#429 | Your Crystal Ball Ain't So Crystal Clear

14:56Colin Moriarty:that was mildly intriguing it was um we're hosting a focus group for pennsylvania residents that pays 350 dollars interested fill out a qualifying survey like well we'll turn down 350 dollars but I also don't know if you're going to steal my kidney. Right, right, right. What's going on here? You don't even say who you are. So.

15:20Dustin Furman:I wonder if people still do this. I'm sure they do at college. I just don't know if it's tantalizing anymore. It's like when I was in college, you know, at Northeastern, there would be like all these bulletin boards. And one of the bulletin boards in the student center was like experiments and like focus groups and things that they like that the scientists at the university and like the scholars were doing. and I would do that shit all the time and they would pay you like 10, 15,$20 in cash. And so like, I would like sign up for the, I would like go and like sign up for a bunch of them. And I remember very specific ones that are really weird.

15:51Dustin Furman:I've talked about them before. Like I remember one of them of like having to watch a pitcher, like videos of a pitcher and baseball pitch and try to identify like what the right speed was. So like they would like, it would be like a little slow, a little fast. And then it's like, what to your eye, like what looks right? Like that was one of them. And they're like, here's 10 bucks. And then you'd like take the 10 and back. It was like 2005. It's like 10 bucks. I'm like, all right, I'm going to go fucking eat lunch, get food and hang out. Probably have a couple of dollars left over. And then some of them would be like 15 or$20.

16:19Dustin Furman:I remember Ramon did like a sleep study that like didn't go very well. I wonder, I assume that's still goes on, but I, I like really, I probably made, I didn't make that much money. I probably made like a thousand dollars doing that. I probably I probably did dozens of those of those things.

16:40Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I was looking the other day. I was having a conversation with Holly because I was like, yeah, my parents used to donate blood all the time when I was a kid. And I was like, shouldn't they pay you for that? You know, like if you're donating your blood, don't they plasma? Well, I looked it up. So plasma is different. Plasma is a more takes longer and I think has more stipulations. so they will you can get paid for plasma but blood they won't because i don't know it's something to do with like they don't want it to be too easy and too lucrative because people will lie yeah yeah about their health in order to donate blood to make money yeah because you won't catch them till later it'll be too late right yeah that's uh they'll take mine the big sorry your plasma is made of thc this is not useful for us this is pure uncut thc that we've taken out of your out of your blood plasma can't believe someone if someone got your blood they're just immediately high for about three days like what's going on here man the future is bright

17:51Dustin Furman:well welcome one welcome all usually it's three of us as i think most of you know but today it's two of us here on Sacred Symbols of PlayStation Podcast, our weekly PlayStation podcast. We've done each and every week without missing a week, going all the way back to the first episode, July 2018. I'm sure you're very impressed. You can support us on Patreon.com slash Last Stand Media if you'd like early ad free access to this show and all the other shows in our vast network. $5 a month is the sweet spot is a fucking steal. You get early access, ad free access to Sacred Symbols every week, Defining Duke, our Xbox podcast, punching up our Nintendo podcast, Summon Sign, our gameplay podcast.

18:24Dustin Furman:And of course, you get access to our Patreon-exclusive Sacred Symbols episode each week, Sacred Symbols Plus, the supplement to this very show. We have a lot of good ones coming up, I think, because now the games are starting to coalesce around the schedule. Everyone's playing them. So tomorrow, I'm sitting down with, and this will be the day that this goes live for Patreon, we'll be doing this. I'll be sitting down with Brad, Micah, Ben, and who else? Oh, Lockmort. And we'll be talking about Dawnwalker. I've beaten it a couple of times. I'm beating it in all the ways I don't want to beat it, so I'm trying to work up to the one that where this is my ending.

19:04Dustin Furman:But there's different ways you can beat it at different times, so I'm just doing those. And you know how I like to beat it.

19:10Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah.

19:11Dustin Furman:And then next week we'll do Wolverine. Gene Park, Farkas, Mr. Farkas. He asked to be on that one, and I think we'll have him on that one as well. I think that would be fun. um we still did you ever get in touch with vince about token i emailed him with i have not received a reply all right well that's on my understanding yeah that's that's fine so hopefully we'll do something with him with token soon we had technical difficulties when we tried to do it last yep um we did i did recent interviews with kiwi talks great interviewer in our space that interviews a lot of game devs um stop killing games went on with those guys and talked to them We had Moore's Law on recently.

19:48Dustin Furman:We had Hogan recently. People really liked that episode. Hogan and I went into some legal happenings, like the free speech argument around arcade.gov. Can Sony be sued to compel them to make discs, even if they don't want to? Things like that. You know, the legal things we like to hit Hogan up for. His brilliant legal mind. So go check that out on patreon.com slash lastdaymedia if you'd like. And of course, Sacred Streaming continues as well on YouTube. We did our airing of grievances this last week. You guys got to call in and talk about Wolverine and talk about Fizzin and all the things that bother you.

20:19Dustin Furman:That was fun. We enjoyed that. Chris was there for that as well. Dustin and I shot the shit the week before, and that was a fun episode as well. We did the State of Play stream. I streamed Madden, my Jets team, which is two and one in Madden. We'll get back to that. So after week three leading into week four, so that Monday we'll do another slate of games. So look forward to that in the next few weeks as well. and merch lastdaymedia.store t-shirts and sweatshirts and stickers and hats and so on shipped directly from my home eric whitehead wrote a note on patreon of course that's one of your perks on patreon as well we'll put a thread up in the news feed for this show and all the other shows every week you submit your inquiries you'll hear them throughout the show eric says what's up guys i had a merch idea maybe do some sacred symbols pacifiers because there are a bunch of babies in here listeners need to stop running the podcast at 3x speed so they can hear what is being said if you don't trust the guys on what they're saying then why are you here appreciate that uh i'm glad that you uh i'm glad i'm glad that you feel like we should have it's like internecine fucking conflict between our audience some people saying they want uh they want others to have baby suckers pacifiers maybe that's not a bad idea remember well you were a little young but it used to be a thing that like girls would like grown women would have like

21:40Colin Moriarty:pacifiers oh my goodness and this was like a thing because they were this was apparently like an

21:45Dustin Furman:ecstasy thing of like them rolling and like having something to like i don't know it was like a thing like like raves and stuff like that oh people will know what i'm talking about out there yeah that's

21:56Colin Moriarty:yeah i have thought you know i think it would be cool to get a little some some last hand merch for leon but i don't i feel like i just need to make some one-offs like yeah that's fine i don't know if there's enough for the audience out there to that we could justify purchase but yeah you know the we love our audience dearly but every once in a while i get asked a question or something that i'm like ah timestamp user you're a timestamp user you've exposed yourself or you just have it on the background while you're doing something else and that's okay no problem with that you got we're all busy.

22:33Colin Moriarty:Just be careful.

22:34Dustin Furman:None of you were busy out there. None of you were doing anything.

22:36Colin Moriarty:Give me a break. Just be careful to not expose yourself when you come at us, you know? So take it easy.

22:44Dustin Furman:Sacred Symbols is sponsored by PrizePix, the unique daily fantasy offering that's enraptured sports fans of all types. Learn more for yourself now at prizepix.com or on the PrizePix app and use the code sacred when you sign up to sweeten your experience. Do you hear that? Is that angel singing? I'm not entirely sure it could be. Perhaps it's heaven itself celebrating the return of professional and collegiate football as hockey, basketball, and more also start to walk into the picture as autumn descends upon America. What makes prize picks stand apart is its distinctive approach, in which you merely choose a roster of between two and six real-life players across just about any sport and league you could imagine, and then choose a more or less qualifier on a specific stat associated with that player in his or her next game.

23:24Dustin Furman:So for instance, you might have seen Kenneth Walker's exceptional performance during week one and think, hey, that guy is good for more than 100 yards on the ground. Then again, you may have been less impressed with Baker Mayfield's shaky performance and peg him to throw more than a single INT in his next outing and so on and so forth. You get the idea. Of course, you can cross sports pulling from other leagues if you'd like, and you can even use the same player more than once, leveraging different stats. Again, it all revolves around the more or less qualifier. That's the entire game, and as you might imagine, it can be extremely engaging.

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24:28Dustin Furman:Again, use the code sacred when you sign up to get$150 in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. Prize picks. Run your game. For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore.

24:45Colin Moriarty:Because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. turning dreams into direction every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine so where will your journey take you etihad beyond borders

25:07Dustin Furman:you can expose yourself if you want that's fine it's your business all right let's get into a few topics of discussion here stretch our legs or spread them And then we'll get into the news of the week. We'll get to what we're playing. And then we will wrap things up with inquiries as we always do. It's not a very crazy week. I think it's a nice, calm week. A few interesting odds and ends to get into. But let's begin here. Andrew D. wrote in and said, hey, CDC, this one's for Colin. A few weeks ago, you mentioned that you ate a copious amount of nachos while Micah was gone on her trip. Well, I just so happen to be listening to knockback episode 51, malls in the 80s and 90s.

25:43Dustin Furman:this week when you mentioned possibly the most psychotic thing imaginable at exactly the 11 minute mark in the episode you mentioned that you would make nachos and peel the cheese from the chip and then eat only the cheese you did this because the cheese absorbed the chip flavor and it cuts down on the carbs i have to ask did you do this while micah was gone and if so does she know about this serial killer behavior um no i didn't do that while she was gone i don't i would make nachos and i wouldn't eat all of the like i would eat some of the chips or many of the chips but eventually you just start peeling the cheese off the chips because it's got the it's got the salt from the chip and like a little bit of the chip flavor and you don't and by the way the cheese is like so caloric anyway you don't really want to you don't want to get too crazy with it but no this this time around i i ate them straight up what i really like doing this is my highly recommended thing with with nachos i don't really make nachos anymore but you know you make your cheese and your nachos and you put i like putting in the microwave some people put them in the oven i like the microwave and i do it where you know you put a layer of chips down you lay it down on the plate you put cheese on top of the bunch of cheese on top of the chips then you put another layer of chips and more cheese on top of those and then you put another layer you know and so on then you put that in the microwave but what i like to do is i like to take hot italian sausages you can either gut them or just cut them up um as you're cut and then a little onion maybe some pepper and peppers and um you just kind of put that on the nachos and it's just really good love it it's very weird but because you know you always go like towards the chicken beef the normal toppings for nachos.

27:12Dustin Furman:But I'm telling you, man, Italian sausage works really, really well on my opinion on nachos. So, yeah, horrible things are happening in this house, but that's the way it always has been. And it's the way it always will be as well.

27:23Colin Moriarty:I can't say I've ever eaten. Like I've had nachos plenty of times, but I've never like used a sprinkly melty cheese and microwaved them or heated up in the oven. I've only done like, oh, we're having a party. you get the the jar of like gelatinous cheese yeah queso's good it's just that's different that's a different thing okay you know yeah i like um now tell me what you think about this there's there's two schools of thought with the with the queso or the nacho the liquidy cheese is that some people like to dip it and then you get the fresh chip every time but you can also get you know a lot of places they'll serve it to you like there's a pizza place near my grandma's house that they'll put it in like one of those shitty plastic containers they'll layer the chips in sideways and then you know they'll pour that cheese over yeah i don't want that's too messy for me i don't think i want oh dude i okay this is what people think this is psychotic i like okay so the first like eat it fresh the first half you get crunchy chips that are still you know contained by the end you're getting the chips that are soaked in and they're floppy with the nacho cheese they're flaccid one might say right i like that too man i like the variety the soggy ass nacho cheese chip that's good i don't i don't hate it i don't hate that you know you know what my like have we talked

28:49Dustin Furman:about the bottom of the burrito how that's like the best part of the burrito yeah the it's like

28:55Colin Moriarty:all the the grease it's like the grease and the cheese and like everything's falling down it's

28:59Dustin Furman:like where the aluminum stops and like you finally have to liberate it from the aluminum entirely to eat the rest of it and that's like the best part it's like the doughy greasy cheesy remnant of what was right right god i'm hungry can you get any good burritos by you probably i really don't even bother i mean it's it's kind of one of those things and it's a little snooty i guess but It's how I feel about pizza where you're not going to get New York style pizza here. That's right. You're just not. I don't. I can't explain it. I really do believe more and more about the water stuff. Just when you're a kid and everyone's like, it's the water.

29:40Dustin Furman:It's the water. You're like, you're like about the bagels and the pizza and something. What are you talking about? And then you travel other places and you're like, holy shit, why can't anyone do it? It's weird. And there are people that ship the water and do all that kind of shit. So like there was a bagel place in San Francisco I used to go to that did that. and their bagels were good.

29:57Colin Moriarty:There was a place in Buller that did that.

29:59Dustin Furman:There's something to it. It's very strange because it sounds crazy, right? It sounds totally insane. But when you live in California for 13 years like I did, I don't know, man. You're not going to get Mexican food. That's the same. You're not. You're just not. I just, maybe in Texas, in Arizona, New Mexico, like those kinds of places probably, but like, no, not in Virginia. and certainly not in Pennsylvania. I just like you could you could fall over a burrito place in California that was better than anything you would you would get here. Like it was like the burrito place that you would never go to because it wasn't good enough in California is better than anything that you would you would get here.

30:37Dustin Furman:And I do miss that a lot because when I was an intern at IGN, it was like when it began, like people like I realized it's like burrito burritos and tacos and just Mexican Tex-Mex. It's really not Tex-Mex. It's like field Mexican like things they made in the fields Like what, you know, like that's where burritos come from and everything like that, you know, and as they were farming, you know, a hundred years prior and you're like, this shit is fucking awesome. What the fuck is going on with this? And you would go to these like Mexican places where no one spoke any English. You would order, you would get the little, you know, the containers of the, of the fresh corn tortillas, you know what I'm talking about?

31:16Dustin Furman:Like they, they serve them in like these almost clay, like plastic things. And it's just like shit. You would never be able to get here. it's just and i'm like why why even bother yeah seriously well why even bother i've got a pushback

31:29Colin Moriarty:about my love of chipotle and i i'm assuming there are people that are from california texas mexico uh you know uh that southern part of the united states and i'm like listen i'm i'm in the desert the metaphorical the burrito desert out here like what am i what else am i supposed to do In fact, as far as I know, Chipotle is the only place in Butler that will serve a handheld like a California style burrito. We have Mexican places that I like, but you don't get that kind of burrito there. Yeah, no, you like the wet burritos and shit. Now it's like that you would now you wish you weren't in the metaphorical desert.

32:12Dustin Furman:You wish you were in their literal desert because then you would be able to actually get a burrito. true but the thing the thing about the thing about this is so i like chipotle too chipotle is kind of like the dominoes to new york pizza it's probably a step up from that but not really it's in any port in a storm and i like it sometimes i'm even in the mood for it just like sometimes i'm in the mood for pizza hut but when i say i want pizza that i don't mean pizza and when i say i want a burrito i'm not even thinking about codoba or like we do have codoba here as well and that's fine i used to eat that in boston there was a good burrito place in boston like a good true mexican place but it burned down unfortunately i don't know whatever happened to it maybe they built it again i left at that point i was like i'm out of here um god though i do miss i do miss that like i used to i dude i used to eat like probably like four or five burritos a week sometimes for years oh yeah i just like lived on i there was a place underdogs we used to talk about all the time on podcast beyond or whatever and i would take the train back from ign and i would call in and like like i knew that the stop where i was like all right if i call now it'll be ready i'll walk and just pick it up pay for it bring it home sit in front of the tv and relax and unwind god man you still look forward to that now you just yeah you're wearing a fucking barren mexican lists actually there's a big hispanic population in virginia and i imagine if you go more towards where a lot of those people live which is more northern virginia probably it gets

33:41Colin Moriarty:a little little sounder but i went to underdogs once san francisco it's gone apparently i i heard

33:50Dustin Furman:i think some which is like unthinkable because that was like an institution um 19th and irving it was at in the sunset i loved that place man i'm trying to remember when i visited ign

34:04Colin Moriarty:um caleb from ign took me to a burrito place that was walking distance oh yeah that's the place

34:10Dustin Furman:what was that place called i know exactly that place that was the was that the one where the woman would would say hola guapo to everyone that walked in because that was i think that's the spot and she used to call me john at that place for years because i have join or die on my arm and

34:25Colin Moriarty:she thought it said john that's awesome yeah that's sick i remember about that place that they had um i think you get cactus on the burrito yeah that's i think it's the right but yeah it's

34:37Dustin Furman:right around the corner you were at the downtown office right like by at &t park so yeah like that's the one right yeah i know exactly that place we used to go there all the time i don't remember the name of it though yeah yeah i don't was it like god i wish i remember we used to bring people to that like the place we used to bring people when we interviewed them was like this weird jamaican like restaurant that was really good um because we would always go to the same places and we felt like they were tired but really we probably should have just gone to those places you know with the people that we were bringing into interview and do all these kinds of things

35:12Colin Moriarty:but nonetheless did you ever go to 21st amendment it was right down the road oh yeah we used to

35:17Dustin Furman:we used to i mean i probably spent thousands of dollars in 21st amendment not of my own money but like when when we would when i would i would always have people and developers from around the world like i very much future lab like the people that run future labs still to this day i remember going to that 21st amendment with them we would just go there and you had drink and eat and i loved that place and yeah we lamented it's it's closing down which i couldn't really believe especially people have i don't know where ign is now but i don't think it's in the same place but ig when fox bought ign they bought my space and my space owned real estate in san francisco down by AT &T Park where the Giants play on King Street.

35:53And we were at 2nd and I can't even believe I don't remember anymore. I don't remember the name of it.

36:01Dustin Furman:I think it started with a B. And there were a lot of offices and tech startups and stuff like that around there, but it was a lot of restaurants and bars and shit because the park is right there. And AT &T Park is dope. For people that have never been there or seen it, the home run wall goes into the water. It's super cool. Um, so it's like right on the bay and places like 21st amendments and Pete's, which was right on King street, which was another place we used to go to all the time. And a few others, these places would be hopping for 81 games a year. And so it's hard for me to believe like they couldn't figure it out, especially because I'm pretty sure the warriors, the basketball team moved from Oakland to the Embarcadero.

36:42Dustin Furman:So that's right there. And it's like, what, how can you not make it work? It's just so it's surprising. and 21st Amendment was good oh yeah it's it's too they made good beer they had good food it's uh

36:54Colin Moriarty:too bad to hear that yeah yeah it's disappointing uh but I was glad I got to go there one time at least uh before they're they're shut down there was a place across the street we used to talk

37:06Dustin Furman:about all the time too it started with an m I can't remember it was like a sandwich shop that was like insanely expensive but like it was really good but even then it was like 20 bucks for like a meatball sub or whatever that kind of shit and i remember they went out of business eventually it was well you can't be charging this much money for for sure what else was down there um wasn't there a shitty burger king or something no that was near patreon that burger king blew up because it was like it's a gas station burger king and that gas station like got all fucked up that's like the worst burger king i've ever been to in my life and i i remember very clearly because we used to work it out of patreon sometimes like we would go there to meet with them and then they always had they had catered breakfast lunch and dinner there i don't know if they do anymore that's like very tech startup shit to like just feed your people so they never leave and uh it was like way too clean for me so i used to just go to burger king and i felt like such a douchebag when i'd walk back in and everyone's eating like you know their quinoa and broccolini

38:04Colin Moriarty:or whatever and i'm like eating a fucking whopper yeah but i'm like this is i i just felt like if

38:09Dustin Furman:not even a fish out of water it's like it's like none of you guys even want this that's what's so interested in me like none of you want burger king you want to eat this that's fine teach their own i'm no problem with it maybe i had a little bit of a problem with it yeah i think a lot of um i think some of the restaurants i like it the higher end stuff i like is still there they're hard water nopa um hops and hominy a lot of good places man san francisco is great eats it's a great city it's just full of crazy people yeah yeah not Not Rob, not Rob Kavazna wrote in said, dear sacred men. Could Mitch McConnell beat Marvel's Wolverine?

38:49Hugs and kisses from Cleveland.

38:53Colin Moriarty:It sounds like he could beat certain sequences. The motorcycle sequence. I'm seeing some hubbub about online. I got to be honest. I'm I'm starting to disassociate with Wolverine at this point.

39:06Dustin Furman:Yeah, I bought it.

39:10Colin Moriarty:I'm becoming Mitch McConnell about it, actually.

39:11Dustin Furman:I'm just you're him looking out the window yeah my favorite part of the Mitch McConnell stuff is that he like before all those pictures of him were taken or whatever he voted apparently so good things are happening I think he could probably beat it insomniac we'll talk about a little bit later um have they overcompensated for accessibility let's put a pin in it get to that a little bit later perhaps the great jabroni wrote in and said colin maybe it is time for you to give the definition of pithy you clearly state that on the patreon post and remind everyone constantly but i am convinced many don't know what it means hell i watched the sacred stream on monday and immediately after you stated to keep things pithy some poor soul goes on an anti-pithy rampage talking about what's on xbox now on playstation something about a girlfriend on to kojima then something about wolverine and then continues to not pick up on social cues i am convinced that many don't know what it means and Professor Colin needs to lecture the audience.

40:10Dustin Furman:Take care, boys. Pithy? I mean, I don't know that I can explain words that are five letters. I don't like doing that. And I don't feel like it should be necessary.

40:22Colin Moriarty:Pithy. Brief. Keep it short. Some of you, some of you are writing novellas. And that's fine. They're not going to get used on the show. but you know sometimes they say you know like i watch that guy john deloney i talk about sometimes

40:43Dustin Furman:the psychologist and he often suggests people write letters but don't send them to anyone just write them and maybe that's like what you're doing is you're just getting it out but uh let's keep it you know a paragraph's fine a normal paragraph i don't i i think um i think you know what pithy means. I don't think you care. I think those are two different things.

