What’s Next for Acclaim? Strategy, Partnerships, and Legacy w/ Marc A. Rodriguez

31:29Kahlief Adams:pitching him game ideas like right before uh uh uh uh an episode of dynamite like hey i'm here in Tacoma landed in SeaTac where he's in his hotel. We're like, okay, we're going to do this and it's going to look like a channel changing. And then you're going to, so it's like, so crazy. It's like so surreal.

31:48Marc A. Rodriguez:It's crazy. He's just like a really dope human being. Like, like there are people that we talk about that kind of genuine aspect of people when we talk about this stuff and he is just very genuine in, in his excitement for it and his understanding and knowledge of it, which I think is also a thing. I think a lot of people don't understand to give him flowers for is like, he's not just a person who's like putting the rubber stamp on stuff he's like no i want to know how it works i want to know how you're marketing that stuff and how you're playing that stuff and all those things which i think is brilliant i do think one of the things that i do want to talk to that you that you that you poked at was yeah the balance now between the future retro that is the new acclaim and the previous iterations of what the company was the things that people like again in our group of of age group we remember right i think how are you all balancing that when going out and speaking to and also getting pitches from folks because again you talked a little bit about like everybody mom is going to try to pitch you every old old old ip that that was already in the mix that that already made money everybody was kind of in that in that space and thinking about those things when you're having those discussions now when you're looking for folks to do partnerships with and folks to publish what are the tenements and kind of kind of tent poles that you're like for you to be an acclaimed game here's what you need to have in your in your package for for making the world dope there's there's a there's a dna that you've

33:16Kahlief Adams:that i want to kind of explain like i said we didn't have enough nuance in the showcase yeah but in every single one of those games there's we wanted to give allusions to something that was but never has come to be. So a prime example, this spectacular title of Basketball Classics. Everyone knows NBA Jam. Everyone wants NBA Jam. We don't own the rights to NBA Jam. Right. But we do own the rights to Basketball Classics. And this is a phenomenal, phenomenal product. This is one of the, and I'm not even talking it up. I played this game when I was at Vox Pop, right? Yeah. This is one of those games like I love 2K.

34:01Kahlief Adams:2K is 2K. This is not 2K. This is instant dopamine on your Switch deck. I'm on the L train, getting to the city, through the grind, and I'm beating the LA East team because obviously we don't have the NBA license to this. But you're able to skirt that line with creativity, with artistry, with know-how, with knowledge and pretty much give gamers an experience like we are keep alluding to that is retro future nostalgia you you think that you played something you played maybe a double dribble this is there's key lines to double there's key lines to nba jam in this there's key lines to the og basketball nes games just nes basketball so anyone that wants to see um the potential for future or old IPs in the future.

34:56Kahlief Adams:It's not just a demand for it, because that's obvious, that's coming everywhere, but it's also about the supporting now. We want to support these creators because maybe if there's enough of not just noise, but like the user acquisition funnel, getting someone to buy something, right? And I like to use the bodega reference. When you go into one of these corner stores and you see the cat sitting on the produce and you want and you want to go buy an Arizona 99 cents you know what you're you know what you're getting you're gonna get that Arizona iced tea and you're gonna go buy a slicer from the corner you know what you're getting every single time someone is selling you something they don't know what they're getting so you're taking the word of trolls online or people that you trust or just your own instinct of just buying it and And whether or not this is worth not just money because everyone's grinding for money.

35:53Kahlief Adams:It's just your time. Time that we are sharing right now that we will never get back. So I value the highest priority as time. So I'm thankful for having this conversation and for people listening to us because they won't get this time back. And hopefully it's worthwhile in some way, shape or form. what we are looking for now is if we have old ips that are viable for reacquisition we will target those but we also have to find the developers that are willing to build those strategically because all of these developers are gone in the wind right yeah the old turak the old turak team is not the new turak team that's coming out with the new turak game by universal of envy right the nba jam team is not the same like they had the evolution with nba street and then those games kind of floundered then everyone went full bore into 2k so if you're looking for 2k in an acclaimed game or in basketball and b-ball classics you're not going to get that but you will get something that will be engaging fun undeniably repetitive give you dopamine because that's all we're doing is playing games for dopamine you're trying to run up the tally run up the scores trying to beat the next level trying to find the coolest way to beat the next boss or the next master of that era of basketball.

