Until Dawn the 2015 PlayStation 4 classic horror game and she was in the new Until Dawn remake with extra footage and interviews and stuff like that and I don't want to spoil Until Dawn 2 I don't think it's really spoiling it she played some sort of role in that game and plays some sort of role in that game that like connects the two games it seems like so I don't know how it affects the game I mean until Dawn 2 comes out next year it's probably they probably done all the mocap and everything for it too but it's I wonder what what their situation is and how they feel about it if they're going to acknowledge it in any way just sad news all around and so young yeah I think there's some mystery about how she died I don't even really want to speculate on it because what do I know I know I think she had she had some sort of like drug problem at some point and you would assume at 36 years old there's something there's more to it but who knows for sure I was just shocked when I when I read that and I wanted to acknowledge it she was really great um as Sam in Until Dawn and I liked her a lot in I I again I love my feminine television shows I I loved uh Nashville that show and she was one of the main characters oh that's right yeah so she was great but she was in Heroes she was in even when when she was a little girl she was in remember the titans some really classic stuff so r.i.p to her any thoughts yeah this happened right after uh so at the the disney d23 where they had that kingdom hearts 4 trailer they had the 25th anniversary uh panel with uh you know the voice of sora and riku so hailey joel osman stuff but um also she was the voice of kairi in kingdom hearts one and so i didn't know that at the time i had no idea who she was but uh so that's a very you know nostalgic role for me and uh yeah it's it's very sad and shocking uh because holly liked her a lot too wasn't she on disney channel stuff as well when she was younger that's how holly i think knew her yeah let me look i was looking at her i know she was in a bug's life yeah she did the she did vo that was like one of her first roles i remember seeing that let me see if i can bring up her um filmography yeah bug's life remember the titans ice princess i i've never seen that but i know that that's like a role that i guess a lot of women little like girls at the time really liked that was a 2005 film about like figure skaters that actually starred um what's her name Michelle Trachtenberg who also passed away right which is crazy what else in here that would be relevant to people oh Scream she was in Scream 4 the Scream reboot and Scream 6 so the Scream reboot I guess is Scream 5 and then television yeah I mean I remember her coming to prominence with Heroes yeah I never watched Heroes me neither but that's what I remember her being in But the only thing I knew about Heroes was that Hayden Penetier was in it.

1:16:20Colin Moriarty:Genuinely. That was like the standout thing about it. But, man, man, I don't know. 36 is so young for something like this. It's really sad. I didn't have a lot of history with her work, but it's just sad. Just in general to see this shit. Yeah, I wonder what the fuck happened. Yeah, it's sad. it's like you don't want to spec she she seems to have had it pretty rough in in some ways um i think she was i think she's saying she was i'm sorry go ahead well she was only recently starting to give interviews about that about that stuff too right right that i was gonna say like didn't she wasn't she she claims i think that right that she like was kind of abused i think yeah i mean that's i'm not surprised by that at all yeah um unfortunately yeah it's it's sad but anyway so yeah maybe go play if you haven't played until dawn you definitely should play the original but um she's awesome in that and that was like her at the height of her powers which is funny too because Rami Malek's in that movie that's what's that's what's so funny about that game it's like he's in that game he's fucking mega famous they really had like they really stumbled upon a cast of people that that uh they wouldn't have been able to get a few years later probably so oh and she just she released a book right a couple months ago i'm pretty sure yeah like really recently yeah i'm sorry yeah this is me

1:17:55yeah so this must have been where where it was yeah it's too bad all right well r.i.p. and peace and we'll see i mean i i was saying to micah like if if she does play a role in told on too and i imagine that that she does it's probably some small thing you imagine there'll be some sort of like splash screen dedication to her or something like that get your tickets now for the dog stars it's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear out there just kill or be killed jacob alordi there are people out there they need our help Josh Brolin. Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley.

1:18:38Ow.

1:18:39Colin Moriarty:Okay, tough guy. And Guy Pearce. Arm up. The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters August 28th. Get tickets now. Rated R. Under 17, not a minute without parents. All right, guys. Well, the big news of the week is the GTA 6 leaks. And I don't have any story pulled up about it or anything like that to read from. It's just that these leaks have happened. Dustin, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, I think it's a multifaceted story that deserves coverage. I'm not thrilled that it happened because I don't want to spoil the game for myself, but it is what it is. So I don't think we'll be spoiled.

1:19:16Like, I will not watch anything that will spoil material things about it for me. So you can assure I can assure you that I will not spoil the game for you because I can't. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, good.

1:19:26Colin Moriarty:I have seen a few like the day that the first few happened. I saw those and there has been continual leaks. I think one of the most interesting developments that happened, I don't know if it was yesterday, is that a lot of people didn't know like, okay, so is this guy just have video clips that were from some testing period that he somehow got acquired, you know, got. But it appears that this leaker actually has a build of the game because he went to a wall and shot in like bullet holes, like leaks or leaked or something like that. just to prove like, no, he has some kind of build of the game.

1:20:04Colin Moriarty:How old is it? I don't know. I saw speculation that like based on a song that appeared in one of the leaks that it's maybe not quite as old as initially. Yeah, I think the song that they had was 2025. Right. You imagine maybe it would be no earlier than 2024. And what I mean by that or later than I should say. And what I mean by that is that like Rockstar might have access to this stuff a little bit earlier or something to integrate it into the game. But it can't be that early. you know yeah um i believe the leaker has like made a statement about like why he's doing it as like a protest against um like the all digital release of the game and sony going all digital and there's like a there's like a website too where people can like pay to like get the next leak unlocked or something there's it's a whole situation going on with this and i i was really interested at first like colin you had posted it in the staff discord because i thought there was just one tiny clip and you're like no check this out and since then there's just been more and more um yeah because because they're dmcaing and they're getting it off of social media quickly but these things are existing on like imager and stuff for hours before they they get to them and so like yeah well i i because you had said like oh it's nothing and i'm like i saw two things that i was like this is definitely real one was like him driving like beating the shit out of someone where i was and it looked it looked i mean it's obviously artifacted and not but i'm like this looks great like so that was like my first my first thing i was like this looks fucking awesome and and the second one was the map and i was like this is obviously real um that's that's where i i cut it off from there and those were both i think existed the game leaks reddit had links to like imager or something and that's how i got them so yeah that's that's as much as i've seen but yeah it's gotten apparently way more serious since then yeah and i some of them have popped up on my feed but I'm not actively seeking them out like it was kind of cool to see that initial one or two not that I support it but it's like of course I'm interested and here it is and as you were saying Colin it does look awesome but at this point the Netflix debut thing is a week away at this point and I'd rather just see it presented to me the way that they intend to and I think where this gets into a really risky situation and i wonder if people are going to start to turn on this leaker is that if story stuff starts to come out and then i think i was thinking about it from rock stars perspective obviously they do not want this they had their whole debut planned they have their whole marketing plan behind it netflix is probably freaking out about this too they don't want someone to do that but in general these leaks i wouldn't say are hurting them in any way right now because it's just simply making people more excited about it but as soon as it gets into story stuff which if this guy has a pretty complete i mean who knows how how complete his build is but um it's certainly in the realm of possibility so i would caution to the audience that's like yeah these leaks are cool right now but it could start to spoil stuff if at the rate they keep coming out so i'm about at the point where i'm just going to mute a bunch of gta related words on twitter until this is sorted out just because i don't want to risk it man it's been in development so long not that i'm the number one gta fan or like i'm very very excited but at this point it's like i'd rather not i'd rather not see much more yeah i think you make an interesting point about the story leaks in that there's not there's not i'm almost certainly not gonna be anything controversial in the in the story right the quality will be i guess what people are most interested in and why i say that is because that's what made the last of us part two leaks so powerful was it was this the nature of the story and who the characters were and stuff in other words i don't know that rockstar has like has like uh mine has has a minefield of characters and things that they're going to come out it's going to be like this whole big thing for them you know what i mean it's probably a little bit more conventional it's probably very high quality but there will be no there will be no controversy around the subject matter i don't think and so i think you're right that if they if this guy starts leaking the story and ruining it for people um it could backfire i think but like what does that even mean so what like it so it backfires on the person the bigger thing i was thinking of and you would know i mean people do shit and get away with it and they don't get caught and they're probably not even in places where you can catch them really realistically but um this is very serious like take take two is going to definitely try to find out who this person is and and i know people are like of course they are but i'm like understand what i'm saying like they're gonna go after this person this isn't like something that's gonna be let go this is a person that's gonna have like they better be careful about who they are and who they tell things to and everything because it's going to like whoever did this is going to have a target on them a legal target it's not gonna be some incidental thing that's gonna be forgotten about i guess and so you have to like really know who you're engaging with but they have the upper hand i mean they have the build they're they're controlling the they're controlling this so right what are your uh preliminary thoughts here chris it's interesting this is so this isn't this is not the first time gta 6 has leaked we saw a really early build many many many years ago at this point or it feels like many many years ago um that was clearly early in development and people had a lot to say and there was a lot of footage of it and i remember kind of looking at it being like ah this game is so big and we've been waiting for it for so long that i kind of just don't i'm not really interested in seeing it really in this way and i've seen some clips kind of scroll across my feed of this thing this 480p quality with like artifact and i'm like i don't care to see this either so i i it's so it's weird like i do think look it's not ideal that this is happening but like i i don't think this is gonna move the needle at all as far as like because gta 6 is such a unique thing in this space like people want it like it's not about oh can you spoil it even if they spoil it honestly i think people just like what is this i think the curiosity around like what this billion dollar game is going to be also the fact that like let's be real we're paying attention to this because we're enthusiasts this is this is a game that far outpaces or far expands beyond the reach of just enthusiasts this is going to be a massive game that like most people with a console will probably play or at least it feels like it um gta is no joke there's a lot of casual people who like only give a shit about gta there's a lot of people who don't participate dude i i it's Kingston's uh Kingston's fiance is she doesn't play a lot of video games she's pumped about GTA but she doesn't you know what I mean like this is like a thing that like normal people care about and these normal people aren't going to be scouring the internet for leaks of this game in the way that like I think it's I really do think GTA 6 is just kind of too big to fail really I get that sense from it yeah um so like yeah it's not ideal this is happening they're definitely going to go after this guy um and it's not ideal but i just i don't see this doing damage in the way that it would have damaged a far smaller entity or a far smaller project or a far more um uh conspicuous game you know like this is a this is a beast of its own i think and i don't think people care in the same way like they'll be curious and they'll watch it but like those people like what i'm curious about is like how much money gta 6 has already made right like like as far as like how many people are just like locked in yeah it's hundreds of millions i'm sure at this point it's at least so yeah so i i don't know it sucks um and i'm really curious about this right i'm curious about what this game is going to look like but i don't care to see it in 480p on a compressed Twitter video like I have no interest in that it's funny like when I saw that that one video I watched I it's totally compressed it's so funny but you could just tell where you know what I mean where I'm like this is going to be really high quality the animation the animation stuff that was going on I was like this is this looks awesome and the lighting and stuff like there's just things where I was like holy shit like that stuff like that stuff plays through I can't wait like it just reaffirmed in my mind you're going to get this really slick version of Grand Theft Auto and it's funny i just played gta 5 which is a ostensibly a ps3 game i played it on ps5 and you could just and having it in my mind's eye so fresh and then watching a little bit of that footage i was like it's crazy it's it is it's like it's it's awesome and i'm really really looking forward to seeing it but i think the other thing i'm more there's there's just other stuff that i'm more interested in a bit now duffin have you seen that like there this is what happens when you make a show of yourself in my opinion is like people are trying to find out who this person is and there are people that like claim that they they've already figured it out and stuff so it's like now who knows if this is all specious and nonsense or whatever but it's just like i'm so i'm much more interested in the in the hunt now for who this person is than anything else just because i feel like obviously take two and rockstar and i'm sure legal entities are involved no doubt but now you have like just the autists online going after you and i'm like i don't know if you want to be in this situation yeah you don't want to get the he will not divide us people you know like tracking you down the uh one thing I do want to bring up and I want to ask you Colin because like this is obviously it's a major leak of the game we've talked on the show about uh the the initial like one of the benefits of maybe not having a disc was that this kind of thing wouldn't happen and yet it has happened what do we make of that really you know what I mean because it's clearly not the disc was clearly not a barrier of absolutely any consequence yeah it's I mean it sucks it's one of the um I think Kiwi was saying this in my conversation with him but like I've heard this too is like there's a culture of like uh I don't want to say culture of fear but like Rockstar like there's a reason things don't really leak because they'll fucking cut your head off you know like that like things are like secretly you know watermarked and all these things that they do at all these companies clever things or whatever and so i was reading dust and i don't know if you saw this because you're so much more connected to this stuff like there was a suggestion that it was a dude that got fished right at have you seen any of this stuff no i yeah yeah i've seen some stuff where people think that it like maybe from india or yeah and that's where that's a that's the biggest studio working on rockstar so it's not on the game so it's not like being like making fun of the indian i know i know it's very popular right now for everyone to be mean about where people are from and all these things different things i don't think it has anything to do with that it's that there's like thousands of people working on it there and so that would be the most just numerically the most common likely place it came from i think right and yeah they were saying that like and and like you said the song affixed to the build suggests that it is a newer build which is not good um i wonder though like this is the thing and this is where my my own development expertise goes out the window like i don't know anything about this is i wonder how compiled the game is you know what i mean like for different people that have access to it like why would you have the whole compiled game just sitting around but then again like how can you really start testing and integrating things if everything isn't there and i don't really know exactly how that works because that's got to be a huge trust issue especially if people are they're sending these builds all over the world to each other and they're communicating over like discord and teams and like whatever they're doing it's like there's like a million ways this can leak and now the funny thing you said about this chris with the disc i was thinking about this is like if there were discs being manufactured it would be on some sort of manifest at the factories and like companies would know and people would know that this game was being manufactured and there might be people that are already been bought off you know i mean to like leak it at that point and and there and they would look at this and be like fuck you know because like the value of the value of the build actually for them actually goes out the window too so there's some funny criminal on criminal shit going on there as well but um so i'm i'm fascinated from that angle of like how this happened like i really highly doubt someone's bought off it at rockstar or something like that i don't think anyone would play that game i i just think it's too crazy and especially in a place like india where that's got to be a pretty rarefied job you know so i don't think you want to fuck around too much so i think someone got got and that's a that's a that's a dangerous thing i i and hopefully that'll make it somewhat put some sort of fingerprint on it or whatever i don't i don't know if they're going to catch i don't even know if i really care if they catch what the person is it's just uh my my big question i guess moving forward is i don't know why people want to do this to other people maybe that's just physical games back.

1:33:44It's so naive of me to say that, but it's not like the Pentagon papers. You know what I mean? It's a build of a video game. And, and there's really no, there's really no righteousness to doing what you're doing. I don't care about take two. I feel bad for the people that like, we're so close. We're, we're so close. And now you're going to fuck it up. we've made it all of this time with no leaks of any real consequence. It's that's to me is the biggest shame. It's like, I don't care how it affects take two. I don't care about any, about any of that stuff. I just, I mean, it sucks. It's illegal.

1:34:25What happened? What's happening here is theft and it's illegal. And that all speaks for itself. But I really do feel bad for those who are, it's like what happened to me with the last of us part too. Like, why would you want to do that? The people, I just don't get it. It just doesn't, it's just anathema to me. I don't, I don't, it seems like it's it's just so mean yeah i would imagine that take two is looking for this guy day

1:34:53Colin Moriarty:and night uh and i would i think they'll probably find him because a lot of better hope they don't because i think they'll find him just because i know this is probably a very different i mean i don't know like even from the information we had we were able to discover quite a bit about the situation on who hacked your playstation account and this could be a much higher level sophistication of hackery or whatever you want to call it but there's always a trail yeah i'm sure they're paying top dollar security analysts to figure this out yeah like what you have to hope is that But like what that guy has to hope is that like he's smarter than the people that are going to work for take two to find him.

1:35:37That's it.

1:35:38Colin Moriarty:Right. And so the answer is either they are or they aren't. That's a big hope, man. Yeah. Like, yeah. Good luck to you, man. I'm interested in watching the cat and mouse. They're going to get this guy, though. I think a lot of it has to do with him just keeping his mouth shut. I mean, it's one of those. I was just reading recently about. I don't know why I didn't know this story, but there was a guy in like 1968 who was like 20 years old. He worked at a bank and he like stole two hundred thousand dollars and just disappeared. and then he died like a few years ago and he like admitted it on his deathbed who he was and his i think daughter like wrote a whole book or whatever about it and he just got away with it but he told his daughter like i just didn't say a word to fucking anyone like not like no like drunk night no you know anything like where you're drinking with your buddies or you're trusting a woman that you think you're going to be with for the rest of your life or this or that other thing he just kept it to himself and like that's what's required it is to get away with shit people don't have that discipline though really like a lot of people um that's that's a rarefied skill so like to just not blab people want because i think on some level people want to be not not that they want to be caught but they they want if they do something that impressive i'm sure part of you if you do something like that even if it's illegal you're like i want someone to know yes someone's gotta know even even this guy realistically like the only like he still like he want he wanted everybody to know he just didn't want to get caught so he's like oh i guess i'm out i'm on my way out let me tell you because this is awesome right and i want people to know this so like everyone's everyone will blab at some point it's just not something we're not we're not equipped to just hold in accomplishments like that we're too prideful of people yeah it's that so you're right and we'll we'll see yeah it's so funny too he's like i'm I'm dying but make sure you look I'm this guy it's a crazy story too like he he worked like they would typically fingerprint bank employees in the 60s but he was like a kid like 20 years old and he had just started working there and so they never even fingerprinted him yet and then he just like and they gave him kind of access to shit and so he just made a decision and just did it and then just bounced and so they didn't even have like they had nothing to go on but he never could talk to his family again like he had parents and siblings like he cut them all off forever it's like it's like damn dude because you know you always hear stories later it's like oh who's that guy in the suit at the funeral 20 years later it's like you know right the guy who disappeared and that's why that's why fucking i mean that's why mobster funerals were always watched so yeah because people can't help themselves no don't commit crimes doesn't pay that was a pretty good haul though$200 ,000 in 1968 was he probably did he probably was able to like solidify himself with that that's an enormous amount of money back then that's an insane that's that's a crazy amount of money yeah it's like well it's like low seven figures so like if you just knew what you were doing it's like yeah you could probably just not even really work um yeah as long as you were you know actively investing in whatever all right um you can't do this to me i work 40 hours a week wrote in that's a reference to an inside joke with micah and i salutations and greetings call me a bootlicker but these gta leaks will hurt the physical games movement right i don't think rockstar take two give a fuck about leaks happening at this point and the only thing these leaks will achieve is pissing off the people who have been waiting for gta 6 for over a decade by spoiling the game for them hell rockstar is probably glad the leaks are happening because it makes them look sympathetic and works as free advertising.

1:39:10I'll go ahead and mute GTA from all social media platforms and listen. I generally agree with you if Rockstar could be confident that there's not a real build out there. If there's an actual playable, that's the other thing too, is like, what is the nature of this build? It's a PC build. Or do you need like a test kit to play it? That's the other thing that like, that's unclear to me. Are they playing it in a virtual react, like a virtual environment? in other words on a virtual machine spec'd to PlayStation or whatever or is it actually because at this point you would think that they would be running these builds on the native hardware and have migrated them over now I'm sure they still have PC builds and there will be a PC build of the game of course they're just not going to release it right away but I wonder about all of that I haven't watched them deeply enough to see like what the button prompts might even suggest although that doesn't really even tell the whole story these days either so So, yeah, but I think so.