41:10Colin Moriarty:I'm imagining somebody writing a letter, letter to Colin. Maybe it's a, maybe it's a book we can publish, letters to Colin. But though it's meant to be unpublished, like get all your like, I can't believe Colin loves Far Cry. And then he writes a paragraph about how he doesn't like Far Cry. Why isn't Colin playing Wolverine? This is ridiculous. You know, like, imagine someone just writing this letter out. to their favorite, you know, maybe their favorite, maybe not podcaster. You don't need to send it. Yeah, they do write those letters out. It's called it's called Reddit.

41:46The great you're going to thank you for writing in. Thank you. The Colin Derangement syndrome is. It's interesting. Yeah. I'm kind of mentally embraced it in a way. I have a power over some people. you can't deny it. There's a lot of there's I don't even say that you don't want to give it too much. It's not a lot of people. There's a group of very furious people.

42:17Dustin Furman:And I continue to do this only despite them because I don't really even need to do this anymore. I'm kidding.

42:24Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I was. So my Wolverine review and some of the stuff I said about Kojima got clipped out last week. There was some hubbub about it. And I was like, you know, initially you're like kind of annoyed because you're like, oh, you're not getting what I'm trying to say. But I was like, well, they're talking about it. And that's that's good. You got to me. You got to talk. You got to talk. You got those boys talking about. They can't make their own videos. So they got to talk about yours. I'm like, OK, no, no.

42:54Dustin Furman:There's a lot of talentlessness out there. We all know this. I mean, this is where outrage culture, I think, comes from in a way, too. It's like the one I am grateful that we don't have to and we don't exist in the world of outrage, but rather just live in the in the world of news consumption, like whatever, whatever happens, happens, because that's like you have to play that role. Things can never be good or OK if you play that role. You have to understand that it's important that you understand that. Right. You you you're outrage merchants. And I'll say again, for people that those kinds of people, the only people stupider than them are the people that watch and consume that content, which is a lot of people.

43:36Right. But it's funny, man.

43:39Dustin Furman:Like ever since I've in August, I decided to kind of try to just disengage again. My whole thing, my whole up and down with social media generally is like I want to participate. I want to be a participant. I want to be a person that engages. I want to do those kinds of things. but it's never going to change it's never going to be what i want it to be and so you can continue to try to engage with this thing that doesn't exist and be myopic about it or you can just let it go i guess and realize it's not going to be what you want it to be and it's funny i've learned a little bit about x's algorithm i mean not not really i mean just by virtue of examining it from my own perspective.

44:21Dustin Furman:But when I stopped posting, I realized that video game content is not what I get recommended on social media. Like I see very little because it's not, I'm not talking about it and I'm not getting a lot of that feedback. And then I'm not clicking on a lot of that stuff. So it's not like it's washed out completely, but even over the last few weeks it's more about like the things i actually care about which is and i love video games but not the video game discourse it's like sports and some politics and some you know cute things like dogs and and history and whatever but it's very it's funny man it's like when you just disengage and then you don't and and and i mean not only as a participant but also as a viewer or the audience, it really does stop showing it to you.

45:11And so the Wolverine discourse

45:14Dustin Furman:has been exhausting for me, but I can only imagine how exhausting it would be if I actually participated in it. But I will play Wolverine in the coming days because I originally on Sega streaming, I was saying about how I might just pull some bullshit and not even play it for a while because why? And no one seems to, you know, I'm not that compelled by it and maybe play something else. But then I realized, yeah, like we probably will interview people from the team in the coming weeks. I haven't sorted anything out yet. And so I need to play the game. So I should just, it's 15 hours, right? I'll just,

45:43Colin Moriarty:just get it out of the way. Commitment, low commitment. And, um, yeah, the way I've kind of like, I don't know. I find it fun to quit back at people. You're in there. It's like salt and pepper. You know, you got it. You just put a little wind to kind of stir things up a little bit, but you can't get lost in the sauce, right? You know, and it's not that every once in a while someone says something you're like ah fucker you got me you got me you got me oh you get nailed every once in a while you're just like or you're just like mad at the situation but it's like yeah well it's kind of it comes with the territory you got to be got hardened up yeah i think it's i don't i don't know how i really feel about this but like my instinct tells me that social media would be much more useful if everyone had to identify who they were.

46:41I understand that that's not really practical and that might not even really be what you actually want when you really sit and think about it. But people just get away with saying and doing whatever they want.

46:53Dustin Furman:I think it would be very different if there were just consequence, like everything I say or do online, you know, it's me. It's not some, I don't have some pen name somewhere, some fake account. I haven't had, I had a fake account, a fake GameFAQs account when I was younger, but everyone knew it was me. And I would use it to circumvent bands. It was Rod Roddy. That was the name. Do you know who Rod Roddy is? No. Rod Roddy was like the flamboyant announcer of the old prices, right? He would wear like sequin jackets and like cool glasses and stuff. so um so rod roddy was my alter ego but uh yeah ever since i mean i've always just put my name and my face on things and so i i think that there's a limit to what you can say and do in reasonable discourse if you're that but of course you can get away with saying and doing anything you want if you if you're anonymous and that's frankly why i think it's funny when some of these people get exposed where I'm like people know people know who you are it's not it's not that complicated to do you know for a lot of these people and so it's like I don't know something to consider but since that's not the world we live in and we have these platforms that we do it's like well I'm just not going to engage with them in the same way anymore I think they're good news feeds and that's what we'll use them well that's what I'll use them as anyone can do whatever they want but it's like smashing your head against the wall at some point I have to be wise enough to know that it's not going to change.

48:21Colin Moriarty:Yeah. All right.

48:24Dustin Furman:Fab Fun Zero Zero with the final inquiry before we get into the news says, good afternoon, guys. First time writing into the show in quite a while, but a worthy moment. Last night, I was able to see Resident Evil three days ahead of the wide release through a Sony Pictures press showing. Saw it on the largest IMAX screen available in Chicago, and I have to say it was truly an amazing time. Saying this is the best Resident Evil is the biggest understatement ever, but still needs to be said. Kreger delivered his signature brand of black comedy mixed up with blood and guts and a true homage to the games.

48:52Dustin Furman:The whole movie felt like a brand new entry into the series in the vein of Biohazard. Tight, claustrophobic, hilarious, and bloody. Can also be said to be the best PlayStation Pictures production, but also isn't saying too much. Any gaming fan, horror movie fan, and especially Resident Evil fan will thoroughly enjoy it. Also saw Buddy last night, which I think you would also enjoy. Good, trippy, surreal black comedy set around old broadcast kid shows. Wish you all the best. with love from Chicago. Resident Evil is a Sony picture, but it's not a PlayStation production, right?

49:22Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I was looking. I don't think it's a PlayStation. That wouldn't make any sense. I don't know. Why would Capcom do that? Okay, on the Wikipedia, under film by PlayStation Productions, Uncharted, Gran Turismo, Until Dawn, Resident Evil.

49:38Dustin Furman:Interesting. Okay, well, there you go. Then it is a PlayStation production.

49:41Colin Moriarty:Wow, I didn't know that.

49:42Dustin Furman:You had said... That you wanted to see it, right? I don't know that I've ever seen any of the Resident Evil movies, but maybe I have. I haven't.

49:55Colin Moriarty:But it's not connected at all.

49:59Dustin Furman:Production companies, Columbia Pictures, Constantine Film, Davis Films, Vertigo Entertainment, PlayStation Productions, distributed by Sony Pictures. That's interesting, yeah. $75 million budget. I think that'll safely do make its money back for sure. But the Resident Evil movies, the old ones were funny because I had no interest in them, but they seem to have done well. People liked them and or they, they did well at the box office because they made like 17 of them. So, yeah.

50:25Colin Moriarty:Yeah, Zach Greger, I, I, I've seen his other two movies, Barbarian and Weapons, and they were both excellent. So I, I will stand by my, my, my concern was like, okay, how much of this is a Resident Evil movie and how much is just, a good horror movie with some reasonable flair. I think either way, I'm going to enjoy it. So maybe I'd like to see it this weekend, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to. But certainly in the coming weeks, I'll be seeing it. OK, fair enough. Yeah, I'm reading some of some stuff about him now.

51:04Dustin Furman:Yeah, there's so many people. I don't know very much about any of these people, you know.

51:08Colin Moriarty:He, Zach Crager, was originally part of The Whitest Kids You Know. Oh, yeah, I remember them. Yeah, I remember that. yeah oh yeah it was on IFC I forgot about that do you know anything about weapons like what it's about no let me read here oh is this an aliens thing

51:28Dustin Furman:no no no weapons is like um looks like all these kids

51:33Colin Moriarty:oh they're children that's what that is all these kids and this is just from the trailer this isn't any spoilers don't freak out anybody all these kids from one classroom in the middle of the night get up from their bed and run out into the unknown all except for one kid and then the teacher shows up in the entire classroom is missing and so the mystery of the movie is what happened oh cool to all these children and why is there only this one kid and so that everyone's like it was the teacher teacher doesn't know anything about it but it's much more than that of course once they yeah that sounds familiar i'm looking

52:07Dustin Furman:at the poster and yeah it looked like I can see now that they're silhouettes of children running down the street not aliens. I'm like who are these little creatures and they're like those are kids. Yes.

52:21Dustin Furman:Alright. Shall we get into the news Dustin and begin? Yeah let's do it. Our episode as we like to do. Alright let's begin here. I'm very curious to see what you have to say about this. It's not huge news. It's not surprising news by any stretch of the imagination. But of course we always cite Matt Piscuit who is an American analyst working at the U.S. data tracking firm, Surkana. And they track all sorts of interesting data about game sales and hardware sales and engagement and so on. And people subscribe and pay an enormous amount of money for access to this data, which is reliable. Although we've noted recently that people, including Xbox most recently, are dropping out of reporting their numbers.

52:58Dustin Furman:And thus, the numbers are going to be more projected. And I wonder how that will do and how accurate they'll be, although I suspect that they'll be fairly accurate. so he posted this thread with some data about player engagement tracking and so on and so forth and i'll read some of these numbers because they're interesting just to show you it's not the story but what people are playing on playstation when we talk about what's doing well and what's not these are the these are the most played games by engagement by active users for weeks for a week okay so this is the week ending september 5th fortnite nba 2k 27 roblox Call of Duty Platform, Grand Theft Auto 5, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4, Marvel Rivals, NBA 2K26, Rainbow Six Siege, Minecraft.

53:43Dustin Furman:NBA 2K27 and NBA 2K26 are both in the top 10. Okay. Minecraft, Apex Legends, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, Madden NFL 27, Once Human, MLB The Show 26, Rocket League, College Football 27, Helldivers 2, Overwatch Dead by Daylight. Do you understand now what they're doing? now that you see what people are playing on the platform and that nothing you're playing is on it yeah yeah so do you have something to say about this before we go yeah yeah so that's playstation

54:15Colin Moriarty:i'm just and obviously those are all live service related titles on steam steam is the one that actually has normal video games if we want to call them that with like how to fish is on their star wars zero company so it certainly seems like the the the console audience are the one and of course i mean there's live service on steam as well some games in there like hell divers is number three yeah it's correct i mean number three is crazy yeah which is insane because i don't know like no one in my circle and even in the last stand audience no one's like oh i'm diving into hell divers tonight on the discord it's been over for me for more than two years at this point it's just it's funny that and if you see on the xbox chart it's at the same position it is on

55:04Dustin Furman:playstation which is number uh 18 which is pretty interesting there's a new war bond coming out i guess maybe people are more engaged for that but i mean there's always new shit coming out to it it's just doing really well i mean it has more than 20 million players so crazy shit anyway that's not the news thought that was interesting but that's not the news someone responds to this data on blue sky and says did you guys notice any change that could be attributed to playstation blackout and matt piscatella somewhat controversially says no there was no significant change at all in player count or engagement in our tracking dustin thoughts listen colin um

55:39Colin Moriarty:i don't like what he's saying here so i'm going to choose not to believe it yeah sir khanah who were who are they how do they know colin how could they know why would you trust them they're just he's matt who's matt piscatella you know we don't come on man come on come on come on man uh this isn't surprising at all um and it's no i think there's a lot of like pointing and and laughing like saying haha see you guys can't do shit and i i understand that that's probably someone's natural impulse but i think we said it when this got announced that it's like i respect people one wanting to try to do something uh even if it is in vain i think it's good to try to do something about a decision you don't like i mean i've spoken many times on this podcast how i don't like sony's decision i guess i've just i've resigned long long before this would even happen that it's like yeah this is not changing so i'd love to be wrong but so i respect the people for doing it i never thought it was going to move the needle and now it seems that was the

56:56Dustin Furman:case yeah i um i agree with what you said about it's cool that people try things and i always say that and i think that people get shit upon for just trying to do different things that are unpopular or against the grain or unsuccessful in some, some way. I think what I want to add to though, to this is it was obviously not going to have any effect. And it's what I was saying on sacred streaming. I guess I'll reiterate it because we have a much larger audience that listens to this show. And I want to make sure to put it on the record that I've been kind of working on this thesis in a way that I've not really articulated and I won't be able to articulate it any better probably than I did on sacred streaming.

57:37Dustin Furman:But if you choose a direction, you're intractable, you know it's not really working, and you refuse to acknowledge reality, all of those things I think are somewhat true around this movement, then it's just performance. Because what is the purpose of it otherwise? And I think it's fairly clear at this point, from my perspective, that the lead, And so it's that like, does it play Twitter account and the movement around that? It's like it's starting to come off as extremely self-interested. And. I've kind of made fun of it before, but like whoever runs that or whoever the people are that run that thing are like some of the most unlikable.

58:25Dustin Furman:Like people, frankly, that are like interact with people in strange ways and like are bad messengers for the cause. and what I every once in a while I haven't in a while but you read like their responses to people and it's just always like kind of shrugging people off and kind of being curt and everything I'm like you're just not doing this very well and so it's it's not a huge surprise that you're not succeeding um I think the movement wouldn't have succeeded anyway because I think and I think this is part of Sony's calculus and this is what I said at the time when you were still out but you came onto that episode was I was just like they know they're going to lose people and they know that they're going to piss people off.

59:03Dustin Furman:It's a matter of like what the balance is and like what the tipping point would be for them to feel like they really were feeling pain. And if, if Serkana's tracking data showed nothing, I don't know what the point of you continuing is then you have, you should figure something else out to try to do. I think what bothers me about the scenario is not that people are trying to do something, which I think is always cool, but that they don't realize the downside or the detriment to what they're doing and they don't make any adjustments. So this stupid Twitter account is just responding to every PlayStation account, every PlayStation post still.

59:38It's like. Your your tactics aren't working. Don't you care or is it a performance? And I say it's self-interested because I feel like it's like, well, your whole thing online is to say if discs work. And if the discs don't release, then you don't do your thing anymore. and that kind of feels like more of what it's about for that person at this point than doing something more actionable

1:00:06Does that make sense to you?

1:00:08Dustin Furman:Like, in other words, it seems like nothing matters. Because like, if you read the responses that people get in this specific movement about like, well, there's no movement here, and there's nothing here. And look at the player data here and the PS Plus users. And they're like, well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Won't see it doesn't matter. It's only starting now. It doesn't matter. You'll see it later. It's like, okay, I guess so. Like, I feel like the moment is kind of coming on at this point. and um it's not that i don't want i wanted to change for you guys too but man you you deserved better messengers and like and it couldn't have been worse like the messaging and like the the the behavior and the the stance it couldn't have been worse right i think that the

1:00:52Colin Moriarty:i do think there is a tactic still well i understand the tactic behind the response to all the tweets because this is what we were saying early on like the idea is that you keep the heat up on sony that they can't promote anything anymore there's always going to be this cloud over them um and i think that that was a valid idea but i just think that the movement has lost like not enough people were pissed off about it and eventually people get tired of tweeting at sony like i don't know i i did my fair share of a few tweets early on at sony voicing my displeasure at the situation but it's like i just i don't know it's not what i want to be online all the time so i i understand the tactic it's starting to feel like okay man like it's it's time to i i i think we this is part of what we said on sacred streaming or somewhere i said this i was like it's time to accept it and the next way to hurt them is to buy your game somewhere else you know and i know that like a counter argument is always like well switching to steam requires an expensive pc purchase and it's like listen it will i mean i haven't looked at the like pc hardware in a while but like you don't need a 50 90 to run games you don't need the top of the line stuff to even get a comparable system to a playstation 5 is it going to be more expensive probably are you still losing out on physical discs yes but if it's somewhere that you're more comfortable making your home with valve instead of sony which i think is completely reasonable then i think it could be the move so that's kind of where my action has been is like i canceled my playstation plus because honestly i wasn't using the monthly games anyway cloud saves a little painful but i haven't really needed to use them that much and moving forward like i probably there's going to be a lot more third-party games that i'm just like yeah i'm probably going to get those on PC.

1:03:09Colin Moriarty:You know, and I've already made a lot, a decent amount of purchasing decisions around PC instead of PlayStation. It's not that I'm gone completely, but there's not really much else you can do. Yeah, I, I, um, I don't know. I understand people's frustration. Like I'm kind of over this topic because we've discussed it so long. I just think, um,

1:03:36Dustin Furman:you look weak if you just can't admit when you've when things that you're doing aren't working or ineffectual and i notice and other people notice and the movement has fallen off in a major way i mean playstation i wouldn't i would argue that nothing playstation does gets quote unquote ratioed at all anymore and it's like the same couple of hundred people at most that are posting things about discs and sony probably looks at that and says like okay it was 20 30 40 50 100 000 now it's 200 it certainly like the the i would have just i would have done things differently if i were them um and again i think that the whole movement comes from that particular perspective of that that twitter account comes off as mega self-interested because everything like their whole future as a as like an entity revolves around this not going away so it's it from that perspective too it doesn't come off as very organic or grassroots in any way um but arguing with data i think is a very dangerous thing and i think that what people say is there are some people that say that you know it'll be like a more mid and long-term effect and i'm like yeah maybe that's true but we can say for sure there is no short-term effect right so that's out the window because a lot of people were like, well, there's going to be like a short term effect.

1:04:56Dustin Furman:They're going to see hits on PS plus. They're going to see a monthly active user job. No, they're not. So now the next step is next year is like the midterms really in my mind, three to five years and beyond five years is long term. But just going into next year, it's like, well, let's see what happens then. I think that the next I do think that this will be the financials in October will make or break this movement, I think, in completely. And then what happens with the PS6 is divorced from this. And that's a whole nother conversation. Some people will be like, they're intrinsically linked. And I'm like, no, they're not.

1:05:30Dustin Furman:Because a minority of you are already buying physical discs. So a minority of those people who will now no longer buy PlayStation stuff is going to be an even more substantial minority. So if PS6 fails, it'll be for different reasons. Maybe a confluence of a death by a thousand cuts in which those are one of the cuts. That's possible. But I don't know. I think this game is basically over after October. if they show no hit in their numbers. And I just think, I said it at the time, and you noted it, it's like you have to hit them where it hurts and you have to do it more consistently. And so doing this like very performative, like one week thing, it's like, who gives a shit?

1:06:07If you really care, disappear. That's what you got to do. Dispere. In fact, sell your console. Don't log into your PSN anymore. um let's see sorry i just got an email okay um you know like i just i just feel like you have to put more of your flesh on you know you have

1:06:31Dustin Furman:to put more of yourself out there like expose yourself more it's the more pain you can exact on on yourself in a way as a consumer the more it will hurt them because your consumer pain means that you're not buying in the next game that you want, that you're not on PS Plus, that you're not playing games with your friends, that you're not doing all these things. And that's all they give a fuck about. They will ride out your performance, your online performance forever, and they are riding it out successfully. And that's just true. So. Maybe they're like. We were, you know, you and I, Dustin and Chris, also I've been wondering, what's their strategy?

1:07:09Dustin Furman:They obviously gamed it out. They obviously have expectations of how they're going to get hurt. and who they're going to lose, and what the gain is on the other side. And we saw from a recent interview with Nishino in the Wall Street Journal, where he was saying that, you know, or maybe it was Satoki, that they understand that they really can't sell a lot of hardware now because of the pricing, and now they need to extract more out of individual audience members. And so we actually kind of have the gauntlet thrown down of challenge, of being like, okay, monthly active users will stay stagnant.

1:07:39Dustin Furman:We've kind of known that because they were going to start hiding some of those numbers. They already announced that long before the disc thing. And now we'll see if the money keeps going up, if the revenue keeps going up, then I would argue that they are extracting more money out of individual users. And so they're right. And this goes into what we were saying last week a little bit too about, and I think most of the, we have a smart audience generally. What I identify as Sony strategy is not what I would necessarily endorse. Right. It's the same thing with Fizzit. it's like I get it in fact Jason Schreier had reporting I think we might talk about it a little bit later that really affirmed a lot of the things that I was kind of postulating when we were talking about it before his report came out where I'm like Death Stranding 2 didn't sell well they're probably way over budget Kojima's difficult to work with they probably want the IP and yeah low and bold so it's like yeah I get it doesn't mean that I think you're smart for doing it or that the greater scheme of things, but I get it.

1:08:41Dustin Furman:And it's kind of a similar thing here for me. And so I just want to make sure that people understand that. I want them to bring discs back for you guys. I hope that they do. I just. I don't know how you can think that that's going to happen at this point. Maybe it will, but I don't think so. I don't I don't know. So. Anything else you want to say before we move on? No. Chris, you have anything you want to say?

1:09:10Colin Moriarty:he's left this mortal plane at this point so well how about this piece of news yeah maybe a little more uplifting MP1st which we've been citing a lot they write report Media Molecule new game set to be

1:09:26Dustin Furman:revealed in 2027 first info leaks of course Media Molecule is a Playstation first party team best known for LittleBigPlanet and later LittleBigPlanet came out in 2008 LittleBigPlanet 2 in early 2011 and then they released Tearaway in the Vita era and Dreams is their most recent project which was basically a bomb and we've been kind of wondering what's been going on with them ever since they're right here quote according to our sources familiar with the project Media Molecules next game is set to be unveiled and released in 2027 so unveiled and released in 2027 not a huge surprise I think it's time for these guys to shit or get off the pot if you ask me as to what kind of game it is.