37:19Kahlief Adams:So in basketball classics, you obviously see allusions to NBA Jam. In Ground Zero Hero, you see allusions to Simpsons styling of artistry. As soon as you saw that green slimy monster, it was like, that's Homer Simpson's head running around. so that's a rick and morty-esque uh crimson like like survive everyone talks about vampire survivors the original game is crimson land so buy crimson land support crimson land yes uh vamp survivors i love i have zillions of hours in that we built out a game for vox pop that was called outer terror that's another crimson like this gzh game ground zero hero yeah is is unlike any other survivor like not because it's just another ran it's because it's it's it's artistry its gameplay and its balance is something that I haven't played, right?

38:19Kahlief Adams:So if I'm going through these partnerships and I'm looking to publish a game, I want to see something that is familiar, but wholly unique. That's a very, that's a razor thin margin. There's a razor thin margin. Familiarity is key, but if it's new on top of that, then that's when you get the smash. That's one you get among us or uh what was that freaking cat game of astray yeah you get something that like i played i i kind of played this thing but it's brand new so i i want to enjoy this granted b-ball classics came out during pandemic so it's one of those content items that was lost in the shuffle yeah it has a very very positive rate and we're bringing it to consoles in uh hopefully by q1 q2 of next year yeah um we're taught we're targeting because we have the 2026 lineup of all the other pc games that are coming out you see in um i don't want to i don't want to name drop another one of our games i mean i'm going to show i'm going to show a couple i want to get okay so go for it go let's go there and i'll give you bam okay we got this this is this this is holy for the mk crowd for the dead cells crowd for the dead space crowd this is one of those retro future nostalgia.

39:35Kahlief Adams:Dead Space is an old game, everyone. Dead Cells is an old game, everyone. This is a brand new game that dropped the same day as the Play Acclaims Showcase. We are so thankful to Void Ma. Eugene is an incredible solo dev that worked on this as a passion project for three years. And we were scoping and scouting. We were like, we have sports titles. We have retro nostalgia titles we have uh old games that are familiar but we need something bloody and and and really like acclaim is known for like the fatalities and all this other stuff so katana everyone calls it katanat or katana katana it's katana um this is this is your dead cells dead space fix on the go play like oh we're all playing on our you know raj allies or now the new, I don't know who's going to buy them, the new Xbox$1 ,000 handle.

40:31Kahlief Adams:I'm going to buy it, obviously, because I'm an early adopter and I'm a nutmeg. But you have to realize that these are not bite-sized properties. These are games that you will sink dozens and dozens and dozens of hours into, right? 70-plus hour games. The roguelike genre is kind of, I mean, he also had to go against Silksong, right? It's obviously going to win a crap ton of awards in December, right? Yeah. But I think I don't want to call, I'm never going to call this an also ran. This is one of those products that it just dropped. It just dropped when it dropped, right? You got to like, you can't be, you can't be reticent.

41:08Kahlief Adams:You can't be a mind reader. People are going to ghost drop. We considered this kind of like a shadow drop or something that was unknown because no one knew that we were going to do this. He was even, he was even showing this at the Next Games Fest and the future game show. and we were still working out the logistics of the deal. This is coming to consoles, obviously. So everyone that was asking during the Play Claims Showcase, where is in a console? It is a process, right? Everything is built on computers. So obviously it's going to make its way to consoles, but it takes time. You want to build your communities because each of the communities are their own ecosystem.