1:40:09If Rockstar had some sort of analysis of the situation and take two where they're like, all right, we have identified exactly what's leaked. This is what's leaked. It's this small. Focused build on driving mechanics or something. It's not even this important thing. It has no access to anything. Who cares? Like that's that's one that part of it, which could be true. But if they if they identify that there's a real build of the game out there, then I don't think there's anything that makes this look good. Like, I think that they're in incredible danger.

1:40:37Colin Moriarty:um yeah that's true they're not they're not happy about it i i don't think this will this will move the needle one way or the other but like they're not happy that this is happening you know it does kind of act as free because it seeing some of it did make me more excited you know but i was already on board anyway like i was i was gonna play this regardless of what i saw just because the curiosity is too intense like what is this you know it's it's been 2013 was the last gta game you know what i mean like the curiosity is immense so but there it's more than just mechanics in the in the leaks like because i scrolled past a cut scene that looked kind of real and it was like just two guys talking i didn't listen to it because it was compressed to shit and i was like who gives a shit but it's more than just like a sandbox you know what i mean or like um there's some narrative of in there that i've seen or that i've scrolled past yeah yeah so we'll see i think it's i i it brings up so many questions about yeah i don't know like it's it's just shocking to me i wonder what kind of audits they do you know when like companies send fake phishing emails out and then they see who does it they'll probably shoot you into the fucking sun if you did that shit at rockstar you know so drawn core to you as far as it yeah like I Dustin touched on this and I and Krista too and I think it's true it's like this does run the risk of pissing the wrong people off and I don't mean the wrong people and like they're going to do something about it I mean like you're trying to like advocate for a certain group of people and they're the ones that you're kind of pissing off and I don't like the self-righteous shit who are you you're like some champion of the people because you're holding some multi-billion dollar corporations product that people are excited about hostage and then you're pretending you're you think they're gonna they're gonna bend to your whim are you crazy i i just i just don't i yeah rockstar's gonna be like we're sorry um we're immediately spooling up the physical run of millions of copies we please forgive us you think that's gonna you think that's gonna be the outcome there's no way the company would do that.

1:42:55They certainly wouldn't do it publicly. Companies pay people off privately all the time. That's well known. There's a, frankly, a whole marketplace for that kind of shit. That's why people steal things for it. You know what I mean? And I don't mean a literal marketplace. I mean, there's obviously a market for that sort of thing. People steal things and then go to these companies and they get paid off so they don't release them and cause huge problems. You, you do that privately before the gun is publicly put to your head. There's just no way that that's why it's so funny it's like you would think that they would have maybe even gone to them probably maybe they did maybe this person did and said listen i have the goods here you can pay me x i don't know it's it's a it's a strange situation i don't again i don't really feel bad for take two and rockstar from a marketing perspective it's sad and that they're probably really distant you know they've been planning for this for years and it's and the marketing's about to kick off on netflix next week so it is funny from that perspective that it's but and it is sad from that perspective depending on how you look at it but from their angle it's it's it's not what i'm curious about i just don't like the whole i'm doing this as i'm holding this game hostage and it's for the people i don't know man yeah you're not even holding it hostage it's still

1:44:11Colin Moriarty:gonna come out you don't have like you you didn't steal the game from them and they're like oh no we can't release it. You know, like it's not even really a hot that you're just kind of just. I don't even know what you what you're doing, really. And it's and I want to be clear. It's not like the guy is saying, here's a tranche of documents from take two. They're building a nuclear bomb. You know, it's not something where it's like, holy shit, what? Like what kind of crazy shit is doing? It's like, no, like here's a video game and they're doing things I don't like, so I'm going to steal it. It's a little different.

1:44:49It's not like this crazy, you know, it's not this crazy connection that is in the public interest. It's not this. We all know what those things are. That's why I brought up the Pentagon Papers or other things where it's like, this is a, this is shit you're not supposed to see, except for you probably want to see it. This is not that it's just theft. It's tricking people. It's paying. It's, it's taking advantage of people. It's hurting people. It's I just I don't understand that level of combat. I don't I don't know. I just I don't understand why people want to do that to other people and ruin things for people.

1:45:26It just doesn't make any sense. And again, I think there's the difference between leaking the existence of something, leaking a little detail and then just showing people all of it. And I think that that's obvious. You shouldn't even have to explain that. So we'll see what happens. I'm going to get rid of this last inquiry because we kind of already talked about this.

1:45:45but yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else to say about it. It's too bad.

1:45:50Colin Moriarty:Yeah. But I wonder if they'll catch him. I wonder if they'll figure it. Someone's going to figure out. You just don't want to play around on the internet too much, man, because there's just people out there that are just too sophisticated. I learned that the hard way. Right? There are just people out there that just know things and know how to do things, And the sad thing about this stuff, I know I say this over and over again recently, is that these are people of aptitude. They're not like some petty criminal. It's like you could do something. You have talent and potential. Right. You can even do what you do.

1:46:31Colin Moriarty:Like, isn't that like a thing like white hat hacking and stuff? Yeah, it's like companies pay a lot of money. To hire those kinds of people. I just don't know why you'd want to do it for quote unquote evil as it were and I know you're going after the big bad corporations and so it's like whatever man I just you can justify your behavior however you want I just always am saddened most by that because it's not some you always hear it's like oh the petty criminals robbing this guy he's got you know he's not only is he stupid but he has no fucking you know he has no prospects in life and blah blah blah it's like that's not really the case with a lot of white collar kind of hacking I guess you might want to call it It's like, unfortunately, these people are often like the brightest amongst the brightest people, the people with the most aptitude, the people with the most skill.

1:47:16And it's sad that it's not turned towards things that are more productive. Just to make a show of something that's not going to change anything.

1:47:27You have to also look at it just brass tacks, like companies can't respond to this sort of thing. So it's like, well, like we're going to have to publish discs forever because people are just going to steal our shit. you're really going to play this like game of everyone pointing a pistol at each other for years and years and years as we all try to play nice with each other based on on for like this prospect of force basically and i don't know strange to me all right well those are two big pieces of news hayden's passing and the gta 6 leak but we have more news to get through. And that's that Horizon Hunter's Gathering is being rebooted.

1:48:07This comes from reporting from Jason Schreier over at Bloomberg. And he writes in part, quote, Sony Group Corp's PlayStation division is overhauling Horizon Hunter's Gathering, the online action game it announced earlier this year, following negative player feedback, according to people familiar with the company's plans. Guerrilla Games, the Amsterdam-based PlayStation subsidiary behind the Horizon franchise, has been working to reboot the game since June, said the people, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the project's future. Following poor feedback and private testing earlier this year, the plan now is to strip out the live service component and turn it into more of a traditional cooperative multiplayer game with a story mode and a far smaller scope.

1:48:47The game is not yet canceled, but the studio told staff in a meeting on Wednesday that they will have through December to impress executives with their next milestone, the people said. Many of the developers on Horizon Hunter's Gathering will be reassigned to a different project that will also be evaluated at the end of the year. Dustin. Wow.

1:49:07Colin Moriarty:Technically, this is, is this good news in a way in that they are, there was that interview with Herman, I think earlier this year or last year where they're like, he said they wanted to nip the problems that Concord had much earlier to avoid a big blunder. And if this is the case, then I guess maybe it's not good, but I guess it's at least progress in the right direction in some ways. But my praise of the situation ends there simply. And I guess it's it's the obvious point that everyone's thinking that just like, what are we doing? What are we fucking doing at this point? You know, with your 15 live service games where literally almost none of them have panned out.

1:49:58Colin Moriarty:and now to the point where you're just trying to like salvage this game which i'm curious about that a lot of people in our audience played the the beta and some of them anonymously wrote into us about it uh was the live service elements the problem with this game or is it just simply unfortunately the same kind of problem that concord had is just unappealing the art style uh in particular i know a lot of people weren't really impressed with and the idea the idea of a multiplayer horizon game i think a lot of people are down with that idea the idea of a monster hunter style horizon game yeah it begs for it it was always supposed to be that i feel like they always wanted it to be that they just couldn't get it and i think the funniest part about this situation is they got a glimpse of that through that fucking mobile game that actually looks pretty dang cool other than it's not on playstation for some strangers not on playstation so it's it's crazy so the article says they'll have through december and then it could get canceled which it's like what the fuck is happening with fair games how has that game survived so long maybe maybe it also has a december deadline or maybe it's already been canceled we just don't know yet but um yeah i would say the the people that this hurts the most are like actual horizon fans and it's not because uh of this game potentially being bad it's because i believe in jason schreier's video on his youtube channel that he's like said that this was this is the primary project maybe that's not new news no that's not i mean that's that's that's not new news that has been yeah we've known that for a while that's not news but but i think yeah but i think uh people were surprised that horizon 3 was so far away but i think we had already always kind of understood or at least more recently understood that that horizon 3 was nowhere near being i think to me this reads if it's because it's not only that they are stripping out the live service elements has turned into a more of a traditional co-op game story mode in a far smaller scope in some ways this reads to me it's like okay this isn't working uh let's salvage it we spent all this time and money on trying to make it a live service it's not working let's see you know if it is a far smaller scope let's see if we can get something together maybe we release it for 40 uh and we can make our investment back um i don't know man it's just it's that i know that this is probably what you'll say colin um but like herman he gotta be on contract he has to be yeah yeah i mean what other what other explanation is there well i mean he i mean that's the thing is that they could still fire him at any time they just have to pay him it's not like he has to be there at this point you know what i mean like it's not like he has to be that's what i want people to understand out there is like he there's he's not an you know you're not the you're not at this level with an at will contract he has signed for a certain number of years and it's guaranteed it's what i've been saying about matt booty where i'm like i feel like he they're just they just don't want to fire this guy because they probably owe him money it's and i i know this more imminently or intimately with like sports teams like it's very common for teams to not want to fire coaches because coaches contracts are guaranteed and and it's uh and it's like oh i owe this guy he fucking sucks but i have to pay him for three years i own 12 million dollars a year or whatever and it's really tough uh herman's not making that much but it's really it's really a tough pill to swallow the Jets coaches so um I that's I don't I don't know whose fault they could possibly be it's got to be some some who is responsible for all of this it doesn't have to be Herman but I don't know how it can't be and his continued existence in the ecosystem along with Matt Booty's at Xbox indicates one of two things either like these guys are not powerful figures like they seem to be on the outside and their influence is limited and so you internally it is known not to blame them for things or two something's totally amiss in these like neither of these guys belong in their positions this position is about shepherding talent having good taste and making good decisions and you're going to make some bad decisions shuai talks about the bad decisions he's made they abandoned fps at a really bad time and signed demon you know after demon souls with letting dark souls go or the potential of what dark souls could have been everyone makes mistakes right I'm not even sure I mean from many perspectives I wouldn't be the right person for the role but just from even a taste perspective it's like I don't know that I'm even the right guy I would definitely have to rely on other people to make calls for me in my blind spots so it's like you gotta it there are people and I see some people out there like well who should it be and I'm like I don't know you I mean, there's there's obvious names.

1:55:30I mean, people bring up Scott Rohde is a perfectly normal. You know, choice. Shuhei coming back would be awesome, but. It could be an unknown. Could be also a group of people. Doesn't have to be one person. It's a lot to be responsible for. It's a lot like you ultimately want to have a decision maker. I don't know, Chris, what are your thoughts here?

1:55:56Colin Moriarty:Share your thoughts with us. I think when you have a 90 % miss rate, you know, like I think something's got to give at some point. It's just like, okay, this is so clearly not working. I look at this as like, like Dustin said, it's kind of good news because it's like, okay, good. Something's actually like pivoting away from live service and actually maybe given a somewhat of a chance to exist as its own kind of experience that's separated from this kind of toxic label. Right. Like you have a oh, if a game comes out and there's no battle pass in it and it's just like, all right, everything that would have been in the battle pass.

1:56:35Colin Moriarty:Now they're maybe going to rework it. So you unlock it through maybe like an in-game leveling system. And that's that's probably going to be a lot nicer. Right. As an experience. And it's going to it's not a live service game and it gets to exist and it gets to just kind of be there for as long as people want it to be there. And then that's it. That sounds pretty nice. Why did this game get this? you see where i'm going with this colin if there was a game that was supposed to be live service that would have benefited by being maybe pivoted away and maybe being released as an ephemeral multiplayer game anyway the fact that we're getting this and not the last of us online is crazy like now this is the decision that's me when when realistically this should have always been the obvious decision right like if you're if you're working on something that's live service and it's not quite panning out um as far as like the live service goes or like the commitment's too high put it out as an as an ephemeral game like it's fine right can't you just make your money on the especially like these big ip like i i that it took this long to get to this obvious solution to this kind of problem is is kind of um it's crazy to me it's crazy to me especially because we already have kind of examples of the ghost of shima you know multiplayer that was kind of like granted that was a separate mode and existed in a you know a single player package but like the the tacked on multiplayer kind of ephemeral multiplayer thing isn't even necessarily that far in the rearview mirror as a concept of something to work on and put out and be okay with so i it's i don't know man it's a little frustrating i do think you know this this insistence on horizon it's kind of a weird a weird angle you know like it's good and we should have more of them but like the the degree in which they they you know chased it is is crazy i just um who did this you know like who it's just helldivers really as a success and i guess you could maybe argue like mlb the show and things like that that are like kind of that are like you know i would argue they're not spiritually live service games but like they are definitely not in fact i think the show is actually kind of more live service than hell divers is in a way yeah yeah yeah probably uh so like it's really only hell divers as far as like and by the way it's not to speak of quality by the way because i actually thought i when i played Concord I was like this is pretty good it's just ugly as sin and I don't care to play it you know so it's not even a matter of quality Marathon I think is great but it's clearly not like working to the degree that they wanted to work Helldivers is their only success it's the one that they have technically the least stake in because it's like a second party thing and it's like they're not really involved so it's this whole thing has been like a a complete disaster and someone has to be responsible for it and it can't be somebody that we've never heard of right i mean what are the chances of that yeah i mean i i just don't i mean why it could be he could bring a bunch of people down with him i'm sure he has a cabal of people that work with him but it's like you got to go you all have to i mean if no one you all have to go if that if that if that's the case like it you have to I think that's why when Holst was demoted and put on you know Holst used to report Nishino and Holst used to report to Toki directly that was in 2024 in 2025 Holst is demoted Holst reports to Nishino Nishino reports to Toki it's like somewhere along that that high rung leadership chain they need to be like this guy's got to go they already in other words they already know they already demoted him right they know if he was if he was the guy then they wouldn't have this is why i'm so fascinated by the year between the the promotion and then demotion it's like things came to fruition remember like concord he wasn't demoted he was promoted to a lesser position yeah he was loaded he was he was promoted they told him you can no longer speak to the c-suite you speak through this other guy who will speak to us um yeah he is um i don't know i don't know what to tell you he's a disaster obviously or someone else's and people and and there are listen there are going to be hits he's probably made good decisions and there's going to be great games released under him there's just no doubt about that it's just a lot of the games that are coming out are derivative of the games that already existed under previous leadership and so like so like saros there's gonna be a god of war you know it's it's not like we're not like going going off here and being like this is crazy amount of great decision making it's like yeah so these games come out and they're good no doubt but like you said even if he you were saying like 90 miss rates like even if you had a 50 miss rate that's too that's not good enough dude that's not anywhere that's a coin flip right i can hire anyone to flip a coin exactly what a joke i want you to have a 90 to 10 90 to 10 not you know 10 you know nine hits and one miss eight hits and two misses something like that that's not even taking into account just the the amount of money the thing too that is is worth taking into account is like the magnitude of failures today versus you know playstation all-stars battle royale as as as like a failure or whatever or like um uh passing up on demon souls right those are failures and those are blunders none of the i think you could accumulate all of the failures of the ps3 maybe with maybe with exception of like maybe that ridiculously high price point in the beginning right with the exception of that you could lump pretty much every ps3 failure of ps3 generation failure and it still wouldn't amount really to what concord was i think i really think concord is like this thing that's like it's almost like a nuclear bomb where like there's still fallout and there will be fallout like playstation's kind of like it's kind of a joke right now and it's not to say that it's not successful or it's not making money like there's like his honey boo boo makes it made a ton of money you know what i mean but it's like we're getting into this area now where it's just like if something comes out of playstation studios it's no longer this thing that people are like there's there's there's just there's a lot of venom around it and that could be either their fault or not or maybe it's just it's a culture problem i think for sure but also dude like you're fucking up like kind of massively and for a long time we can't be making these mistakes when games take five years to make yeah like this is not like this is not like a ps1 era like oh we fucked up on a game and it took we were working on it for four months and we got to restart and you're still within the same calendar year and you can recover like this is a very different thing there's a very different scale of money there's a very different impact to the failures that do happen and even the successes that are happening it's crazy like the failures are stronger and the successes are diminished actually because it because the successes cost so much because spider-man 2 and like whatever spider-man 3 is going to be and even wolverine like that's going to make a ton of money and it's going to be a massive success it's also going to be it's a licensed game so it's expensive to even succeed at making and then you have concord or something like it and that's a massive failure so it's like the scales are all off and you like you said like you we can't have like a 90 percent and and again i don't know if that's literally the number no it's it's not but that's what i was even saying like even if you look at it as like a coin flip it's like that's just that's insane you can hire literally a homeless person off the street to make coin flips for you just get an algorithm to do it at that point you you pay millions of dollars to people the thing about holst is that sure yeah i mean i bet him he's a perfectly nice person and it's it's not i always say this i remember we say this a lot with matt booty because we're fucking beat him up so much like it's not personal i hate this kind of shit it's just like you're in a professional you're in a very important role in a professional capacity that affects a lot of things and a lot of people and i'm gonna criticize your performance about that you're not you don't work at some mom and pop operation it's playstation and right it's not really working yeah there's there's clearly a miss a miss that's i don't know the whole like personal angle it's like dude i i love my uncle my uncle should not own a company you know what i mean like this just like you should stay away and from business uh and like this is a similar thing it's like maybe at some point you were good for the job like it's very clear like this is an evolving industry and it's like it's shifting very very rapidly and things are like it's blowing up and you might you might just not be equipped you might not be a match for whatever this is now you know either the industry's outgrown you or you've outgrown you whatever it is like this is these puzzle pieces don't match now clearly as evidenced by just raw numbers it's not even like a subjective kind of thing at this point i think you could make a like a categorically provable case um so yeah i don't know it's interesting to me just that

2:06:37i don't believe that holst necessary necessarily was always going to be the wrong person for the job and i remember what he was when shuhei left and things were a little more rosy i was like yeah this is fine i mean holst is the really like he's the managing director of one of the most important teams that Sony owns and they do produce great games. So like, why wouldn't he be able to parlay that information? And like we always say, and I think having a creative in all of these roles is, is, isn't always necessary. There's people with lots of different disciplines and they know how to listen to different people and they know what they don't know.

2:07:13And I like that kind of shit. And I think that's, that's how you, that's how you operate. Everyone has their own little thing, their own little expertise. But Holst was the managing director of Gorilla. And it's funny, man, I brought up his biography on Moby Games, which hasn't been edited since he was at Gorilla. And it says he is responsible for financial, HR, marketing and strategic matters.

2:07:41He's not a creative. so in that particular position of taste making you either have to be surrounded by lieutenants that are really knowledgeable and you trust and that know and make really good decisions or the taste making falls on you and i think you can even look at things like kill zone originally and be like you guys don't have the greatest taste kill zone found its way but the idea of halo killer and all of that that was like it was like it was preposterous when you look back at it And maybe he's just out of his depth in that way. Like you just have to have maybe he has a great financial mind.

2:08:19Maybe he has a great organizational mind. Maybe he's good at marketing. But the choice making, it was easy to blame previous. Previous people that worked there and administrations, as it were, for both the good and the bad. A lot of things that Shuhay like we love Returnal, but that's Shuhay's game. we loved ratchet 2021 that's shoe haze game miles morales shoe haze game the god of war and horizon sequels shoe haze hell divers shoe haze right like now we're starting to get the results of actual herman projects he's been there since 2019 in this capacity and then was promoted obviously to the ceo role but it's really the same thing he's just ahead of the studios now you're seeing the things he greenlit both from a first and second party perspective.

