The Mixtape Discourse, Saros, Directive 8020 & Double Fine Gets Organized

0:01Spawn on Me is the premier podcast spotlighting people of color. Every week we talk news, what we've been playing, and tell you who's invited to the cookout. Our show is all about talking about gaming through a prism of blackness because we are the culture. Welcome to Burkago, y 'all. Yo, what's good everybody in Burkago? This is the Spawn on Me podcast with Kahlief Adams. I am your host, Kahlief Adams. Hope you're doing well, having an amazing May and having a good time in this existence, because it is a hard time out here for something or other, if you know the song. I am having a pretty good week and a pretty good month.

0:39I was over in L.A. getting to check out the Mortal Kombat 2 premiere. Shout out to the entire team down there because it was fun to get the chance to see and rub elbows with some celebrities. I got a chance to say hello to Ed Boon and the rest of the team. uh so that was that was brilliant and amazing then i went to vegas to go hang out at the icons esa conference which is really good for me as a person who's trying to network for a job so it's really good to be able to meet so many so many dope people and so many c-suite people to talk about the industry in a lot of different ways and now i'll be heading out to games beat down in Southern Cal to go check out and moderate and emcee Games Beat moving forward for this particular episode of Games Beat.

1:28So it's going to be a lot of fun in the next couple of weeks getting things done. And there's some fun things coming down the pipe in terms of episodes. So if you have not been paying attention to the show, you know, we took a couple of weeks off to kind of do a couple of things. This week we're going to have two episodes. We're going to have this episode and we're going And I also have a interview with our friends from Tribeca Film Festival talking about their upcoming games program and some of the dope things that are going to be happening at the show a little bit later in this year. So check out that episode as well.

1:58When that drops, that'll probably drop maybe Wednesday or so to get all of those things in the mix because they have a couple of announcements that are embargoed that I don't want to put out today ahead of embargo. So lots of goodies there, lots of things to discuss. This week is going to be pretty quick in terms of the show because there isn't a ton of news. And I do want to talk about two reviews. One is going to be Saros and the other one's going to be Directive 8020 from Supermassive. And I think the beginning of our conversations around what I've been playing will be around Mixtape, which is absolutely one of my favorite games of the year.

2:38And I do want to talk to some of the controversies that have come up because the internet is full of weirdos who don't understand things. So without further ado, we're going to get into the news with the 411. And here we go.

3:05first up on the news for this week in gaming double fine is looking to unionize they are the first company, first first first first first party studio to look to unionize under the new tutelage and the new leadership of Asha Sharma and the rest of the new Xbox team. The CWA, the folks who have been helping a lot of teams unionize the Communications Workers of America Group, put out a joint statement alongside the brass of Double Fine that talked about, you know, how they're trying to find good ways to represent the team from Double Fine with a world that has been very, really different in terms of the development space and one in which a lot of teams have been losing members.

3:53A lot of folks have been getting shut down. A lot of developers have been losing their jobs. And in that statement they shared, in tandem with requesting voluntary recognition from the company, workers have also filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board to secure union representation. We appreciate that Microsoft has taken a neutral approach and has agreed not to interfere in any way with workers' rights to organize a union. This is pretty cool because I think we've seen this kind of bubble up since 2021. And now we're seeing multiple teams start to engage in the process of finding smart ways to protect their teams and finding good ways to protect their workers.

4:37I think what will be really interesting to see is, do we wind up seeing some pushback from Microsoft here and pushback from Xbox in this way? I think in a time in which Xbox is still trying to regrow its user base, regrow its brand recognition and brand visibility, you know, players who are not really looking at the fine print probably don't care that much about, you know, our studios unionizing in any kind of way. But folks who have been paying attention to the industry for a while, I think, are looking at these moments and saying, is Xbox really looking to bolster the teams that they have acquired and does this mean that they are either kind of being a helper or hindrance to to the process of you know protection uh for for for folks in those studios you know the idea when you see someone unionized is is different depending upon how you look at it you know some folks look at it in in my purview of saying this is a smart move in terms of where they need to be in terms of their scope of their teams, the lineage of the work that they've done.

5:50And, you know, again, finding good ways to keep people safe in a really volatile environment. Some other folks will look at this and say, is Double Fine in trouble? And does this mean that, you know, with games like Kiln that are maybe not doing as well as they expected, even though the game is fantastic, definitely go check out Kiln. It's really, really good. But does this mean that Double Fine is kind of safeguarding itself from, you know, the possibility of getting shut down or any other kind of negative things that would happen towards a studio like this? My hope is that this is, you know, another movement to find a smart way to build on what we've seen happen in a couple of different spaces.