1:10:06Dustin Furman:It's a social simulation type of game, one that's inspired by titles such as Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. We were also told it's not Games as a Service, though we wouldn't be shocked if it had Games as a Service elements in it. That's basically it. That's basically all they report. Now, we have a letter here. A lot of people wrote in about this, but Anthony the Vigil was one of them, and he says, hey, CDC, what do you think about the news that Media Molecule is working on an Animal Crossing like game? If done right, I think the game could be a big hit for Sony. What do you guys think? Have a great day.

1:10:35I don't know, but I don't hate this at all.

1:10:45Coziness is a real factor in people liking games,

1:10:49Dustin Furman:especially on the platform that I think Sony is reengaging with, Nintendo. And the idea of these self-encapsulated sim life games that are light and airy, they're really popular. The thing about these kinds of games, though, you can make the same kind of argument about Sony with games as a service. Generally, people make this argument is like, just because these games are big somewhere else doesn't mean they'll be big here. But I think it's a safe place to be and probably not a very expensive thing to make with probably high upside. Although I don't know how the audience will take to it. And I've seen people express this about Astro Bot in the past, but Astro Bot's have maybe three or four million copies, something like that sold.

1:11:30Dustin Furman:That game is way bigger and better than those sales indicate. but the audience on PlayStation isn't necessarily engaging with that kind of game. And so I don't know, even if what Media Molecule is doing would be objectively good in some sense, if the audience is necessarily going to show up for it. So that would be the bigger concern that I would have. But what do you think about these plans about Media Molecule's next game, which apparently we'll see and play within a year?

1:11:54Colin Moriarty:Pop quiz, Colin. What's the number two best-selling Switch game?

1:11:58Dustin Furman:Number two of all time?

1:12:00Colin Moriarty:All time. Animal Crossing. That's it. I mean, it's kind of obvious based on the circumstances, but...

1:12:07Dustin Furman:Yeah, I would not have guessed it. The number two best-selling Switch game is Animal Crossing New Horizons.

1:12:14Colin Moriarty:I'm looking at the Wikipedia page, so hopefully these numbers are right, but it sounds right based on what I remember looking from Nintendo reports a while back. But copies sold 50.29 million copies. And the number three game is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at 38 million. So it's number two by a significant margin. Um, so with that being said, I think it would make sense that Sony who for better or for worse, as we've been talking about is reaching a broader audience would want a little, a little piece of that, uh, animal crossing, new horizons, animal crossing has been, you know, a successful IP for Nintendo for a while, but it wasn't until new horizons, particularly coming out March 20th, 2020.

1:13:03Colin Moriarty:the absolute perfect time nintendo couldn't have nintendo was thanking covet 19 was nintendo

1:13:11Dustin Furman:responsible for covet 19

1:13:16Colin Moriarty:it certainly worked out one of the great marketing gambits of all time for even in my own personal anecdotes about animal crossing new horizon it's why i bought holly a switch my mom wanted to play this game so bad that i bought her a nintendo switch to play this game and her friends were playing it everyone wanted this game so it's going to be really interesting because as an animal crossing fan there's a very delicate line to balance and it's particularly interesting coming from media molecule because they are known for having highly customizable games whether it's little big planet with the create your own levels and then dreams which it's like you don't people don't necessarily want to make an entire game as the game right so part of animal crossing's appeal is that it's like it's i don't want to call it like legos but it's like oh we we built all this furniture we built all this stuff that you can place and decorate but you can't you can't build the desk yourself you can't go in with like uh like a rudimentary uh you know a model builder and then build the desk in the game right i don't think that animal crossing fans would even want that part of the appeal is its simplicity but at the same time hardcore animal crossing fans want more from it where they are annoyed by the limitations of the game so media molecule i think has the potential to make something that is more in depth than animal crossing that would be very appealing to a very wide audience but they got to control themselves they can't be going too fucking crazy where you're dealing with logic maps and all this shit for this kind of game they have to they have to rein themselves in i think and i think the other thing which i think they're very capable of uh is that it needs to be visually appealing and that sounds very basic but and i don't know some people would maybe say this is sexist but it needs to appeal to the girlfriend this kind of game i have a little sexism here and there it's okay it needs to appeal to everybody actually but you know what you don't like that was the thing about animal crossing part of the reason why i was so successful is that it got people that normally aren't interested in video games like my mom to be like oh i want to play that because the cute little characters cute little houses cute little interactions all very perfectly balanced so um yeah it needs to it needs to be appealing and i guess that's a particular thing to say about playstation just because i think that a lot of their games either only appeal to the core or they make games that appeal to nobody like concord it's amazing that's what i'm talking about the like the concord effect where it's like but is it cool is it actually cool in this case it's going to be like is it cute is it actually cute so i'm very interested in this i'm very very intrigued i think it's actually i'm in the words of alucard yeah i i'm curious i feel like this is kind of the the good a great direction to go in after the the mess

1:16:48Dustin Furman:of dreams i actually i actually totally agree i mean i i don't know what its likelihood of success is and i think a lot of it will be quality oriented and i think that i don't know what media Molecule can do in that regard anymore. They haven't made a game in a long time. A lot of the people that made those games are gone. Most of the leadership of Media Molecule is gone. The founding leadership is gone. I think four out of five of them. Even the studio that brought you Tearaway, which is not even most of the team, the studio that brought you Little Big Planet 2. I would have to go on Moby Games.

1:17:21Dustin Furman:We actually really won't know until the new game comes out, but I'll do some comparisons at the time. We'll see. You can probably do it on LinkedIn now if you wanted to. To see who's still there. I'm sure there are people there. not many so their old pedigree is almost worthless it's like well i don't know it they constantly brought up ship of theseus and the bioware stuff and we always bring this up it's an opportunity for them to start a new chapter for their studio or die trying i guess because i don't think they're going to survive another dud nor should they probably so we've spoken on this show ad nauseum not recently for sure but about dreams and i think dreams is one of those ill executed good ideas and it's too bad because they really wasted a lot of time and resources and money and goodwill and you look back at some of the things especially little big planet like they obviously didn't want to continue with a little big planet maybe they shouldn't have been forced to but it existed without them and it was fairly popular without them and you wonder like well where could you where could you have oriented yourself to do something different why was it so important for them to do weird shit and i remember specifically at the ps4 reveal event where they're doing all their weird shit and that ended up that's what ended up being dreams but i'm glad someone went in there finally was like you got to make a game and you can get back to your ugc roots your little big planet roots that was big in other parts of sony to the user-generated content stuff like infamous 2 had it and others but little big planet i mean that was their whole thing was shit shit what was it create share play or whatever create play share whatever the fuck it was and that's good and i agree with you that going after different audiences isn't going to be important to sony and I like what you said about it's not it's not sexist at all I don't think it's like these games do appeal to women doesn't mean that they can't appeal to men too or sure anyone um plenty of men like that stuff but the softer edged games will appeal more to a softer edged audience that doesn't necessarily want to shoot a gun or kick a ball or whatever and um I don't think you can really I don't think it's a bad thing for you to experiment in that world as long as you're doing it with your eyes wide open understanding that it's a little bit of a risk because you've not engendered that kind of audience that kind of audience doesn't really exist on your platform at all and what you're kind of hoping for is like some sort of breakout hit it's kind of when you when you release or work on something like this on a platform like playstation you have to know that you're not doing the intuitive thing you're doing the different thing and that it's dangerous but that it could work out mightily for you.

1:20:14Dustin Furman:So there's no reason why I like I don't think risking media molecules existence on this game is a bad idea. You have to do something with them. And now, is it going to be Animal Crossing level? No, Animal Crossing obviously benefited from COVID, like you said, but it also benefited from being a Nintendo first party game and Nintendo first party games generally sell very well there. As I say over and over again, they're incredibly reliant on themselves. So they create new and novel things and their audience shows up for it. They have a very loyal audience. Again, using the Astro Bot comparison, Astro Bot should have sold much better than it did considering how good it is and how well received it was.

1:20:49Dustin Furman:It's game of the year level and yet can't break 5 million copies. I don't know from that perspective if it speaks highly of the audience's willingness to meet them where they're going to go. So we'll see. I think a lot of it will have to do about the quality of the game. And of course, we really don't know anything about it. Like I said, it's like a paragraph, a short paragraph in an MP1st article. But people like their sim games. They like their building games. They like their farming games. They like games where you work jobs. And like I play fucking Power Wash Simulator. But even if you look at things like Moonlighter and like.

1:21:29People, people like coming home from their day job, driving a truck and then they drive a truck. Right. It wouldn't be that surprising. for a person to want to come home,

1:21:41Dustin Furman:organize their house and clean up and eat dinner and put the kids to bed and then do it again, you know, in a game. So I don't know, man. I dig it. If you want different things out of PlayStation first party, I guess you're going to get it. So we'll see if people show up or not. I doubt I'll play it. I mean, I will, of course, keep an open mind. Maybe it'll speak to me in some way that these other games haven't. I have not played it. I liked the original Animal Crossing a lot on GameCube, but one of the things that I really liked about it was how I liked trading things and like getting things online, like using those digit codes that you, you know what I'm talking about?

1:22:22Dustin Furman:That like with the original Animal Crossing, like you could, you shared things in Animal Crossing, like obviously GameCube got a modem later, but the original Animal Crossing was like this self-contained world that felt like it was alive. And you would trade with people by like trading these codes and doing these things. And it was like really vibrant on GameFAQs. And it was a really cool thing, but it felt like old fantasy sports where like you would like instead of the computer doing the math for you, you would actually have to go into the newspaper and figure out the stats yourself. There's something romantic about that to me.

1:22:53Dustin Furman:And I liked that. And that was quickly gone with Animal Crossing. And reasonably so. I mean, why wouldn't it be? but um so it's just not my kind of thing but you know who i think this would be aimed at is micah oh yeah she loves that kind of shit she loves like harvest moon oh she likes the real like what's the real harvest moon now uh stardew valley right no no no they're like oh you know i'm talking about like like netsume it's like a really nerdy thing but like there's like another spin-off series like wonderful life or something like that that's like what is it story of seasons thank you yeah Story of Seasons is like the real Harvest Moon now.

1:23:33Dustin Furman:And Harvest Moon that is now Harvest Moon is kind of like a bootleg Harvest Moon. So there, yeah. So thank you, babe. So there's a... Yeah, so there's already like a lot of contention in that space. And there is space for someone else to kind of come in and maybe do something. It's interesting. I'm interested to see more about this. I'm interested in this. All right. Next up. It'd be nice to have Chris here for this, but we can obviously get into him with us next week. And of course you played as well. So you'll have things to say, but Bungie released a new statement on marathon. And they write a few interesting things here.

1:24:11Dustin Furman:They write in part quote, we previously shared plans for marathon's next major update to launch on September 22nd. We know many players were looking forward to it and we appreciate your patience. We are adjusting our plans to ensure the update meets your expectations. The content originally planned for September will now arrive as part of our symbiosis update on December 8th. Alongside the new runner shell permanent PVE experience and refresh perimeter zone, the update will include a social space and firing range and experimental TDM mode and improvements to new player onboarding. Before then, we'll release a smaller focused update on October 6th that resets progression and the in-game economy, refreshes awards, and improves the live game while giving the team the time needed to deliver the larger experiences planned for December and March.

1:24:50Dustin Furman:We're also moving away from a strict seasonal schedule. Instead of tying major updates to fix seasonal deadlines, were giving the team more flexibility to build, test, and improve features before they are released. Since launch, you've told us that Marathon needs more depth, more variety, stronger progression, and better reasons to keep playing over the long term. We agree. Addressing that feedback requires us to change both what we're building and how we deliver it. They write about what's going to be in both the immediate October nightfall refresh and then the December symbiosis release, which is the bigger release.

1:25:17Dustin Furman:But they say, and we've talked about a lot of that already, but we'll say this. They say the path ahead at the end. quote October will refresh the live game and give players a healthier starting point symbiosis will be a significant milestone for marathon introducing permanent pve and several new ways to engage with the game but it's only the beginning of what we're working towards as players spend time with these updates and share their feedback we'll continue refining and expanding marathon um what do you make of this I'm kind of fascinated where Sony is with this game because I feel like they think they have an effective beachhead I've kind of used this reference in the past where they feel like they have something truly good and I think they do and they have something truly differentiated and stylish and I think that's also true it doesn't have the player numbers to sustain it in the long run but I don't think they want to abandon it and I don't think it's a bad idea getting to this getting to this place even in development is onerous and expensive you've already done it you probably should try to extract as much as you can from it and see and I think there are still things they can do, including making it free before they abandon it.

1:26:19Dustin Furman:So I'm curious what you think about Bungie's evolution with this. And if they'll, I wonder how long this game will survive. They're talking about it through March. It sounds like, so I guess we'll see beyond that.

1:26:29Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's no mystery. Marathon player numbers, particularly right now are worse than ever. Um, and I'm this, this update in December, I feel like is, the right move in that so i am a lapsed marathon player as it stands right now marathon is my game of the year looking at my steam time i have 226 hours in it i bought it on so much time

1:27:04Dustin Furman:i've never played a game that long i don't think of my life it's so funny i bought it on steam i

1:27:08Colin Moriarty:bought it on playstation uh so i could grind out stuff on my couch you know so i have a lot of time I've not played marathon in months though. And I think that's part of the player number thing is that people that played marathon and were into marathon put a lot of time into it. All the people I know who played marathon put a lot of time into it. Me, Brad, Chris, Pork Poncho. We all have similar hour counts on marathon. And part of the problem why we're not playing marathon anymore right now. and my theory on why the player numbers are especially bad is that there's no reason for players like us to come back we did all of the main thing like we could come back I guess for the love of the game and there is something to that but I I did compiler I did all the vaults I have done not that I've like 100 % every single entry and stuff that you can unlock but I reached the end game of end games in Marathon.

1:28:14Colin Moriarty:And the thing that's going to bring me back is actual new content. The Nightfall mode was cool. Like it was a cool little refresh. It brought some new things. I liked it. But it wasn't enough to really keep me there. And so I kind of prefer the fact that instead of doing like a half thing now and a half thing later, that when this update comes out in December 8th, it's going to feel like there's new experiences there for me. Not just a refreshed map and a new playable runner shell. It's going to be something, hopefully, to actually chew into. And I think you're right, Colin, that I think that they have the stats on this.

1:28:56Colin Moriarty:They know that there's something appealing there to those people that really got into it and put in 200 plus hours into the game. The miscalculation, and I think we said this before the game came out and even when we were enjoying it, is just the hardcore PvP. Well, I guess it's PvP, but hardcore extraction simply does not appeal to a super large audience. It was never going to be an insane live service game for Bungie or PlayStation. Even if what's there is amazing. It's just, it's too punishing for the masses. And I get that. There were some nights where I played Marathon where I'm like, I can't fucking do this.

1:29:49Colin Moriarty:I'm going to end it if I keep playing this right now. It's just too much. so going and making marathon something that does have modes that are more appealing to other people such as the pve mode and what's really interesting the the experimental pvp team death match mode is not something that i expected either my biggest concern colin right now i think we'll make it to this December update I think they will give it that chance to get to and release it if the December update does not move the needle I'm worried they'll pull the plug before March uh but I I it's really hard to say so it's tough it's tough with marathon because it's it's so good but you y 'all don't understand it.

1:30:46Colin Moriarty:Y 'all aren't good enough. No, I'm just kidding. People get really mad about that.

1:30:49Dustin Furman:Well, the thing about, I mean, I say this as an outsider, is like, I hear things, it's just so, it's so anathema to the way I play games where I'm like, you're like, I played it for like 200 hours and I'm like, isn't that enough? And I'm not saying from your, even from your perspective as the player, like when you look at it from, I just can't imagine working on games where I'm like, yeah, we got to keep these people engaged for thousands of hours. It's like, what? Like, I just feel I feel like that's such a I guess what I'm saying is in the old world, having someone engage with your game for 200 to 250 hours and be like, we're just out of content or whatever.

1:31:24Dustin Furman:It's like that's a that's a win. Right. And I know that I know it's just different now and I know expectations are different and it's time game and it's all about time. It's about when you contain someone, you're stopping them from almost spending or migrating to a competitor. It's it's it's it's so much more real in an ecosystem where there is just unlimited choice. Right. It's not a matter of like I do this or I go fuck off. It's like I do this or I can just go on PSN and do whatever the fuck I want because I have unlimited options. And so I know that they want to keep I get it. They want to keep you.

1:31:55Dustin Furman:But I look at that and I'm like. I don't know, man, the expectations around these games are incredible. And I know that the stakes are ratcheted up and there's a lot of money on the line. I'm personally intrigued and I think I will finally give Marathon a try when the PV stuff is permanent. I will play like because I love shooters. Like I love first person shooters. I just don't want to play against people. I really don't. Especially like the sweaty people that like and like you're saying like marathon. It's it's the problem is the people that will stick with it are become are going to become better and better and better.

1:32:29Dustin Furman:It's like we make fun of the the wall hugging gears shit like how unpalatable that is. And like I would just never even bother because I'm like I'm not playing with these fucking people. But like that's who's left. and so you're just going to get your ass kicked in these games and that might not be fun to people and I totally and it's like you were saying I totally understand that I'm intrigued because I don't think well there are a few things I think it's entirely possible that Marathon is doing a lot better on console than it is on PC the reason I say that is because the inverse is true with hell divers so why can't it be true in the other direction in other words is it always going to be that every game is more popular on PC than it is on console and thus you can read the Steam DB numbers and garner some sort of valuable information or could those numbers be mixed up?

1:33:20Dustin Furman:And I think Helldivers indicates that yeah, I mean they could be. It's just in the other direction. So I wish we had a better understanding and framework of like what do you got like what is the player count and how is it doing on Xbox and how is it doing on PlayStation? Is that why you're interested in it? Are you interested in it because you feel like you have the core of something good? Are you interested in it because you feel like you've spent all this money on this stupid studio and you got to get your money out of it? You got to like extract some value out of it. Is it that you're afraid of letting a lot of these guys go and float off in the wind to other teams and lose real talent, more real talent than Bungie has already lost?

1:34:00Dustin Furman:I don't really know. I imagine it's probably some combination of those things. Like I imagine that Marathon is bigger on console than it is on PC. I imagine that Sony does see something special here that they didn't see in Concord. It's frankly, I don't know if we're going to talk about it here, but I don't think I put it in. But like there's like footage of fair games that has been released where it's like, yeah, they kind of believe in this. And I actually think it kind of looks cool. Like I stand by that. Like, I think this looks cool. Again, not a game I'm like that intrigued by, but I don't think it looks bad by any stretch of the imagination.

1:34:31Dustin Furman:So they probably I mean, certainly they judge these things on some sort of spectrum where they looked at Concord and they were like, gameplay is great but this world these characters this shit sucks like the audience just doesn't like it there's nothing here but i think with marathon they're like unique style exciting extraction shooter style gameplay the the interesting aesthetic story developer uh you know etc and so on and so i i think that they they look at they look at marathon maybe with something a little bit of promise but again i just love my reference of the beachhead like you let them push you off the beach, but don't just like vacate it.

1:35:08You worked hard to land. And frankly, you bought this team and you might as well die trying.

1:35:15Dustin Furman:It's the same thing with media. I said with Media Molecule, like I don't know what the future holds for Bungie. And I think that they have big decisions ahead. And I probably think they're determining what they want to do. As I've said before, for people who have not heard, and I'm sure most of you have, Sony has to decide whether they want to invest like a half a billion dollars in the team or not. I mean, that's the choice, right? That's not a dramatic thing to say. You either let this team go for five or six years to make Destiny 3 or something else, or you close them down. Those are your two options.

1:35:44Dustin Furman:I don't know how some shell Bungie works or what the purpose of it even is. You're sitting on all this real estate. I don't know. What do you think about that? I mean, I wonder, does Bungie exist next year, this time next year? I think that's an open question, to be honest with you.

1:36:03Colin Moriarty:i don't know there are things that they're like uh they're leasing out part of their office now

1:36:07Dustin Furman:yeah because they built this whole new campus like when the going was good of you know renovating the offices and making it very stylish and the cheap money era and i i just i can't even believe sony got i i they sony got fucking fleeced man like you can't even say that they got they allowed themselves to get fleeced because who knows what's really true and not about the scuttlebutt around that deal but like that other people were sniffing around and Sony got nervous and it's like you should have just let someone else buy this team what a fucking stupid stupid move you could have bought a big publisher for this much money like you could have gotten into bed with Square Enix or something or bought a piece of Capcom or did something you know not that I'm not saying those are options but you know what I mean

1:36:52Colin Moriarty:right yeah I think that I really think that the dream of a Destiny 3 is just not likely at all. I said last week when we were talking about the Kojima stuff, which I realized someone, someone left a comment that said it was a Sean Layden tweet or something. He said an interview about being led by the spreadsheets. And I feel like Sony is purely led by people that are following the numbers to a T nearly exclusively. And they're looking at, it's like, okay, the fans want destiny three. They're saying they want destiny three. that's all they say in the live chats uh where were they when they were putting their dollar down for the final shape not there uh where were they yeah where were those player numbers

1:37:43Dustin Furman:diminishing numbers for every expansion every subsequent expansion which is normal

1:37:47Colin Moriarty:i and to be fair that's a sony that's a sony perspective because i think it's a totally valid point that a lot of destiny players were like i don't want more destiny 2 i want them to upgrade and evolve the experience into a destiny start again i want to start again and i think that's totally valid and i would agree to that just because i fell off of destiny 2 after i don't know how many expansions but uh but that number isn't quantifiable on a spreadsheet and that's what they're looking at in my opinion so i don't think the destiny 3 thing is happening And so I'm trying to remember what the reports we read a while back that were like they were trying to get a new project greenlit.