2:09:13Lego Horizon Adventures, the Until Dawn reboot, Concord, although Shu takes a lot of credit for that too. Even things like Sons of Sparta, going in on Marathon, buying Bungie, buying a Haven, getting in bed with Deviation, then spooling up Dark Outlaw, then closing the studio down. Deploying Bluepoint and Bend on games as a service closing Bluepoint down. Media Molecules spinning their wheels for years. London Studio

2:09:50Colin Moriarty:getting closed.

2:09:56Colin Moriarty:It's a lot, man. And yeah, there's, and it's like, yeah, there's Ghost of Yotei in there. Yeah. The sequel to a game that Shuhei greenlit. They knew what they were doing. There's Astro Bot. That character had already existed. They definitely found their way with that. And that's what I'm saying. Like, yeah, there's some miss. There's not it's not all misses. It's just that, like, I could get my dad who's 75 years old and doesn't play video games and he can he could also hit 20 percent of the time. He doesn't know fucking anything about games. You know what I mean? This is a position people would kill to be in.

2:10:34Kill. To have to be able to wield billions of dollars of assets. and coordinate with what was once the most respected family of studios in all of gaming, but is certainly no more. It's not to say that the studios aren't good anymore, but that prestige is gone, in my opinion. That idea that we hit.

2:11:02We assure you, we hit. That's not... I don't think there's any guarantee that that's true anymore. sure the audience has changed as well but they've done nothing to uh placate the core audience that's the thing that bothers me the most it's not one of these positions where it's like who wants to do this job who could ever do it it's like dude do you have any idea how many people could do this job and would like excel come on man

2:11:30swagger rock wrote in and said hey sacred boys it looks like they're going back to the drawing board on horizon hunters gathering but i think some people are overreacting all the headlines say is it's getting rebooted, but from what I've read, they're just changing some of the live service and progression elements. Are people blowing this out of proportion? Will Hunter's Gathering flop Concord style? Who is to say? I don't think Hunter's Gathering is going to flop Concord style, but it's certainly not. They wanted this to be like a main line like Horizon game. It's not Horizon 3. It wasn't going to continue Aloy's story, but they wanted this thing to exist for years.

2:12:00And then they were obviously going to get comfortable enough to split everyone off, probably to go on Horizon 3, which is in pre-production. So, right, like that's what they've kind of said with, I think some of the reporting around Jason was that like, you know, this game is early. I don't think it's an overreaction at all. I'm being blown out of proportion at all. They put the whole team on this game. Gorilla's not a slouch. Zero Dawn and Forbidden West are excellent. And frankly, so is Shadowfall.

2:12:32Yeah, I don't know, man. There's really no slicing this in any way that makes it look good. I think what they're trying to do now is to salvage it and get it out like can we just release this thing that's like this glorified horizon multiplayer game with a little bit of a story component and my assumption is that they were told that like and that it was reported through jason you know they were told during the meetings this week you have till december and then we're going to present this thing and then we'll see what happens it's like what if it doesn't work what are you going to do to gorilla.

2:13:09This is a flagship team. This is, remember we were saying earlier like there's, now you're like it's all it's all, it's all bone at this point. It's like it's like, you're not skin deep anymore. This is, you're dealing with Naughty Dog, you're dealing with Sucker Punch, you're dealing with Gorilla.

2:13:29Colin Moriarty:It's serious business now. Like part of the heart and soul of it all.

2:13:37Colin Moriarty:I don't know, man.

2:13:41AOC's frozen eggs wrote in. What's going on with the AOC and the freezing of the eggs thing? It's like a thing she's like, it's like it's still too public for my taste.

2:13:52Colin Moriarty:I mean, isn't everything that they do public? Yeah, that's true. And who am I to say that? Really, at the end of the day. The fucking, oh, there's a fly. Get him. I think I can get that son of a bitch. Look at me at this flip. There may be a lot. There may be. I saw it. I just saw it come into the frame. Oh, God damn it. It's so hot that like now there's just like flies outside. Yeah, flies are the worst. I was in the pool the other day and a fly was biting me, but he wasn't even like a horse fly. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Why are you biting me? Wait, it was just a normal fly. Yeah, it was like I was just a black like fly.

2:14:27And I'm like, and I and I feel a little pinch and I look down on my thigh and I'm like, why are you biting me?

2:14:33Colin Moriarty:Oh, God, this is going to piss me off. I don't know why the horse flies are biting me either. get him get him oh yeah oh did you get him nailed him i got one hell yeah i don't know if there's another one love it flies man it's fun to get to the fly the next day when he's like out of steam and it's over and he like can barely move to aly's elderly yeah it's like it's like he hasn't eaten in a day and he's like all fucked up and he just like he's he knows it's over and he's just kind kind of resigned to his fate at that point. AOC's frozen eggs run in and said, hey, CDC, I'll keep it simple. What in the actual hell?

2:15:14Horizon Hunter Gathering is being rebooted and Horizon 3 is very far off. How do you absolutely mismanage one of your key IP like this with their previous release schedule of five years and all the work they've already put into the franchise? It should be out in a year or two. This is absolutely unacceptable. Yeah, it sucks. I love Horizon. I always knew that it was far away. I feel like that was fairly obvious. I don't know that I thought it was going to be like into the 2030s. I thought maybe 29, 30, something like that. But it felt like we, listen, like, why would Gorilla be immune to what happened to Naughty Dog and The Last of Us Online?

2:15:54And it sucked the whole team up. Of course that was going to happen. Look at him, he's looking at the fly. He can't stop looking at it. I saw it coming to the frame again.

2:16:02Colin Moriarty:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I just, I hate, I hate, I have such a deep hatred for flies. They do seem they are. It's funny, man. Before. It's not funny at all. I was reading recently about. Look at him before people realize where life came from that, like they thought flies just came out of rotten meat. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like it was just spawned out of it.

2:16:30Colin Moriarty:And they had to like do a test where one was under glass. Right. and one wasn't or something right yeah what a mysterious world we used to have it was mysterious you're right like it's so it's so quaint and interesting like it was a great discovery and you got a huzzah in the background it's all gone now we got a huzzah more often it's like at some point they were like oh like if we if we actually wash our hands between patients the disease doesn't spread right like it's something i think i watched a video at some point where they were like no that can't be that's ridiculous i wonder what like you you could probably if you if you got yourself into the right headspace you could probably put yourself into the mindset of somebody who would be like why would that make sense there's a bunch of bugs in water yeah right you know what i mean you find some some ridiculous like of the time way of just like no there's no reason to rinse your hands off before surgery where it's like oh this guy's really sick uh the sickness is in his blood so let's drain his blood out right uh and that will then he'll make new blood that's healthy it's like they're taking sick people and draining their blood out to try to make them better there's like some sense to it which i like right it's it's like it's completely un it's completely logical from like an uninformed position right we because we take we take for granted all that we know and then we and then but like i love like um just the the invention of the telescope and the microscope of like pointing it out and pointing it down and then and then realizing like holy shit you know like what like they were seeing like these things they had never seen before these microscopic things or whatever and then they understood things could be smaller than the eye can see and perceive and then they're like oh and then you give it a little time and then disease you know theory and all that kind of stuff germ theory and everything kind of propagates and it's the same thing with the planets and like the moons and discovering the moons of jupiter whatever and they're like holy shit the fuck is going out there it's awesome it's funny as hell like because when we think when we think about like ancient astronomy and stuff i love that and like until the 1500s they were just looking at the sky like we would there was like nothing special about it they were just they studied it and they understood how it worked like how it functioned and how it moved but they were just staring at it that was astronomy it's yeah it's it's a bit kind of saps the uh not the whimsy necessarily but like this all the things that we don't know about now like this there's a probably infinite amount of things that we don't know but like a lot of that is stuff that we're not even aware of you know like back then it feels like there were things you were aware like what is sickness like you knew that it was there right but now it's like whether or not particles are observed or not it's just like i don't know what the fuck that means and that's the correct remember when i told everyone that there's that pic that i watched that video where they actually like saw like at the atomic level some like some thin piece where you could see the actual individual molecules for the first time and like and i was like and it's like holy shit that really is what it is it's like not even it's like not even a like a theory like in your in chemistry class and they have the little wooden balls and stuff it's like holy fuck that's literally there there are literally these bound little particles like it's crazy imagine showing that to people like hundreds of years ago it's like no that's really what it is they probably think you're a devil or something yeah i don't know how we got here i don't either i'm in i'm in a funny mood today uh zan fair wrote in and said hey ccd i think this is the big chunk of it and we can move on after this while i understand why playstation and other major publishers have pursued a live service do you think the model has ultimately been far more high risk high reward than they anticipated with so many live service projects failing or taking years and enormous resources to develop.

2:20:45Has the pursuit of this model ultimately caused more harm than good for the industry, particularly through canceled projects, studio closures, lost opportunities and resources being diverted away from other projects within those studios? This to me is the whole game.

2:21:01The level of decision making has been so poor that you can't even focus on the products themselves as far as the products that never appeared, the opportunity cost in the decisions that were made and the decisions that weren't made. That's what's sad. In other words, who gives a fuck about fair games? It's that fair games exists and is sucking hundreds of millions of dollars up or whatever over the years in which that money could be deployed elsewhere. It's what we said in a really simplistic way about the Bungie acquisition. It's like that could have been 10 Naughty Dog style level games. And at some point it does matter.

2:21:39It's all been hidden in the numbers because PlayStation still makes a lot of money. So the only question you can ask now internally from their perspective is, well, how much better could it be? Why aren't we making more money? We're obsessed over margins and we have this guy making these fucking decisions over here, green lighting nonsense, green lighting, literal nonsense over and over and over again. And by the way, I have said this from a marketing and like PR perspective that Sony itself should have to absorb so much of the damage of canceling games before they're announced that happens all the time so there was like a spider-man game right there was a twisted metal game right uh yeah even god of war in a way because they never really acknowledged it it's like but still what i just don't understand how this is happening it's gotta give like it feels like it's gotta

2:22:34Colin Moriarty:give man i mean to be fair the god of war thing i do think god of war is like one of the exceptions because it's just like what a gross misallocation of like oh yeah totally totally like i get if there's like a when sotie santa monica was working on that that sci-fi game and they canceled that that's a different thing you know what i mean that's a different thing to uh to blue point making a live service game that's great like that's if i were them i would have wanted that to never be known right or that sucker punch game that leaked to that like they actually built like a little build up and stuff like that like these things these things happen that's how you iterate i just want to point out that like i just i think that there is some iterative chaos that happens even at the finest run teams and finest run studio families but it just seems like it's fucking nonsense to the point where it's getting to the point where with outside of intergalactic and a few others it's like these teams are almost some of these teams are worthless now because like they're not even going to make anything for years some of these teams probably won't even survive i've said that about ben and media molecule like where there's total i i don't think their survival is guaranteed i hope so as soon as ben's next game is announced as soon as media molecules next game is announced then i think they're safe up until that second you just don't they just made too many bad decisions they got to get new leadership man i know i know we say it a lot but like stop begging me to say the same thing with your decision making right i don't know what else to do.

2:24:04What am I supposed to just say something different because it's the same story over and over again? I don't know, man.

2:24:11Do something different. And by the way, every second is a waste in this old paradigm because time is of such the essence. You've got to make these decisions now. Now. Yesterday. It's what we were saying about Bungie, right, Chris? Make a decision. either dump a hundred hundreds of millions of dollars to them and have them make a new game or get rid of them. Make a fucking decision. Like you can't, you can't just, this is your situation. This is it. These are the teams you have. This is the talent you have. Make decisions and make better decisions. I refuse to believe that they don't understand what's happening here.

2:24:55They're not stupid. They're not. That's what's so frustrating.

2:25:05it's like we were saying about the ea acquisition with the saudis is like what's so frustrating about that is that the saudis won't change your games because they don't believe anything that they actually say they just want your money sometimes there's just these situations that are just like i just that are worse than they even appear and and i think sony is very lucky man they are very lucky that they don't have they have completely inept competition

2:25:35that's just the end that's just the they there's no one to make them pay who's gonna make the pay microsoft i don't think so the xbox hasn't been able xbox has only been losing ground to playstation as this has been going on that's how bad that situation is and really it's crazy and when and when people it's like man i'm more an Xbox 360 level Microsoft that was really operating on the level. A Nintendo that was more aggressive in the traditional space, which they're really not anymore, would be bodying PlayStation.

2:26:14They benefit a lot from brand loyalty. They benefit a lot from inertia. And they benefit a lot from being locked. What are you going to do? You're going to leave? I mean, that's I know it's funny to say that, but it's like that's that's kind of like a legitimate thing. It's like you're going to leave. You're going to say goodbye to all of it. It's a pretty powerful, coercive tool. Yeah. Like for you to be able to sit back and be like, you're not going anywhere. Your friends are here. Your trophies are here. Your games are here. Your saves are here. Your communicate your relationships and all the things you're not going anywhere.

2:26:52And that's the sad. That's the sad reality of the way they're treating it. yeah it's crazy it's crazy how you're totally like the fact that xbox is not even in the conversation is quite crazy yeah like they haven't they haven't cut down the lead right where it's like oh they're coming back like they're really taking it's like no it's getting worse it's somehow getting worse

2:27:21that strikes me a little bit when so when people say like sony doesn't have any competition and And I'm like, well, it's just not going to. I've said this before. It's not Microsoft. Like, it's got to be someone else. And everyone's just kind of in their own silo now. Nintendo's just doing its own thing. Nintendo's half as big as PlayStation. I think people have this idea that PlayStation, Nintendo's like this behemoth. And I'm like, no, not compared to PlayStation. Not compared to Xbox. Xbox makes more money than Nintendo. So you really are dealing with these different scenarios. I'm most interested in Valve.

2:27:53That fly in the front of the camera.

2:27:54Colin Moriarty:he's really fucking around really it's really pissing me off i'm so i'm actually like i'm doing such a great job containing my rage the thing about flies chris with this i was thinking about this when i was in the in the um in the pool yesterday and i slapped it one it's like they just keep coming back it's like i'm almost killing you over and over again why don't you care you think they were in their little little primitive brain they'd be like danger danger and just go do something else the only reason he still draws breath is because i have a job to do like this is so great he doesn't understand how borrowed his time is right it's insane god damn and how do they have so much energy in such a little body i always was wondering that too it's like oh maybe they'll tie her out maybe but they just seem to have this it takes like a day for them to really get get tired like damn it's a lot very efficient machine i wish yeah i wish i could make i wish i could turn it i wish i could turn this fly into a person just so I could beat the shit out of them.

2:28:54Colin Moriarty:That's how angry these things make me. Just go beat up a random passerby. Yeah, you're a fly. It's the complete psycho. Oh my God. All right. So we leave that for behind. I guess we'll have more information. I don't know. By the way, I did want to say this because we said like I've talked to people that have played for loop. I've talked to people that have played fair games. I've talked to people that have played the new fair games. I've talked to people that have played. What's it called now? Oh, what's the break in? But it's got a different code name now, I think, too. Or it did when I was talking.

2:29:31This is a while ago. You know, I've talked to people that played a lot of this stuff. The last of us online, we obviously know that.

2:29:39Horizon, people weren't. I talked to a few people and they weren't complaining about the gameplay. Yeah, like that's not a surprise. so maybe that's the level of feedback where they're like the people like the game what do we do you know like to get to take all the shit out and fix it and i think that's what they're doing so i just wanted to say that like i don't want to i would i was never very critical of this game because i want i like horizon and i thought it looked appealing to me personally but um don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water necessarily there might be something

2:30:11Colin Moriarty:really good underneath the most annoying thing about live service games is the live service part of it it is the battle pass it is the you know the um the pop-up windows about updates and like seasonal activities it is all that crap a lot of games actually like i remember that was the thing with uh suicide squad i remember enjoying like the gameplay of but then i was just thinking why is this a live service game just makes no sense that this is what this is so if they understand that they've got like a solid foundation of gameplay and they could just like all right we've got a good we've got something that plays well that people want to play it's it may not be sticky in the way that the live service game is but like maybe that's okay let's just make it let's just get rid of all the the toxic shit that people associate with negative press and then we can just have this kind of ephemeral like low stakes kind of game that has a higher chance of doing well in that in that context which i think is probably smart it's the smartest way to go about it yeah i don't know otherwise otherwise you just write it down yeah but i don't know they might they might have some hope that the the calculus is somewhat simple in that regard and it's what they did with concord because they realized they would never reach the threshold it's like you need to make back at least what we would make by writing this off which is for people that don't know if you if you absorb like let's say they lost 100 million dollars is just an example and they absorb that into their gross income so that it will or their net income so it lowers it by that much money.

2:31:39And then they pay less money in taxes on that. So like the difference between those two numbers is like what they need to meet. And they might simply say like, and that's like, it's like a third, let's say, or a quarter. If you're not going to reach of like what you spent, if not, then you might as well just write it down. And I think that's what they're probably trying to figure out now. And you could split it up over quarters and stuff too. That's what they're doing with Bungie. They've taken multiple hits to try to withstand and absorb the loss in value of the company. All right, I just wanted to bring this next one up.

2:32:12It is somewhat related. And I think importantly so in a few different ways. But the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece that I highly recommend. It was published August 14th. And you can Google it. It's called How a Sony Veteran is Overhauling the Company He Grew Up In. And it's an interview with Hiroki Tatoki, the CEO of Sony. A very rare, deeper interview. And it gets into a lot of the stuff that I've been talking about. about Sony's new direction and why I think these things are connected with good decision-making. They write here in part, quote, Sony was founded in 1946 as a radio repair shop in bombed out Tokyo.

2:32:49By the 50s, it was making tape recorders and transistor radios. The Walkman came out in 1979, revolutionizing how people listen to music. Sony followed that with the Handycam, the Discman, and other innovative products that made It's a Sony synonymous with quality and cool. Now, this is not going to be news to people that listen to the show because I've been talking about this for many years now, but they continue. In 1988, Sony bought CBS Records, home to artists including Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan. It seemed like a trophy purchase for an electronics firm swimming in cash during the heady days of Japan's bubble economy.

2:33:21An even bigger deal, Sony's 1989 buyout of Columbia Pictures for around$5 billion, including debt, would for a time be a favorite business school example of corporate hubris. Sony wrote off most of its investment just five years later following a string of box office flops and profligate spending before a turnaround helped by hits like 1997 blockbuster Men in Black. Tatoki, Hiroki Tatoki, the CEO, who joined Sony straight out of college, watched these early experiments from his humble perch as a junior treasurer in Tokyo. Would he have imagined in the late 1980s that 30 years later, Sony would be primarily an entertainment company, its consumer electronics business, a sliver of its former size?

2:33:59Tatoki said, quote, no, never. People didn't mention the entertainment industry at all, end quote. They continue today. More than two thirds of Sony's revenue comes from motion pictures, music and video games with franchises such as Spider-Man and Jumanji. The company has made a big bet on Japanese animation known as anime, a wellspring of pop culture hits such as Demon Slayer, Kimetsu no Yaiba. Did I do it right with that? Close enough. A key strategy is turning hit video games into movies and TV shows, ensuring valuable entertainment properties keep earning. After the success of The Last of Us, a post-apocalyptic TV drama that was inspired by a video game, Sony is working on a TV adaptation of God of War, a video game that follows a muscle-bound Spartan warrior in his battle with the Greek gods.