6:32And I think the consistent ask of unionization is to look at the overall space and to find good ways to come to the table as a company and as a brand alongside the makers and the creators to find a good middle ground to continue to build and find some pockets of safety. And I think those pockets of safety will be the ones that will continue to move people forward, give developers and give creatives a space to actually create, while also finding a really interesting place for the future of where we see the rest of the first party studios potentially move. maybe this is now a you know canary in a coal mine for other first party studios to potentially think about unionization in a way that makes sense for them and in a way that keeps those teams together because we've seen over multiple games and just how good you know having strong leadership can be that it really does bolster the team to find uh smart ways to keep them together and do that kind of work, which is pretty, pretty dope.

7:46I love that, and I'm happy for Double Fine seeing that they're potentially going to be moving in this direction and hoping that Xbox doesn't try to put a blocker in the way for that because I think with this new leadership, I think a lot of folks are looking to see how involved will Asha Sharma get in all of these things and how will that kind of maneuver or move the needle in terms of yays or nays in what this looks like going forward. so that was it for the news this week it is a very short news week again there's a lot of stuff in the mix that doesn't really matter uh you know stuff that i don't think is that interesting but i think the double fine story definitely pops up to to the the forefront in terms of what i think is dope and and and cool to be able to see uh come to the fruition so big shout out to our friends over aftermath for cracking that story um and putting that out in the world the other kind of big story is that uh forza horizon a version of it got leaked out and those cats got banned for like 8 000 years which is freaking good ban all those cats get them out of here and get them gone you can't be out here leaking stuff uh and doing that stuff so i'm playing through that game for review i ain't leak nothing i ain't like nothing i'm not a leaker i do everything by the book because that's the way I do.

9:08Word. We're going to get into some what I've been playing with what we've been playing.

9:23So this week on what we have been playing is all about one of my favorite games of the year and that game is Beethoven and Dinosaurs mixtape being brought to you by Annapurna Interactive. It is the story of three young teenagers on their last day before one of them goes away to college. It is their last day of high school and you have these three awesome characters who are sharing their moments together while the main character builds out their musical mixtape, which is the kind of driving force for the game and kind of one that wraps around the narrative of this game. It is pretty cool in multiple directions.

10:17I had a whole long video that I put out on Twitter that you can go check out that talks about why I think this is a game of the year contender at least at least at the very least this will get an award at the the the TGAs I think it's too good not to and there's too many cool and interesting fun things about this game that I think you know removes the specter of like well does a game that is a very arty game deserve the recognition that it winds up getting. I think it's brilliant. It's about a three-hour game. It is one in which you're kind of walking through these multiple spaces, kind of looking through the memorabilia of these folks' lives and looking through and reminiscing about, you know, their friendship, you know, them going through their first kiss, them going through their first party where they got drunk and got chased by the cops.

11:10You know, the things that that come along with a very angsty teenage story that is set in the early to mid nineties, but also feels very much like one of those kind of John Landis movies, John Hughes movies, even in the way that it kind of brings its UI UX kind of pieces together and, and, and titles and things like that. And the way it visually appears in this kind of dope stop motion animation that they, that they pulled into the story. it is one of my favorite things i've gotten to play in a long time i'm a big fan of beethoven the dinosaur anyway if you're familiar with a little award show called the spawnies uh we rewarded uh awarded uh their other game the artful escape with one of our favorite games of that year in 2021 i believe and they continue on a really fantastic ride that brings you know a lot of that teenage angst, a lot of that, you know, hyperbolic, you know, very cringe, uh, uh, dialogue that we know young people, especially engage in, you know, when I was talking about this game, there were so many different avenues that I thought were smart besides the ridiculously good soundtrack that had so many songs that, you know, both I knew and didn't knew, didn't know.

12:36Um, but they all felt really cohesive in terms of the storytelling that's in the space like the thing i've noticed is that games like this that that put together these kinds of stories do this really interesting thing where you often see this moment where characters are listening and engaging with art that is much older than them so there are like a ton of ton of music that is in this game that for these characters to a certain extent doesn't fit right it's like stuff from the early 80s and stuff from the 70s there's some stuff from you know one of my favorite groups the shylights that comes into this story and it feels a lot like those early movies that i grew up with right you know the adventures in babysitting, the, you know, high fidelities, the can't hardly wait of the space.