1:38:33Colin Moriarty:And so maybe that's kind of what the stasis is right now. And they have the team working on Marathon, obviously. But you're right. I think that it's like you either you either invest or you get out. Yeah, you got it. You got to cut.

1:38:48Dustin Furman:You got to cut your losses at some point, I think, if you're not going to invest in the team. And they know that. I mean, it's just. they ripped gummy bears away from them. So that's not going to be their next game. And I don't know that that game really has a prayer either. I mean, based on, we don't know anything about it, but I say that based on just Sony's tastemaking, it's like for all we know, that can be the fucking stupidest worst shit you've ever seen in your life. I mean, just based on like some of the choices you made, you know? So like, there's no guarantee that, that they saw that they're like, wow, this is really special.

1:39:17Dustin Furman:And well, they thought that about a bunch of other things too, just to remind you, including Bungie itself. So, um, I don't know if they're, they're calibrated properly in that regard. And so Team LFG and stuff, I don't know about them. We'll see.

1:39:36Destiny 3 might be one of the safest bets

1:39:37Dustin Furman:that Sony can make in some weird way. It's just that it's going to take a long time and you don't really know what things are going to look like by the early 2030s, which is when it would come out. So at that point, you're talking about almost 20 years since Destiny 1. and I don't know who the fuck even know I mean that's the risk of just you got to at some point take these risks because you just need the time you're not going to be able to introduce these games into the current market so you got to kind of hope and pray so I do think that from some perspective Destiny 3 might be one of the safest games as a service bets that Sony could actually make it's just that it won't pay off anytime soon and you can't really guarantee its safety in the the long term everybody's fickle and who knows what the next big there's gonna be 25 big things in between now and then that take over the industry and dominate player counts and and i don't mean like there's gonna be thousands of games that people like and play between now and then it's more about the huge things that they're going after i don't know what i i think that

1:40:48if they need to shut Bungie down and kind of cut them off the ledger,

1:40:52Dustin Furman:you assume it's to save money to do other things or to balance stuff. And I think that I would rather cut Bungie than a lot of the other teams. And certainly, cutting Bungie would save a lot more money than a lot of the other teams because they are an expensive and bloated team even still. And not nearly as bloated and not nearly as expensive as they once were. but it all goes back to the stuff I've been saying for years about just American game development generally. It's going to become more and more unattractive to do things here. It's too expensive.

1:41:26I don't know. Yeah, I imagine they are probably working on whatever project

1:41:30Dustin Furman:they are trying to get greenlit, and we'll see. But that's only going to require a small team to spool things up before you go into pre-production if you get greenlit. I don't want people to lose their jobs. I just don't know why Sony got involved with this team to begin with. And they would have gotten Marathon. Would have come to PlayStation. That was going to be a thing. It's not like they were. It's what I keep saying about Fizzin. Like. I wouldn't have made the choices Sony made. I think it's stupid. I think it's a bad optical move. I think you want to stay friendly with Kojima. I think you got to be patient.

1:42:05Dustin Furman:I think you're getting the game you want to get. But at the same time, like that game's coming to PlayStation. So if you look like it is. if you simply take it at face value, they're reporting that a lot of the holdup about Sony's involvement with it, which is that it wasn't going to be exclusive. So why would they then bring it to the smaller publisher on the smaller platform and then make it exclusive? That doesn't make any sense. Of course, it's gonna be on PlayStation. So it's like from that perspective, you look at it at Sony and be like, well, we're still gonna get the game. We just get 30 % of every copy of the game you sell and we don't have to do anything.

1:42:36Dustin Furman:And I think that there's something kind of compelling about that too. so maybe you just let other people make these games but I just think it leaves them vulnerable uniquely vulnerable and by the way I think Helldivers has been a spark up their ass if anything I'd be like see we can do it Helldivers 2 is more than two years old that is a true game as a service success story it's not one of these ephemeral things that does really well what was that sexy destiny that came out that everyone loved for like five seconds oh

1:43:07Colin Moriarty:the first descendant first descendant something it's something descendant the first descendant

1:43:13Dustin Furman:yeah and it's like it's it's it's not easy to get a hit and get people to play anything but it's really hard to get people to play the same thing over and over again for two and a half years and I think they they're like shit man why not us and so if anything I think they're probably emboldened in some weird way too but we'll see I think marathon has a It has potential, but I think its success is unlikely. I will say that. I just like how many games, how many games really turn it around? Like, you know what I mean? Like kind of hang on for a while and then they really roar back. I don't even know that I can think of very many at all.

1:43:57Dustin Furman:And so you're almost chasing it. It's like good money after bad in a way, but you almost don't want to let it go. Yeah. Anyway.

1:44:05Colin Moriarty:Yeah. All right. Next up, Tokan.

1:44:09Dustin Furman:We brought up Tokan a little bit earlier, but Marvel Tokan Fighting Souls, which of course it translated in Japanese as Marvel Fighting Souls, Fighting Souls. They write a letter from the director of the game to all Tokan warriors. This is on Steam. They write, quote, a month has now passed since our August 6th release, and I have to admit that I am amazed every day by all the discoveries and creative tactics players continue to find. Seeing the game's content so positively we received with players enjoying the experience and feeling inspired and keep playing has been a tremendous source of joy for the entire development team, he writes.

1:44:42Dustin Furman:However, we also recognize that the launch period was impacted by stability issues on PC, and we sincerely apologize for the frustration this has caused our players. It was never our intention for players to be unable to enjoy the game as we envisioned, and we are currently making progress on improvements to the PC version so that everyone can enjoy the game to the fullest. Today, I would like to share several points with you. So they talk a little bit about, and people can get old in this, about inputs and cooldowns for assists and switches and balancing. But I thought this was really interesting as well.

1:45:11Dustin Furman:So the first part of the story I wanted to bring up was that they're still working on fixing the game on PC. I don't know what the major problem is, and it's too bad because the game apparently is fairly popular on PlayStation and runs perfectly fine on PlayStation. So this PlayStation-produced second-party fighting game that they're also trying to make available to a wider audience on PC is hurting them and injuring the reputation of the game on their own console. So it's bad irony. But if you scroll to the bottom, Dustin, I thought this was interesting. They share win rates by character in the game.

1:45:42Dustin Furman:And I thought it was pretty remarkable. The win rates for the highest ranked characters are 52 % and the lowest ranked are 48%. That's crazy balance. Really, really incredible stability. And they write, quote, these results may look surprising, but statistics show that character win ratios are stable and only have a narrow variation range. i don't know i just was so impressed by that usually in my my brief and old experience with fighting games but certainly always interested in the space and reading about it it's like there are characters and things that are exploited so badly where the characters are so much stronger and more especially in team bat team fighting games um think of moral versus copcom 2 where like half that no one even touches half that roster so so uh i don't know i just thought that was kind of an interesting thing that they shared i think it's a good sign for the for arc system works innate ability to create a good fighting game and i would love for them to stay in bed with sony and continue to do other stuff outside of marvel if possible yeah i i mean balancing

1:46:40Colin Moriarty:any game is something that must be incredibly difficult but balancing a highly technical fighting game with a you know a giant roster you know you brought up marvel vs capcom but it made me think of how in like the competitive super smash brothers melee scene is i think it's like fox fox is the character and there are some a few others and then there's like a dark horse of a character that uses some random character that somehow is like he's like autistically locked in and is able to do well despite its disadvantages and stuff i i don't know enough about fighting games to like you know say whether this is good or it sounds good i mean a difference between what four percent i just think that's remarkable i mean it basically suggests that there is really

1:47:28Dustin Furman:no advantage to using any of the characters which is right they did a nice job of of ironing that out that i guess blade would be uh the the most powerful character and champion the least powerful but that's only 52 win rate and 48 win rate so i'm not a fighting game guy by any stretch of the imagination but i i was really when i was researching this i was really intrigued by that data because that is not indicative of normal fighting games at all yeah well and i wonder

1:47:52Colin Moriarty:okay i'm curious about some of this uh because i'm guessing this is just the online statistics i wonder if there's a thing that the so the characters at the bottom so there's champion but deadpool wolverine hawk a hulk ghost rider okay i was like with the most popular characters that normies would tend to use maybe have a lower success rate than some of the more intricate characters like so wolverine and deadpool specifically on hulk

1:48:22Dustin Furman:yeah i don't know who champion is i don't even know who the fuck that is um yeah that's a good that's a good point too and actually they say this here as well and i think this would be actually interesting data for them to release they haven't they said quote looking at results by teams might yield different results but it at least seems that individual character matchups are quite even and um so it would be interesting to see like what the specific powerful teams are and their win rates against like the worst possible permutation i guess there are what 20 characters or whatever so you would have to do the math to see like what there's obviously a finite amount of the three character combinations so like what would the most powerful and least powerful combinations be and I'm sure every combination has been explored it's not like a game of chess or whatever so that would be cool data to see and maybe they'll I don't know if they want to show that data though because that would expose more of the weaknesses of the of whatever balancing they've done but I think but yeah I find the irony deep that the PC version of the gate means you do the game, which is not even the important version of the game by PlayStation standards is the one that's kind of ruining the game's reputation.

1:49:25Dustin Furman:It's too bad. And I wonder how much it's hurt them. I don't even know to assume what kind of sales figures Fighting Souls has seen. I assume Alinea probably had something to say about that at some point. Okay. Next story. Seems like Build-A-Rocket Boy, Barb, as the acronym goes, the studio behind the ill-fated Mind's Eye that I platinumed last year for some reason, is finally going out of business. Kotaku writes, quote, Build a Rocket Boy, the Leslie Benzies and Mark Gerhard-owned studio behind the widely criticized GTA-like Mind's Eye is reportedly closing down for good. Multiple rounds of layoffs, a collective grievance by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain and accusations of crunch and unlawful employee monitoring.

1:50:12Dustin Furman:It's fair to say that Build a Rocket Boy's journey has been a controversial one. Well, said journey has now seemingly come to its conclusion. Despite multiple attempts to transform Mind's Eye into a game that people might actually buy, multiple employees at Build-A-Rocket Boy have reported today that the studio is winding down permanently. Build-A-Rocket Boy level designer Liam Shannon, QA analyst Elizabeth Tavanova, release manager Michaela Emsley, and production QA analyst Cameron Deves have stated over the last 24 hours on LinkedIn that the time of the company is coming to an end. However, this isn't simply a case of further layoffs at a studio that continues to operate.

1:50:44Dustin Furman:A LinkedIn post from Dan Hawkins, Bill the Rocket Boys, principal talent acquisition partner, straightforwardly stated that, quote, along with the rest of his colleagues, he'll be helping Barb through until the very end as the studio winds down permanently. I went and looked for that statement and he deleted it. So I don't know if he got in trouble or broke some sort of whatever. Seems like the studio is finished. I have no idea how they even survived this long, to be honest. I imagine a lot of it had to do with early investment money. I'm sure Lensley Benzies had no problem drawing investment money.

1:51:13Dustin Furman:He's also independently very wealthy. And so maybe he was floating it too. But mine's like the thing about this is what we were saying earlier about some working on these games until like your eyes bleed is that I just think someone needed to come in with mine's eye and say like this isn't happening. It doesn't really matter what you do. It's not going to be OK unless you just make it again, like start again. But obviously you're not going to do that. Your infrastructure is all fucked up. Your world's boring. Your tech doesn't work. Story shit. you know I it's weird to me that they like thought I don't think they really thought I think they just did what they felt like they had to do but I would really love to know the full breadth of the of Dustin of the numbers how the game sold and who was really engaging with it over time because I play a lot of video games and I like games like Mind's Eye like open world GTA like games and driving around and shooting in third person and it's good shit and I just was like man man, this game is fucking tripe.

1:52:13Dustin Furman:So, RIP and peace, I guess. What do you think?

1:52:17Colin Moriarty:Yeah, the Ritual Network gets the last laugh on this one. But it's no surprise. It's been fun following this game throughout the disaster of it doing the stream with Gene. The stream that it even, my die was so bad, it took down the stream from a technical level somehow. Certainly wasn't my fault. I'll tell you that. I was looking on Amazon. You can still buy through an Amazon third party, but you can get the disc version of mine. I believe probably with the 1.0 version. $19.

1:52:55Dustin Furman:Yeah, overbought.

1:52:56Colin Moriarty:I would do it for$10.

1:52:57Dustin Furman:$10, yeah. Yeah,$10.

1:52:59Colin Moriarty:Yeah, to just to download. I want to play the build on disc version of that.

1:53:04Dustin Furman:It's got to be fucking awful.

1:53:05Colin Moriarty:I'd like to do it. I'd like to do it someday.

1:53:08Dustin Furman:Yeah, just to put a little monitor on it. I'm sure the price will drop.

1:53:12Colin Moriarty:yeah so Colin I think we got to definitively declare well okay this is to mind's eye not the people working on it because clearly it was a lot of mismanagement to mind's eye R.I.P. Bozo

1:53:27Dustin Furman:yeah I mean I give I mean I could give a fuck about this game

1:53:31Colin Moriarty:to build a rocket boy because I'm sure that you know Leslie Benzies seemed like he was kind of crazy with the whole ritual network stuff

1:53:41Dustin Furman:uh so yeah r.i.p. snickled wrote in about that he said build a rocket boy was genuinely a great studio name it actually was r.i.p and peace to a legend if you're listening i hope one day you find out who sabotaged your game leslie that i'll always be mystified by what the fuck went on with that that's a weird one to me what the fuck were they talking about who gives a shit who's trying to what do you think rock stars were like i don't want to put words in anyone's mouths I just feel like the implication was that it was Rockstar. Right? I mean, who else could it have been? And like, why would they give a fuck?

1:54:20They probably saw what you were working on if they even paid attention to it at all. They're like, holy moly.

1:54:25Dustin Furman:You know, this is... It's a bad scene over here. I think we'll be... I don't think we have much to worry about from mind's eye. So I would love to know more about... The Ritual Network thing will always be a funny joke, but like it's... Seriously, it's like, what is this? What is going on with this? It's very strange to me. And I wonder if we'll ever learn more about that. Like people, now that the studio is truly done and no one has anything to gain from it anymore, I wonder if people will start saying more. And I wouldn't be surprised if they did. We'll keep an eye out for that, but pardon the pun, keep a mind's eye out for that.

1:55:01Dustin Furman:But RIP Build a Rocket Boy, there's been no definitive, conclusive statement by the time we're recording about their closure. and they're a British studio. So there are different rules there. You can't just shut shit down there anyway. You have to like put people in, what is it, consultancy or something. And then you have to like warn everyone that they're getting laid off, which is fine. I have no problem with that. But like unlike the United States, companies just don't disappear one day. So I don't know if we'll get any conclusive and maybe they'll just remain a shell of some sort and own the IP.

1:55:33Dustin Furman:And I think I'm also curious why IO Interactive got involved. Because that was one of the things that made me feel like they were. I was like, oh, this game, IO's good studio. And obviously, ever since then, IO released the 007 game earlier this year, which is one of the great games of the year, in my opinion, was fucking awesome. So and Hitman, of course, everyone loves Hitman. So what were they thinking? Did they just want to be in bed with Leslie Benzies? Did they see some sort of bullshit? did they get got i don't know i don't know how they could have seen this thing and be like yeah

1:56:09Colin Moriarty:we want to do this with you well i can understand maybe the perspective that's like dude this guy he produced grand theft auto of course it's going to be a hit like this guy knows what he's doing he produced the biggest game series of all time and why wouldn't we say presumably the thing right Dustin is that he does know what he's doing right you have to presume that he knows what he's doing he didn't produce one of them he produced all of them you know he did design work and a lot of

1:56:43Dustin Furman:other things on not only Grand Theft Auto but other games too it's like I don't feel like you can get I don't think you can fake it that's what's so interesting about the failure this

1:56:51Colin Moriarty:game it's like what happened maybe there was a bit of hubris about like creating a GTA like the the vision was a game that was to the the degree of a grand theft auto but you simply cannot make that without grand theft auto budgets so it was like a mismatch between his vision for the game and what his budget actually was and what was achievable with that he to put a finer point on it he produced gta 3 vice city

1:57:26Dustin Furman:San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories 4, Chinatown Wars, the GTA 4 DLC, and GTA 5. He produced Manhunt and Manhunt 2. He was the executive producer of Red Dead Redemption. He was the executive producer of LA Noir. He was the executive producer of Max Payne 3. I just don't think you can fake it for that long. Production, especially with big games like that, like he was the... So for instance, we talked about this a few weeks ago. I was like, GTA 4, when it came out was the most expensive game of all time. He produced it. He literally is the money man. You know, like he's literally organizing resources, funneling people into projects, keeping the spreadsheet straight, making sure everyone's on task, like making sure the money's being allocated and spent wisely.

1:58:19I don't know. I don't know. I just find that weird. It's kind of how I feel about Amy Hennig too. it's like, what's going on here? You obviously can do it. We've seen you do it. We've seen you do it multiple times. But I think the big thing with it, with mine's eyes, he wasn't the producer, was he? He was the director.

1:58:39Colin Moriarty:Right. Yep. And that's two radically different things.

1:58:46Dustin Furman:And I think, because people have pushed back on me in the past and it's reasonable enough, like he has done design work and he actually began as, he actually began as a programmer. So he has like some sort of technical knowledge as well before he got into production. But production is innately uncreative. It is. It's not the creative part of the game development. It's quite the opposite. It's the realism of making a game. It's all of the reality of what goes into the creativity. That's what production is. so i don't know so maybe it was him just biting off more than he can chew from that perspective as well where he really should have stayed in his lane of production yeah and frank i don't i don't know anything about bull the rocket boy obviously but he probably did a lot of the role of producer and studio head where he was like and studio heads are often game directors but sometimes they're producers where i'm i'm sure he was very compelling i'm sure that they raised a lot of money and what does this mean by the way for everywhere because that was the game that they were actually building that was like the real game and everywhere was Well, Mind's Eye is embedded in everywhere, I think is what it is.

2:00:05Dustin Furman:You know what I mean? It was supposed to be like an MMO where you made games. And then I think Mind's Eye became kind of a smaller version of that where you had a shooter in an open world where you made games. You made your missions and you did all these kinds of things. And it was in development forever. I mean, it's been development for like 10 years. So I assume if Build a Rocket Boy is done, then this is over. What a waste.

2:00:33okay i guess the next story is kind of a spoiler but not really well it's should we not report it no we should we should because they're gonna announce the game they're going to announce it well at that point you're right all bets are off you're right

2:00:53Dustin Furman:i don't know how to say this website's name we've we've cited them before but it's frvr is So one of those things where they just don't want to use vowels and it's like fervor or fever. Fervor. Fervor, probably. I'm leaning fervor, but I don't know. FRVR.com. They write, Lies of Peace Studio trademarks Wonders of O. And they write, it sounds like a Wizard of Oz Souls-like game. The studio, of course, at the center of this is the Korean team, Neowiz. and their hit 2023 Souls-like game Lies of P. And that game did very, very well, of course. And I think a while ago they confirmed that there would be a sequel and the end of I didn't play Lies of P, but the end of Lies of P apparently blatantly teases a sequel.

2:01:42Dustin Furman:And it seems like that sequel will be Wonders of O if this trademark discovery, which is a European trademark, is any indication. you don't just file as someone who's filed many trademarks you don't just file this shit for fun so obviously this is either one of the names they're considering and they just want to squat on it or it's the name that they've conclusively come up with what do you make of this? of course Lies of P was based on Pinocchio right? or at least part of it was so this wonders of O game will revolve presumably around Oz, whether it's the wizard of oz or the original books you know l frank baum's books land of oz and all those i have no idea but um there it is yeah out in the open i think this sounds awesome it sounded awesome

2:02:37Colin Moriarty:for long before uh this uh trademark happened and i love this idea of a a game that's like their souls like universe is based on um new like copyright free royalty free novels like old classic novels at this point um and wizard of oz man i don't i don't care much for wizard of oz in terms of like you know the original movie's fine uh it's cool the production all the stories behind the production it's neat and of course now wicked and stuff like that is is big i i couldn't give a single fuck about wicked god bless yeah me neither i don't care but at one point i was curious i think i watched a youtube video about the original books and there's a i think there's a lot of them and the lore and like all the place it goes is fucking insane it's worth looking into the the lore of the Wizard of Oz so uh I seeing that they have all this source material to pull from and even if they didn't like Pinocchio that what they did with Pinocchio is totally crazy without any source material I mean with some source material to pull from but so I think this will be really cool I'm really excited to see what the look of the game is what kind of are you am I gonna be fucking up a munchkin with uh a blade god willing the you know the lollipop guild i'm gonna be fucking these dudes up yeah they're gonna be done for so maybe there's like what is there like the flying monkeys stuff like that good shit so so yeah i'm i'm very intrigued by this and i'm also i i told holly about this this morning and we were discussing like what other games could there be in their universe we determined that the most likely one would be the third game Alice in Wonderland that would be cool I think that would be so cool I mean I don't know maybe like where else is there really is Peter Pan at this point yeah Peter Pan's got to be well

2:04:49Dustin Furman:old enough so and I love Peter Pan Peter Pan and the characters are in public domain but there are exceptions. That's the word I'm looking for.

2:05:00Colin Moriarty:Not copyright free, public domain.

2:05:02Dustin Furman:So like the Disney, Disney's film is still copyrighted for instance, but. Sure, sure. But the characters are not. I was looking. Colin,

2:05:12Colin Moriarty:do you find this more or less intriguing than Pinocchio? Because I don't know where you're at with Oz. Oh, I love Oz.

2:05:17Dustin Furman:And I think, no, I should be clear. I love The Wizard of Oz, the film. There is, I watched a documentary a few years ago about L. Frank Baum and about the Oz books. And there's like a whole series of books. Like, I don't know fucking anything about that shit. I really don't. And it was really interesting to learn more about that. And you're right. That people have long read political allegories into the books. It's not unlike Lord of the Rings in that regard. And I think similar to Tolkien, I think that bound was like, it's not really what it was, but people like the wizard of Oz, like the wicked witch of the East and everything like that.