2:34:40Tatoki said, quote, that's the flywheel we like to make, end quote. He added that Sony is looking for ways to integrate gaming and anime genres he said had a natural affinity. The reason I wanted, and this is much more in here, and the big reason this, by the way, was being circulated is that they say at the end of the article, it's kind of burying some of the most important information. they're talking about the uh the crunch on on uh ram and and memory and everything and they say quote that has also affected the rollout of the ps6 the sixth generation of sony's playstation video game console many analysts had expected the console to arrive next year but those expectations have drifted further out because of the global shortage of key components caused by the ravenous demand from ai to toki said the company still hasn't fixed a date for ps6's launch end quote so that's what really came out of this article for people which is not a huge surprise that they're really talking about PlayStation 6 and not even really...

2:35:34It's not a quote of him saying PlayStation 6, but they're not saying like our next console or our next hardware, but really referring to it in the article as PS6, which suggests to me that that nomenclature was exchanged perhaps with the Wall Street Journal journalist. I wanted to bring this article up though about more of what it was saying about what we've talked about for years about Sony becoming an entertainment company by noting that it makes it what we were just talking about more essential than ever. It's all going to be about decision-making on on that you always have to make decisions what tv are we going to make what can be like the bio system and bravio like that always existed but it's different now now it's really about it's about taste it's about like understanding what the consumer wants from the entertainment level and sony has been aggressive as in the 80s as we discussed and as they say in the article of going in and buying things that had already existed but playstation is something that they they themselves created and have to nurture it's different and so i wanted to say that like this all comes together for me as some as as they they understand they understand like what what time it is and they know that they're in serious trouble if they don't figure it out i highly recommend this article if people want to go check it out did you guys get a chance to

2:36:48Colin Moriarty:to browse it it's not very long yeah yeah it's interesting because i was trying to think like what i remember even as a kid like sony electronics being like the nice good stuff and like how i don't know if it's just there's so much competition in that space or if they found entertainment to just be much more lucrative you know i think it's the latter i think some of it's the former but i think some of it's the latter as well they had a dominant position in some of these electronics verticals that they only gave up because they stopped focusing so much on their own quality because it seemed like the money was coming from somewhere else you know so you're right i mean when i was growing up sony electronics were the top of the line that fly man just do something about it all right turn your camera off the breaking bad it is the episode of breaking bad it literally is all right i'm gonna go on a murder spree real quick yeah i don't know how to turn the camera off on this actually uh there's a button i might be able to do it for you there you do that you go all right i'm gonna go attack should i turn his audio off yeah turn his audio off too okay well i won't know actually when he wants oh yeah yeah keep it on it'll be oh wait now i can't he'll have to turn himself back on oh okay i've never had to manually do that before let's see oh good luck chris buzzard wrote in to us in the meantime uh dustin said hey guys concerning Hiroki Tatoki's recent interview with the Walsh Journal.

2:38:20I've seen quite a few articles focusing on his comments that Sony still hasn't settled on a release date for the PS6. A lot of people are now connecting this with Sony's announcement that physical game disc production will end in January 2028, and more speculation that the PS6 could therefore be a 2028 console. What do you make of that? Do you think there's actually anything meaningful that can be taken from Tatoki's comments about the PS6's release window, or is this mostly gaming sites turning a fairly standard we haven't finalized the date corporate response into headlines for clicks? Given that Sony wouldn't publicly confirm a release date this far out anyway, is Satoki's answer actually significant and does the January 2028 end of physical disc production give any real weight to the 2028 PS6 theory and cheers for all the content thank you for writing in so what are your thoughts on this I mean I would imagine at this point they would have a date so that they don't now that can mean anything it can mean like we have a quarter picked out or even a week or a month and we just don't know where exactly we're going to be or it could be we don't even know what quarter we're going to fall into i just think it's got to happen no later than q1 maybe into q2 calendar q2 2028 otherwise i just don't they can't hold on to it they must know that so i mean they're in a tough spot it's tough it's a tough one uh what was the the quote recently the plan is the plan until it's not the plan yeah right as stupid as that sounds that

2:39:42Colin Moriarty:That actually may be the case with the PlayStation six that they have a plan on when they want to release it and maybe even a date or a time frame in mind. But with, you know, the RAM crisis and things like that, the plan may not that might not always be the plan. In terms of this article, I think this is like nothing at all. Like, oh, we haven't finalized a date. i'd be curious what the translation meant or was exactly like if there was another way that it was like we have not maybe he meant like we haven't confirmed when we're releasing it yeah i think almost like a no comment like where we have not said anything about that not necessarily it could be that though it's like oh we don't have a date yet we haven't told you a date yet i don't know To me, it just doesn't really read like anything.

2:40:33Colin Moriarty:I'd say the disc, the closing of the disc manufacturing is more of an indicator than anything else. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. I think I feel for them. I feel for all the companies that are in the commercial or in the consumer hardware market because they really, they can't do anything about it. You know what I mean? They just, we can beat Sony up for a bunch of different things we do. but I don't know I don't know I don't I just don't know what they're supposed to do it sucks it's such an unfortunate thing for them it's unfortunate for Xbox Nintendo's switch prices are going up imminently I think yeah it's all in the pursuit of AI and it's just the I'm not even really mad at the AI companies at this point I'm mad at the the manufacturers of all these goods choosing to destroy the consumer market in the chase of the dollar, which I understand you're publicly traded companies, but they're doing it to everyone.

2:41:43They choose who they sell to. It's not like you're cutting off all your consumer. You're upending decades of standard electronic pricing and the expectations around it. in pursuit of this new technology on one hand you can't blame them on the other hand you blame them entirely for it chris did you have a successful hunt no now he's no now he's hiding how frustrating

2:42:11Colin Moriarty:is that yeah and he's gonna show up i'm sure so like you know what i what i did was like i have some sugar water that i've just like left out yeah kitchen so hopefully he just goes there uh instead of being obsessed with i don't even technology i don't even understand yeah that's another thing probably or something it's 90 degrees outside go to the window yeah go outside this is these i the i really i hate hate flies man i just don't know what their purpose is i don't get it someone spawning out of rotten meat colin i had a question about what you think as far as the ram crisis yeah please uh so is it possible that at some point and again i'm maybe i'm talking out of my ass here that's like this problem of ram because everything needs ram your car now needs ram right um all all of the devices we buy society runs on electronics that use ram is there and i know the flea market people might not like this flea market is there a point where the that and it's i mean these companies are not just american companies they're global companies but is there a point where someone steps in it's like you need to allocate some of this for the rest of the world or this is going to this is fucking things up majorly yeah i just don't know that they're because it's so international i don't know that there's anything anyone can really do you know you might be able to feel that's what well i'm just thinking like most of these are chinese firms or like they're in taiwan or whatever maybe like locally you could do that or extract things for your own companies but i don't even this is it's it gets into like regulation in the gaming industry about how why it's so difficult is because you're dealing with like different governments different companies in different places and different publishers in different places with different expectations it's very difficult to wrangle people like that that's why i'm saying like the market's working as it's expected to work that's the free market for you that's the free market supply and demand I mean, of course, they're going to chase the top dollar.

2:44:22Of course, yeah, of course. Yeah. Who cares? Who cares how it fucks everything else up? They can still make an enormous amount of money, not fucking everything up. See, that's the that's the thing is like, you don't have to fuck things up like this. Right. You're just and again, like, whatever, man, I'm not I'm not naive. I understand what time it is. But it is incredibly destructive to what is going on out there. and companies like Sony are the victims. Sucks. I mean, we're the victims downstream, of course. They didn't want to release a thousand dollar PlayStation 6. I guarantee you that wasn't the plan.

2:45:00Yeah. Again, I'll remind everyone that the early rumors about this and Tom talked about this and like I guess with a lot of the documentation he was reading was that they wanted to make something cheap. The whole idea was to make it affordable.

2:45:14And saturate the market. it. That was what they wanted. So their whole strategy is. I don't know, man, I don't I feel like I don't want to say this is existential because Sony's got Sony's fine, but PlayStation's a big part of Sony, man. Big, big part. The biggest. And as PlayStation goes, so does Sony. So it's a lot riding on this little machine. It's it's actually so much more relevant than it's ever been in my entire career how this thing does for the health of the company. Because back when PS3 was struggling, Sony was fine in other ways. And I remember Shuhei talked about that recently. So that's not that that world doesn't exist anymore.

2:45:56All right. Want to talk about this. This is an interesting one. We've been covering the delisting of games this year from the PlayStation network from the PlayStation store, something we've been begging Sony to do. And it's one of the few things that I think they deserve a lot of credit for. They are finally doing it. They're nuking these various PlayStation shovelware and trophy publishers that release sometimes dozens, sometimes scores, sometimes hundreds. And I think even one of the publishers might have had more than a thousand games deleted off the network, which is good. However, there's this new one that is getting people talking.

2:46:33And I had a certain opinion on it until I spoke to someone, and then I had a little bit of a different opinion on it. So I wanted to talk about it here. Over at delistedgames.com, they write, 13 titles from Turnox, this is T-E-R-N-O-X, the publisher, leaving the PlayStation Store in a week. They write, quote, Turnox announced on Twitter on Sunday that 13 of their games will be delisted from the PlayStation Store in a week. The titles, which have been hitting console platforms since as far back as 2019, will apparently remain available on Nintendo Switch and Xbox storefronts. Several of them are also available on Steam in addition to other titles released that have not made it to consoles.

2:47:04In a follow-up reply to their tweet, the publisher added that, quote, I'm really sorry that this happened and that I failed the developers whose games I published, but there's nothing I can do about it now unfortunately I still have a tiny bit of hope that this decision will be reconsidered so please share this message if you can the games that are being deleted are 13 games I've never heard of and so I saw people complaining about this and obviously the tourists in the PlayStation space um were being like see the digital games you know kind of thing and I'm like guys we've been begging them to do this this is like what we want this is what we want we've been celebrating this all year why is it a problem now and a lot of people were they get a problem because it's the first and i want to be clear most people had a problem with it without reading anything about it because they were like well it's post july 1st this is like when everyone's mad what i'm mad about with the digital future with sony and look it's them taking games down arbitrarily and so i actually tweeted out like if you're complaining about this you're a fucking annoying tourist but then i spoke to mystic ryan um and did some research as well I watched his video as well about this and this might be a more a more dicey example of what we're talking about wherein I would like to know more about what Sony's train of thought is on this so I did a little bit of research actually on this um and by the way I deleted the tweet about it even though like someone was saying like, oh, it's getting ratioed and somebody deleted it or someone said like it got community noted.

2:48:37And I'm like, no, actually it was neither community noted nor getting ratioed. I deleted it because I felt like it was really mean to the developer after what I learned. So I deleted it. So I did research on this game, on the studio's games. Some of these games, most of these games were made by the studio, but he did publish a few of the games externally as well. so again there are 13 games and i was talking to mystic about this mystic had played i think some of these games and it brought up something interesting in me where i'm like hmm this is a little bit tough these games that he that he listed all have really high trophy completion rates and by the way they're going after shovelware and trophy games sometimes they're one in the same but sometimes they're not.

2:49:24There are games that were trophy games that have been delisted that were okay, I guess, but they were made to, because they gave you trophies in like 10 seconds. So they were deleted. But then I was thinking about this, guys, and I know I'm getting to where I'm going. It's like, what if your game is just small? Back in the day, you weren't allowed to give platinum trophies to small games. It was the same thing on Xbox. You get 200 achievement points, I think, and you would get like, you know, an equivalent number of trophies. And over time, they really flexed the platinum rule so that almost anything gets a platinum trophy.

2:49:54I was looking at some of these games like he was talking about the game Retro Highway, which actually has the lowest completion rating of any of their published games at 35 % platinum rate. But it was made externally and it takes a few hours to do. And I was like, I don't know. Is this what we're really talking about? I would like to know more about it, but the games are like, so Nexoria Dungeon Rogue Heroes, 76 % platinum rate. finger fitness which is clearly garbage I looked at it and Mystic brought this up on his video as well 86.9 % platinum rate and clearly made for no reason other than trophies retro highway seemed like a real game but with a high platinum rate unichrome a one bit unicorn adventure 53.2 % ovoid console edition 75 % run and jump guy 62.2 % scrap divers 67.1 % foxes zen house 83.8 % invert 78.5 % bullet beats 78.2%.

2:50:53So I think it's the trophies that got this guy deleted. But then I'm like, I don't know. And this is what I was talking to Mystic about. It must be a publisher level thing where it's like you break the rules X amount of time and we just throw your shit away. Because really what they could do is just delete some of this stuff. Right? But it seems like there's some sort of rule that was broken. and I think I can say with I don't know I don't want to say with any sort of certitude but it is my feeling that some of these games that were published by them were made to get trophies no doubt and if that's the case then they're basically like we're throwing it all out but high trophy rates don't necessarily mean that the game was made for trophies or that even that easy to get and this is where I think intent comes in and maybe where like you need more of a human touch on some of this stuff.

2:51:48Like even at my own developer, Lily Mo, we have some, we have some games that with low completion ratings, but we have some games with like 50 % or whatever completion ratings, but it takes hours and hours to do it. I think we don't get in trouble in quotes because it's clear that you have to play the game. I mean, even with Abroxia 2, which I think has like almost a 50 % completion rating, you have to beat the game on new game plus on like the hardest difficulty and do all these kinds of things. It's like, it's doable and people do it. Maybe a compliment to the game. And there are even first party triple-A games and just triple-A games generally that have a near 50 % completion rating including like the Spider-Man games so I'm like I don't know it's the first time I've seen one of these where I'm like you're right there might be something weird about this one so I just wanted to throw that out there that I was wrong to judge them so quickly that's why I deleted the tweet and I didn't want because I just felt like it was mean it wasn't really mean to them actually also I kind of deleted the tweet by the way I save every tweet I've ever deleted I have a picture of every tweet I've ever deleted because I don't trust anyone out there so um but the other thing was that um it people were interpreting it as me attacking the story and the and the outlet which I didn't like because I was like I'm not attacking the outlet I'm attacking people that are freaking out about this so maybe throwing the baby out with the bathwater been using that term a lot but I don't uh I don't know I just I don't know if you got you guys wouldn't follow this this is deep PlayStation lore but I feel like I would like to know more about this and my assumption Dustin is that they just broke the rules and so they're just out yeah my impression from looking

2:53:25Colin Moriarty:over like I'm on their website uh one of these games really sticks out and it's that finger fitness game and when I saw it like I mean it's been a while since I've seen it but those like the jumping taco or whatever game those guys got new yeah you know like but like when i saw this finger the cover reminded me of one of those games that's what i'm saying like i just think that that that is what that is yeah to me they flew too close to the sun they did this game to maybe just because i also searched platinum finger fitness there's a video the top video that comes up 15 minute platinum so should there be new more nuance uh probably that they but the thing is in most cases i would assume making an assumption here is that the companies that are making these asset flips platinum games that's what they're doing primarily and that's all they're to call in all these by just getting rid of those developers those publishers so it's a rare case that this publisher doesn't seem to only do that but they still did it so yeah because because you know what i think about you guys wouldn't know this is like that there's a developer publisher retilica or something like that you know r-a-t-a-i-l-a-k-a they release a lot of stuff on PSN and they release games with easier trophies, but they're real games.

2:55:00Like it requires, you know what I mean? It requires like a finer touch, I think. Right. I feel like he says in his own tweet, he feels bad for those who he published on behalf of because their games are getting delisted. I wonder if they can like get their games back up on their own label. Probably.

2:55:20Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I don't know, man. I look at this as like this finger fitness thing in particular. I'm like, the platform is not better for having this. In fact, it's diminished for having a game like this on it. Yeah, totally. I agree. So like, I just, I can't, it's hard for me to be like, like, why'd you do this? You could have just not done that. Right. And you would have been fine. So like, I don't know if it's really as nuanced. Yeah. I mean, I think you're right in that. You know what you're doing in some way. You have contributed to the destruction of the trophy ecosystem and the storefront. Sure.

2:56:01Your game doesn't need easy trophies. If your game needs trophies to sell, then it's probably not worth selling. And I don't mind a five or 10 hour platinum, but I do mind a 15 minute platinum. And I think Sony needs to go back to the old rules. We wanted platinums in every game and we were frustrated when we didn't get them. And then they gave us exactly what we wanted and we shouldn't have done it. And they and they should go back to like being like, no, you get like two golds and three bronzes and two silvers or something unless you are X big or X size or whatever. and I feel like I'm one of the people along with a few other people that helped kind of destroy that because we figured out a long time ago not even a little bit long before I made games where we learned that like you can kind of just ask for a dispensation and they'll give you a platinum and then I think a lot of people started doing that and then I think they just made it in the rules that's like yeah you just get a platinum I thought you guys would be interested in this though I was wondering if this game had anything to do with it it's the specific game they released Dungeon Loop

2:57:02Colin Moriarty:this game doesn't i was just looking at that this game doesn't have trophies and should have never i was saying this the mystic it should have never been certified and i wonder it's like you can't release games unless they're classic games without trophies that's been true since 2009 so that this game i think this game came out in 2024 um i was like i wonder if that was one of them too where the game just straight up didn't have trophies in it. Now that's Sony's fault for certifying. There's an achievement guide for it that I'm seeing. Yeah, like if you, I'll find the thing for you. Like there is no listing on PSN profiles or on any of the backends for this game on PlayStation.

2:57:42Colin Moriarty:Oh, weird. I'll see if I was reading a thing about it. Let me see if I can find it. I wonder why that would be the case on PlayStation and not Xbox. Yeah, Dungeon Loop has a broken or non-syncing trophy list on PlayStation Network, meaning users on tracking sites like PSN profiles have noted that the game's achievements fail to sync properly and the developers have not fixed the issue so it's it's all bust it's like busted up completely where like it could very well be you publish your own trophies live it's why some trophy lists appear really early and some trophy lists appear right at launch you have to do it manually or at least set a time to do it and it could very well be that they just literally never set it live like it could be that easy to fix but yeah all right so I want to just acknowledge that little bit of a mistake on my part but want to see the nuance of things when the nuance exists I don't I don't know if anything's gonna come up for that or if like it might already be over you know yeah but I think people were upset because they're releasing that game stonks 9000 or have you seen that yeah that game looks kind of cool reminds me of like the NES era like what was that game like million dollar kid or something like that.

2:58:54That was...

2:58:54Colin Moriarty:Oh, it's Takeshi's Challenge or something? Yeah, yeah. All right. Dustin, Kingdom Hearts 4, releasing late 2027. We did talk a little bit about it on the stream, but you can talk about it here. In a press release, Square Enix writes, during D23, the ultimate Disney fan event, 2026, Square Enix and Disney and Pixar games announced that the highly anticipated action RPG Kingdom Hearts 4 will release in late 2027 with a new trailer debuting at the Disney Entertainment Showcase revealing the new in-game world inspired by Disney and Pixar's Coco. That is one sentence, by the way. Alongside this announcement, it was announced that Kingdom Hearts' working title, the original anime series for Disney Channel and Disney Plus is in development and collaboration with Tetsuya Nomura and the creative team at Square Enix.

2:59:43So I saw a Nomura interview later, or maybe he said it on the stage. I don't know where he's like, it is coming in 2027. Like there will be no delays. That is powerful stuff, especially from Square Enix to say something like that. So I assume the game is done and they're in some sort of confident state where they're polishing and getting ready to go for a Q4 calendar Q4 2027 release. It seems like I'm sure you're very excited indeed. I also noticed this in the press release. I don't know what this means. Could be nothing. Kingdom Hearts 4 will be available for a Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S and PC.

