#69 Is early access to a game worth extra money?

This ep was recorded right after Gamescom, but we swear it's still timely. For years, publishers have offered buyers a way to play a game early by spending more money. Is it ever worth it though? You either leave your friends behind and they need to catch up, or suddenly obligations get in the day during those 3 days and you could have just saved $10. Does it ever make sense to buy a digital deluxe edition of a game? Also. Nice.

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SHOW NOTES
Reanimal trailer:
https://youtu.be/yXEMXKXrrPs

Secret Level anthology series trailer:
https://youtu.be/gLihxsmI_OU

Relevant reading about Peter Molyneux:
https://www.eurogamer.net/the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot

TODAY'S CRUBCAST HOSTS
Chris: https://www.youtube.com/@MykonosFan
Nicco: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl56kbl3tb-KiGEHT7MUGUg
Moriarty: https://www.youtube.com/@reallycool

CHAPTERS
00:00 Are 3 extra days worth it?
08:17 How MMOs pioneered this strategy
18:30 Updates should be eliminated 
26:41 Clarifying early access VS. Early Access
27:52 Getting into Gamescoms announcements (Indiana Jones) (timely)
31:24 Hot takes on the new Call of Duty
37:29 What was with that Starfield trailer though
42:03 We weigh in on the Squid Games...Game
44:19 Why is Peter Molyneux allowed on a stage
50:24 Borderlands 4? Yay?
56:51 Civ VII hype, in spite of its length
1:01:34 Secret Level could actually be really great
1:12:09 AllHailBuckets' Crubscriber Question of the Week

Creators & Guests

Host

Chris

Chris is the owner of the MykonosFan channel on YouTube. He hasn't been to Mykonos.

Host

Moriarty

Moriarty is the owner of MRIXRT on YouTube, it's @reallycool.

Host

Nicco

Nicco is the artist behind AllHailBuckets, his personal music project. He has a TikTok.

What is Crubcast?

The Crubcast is a weekly podcast tackling various gaming and life topics with a touch of controlled chaos.

There's a new trend among AAA games to offer early access as a perk of pre-ordering.

Maybe you get 24 hours, maybe you get 3 days of access to the game before people who only bought the regular version.

Today we're going to talk a bit about that, how we feel about it, and whether it's a good or a bad trend.

My name is Moriarty, and with me today on this Crubcast is Chris Mekinosfan and Niko Allhill Buckets.

Today was Gamescom, did you notice any games offering early access perks, Chris?

You know, I think by the time most of the game trailers ended, my eyes had already glazed over, but I can think of a game that comes out today at the time of recording that is offering early access today, and that is Hit Game Concord.

One of the best games ever?

Yeah man, the hit game.

There's also, I can think of, Sonic X Shadow Generations, which did have a Gamescom trailer today, not part of the event.

That is also doing a 3-day early access, or a Sonic game.

It's definitely there, right?

Games are doing this, it's becoming a thing.

Every major AAA game that I can think of recently, at least there's some talk about, are they going to do early access?

Is, you know, Call of Duty going to do early access?

Is the new Ubisoft game going to do early access?

Is the new EA game going to do early access?

And it becomes a thing.

Niko, you watch Gamescom with me for a little bit.

I know we saw it several times in just the first hour.

Yeah, I mean, I think the one that we started talking about it with was Path of Exile 2, and we were just like, yeah, you know, I think where we had spoken about the difference between a single player game being early access and a multiplayer game being early access.

And I do think that kind of resonated with me because a single player game being early access is one thing, but a multiplayer game being early access, and then when your friends come in to play it with you, you're just so much higher level than them, like it just kind of breaks the experience, and I don't think it makes for an excellent time overall.

I agree.

I'd say.

Yeah.

I actually have a short anecdote, right?

That perfectly plays into this.

In my Discord, we had a big community of people who were very excited for The Division 2.

We all played the beta together.

We were super excited for this game.

We'd already put in like 200 hours into The Division 1.

I had a big clan.

We had like 50 people who bought this game, right?