2:05:54Dustin Furman:I thought Washington DC and these guys are these guys. and this is that and like it's like yeah I don't know if he meant it that way or not I really don't know and I think the documentary I saw to suggest that it wasn't really supposed to be interpreted like that so I don't want to I don't want to be a poser and be like yeah I'm a big fucking L. Frank Baum Oz fan I don't know shit about the books but the movie I love and I've always loved it and I've loved the iconography and the color and the the acting and the performance it's I love it so much. But one of the things I was looking up was the fit, like when we think of Wizard of Oz, we think about the movie.

2:06:32Dustin Furman:And I was wondering if that is actually still protected. And so here's what it says on Wikipedia. It says the 1939 version of the Wizard of Oz is the most well-known adaptation of the Wizard of Oz. Its copyright was renewed in 1967. And so it will remain copyrighted for a 95 year term entering the public domain in 2035. So they are going to have to go to the books and you're going to get a lot of the same shit there but it's going to look different and i think that's kind of what happened with pinocchio too because we kind of know pinocchio through the disney cartoon as well but that's an obviously an old story you know what i mean so it's a little disappointing from that perspective because it would be cool if they could really take advantage of the iconography as we know it but they're not going to be able to do that so it'll be based on which i think is fine it'll give them a lot more flexibility and i'm sure their designers are going to go off on like imagine what the like wicked witch of the the wicked witch like we all know what she looks like we know the actress we know the green paint her riding the fucking bike the hat but they're not gonna be able to do that you know what i mean because they're gonna get their asses sued so i i so i i uh i want you know what i mean i wonder from that I want in some way it's more exciting actually for them to be contained to the books because that's a mystery to most of us I wonder you scratch an itch at the back of my my brain

2:07:58Colin Moriarty:Colin where I think in one of my history classes in eighth grade the we did a thing about Wizard of Oz and some of the the political allegories that people were thinking about at the time i don't remember what they were but i remember that there are wizard of oz silent films from 1910 so i wonder and i see you a link here i wonder if these because some of these like the tin man looks vaguely similar to the movie so i wonder if they there are certain aspects that they don't were they inspired by the silent film that's now part of the public domain

2:08:46Dustin Furman:i don't know yeah i wonder yeah you're right with oh yeah the tin man's like right on and i think that i think i think to be fair if you think about like late 19th century like children's books and like the covers they were probably art of these characters on them that were then interpreted into these characters and so maybe the cowardly line and certainly the Scarecrow and maybe even Dorothy herself. These might be more literal interpretations of things that would be in the public domain. But I thought this was interesting. It says here in a landmark case, WV WB Warner brothers versus Avella, the U S eighth circuit rule that any visual depictions and aspects of characters in public domain developed solely for copyrighted films are under copyright protection.

2:09:29Dustin Furman:So in other words, like they, it is kind of like, Like just because these people that made these silent films didn't go after them doesn't mean that in turn the people that did the 1939 film wouldn't be able when they're not alive. But whoever owns that would not be able to turn around. And especially when you're looking at that trademark expiring, like they have nine years left and they're going to extract it. Because once that thing like it'll be to the point where like you can do whatever you want with that film. Right. Including, I think, like remaking it, like doing all sorts of shit to it.

2:10:02Dustin Furman:So it's actually the 2030s will be pretty interesting. It reminds me a little bit of. Remember, like the Winnie the Pooh horror film, because like Winnie the Pooh entered public domain and now you could finally do shit. But Disney's is still is still trademark. So you have to like take Winnie the Pooh and bastardize it. That's what's going to happen, I think, with. With Wizard, with the Wizard of Oz in the 2030s, 2040s. We'll see. I'm very. I mean, Lies of P is one of those games that I am extremely intrigued by and I think I will play at some point because I just think it looks really cool and it sounds really cool.

2:10:35Dustin Furman:And it's funny because it's a it's a piece of old secret symbols lore about how. We did a fake ending thing where we said that you meet Walt Disney in the ending and people were like people literally like left patron because they thought we were being serious. But but what really what really happens is more indicative of what this sequel suggests.

2:10:55Colin Moriarty:Correct. Yeah. Yeah, which it's one of those things I'm sure. You've had three years. So, yeah, there are some people that are going to be annoyed, but they're going to announce this game potentially soon. I mean, I would assume in the next six to 12 months.

2:11:09Dustin Furman:Yeah, maybe it maybe it not Tokyo Game Show at the Game Awards.

2:11:13Colin Moriarty:Yeah, big places. So it's just reporting, man, at this point. It'd be what it be. And it is what it is.

2:11:23Dustin Furman:All right. A few more pieces of news that we should get through before we move on to what we're playing. saw this on the playstation blog the official playstation blog they write introducing the next line of ps5 audio products playstation pulse and pulse edge wireless headsets they write in part quote when we introduced pulse elite in 2024 our first wireless headset featuring planner magnetic drivers and playstation link connectivity we saw positive feedback from players who enjoyed the greater precision clarity and level of detail brought to their games and entertainment today we're excited to share our first look at our refreshed lineup of ps5 audio products, PlayStation Pulse wireless headset and Pulse Edge wireless headset.

2:11:59Dustin Furman:Superior sound quality remains at the heart of these new headset lineups with custom studio inspired planner magnetic drivers that deliver exceptional sound separation and spatial accuracy. This makes it easy for players to pinpoint directional cues such as footsteps or reloads and competitive first person shooters. Larger planner drivers have been added to PlayStation Pulse and Pulse Edge headsets, creating fuller, deeper bass while keeping the sound clean players have the clean sounds. I'm sorry, players have enjoyed from Pulse Elite. these enjoy these use playstation link as well just like the old ones did so that's low latency audio as well as a flexibility to seamlessly switch between devices that support playstation link so that's your pc and mac your playstation 5 and your portal as well and there's also a little microphone that sticks out for cleaner in-game chat if you prefer to use that as opposed to the annoying speaker on your controller i don't know if they've revealed pricing for these things yet but um it says here at the bottom playstation pulse wireless headsets will launch in select markets starting this holiday season with pulse edge wireless headsets launching in early 2027 and you can obviously learn more on the playstation direct website any and they look nice i don't need them but any interest in uh it seems like the microphone is detachable by the way

2:13:14Colin Moriarty:which i think is kind of cool yeah so you don't have to look like you're a fucking customer service

2:13:18Dustin Furman:rep when you don't want to but yeah yeah what do you think i think the look of these is nice

2:13:24Colin Moriarty:particularly the the pulse edge they kind of just look like a standard set of headphones with a playstation logo in it and the detachable headphone or microphone is nice looking there's like um like a spreadsheet of the breakdown of the different features between the regular and the edge is important to know at least in my brain that the normal version does not have an audio jack yeah it's so annoying i noticed that too it's so you can only use those what it seems like from this is that those are only usable on your playstation maybe a pc with the dongle but who knows so to me would be if you want to use these as headphones you would need to get the edge version of it i will tell you colin i have i think the headphones that you're using like the normal playstation pulse or the playstation wireless headset uh ironically that i got at a yard sale for five dollars and i don't particularly like them very much but i have been thinking that with leon there's been a couple instances where i'm like i need to use headphones and so i have a different pair that i just plug into my controller like maybe it would be nice at some point to have a nicer pair of headphones for the the living room why don't you just tell that little boy to be quiet sometimes well it's not it's not him being loud it's that i don't want to wake him up i see what you're saying oh yeah forget it he's starting to get a little more sensitive to to sound so so yeah maybe maybe well now that uh sony owns audis audis nuts maybe the the quality will be better than that uh original i would hope i need to get new ones

2:15:15Dustin Furman:because uh like you can see like they're just like ripping apart at this point you know yeah and what's shitty is that like i take care of my stuff i don't throw them around i just i hang them like this yeah when i don't use them so it's like they're just they just grind down and i and so i actually saw the um that's what i was disappointed was i because i used a little thing here the audio jack and yeah like you said i noticed in that in that list it's like audio and microphone jack yes for the pulse so i'm like i'd have to get the pulse elite i want to see how much they are i you know what i miss we used to have them at ign and i really liked them was just the old school sony headphones you know that like barely cover the ear they're not like these puffy things and they're like very high quality it's the same thing and they've been making them for like decades but people just continue audio engineers like them and others i don't know i don't really have i could get i i do need to get inner like custom in your ears probably at some point for my drums too um yeah but that's a whole process i don't really feel like i don't even know what do they do they send you like a fucking mold or something and you have to do it

2:16:17Colin Moriarty:and then send it back to them uh i looked into this briefly because i mean as the the video listeners see i use in-ear monitors for everything on my pc now uh just because i don't know i got tired of wearing headphones i'm just tired i they would clamp on my head and feel annoying and so i love in-ears so i was looking into custom ones maybe when these ones die i'll do that and i think there are like certain locations that do that like certain sound companies and stuff that you can go to their brick and mortar and and they'll they'll you know shoot foam in your and stuff like that i wonder now if they're like ones that you can take a picture of your ear and maybe something like that but yeah so yeah shout out the in-ears not a bad way to go it's so funny

2:17:05Dustin Furman:like how you and i must have talked about this like over the last 20 years or so like everyone all the musicians and all the bands now start wearing these but when you look at like old footage from the early 2000s and backwards like no one's wearing shit on stage so it's so it's so funny they're all playing they're getting blasted through monitors and some i um it's funny like 311's rapper he everyone wears them but he when he ever he raps he takes his out because like he and then he puts it back in so like when he's not when he's not singing so i'm like it's funny how you get used to it and i think it was dave grohl or someone said i don't think he plays with them at all i think he still gets monitored um but i realize like i'm i'm fairly I mean, who knows what will happen with my degradation of my hearing in the future, but like, I'm pretty lucky to not have completely fucked hearing considering when I was a kid and I don't know how your dad was about this when he played drums, but like, I never wore ear production as a kid and a teenager playing drums ever.

2:17:59Dustin Furman:And when I played in my bands, I never wore it. It wasn't until I was an adult and started playing again that I was started like wearing headphones. And I'm like, holy shit, man, how did I fucking not die? Like, just, it's just crazy. I don't know. It's just crazy to me. so trying to be a little more mindful of that and that's why i want to maybe get the the monitors because right now what i do and this is not good i mean it's better than listening to the drums raw but i put my earbuds like my my airpods in and then i put noise cancelling headphones over them and then i blast music to play along with it that is not as loud as the drums but it's still extremely loud so really the idea would be to just mix those two things together so the sound could be lower and you would alien you know or isolate the sound away from entering your ear and take better care of yourself because man i don't know how i got away with it i really don't yeah

2:18:48Colin Moriarty:my dad he knows he's like yeah my hearing's definitely not as good as it should be i think he started to protect his hearing kind of at a good pivot point where it's like he might be a lot worse off if he didn't but it is important you people people don't care until it's too late so uh do it protect your ears though you and i've talked about this in the past for sure because you and i both have gone to a million shows is a newer i don't go to many shows anymore but a

2:19:20Dustin Furman:newer phenomenon that i've only noticed in the last 10 years or so is people wearing ear protection at shows i have no problem with that but i i don't know if you do that or your parents do that but i find that a little strange because you're not going to destroy your hearing from one night of rock and roll you know like and in fact i love the ringing head can't sleep shit after a show i love that you know how like you're like you're in bed after a show and it's just right it's like and like you just you feel like you're still there and your head's kind of feels puffed in a way and i'm like that's the experience of going to a live show i love that and i couldn't imagine not wanting to get blasted the fuck out when i when i go to a live concert

2:19:58Colin Moriarty:personally i'll tell you from personal experience colin you will love that until one day it does not go away and that happened to me for when i saw iron maiden in dc and i was at the barrier at the very front i did not wear earbuds and it was months and months like probably a good part of a year that i laid in bed and i heard ringing so you had like tinnitus yes and i actually was just thinking about the other day that i'm like oh my tinnitus because i was like okay this is just my life now uh but i've noticed that i'm like okay it's been like i i don't think about it anymore which is good which maybe my brain has blocked that out but i i had that mentality as well so that's why i i try to warn and not not only you but anybody that's like it it will bother you when it does not go away and you're you're laying in your bed at night and you hear ringing and maybe you don't hear like me am i worse like thankfully uh because i don't want to be like i'm i tonight is so bad it wasn't that bad like during the day i wouldn't notice it but every night i would go to bed hear the rain you have tonight it's like fucking huey lewis or something i don't think he can play anymore um yeah no you're right i mean it's it's i am very rarely

2:21:20Dustin Furman:I've a few times been up to the barricade or like in front of the stacks. So I do think that I'm not getting it as bad probably where I've been like somewhere in the mix of the pit. But yeah, I've always really, I love loud. I mean, Micah makes fun of me all the time because I listen to loud, like loud ass music. And I'm like, you either listen to it or you fucking don't. I'm not here to like do some passive bullshit. It's like, I want this shit rocking. Now, I don't want it, you know, I don't want it at some sort of low decibel. So I even get the warnings from my phone where they're like, you should probably tone it down a little bit.

2:21:55I'm like, all right, I'll do it.

2:21:58Dustin Furman:I'll do it just for you, iPhone 17. But I think I got to get new earbuds because I have had these for a few years now. And I think they just, there's ways to clean them. We were talking about this. But I think at some point they just get kind of cloggy. They look clean, but like they're just not loud. And I'm like, I want them to be louder. Like this is not loud enough. and now people are being like yeah because you're going deaf and i'm like no it's not that like they're definitely getting softer like these are fucking loud as shit these headphones that i use now i have these on like a 1.5 out of 10 as i'm talking to you but like these just don't go loud anymore for me i also think apple's kind of doing some chicanery where they don't want to get sued so they just don't let shit get because i remember like back in the ipod era like that shit was nuts like you could get those things like like people would walk into class like when i was in college and I was one of those people and you would just hear clearly, like clear as day what they were listening to.

2:22:53Dustin Furman:I remember specifically because the Jefferson Starship song, Sarah, was being played by someone in that situation once and I was like, what is that song? And they thought, I was like, I was like, yes, that's right. And I went and downloaded it. It was excellent. Love that song. Anyway, Pulse Elite. Pulse Elite headset. Okay. This one's for me. Gamatsu, our friends over there, write Power Watch Simulator 2 getting Barbie pack due out late this year. It'll cost$8 just like all their packs do. And Dustin, you know what I'm going to say?

2:23:34Colin Moriarty:A job is a job. That's right. Job's a job. That's right. So I'll be all over this. Barbie's world needs to be clean too. Why wouldn't it be? In fact, I'd argue Barbie, beautiful stylish woman modern woman working she's got her you know her corvette she's got ken they're at the beach she's on her cell phone she's working she's doing whatever she's doing we got to take care of her you know she's got to have a clean house to come home to after a long day so i don't know what's going to be i don't know what the different stages it looks like

2:24:12Dustin Furman:maybe there's like a boat stage a little picnic stage obviously the Barbie mansion I assume the mansion like the dream house or whatever they call it the Barbie dream house that was always the toy everyone wanted I remember my sisters had one they were older than me so it was like an older one that was I never even saw them play it was like something in the fucking basement but at some point they liked it that's probably going to be the big you know they always do the big stage we probably don't know at the end of every pack they do like a big stage like a big one and that will probably be the i would assume the last one yeah yeah i like i'm looking at this

2:24:47Colin Moriarty:first of all i like the the barbie fit that the your your power washer gets to wear the customized barbie gun i think this is great uh great brand synergy between these two it's fun and it's a

2:25:02Dustin Furman:funny one yeah it's fun it's good i like it because i i do feel on it like earnestly and honestly they've been very eclectic and i appreciate that it's it and they're getting bigger brands now it was like it was star wars and now it's barbie and it's cool i was disappointed i didn't report on it it's not huge news for for purposes of our show but i think future lab did lay some people off because i think they canceled the game this game they were making like this other game so not all is well over there but i will certainly be buying this when it launches in late 2026 and I wanted to acknowledge it as a job is indeed a job.

2:25:37Dustin Furman:Barbie, I'll take good care of you. Yeah.

2:25:39Colin Moriarty:What is your dream Power Wash 2 DLC? That's a good question. G.I. Joe? G.I. Joe would be cool, but I don't think that would ever happen.

2:25:53Mega Man would be kind of cool, but I don't think that would happen either. Castlevania would be kind of a cool one, but outside of the realm of games.

2:26:02Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I don't even know. That's a great question. I'd have to really think about it. It's a thing to chew on. Yeah. Because I think about like Spongebob and Shrek. It has to have iconic location that is scale, like to the right scale. Shrek's swamp, Spongebob's home, the pineapple. So that is a tough one. Yeah.

2:26:33Dustin Furman:Let me ponder on that. to ask me again in a few weeks maybe i still probably wouldn't have thought one more second about it but you can ask me in a few weeks at that point we'll we'll reassess the situation by the way kind of unrelated i mean completely unrelated but um i discovered today that lego announced a downton abbey set oh really and it's fucking dope i was showing it to micah before and i'm like i think we're gonna get it's 250 bucks i think it might even be more than that's standard pricing for lego my friend it's like 4 000 pieces or something i'm like this is fucking sick like super sick so i'm gonna be all over that but that's neither here nor there all right a few more things to acknowledge and then we can exit the news um i saw this on video games chronicle our friend andy robinson wrote it wrote the story over there and he says level five boss admits using ai for professor layton and yokai watch reveals and they write quote last week the japanese studio held a digital showcase level five of course where it announced new entries in many of its beloved series.

2:27:33Dustin Furman:However, the showcase was quickly met with criticism after social media users gathered evidence that most of the showcase utilized generative AI. One fan wrote, quote, I was so excited when Level 5 announced their big comeback with Professor Layton, Deka Police, Deka Police looks so good, and Yo-Kai Watch, and more, but seeing this such blatant Gen AI being used across their games, yeah, this ain't it, end quote. Another user added, quote, the Level 5 we knew is long gone at this point. What came back seems to rely way too much on Gen AI. Going from making literal artwork like Ni No Kuni to this is so sad, end quote.

2:28:03Dustin Furman:The criticism prompted a response from Level 5 President and CEO Akihara Ohino, who confirmed the company used generative AI to make their game footage more spectacular, but conceded it had gone too far. He says, quote, it was entirely due to the desire to make the presentation more spectacular that we incorporated processing that also served as an experiment using the latest AI. It appears that some people felt uncomfortable about this, so I deeply apologize. However, at our company, the parts that relate to the charm and individuality of the released work, such as scenarios, character designs, and basic settings are all created by human hands, end quote.

2:28:35Dustin Furman:The CEO claimed that Level 5 is using AI to digitize, quote, creative work made by people, such as converting original artwork into polygons, end quote, but insisted that, quote, no simplistic AI generated output data is included in the games that are released, end quote. He continued, quote, on the contrary, thanks to the time created by AI efficiency, creators are now able to dedicate more time to the essence of creation, and I believe the finished products are turning out to a level that will satisfy everyone even more than before. Ultimately, under the plan to shorten the current five-year development plan for major titles to two years, we are in the stage of trial and error and struggling forward.

2:29:11Dustin Furman:That said, it's undeniable that this time, out of a desire to create a clear and flashy presentation, we ended up using AI in a wide variety of ways. We will take this as a lesson and carry it forward to the next one, so please look forward to Level 5's next presentation. End quote. Get fucked. I'm not buying this shit. If you listen, I love Professor Layton. I've loved Professor Layton since the original. I am. I am a lapsed Layton fan. My love of level five goes back to Dark Cloud and Dragon Quest eight and, you know, Cooney and a bunch of things like. What is this? They were like one of the great Japanese studios at one point.

2:29:48And now they want to get their current five year development cycles down to two years. Dude. that's going to be a lot of AI, a whole lot. And by the way, saying things like creative works made by such,

2:30:04Dustin Furman:it's converting original artwork into polygons.

2:30:11The fuck are you talking about? What do you make of this?

2:30:15Colin Moriarty:Yeah, this totally sucks. And I always think it's funny. It's like, oh, well, don't worry. The original design was made by us. It's like, yeah, but you're still taking like the shortcut. You're making the machine do the hard work. I could come up with an amazing character design. Well, let me put this. Let me step back a minute. I can draw some kind of character and then I can tell ChatGPT to make it look amazing. And it will do what it thinks looks amazing. But the hard work wouldn't have been done by me. it's done by the computer so it's very unfortunate especially from a developer that uh known for making years ago so many great games but they've kind of they've squandered man over the before all the say i stuff it's like what happened to them i just saw it too do the deca place delayed to 2027 i know that's gonna kill really bad news for you yeah it's gonna

2:31:17Dustin Furman:kill me because i think i'm gonna have to absorb a zero on my list unless forza does come out this year but right but even if it does because there's like some like um playground is claiming that forza horizon 6 will come to playstation this year and then they reiterated that but then there's been reporting like that it's absolutely not coming out this year so i don't know who to believe but if that happens then i'm going to absorb at least one zero i think and that sucks because i was winning dude

2:31:48Colin Moriarty:oh i think hodge made a mistake okay wait hodge i mean this is only a half mistake part of your uh well yeah send me the link so i can see let me i'll send you the link i'll send you like he has the the score counted for uh forza horizon but he did make a marker that this was the xbox yeah that's yeah that doesn't that doesn't not count unless it comes out on playstation let me see here but okay so tomb raider delayed fable delayed deca police yeah so yeah if if fuck there's really no way around it you might you might take two zeros dude wait a minute yeah we picked 12 right yeah man that sucks because i i'm like killing it with the selections i made but i i got i flew too close to the sun i guess god damn it what a disappointment dude and i just i just picked up a 90 plus with uh stupid trails of here trails of uh whatever trails of bullshit dude they're gonna get so mad uh trail legend of hero trails in the sky second chapter just came out today right and it's supposed to be good right oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i really i listen i'm i kid i i really don't have a problem with the series i just think the fans are a little overzealous the fable and forza ones were supposed to be dickhead choices that i

2:33:20Dustin Furman:thought i would definitely score on and look what happened they blew up in my face flew too close to the sun it happens um and i want to be clear about level five like you're right the level five of old has been dead for a long time i but i don't know because and by the way not everything they released back in the day was good they did release white knight chronicles which was for those that weren't on PlayStation 3 in 2008. It's like, that was a rough game. Did you, did you play that game? That game was fucking, no, I heard it was bad, but they did, you know, God, man, what a, what a legend. It's like dark, dark cloud, dark cloud to dragon quest, eight rogue galaxy, John dark.