3:00:22Colin Moriarty:interesting usually i'm seeing that order yeah it was at a nintendo direct that's where it kind of came back yeah so i i would assume nintendo might have this one for marketing they might yeah yeah uh this trailer was awesome they did the initial i think it was like a 90 second trailer at the main d23 uh event but then they did the panel which had a much longer trailer and of course shows off Coco which is why I watched Coco for the first time last night and the game looks from a graphic standpoint the fact that it is comparable to the Pixar movie they were getting pretty damn close with Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Toy Story world I think Tangled was in there as well but this was just like damn they are really cooking with this uh the gameplay looks cool uh they definitely are starting to this trailer all the trailers are a little crazy of course but we're starting to get characters with um nonsensical names thrown out there good we've got organization 13 in the hoods so it's it's starting to feel very kingdom heartsy Now, they did show sequences where you can play as Donald and Goofy, which is a, I believe, a series first and also a Mickey section, which has like a paper Mario Mickey section in it.

3:01:54Colin Moriarty:Interesting ideas. I'm interested in the fact that Sora is separated from Donald and Goofy for at least I would imagine this is the early part of the game. we're dealing with a lot of underworld slash death scenarios, whether it's the Coco world, or it seems like Donald and Goofy are interacting with Hades. So another underworld death situation, but it looks awesome. As far as 20, 20, 27, I always have to remember. And it's funny. This came up just recently. Colin is that square annex at one point had an entire event to announce the release date of a game final fantasy 15 because that had been delayed and no one knew what was happening and they're like this is the day and they did a big counter uh on stage and a big reveal with your former co-workers tim gettys and greg miller only for them to delay it again after a big fucking event so they must have wanted to kill themselves after that they had to have and hopefully they would have they've learned from that but i'll never forget it because of how funny it was so that's 2027 stupid game yeah go on i'm sorry i i believe that it would be 2027 there's a small chance it could be early 2028 yeah i i hope they're smart enough to not uh well it doesn't matter people will play it it's going to do great oh yeah we had mentioned also that you said it i think on the stream right that they said it's a billion dollar franchise and then I'm like well that's not really that big of a deal right like considering the all the Kingdom Hearts games that have been released respectfully sure you know I was like yeah that's cool but it's a fucking fever dream is what it is now Brad was saying the uh the rumors of the Endor that you go right was that he was saying that would be so cool yeah biker scout already been teased biker scouts it's got the it's got the ATAT foot oh cool it's in the first reveal so showing i think we can lock that in the chicken yeah chicken foot um i'm curious what else they're gonna do in terms of worlds disney owns so much more since uh you know this is like the only silver lining of disney owning way more stuff is that there are a lot more possibilities of places that kingdom hearts can go and at this point uh i'm here for it whatever they want to do i don't care they go to simpsons world yeah family guy i want to i want to see family guy i want to see sora team up with brian and stewie that would be fucking awesome i would love that oh god i would love that so much well kingdom hearts 4 late 2027 something to look forward to i'm sure they'll be teasing it out as time goes on anything you want to say about this chris i doubt it i can move on without without even yeah i don't what do you care i have nothing Oh my god, you gotta be kidding.

3:04:58Colin Moriarty:He's back? Yeah, he's back. Do you want to go back to work? No, don't worry about it. I'll just sit in the rage and then it'll all come out. Oh, good. And he's gonna regret this. Well, this next one for people like Dustin and I. Um, Cart wrote in and said, Is anyone excited about a potential new Terranigma port or a remake in the works? Never came to the US. I've always wanted to play it, but never found a reasonable method. Will you guys give it a shot, if true? I saw the story and I was like, wow, man, I miss this. This is really exciting. Seems like the game Terranigma is coming out, maybe being re-released this year or next year.

3:05:40The reason this is a big deal is because it comes from a, it's really two big deal, two reasons it's a big deal. One is that it was localized, which is never released in the United States. It actually came out in Europe on Super Nintendo. But it is the last Super Nintendo or Super Famicom game from a studio called Quintet. Quintet was a studio that used to work with Enix long before Square and Enix merged. And they are responsible for a bunch of fairly beloved games on Super Nintendo, including my beloved ActRaiser, but also the RPG Soul Blazer, the RPG Illusion of Gaia, which is probably the best respected of them, and the RPG RoboTrek.

3:06:21Have you ever played any of those, Dustin? Do you own any of the Quintet games?

3:06:25Colin Moriarty:I'm looking at their list and I can don't think I've ever played any of their games Actraiser is like obviously my shit I fucking love Actraiser and they did release an Actraiser 2 but Actraiser 2 sucked and then they later went on to make a PS1 game called the Grand Stream Saga have you ever heard of that game before it has really bad box art I just brought up oh yeah it is bad box art and that was a Sony published game actually and I feel like um I feel like that might have been re-released at some point, but I don't know about that. It says THQ on the box. Yeah, they published it in the United States.

3:07:03Yeah. So, yeah, I hated that fucking box art so much, that Grand Troop Saga box art stuff. But Terranigma was this weird game where it was a very late Super Nintendo game, and Enix had kind of closed up shop in the United States. I think Dragon Warrior 4 and a few other things just weren't doing what didn't do well for them. And so they kind of bailed out and they were going to kind of use proxies to release things. So they had a finished kind of localized version that just was never released because by the time it was going to be ready, everyone had kind of moved on to PS1 and N64, or at least that was their feeling.

3:07:39So that was one of those very rare Super Nintendo games that came out in Europe, but not in the United States. So unless you had access to an emulator back in the day, which many people did, of course, you really couldn't play it in a localized way. So it makes it a pretty big deal. Now, the other big deal, if you read about Quintet, is that no one really knows who owns some of these games, or at least that was the assumption. And then when ActRaiser was re-released, that was in what, 22, I think? There was some assumption that like, oh, Square Enix might have figured this out. And it seems like maybe this is the next step of liberating some of these games, because Terra Enigma is in a trilogy, as Pushware notes, where Soul Blazer is the first of those games and Illusion of Gaia is the second one.

3:08:28So this was like the conclusion of some sort of interconnected games. Just very exciting kind of closed loop moment for someone like me because this game was always... I'm familiar with it because I've watched videos of it and I'm pretty sure I had a ROM of it back in the day. But it wasn't something I really played very deeply. so it's not that mysterious to me but it was one of those games where it's like damn what is this game and we're finally going to maybe get it in the west because it looks like a studio name or a publisher Clear River Games is teasing that on August 24th so the day this goes live on free feeds they might have a little something to show from the game so just wanted to throw that out there very exciting and Nintendo is actually the publisher of the game in Europe Nintendo itself okay just some quick coming back to closing loop story thing here again with pulse elevate wireless speakers they launch november 12th 2026 what's interesting is that this is an update of the original story and if you go down to the comments their comments are from september of 2025 so they announced he says september of 2025 and now they're finally all this time later ready to release them and uh i believe they were delayed right they were didn't they have a last minute to remember

3:09:41Colin Moriarty:that was that this trying to remember anyway i don't know about these it doesn't matter they're 219 dollars if you care i don't but yeah it's for a lifelike audio for desktop gaming and on the go if you want the headset of course so those are there any interest in that probably not not for me i have no idea who these are for that's what i'm saying it kind of conflicts with the whole not not doing PC thing anymore. Right. Yeah. Like no one. PC gamers are not using speakers for the most part. They're using head headphones. They're definitely not using a built in mic. I mean, maybe if this built in mic with AI enhanced noise rejection.

3:10:31Colin Moriarty:I mean, I just. I don't know who this is for at all. maybe they'll be really really nice speakers and everyone's like oh these are actually really great sounding and i like there's a picture of speakers and the speakers with the portal if you use these with the portal you need to be sent to jail that is so immediately yeah that's like psychologically crazy it's completely psychotic it is yeah that's not a good that's not a good person doing that you know like that's like there's something something askew about that i i just yeah speakers to me like if you're if you're really an audiophile in that way like you're not really gonna be um i i don't know who i don't know who this is for they look nice i guess yeah we'll find they're aesthetically we'll find out aesthetically kind of nice depending on what setup you got but all right uh just a few more things then we're almost done we get to what we're playing just thought i note the call of duty um modern warfare 4 beta that i think is this week right um if you yeah it's real soon i just signed up yeah so it's yeah running from august 24th 21st to 25th in early access or pre-order and then 28th of the September 1st for the open beta for all players.

3:11:57But I wanted to just point out, it's obviously uncommon for them to do this, but it is uncommon for them to include a campaign level for the first time ever. So I thought that was kind of neat. Just wanted to point that out there in case all of you fellow single player people want to check out Call of Duty early, you can do so. There's actually something for you this time around. Are you guys going to play the Call of Duty beta? Well, you said you just signed up for it, so you are. Chris, are you in? I might do that, yeah.

3:12:20Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I think if there's a campaign level for free, I mean, yeah. that sounds like uh it sounds appealing to me yeah i have um if you have discord nitro you get uh access to the beta oh okay i have i do it really i do have nitro so you could give your code to chris oh can i do that i think i i think i have it as well oh so like i didn't realize that was probably the cringiest thing i pay for yeah i would agree with yeah i would agree because i was used i got rid of it for a bit but then i was sending like files between like either me or lock and jimmy or stuff like that and i kept running into the upload limit i was like well i actually use this yeah that's the thing about it yeah i like being able to bring my emotes everywhere it's a nice little perk too yeah i don't know why i have it i have it for some reason there's like a specific reason but i don't know yes for streaming okay for sure so you when I mean if you keep streaming on your system we probably don't need anymore but it's not a big deal what is like 10 bucks a month or something it's okay yeah all right thought this was interesting video games chronicle reports uh that Matt Groening the creator of the Simpsons obviously um let it slip as he noted that it looks like the famous 2003 game hit and run from your beloved Radical Entertainment, Chris.

3:13:44In fact, yeah, yeah. Might be making a comeback. So he says during a D23 convention panel in Anaheim. And he was asked a bunch of questions, I think about the second movie coming and all the rest. But they write that, well, Croning says this quote, I don't know if I'm speaking out of turn, but I think the original game is coming back in some form. And then showrunner Matt Selman says, or not uh so it seems like they are teasing that this thing is coming now people have been talking about this game a lot this is a beloved game in fact i learned through summoning salt that this is like a big uh speed running game that like is totally it's like wildly busted open and um there's a great summoning salt about it but episode about it but because you have to collect coins to move on in the game right so like there's all these efficiencies that people have figured out it's actually really really interesting it's one of the more interesting speedrun games i've ever seen but this was a big one that's cool this was a big game everyone loved this game back in the day and uh it would be cool to see it come back radical of course would go on to do prototype your beloved right that's that's true they did uh i think they did um hulk's ultimate destruction

3:15:00Colin Moriarty:too around that same time but they yeah dude i love the simpsons that was back when we were getting like really weird kind of like bizarre gta like i don't even know how to describe that was early open world you know so like there was a lot of different stuff going on a lot of experimentation with ip that you normally wouldn't see um and that's exciting man like it like it's a it's a great game i'd play it i forgot my only they did crash team racing oh tag team racing oh it's tag team racing oh they did yeah okay that makes that makes more sense right right tag that's like that you like crash team racing tag team racing is okay it's just it's it's you know original ctr is where it's at yeah but it's funny matt graining is um is that how you say it sorry I think so I'm fairly certain I never heard it but I have a memory where like I was at a bar and his son was there and it was with a bunch of other animators and we were just talking and I didn't realize it was him and I was just talking about how much The Simpsons sucks

3:16:12Colin Moriarty:and I had no idea that it was fucking the son of the fucking creator of The Simpsons well you told the truth i i i think everybody was kind of like i think they get it because i was talking about how it's not that great now and i think everybody i think even matt graining understands that but uh it was just a funny memory because somebody came up to me he's like you know that's uh that's uh matt graining's son and i was like it sounded like a joke because it's like oh that would be funny if that's what would happen and then no it's real i looked it up in the bathroom i was like oh shit matt grainy i gotta get i gotta get that in my mind i i it took a while like i i had to be corrected did you know that dustin i feel like i've heard that but i don't know yeah i don't i don't i didn't know that i learned they're doing i know a lot of cartoonists yeah there's a new simpsons movie right probably this is all part of the the marketing plan smart energy gotta market it smart dude dude it's as a smart as hell move to do though like a a simpsons hit run synergy like that they were they must have been saving that yeah i mean they're like because they could have brought that game forward at any point and they're like well let's wait wait until we have some synergy going on synergies yeah that'll be a good yeah like i don't know i don't simpsons are i never and i haven't played many of the simpsons games if simpsons arcade is still the one that touches touches my heart the most i love that game dude hit and run is so funny man like i love like you can just kick the fact that you could kick marge down the street always made me laugh to me because like you can you can just you can straight up be homer simpson committing domestic violence in that game and it's like to the moon nobody gave a shit it's kind of crazy to the moon to the moon march um Pow, right in the case.

3:18:06Pow. All right, finally, this came out today right before we recorded, so I thought I would acknowledge it. Matt Piscitella over at Sakana has released the July 2026 data for the U.S. video game market. It ain't good, but games sell nonetheless, and we must talk about it. Things are down July 10%, I think, year over year. Hardware, he says, continues to be impacted. by the record setting, not only the monetary situation, but also the record setting Nintendo Switch 2 release. So we have to kind of balance those things out year over year. PlayStation 5 was the second best-selling console in the United States for the month.

3:18:47Switch 2 is number one in units sold. PlayStation made more money. Gross anyway. I don't know who made more profit. Best-selling game of the month. And remember, Serkana is kind of in a projection mode now because they are including things. And by the way, it's getting a little more complicated now. I'll tell you guys why in a minute. but they're starting to include projections for sales in which people don't play nice with them anymore. So they have more holistic numbers. That is their view anyway. Call of Duty Black Ops 2. Number one game of the month for July. Crazy. College Football 27. Number two, Black Flag Resynced at number three.

3:19:23Nice win for Ubisoft. Big win. Much needed win for Ubisoft. Number four is EA Sports MVP Bundle. So that's College Football 27 and Madden together. and then Black Ops 1. By the way, last month, Black Ops 2 was 67. So it's crazy. That game was number 67.

3:19:46Colin Moriarty:Before? A PS3 game. All the... Yeah, before the new push, right? Wow. That is... I was about to bring that up. That is crazy. And even... That is actually insane. And Black Ops 1 is 150. That's a 16-year-old game. it's it's absolutely anyway halo campaign evolved number six splatoon raiders number seven echoes of aimcrad sword art online i know that was one something you like to pick up dustin that was a number eight i don't even say that tamadachi life living your dream number nine and then uh first light holding on at number 10 that's uh across all platforms year to date requiem remains the best-selling game of the year followed by first light number three is crimson desert number four is mlb the show number five call of duty black ops 2 number six is forza horizon 6 which is still not on playstation they're going to boost back up when when it comes out there tamadachi life is seven huge victory for nintendo on that one lego batman legacy the dark knight very quietly at number eight Pokemon Pocopia and number nine and then football college football 27 is already at number 10 that will obviously go a lot go up um here's something that I I wanted to add I don't know if you guys saw this Microsoft will no longer be giving Serkano numbers oh that's a big deal and we all know why by the way because they are not going to be able to hide or they will be able to better hide from the results of what they're doing, the gears and some of these other games.

3:21:29It's clear as day. That's what they're doing. There's just literally no doubt about it. So Microsoft's dropping out. It's all going to be projections for them now moving forward. So two of the three first parties are now projected. I still believe the numbers, but they are not ironclad like they used to be. So I don't think they're lying. I don't think they're trying to misrepresent or obfuscate anything, but they don't actually know now. and now Microsoft's going to be one of those but understand 100 % what they're doing because they want it to be like oh yeah like everyone's like look at gears bombing and they're like well the numbers aren't real they're projections so I see through it okay if you want to be depressed by the way look at all the mobile games that are being played like Monopoly Go oh god more people are playing Monopoly Go than are playing anything on Playstation all right that's all we have for the news all right we're back let's get into what we're playing by the way i'm just looking at twitter here and as we were taking a break uh jez friend of the show jez cordon i just a tweet came up from of his it just says you don't hate roblox enough and then it's from the courier journal and it's a headline that says roblox argues eight-year-old waived rights in wrongful death lawsuit oh my oh man dude that's good shit all right let's get playing like i said i'll go first and get out of the way quick i beat beast of reincarnation last night really like this game it is i talked about it deeply uh on summon sign people can hear me talk about it there with brad who also beat it but uh there's a lot wrong with the game i think i think there are too many systems in the game i think it's a little too complex from a certain perspective just systems wise like you don't even need all these systems that are even necessarily really interact with to be good at the game or to play the game but i think there's a lot of heart with this game and i found it to be quite emotional and interesting i really like the story in fact i thought the ending was really sad like got me a little teary-eyed oh and And I just really like, I don't want to spoil it.

3:23:45I get a little bit more into it on Summon Sign, but what it's about, it's about the hubris of humans is really what it's about. And them trying to circumvent and get around the realities of life and these things that are happening to them and how things kind of blow apart for them over thousands of years. and I and about it's obviously got a lot of anime tropey things and the silent protagonist she's not silent really but the muted protagonist that forgets her past and yeah the mysterious older kind of you know sensei style figure who accompanies you on things and you have your dog companion and it's tropey it is but I feel like it's only tropey on the exterior and it's not the strongest game in the world.

3:24:38I actually think it's like a high-end AA game, if not a low-end AAA game, but, and I will say it's set up for a sequel, though I don't think we'll ever get one. But I really, really liked it, and I'm working my way through New Game Plus now, and I'll apply Platinum in the next few days, show my respect for it. So, that's a game I recommend people check out. I assume it'll be discounted before the end of the year if you want to wait a little while for it now, and obviously other games are coming out that are going to be much more intriguing to most people. But I thought releasing it when they released it was kind of clever, actually.

3:25:11It got a little bit of time. It carved out a little bit of something for it. And I think there's something to it. I really, really like it. So definitely look into it. It won't be for everyone, of course, but that's where I leave that. Chris, it says here you're playing Spider-Man 2, the 2004 version.