41:50Kahlief Adams:A thousand percent. Steam is Steam. EGS is its own thing. The Xbox Gamer Tag Gamers, those are my fans. Achievement Hunter Heads, Trophy Hunter Heads for PS. Nintendo, the Switchers and the Switch 2 folks and Kin, all dozens of them. There are dozens of us. But we are building these games to be as wide of an audience as possible, but there also has to be that demand that is met, right? We can't just build for the sake of building because we'll burn out faster than the older claim. We want to last longer than the older claim. So there's also budgeting to be involved. There's also our strategic advisory board.

42:32Kahlief Adams:And there's boards that we pin all of our pitches against. There's a chair of people that is not just me making the decision. I don't even have the final decision. The CEO does. So for me, it's like I'm advocating for you. if you're an underdog if you feel that you're underserved if there's a game that you dropped and you felt that it dropped at the wrong time and you want a new and you're still building content for it and you want to bring it to console but you don't have that give us a ring my emails are going to be available i'm on linkedin i'm on every social yeah just reach out to me we'll evaluate it i'm going to be realistic i can't put it we can't put everything now right um but but build and show promise and have the tenets of that um the tried and true is this fun will don't just build for yourself build for people build for other people that do not like games make your game as accessible as possible don't go overboard on accessibility options just make your game pick up and playable because time is of the essence and we want to play all of these games everybody's backlogged right so we want we want to spend some money on a good a good dopamine hit and all of these games are that so i mean look and we we talked about this

43:50Marc A. Rodriguez:when i worked at intel uh some years back the the we had a term called time to fun time to fun is really important and you have to again we are vying for everyone's ears everyone's eyes and time like you said is is of the essence i think one of the things i loved about the uh the showcase was the diversity of genre and the diversity of titles and the diversity of understanding that there was a game literally for anyone in that space, in that showcase. One of my favorites that I definitely want to show really quickly was Gridbeat because I am a huge rhythm game fan. Same here? From the school of, oh my God, why did they just run away from me?

44:32Kahlief Adams:Rock band, guitar hero, DJ hero, everything. Like all of that and some. Yeah. I don't know why. Cadence of Hyrule. There's so many things in this. So many. Where is it?

44:46Marc A. Rodriguez:I'm so mad that game. I literally had it in my brain. But that being said, it'll come to me as soon as we jump off the call. It'll be like that game that I just remember. But I love stuff like this being in the space. Again, like this kind of visual aesthetic is something I've not seen before. this feels different in a lot of different ways but it's also akin to so many different games that we grew up on and have an understanding of how has it been to be one of the folks who was kind of ushering in this as a team so like when you're going and you've done the place the the showcase showcase has gone live everyone has seen it you're getting feedback from folks like what's the what's the next thing that happens after something like this is it something where we all get in a room and you're like, all right, what's the next move that happens after those discussions happen, after something like that goes live?

45:37Kahlief Adams:We got out of our, we were building towards the post-mort. So we had a two-week sprint to our post-mort to evaluate where we did wrong, where we, just SWOT analysis. What was the strength of the show? What was the weaknesses of the show? Where were some opportunities? And where are definite threats? We analyzed everything. It's not, there's, like I said, there's nuance to everything so taking little bits and bites everybody's onto like youtube shorts and reels and all of this stuff this game is one of those this game is one of those sit down and okay i'm gonna jam to this this is like i'm gonna do because it's not it's not only i want to i want to make it clear this is not only just a rhythm game it's a dungeon crawling rhythm so you're battling systems in you are a series of hackers you choose your hacker you could build up however you want and you're going with the cadence of the beat it's a it's a 120 bpm uh original soundtrack that's building and building and building and like you're you're feeling the groove as you're going through it and then when you're doing boss battles it's really really fun and really really cool so where where we go from this after we kind of like shown this lineup is start building out the lineup for 2026 like what is gonna so i'm happy to say that this will be one of those also uh early 2026 games that people would get their hands on immediately on on on pc and console um and and and i kind of like i need to like hammer that into people because it just it it didn't it didn't make sense for them but i i know people that are in the know needed to know so i want to make that aware We are building these for both, right?