2:33:59Are you serious? It's crazy. Pretty good. And then, and then, and then they start getting all into the professor Layton games. Then they get in the Nino Cooney.

2:34:15Dustin Furman:but like it's not been great since then a lot of it is yokai watch which is not not bad at all but it's not my thing they did release that game back in what 2021 megaton musashi which i still haven't played which is supposed to be really good you know i'm talking about um megaton musashi and then i don't know man i i it'll i guess what i'm saying is i was eager about this new latent game especially in DECA police, but I'm, yeah, I am fairly confident that I can stay away from them. If this is the shit they're going to do to cut your, your time. I never saw them say that. I assume he said it like we should know that.

2:34:52Dustin Furman:So I assume he said it at some point, but cutting your, cutting your development time by 60 % in this era means that you are mechanizing enormous amounts of game development. And I don't know that I want to support that. No DECA police, I think, especially looked like a return to form for them for me and that's why i was really excited about it but i'm gonna have to make it i need to know more and i want to have i want to know more about what they're doing it sounds like they don't really give a fuck about what i think though and i i respect that but um it's disappointing because i really they really were one of the great studios for a while at out of japan and very consistent i never played the inazuma 11 game which is the um that's the series about soccer players right i think sounds right and that's like been a long time thing that they've done as well but um soccer but i've never gotten into any of that so i don't know man it's just it's too bad now i have a question colin is that

2:35:56Colin Moriarty:you're late you liked leighton you said you're a leighton leighton fan yeah i'm a lapsed leighton

2:36:01Dustin Furman:fan yeah i like i played the first four or five latent games yeah so the column we're already not a puzzle guy no i not at all but what i first of all i didn't think it was that hard some of them are really hard but you like collected i don't know if you remember it like you collect coins and you can kind of find it oh so there are ways for you to like circumvent not not infinitely but like puzzles that really do stump you um the music the puzzle music in the early latent games is like embedded in my brain because it like just plays this like looping song that's like very catchy but yeah i love the characters and oh you never played leighton that's too bad because it's very visually pleasing in like the way so like you solve the puzzle and you might be right or wrong but like there are these things that appear where it's like it'll be like leighton's face and he'll like and you'll like get closer and then you'll be like or like point to the camera and you get it but then like it'll if you fail it'll it'll fuck it up and you'll have to start the puzzle again Very, very cute, very charming, nonlinear.

2:36:59Dustin Furman:Interesting story. It's actually a long time ago, I dated a girl who didn't play games, but she really loved those games, too. I always thought that was interesting. By the way, for all the PlayStation fanboys out there, one of the things you would appreciate about level five is their complete insistence on not releasing Xbox games. I don't know why. I think they've only released like a couple of games ever on Xbox. They just don't do it. I don't know why that is. It's kind of like Nihon Falcom. They just won't do it. None of the Trails games are on Xbox. I always thought that was kind of strange.

2:37:33Colin Moriarty:I mean, you would imagine with those games, Trails now is starting to be a more breakout success in the West, but they're building them for a Japanese audience. And so that's probably part of the equation that they're, at least in the past, that they're like, we're building these games primarily for Japan, and they simply do not buy. that Xbox is here. A few more I want to talk to you about before we go. Let's do it. Just saw this. I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about it. I'm sure you're familiar with it. War Dogs. These guys announced that the game

2:38:09Dustin Furman:and it's by a studio called Bulkhead, which I guess this might be their first game because I've never heard of them. But this new game, War Dogs, sold two million copies. It's available on PlayStation, I think, in early access or it will be coming to PlayStation and early access. I'm not sure which, but do you know anything about this game? It's the new kind of phenomenon in the shooter space. And what I was reading a lot about it, what I was interested in, and I don't know if you saw this, is like they are positioning themselves overtly as like the anti-Call of Duty. Like they say shit like this isn't Call of Duty.

2:38:39Dustin Furman:Don't buy this if you want Call of Duty. That kind of shit. I'm like, huh, interesting. Seems to be working. Yeah.

2:38:46Colin Moriarty:So War Dogs is not available on PlayStation yet. looks like that will be sometime next year but it is out on pc i'm trying to figure is in early access doesn't matter either way uh my friend brandon keeps asking me if i'm gonna play war dogs at some point and i've seen a little bit of gameplay and it does seem pretty interesting i know this game has been a big hit with streamers it's funny too when i was playing call of duty the beta i was playing with pork poncho and on one occasion when a like we a team just got totally owned in like the the end screen lobby some guys like fuck this man i'm going to play war dogs and pork was like i've heard that at least three times today that it was like call of duty fans pissed me i'm going to play war dogs so uh i've not checked it out yet just because it's like dude i i can't play a multiplayer shooter right now in this environment with so many games coming out but i'd like to at some point and i think it's cool to see a new player in the field with obviously battlefield 6 did really well but from my impression kind of fell off like i don't know if the player numbers i'm sure they're still fine but it's not as big as it was certainly and call of duty with last year's release being um absolutely terrible and i feel like monowar for four right now is up in the air i think the sentiment is overall negative but it's hard to really read the room and what's going to happen when it actually comes out so i think people are hungry for another alternative and war dogs was like right place right time uh to to step in

2:40:36Dustin Furman:on steam battlefield six is number 25 and daily active users still with um almost 40 000 which Which is not great, but the peak is 747 ,000.

2:40:47Colin Moriarty:Well, yeah.

2:40:48Dustin Furman:Yeah.

2:40:51Dustin Furman:Yeah, I should have done this research beforehand, but I found some information. War Dogs, Bulk had to say that War Dogs will come out in 2028 on PlayStation in its final form. And there is a page for it on the PlayStation Store, so you could wishlist it now. But the only way you can play it is on PC currently. Two million copies. All right. Speaking of copies sold, Square Enix has announced that Dragon Quest has surpassed 100 million units sold. I just wanted to acknowledge that because that is an amazing number. And it's a series that I hold near and dear to my heart and have held near and dear to my heart since I was a little kid.

2:41:27Dustin Furman:When we knew it as Dragon Warrior. And Dagon would go to Chinatown and come home with mysterious manga books for me that I still have to this day. We were so intrigued by this series. But this is all 11 mainline games plus all the spinoffs. I believe. So it's not like, actually it says 100 million games sold and there's an asterisk. So let's see if we can find it. Unit sales are the total number of cumulative package shipments and digital sales. Digital sales are the cumulative unit numbers in or after April 2015 and include full game downloads of package games and download only games for console and PC.

2:42:01Dustin Furman:So yeah, that's, I don't even think you needed to clarify that, to be honest.

2:42:05Colin Moriarty:Right.

2:42:05Dustin Furman:But yeah,

2:42:06Colin Moriarty:exciting. Congratulations. This is great. I'm a, I'm a fresh Dragon Quest fan starting with seven reimagined and then when uh i was on paternity leave playing dragon quest 11 absolutely loved it and so dragon quest 11 is awesome it really is an awesome game

2:42:24Dustin Furman:dragon quest 11 it won't end but it's an awesome game it doesn't end but it's an awesome game no it absolutely will it just to be just reiterated it will never end when you play it so buckle in

2:42:35Colin Moriarty:no no i managed to knock that out in like two weeks though that's crazy it took me i platinumed but I think it was 125 hours well I don't know if I told I mentioned this on a show before so I'm not exposing anything new I don't know if I told you yeah hit me I cheated a little bit I cheated a little bit because I played on PC I downloaded a mod that gave me a little uh it wasn't was it 1.5 times experience or two times experience so uh even with the mod that gave me more experience I still had to grind uh so there's a lot of grinding in that game be warned yeah it's a I mean it's Dragon Quest yeah um I'm disappointed I'm happy you're getting Kingdom Hearts next year but I thought we would get Dragon Quest first and I I'm I it's just it's been it's been almost

2:43:31Dustin Furman:fucking 10 years you know it's been literally eight years since Dragon Quest 11 came out the fuck are we doing it's the thing about mike against me when i say this but i'm like they're like the the annoying thing about this is like they were like reinventing the wheel like it's a final fantasy game like it's fucking dragon quest you really should have already had two of them out already and probably have a third one in development we should be on 14 it's like should

2:43:55Colin Moriarty:be the next one right don't reinvent the wheel stay with tradition tradition is what makes dragon quest buzz since dragon quest 11 has there been 11 dragon quest spinoff games that have come out or remakes like dragon quest builders one and two i think builders came out after 11 right no no builders one came out before 11 oh okay but still even then there's builders two I think it goes Builder

2:44:25Dustin Furman:I think it goes Heroes 1 Builders 1 11 Heroes 2 Builders 2 Right And then all And then Dragon Quest 1 and 2 I mean not in order But Dragon Quest 1 and 2 Dragon Quest 3 Dragon Quest 7 And I was looking here At the game I wanted to find it Because I Feel fairly confident That they just Randomly released A dragon Like another Dragon Quest game I thought Like out of nowhere not Dragon Quest Monsters which they also released recently

2:44:59Treasure? Oh the dungeon game

2:45:01Dustin Furman:yeah, Turnoko's Dungeon, like secret dungeon or whatever the fuck that game's called, let me see if I can find it

2:45:07Colin Moriarty:that's funny, that's not the game I'm thinking of so there's even more, I'm thinking of the game that's about Eric and his sister yeah yeah

2:45:20what is that?

2:45:21Colin Moriarty:that one is called Dragon Quest that's Dragon Quest okay I was gonna say there's also like infinity trash oh yeah infinity but the one I'm thinking of is just like

2:45:33Dustin Furman:they literally just released this out of nowhere which is hysterical it's Dragon Quest Dragon Quest Heroes Torneco Torneco's Mystery Dungeon which was a Game Boy Color game I think so they're like really getting deep into the nitty gritty as it were with some of this shit which is great i don't mind that at all but um seeing dragon quest monsters come out and liberated from game boy i thought was kind of weird too but i i i haven't i don't want to say an infinite appetite for dragon quest because that's not true but um i really really love dragon quest i i won the game that i tried twice and i did like but it's just it's too repetitive is i i did like dragon quest heroes because it definitely speaks to the fan in me it's very fan servicey in terms of really sexualizing the slimes and everything all the game but you know there's just a lot all the enemies you recognize all the characters the spells and everything it's really cool and it's a cute game but it's just these these musos are just so fucking boring it's like oh my god the fuck i want to like it because i i kind of understand why it could be fun but it reminds me of when i would play dynasty warriors when i was younger i'm like i don't know about this like what are we doing like you feel like there should be more to it and you're like, this is it.

2:46:43There's no literally no challenge at all to the game whatsoever. All right, finally, this one's for me and you and we're the only ones here.

2:46:57Dustin Furman:Terranigma has a launch date January 14, 2027. I'll be all over this. Clear over games is publishing. It'll be on PlayStation 5. There is no PS4 version, which I'm a little surprised about, but there it is. Of course, Terranigma is a late quintet developed Enix game from the SNES era that was localized for Western release and did come out in Europe, but never came out in the United States. So unless you played it on emulator, which a lot of people did, you've never experienced it before. And this is really kind of like one of the major missing pieces of the SNES Western catalog. So exciting news for us role-playing game fans.

2:47:35Dustin Furman:And that's all we have, though, for the news this week. All right, Dustin, it's time to get into what we're playing. I'll go first. I don't have very much to say because I'm still playing the blood of Dawn Walker. I've I played every night. I love it. I think it's awesome. I think I've gone on and on about it. I don't want to say too much more about it right in this setting because I don't want to spoil too much about it. But I'm at the point in the game where I've beaten it a couple of times. There are like five or six different endings to get. They're all fairly predictable. You know how to do them if you can do them in time.

2:48:05Dustin Furman:So I did what I consider to be like the bad ending and then I did like one of the normal endings um tonight I'm going to try to do another one of my the normal endings and it's all leading up to me wanting to do the ending that I want to do for like my own canon for my own character but um we'll be recording the spoiler cast and review discussion tomorrow so um we'll get into that in a much deeper and more spoiler spoiler we way at that time but highly recommend it I think it's so good and it's really between it and pragmata probably for my game of the year i don't really know i think i probably would go towards pragmata still but um they're very different so yeah really i really a shout out to them like i'm i'm i'm impressed by the game it's not perfect and i'm interested in what they're going to do with it um i keep saying this one thing i'll save for the spoiler cast about like something that i think would be funny for them to do in the second game but mikey like hates the idea so it'll be fun to to get into into what that would be but um i am particularly impressed by the organization of the game like it is a very complex game thematically and i think by doing by making certain fundamental decisions by like not tracking your karma for instance or like really having like decision tracking in a major overarching way but allowing you instead to just kind of interact with situations as you would in different ways and then having those specific outcomes it's quite the web it weaves like i'm surprised like i'm like damn this is cool and yeah i just think that rebel wolves just did such a such an awesome job the whoobs wrote in and said senior colin i shed a tear when i heard you were safe scumming in dawn walker is there a reason you don't like dealing with unexpected outcomes and consequences in this type of game seems like it would be part of the fun when sharing what happened with someone else but understand that it's not for you no way man i'm i'm i'm uh in a game that tracks your karma so like in mass effect or fallout um what is new vegas kind of throws this on its head a little bit but generally speaking like what you you know what you're doing there's there's almost no reason to save scum because there's no reason to play neutrally or to bounce back and forth between like you're hurting yourself when you do that especially in a game like mass effect it's like oh i'm gonna make a renegade choice here i'll make a paragon choice here it's like that's the worst idea like you either you have to choose one or the other and it's obvious it's like you deal with the new i always think of the news person that you deal with like on the citadel or whatever one of the games where you like you either like give them an interview you punch them in the face it's like well i i don't i know what i'm doing and so safe scumming is not really needed um new vegas i think is a little more gray and and and can get a little more complicated i understand people wanting to play these games and then kind of deal with the consequences of it of what they of what they do and i can totally see the fun in that um i don't dedicate 30 40 50 hours to a game to make some random choice that i didn't realize was going to do something and they make well it's like i don't think so there's no no universe yeah so um it's fun if i had infinite time and i was going to play the game seven times be like well i'll just deal with it i'll figure it out the next time but not in a game not in a game where every choice you make is not calculated in such a way that it's obvious what you should be doing and so you really do deal with every choice as it comes and sometimes it's like I don't want that to happen or like I didn't intend for that to happen or whatever and no I have no problem going back to an older save for that but I would say it probably only happened half a dozen times in the game and I will say a couple of those times I was intentionally doing it where I'm like I'm just curious I know I'm not going to do this but I want to see it and so yeah I can see it both ways but I'm not there's no universe where that would be fun for me to you know what I mean like I understand save scumming being a little bit annoying to some people but I would do it in mass effect and shit like that too if I felt like it was necessary it's just not

2:52:06Colin Moriarty:when I played Baldur's Gate 3 I did some save scumming cause it's like you said like a disastrous outcome um i think save scummy like there's uh it's not all created equal like some people it's like oh you tried to unlock a chest you rolled poorly yeah i've never done that you got to deal with the consequences yeah i've never done that i've never done that before and even sometimes like maybe a slight like a slightly bad outcome happens like okay well this will be kind of interesting to deal with uh so there's there's there's levels to it there's a spectrum

2:52:43Dustin Furman:Yeah, we know all about spectrums here on Sacred Symbols.

2:52:46Colin Moriarty:Certainly, certainly.

2:52:49Dustin Furman:I'm sorry. Yeah, so you haven't played this game yet, but are you going to check it out or is it not really up your alley? I don't really know. You don't really play very many games like this, but I guess you do that some of the bigger ones like an Elder Scrolls game or a Witcher game or something.

2:53:03Colin Moriarty:So the open-endedness is the thing that is most appealing to me about it. I want to play it. I just know there's too many things that are taking higher priority right now. This might be a last and holiday break game for me, being able to dive in then when it'll be a little bit more calmed down and I can catch up on all the other stuff. But so I will play this for the end of the year, at least some of it. I want to try it out. So at some point, but I'm I'm intrigued by more and more what I hear about it at the

2:53:37Dustin Furman:foundation of the story and this isn't a spoiler but I don't know how much I didn't pay much attention to the game in pre-release so I don't know how much they talked about it but like the whole game is about like vampires that take over this like isolated Carpathian Valley by curing them of the plague well do you know like yeah I know about that and like and that like they're basically like a socialist sort of like anti establishment group that's like trying like they get rid of taxes and like all these different tithes it's really super fucking interesting and like how people like are collaborating with them and it's a neat neat idea it's a really really cool idea i'm like really smitten with it so shout out to that but you're playing another game that i'm really interested in i bought but i have not gotten to yet and i don't really know when i will to be honest with you by by the end of before grand theft auto i'll definitely have gotten through it um and maybe sooner onimusha way of the sword so the fifth core onimusha game um so what do you have to say

2:54:40Colin Moriarty:about this yeah i think this might be the third week that i've been playing it on sacred symbols and i still have been uh consistently this pat like i was gone for the last day and a half and so i feel like i haven't had a ton of time into it and also part of last week was finishing up wolverine which i can talk about briefly but wolver wolverine uh i really like this game a lot i love sword combat parry type games you know uh this game does have a lot of seki road type feeling to it but i think i said last week that it gets a much slower version of that and i think the thing i'm enjoying most about the game is the boss fights are pretty sick uh they are much harder than the the regular part of the game and there it has that like feeling of okay i really have to lock in i have to learn the the moves that the boss are doing i need to learn for example something that i feel kind of stupid about as a player of the game is that you can parry an attack which is like hitting l1 at the right time when they attack to kind of like deflect it uh but there's another way of i think it's the difference what they call it parrying is just an l1 tap but there's also a deflect which is holding l1 so you're blocking and then tapping the x button and that does way more stagger to their stagger bar and so i was like trying to fight this boss i'm like man his stagger bar is like taking forever and then i was like oh there's this whole mechanic that i'm not even engaging with just because i've been doing the standard parry so i'm still really enjoying it i really like the the art direction is crazy there's some weird fucked up creatures in this game uh i'm still not really hot on the open world sections of the game i've kind of been ignoring it but at the same time there's points where i'm like man i'm i'm missing these materials for this upgrade and so i don't want to get behind on my character progression so i'll do a couple things here and there i'm curious colin what you'll think when you eventually play this game just because it is an onimusha game because it's like you have the gauntlet you're collecting the souls sucking in and stuff and the setting like i i only played the first the first onimusha game so i'm i'm not like an expert on the series but i'm in some ways i'm like it's it's kind of not an onimusha game yeah it sounds more like onimusha 2 but like much

2:57:30Dustin Furman:grander than than that and yeah we'll see i think i don't know i don't know like what makes an onimusha game at this point like i guess we'll find out so yeah um i understand that they had to modernize it a little bit and and put some meat on the bones i know that a four or five six hour game simply wouldn't be acceptable which is what onimusha one and two are so um only one you can beat in an hour and it's like would be fairly trivial to beat it in like an hour an hour and 15 minutes so right um by the way i knowing your love of the kind of the the the third person sword based melee combat the blocking and stuff like that like dawn walker is very much based on that in a in a major way um yeah more than any other third person action rpg i've probably ever played um so and i mean like open world game not necessarily you know uh they do this thing called like omni blocking like where and omni attacking and stuff where it's like that's what i'm unsure

2:58:25Colin Moriarty:of yeah it's cool i like it personally but because i know that what i played of kingdom come has that and i was never sold on that that style of fighting so i'm not saying i don't like it i just don't know yet i was like when i saw that in the previews i was like it took me a minute to understand it

2:58:43Dustin Furman:like you know and and get it like i was uh i was not good at the game i died a lot in early on but you get you get really good at it i was saying to micah it's actually a it's a little it's not quite to this degree, but it's a little bit like Expedition 33 in that if you're really good at it, you could probably low level run this game easy because it literally is all about just following the onscreen prompts. Like no one ever attacks you without them telling you they're going to attack you ever. And they'll tell you exactly how they're going to attack you. You know, if they attack you with the yellow arrow up, it means you block pressing up.

2:59:14Dustin Furman:If it means they're attacking with the yellow arrow down, attack, block them, pressing down. If a skull is on there, press circle and get out of the way there's nothing that happens that's not telegraphed and so if you're if you are steady with the button presses you can actually probably it'll be interesting to see how people manipulate the shit out of this game because and if they haven't done so already right because I will say the time constraint is not as nearly as bad as I thought I could I could have beaten the game after 15 days probably if even less I just was low level and I didn't want

2:59:42Colin Moriarty:to do anything yet so yeah the other I didn't write this here but I guess to conclude last week I said I was at the very end of Wolverine I did since beat it just like the day after we recorded I don't want to talk about it too much I think people are at least I'm getting sick of the

2:59:59Dustin Furman:Wolverine discourse we'll get into Wolverine properly on a spoiler cast review discussion

3:00:04Colin Moriarty:for sure and we can actually talk about the game itself but my my point I think overall remains the same even with the ending that it is it is the literal definition of a mediocre game particularly from Insomniac. It's not a bad game. I've played bad games. It's not a bad game, but it's not great either. So we talked about it last week, but I'm curious how the audience is going to find it. I know a lot of people when it came out on Tuesday were very hot on it, and I'm like, yep, I was also hot on it the first day I played it. It'll be interesting to see, and I think there are people that will enjoy the game throughout the entirety of it.