3:25:25Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I got a, I'm in a weird mood. You know what it is, honestly? Like, we're about to, we're about to be inundated. with so much that like there's a bunch of games that i like i want to get to in my backlog like real like you know modern stuff that i i want to sink my teeth into but like i don't think i'll have the time to really get into it before we have to switch gears into early september and what that's going to bring and so i've just been playing a bunch of older stuff just to kind of take it easy before we start getting crazy and i was playing the original spider-man the the the original toby 2002 release on the original xbox and i kind of got bit by the bug and i was like oh yeah i loved spider-man 2 back in the day i wonder and it's a game that i haven't played actually since probably around the time that it came out probably like 06 was probably the last time i played it so like it's really only existed in this um it really is a nostalgic game for me in the sense that i just i don't have any associations with it beyond the era in which it came out and the time that i played it it's not something that i revisited all that often so i was curious about like how well it held up like whether or not i would still like it and it's interesting because it's like this is a very important game in the in like the history of like open world games like this is like the this is the foundation by which all future spider-man games operate and i would argue most superhero games operate that that borrow from open world tropes like this like it all kind of starts with this and it's really fascinating because it's like it's really not easy like and i don't mean like it's not easy to beat like it's fairly trivial to beat i mean to like really the effortlessness by which insomnia gets you to feel like spider-man is not in this game like you have to work to be good at just moving around and like swinging and there's like a bunch of unlocks in the store that you have to get and I don't remember it being that way there's an interesting thing that I that I completely forgot that I actually so let me just be clear this is not as good as I remember it it's that it's definitely it's got a weird structure it's like you got to get a certain amount of hero points and then you have to do like a random objective and then it checks off and then you're into the next chapter it's kind of stilted there's not a lot of level variety it's all kind of in the open world there's like a handful of indoor spaces and they're not really well thought out um and so i don't want to sit here and say like oh it's um it's it's better than modern spider-man games because there's a nostalgic element to it but there is something that i do think is cooler and it is that demand that the game has for for you as you're swinging and how much more thoughtful it is like there's real physics like you can kind of you can swing but you can also choose to hold on to the web line and just kind of like dangle there if you want whereas in in the new in the new games you kind of have to like they make you let go like you can't go in a loop and if you do like you can in two but like it's like a button that you press it's not quite a consequence of physics and what i noticed too is like if you swing and you make a turn like if you swing around a building and the web kind of hits that corner that is the anchor point of your web so you can actually like use that to like really quicken your momentum in ways that is like really interesting so like there's a lot of really cool web physics that they did in this game that i think is actually more advanced and kind of more dynamic and better than stuff that we get even now and from that aspect it's it's been a really interesting game to to revisit it's very of that era too like the voice actors are terrible and i love it there's a great clip of like this this woman who's supposed to be like you do like random crimes which by the way is in spider-man and spider-man 2 now like the insomniac games but like you'll go up to some random passerby and they'll tell you about a crime it's like that woman she needs help it's just like it's very clearly like the cousin of somebody who like worked there yeah the pain make it stop and it's like there's no urgency to this at all it's fun it was fun like i beat it and i didn't expect to um i just thought i was gonna play it for a little bit just to get a feel for it and i ended up beating the whole thing it's very funny mysterio in that game is great because like i said there's a great setup with him uh that they that they pay off quite well and uh it ends the end credits maybe you might appreciate this colin it ends and it immediately starts playing the distillers hmm i don't know if you know that band or not but like i remember that it's like that is so like i haven't heard about the distillers in so long that it immediately like when i finished the game like it immediately pulled me back i was like oh my god brody doll i haven't thought about these i haven't heard this sound in so long interesting license yeah very odd very good though like i i'm starting to listen to them again but yeah it was a fun little time uh i don't know what i'm gonna do what i'm gonna play next i have my eye on space marine but that's that's also kind of like a real space marine 2 uh warhammer 40k i have my eye on that i kind of have my eye on big walk a little bit but i don't know i gotta get people to i gotta get people on board for that so it's like a space marine space marine yeah i remember this i remember this record yeah this is the one i think coral fang yeah yeah from um the distillers it seems like it's their last record i didn't realize that they were like not really even around yeah i mean i had no idea but it's such a good it's like that sound is like so like i remember i like the credits rolled and i was like oh whoa this is this is so early mid 2000s yeah i appreciated it yeah i'm trying to

3:31:44Colin Moriarty:kill the gilmore girls also it's mega funny how quick like these games always adapted like the story of the movie with like a little bit of extra flourishing but like i love how like they just can't pace things properly like dr octopus is giving this like this really villainous monologue and then you and then you punch him and then he's like what have i done it's like breakneck pace i love it i think i think i know where i found them from there are two things atv off-road fury i used to play that series randomly they're in the third game of that i really like those games climax i think made those they're in uh they're in one of the underground games i think if i remember yeah it says here they're in tony tony ox underground too which i didn't play and and honey ox pro skater 4 which i also didn't play but this is where i think i actually know them from is rock band yeah um drain the song drain the blood yeah yeah that's a that's a name i haven't heard for a long time it was a good sound it was like refreshing because it's been so long it's like oh yeah this is good it's good stuff but yeah i had i had a good time but it's uh it's definitely not aged as well i actually do think like weirdly enough i actually think um i actually do think the first spider-man is probably better even though it's less fondly remembered but uh unquestionable like moment in time and an unquestionable moment in the in the evolution of like open world games and so it was cool to revisit what are you gonna what are you on to in terms of um what's your plan moving forward because metal gear is coming out soon and then metal gear is coming out and that's a long game too so like i let me is a plague i was thinking something yeah when's that pretty soon i think it's like next week maybe even oh it's gotta be plaguetail then i'm gonna be i'm probably gonna be all over if it's that soon i'm gonna be all over plaguetail i love those first two games i those are games that i wouldn't have expected to love as much as i do but i really do i earnestly like really i think they're great i think it's because there's just no like they do it's it's a stealth game and there's like it's such an underserved market this one looks more action oriented i had no idea it was that close yeah i thought it was next year august 27th whoa so it's resonance right yes yeah i for some reason in my head i thought this was next year um yeah this is gonna be this is gonna be it for me on the 27th and then i'll try to wrap that up and then then it's the third of september where everything starts kind of kicking off right yeah that's with uh blood blood of the dawn walker and onimusha i think the next day yeah so that's that's gonna be a big one it's gonna be a little bit of a scene out there it's gonna be so busy so soon um that's what i said for plagetail like that's i'm i'm actually so that is actually such a great you know when when something's coming out and you you don't even realize that it's coming out and you're like but you you were looking forward to and now it's like it feels like i kind of cheated past the waiting that a lot of people have to do because like oh it's suddenly imminent that's a great revelation see here um yeah i was trying to look i think i'm looking at my calendar i think uh if i can get piece of reincarnation out of the way platinum it that i think i can get an alan wake two and probably bang that out quick and then at least just leave control one for me to replay before going to control two i don't know man we'll see what happens dustin you're playing the most relevant game mortal shell 2 mortal shell 2 talk to us about that yeah this isn't a game i was really planning on playing but then i uh saw all the reviews being so positive and i thought i would check it out i reached out so for disclosure i did get sent this game and it's great it's really good actually not perfect but the first mortal shell i played a little bit of when it came out this was like 2020 while ago i did not like it i the only thing i really remember from it is that it felt really heavy and weighty this game uh so the big spin on the souls like formula is that uh you inhabit different shells that are different characters with different special abilities um the other really interesting thing about mortal shell 2 in particular is that there is no stamina bar in this game which is like a hallmark of this kind of game is that you have to manage how much you are dodging attacking because there's a finite item out before it fills back up uh but this game just doesn't have that at all um and it's been a very interesting dynamic to get used to it's like oh i can just if i need to just endlessly dodge backwards i can do that um so it's kind of has a little bit i wouldn't call it like elden ring open world but it does have a an exploratory aspect of it it's interesting because if you want to get new weapons you actually you go to a guy uh in the hub area but you have to buy a map and it will show you where the weapon is at on the map itself and you have to go find it so that's kind of cool as far as the different shells i have two unlocked right now one of them is a thief style character whose special abilities they go invisible for a second and they can do like um like a special move to attack someone from behind and then this other one i have is i don't know how else to say it but you'll see in the marketing it's it's the girl with the with the butt he's just got a big old uh dumpy she's got a tookus she's got a tookus and it's a little it's a little gratuitous at some point i'm like what damn it's you know i'll ask hanging out on a thursday like what's going on uh and her special ability is that she has like a i wouldn't call it a grappling hook but it shoots and then you can like launch yourself towards enemies with a lightning attack and it's pretty cool too uh i'm trying to remember i had it pulled up what they were called and i already forgot um i think they're called seals and this also can radically change the gameplay uh so you can change these out um like basically at any point where the seal i have on allows you to parry and do like deflects so it makes the game feel in some ways kind of like sekiro parrying which i really really love the other seal i have basically temporarily turns you into a rock kind of reminded me of uh the halo reach rock move where you just like hunker down for a second yeah but so you can use that when you are about to get attacked to defend yourself but it's also you can use it like middle like in the middle of an attack and so you can kind of gather more enemies towards you while you're um you know hardened and then slash them all at once uh but the combat who's hard who's hard me playing mortal shell 2 uh but overall i am really digging the combat oh the other thing too sidearms so a lot of people when you think of sidearms in souls like games of bloodborne uh which your sidearm was cool and useful for drawing an enemy's attention or doing like a special attack but they weren't really something used in combat regularly it's not the case in mortal shell 2 the first sidearm you get is a giant shotgun and so you get like depending on the sidearm i think the shotgun you get three shots and so you can use those three shots and they do mega damage usually depending on the enemy but uh in order to gain the ammo back you have to do standard hits so it has like a nice flow where you're like doing some melee and then you can like clean up the last few with your shotgun and it's a nice dynamic to the formula the game so far for me is a little bit buggy not horrible i'm playing on playstation um and there was a patch that i believe came out this morning or yesterday uh that i have maybe this is already fixed but i managed to number one crash the game uh and then two i was able to roll out of zone and so i was just fucking stuck and i had to restart the game in order to get out of it so that was cool and then i was doing a boss battle and the boss managed to get out of zone like out of the boss arena and he was just like standing there outside of the arena and i couldn't kill him so i just had to commit suicide and restart the fight and this is only over the last like what i think i got it tuesday so over the last like two or three days of playing i've had these three bugs uh so maybe a little bit needs cleaned up again there was a patch that i have not tried yet that probably cleaned some of that up but yeah i'm i wasn't looking forward to this game because of how i felt about mortal shell one and this is just such a huge improvement across the board i i need more time with it but my feeling right now is that this might be the best souls combat that isn't from software uh which is for me a pretty big thing to say because i am an annoying purist with from soft games the game that got closest was probably liza p and some people still prefer that but i think the parry is way better in this game and i love the shotgun or i got like a crossbow later on so uh yeah i'm excited to dive more into it i'm on i've i've fought many bosses but i'm i think i'm at one of the first like big bosses of the game which is just absolutely ridiculous this game is dark and as creepy as it looks it has a little bit of of whimsy to it i'm gonna tell chris about the boss after we done recording because i was just uh not expecting it i'm curious i'm i'm curious about it yeah it is a it's a pretty sick game um i'm trying to look up screens here of it it's yeah it's too hardcore for me i think you know yeah it i'm i'm not struggling like i wouldn't say it's like a super like some of sometimes these souls like games like get become like really hard uh like they're the design for the most hardcore people of that audience i'm not finding that to be the case though i am dying a lot there are a lot of enemies that can just like immediately one shot you which that's the other mechanic of this game is that you're in a shell like which is whatever warrior a mortal shell a mortal shell and when you lose all the light you get your body gets kicked out of the shell and so you have to build up a meter through attacks in order to like regain your shell so it's kind of like a a second chance opportunity in the game but i'm finding a lot of times there's been certain enemies that just like hit me at the right mark and then I go flying out of my shell.

3:43:40I'm like, ah, great. But it's

3:43:44Colin Moriarty:really cool. Really pretty game too. It's running pretty well for me on PS5 Pro. Not immaculate frame rate, but good enough. Alright. Mortal Shell 2. Another something to keep you busy in these quieter weeks before we approach the madness of Wolverine. Wolverine. all right let's get into listener inquiries and wrap this thing up six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas my friends from the audience over on patreon patreon.com slash last sam media submit your inquiries into the threads on the news feed for all the different shows the threads for sacred symbols go live wednesdays and are deleted thursdays brian sirrett wrote in said hello boys and an extra hearty welcome back to the dust man himself thank you i know this may be a tired topic for some but it's been really bothering me more than unusual lately.

3:44:34The toxicity of fandoms has reached a boiling point for me, where it has become almost impossible to engage in any good faith discussions on literally anything. I have loosely been a part of many fandoms and watched as they've cannibalized themselves with entitlement and outrage. What is it that drives these fandoms to become so toxic? How can we push back? I don't want to enforce an idea of toxic positivity, but is it worth encouraging people to engage more earnestly on a wider scale with things they really, really do? I'm sorry, with things they really do think deserve it that was me not you or is it all futile and destined to be labeled as shill behavior i don't know it's extremely discouraging and in the end these people will never actually be happy with anything but when the loudest among us are the most deleterious it leaves the creators with little else to go on anyway i hope all all is well with you all is well with you and boys and i'll go back and hang up and listen i can't i don't know why i'm not reading i fucking botched that entire thing sorry brian oh my god the whole thing um i wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about this because i feel like we need to get some sort of direction from the audience and from each other there's this idea we're part of an ecosystem of people that play games gaming is a communal thing even if you're not you know I'm not a multiplayer gaming gamer but I've always liked enjoying games with other people talking about them and experience them amongst other people and having a community of people that do those kinds of things and it always felt like even in the forum days certainly in the usenet days which I was not a part of but you would hear a lot about those days like there was a lot more earnest conversation about what was good and what wasn't and I think a lot of that I've kind of come to realize like at a place like game facts for instance like that you know still exists and still has its forums but was a dominant forum 25 years ago or so is there was a level of ownership like real ownership over who you were and what you said and that you kind of like fit in quotes or didn't and they even had the karma system and everything at the key people in line at game packs which is actually kind of brilliant and it just seemed more honest there were a lot of bad things back then and people shit on those games but there were a lot of good games too and great games and people have enjoyed and celebrated those things and then of course there were all the controversies and all the things that people argued about nonetheless I think because the barrier to entry is so low now in terms of getting involved in the conversation on social media you need like an email address you need like a throw away email address that's it and you and really you losing your name and getting banned like these things don't mean anything in these places anymore like it used to so I think it drags everything down.

3:47:16And that's what I think Brian is saying is like when the most are like the loudest or the most deleterious. Yes. It's it's a bad situation. And I see people say and I agree in the main with the like with the with the idea. It's like, why do you pay attention so much to what people say? Why do you pay attention so much to what the conversation is out there? And I'm like, well, isn't that part of what we do? But if you don't want that. Then we could examine things within a silo. And I think there is something to that as well. But I think you're kind of missing for the forest for the trees if you do something like that at the same time.

3:47:56It's very difficult as a creator for, in my opinion, someone who really cares about a show and prepares for it and tries to make it interesting and good. It is very difficult to avoid all of the negativity and talk about gaming in a realistic and grounded way. And so I think a lot of the criticism is right on the money. But at the same time, I'm not really sure what people want. Because that is what's going on. It is reality. It's like if you're a political reporter and there's an election going on, you're like, yeah, but we're going to talk about this other shit. It's like, yeah, but the election is going on.

3:48:30Like the outside world is prevailing upon what you are doing. I don't really know how to articulate it better than that.

3:48:38Colin Moriarty:Yeah. And I don't know what you guys think about it. And I don't really know what the audience expects. Because I try to give it to you straight and then by the way when i try to give it to you straight when i try to celebrate a game like beast of reincarnation or whatever then i'm told that i don't like good i always like bad games i always like mid games like nothing is earnest it's always like towards some end right like people and people inject negativity into it and i don't know i don't know what you want i really i really don't know what you want it's easy enough for me to ignore it and not participate with it too much because i am people say oh you're not above it it's like i kind of am i mean we don't really need to grind like that anymore.

3:49:14I don't need to be part of every conversation and put my name out there and all that kind of stuff. I don't need to. I want to know what people want and I don't want to know what you guys want. My host as well. So that's where I'd leave that for now. Do you have anything you want to add either of you? What do you want?

3:49:31Colin Moriarty:It's tough because like with the internet now, I mean, there's like multiple factors in place. First of all, of course, algorithmic content that pushes toxicity is, of course, a factor in all of this. There's the fact that the Internet encourages like micro hyper specific communities where you're going to have a range of people that are into whatever you're looking at in different ways. I think there was like an Instagram reel or something, a video a long time ago about like getting into the coffee subreddit. And there's like, oh, is this a good piece of equipment? They're like, well, what's the mineral count of your water?

3:50:15Colin Moriarty:Because if you're not checking your mineral count, then you might as well not even make coffee. You know, like stuff like that, where it's like the guy with the big dick that knows everything. It's like every community is going to have. Like Souls players. Souls players, right. but the thing is there are there are thousands of tens of thousands of normal souls players as well but there's also but there's the really loud people that paint the picture for everybody right so and that the other thing too like there's so many elements i think that all contributes to the other thing too is just that with the internet and probably before the internet it too but now we have a place to display it for everybody is that people take these things that they're really hyper into and make it part of their who they are as a person we've talked about that before where it's like uh it's like a reverse toxicity where you could say you know the joke on twitter where it's like saying i really like this it's like oh well you don't like this then like the reverse pancakes it's like someone was just giving an opinion about something in a non-toxic way but you took it in a toxic way so it's like it goes both ways that's the whole thing is like there's that's what i i was saying about beast of reincarnation is like i've gotten a lot of negative feedback about liking it i'm like why why that's the lens that's the lens now uh and it's the lens because it it it drives traffic and it drives conversation anger is the best way to engage people people have known this forever and so it is it's it's a shame it's it's like a perfect storm of like you are you are monetarily incentivized to engage in this way and even if it's not money it's that you're getting you're getting attention you're getting notoriety you in some cases it's literally money um you're getting engagement and it's that mixed with this like fusion with um like earnestness is embarrassing now like you can't read like it's it's unwise to be earnest is the prevailing kind of wisdom and everyone's kind of become the character you know what i used to think about actually i used to think about this a lot james rolf used to he like he used to play the angry video game nerd right and he would have a show and he did the show but he wasn't on twitter angrily tweeting every hour every day because james rolf was not the angry video game nerd he played him now it's like smash jt is just smash JT.

3:53:05Colin Moriarty:You know what I mean? Like there's nothing like it's he's just the character and everybody's just the character. Everybody's upset about everything because they have to be because if they're not, then they're not motivated to work. And if they're not motivated to work, then they starve. You know, it's like it's it's just it really is a perfect storm. It's like a mess. I've been thinking about this for years where like no one can turn the bid off, even in comment sections. Like I remember I remember I remember a time when YouTube comment sections were they would comment about the video and now it's like everybody's doing their tight five you know oh bro bro looks haggard or something you know what i mean or just some bit trying to get the most up votes or the most like thumbs up or whatever everyone's doing a bit yeah it's good and it's like there's and no one's a person anymore and it kind of it sucks uh i don't know where to go from that necessarily but i i do think that i do think that is true and uh it's just where it's just where we're at now and we can't really we can we can starve it of oxygen as much as it as as as much as it would be reasonable to like it It doesn't need to subsume like 90 % of our show.

3:54:25But to ignore it is a bit disingenuous. Yeah, that's the perfect word I was thinking of as well as disingenuous. I think I've laughed about this before because I consider myself a naturally half glass, empty, pessimistic person. And I don't think this show reflects the negativity of the games industry in any way. it it's it's made me feel like i'm the happiest most go lucky person you've ever met sometimes when i look around and that that to me i'm like this is weird man is that i don't know that i've changed i feel i feel like things i feel like things around me have changed in a really material way and here's the thing chris that i think is interesting too and dustin you might might relate to this as well is i think about it with the disc situation the internet is not real life you hear that all the time and i think by the way that that's sometimes true you see that a lot in elections, right?

3:55:18Not even presidential elections. You've just seen that recently with House and Senate primary elections and stuff like people that are like really dominant on Twitter just get wiped out or whatever. I'm like, yeah, there's some truth to that. Okay. So let's take you at your word. The internet's not real. It's not real. Okay. The disc stuff goes away. Well, we're rallying on the internet to, for the movement of discs. I'm like, okay, but it doesn't seem like it's mattering. The stock has gone up and they're not even saying, and they said it literally oh you're shilling for corporations so then what's going on the internet is real yeah like it's literally that easy to poke a hole in that whole in that whole line of questioning it's like people act like they're above it that's the shit that pisses me off is it if you're in the space you're not fucking above it i hate to tell you that

3:56:07Colin Moriarty:you're not above it that's true you're not is it ironic that the people who want physical media are not rallying physically not that you would have anywhere to go but yeah there you go no i uh yeah i mean we've talked about this on the show too before where it's just like i we me and you colin and it probably doesn't at this point just through sheer osmosis is like you know i i can speak for me for sure that i i don't i am cynical i'm somewhat pessimistic i don't aspire to do that though i don't aspire to be that way it's not something that i don't look forward to being cynical every day i do earnestly believe that everything that you once liked is worse now and everything that sucks now is the best that it will be going forward like I artists like it's a bummer not everything I guess but like most things like I do feel like things are kind of degrading in a multitude of ways but I don't love that and I don't want to spend all my time thinking about that and I don't want to make my entire world that in the way that so many people seem to want to do that I I can't relate to that because I'm not prideful about the cynicism like it's not a good i don't feel good about it yeah i'm not proud of it no i'm the same way it's just who i it's who i am you know like yeah i i don't know why i don't know why i became cynical i don't know why i became jaded but you're exactly right it's like it's it's a disposition it's not an act and when people that are doing it as an act are out jaded you or out you know criticizing you and do all that i'm like there's something there i'm telling you there's something weird about that like and it really does they're doing they're doing jaded face right and i don't appreciate it right exactly you're stealing my identity wearing it like a fucking like clown makeup my culture is not your costume i just think there is something to i've said it before these people are trapped it's a trap and so they are going to have to self-perpetuate the negativity because they cannot it's not even that they can't be positive they will have no success if things are good or things are perceived as being good no one gives a fuck what those people think about good things yeah and that's what i remember you can't pivot you think that smash guy is going to suddenly pivot into being like i like video games and i like playing that like yeah right i went over it on his own show with him i'm like it's all negative all of it is negative none of it is about the games it's all about this culture war shit and And the culture war is negative.