47:16Kahlief Adams:For multiple ecosystems, right? PC and console. So I don't want to say a console, consoles. I like to use the old adage of the older clean commercials would be like, available now for a home console, right? We don't know what the hell it is. Like, what? Is that a Nest? Nest? Like, they didn't have a... So available soon for PC and home console, okay? This man knows what he's doing. If you haven't understand that Mark is a master of his craft,

47:53Marc A. Rodriguez:he is a master of his craft.

47:56Kahlief Adams:Hey, that's all the old acclaimers. That's big shout-out to Lance Williams and all those old acclaimers. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I really want people to understand that there was also those old ads. When we built the showcase, we wanted it to be a, my kids wake up every morning and we have, we are one of the last vestiges of cable television. Yeah. So we have like the, we don't have premiums. We have, we have the premiums in the streaming tech, right? And then we have just basic cable. I always thought it was a good idea to just have basic for your kids because you want to know what's happening in the streaming wars, but you also want to know like what adverts, what propaganda, what any, what anything is being sold to us on linear.

48:44Kahlief Adams:I don't even call it linear, just regular cable. Just cable. Right. I grew up in the era of the origins of MTV and liquid television and Ren and Stimpy and Disney afternoon and all of these things. Right. I helped build out when I was at Capcom, the resurgence of the DuckTales remastered. That was like another feather in my cap. That game was so good too.

49:06Marc A. Rodriguez:Yeah. That game was dope.

49:07Kahlief Adams:So we did that with WayForward. So what I wanted to accomplish, we were working with this amazing content creator, Richard Cooks, amazing Richard Cook. He's one of the foundational elements of directing what this vibe was going to be. The original cut of the showcase was going to be Super Nintendo-y. It felt very, very direct. It felt very like over-explanatory. We gave too much. I think we pulled back so much with the nuance that we took away a lot of the explanation, like exposition in what we were trying to accomplish. And it wasn't to be like the Wizard of Oz, mysterious. It was just because we were running out of time and we did so many iterations of this that I was like, okay, let's do an audible.

49:54Kahlief Adams:I'm not an executive yet. I was an executive previously. Let's make an executive decision together. let's make a roller coaster ride in the form of channel surfing on a sunday late night and you're you're changing the channel and you're seeing a diff you're trying to avoid a claim at all costs and all you're getting is banger after banger after banger of content right of game that will serve a purpose like maybe i don't like this but i like this yeah maybe i don't like this maybe i this pixel platformer like megaman style game but i like this dreamcast sx ssx tricky hyper yuki syndicate snowboard game yeah so we wanted to we wanted to make it so that when my kids woke up and they turned on the television they were able to see like interstitials like little commercials in between little kind of like i'm changing the like who's they were like dad who's changing the channel like i have an eight-year-old on the floor like what who's changing the channel on this show I said, no, this is the show.

50:55Kahlief Adams:This is the games that we're going to come out with. He said, these are all great. Like, what are we doing? So I wanted that feeling for the 50-year-old Acclaim fan. And I wanted that for a five-year-old new potential Acclaim kid. I want to build the next generation of fans of fun, cool, enticing games. I love Roblox. I have people get them off of that ecosystem for a few minutes and play something that has an ending. Play something that will allow you to stop and breathe and go out and go ride a bike and then come back with a scraped knee and then play the next banger that has it. That's all I want.