Which I had an affiliate link, so maybe I was a little biased, but I was very excited to play this game with everybody.

And then they gave me, because I was, you know, the influencer, they gave me the like $150 pack of the game, which came with three days of early access.

And this is what killed that game in my community.

We were playing The Division every single day, every single day.

When the beta happened, we were playing it every single day.

It was like 12 hours of The Division all day.

There was always someone playing the game in the chat.

But then suddenly you have this three day period where only the people who paid more money were playing.

And suddenly everybody else who jumped in, they were, you know, 30, 40 levels below you.

because three days, I mean, if it's a game that you're really into, that might be 20 or 30 hours of gameplay.

I'm at the end game before you.

I'm at the end game before you even start the game.

Yeah, dude, it's so misfortunate, right?

because it feels like if you want people to rally around your game as like a community point, which I would argue that really any online game that's sort of like the end game, right?

Is like, we want our place to be the platform.

Like people are going to be on here all the time.

And if you want to have a dedicated community, if you want to, you know, dare I say farm for whales, like you got to make your ecosystem habitable.

And I feel like early access is sort of the antithesis to that.

Do you guys agree?

I do.

I do.

I really do.

And I actually think that I would be a little bit more militant than you in saying that even in single player it's bad, right?

because if, let's say, you know, the most anticipated single player game is coming out and it's Sonic Shadows, right?

I can go and I can pay an extra twenty dollars to play it early, or I can go watch somebody stream it.

And now perhaps I'm less interested in buying it, especially if they hit any sort of, you know, issues or snags.

There was a study a while ago that I thought was really fascinating because it changed how I thought about some of this stuff, which is that demos actively hinder game sales.

If a game has a demo available, that demo will 100% of the time lower the number of game sales, right?

I can't think of a game that I've ever played the demo for that I then bought.

It always lowers game sales.

Across the board, there was a study.

It always lowers game sales.

It's because the people who have this super hype, but it doesn't click with them, or these people who have this crazy hype, and they get into it, and now I've got it.

I've played it.

I've done it, right?

You're hurting both of those groups, both the people who would have played it, but it didn't quite click with them, but maybe they would have kept it and bought the game, and the people who have that sort of, I don't know, Funko Pop-esque need to have the thing, to experience the thing, but now that I've done it, I've done it, I don't need it anymore.

And so you end up losing sales.

And I have to imagine that Early Access doesn't actually help sales when it's showing up on streaming.

I think it's a very short-sighted, give me an extra $10 now so that I can please people for this quarter, but that game is going to suffer for it.

I think almost every time.

I think Shadow Generations is a great example, which I'm just going to refer to as that.

It's Sonic X Shadow Generations, but that's easier, right?

Is that the new one that we were looking at the offerings for?

Or is that?

Yes, it's the new $250 one they just announced from Limited Room Games.

I already forgot that.

Right.

Yeah, OK.

I was like, when did we?

OK, yeah, that's the one.

That's, you know, as a Sonic game, you will burn through that in three hours, right?

That is very easily disseminated out to people.

So if I am someone not doing content on Sonic and I'm looking at it, I go into a Sonic server, somebody's probably posted all the stages, all the bosses.

There's already a full playthrough because it takes like three hours to get through a Sonic game.

Right.

And then that sits for three hours.

And I probably feel like, well, I already saw the game.

You know, I can already tell if it's good or not.

because it's a Sonic game.

It's real easy to flip through and kind of be like, hmm, okay.

And I, it's a weird one, right?

If it was a long game, like a 30 plus hour game, I think I'd get it.

But the idea of expecting someone to pay 20 more dollars to get that three days early, but then offering it in the first place, I don't understand.

I was looking to see, like when the first time this happened to a game I was interested in was, and it was Forza Horizon 3 in 2016, which was a 20 extra dollars to get into the game for three days early.

And I just, I've never got it, right?

If it was like two or three weeks for a long game, I think I'd start to be like, okay, I can start to see the value proposition there.

It starts to feel insane in a different way of this game is ready and can be sold, but isn't for two extra weeks, you know.