3:58:57It has to be negative. It is portrayed as that. That's why it's a war.

3:59:01Colin Moriarty:You're trained to look for things to find issues with. You know what I mean? Like, I can't remember. There's like a phrase that's like, if you look, if you look for something in an empty room for long enough, you'll find it. I can't remember what the real phrase is, but it's like something like people will find anything that they have to find in order to justify the time that they've spent looking for it. And I don't know, man. I don't know what you do about that. Yeah, it's it's it's a shame. Like it's it. You have to understand when you're watching these people's stuff, you have to understand it's a trap.

3:59:32They're trapped. There's no getting out of it. It's either that or nothing. And that's one of the things that I am really grateful of in our own situation is I can be whatever I want. People just expect me to be honest and I am honest. So sometimes things are good and sometimes things are bad. And that's exactly what people come to me for. I'd never have to be any other way. And. I'm down with that, but understand that a lot of your guys' opinions are starting to infiltrate in a negative way. So when something like Beast of Reincarnation or these things, I think people think that I call out these games because I want to be different.

4:00:06It's like, why can't I just like things? That's you being negative, not me. And that's me acknowledging the reality that others put on us. It's very complex. It's a hard thing to navigate in all spaces. It's not exclusive to games. all right awesome from rochester wrote in and said hey cdc i just wanted to touch on colin's theory that people don't like video games anymore or want to hate on everything we just talked about this but i promise this is going somewhere else multiple times you guys have touched on the inshittification of everything but one aspect of inshittification that you guys don't really get into is the inshittification of movies and television colin in particular sticks only to games specifically however over the last decade or so a ton of sci-fi and fantasy franchises have been thoroughly inshittified star wars and indiana jones during the lucasfilm disney era Star Trek during the Kurtzman era, Doctor Who during the Chibnall era, Lord of the Rings with Rings of Power, Halo with the TV series, Marvel with phases four and five, and the list goes on.

4:01:03While there are exceptions mixed in there, Andor, Picard season three, etc., I think that those are all franchises, that all of those franchises now produce more critical and commercial bombs than hits. My point being that I think when people see certain modern writing tropes in the latest Wolverine footage or other AAA game, they have a natural visceral response to it, even if they can't articulate why. Since at least Colin hasn't seen most of that content, it would make sense that he wouldn't be sick of the same cliches. Just my counter theory. Keep up the great content. I've talked about this counter theory.

4:01:28I want to bring up something very important though with this. Maybe we haven't explored this particular question yet. If things are so predictably and horribly bad, why does everyone keep going and seeing all this shit? See, when Star Wars lost me, I'm out, right? So it would make sense that I'm kind of immune to whatever has drawn Star Wars down. Marvel I was never really in on Rings of Power looked like shit from the beginning in my opinion I've never been in Star Trek so I can't speak to that but it's like and Halo I mean you know I'm not going to speak to that too much either though it seems like no one really liked that yeah the point is is that like yeah everything has been in shitified and yet everyone persists in those space instead of removing themselves from the same it's the same thing with games in the inverse it's like if it's so bad if PlayStation is so bad, then leave.

4:02:25What do you want? Do you want like a fucking parade on your way out the door? So, yeah, I've I've dodged some of the inshittification, but I think a lot of the inshittification has been allowed to take root because we're in phase five of the Marvel movies.

4:02:41Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I don't know. I think what we're talking about, because the inshittification of television and movies and what you're describing is, I feel like it's different because you've only brought up franchises that have existed for a long time. i don't think movies and television aren't shitified really at all i think the system in place that makes them is like the streaming like that everything is streaming now and there's like there's no residuals for actors anymore in the same way that they used to like there's there's things about the industry that has been in shitified um but i think it's a bit disingenuous to to say movies and tv and then go on to list franchises that have been around for 20 plus years like i i think obviously those things should have been gone a long time ago right but they make money and so they're gonna they're gonna keep doing that they're going to keep wanting to make money it really is the root like it really is the root of everything like the reason why everything sucks is money the reason why everything way things are good is money like it really is like it it's the core problem but like there's great films coming out all the time obsession was great the Odyssey was fantastic so like I don't I don't think and even that's an old story you know what I mean so like I don't I don't know if I I think what you're describing is the reliance and the unwillingness to move on to new things results in shittier versions of the things that they refuse to move on from I think that's true I think that's always been true though like to to stay on one story for 20 years like i mean like how could that possibly stay fresh and engaging and entertaining Does that make sense?

4:04:36Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it makes sense. What do you think, Dustin? I think when it comes to movies and TV, he brings up all these series. But while there is clearly a large portion of the audience that... I mean, Star Wars is easy to bring up. The large portion of the audience that was not happy with the Lucasfilm Disney era, there are also a lot of people that really like it. and have no problem with it and don't see anything wrong with it i i know a lot of people like that that think that the new star star wars trilogy was great um so i think in a lot of cases we're kind of bubble thinking even if the bubble is much larger there's still a general audience bubble now sometimes that does break for example star wars uh that mandalorian and grogu movie you eventually do get you do get to the point where but like dude they're doing that star fighter movie with uh ryan gosling uh which i don't know it could bomb it could also be a big return for star wars in terms of sales right after the down uh sales of mandalorian and grogu yeah but i guess his point is like people because of the inshittification of tv and movies that's why wolverine people aren't into what they're seeing right is that what he's saying sure i i think he's he's talking about like the writing tropes from these and shitified properties I just think the writing in the question is a bit weird because it implies that movies and television are bad.

4:06:22Colin Moriarty:When, like, I mean, like, dude, Severance. Like, there's so many good original IP. It's really just these IP. And that's a valid thing to say that, like, oh, Marvel is written in kind of like a very annoying way. I would generally agree with that. um and there's look there's parts of the wolverine game that i've seen where i look at it and i'm like ah that's not it's not written to my exact tastes but i just played one of my favorite games from when i was a kid spider-man 2 and it's like it's it's delivered terribly you know it's written very poorly and everybody loved it and so that's kind of the thing where i'm sitting from it was like i think it's not that i think the standards are too high because i don't necessarily think that's true but i do think we're tougher on the things that we used to be okay with relative um then maybe we should be and it's or maybe not like i don't know like i because spider-man 2 like when the new spider-man 2 by the way marvel uh insomniacs um when that game came out i remember having all sorts of issues with like the writing of it you know like i thought it was i thought Harry and Peter and MJ were written like like HR was constantly watching them.

4:07:43Colin Moriarty:They had like no real personality. I think that's true. I think it's valid to criticize, but it doesn't immediately make a game a zero out of 10. You know what I mean? And it's the hyperbole of it that really bothers me. Like the idea that like, oh, this is written in a way that I don't like or like this has this bug or this has this visual issue. and so like the entire thing is garbage and it's like we used to find enjoyment and stuff that was like not a hundred percent perfect and that's what bothers me about all this really yeah i think mostly for me i mean i don't want to speak i i wouldn't be able to i've said that before because that one of the reasons why forespoken didn't bother me as much as other people and stuff because i just don't engage with a lot of the shit and that's true but i would say that the things that i have engaged with the bad writing is not it's bad ideas it's bad execution it's it's much more than right episode eight sucks and the writing just scratches the surface i mean fundamentally it's about the writing because that's the script but it's not the execution of the lines like i don't remember there being too you know like if they fly now and like that kind of stuff it's like yeah that shit sucks but that's not why it's bad anyway right part of it yeah it's it's part of it it doesn't yeah that's good that's more what i would say but the thing the thing too is that like those things that it bothers me because like i think even a line like that they fly now or whatever a bad line used to be fine if everything around it was great right that's what i was gonna say chris that would have been a line people said like lovingly if it was a good movie yeah you know what it's like it's like spider-man 3 how spider-man 3 is now where like people talk about like the dancing toby mcguire in the in the street and like they refer to it lovingly now because they realize that it's actually a pretty well-directed movie but like they fly now would have been in an ideal world that wasn't so hyper negative a line that is as shitty as they fly now they fly now they fly now that would just be like oh a silly thing in a movie that was otherwise fine but now the issue that i'm having is like now i don't know i really don't know if like if if Empire Strikes Back came out today.

4:10:16Colin Moriarty:If people wouldn't have issues, you know what I mean? With like, what the, why does Yoda sound like this? You know what I mean? Like I just, I, it's so cynical. Yeah, it's definitely, I mean, the rise of cynicism has made everything uncertain, I think. Yeah, so. Well, thank you for writing in. What was your name again? I scrolled down. Austin from Rochester. Brandon Price says, good day, lads. Colin, you had mentioned on Summon Sign this week that people need to curb their expectations with games and stop constantly looking to be blown away with every release. Most of the time, good is good enough.

4:10:47Greatness should be seldom seen and much harder to achieve. It is, after all, why we appreciate things that are great, whether or not we expected them to be or not. I have applied this principle to my own life over many years, and I have found it to be very healthy. I think people try to be more happy than happy, and in the end, they're left constantly unsatisfied with just being good enough. Thanks for the great content from you and the crew as always this is a big one for me too just about the conversation of sony doing the same things over and over again by perceptions of the outside world and like i think the ip are obviously getting a little bit repetitive but i'll just remind people that like then you sit down and play a game like like ghost of yote or something and you're like yeah no one's basically there are very few studios that do games of this at this caliber and i do wonder if sometimes we overlook look greatness by volume because the greatness comes from similar and familiar places

4:11:42Colin Moriarty:does that make sense in other words like yeah go ahead chris well no i was gonna say i think we're just used to a new quality bar that is way above and beyond like what we used to be accustomed to like i think like a bad game today would is like a competent middle it's like a competent mid game it's the kind of game that you would like you would probably still love in 2004 if you were a kid you know what i mean you would probably could have been your favorite game ever like like plenty of us at when uh when we were young these like games that were like not 10 out of 10s that we loved anyway um i think most get like i can't remember the like what was like lord of the rings golem maybe like the the last lord of ring lord of ring yeah lord of ring golem it's probably the last like or i guess mine's eye like there's a couple like there's a couple of games that come out that are genuinely like bad but not to the degree that they're used to dude i used to get games i used to i remember i have i have games on ps2 that were straight up broken that just didn't work i had an nes cartridge that like i i can't remember what game it was but it just straight up it was it was bugged and you couldn't patch it because there was no such thing and you just had a broken fucking game and that was it i think people don't remember what it there's there's a lot of rose-tinted kind of glasses definitely for the era that we come from and i and i think it's not to say that certain things weren't bad i think a lot of things were actually better back then i think pacing was better i think we had a better balance of like budget to scale and like what we could do uh a better balance of indie uh or a better balance of triple a double a like there's a lot of things that were better but like the the the game that gets the worst press now would have been lauded in like 2002 or like 1995 you know what I mean like I really do believe that earnestly I agree I agree with you like when you look at now I'm removing myself from the volume of total cumulative games because there's so much shit being released obviously especially on steam but if you just look at like normal releases there are more than ever there are thousands of a year of what i would consider like intentional releases and the amount of bad games is actually shockingly low in my opinion comparable it's what you're saying like comparable to the volume there were a thousand and well i'm sorry there is shovelware also to contend well that's what i'm saying though like if you remove but remove this what i'm saying to like to restate it like earnest releases there are like games where it's like this isn't bullshit this is we are trying we are not trying to be jaded or sarcastic in our release we're not trying to take advantage of trophies we're not whatever all that shit there are thousands of real games a year on all these platforms and i think that the the amount of them that are truly bad is like actually vanishingly small comparable to there are a thousand or so nes games not even and like 20 percent of them are shit like that that's definitely not what we like shit shit like that's not what you are dealing with anymore and that's why yeah like a game like mine's eye is so notable because it's like wow this really does harken to a different era of like wow you really are it's not it wasn't nearly as bad but it reminds me of the game um enter the matrix the atari game where like they clearly just had to release it the atari game the atari oh okay all Yeah, yeah.

4:15:12From the early 2000s. Yeah, it's an Xbox and PS2 game. I understand what you mean. I know I said that weird. You're totally right. But it reminds me of that game where it's like, yeah, this is just going to come out now. You know, and it's like just empty environments and like nothing to do in it and shit.

4:15:28Colin Moriarty:And it's like, you know, it reminds me of that game. You know, it's crazy about that game, too. I played that game. I liked it. Me, too. I was about to say the same thing. Or at least I remember liking it when I played. I'm sure like I play it now. It's probably a mess. But. That's what I'm saying. It's like Mind's Eye could have come out in 2003 and there would have been people liking it. The reality is when I was obsessed with like Super Mario World when I was a kid or Mario 3 or whatever, you could have showed me Mind's Eye at that time and I would have dropped Mario 3 and Mario World like a hot fucking garbage and moved on.

4:16:02That's what I'm saying. We've experienced obviously the linear growth of games and that's the only way you can experience it and have some sort of realistic outlook. I really believe that. Like I really wanted to, like you don't, you can go back and play those games, but you weren't there. And I don't mean to be one of those dickheads, but it is a relevant thing. It's like you weren't playing it in the time. You're looking at it through all of these lenses that are distorting reality around it. And the linear fashion of the releases of games, it makes it such that maybe people like us, like Gen X and people like us millennials are a little more realistic.

4:16:38And that's why I like examining the seams between games, because I realize not everything is going to be Ghost of Yote. Even if I was, I wish that they made something else other than Ghost of Yote. But when you get it and you play it and you're like, this is fantastic. I mean, this is objectively high caliber, beautiful, runs well, well-made presentation, story, voice acting. And you look around and you're like, yeah, like people are getting tired of this. And I'm like, what? like it's like it's like it's like you're saying it's like they're getting tired of high quality games because they're all delivered from a third person perspective well i think that there's a fatigue in the ubisoft style i guess ubisoft originated like

4:17:24Colin Moriarty:open world do there are six different activities uh you're gonna do these six different activities many times in across five zones. Yeah. That's what people are over. Yeah. That's like, that's why Yote, like Yote is a beautiful game. Story's fine. But to me, like it's what Brandon said, like Yote was a good game to me. I enjoyed it. But, and that's all I really expected it to be. But let me, but let me, can I, may I, let me ask you. Grafted over other games. it's objectively of a higher quality than most of what comes out no whether or not it resonated with you that's depends on which standpoint that you're looking at it is it objectively a better looking game than most of the games that have come out around it yes is it for for me in my experience is it objectively a more fun game to play a more interesting to game no i've played a bunch of games like ghost of yote before many in fact uh and that's okay yeah we've grown accustomed to a level of quality that i think is is i mean that's it's interesting you know i i like i like ghost of yote i think i think it's great i also kind of fell off it because i'm i do this type of game is very common so like this is the kind of the key difference right is that derivative and samey or like how things evolve very iteratively instead of like you know i remember when sequels used to be like fundamentally different like they would be like they would have to they would scrap the entire thing and they would rebuild it from now it's more like you spend a lot of time building a tool set and then you kind of like iterate on the next thing and so from that perspective i could see why a lot of people are bored or maybe disappointed because we're getting a lot more samey stuff i mean this is stuff that i've talked about on the show too like a lot of unreal engine kind of like the homogenization of all the engines where it's just like there's not really as many proprietary games being made that have their own unique quirks and unique feels compared to the way that how many that we used to get or at least in the way that we used to get them at least the things looking a little bit samey feeling a little worse they're not worse games they're just not as interesting to us because we're used to this and i think it's i think people just need to get accustomed to stepping outside of themselves a little bit more often than they do it's a good habit i think to build for yourself to kind of just step away and observe things as objectively as you can and i don't think it's as hard as people think it is like i really like there's a lot of games that i love that i think there's plenty of games that i love that are shit like i i really i have fond memories of that that 360 destroy humans game absolute shit it's absolute garbage it doesn't run well it's completely busted it's not funny it runs like and i think literally like 15 frames a second so i feel like naughty bear you're basically describing naughty bear yeah literally down down to the frame rate yeah so it's like things like that but it's like i think it used to be more common or it used to be more okay to have like an eclectic taste like that right i like this i like this weird b movie that kind of sucks and now it's like i don't know if it's not a from soft game or if it's not like i don't know whatever the uh whatever the arbitrary thing that people have chosen is not is worthy of like being an underdog i guess like crimson desert was that for a second um i don't know it's just weird it's a weird environment yeah it is it is i i think i must admit as we exit this question that one important component to this i think is just how much you interact with things and i think this is kind of the inverse of what was said in the previous inquiry about like well colin missed the star trek movies and they missed this so he's it's like if you're only interacting with games at the most base level which a lot of people only can because you have real lives and you have families and jobs and other things that you can maybe play half me like if you can play a half dozen games a year you might be lucky but for a lot of people out there then you're naturally going to gravitate towards what is best and everything else is going to look subpar to you but not unlike when i watched mad men and then i try to watch something else and it's like well like this is obviously not as good as mad men i don't really care because I am I'm a TV enthusiast and I'm using a hypothetical person and thus I'm going to watch this thing that I know is worse because it's what's available and that's the position I find myself in in games like I can't only play the very best of the best because I play way too much and so there are just things in the seams plus it's it's what I just I know it over and over again like and I'm not saying it's anyone that's writing in because we haven't gotten to this conversation but those that say that there's nothing to play it's like you are blind and retarded yeah like like you have got to be out of your fucking mind so it's hard for me to relate to the cynicism like because i actually think this this year so far it's about to pick up it's been awesome it's been a little slow for me personally for my it's about to pick up like massively yeah but i see but like i don't know man like 007 was great like resident evil pragmata mouse we're still we're still getting great i don't understand this thing it's like the games industry stuck we're not getting good games anymore it's like i think that's kind of i think you're divorced from reality anyway and also and then some people say like we're talking about first party games and i'm like well those are and first and second party games are there's a nice volume of them out and coming especially this year so we'll see but it's always no not that one no not that one no not that one no not that one it's like okay it's exactly what happened in the ps3 era by the way so all right nope not starhawk nope not resistance nope not twisted metal 2012 no not rain nope not tokyo jungle no it's like where are they i don't know now it's like not saros not token we'll see how wolverine i'm sure wolverine's gonna do great we'll see how phantom blade does ken is supposed to go out later in the year although i think it's probably gonna get bumped because they haven't said anything about it um yeah that's definitely bumped i don't know whatever i would imagine matthew buchanan wrote in and said hello to my flea market advocates what do you think about former naughty dog developer benson russell saying that his ex company's release structure is unsustainable is there an argument that they are a bit too relentless in their pursuit of perfection or is that simply what makes the studio what it is could you see a similar weight for the game that follows intergalactic i'd be keen to hear your thoughts i don't think there's going to be a weight comparable to intergalactic simply because the last of us online was canceled so there there is nothing in there and like everyone's on intergalactic now or most of them is our intergalactic i assume because remember neil indicated that he's producing a game too right so there's obviously something else um so i've articulated this i think before and i don't know how i don't know exactly how to do it is like I almost think it would let a lot of the steam out of the pot if they just didn't hit once.