51:40Kahlief Adams:That's all I want to do. And I think that we're missing that. We're missing that as an industry. We are commoditizing time so much in the form of money for time, like either pay to win or pay for mounts or pay to look good in the thing and then just want to be a straight like stop just play a game just have an ending get that dopamine and then in 10 years like man remember that remember that game that i can't remember it was like a dungeon crawler and you had to go to the beat yeah what was that thing is you want like a grid and head of oh grid beat yeah that's what i want in 10 15

52:18Marc A. Rodriguez:20 years i think there are there are moments that i'm happy you said that because i think i think a lot of us in this space especially the the generation who is coming up now they don't really have a frame of reference for ending things yeah there is this we're in this really weird uh balance of um things that are potentially dying because of just like technology dying and transference of different kinds of media and, you know, the save games, please save games faction is in one corner. You have the preservationist. Yeah, preservationist. The physical crew is still like, yo, we need physical here.

53:01Marc A. Rodriguez:And then you have folks like us and me who are kind of, who are like first adopters for a lot of new technologies, right? Where I am a person who's like, give me new, give me new, give me new. but also have a very deep well of nostalgia so like uh the game i was thinking about was amplitude

53:19Kahlief Adams:uh was there's also beater raider there's also beater raider that was made by timberland and rockstar i worked on that game so you worked on that get the hell out of here

53:28Marc A. Rodriguez:i had that on my psp that was my joint for that was i was because i was trying to make beats and i was whack so i was trying to make beats on the train and i was using beater raider on the train and I remember oh that's a whole side tangent we're gonna run out of too much time but I remember playing Beat-a-Raider on the 2 train, going to work trying to figure out how to make dope joints going to Brooklyn to 5 spot where they would do beat battles beat competitions where my boy used to play with MTV Music Generator everybody else had an NPC he would bring a 13 inch TV his PS2 and MTV Music Generator and he would make dope tracks on that joint.

54:13Marc A. Rodriguez:I remember recording beats on Amplitude to a mini disc and making things on that because you had the optical out. Anyway.

54:24Kahlief Adams:That's a whole other podcast that we have to have multiple staff and multiple people just being like, remember the nostalgia pod. We kind of do that. I do another pod with the Super Nintendad's podcast old old ex rock star people and myself oh hell yeah like uh our other i'm like the third chair like kind of like co-opted that pod but yes there there's so many different ways if we could do a collab we'll talk outside we have lots of things to discuss i i want i want you to i want you to honestly look look at that example of what you just said yeah we're building things in a situation where it was a commute.

55:04Kahlief Adams:Yes. Yes. There's so many, there's so many different, I mean, I don't know what your commute is now. If there's train, I know there's, there's public transit buses. There's, but it's like, is that, is that feeling that you want to have something on the go? Yes. My kids are now, my kids are not playing like the mod retro, the new game boy. Yeah. That's super, that that's regardless of what the company lineage of that, that tech is amazing. It plays all the old game boy color. and old Game Boy games, like that tech, that's what I'm saying. We're entering a resurgence of, the early adopters and the preservationists are the same.

55:43Kahlief Adams:We are one in the same, right? So there has to be tech or at least game licenses that are preserved in certain factions. Like I was a person that had a mini disc player before the, like the year before the iPod came out, everyone was jamming with mini discs. I still have mini disc here. I was also a person that bought a crap ton of DVDs from the Virgin Megastore. And they're all gone because they're all, they were garbage. Like, why am I going to hold like a giant wall of DVDs? Like, it's also spatial. Like, yes, you don't have space in different places. You can't just lug around stuff. It weighs you down as a person.

56:20Kahlief Adams:So there is a lane for people to be digital only and preservationists. You just have to preserve the code sets so that they can be utilized in whatever form function in the future by utilizing it similar to cco similar to you know uh um the same way they're building mickey mouse styled games and winnie the pooh horror movies yes it's the same way that in the future you're going to be able to do this with other games at least preserve the idea and not just rely on like youtube is going to preserve it or like these big mega corpos there has to be some kind of mpo or like some kind of like concerted effort through the National Archives or somehow to preserve this.

56:58Kahlief Adams:It's art, it's music, it's artistry, it's writing. So if there's any other medium to preserve, gaming is probably one of the most important.