13:34Like so many of the movies that I grew up with that brought together this really early connection to that feel of what it's like to be a teenager in the suburbs. Now, mind you, you know, this game is making people lose its mind for multiple reasons. there's so many different angles to the silliness of the way the internet has kind of reacted to it and it's because a lot of the outlets have given it tens they've given it perfect scores they said it's really really engaging they said it's a fantastic story and i agree like i think this is a 10 out of 10 out of 10 game for me like this is a game that hits so many different things art is beautiful and really interesting the music layers are really smartly done and they've done a fantastic job of crafting and curating a really dope playlist that goes along with this game.

14:30I think the moment-to-moment actions, although not super in-depth in terms of what you do in terms of controlling the characters, is what you would think of as something of like a Walking Dead or something akin to something like that. And I think those games are fine. Like those games have never not been fine for me because they have a very guided experience. And I think, you know, that narrative moment where you're seeing and kind of connecting with these characters and pulling things in from your own lived experience that go along with what these characters are trying to bring, all together makes something that feels pretty memorable.

15:08And I think for me, it really did hit home on a couple of different levels that, again, aren't from my direct experiences because I'm not a young white kid in the suburbs. I grew up in the Bronx in the early 80s. That was very different than the experiences of these characters. But through the media that I consumed, I was able to gauge and to pull in some of those experiences through those narratives that may not necessarily be mine. but they are a shared experience in the terms of how we all connect to media, how we all connect to experiences. And even in that space where that zeitgeist is in there, you're always kind of coming to and realizing, Oh, I am very different than who these kids are, but also there are some universal things that come across these stories that are ones that even me as a kid in the Bronx can absolutely relate to, right?

16:08The ideas of getting in trouble and what trouble looks like, the idea of rebellion and what rebellion looks like, the idea of camaraderie with a small band of friends that really feel like they know you in a really intimate way. You know, even the small parts of like what it's like to go hang out in the park with your people and go chill. You know, what it's like to go sit in a room and hang out and talk crap for a bunch of hours and just reminisce on on the world around you and mind you when i was that age the same things were were relatable like we all as young kids were cringe in the ways that these kids are cringe we are the cringe of of humanity is never going away it's probably why you see so many stories be able to be recycled and retold is because the human experience isn't that different across the board.

17:03We all have certain touchstone moments that are very specific, that are very relatable, and that they do kind of cross over across multiple generations, lives, people in general, with variations based on geography, social economic status, and other parts of those discussion points, right? There's so many different avenues that make us different, but there's a huge amount of things that come together that are very similar that make up a story like Mixtape. So it's been really interesting to see how much the internet is malding right now at this game's scores and about how the story is being told.

17:46And we've now resurfaced the silliness again of multiple versions of the silliness, which is like, what is a game? Because this game supposedly doesn't have a ton of interactivity and doesn't have, you know, is not, is a walking simulator, which is fine again. And the idea that now, because there have been so many reviewers and outlets who have given it really good scores and perfect scores, there must be another conspiracy happening where everyone is together and everyone is, you know, paid, is paid off to be able to do this. everyone is a paid off shill and all of these things are connected and this is oh some but some influencers got some some some swag you know the swag means that they that they're connected to this thing there have been so many silly and unreasonable uh uh pieces of commentary on the social media space over this game which is a game about fun like this game is really light-hearted it.

18:52It is not a game that is trying to do something amazingly deep. The story itself is pretty easy to kind of understand if you've ever seen any movie like those. It is not something that this game is trying to be woke as hell and trying to be on some like, I'm trying to be like, mind you, if there was a really good analog to how these characters are, I think of it in terms of like, this is a digital version of Dawson's Creek. There's that moment where you have characters who feel like they are written by adults, but they're supposed to be, supposed to be teenagers, right? Now, teenagers these days are much smarter than the ones that when, when we were kids, like they are much more learned, learned, they are much more, um, uh, they, they have way more, uh, ability to kind of understand the world around them.

19:41we are treating them more like adults than when we ever were treated like when i was a kid you know you were supposed to stay in your lane and shut up and not talk and you know you know speak when spoken to when i was growing up we've given kids so much more space to be exactly who they are at an earlier age that that analog doesn't feel that different with this story in comparison to where people are finding it so it winds up being this thing where you have all of these angles that all of these folks on the internet are hating on this thing and none of them make sense like the ability for people to figure out and find conspiracy when there literally is none is astounding we are at some next level of red string theory that i've never seen before for a game like this now mind you it's not even something where there's any controversy here there's like a scene with a with a with a kissing scene which is like a first kiss scene where they digitally represent and show tongues moving together and you can control the tongues which people also freaked out about while most of the folks who i've usually seen jump into these conversations are the first ones to talk about we want every scantily clad woman we want boobs and and butts and everything.