3:00:51Colin Moriarty:And I think that's great. But I think that as people have more time with it, many of them will come around and be like, okay, I get what they were saying.

3:01:02Dustin Furman:It does appear, I mean, it's early. Early numbers are pretty good, though, once the game is out. There is some data suggesting that the game is doing extremely well.

3:01:11Colin Moriarty:I believe it.

3:01:14Dustin Furman:you can kind of garner the velocity of sales based on the scores, the number of scores it's getting. And people were comparing like it already had like four or five times more scores than Saros did, which means it's already sold several million copies probably. And people that are playing it like it. It's getting very high scores from those people as well. I am more and more intrigued the more time goes on about like what's going on with this game. because I trust you. I trust Chris. There's a lot of people I like to hear about video games, but I know games too and I have an intuitive understanding of them and it's like one of those things I'm like, I got to just play it to understand it for myself.

3:01:51Dustin Furman:And I was always going to, you know, but like the more people, the more it becomes part of the zeitgeist of talking about it, the more I'm curious what I think about, what I really think about it and I just don't know. I really don't. I have a good idea of what it is and what I think I'm going to think of it, but yeah, But yeah, this weekend, I think, you know, once I'm, I'm not going to platinum Dawn Walker. I didn't play it on the hardest difficulty level. I'm not going to do that to myself. And there are other, I don't care about getting all the trophies in it. So. Probably spend tonight and tomorrow night kind of cleaning up the endings and then we'll do the spoiler cast tomorrow and then I'll probably move beyond it until or if they release an expansion for it.

3:02:31Dustin Furman:I already see how they could expand it. Part of me really, by the way, with Dawn Walker wants them to just move on. I think that would be a lot smarter. One of the cool things is that Rebel Wolves made this game very quickly. They made it in like four years. I think they could probably get it down to three if they get going. although I wonder the complexities of doing another game of writing something bigger and better well and they're probably gonna get more money they could clean things up a little bit visually I think especially so we'll see all right let's get into six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas from the audience Dustin before we go of course we end every episode of our show with six inquiries from the audience you submit your inquiries via the threads in the news feed on patreon.com slash laststandmedia for sacred symbols.

3:03:17Dustin Furman:That thread goes live on Wednesdays and is deleted Thursdays, so you have about 24 hours. AL022 wrote in and said, Hi, CDC. Additional reporting by Jason Schreier last week that PlayStation's main concern with Phyzzin seemed to be paying that much for a non-permanent, seemed to be that paying that much for a non-permanent console exclusive. It also seems that PlayStation had tried for years to outright purchase Kojima's new studio. Finally reported was that At Kojima, we'll lose access to both Columbia Studios and Decima. How does this shed light on last week's conversation? It doesn't seem that they're unwilling to pay this much, but rather not only let the game come out on PC or Xbox.

3:03:53Dustin Furman:In addition, losing both Decima and Columbia access in combination with setting the project, it must be setting the project back moderately. I'm sorry, I botched that last sentence. I promised we would get back to this topic earlier in the show, and indeed we have. Where are you, where's your mind at now Now that we're a week out on the fizzin situation, where do you settle on this? What do you think? I mean, there's not much else to say. It kind of just is what it is at this point. We can obviously deconstruct the decision making. I stand by what I said last week, which is that I don't think Sony anticipated that Xbox would be the one that came and picked it up if anyone did.

3:04:26Dustin Furman:And I think that that kind of stunned them. That's my assumption. But I also don't really blame them for letting it go based on some of the subsequent reporting and things that I think just made sense if you just understood games before that, including the lack of sales of Death Stranding 2. and his refusal for exclusivity. He wants to own the IP and everything. So I think there's a lot to consider, but I still think that they made a mistake. What do you think?

3:04:48Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I, my opening statements last week were PlayStation doesn't care about you. And even with this news, the, the, the, the fuller picture from Jason Schreier, I think that's still true. I think that's what we've been talking about for quite a long time on this show. And I guess I, you know, the aspect of the missed deadlines the the bigger budget um i'm not surprised by that at all and i i really hate to repeat myself but i feel like this is like a a spreadsheet thing where it's like well oh they're at he needs more money and we're it's not a guaranteed win it's like i I get that it's just that um what it does for your core fan base what it does for your brand is is bigger than the money and I think Chris I think it was Chris last week I think the one of the most important points is like this is what what this is what the investment was for it was for the death stranding was a weird fucking game both of them death stranding one and two that uh are not like they're not the uh clear marketable mass market products their game about a man that delivers packages with a with a baby on his chest like it's not exactly uh appealing to the mass market but you let him do that so you can get this game and now that you're here and now now you're backing out it's like no that it's it's stupid again i think you're right colin that i get it i get that they're looking at it like well we don't even really own this we're taking on the risk uh it's gonna go to other platforms you know but i just think that it's it's a a short-sighted decision now what's going to be interesting is that with the loss of decima and the columbia pictures stuff i know that the xbox press uh the press report about it mentioned that there would be movies and tv stuff related to it but surely it's scaled back to some degree and i i worried that as a possibility i'm not saying this for sure that this new version this the new direction of the game is scaled back and that's disappointing i wonder how far along they really were with this project and maybe that gives a little more credence to sony where uh it sounds like i think i saw on twitter that there was a bunch of uh well not a bunch there was some new news about this game today from tokyo game show So apparently one of the things they put out references something that points like it's probably going to be made in Unreal now, which is probably the easiest pivot for them to do.

3:07:57Colin Moriarty:They announced the lead is Bill Skarsgård, which is cool. But that's really about the extent of the new information, along with some other the people that are going to be in the game. so i i wonder uh what what this like in the two realities the the playstation version and now the xbox version uh and i don't mean like the literal version of the games i mean like the support the playstation produced version uh that had that dealt with the expanding budgets that dealt with the missed deadlines versus Xbox, which there's also a reality too where Xbox sees this as like, okay, we're in the mode where we need to win back people.

3:08:44Colin Moriarty:And this is the type of thing that even if people don't care about Kojima, it sends a signal. I think that's kind of the biggest difference between PlayStation and Xbox right now is that my feeling is that the PlayStation, the vibe I get from PlayStation is, fuck you, where are you going to go? and the the the vibe i get from xbox whether or not it's hollow is one thing is like come on like we we we want you back we're gonna do these things that that that may entice you uh whether that pays off probably not uh is is remains to be seen but the attitude certainly from Xbox is more appealing than PlayStation right now.

3:09:30Colin Moriarty:So it's, it's annoying. So I've rambled a lot. I don't really know where I'm going with this at this point, other than I don't think that Jason's, Jason's repair, Jason Shriver's report certainly adds more context and detail, but it doesn't really change my feeling about the situation.

3:09:48Dustin Furman:Yeah, I, I'm generally with you where, and again, again, it gets back into what I was was saying earlier and what we said last week where it's like I'm trying to differentiate from what I think Sony is doing from what I think I would do and like my interpretation of these events because I do understand it from Sony's logical perspective and I did even when we talked about it the first time I just think that it is unquantifiable what you are letting go and I I just reiterate because I just think it's such an important point that I just don't think Sony played it out like they thought that it was going to go to another console manufacturer.

3:10:25Dustin Furman:So I think that they were just like, well, whatever, you know, like if he finds an outlet for it, if Capcom comes in and wants to publish it for him, or if he finds independent investors or a new publisher or whatever, he self publishes it. It's like, it'll come to PlayStation. And I think from their logical, well, let's, let's back up. If what is reported is true and Kojima's stance is true. so Sony wanted to buy Kojima Productions. I wouldn't be surprised about that at all. They want the IP. That would be the way that they've done business since the 90s. Kojima wants the game to be multi-platform.

3:11:05That last part being important. If you take that as true,

3:11:10Dustin Furman:then why does it like, so this is where my logic ultimately leads me from a business perspective. If that logic's all true and you take that all for granted, then really sony's like it's what i said earlier in the show so the game still comes to our platform and we don't have to fund it what do we what do we care and i think some people are talking about this being like well it'd be exclusive and all these things i'm like so it's going to be exclusive on xbox and pc but playstation wasn't going to get it exclusive is that is that the art that's the argument that they blew up the entire project and moved publishers and lost their engine and lost their ability to film shit for free and use all these mocap studios and they did all that because they wanted to have an xbox exclusive yeah okay i mean that so like when you look at it through that that logic it's like it's coming to playstation like and therefore you look at it and you're like well and if it's not then he didn't mean what he said i mean this is this is why i think the od project was so interesting because that wasn't his primary project and i think that's why he was comfortable being like what it's a whatever kind of thing.

3:12:14Dustin Furman:And by the way, that's taken years and still hasn't come to fruition. I that's and I know people roll their eyes when I say this, but it's like you really have to ask yourself the question of what Xbox even looks like by the time this game is anywhere remotely ready to come out. So like, I just think that their whole stance of we're not even going to say where games are coming. It's the same thing with Starcraft and all these other games that were announced recently out of Blizzard, where it's like, who the fuck knows? We'll just build them on PC and we'll worry about specking them the console a year before they come out or whatever, when we're ready to announce it and I think they're probably in that stance too with Fizzing because you can imagine I just the other thing that I think is important and I do think this is incredibly relevant is that I think Kojima understands where his audience is and he's not going to be like yeah we're going to go this other place we're going to do this other thing and by the way it's never those other we're just cutting all of them off and we hope some of them come over it's like they've been your bread and butter since Metal Gear Solid 1 dude we know that PlayStation is driven this entire thing And so I just think if you remove the emotionality from it, there is a sense of logic to it.

3:13:15But I still just think it's what you said and it's what I articulated last week.

3:13:22Dustin Furman:You earned this game. It's not to say because you said like Death Stranding is a weird fucking game and it is. Metal Gear is fucking weird too. It's just that it's much more palatable. And so and it's what he's known for. do i think people are catastrophizing this a little bit probably but it's certainly an interesting story and it has an interesting subtext to it and it's an undeniable win for xbox right now i don't know what it looks like as they have to fund this thing to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and listen i'm just basing this on history and people's kind of general opinions of their games.

3:14:03Dustin Furman:It's like Xbox is an average publisher of games. They're not this extraordinary font of talent. They're not going to do anything to help Kojima. Kojima is going to have to help them probably get over the finish line. And the other thing is they're way out of their wheelhouse with cross media and transmedia stuff. Way out of it. Sony has an enormous amount. Sony has more experience in movies and TV than it does in games. So this was a place where it makes a lot of sense for them to be and that's i think that to me is the thing where i think sony really dropped the ball what would have been interesting by the way and i was thinking about this was what if sony and this isn't going to happen now but like when sony was kind of like wanting out and they needed like maybe another partner they're like what if xbox worries about funding and publishing the game and we do the transmedia shit and everyone and there's a playstation and xbox logo on and everyone gets it and we just kind of split the difference we mitigate risk because the one thing that i'm fairly confident about with fizzin and i could be completely talking out of my ass here but i just it's not going to be a mega smash hit i just and i don't mean that critically i mean commercially because kojima's never released anything that's you know tens of millions of copies and it's going to be this phenomenon like sony studios sony's playstation studios like regularly spits out games that sell way more than metal gear so there's that too but i think it was a mistake it was a mistake when they probably thought that some other third party would come in it was definitely a mistake now just from the optical

3:15:37Colin Moriarty:game but yeah i think that uh i think you're right about the catastrophizing i think that it's what we've talked about that if this is the playstation the hardcore playstation fans feel like they have been punched over and over again or you know a death by a million cuts where it's like you did all this shit over this last generation this is this is where we're at now and now you do this you know so it's like maybe maybe it feels like the reactions inflated but it's indicative of the entire situation you're right you're absolutely right and i think it it also goes to show it's like well

3:16:26again we we believe you earned fizzin by by funding death stranding and death stranding 2

3:16:33Dustin Furman:but kojima didn't have the zeitgeist kojima not even kojima didn't have the energy to sell a ton of copies of death stranding or death stranding 2 on playstation either in other words like people didn't show out you might recall because we talked about this like people didn't show out for Death Stranding Death Stranding 1 hit 5 million copies more than a year after it came out after it came to PC when it launched into a PS4 ecosystem of more than 100 million units Death Stranding 2 hasn't even hit 2 million units yet and by the way it launched day and date didn't or not day and date it came to PC later but it's on PC right so these like I think there definitely is a disconnect somewhere between like the zeitgeist around things in our ecosystem and then how they actually do.

3:17:18Dustin Furman:And the way Kojima is discussed, do you think Kojima games sell 25 million copies each? But they don't. And I say that with a level of sadness, especially with Death Stranding. We've talked about it last week. I'm a fucking huge fan of Death Stranding. I think Death Stranding is dope. Huge fan. Loved both of them.

3:17:42But they're not mass market games, and Kojima might not be able to really make a mass market game

3:17:47Dustin Furman:based on the market. In other words, what the market's looking for. It's especially funny with Death Stranding 2 because I don't know if they communicated well enough, but Death Stranding 2 has a lot of Metal Gear in it. And it's a much more action-y, kinetic game, but it didn't really matter. There's a lot of choice out there, And I will say the comp, the choice and time compounds are only going to get worse. So by the time this game comes out, who even fucking knows, dude. So yeah, it sucks. It's sad, but remember Sony published death stranding one and Kojima at a different time, right? They made that deal right after he left Konami in the mid 2000 teens.

3:18:29And that game came to Xbox. You know what I mean?

3:18:34Dustin Furman:he has incredible power over publishing rights and all these other things and so i just look at this and i'm like it's just not not coming to playstation and so if if when you reduce it to its bare essence it really does come down to caring about the logo of the company that funded it and to me I just can't get too upset about it it sucks because of the optical game it doesn't suck because Sony doesn't have to pay for it because it's coming you know what I mean so like what are we really getting upset about at that point as well I think is an interesting question to ask and it's something it's a challenging question to posit to yourself to counter that

3:19:20Colin Moriarty:though don't you think that you mentioned yourself that you feel like Xbox knock is is not necessarily steward that's going to be able to help him like the playstation was so i mean that's true you could be upset because you could feel that fizzin is not going to come out at the same quality uh because sony isn't there to help or doesn't have the same kojima won't have access to the same level of resources at xbox than he would so yeah he i mean he won't i mean and yeah that that

3:19:52Dustin Furman:does suck like as a steward of the game and the quality and product but it's like yeah that's that's his problem i guess like i it is i would i would love to know who else talked to him if anyone else and like what why you got involved with xbox other than they were are they you if you found them at a very unique time where they really want to hurt playstation and so it's like oh you want some ridiculous amount of money sure you know um whatever it might not end up making sense at the end again for as trepidatious as i am about microsoft's game quality stuff i just think they're way out to lunch with the transmedia stuff and i would be really that that to me i'm like i i would if i were him i'd be like man i don't know like microsoft has infinite amount of money it doesn't really matter right like it hasn't mattered at all actually you have to execute and you have to find partners that are willing to work with you and i think that that's one of the things that they've been softening on and getting better at that I think Sony should take note of because the one thing that I think is for sure is Sony doesn't have the draw that it once did with big partners that feel like the grass can be greener elsewhere and we talked about this with Stellar Blade in a different time that would obviously be a studio PlayStation would buy and that would obviously be a PlayStation IP but it's same thing with Helldivers Helldivers isn't PlayStation IP, but Arrowhead.

3:21:21I don't think these companies

3:21:23Dustin Furman:really necessarily see them as a good place to be anymore. And if people are, if they're right that the grass is greener, Sony should be more worried about that than losing Fizzin. Because it's a more systemic thing that will affect many more games. Right. But I digress. The Eldritch Robot Master wrote in and said, hey, fellas, do you believe that focus testing is ruining gaming, in particular Sony first party? We have all experienced the dumbing down of puzzles and such with characters looking at you, Aloy, blurting out answers as soon as you glance in the general direction of a puzzle. Now we have a great deal of handholding in Wolverine with scent trails, auto-completed QTEs, and driving sections.

3:21:57Dustin Furman:What can Sony do to remedy this? Should only hardcore gamers be invited to focus testing? Should we be celebrating games being inclusive to toddlers? I'll hang up and listen. I do think Sony might have gotten a little lost in the sauce over the last generation, let's say, because they were, and I think it was really powerful for them, and I think it was important for them, and it got them a lot of good press and attention was like they were definitely at the very tip of the spear of accessibility and it's not about hardware accessibility per se because actually microsoft beat them to the punch there it's about what the games can do and what like the i think it really began with like uncharted and the last of us and tsushima where it's like here's a granular almost insane level of customization to make the game playable for you and a lot of it had to do with not your inability to play games because you suck at them, but your inability to play games because you can't.

3:22:49Dustin Furman:You can't see something. You can't move fast enough. They allow you to shut things off and put things on the screen. And I really think that that's good. And I don't mind it. What I do mind is when that infests the standard that the game is presented as. And I think I haven't played Wolverine, but from what I understand about it, it seems like the messaging has been mixed and that things that maybe shouldn't be on by default are on and that maybe the game assumes things about the base player that it shouldn't. So it's not that these things shouldn't be in the game, the fart clouds and the yellow paint, all that.

3:23:27Dustin Furman:I don't give a fuck. It's just like make it modular. Why not? And I think that that's the answer to the question. Also noting that you could have your Elden rings in your games where it's like, no, this is it. This is what we're going to do. We talked about Liza P earlier, right? Liza P was fairly controversial because they released a normal mode that made the game easier. And a lot of people were upset about that, but it's like, yeah, I mean, they want to be a mass market game. Just don't use it. But I also, I also think, I also think studios should have the right to be like, no, this is the way it is.

3:24:02Dustin Furman:It's not for you. And we're sorry, but we're not doing that. And I also think it's okay for studios to say like, we want as many people as possible to play this game. And that's where Sony is. And I don't, so I think it's fine. I think it's how they present it. What do you think?

3:24:15Colin Moriarty:this one's tough because i think wolverine is has a little bit of a different situation i think when i think about a game like horizon forbidden west we talk we make fun of aloy who she can't shut the fuck up about what you should do um i think that there's issues like that that i think can be are an aspect of like tuning right where uh maybe the standard difficulty you tone that back how much it points players in certain directions things like that waypoints wolverine's a little bit different because the the fart cloud controversy is wolverine's one of his abilities is that he can track sense and i think that this ability would have made more sense in a game that has some even semi-open worlds or like open hub areas but wolverine overall is a very linear game so it it's like it a lot of the messaging around the far trails got totally crazy and as you like some people were saying that it's on all the time other people are saying it's not on all the time there are certain points where wolverine is tracking something but the problem is the mechanic just doesn't simply is not interesting because even without it you know what direction generally to go in because for the most part it's a point a to point b game um but there's other parts too where i i mentioned last week where uh logan's like oh i need to get up high so i can get across here maybe that crane over there i'm like yeah no shit i know to go to the crane and also there's uh there's these sections where uh you you you go into like this door to to like deal with logan's past and you do like a challenge room where it's like fight all these enemies some of them are go through this obstacle course and do it as quick as possible and every single thing is marked every single marker to jump on is painted white even like a direct path that has like a pole swing has a little white flag on it it's like we get it there's literally nowhere else for me to go but you made sure to mark it to the point where it feels patronizing uh so that's just like a design thing where it's like i get it that i've been i've felt like i don't want to say defending yellow paint because that was like a big thing because there's always like these ironic situations where people like i don't know where to go and it's like well that's what the yellow paint is for there's clearly a balance to it where it's like yeah i'm okay with pointing players in the right direction i think that's an important part of game design uh because it's needed sometimes but wolverine takes it way too far in the other direction where it's just constantly telling you where to go and there's there's something wrong at the core of that game that i think was due to the fact that it was scaled back at some point and so a lot of these uh mechanics built around pointing players in the right directions made a lot more sense in a bigger game so is play testing ruining games may it's certainly pushing some of these mass market games in a direction for people like us in the bubble people that are playing games as their primary hobby and listening to gaming podcasts that is negative some of it can be fixed uh through more i don't know whether it's more granular better management of difficulty and what's turned on and what isn't turned on in certain difficulties um i think that's going to be the thing that that could save this situation yeah i i i don't want to force studios into these

3:28:28Dustin Furman:situations where they feel like they can't make a mass market game that still speaks to the hardcore sensibilities of the player base that they're aiming for but trying to spread the field and again i respect the fuck out of the studios like from that are like that have this uncom uncompromising vision. And they're not the only one. But yeah, they just need to balance these things better. I think playtesting is really important. In fact, playtesting is something that you... Knowing a lot of people that work on games, it's a really important part of seeing someone else play your game that has no context for it.

3:29:07Dustin Furman:Remember, you're building this shit in a silo. Everyone knows it. No one is seeing it that doesn't know it. No one is seeing it that doesn't know it intimately you need to you it needs to be play tested by other people and you i you would be do the games that would come out if they didn't focus test their games would be fucking just ridiculous like because because they're just thing i know from my own experience there are just things you take for granted and then you're like oh no one under literally no one understands this no one yeah and that's something you got to get in front of people so i i have no problem with it.

3:29:45Dustin Furman:But yeah, the balance, all about that balance. Caleb Taylor wrote in and said, Hey CDC, I want to talk about bloat and personnel saturation in gaming. For example, I keep seeing the same headline about Sweet Baby Inc's involvement in Wolverine. I don't want to sound like some desperate anti-woke dude, but do we really need cultural sensitivity consultancy from that many different people for a 10-hour game? Again, not trying to attack the game or make it political, but this is just a fantastic example of how bloated tech companies are, gaming included. As someone who generally favors the use of AI compared to most and actively participates in its development, nothing would bring me more joy than to see it utilized to trim the fat and cut low output contribution from the industry.