57:09Marc A. Rodriguez:And I think that's a perfect way to kind of end this part of the conversation. Because I think what you all are doing with these games that you have pulled into the portfolio that are smart, that are fun, that are interesting, that are visually appealing in a way that brings about lots of different versions of that dopamine hit. When I was watching through the showcase, I was like, ooh, ooh, that looks dope. That looks cool. Like I'm seeing tidbits of things from, again, that entire ecosystem that is both from the lineage of the kind of heartbeat of what Acclaim has brought to the world before and bringing something very different and new to the table that I think I'm really excited for and know I'm excited for because I think there's a really dope angle in a lane that you get to own in a way that nobody else gets a chance to own, which I think is super, super cool.

58:05Marc A. Rodriguez:And that's very rare in the business that we're in currently is that everyone is kind of doing this derivative thing. But when you find folks who are finding those really cool angles, they'll kind of poke at stuff in ways that are different, you got to give them some love and you got to give them some props. I think there's still, yeah,

58:21Kahlief Adams:there's still going to be people that are, oh this is the derivative of a derivative but honestly this this this acclaim this new acclaim this acclaim inc venture is is is i've worked with the bigs i've worked with rockstar in the beginning i work with capital this is the this is still not the culmination of all that work this is the most exciting part of my career and i'm not just saying that for a check i'm saying that because it's like you like you just said it's genuinely exciting to be on the cutting edge of being able to just bring cool dope things to the world in a different way they could call you the the next devolver the next rock star the next whatever we just want to live up to the name we just want to live up to the name but we just want to be if we if we could get an ounce of that success and still have our integrity and the integrity of the developers who are building these products for us and having and allowing us that is the thing that i want to thank before we end.

59:17Kahlief Adams:It's all of the developers that have given us their trust and their willingness to not really say as a risk, but to want to brand their work as a claim. That is what I really am cognizant of and want to respect and always be the driving factor that those developers, we gave them a promise that we're going to try to get this to the world. And even if the world has its own opinions and the internet will always do that, we will at least say that we tried even the most hardest and the most down and out, we will still work for them because that logo is not just a logo that means quality now, but it means fun and it means risk taking.

1:00:07Kahlief Adams:And it means that you're going to have an experience unlike any other publisher man if you ever wanted me to run

1:00:15Marc A. Rodriguez:through a wall i'm ready i'm ready man that was that look you don't even that's that's the best almost wrestling promo cut i ever seen in a minute because that's but but the thing i love about hearing you say that is even in the short time that we've been together just on this conversation I feel that from you. That is the thing that I've had hundreds upon hundreds of conversations on this show with people who you know that their heart is in it and you know that they're really pushing for something different. And they're really pushing for something bigger. And I love to hear the enthusiasm and excitement that you have for this project.

1:00:52Marc A. Rodriguez:I know Alex is out there. We'll love to snack him at some point to come on.

1:00:55Kahlief Adams:Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's going to jump on it. I thank him for the opportunity as well because this is, like I said, this is one of those things that is beyond a feather in my cap. It's a cyclical thing. I started my career because of Acclaim People. I only want Lance to smile. I want Lance to be like, you're doing it. Thank you for doing something to bring this back. So that's what I want to do. I want to make people happy.

1:01:20Marc A. Rodriguez:And it's one of those things of like, you know, one of my friends who got me into this industry was like, this is a very small industry. remember the people that you came up with remember the people people look out for people and they look out for each other and in really smart and good ways if you're really about your shit and you know what you're doing people will look out try and make that happen and you the pedigree that you have shared today on our show is beyond everything that i could have imagined and i'm very happy that we got a chance to have you on the show to talk about everything that's happening with acclaim before we let you go i want to give you your time to shine tell everybody where they can find more info about all the goodies that are coming, coming to the, to the platform.