21:06And we want every single moment to be titillating because if it's not, then you're not really paying attention to the artist's vision. We don't want censorship. We don't want all of this stuff. But all of these people are sitting at home and jumping on their Twitter feeds and crying nonstop. I put my video, my thoughts about why I think Mixtape is a game of the year potential, has game of the year potential. there were like 22 ,000 views on that video. And the responses have been so unhinged and so unreasonable and so silly that I did want to kind of go through, not necessarily responses, but I did want to talk to some of the conspiracies and debunk them because they're all stupid.

21:55And I feel like the people who are spouting them are also not very, very smart. so a couple of things are in the mix and i do want to share a a piece of content from twitter this is from someone's tweet that speaks to some of the things that were in the conversation and i want to go through them because i think that they're silly so um published by the daughter of the fifth richest man in the world um larry ellison's daughter is the the person who runs Annapurna Interactive. She's the head of that company. Annapurna put the game out. Fine. If you want to make that the conversation part about what that looks like, then I guess that makes some sense.

22:45The other part, the government funding part of it. Australia, which is where Beethoven and Dinosaur are from, they put out those... there's a process to be able to get some of those things paid for, or at least financially supported from the government. Fully licensed soundtrack, despite being indie. So supposedly, now there's this moment where you have the government funding it. You have the rich owner who is using her power to license music in a game that is indie, while also most of the people who are making this argument didn't even know about Beethoven the Dinosaur until this game without understanding that the game, or at least the studio, is already well known.

23:46They already won awards. They won a BAFTA award. They won a Spawny. They won multiple awards already from other well-known, established understanders and purveyors of awards. And it's not like The Artful Escape was a game that people didn't know about, nor was this a game that people didn't know about either. I literally in my coverage at Summer Games Fest last year said this was a game that ended out my show and was the best thing I'd seen at Summer Games Fest last year. I can't be mad if you don't know how to look at video game coverage and you only watch the same three people who are all spouting a ton of this nonsense and a ton of this doo doo that doesn't make a lot of sense.

24:32They were also mad at the fact that they got perfect scores. We already talked about that. There's always this idea of collusion and all of this thing. My favorite part of this whole thing of all the tin hat, aluminum foil crowned people was, you know, the, the PR who was, who was working on this project, sent out some influencer kits to some people. and it comprised of some stickers, a kush ball, a little finger, little finger, uh, skateboard deck and two other items, right? It had a CD in it and two other items. One was a pair of headphones and one was a CD player, right? A portable CD player.

25:20The, the, the internet theorists and conspiracy theorists were like oh my god this indie studio and this indie game had so much money because they were run by you know larry ellison's daughter that they could afford all these expensive influencer kits that got sent out to these people and all of these people didn't disclose that it was bought and paid for because all of these people's are shills and they probably gave it good marks because we know how the industry works and how things go. When you give people money, when you give people product, it automatically changes their potential ideas and opinions on stuff.

26:04I saw that and I immediately laughed because one, it's really silly and it's stupid. Two, because it tells me that none of the people who are spouting this nonsense understand how to Google. Now, mind you, it took me about 10 minutes to look at some of the videos of the ones that were received or the package that were received by some of these influencers to Google search and reverse image search, what were these products and how much did they cost? Now, mind you, I've been in this industry for 15 years. I have my own price for what I ask for, for speaking engagements and for hosting events and all of those things.

26:51Now keep that in the back of your mind because these influencer packs had a couple of items in them. Let's look at them really quickly. So the first one is the Porter Pro Limited Edition Rhythm Beige on-ear headphones. These are wired headphones, right? These are some of the ones that were included in the box. They were in the influencer box. Do you want to see how much it says on there? It says$59.99. Right? Okay. The second item was the Sightrin R300 portable Bluetooth CD player. The price on that MSRP is$99. So in total, if we are going to talk about the idea that you can buy someone's opinion for less than$200 is a indictment on the stupidity of the internet.