4:24:56The unfortunate reality is there's no room to not hit. Because it's not the PS2 or PS3 era where you're going to get another bite at the apple, another swing at the pinata in 18 months. If something like Intergalactic doesn't work, and I'm not saying it's not going to, I think it's going to be awesome, and I think it's going to sell millions of copies. but um let's assume it didn't it's like and let's assume that they can get another game out in two or three years and they get another bite it kind of like removes the expectation that really is i think really important to the the the pressure that creates the diamond but it must be horrifying and i i mean that in a literal sense of the word like everyone is looking at you as being the team that pushes console gaming what you do matters it finds itself in a bunch of other games i said i see the last of us in resident evil requiem clearly you know in my opinion like as an example so but the reality is is like naughty dog fucking up or naughty dog releasing an eight which would be a failure for them they've not released an eight in generations it might be weirdly good for them like for the eyes to kind of go like all right well you're a has-been team or whatever like an like a sports team that's getting a little too old we're gonna go pay attention to the new hot cats and then you come back up and you pop one and you're like no I just know that that's easier said than done and that's obviously not what they want.

4:26:40They just want to release 10s. But man, it's tough and it's going to take a lot of time, but I wouldn't conflate the amount of time Intergalactic has taken as it being in full production all the way since The Last of Us Part II because it really hasn't been. And you have to understand that The Last of Us Online was the studio's game. And that's wasted several years. So that's not going to happen again, hopefully. we'd probably be playing it already if not for that. Yeah, I would assume so. Because it would have entered production much sooner. Yeah. Now, ironically, I mean, it's going to be useful for them at any time.

4:27:15I think it's going to be really important for them now. Because it's going to be only on PlayStation, obviously. And PS5 is going to be so onerously expensive at that point. Plus, I assume it'll be a PS6 game. We at the very least know it'll be playable naturally on PlayStation 6. might be very important for them to have that big pop at that point but yeah i just wanted to throw that out there that it's it it is literally unsustainable unless you believe that they can just release 10 caliber things forever and that's just going to become more and more expensive and more and more difficult and we're going to get into that in our next inquiry you guys anything you want to say before we move on nope kramer at the factory then says greetings Afro-Americans.

4:28:03You guys have discussed a few times now that AAA game development in the United States is dead. I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by this. Does it mean that there cannot be new entrants in that space? Are the big studios we have today in trouble? I was wondering if you could elaborate on this argument. Thanks to keep bringing the last. Well, this Matthews conversation earlier, his question earlier, Kramer at the factory will allow me to articulate this better. The people that work at a studio like Naughty Dog is an example of the highest caliber. They are amongst the most expensive workforce in the entire industry.

4:28:35You don't work at an audio dog if you don't know what you're doing. And those kinds of people have choices that drives price up, makes everyone very expensive. Now, this is, of course, just the top rung of American development, but to maintain their level of perfection is going to require more and more of those kinds of people spending more and more time as everything gets more expensive, as inflation goes up. And as you stay at the studio, you expect to make more and more money. That happens at every company. We are going to enter an era in the American games industry and it's not going, we're already in it and it's not going to be exclusive to America.

4:29:12It's going to hit Canada. It's going to hit Western Europe, not Eastern Europe. It's going to, Australia's games development space has been long devastated, unfortunately, so it's not really there. We cannot compete. with Japanese labor. We cannot compete with Polish labor. We cannot compete with Czech labor. We cannot compete with Taiwanese, Chinese, South Korean, Vietnamese, Indian. Yeah. I just don't know what people think is going to happen.

4:29:48Colin Moriarty:The emerging markets too are going to be a big thing. Now, Chris, of course, there is a solution to this problem, but people aren't going to like it. What? You could have tariffs on foreign games.

4:30:04But I am a protectionist, but I don't support tariffing entertainment. Just because I feel like it's too ethereal. It really can be made anywhere. And you have to make the tax benefits really good to make things in certain places. That's why British Columbia is a huge place to make things. Ontario, Georgia was. I think they're kind of fucking that up. California used to be. Texas much more. so. There's other ways to play. But yeah, that is like something you could do. Apart from that, if you're selling on a global market and you are, you're going to lose. There's just no universe where in 10 to 20 years, the American games industry is going to look like it looks like right now.

4:30:46And you already see signs of it. And if you are at one of these studios, you better hold on for dear life. You either are going to have a studio that makes games, like Naughty Dog's not going anywhere. Sucker Punch isn't going anywhere. San Diego Studio is not going anywhere. And there are a shit ton of American studios outside of Sony that aren't going anywhere too. But the possibilities and potential is shrinking and your ability to jump around is, I mean, I talked to a lot of developers. It's dangerous at this point. Like it's not only about finding the right studio, it's about finding the right game that you think might survive.

4:31:20And a lot of these teams are just trying to get to the next game. they're not even trying to make profits really like at this point it's like can we just justify ourselves justify our salaries justify the fixed costs and just make a new thing that's good enough at this point people are making games in japan for 25 30 35 40 000 a year i don't know and you better and by the way shrink that price when you go to south korea shrink it again when you go to india yeah it's not a coincidence that rock that the predominance of rock stars development for grand theft auto is in india i hate it because i want us to make our own games and i want us to be a participant in it but this is it's fucked i think maybe the best thing you can hope for is like distributed internationally distributed teams which exist all over the world but also it's very complicated with legal matters you have to be pretty big you have to have lawyers and accountants that know how to navigate that kind of shit doing international stuff like that is complex um it's not for a lack of creativity or talent it's certainly not for a lack of output a lot of great american games all the time for decades i'm american we're american i would love for us to dominate like we used to and we had it for a minute

4:32:47but i couldn't even imagine what resident evil would have cost here I don't know game like Pragmata where they were like yeah we'll just restart it and we'll develop it for fucking seven years or whatever it took it's like it's crazy and then they make their money back because they sell three million copies like

4:33:08three million copies ain't gonna cover Intergalactic's cost of development

4:33:13Colin Moriarty:yeah probably nowhere close actually so I don't know it's a tough it's a tough conversation it's a tough pill to swallow you could just uh get trump on the phone get some tariffs going tariff tariff uh like gran turismo crazy that's been floated not for games but for film yeah i remember hearing about that i don't you could take it to its logical conclusion that there is no difference right where it's like well why is it different for this but like you'll so you'll tariff like the air conditioner but you won't tariff like the the album that was recorded overseas or something it's like well i just think it's more complicated than that but maybe maybe i am being a little bit of a hypocrite maybe it should all just be tariffed that has that would remove america's competitiveness in the game space entirely i think though gotta be careful about that too be good for our own games though all right final inquiry comes from rochambeau be very curious to hear what you guys think of this he says hey guys long time third time i'm really over the melodramatic attitude of people getting misty-eyed about the about physical media and i need someone on record saying the quiet part out loud physical media was always a nightmare and digital saved our sanity my childhood wasn't the tactile joy of ownership it was performing amateur cpr and an NES cartridge, praying the Contra would boot up before my parents called me for dinner.

4:34:43And that was the best case scenario. CDs turned into skipping based rhythm games the second you looked at them wrong. Cassette tapes ate themselves for sport and the fix was jamming a pencil into the reel and hand-craking your Van Halen tape back to life like you were starting a Model T. We haven't preserved physical media. We perform triage on it. So here's my question for the show. In a world where I can now scratch, warp, unspool, or blow into absolutely nothing and my games just still work why is nostalgia trying to drag us back to the dark ages someone had the good sense to burn down the library of alexandria hell even the nazis couldn't be bothered with biblical physical media am i wrong to think backwards compatible cloud library is just one of the great unsung achievements of our lifetime or am i just a guy who has too much nes cartridge dust in his lungs keep up with the great show sorry for mentioning nazis thank you for writing in i like it is an interesting and funny way to articulate it but it is true that we are forgetting what it was like and it did suck scratching a cd was the worst dude i remember the cds that i scratched i scratched my original copy of 311's transistor i literally that's one of my favorite albums i literally had to go and buy another one at some point and then i bought the fuck and what was funny about the second one i bought was it was accidentally the queen version oh um so it is true like i i remember like it did it did suck what we forget it's oh it's a matter of being careful what we ask for i think the the move to digital like with itunes like the ipod and stuff i was like this is amazing why would you ever go back and i never did in fact i just got more and more digital there's nothing romantic about going into a store and buying a game and having it on disc for me if there's like some sort of practicality to it i appreciate that but i do think we are kind of ignoring the reality that it's actually if things work to the way we wanted them to so much better and maybe that has to be spoken about more but that's an argument lost on younger people that never existed in that space and so they they don't care and why would they i mean i i don't

4:36:50Colin Moriarty:I know what people are saying like I had scratch discs too I had cartridges that didn't work I had consoles that just kind of died you know but I I don't know I look at it from less of an angle of like yes things are more convenient but I do think convenient I do think you have to juggle your conveniences or or balance your conveniences because I do I do I think too much convenience and you end up like WALL-E. You know, you end up like the... You end up a little bit divorced from the world around you in a way that's not that healthy for people. And so, like, I don't know. I like the experience of going into a store and getting a game, not necessarily because of the physical media, but because I have to...

4:37:37Colin Moriarty:It means something to go somewhere to do something and interact and just exist as a person instead of like a hamster in a cage with your fucking wheel that just gives you everything that you want. I don't know. I get it. I love the conveniences of digital media. And I'm not the biggest physical games collector. I've started kind of recently getting back into it. Still nowhere near the degree that most people are going to be. I just played Spider-Man 2 physically on my 360 and I didn't... It was not... it was not this harrowing fucking experience of like getting up to open the display putting it in it was kind of nice yeah in the digital space i will agree that it's been fine with it with that stuff i his stuff about the nes is true like it was nuts yeah i remember things like the things everyone it's not even that like there's so much more to it like sometimes you'd have to shove a cartridge in on top of the cartridge you know like there was everyone had like their own little trick like that was actually almost seemed like only for one machine like the ghost in that specific machine you had to do a certain thing it fucking sucked dude i had a i had a 360 that wouldn't open the disc tray wouldn't open so i had to i had a paperclip taped to it and it was like a there was like a hole that there was like a hole to pop it out yeah yeah it was like a hole that you could like press on like a you could physically move the gear to open it then you drag it out and put it in slam it so like yeah i mean i don't know i kind of um it's just part of being a person i don't know like i i i kind of i am kind of romantic about it um but it's only because i know things are just going to get more and more divorced now i kind of savor the little frustrations that i have because i know at some point i'm gonna be i'm gonna not own anything i i think for me it's more i'm nostalgic for it because it was old and it was fun and there we were talking about going into the store and buying the games and seeing the games on the shelves and reading the instruction manual it is fun but i don't long for it i would have taken this reality when i was a kid any day of the week if you if you told me like oh you could just turn your nass on and fucking buy i'd be like all right oh yeah i would have thrown that away in two seconds you wouldn't have had to have your mom drive you to you know game stop or software set or wherever it is yeah like we had to go and get the games physically we had to and of course that's implied and obviously intuitive everyone knows that but it's like we didn't want to we didn't that's why we liked television you know this is where you're i feel like the world experience of just like two different people but different, I don't know, socioeconomic points and where they were is like totally different.

4:40:32Colin Moriarty:Cause it was like, for me, if it was like, oh, this console doesn't play used games, then we're just not getting it because we can't afford non-used games. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't even really, I mean, that's a whole component to it, but I don't even, and I don't consider that cause I was never really a used game person, but it's funny because like I could have, it would have been awesome to be more open to use games when I was a kid I kind of was put off from them by like my mom saying like no it's worth it to like am I and other people just buy the new one it's like I think they were scared it was going to be broken or something like it was always like that like dramatic like that was that was the fear for me that I was always I was yeah what I was gonna get the one disc that was like scratched to shit and then I would have spent half the price on something that like it would be completely busted because like I my parents weren't just giving me games hand over fist by any stretch of the imagination I but I understand what you mean and but I also think that that's why the used game argument is so funny to me because it obviously is so vital but it is also like the illustration of why the companies don't care not because they don't want you to buy used games but because it's literally like a zero interaction thing for them like it's like they get nothing by placating you so it's literally that simple so it just can it's these two different wants conflicting with each other but i understand what you mean and that's a huge component of it that's one of the things I said when I talked to the congressman's guy was like the the rights of owner physical ownership were implied like you're technically you technically do have a license when you buy a physical game but the license is like you can't play this like on a fucking projector in Times Square you can't like it's the same thing of like when you buy a blu-ray you're not supposed to like put it in a movie theater you're not even really I think supposed to technically have like huge parties with it or whatever but like it doesn't matter no one gives a shit and it's physical and you can do what you want with it that's obviously the the escape hatch that's gone now i get it right i get it and i think for part of uh getting to like the the physical aspect of physical media that he's mentioning here it is ironic which i know this only applies to part of it is that he's mentioning about the nes what's ironic is that the physical media actually wasn't the problem with those games not running yeah it was it was the hardware itself it was specifically the american nes right and like there are this year alone there's been two brand new nintendo 64s that have released that take original cartridges because they all still work yeah that's true it is for people that don't know the connectors the pin connectors on on nes would have them laying on top of each other instead of instead of pressing in like they did with the snes or the nes version 2 dog bone controller nes so yeah it was it was the hardware it's so stupid yeah what actually put me off of uh or not but i shouldn't say put me off physical media because i still got physical media but like put me off of the idea of like uh relying on it early on like i was really early to digital like pretty like i was i was downloading stuff pretty as as soon as i could really and it was because i had an nes and and some cartridges that my parents had put in the attic and the attic fucking destroyed it like the intense heat and the intense um cold like back and forth for years just completely destroyed it to the point where like i i no longer viewed physical as like oh this is like a surefire thing i own this forever you actually have to take care of it which obviously right you're a kid i don't know and your parents don't know they're not reading the stickers they assume things that they probably shouldn't assume well and that goes into the other part which is about discs and it's like yeah discs get scratched but it's like if they and they are delicate but if they were so delicate then there wouldn't be a thriving retro games market because they've survived or they're fixable you know what i mean like they and it's dude up the ps5 it's one of those things where i don't know if it's just because i'm an adult and I take care of it now but like you don't hear about people having scratched up ps5 discs I don't know if it's some kind of coding they put on blu-ray discs that they just became much more scratch resistant and the other thing too about disc rot is exactly what you were saying chris is that the fear-mongering about disc rot is so overblown by certain people that it's like it's like yeah if you kept your ps1 games in an attic that was negative 30 and then 99 degrees in the summer for 10 fucking years then yes yeah but like in my library anytime that i've pulled out a game i have never had an instance of my own games or games that i've bought used that have ever had disc rot ever yeah i mean there may be a game in my collection somewhere that has disc rot that i don't know that's certainly possible but if they've been taking care if they're not in an extreme scenario it just simply at least for for right now i don't know maybe in fought in 10 years 15 years the expiration date goes up and they all suddenly rot out but it's certainly not a problem right now yeah overall so yeah as far as rochambeau here it's funny because i feel like this right and i know he's being funny but like i feel like he's the one being melodramatic about how uh uh how volatile the digital the physical media is yeah I think he, I'm sorry, go ahead, Chris.

4:45:54Colin Moriarty:Well, I just, I just want to say like, I really, cause I really do feel this way. Um, the, the, the hardships that came along with that stuff and like, Oh, I gotta go. Oh, I, you know, I gotta go to the store and grab a disc and I got in Iraq with somebody and I got to come home and it may or may not work. I get it, but I, I just, I guess as I get older, I think about any excuse to not stay stagnant and in and locked because it's too easy I I really do like it's too easy I feel it for me as well where like I just any so I do miss even just from that aspect not even necessarily because it was good but it's good for you in the same way that like you know vegetables are when you're a kid you know what I mean like it's just like it's good to do these things and it's good to get accustomed to doing these things when i wake up i don't want to drink an entire glass of water i want to have a fucking sugary fucking drink you know that's what i want to do but like it's just it's good to not do that and i think people generally got to get better about doing things that are that they don't necessarily want to do that are just good for them I know it's not necessarily there's nothing to do here because like physical games are kind of on their way out or whatever but I just think like the spirit of that is something that we should not necessarily throw away so flippantly yeah I mean I'm still curious where this all kind of ends up the whole physical games thing I still think there's a way for them to salvage this if they wanted to but I just don't think it's it's going to happen to placate PS5 players at the very least but we'll see.

4:47:44I think that one week of blackout or whatever is going on now, right? So we'll see if that matters. I don't think it's really going to make a difference but yeah, can't hate on people for trying something anyway. All right. Let's get the hell out of here. It's time to go. My boys, it's good to see you today. Good to be with you as always for a pretty lengthy episode. I think people will be pleased about that. Yeah. Let's go around the horn and say goodbye. Chris, goodbye to you, my friend. Be well. Anything you'd like to share before we go?

4:48:12Colin Moriarty:uh i'm gonna check on that cup of water uh oh yeah i'll find hopefully i'll find a waterboarded drowned fly and then i'll get on with my day i'm supposed to meet a friend of mine at b-dubs oh nice kind of soon i haven't been to b-dubs in a while i love buffalo wild ones good shit do they do their cheese they have a cheese curds and caramel i don't know if you've ever had that that's like one of the like appetizer style things right that they yeah but like it's not something that i would have tried if not i think i was at at there years ago and the waitress was like you should have this with caramel it's like cheese it sounded like alien to me and then i had i was like this is fucking this is top tier shit so i'm kind of excited cool man have fun i love buffalo it's too bad just because most of them are so gross that's why i don't go more often yeah i've it's the thing that's a bummer though is like i i'm gonna walk there and it's like 90 degrees right now don't know how i'm feeling about that but alas gross yeah not fantastic be well good to see you as always dustin goodbye to you anything to report uh nothing to report i think we're having breakfast for dinner oh fun so i'm looking forward to that gotta relieve holly for a little bit you You know, she's been taking care of the baby.

4:49:32Colin Moriarty:So I'll hang out with Leon for a bit. Play some mortal shell. Little boy. Little boy. Play some mortal shell with your father. I try to like sit him. Like we have a, I can kind of sit him down beside me. And he can kind of like, he's not looking at the, he can't see the TV. You know, he can only see like a foot and a half in front of him. So, you know, I try to sit with him and play games, but usually he's, he's not into it for now. but he's more interested in pooping pooping yeah that's like his that's his main thing right now he's he's just i say this lovingly he's just kind of boring right now other than just being he's either just being insanely cute and i love that i love cuddling him he's great but he's just trying to poop fart and eat boring is good for a baby man yeah that's a great situation yeah I am also trying to poop fart I mean that's basically my life now so yeah certainly boys it's good to see you as always I appreciate you guys and thank you for bringing your A game as always to our sacred symbols a playstation podcast you can guys get it live each and every week as you know patreon.com slash last I meet it for early ad for access and last in what is it I'm sorry last I meet it dot store for merch there was something else I wanted to say before I left but I forgot it doesn't really matter Mike is going away next week oh so where's she going she's going to see her family like for just a few days i'm going to stay back and be with the dogs but um so i don't know what i'm going to do i might die you may order doordash every night it's so funny because there's this idea that like we are always ordering doordash doing these things like we never doordash it's too expensive it is it's like well it's just like it's the quality too you know like i just feel like i'm not getting it's always cold and yeah I'd rather just make like you know something in the do the air fryer has been a revolution oh yeah hell yeah it's a revolution I gotta get I have one that's like on its last legs or it's like I don't even know if it's an air fryer it's a toaster oven that has an air fry setting from forever ago I don't even know really what that means because in my head air fry is a toaster oven yeah like it's a great the air fryer is great like I never was familiar with it and then we have one and I put a few things in it.

4:51:48I'm like, yeah, this is.

4:51:50Colin Moriarty:This is working stuff. Yeah, yeah, I got to get one. All right, my boys will be well again. I'm out of here. I already said I'm a patron dot com slash last day media for early access. Last day media dot store for merch. 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 Collins Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show is conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman.

4:52:26All 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. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

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