1:01:59Kahlief Adams:Use whatever search engine. I hate just saying Google, play a claim, play a claim, everything. So a claim, Inc play a claim. If you want to pitch us this play a claim.com slash pitch. If you want to reach out to us on Twitter, on blue sky, on all the socials, we have a link tree. All you got to do is a claim Inc link tree. The links will probably be in your bio. You can link up with me on LinkedIn. we could connect join our discord it's growing it's really cool everybody's chill and if you're not chill you know get out of the space we've accomplished we are managing things well so we really want an influx of cool positive people and yeah if you want to pitch me directly my email is tied to everything it's marc.r at playacclaim.com um yeah that's pretty much it shout out to my wife and my sons uh who put up with my madness and i gotta go i gotta go pick up my kid because he gotta go do taekwondo today he's doing nunchucks

1:03:05Marc A. Rodriguez:so uh oh snap be careful watch your heads exactly exactly caliph i want caliph i want to thank you thank you again sir thank you no seriously thank you for for taking the time again uh our new york hearts are bound by all the goodness there um we'll definitely love to circle back and talk more goodness about this both on another episode of the show and off the show i think there's a lot of ways we could do some dope stuff together um everybody at home please give the team your love because this is a really dope amazing crew that's bringing back acclaim in them in the coolest ways lots of stuff that i have to go through and go play that basketball game basketball classics is already speaking to me i got a chance to play a little bit of it um but but need to

1:03:51Kahlief Adams:unlock unlock all the bosses and then the master crew so you got you got some you got some time on you got to get those achievements up get your i gotta work on i've been i've been tasked now i

1:04:00Marc A. Rodriguez:gotta i gotta knock it out everybody at home want to thank you all for watching uh we're gonna take a quick break and run a couple quick ads and i'll be back with our outro for this episode of spawn on me again thank you mark for your time nobody at home take a look at this hey there my name is

1:04:16Kahlief Adams:naomi and you might know me from internet things like hosting for ign i'd like to introduce you to my new show this week in gaming it's 20 minutes short and sweet and every week i go through all the important gaming news that you need to know and then we have folks on like kalief adams who shows up quite often talk about all the important news and you get to listen to it wherever you get your podcast so it's easy to find just look for this week in gaming and make sure to give it a

1:04:39Marc A. Rodriguez:follow and every week monday at 9 p.m pacific time you get a brand new episode i hope you'll join me yo that was a banger of an interview massive love to mark anthony rodriguez coming to us from acclaim to talk about all the goodness that they are putting out in the world i am very excited about the games that they had in their showcase man i would love to just sit down and talk to him even more about just some of the stuff they've working on and talk to some of the folks who are in his fold in the gaming space. Some of the ex-Acclaim folks that he had been talking about and some of the connective tissue between all of that and the games we're getting a chance to play now.

1:05:14Marc A. Rodriguez:So thank you, Mark, for so much, so much time. I know we were supposed to be on for like probably 30 minutes and that wind up being an hour or so. It's always great when you can get folks this time and they're just so beautifully eloquent about all the things they've worked on. So I'm very excited about the future of Acclaim and I think you should be too. So check out the links in the show notes. You're going to see more of the work that they're doing and give us some love in the show notes as well. When this goes up on YouTube, when this goes up on the podcast feeds, throw us a comment. I always want to bring back Ask Ka anything.

1:05:50Marc A. Rodriguez:I want to bring that show back and would love to have people send me in questions that I can answer every week and make some dope content out of that. So I'd love to be able to do some more of that. So if you have any questions, shoot those over as well. we can get that into uh some new some new dopeness over on that end until then we're going to get up out of here for this episode of spawn on me we have so we have a lot of really uh fun things to talk about this week the conversation around the ea merger just happened i didn't even talk about that this episode because this was a long episode i'm looking for other folks to bring to bring on to the pod to talk about that and there's a couple of guests i'm looking to to to steal um and have on the show as well for for one of the upcoming episodes because there's a lot of really dope stuff to talk about in the space so with that said much love wash your hands wash your butt make sure you're taking care of yourselves and everybody else around you and until next week we say peace