28:03because if you are a content creator and one, this isn't straight up cash that someone's like paying you for an ad, right? It's gifted swag that comes to you in a box that you like you sign off on. You're like, Hey, usually the way it works is like PR will reach out to you and be like, Hey, we want to send you this cool thing. Would you agree to send us this cool thing? the only ask usually is either you have to just do some social content around it. Now, mind you, again, the FTC has said for many, many years that the conversation around what you can do as a content creator in terms of receiving gifts or swag or any of that stuff is usually you have to put like a hashtag ad, hashtag gifted in your social media posts, which is the thing that literally almost every PR agency will tell you to do or share for you to do because they don't want to have backlash against the FTC.

29:01But even within that discussion point, that is less than $200. Now, mind you, even if they sent out 500 of those kits to people, they said, yo, we're going to go wide in terms of how many folks we want to kind of share this with, how many folks we want to have in that mix to be able to see what that looks like. That's less than$100 ,000 for a marketing budget that probably the music itself probably costs more to license than the swag bags and the swag packs that they sent out because the game literally revolves around the music being in the story. and if you know about music licensing, usually you can cut a pretty decent deal on how much that costs.

29:55If you buy titles in bulk, if you buy songs in bulk and you go through the proper licensing of those things. Now, mind you, maybe the ability to have someone like an Ellison in your back pocket be like, hey, you have more potential ability because you're already in a media space to be able to use some of these things because maybe you've used it across some of your other media outlets like TikTok or other folks where you've been able to license music. But the idea that has been running wild and rampant that journalists and people who obtain these packages are paid off and the price tag is basically around 200 bucks is fucking preposterous.

30:48It makes no sense. It is one of the dumbest things I have heard in a long time because it makes literally no sense. And what bothers me is the fact that it says that any of the people who are in that conversation can be bought out for less than$200. There is no content creator worth their salt, at least that I know that would buy, would get your opinion bought off for less than$200 or for$200 or any amount of money. It doesn't make any sense. You literally could go buy that thing on Amazon and it's not that expensive. It's not even bespoke. It's not even some joint that is like oh this is like a one of one very special specially made thing just for us like it's special because they branded some stuff and put mixtape on the the headset on the carrying case and on the the front cover of the cd case but it's a hundred dollars are we this bro that this is what we're saying we are you know spending people's souls for two hundred dollars have we gotten that bad no no one's gotten that bad no one is giving up especially journalists when they have especially for the larger outlets like ig so ig is beginning the most shit because they put out 10 out of 10s and everybody's mad at them but it's been amazingly funny because for all the people in all the conversations that I've seen for the past five to seven years about how, how much we hate IGN, how IGN scores are asked and how they don't have any actual, um, purpose and meaning and any leverage.

32:39Everybody named mama really is mad about them. 10 out of 10 is coming out of, coming out of IGN. Make it make sense. Make it make sense. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. And we're seeing multiple the usual suspects suspects are in the conversation but what has been really interesting is just seeing how all of those little conspiracy theories have started to run rampant across the internet and it's really it's really silly because none of it makes any sense none of it if you are in a marketing capacity the amount of money that you spent on those swag packages is nothing compared to what an actual marketing, but that's such a small sliver of a marketing budget.

33:33What's also interesting is that marketing budgets for influencer stuff has been scaled back significantly over the past two years. People are trying to cut every corner and are not trying to put people in expensive spaces because they know that for games like these and for games in general, they don't have massive budgets for influencer budgets anymore. This is another reflection of the internet not understanding how anything works. And it's so stupid. We used to be a good country. No, we used to be a good internet. Again, the running things that are in the mix. Oh, this is just like millennial slop.

34:21oh, this is one of those moments where people who were failed, you know, theater kids made a game. This game has so much style in it that most of the people who are in it having those discussions have no idea what to do with it. Let me let me hit you to something really interesting and really and really poignant for you. Everything that you think is cringe within this game will be the same thing that the generation behind you is going to think that the things that you like is cringe now. It is a endless cycle of cringe kids, just to let you know. So if you're like all the old people are, are, are, are crying because they found something that emotionally resonated with them.

35:05You're going to be there too, fam. You are going to be there too. I thought I knew all the things and I thought that I was the smartest one in the, in the room. And I thought that I knew everything about everything. And I, oh, you couldn't tell me that my parents weren't stupid. And oh, you couldn't tell me that everything my parents didn't do wasn't the worst, most boring, corniest shit in the planet. All the things that you love now are all going to be the same way. And you're going to have these same moments in another 10 to 15 years. So get ready because it's coming. It's going to happen to you too.