3:30:19Dustin Furman:Is it delusional to think that running lean is better for the industry or will the tools that enable more efficient pipelines, including but not limited to machine learning, ultimately corrupt the gaming market as a whole? We often discuss the drawbacks of these tools in production and have made great points about the integrity of the art, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts specifically on the non-creative side as well. Thanks. I generally agree with you and I've talked a lot about my own experience in tech and like kind of that, you know, I worked at a video, the biggest video game website in the world, but, you know, working in Silicon Valley around all these companies and knowing all these people that work at these tech companies and, and, and having people work at these places, a lot of great people, but like, they can't even define what they do because these places are bloated.

3:30:59Dustin Furman:Like there, there are, I, there, there's no company really of any size that needs all the people that's working, that are working for it. The one thing that I want to kind of come out in defense of with us, not the Sweet Baby Ink stuff so much. I mean, it's like, whatever. It's kind of an old and trite conversation point at this point. But consultancy can mean a lot of different things. And it's not a fixed cost that is the onerous nature of making games. In other words, there is a ton of shit they can cut. And the money wasted on Sweet Baby Ink was no doubt wasted. Like, yeah, cultural, like cultural sensitivity for what?

3:31:34Dustin Furman:It's a superhero game about a fucking dude with claws. I totally get that. but they might have paid them like a hundred grand or something for all you know like all of them combined and they might have done a month of work reading scripts and in other words like there's one person in insomniac that costs more than that like one person like that's actually a fixed cost employee in in um in burbank or in in north carolina so i don't want to over inflate the cost of outsiders. In fact, the unfortunate reality of game development, and you see this in credits across AAA games, is the dirty little secret is outsourcing and keeping people on the outside is how you save money.

3:32:22Dustin Furman:What would be really expensive is if these dudes worked in Insomniac. And also, that would be a huge problem for the culture of the company. So I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's kind of where I stand. I don't really think it's worthy of derision, not because of the political stuff, which is whatever, and you can feel how you want about that, but because like we don't really, I haven't, I haven't beaten Wolverine yet. I imagine the credits are insane and they'll credit everyone that's ever even looked at it. So like everyone that works in PR, everyone that works at HR, everyone that works in the, all the lawyers and the, and it's like, Like, yeah, but what did each of these people cost pertaining to the overall game?

3:33:05So this is fat that needs to be trimmed, but it's not the most fat.

3:33:11Dustin Furman:And I think you'd be surprised about how much you save. The bigger fat is in the fixed cost. It's my opinion.

3:33:19Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I don't think I really have much to add about that. I know that a lot of people, of course, anytime Sweet Baby Inc. shows up, And I really don't know enough about that situation, what they do. I know that they've said some things that people find unsavory in some of their GDC talks or something like that.

3:33:39Dustin Furman:Yeah, I mean, there are definitely people that have worked at that company and done stuff for them that are completely off the reservation. There's no doubt about that.

3:33:46Colin Moriarty:I think maybe this is a hot take. i don't think it's necessarily wrong to have someone review the script for cultural sensitivity and the fact that it's like if you're making a mass market game there could be something in it and i'm not saying like i don't know something that could offend someone like uh i don't know culture let me restart i think that you could potentially write or say something that isn't offensive to you or anyone you know but when you're making a global product that's like oh when when this country sees this uh that's that's actually deeply offensive in their culture and so you could have there could be an uproar about this game in here culturally even though it doesn't mean anything here.

3:34:37Colin Moriarty:And so if you're making a global product that you're trying to sell as many millions of copies as possible, there may be some things you can do to easily avoid those types of situations. Does it break the integrity of the game? Certainly some companies maybe take it too far, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea.

3:35:00Dustin Furman:I will say this about Sweet Baby as well. There's two things. number one is that they are a controversial group. I think for some reason, if you do read and watch and listen to some of the things that people have said, it's like, yeah, what is this? What do you mean? And I think through that lens, it becomes a choice when studios and publishers, especially of size, continue to associate themselves with them because it seems antagonistic in some way to, I think, a lot of the audience. It's like, what are we doing here? What are you trying to say about your own audience when you hire people like this?

3:35:31Dustin Furman:the other thing that i'll say though is that in my my estimation these guys have almost no power and diminishing roles in upcoming games if you read the games that they worked on and the games that they're working on that are coming up and now obviously not everything's been announced and certainly there will be things that we we learn about but it's like the the the the work that they had been associated with and and the work that they're associated with now are very different so if you look it's like early on assassin's creed valhalla gotham knights god of war ragnarok um spider-man 2 alan wake 2 kill the justice league even tales of kenzera it's like okay this is some pretty big and notable games but as time goes on as you get into 2024 and 2025 the numbers start going down and then you get and it's like south of midnight Reluded games you've never even heard of right like usual Jane canceled games like Contraband and Hyper Lightbreaker which was just canceled recently and I think Wolverine is kind of one of the lasting AAA vestiges of like a different time because they this game is supposed to come out a few years ago you know so I just I look at it I think I think I don't think what people realize is that they've kind of already won I guess is what I'm saying I don't I don't think everyone's worried about it but there are certainly people that are like there's no universe we're working with these people even if we even if we think they're useful even if we think they're talented why would we do that unless they were working in a ghost writing capacity or something like that so I just think people have to kind of take the W in a way and understand that the Wolverine stuff specifically I think is a vestige from a different time when different decisions were being made and I would be surprised to see their name pop up in like intergalactic or something like that you know so

3:37:18just I don't want to say take the W, but maybe do. All right. Dreamboat wrote in and said,

3:37:26Dustin Furman:Hey guys, I bought a Series X back in 2021 for the myriad of promised exclusives at the time, RIP Bozo, yet I hardly turn it on even with Sony's anti-consumer choices of late. It may be silly, but I'm reluctant to move on from PlayStation due to my trophy list I've been building for 15 plus years. This leads me to the following question. Should Xbox consider an opt-in program to port trophies over to achievements for cross-platform games? Such a feature would make Xbox a much more attractive option for me personally, knowing that I wouldn't be completely abandoning my list of accomplishments. I suppose some may think this could jeopardize the sanctity of gamer score or trophy level, but what does a trophy level even mean?

3:37:59Dustin Furman:Whenever I see the numbers climb, all I can think of is how is this calculated? Who the fuck knows? There is a formula. You can look it up. But yeah, it's an experience system like in a role play. Steam ought to consider the same type of program, in my opinion. Maybe someone kind of platform agnostic achievement system. I don't know, man. Is this a good idea? has a decade plus of yellow paint gaming robbed my ability to think thanks for putting on such a good show week after week i'll hang up now and go back to unfairly judging wolverine from a distance due to my disinterest in superhero games thank you for writing in so dustin i'm sure you know in a lot of the audience knows i've made the case for this many times in the past however the reason i bring it up now is because i think we are in the first we are we are in the first let me back up there's a situation where i'm like i don't think this is a non-zero chance that this happens.

3:38:44And the specific thing is Asha. Like they are. I don't know how it would work.

3:38:52Dustin Furman:You'd have to scrape the API in some way. You'd have to log in and associate your name in some sort of conclusive way. I mean, it's not like some sort of like just trivial thing. But it's the exact kind of thing they would do right now. You know what I mean? Of like, here's a module put your psn name in it like log into your xbox account put your psn name in it somehow you verify it's you and then we'll just scrape all of the cross media or cross platform stuff off of your trophies and give you the achievements do i think that they're really going to do it no do i think it would be really cool i thought it would be cool for years and i've made the claim for years do i think that we're in a situation where it could be possible because there's like the will to hurt you know and the will to steal and the will to do all those things i'm like yeah maybe so just want to tip my cap to you because i've thought about that many times in the past and i think that that would be a very effective thing to do as well but i just don't know the the biggest problem is not even scraping the api because i don't even think you you would need to get permission to do that like i think you could just do it um psm profiles does it exophase does it i think rather it's like how do you verify it's you what do you do and how do you make it so that like you don't because like that could like one little security tweak with that or one fucked up thing with that and it could it could ruin the entire achievement system like permanently where they would have to like almost roll it back or something so it's not like something you just do but if they could figure it out and again i don't know how you would i literally that figuring out i don't know i that one thing i'm like i don't know i don't know how you would do it it would require some sort of cooperation between the companies which would never happen and um otherwise how you're going to really identify yourself as that but i love the idea yeah that's i think it's a great idea but

3:40:41Colin Moriarty:who who's to stop me from i log in with my xbox account and i say oh my playstation account is long island viper right exactly you know uh without there being some kind of login to that account and you're right that it would require some kind of cooperation yeah like a lock in a like and it's like why would they do that yeah so i i don't know how any other way that they could possibly make it work i'm sure xbox would love to do that but not at the risk of ruining

3:41:12Dustin Furman:everything yeah because it would it would literally it would probably suck up 95 plus of your games if not more so it would be like a real way to just be like yeah i'm off to the races i think i have something like 500 i would have something equivalent to like 500 000 it's a a little fly flying around where'd you come from like i think i have something like 500 000 user score or gamer score equivalent so it's not even like that crazy by gamer score metrics but it would definitely be cool to bring that over you know um it's not going to happen but i i just don't think it's i just think you're dealing with an operator for the first time that's like that i bet you that's come up.

3:41:51Like shit like that. Yeah, certainly.

3:41:55Dustin Furman:It's Shane Bailey wrote in and said, good day, CDC. How worried should we be for the future of Housemarque as a first party studio? By all accounts, the sales of Saros have been soft since launch. Two days after Wolverine's launch, it has over 21 ,000 ratings on the PlayStation store, while Saros has 10 ,000 after nearly five months on the market. Do we really expect them to continue funding a team for the next five years just to produce a game that may not even break even again? If Housemarque's fate is as tenuous as one might expect, what conversations do you think are happening in the studio right now?

3:42:20Dustin Furman:What does their next game need to be to reverse their fortunes? Much love from Sydney, Australia. I don't know. I don't know where their heads are at with Housemarque. It's clear. We've said this a million times. If Alinea Analytics budget numbers of the game are true, then there's no universe Saros is making its money back. And then again, we're talking about a sub$100 million game that doesn't cost very much. You have some sort of prestige in having Housemarque, and I don't think they could... If they close Housemarque up, it's like, what are we doing?

3:43:02You just bought them. At least Bluepoint didn't even get a game out. But I am a little worried about them.

3:43:08Dustin Furman:I think what's probably happening behind the scenes are two things. One is they're probably going to continue to update Saros a little bit more. they've already done some cool stuff with it I was going on I didn't play it yet but I like the photo mode update where they gave like photo mode trophies which I had never seen before and I think that's really cool so like a reason to play through it again if you want and maybe it'll get like some more like they've added some meaty stuff to it but maybe it'll get like some more meaty expansion or something like that but I don't know that there's much juice there I think the bigger thing that's happening there is they're probably trying to figure out what they want to do next and then pitch it and I assume they have some sort of timeline given to them.

3:43:46Dustin Furman:I'm sure they're in the trenches doing it now. I would imagine that the real answer is that it's unknown. Like if they come to Sony in three, four, five months with something and they're like, what is this bullshit? This is like what you guys want to make? Or maybe they come to Sony and you're like, oh, this is very impressive and Sony greenlights and says, we'll see what happens. I am more than Housemarque, which is a studio I hold near and dear to my heart. I am kind of mystified by Saros. that game really did come and go like a fart it really did like gene ray's fart gas and um i don't know why there seemed to be virtually no interest in it which i thought was fascinating because returnal had its audience like returnal took a minute to burn but people loved that game and it ended up doing respectably and it's like saros launched into this much wider and more robust playstation 5 user base that cared about it a lot less and i don't know if it's a a product of saturation that didn't exist when returnal came out in other words the uncharted 2 uncharted 3 conundrum of returnal would have done just as badly as saros did if Saros came out if it came out second and Saros would have done really well if it came out first um maybe there's something weird about it it almost seemed like it never happened and I wonder if that's just the day and age we live in so am I worried about Housemarque not in the short term am I worried that they'll get another game out yeah I'm not I don't think it's a guarantee that they get another option to make another game but I don't know if that's been decided yet I would like I hope it is I hope people out there are listening to this being like, what are you talking about?

3:45:36Dustin Furman:We already got greenlit. We're working on the next game. We're fine. That would be ideal. Because it's like you said, how much more damage can be done to these people, like to the ecosystem at this point? Especially with someone so near and dear like Housemarque.

3:45:54Colin Moriarty:If I'm putting my I don't know, my Sony hat on, I would be going to Housemarque and saying, listen, the roguelike stuff was cool to do it to try a triple a roguelike but you can't do that anymore like we we need a more traditional game from you guys you can keep your arcade combat because people love that but the biggest deterrent from uh returnal and sorrows is the formatting of these games and we we need something else uh so whether or not they'll want to do something like that i mean they won't really have much of an option uh but it's definitely concerning as as we've seen repeatedly over and over again sony is very much not interested in making small amounts of money uh they would they would rather burn all

3:46:54Dustin Furman:the money rolling the dice on a live service game well to be fair i i agree with the the thing before the comma in your sentence where it's like, I don't blame them. You really do have to control how you're making money and how you're allocating your resources. And if you're spending, just as an example, like$100 million in a game and you're making$120 million back, it's like that was a complete waste of time. We literally could have just invested the money in the market and made more money doing that. And we could have made that return back in like a year. And I think that that's a legitimate thing.

3:47:24Dustin Furman:We have to balance the way we look at the business through the enthusiast lens of like well they're not wrong and by the way they're not the only team the only publisher that has made that determination recently they might they kind of made it earlier than a lot of others but everyone's there i mean xbox is there if by the way if the rumors not only did xbox get rid of a lot of its smaller teams and spin them out but like if the rumors about game passes changes next year are true then like the small the error small game with xbox is definitely over no doubt about that so and look at take like take two doesn't publish shit ea doesn't publish shit.

3:47:58Dustin Furman:Ubisoft doesn't publish shit. It's like, yeah. So I'm like, yeah, it's kind of status quo. I don't want to blame Sony for that particularly. All right. Final inquiry, Dustin, and then we can go. DRock says, howdy doody boys. Is there any rhyme or reason why devs don't aim for their horror and spooky games to release in the autumn? Obviously, the gaming world is global and not all regions celebrate holidays like Halloween, and I'm sure there's business and fiscal timing responsibilities, but I can't help but think it's a missed opportunity sales wise. I reserve this time pretty much exclusively for my spooky games of the year.

3:48:27Dustin Furman:I'm a busy father and government worker, so this is how I compartmentalize my limited gaming time. I'm thinking about Until Dawn 2, which I'm sure I want to play, but I'll be waiting until dawn, autumn 2027 to play. Many spooky games are discounted at this time, but if the game came out closer to Halloween, I definitely would pay full price and contribute to the early sales data. Would appreciate any thoughts or insight on this topic. Thanks, boys, for all the great content. This is a great question, but I do think it has an obvious answer if you think about it. What do you make of it? Where does your mind go?

3:48:54october is too busy right yeah and it's too busy with big games yeah and it's flanked by months

3:49:02Dustin Furman:that also release big games like the annualized ea sports games august and september call of duty battlefield all the big shooters october november then you have like games like you know a big game like grand theft auto is going to be a rarity but there's always something big in there it's like it's it does seem obvious until you're like no this is kind of like a buzzsaw that's why until Dawn 1, it would have been cool if it came out in October, but actually it was kind of wise. It came out in August. And it's like, yeah, it leans into and finds its footing so that maybe it's something you anticipate to play.

3:49:31Dustin Furman:And I will say, I mean, it's not October, it's not November, but January is a pretty, February is kind of scary too. The wintry, dark, cold months. The doldrums of winter. But yeah, so like, DRock, your mind's in the right place. I like what you're thinking, and I think that if you have the AAA provenance, so like you're something like resident evil which doesn't typically come out in the fall but like that's that's like the game that could dominate that space but i think a lot of i think a lot of publishers know better than to like worry about that because i think they look at games like resident evil and chronos and all these games that do respectively and through their own metrics and they're like none of these games came out at a particularly scary time people just like scary games so i think that's the logic behind it but we have many people that work at publishers and developers that listen and they can write in if they have any thoughts

3:50:26Colin Moriarty:they'd like to share right and d-rock will get a a spooky game and spooky season with uh resident or not reasonable silent hill yeah that's coming out uh right before october so you can go right in with that and uh halloween's out too but i you said that that's not very very good right jimmy asked me to play last night i'm like i can't man but uh can't do it man i couldn't because i i just got home and i was like i already have to do duke i had to stream i don't want to ignore my family anymore than i already have so uh but apparently it's there's players now i don't know how it's faring in terms of its bugginess but i want to play it again well DRock we appreciate your writing in good question

3:51:12Dustin Furman:there are no such thing as bad questions do you ever believe in that there's no such thing as stupid questions I'm like yes there is yeah there are yeah certainly let's stop let's stop with that nonsense I went I was a little kid and I'd hear that I'd be like what are you talking about like there's you want me to challenge you on that because I can alright Dustin it's time to go everyone's going to be upset because this is going to be sub four hours I think blame Chris who isn't here but will be next week I suspect any closing comments before we go

3:51:43Colin Moriarty:any closing comments game of the year released today Fire Emblem Fortunes

3:51:49Dustin Furman:Weave yeah got that nice Nintendo bump

3:51:51Colin Moriarty:I saw got that Nintendo bump I'm so excited Holly was playing it while we were recording very so I'm very jealous but uh I'm diving right in to that tonight sorry Onimusha but that's it I'm I'm pumped.

3:52:09Dustin Furman:Mike is, she's always playing interesting things. I love, she's always off beat, but like recently, she's like, you know, I got all these games to play. It's so busy. And I'm like, what are you playing? She's like, oh, like Cold Step Saga or something. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that Silent Hill game. Like, I think it looks kind of cool. I think it'll be the last one of these five games this month that I'll get to, but I'll get to it for sure. I think that's going to be the odd man out in terms of sales,

3:52:35Colin Moriarty:probably which is too bad but yeah i think we'll know more about control resonant pretty soon yeah

3:52:43Dustin Furman:i'm excited really excited i still have to replay control one though so i'm not gonna get to it anytime soon i want you gotta have the context for a game like that man like it's too petty it's too subtle you know what i mean you gotta do it you gotta do it or you can watch your you know your hour half an hour like catch up kind of thing i guess but i feel like that's a cop-out that's what I'm doing it's been seven years since I played control you know like right it's not not like this thing I remember that well anymore all right well I'm gonna uh I think I'm gonna go in the pool but I think this might be my last day in the pool because I was looking I emailed the pool company today I'm like I think it's time to close this thing because I was looking at the upcoming weather and it's like now it's gonna be all in the 70s and I'm like yeah it's too

3:53:23Colin Moriarty:because it's 89 right now but it's gonna be falling off soon so yeah the season I have to relinquish it until next year, I think. Let it go.

3:53:31Dustin Furman:I do. I have to let it go. All right, my friend. Well, it's good to see you, Dustin. Thank you for being here. And thank you all out there for your kindness and support, your love. We appreciate you. Hope all is well with you as well. Patreon.com slash Last Stand Media for early ad free access and Last Stand Media.store for merch. We'll see you next time. Until then, goodbye. See ya. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show was conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty.

3:54:04Dustin Furman:My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor. Thank you.

3:54:58Dustin Furman:Carlos Algaret, Chad Lewis, Chris Galvin, Chris Morton, Chris Ritchie, Christopher Devayo, Christopher Moore, Christopher Morgan, Cody Benin, Conrad Pennyfarthing, Corey Beacom, Dan Nolan, Dan Root, Daniel D 'Amour, Daryl E. Naaman, Dave Alvarez, Dennis Usel, Denny Woodnever, Don Lee, Donald Difford, Donald John Vaders, Double Duty Dirk, WTF, Eddie Smith, Electric MD, Ellis, Emmanuel Perez, Enrique Perez, Enteshas, FRAIL CABBGE ST. MATTHEWS OF THE DIOCESES OF BRIGG

3:55:55Dustin Furman:Joosh, Jorge Pal, Joseph Baker, Joseph Lopez, Josh Godfrey, Josh Gravelick, Josh McKinney, Josh Schullinger, Joshua Smallwood, J.P. Lynch, Justin Payne, Justin Wagaman, Cam Wallace, Keith Richards, Kendrick Caius, Kyle Hagel, Kyle Martin, Lizard King, Logan Little George, Madmoc Media, Miranda Grubba, Martin Beck, Mason Bouchard, Matt Flowers, Matt 20, Matthew Ash, Matt MGS 24, Michael Buffel, Michael Gates, Michael Mash Potato, Michael Vecchio, Mr. Tom, Morgan Ashley, Mr. Finkler, Mr. Malf, My Name is Mayo, Nate Izod, Nathan R, Neil Amon, Nick Amato, Norse Nuts, Ali Fritz, Omar, Omar Rosa, Orchard, Organic Produce, Out of Focus Bigfoot, Patrick Leslie, Paul Joyce, Peyton Stone, Phil Crone, Qualia Freak, Randall Holsey, Rallo, Relentless Rex, Remington James, Ray Ligia, Robert Byers, Robert Schultz, Roto24, Ross Marenka, Ryan T.

3:56:56Dustin Furman:Mandel, Sakib Alam, Saul Balcazar, Sean Mason, Shane Brecky, Shane Miller, Shane Rayoum, Silent Butt Deadly, Simon Conception Jr., Sketch McGetch, Spencer F., Steven Glasman, Steven Innerfield, Stewie108, Sunny Sides Up, Sweaty Magic, Sweet Jones, Terry Tip, The Fandom Traveler, The Shady Mailman, Throw7, Toby Ryland, Tony Zuniga, Trelon, TrenchGoat, Trey Woodward, Tyler Tremel, Uncharted Shinobi, Vance Cody, Vega the Late, Vitra, WhoisStevenDay, Will Williams, William Holbert, Wurisan, WhiskeySin, Zach Cohen, Zachary Wood, ZenRed, Zman8601, and Zainal Yuichi.