But I think that's better.

I don't think there's a middle ground.

I think you have to go early and be insane about it, or preferably not offer it at all.

I think you have to take into account that this is an MMO thing, right?

That's where this comes from is from MMOs, from Lord of the Rings Online, from things like that, where what they would do is they would very purposefully use FOMO to encourage you to get it.

But you were already playing the game, you were already playing World of Warcraft, and then, oh, other people have this cool stuff, and all I'm going to do, I'm already going to buy it, I might as well give them 10 extra dollars and play it today.

And that's where that comes from.

It is inherently and sort of, you know, integrally predatory.

It's designed to be that way.

It's designed to create have and have nots and encourage you to become a have for only $10 more, which is just the worst.

It's such a bad system.

And we're seeing it now in everything.

It's showing up in every game because people are realizing that they can get this extra $10 or $20 or $30.

Well, so that's like that's my thing, right?

Like, I feel like the way that it was was fine or it was you pay full price for a game the day it comes out.

And then as time passes, the price gets cheaper and cheaper and you pay the day one tax versus like, you know, playing the like day negative three tax or whatever, right?

Which is like now even more insane to just be like, OK, like we're going to pay above the market cost of this game to play it three days before it's, quote unquote, official release date.

Well, it's like, well, what's the where?

Who's that for?

Who's this?

I'm also like, what are we doing here?

It's very individualistic, right?

But it's like, man, if like your car breaks down or, I don't know, your power goes out, right?

Or you have to work overtime at work just instantly.

You've just kind of wasted.

You get other things.

Usually that's how they pepper it in.

It's like, oh, you get the exclusive DLC or when a season pass or something comes out, you get that included, right?

You know, we'll try to do things, but it's usually the main draw in this situation.

And I'm like, it's so easy for that to just blow up on you and you're not even be able to enjoy the game for those days anyway.

And the other thing, kind of inherent, but this only ever applies to digital stuff.

Like I am getting Sonic Shadow Generations physically, and I just don't even get the option to get it three days early, because they make more if you buy it digitally.

So they want you to buy it digitally, right?

But it is like a weird like, well, you know, you're a big enough fan to get the physical, but you don't get to play it early because you wanted the physical.

And it just creates like a weird dissonance, I think, in a consumer, right?

Nowadays, most people buy the games digitally.

It's not really, I mean, it just feels like, why can't the game start when it starts?

Like, why can't it just launch when it's supposed to launch?

It's going to get worse.

It's going to get worse.

And you go, I, I actually am very concerned about GTA six, because I think that GTA six is exactly the kind of company, the kind of company and kind of product that can do some really, really bad predatory things if they want to.

They already know, because you might recall, they did a survey about a year ago, seeing and testing the temperature of doing $150 base price, right?

And people mostly were like, I mean, it's GTA.

Yeah, of course I'd pay that, which makes me think, oh, so what if they did a $250, get it today for two weeks early access?

That would be enough that people would pay for it.

They would absolutely do it and they have the power in the market to where it wouldn't harm their sales at all because it would still sell like absolute bananas later at $80.

And you know, they do something like, oh, and you'll get like an exclusive car in GTA Online or something, right?

Like some really cool looking car or mansion or whatever the hell happens in GTA Online.

I don't know, but they'll do stuff like that.

The people will be like, well, hell, I mean, if I'm getting all this stuff too, it's GTA 6, man.

That's the one game I'm going to play next year, you know?

It's the one game I'm going to play for the next decade, right?

because a lot of people play this game, GTA Online, nonstop.

Dude, you know what I hate even more is when they have like either a preorder bonus or like a pre whatever bonus, whatever you're doing, you're spending extra money, you're getting this bonus, and then they just make it available like later on.

Like you can just buy it later.

Like my whole thing is like I pre-order like if I'm going to pre-order the game for this thing, don't then make it available later.

Is there like a time?

Why did I pre-order it?

Is there a time delay where you think like, okay, let other people have it?

because I don't know.

When it comes to mine, you may be aware of a little game called Ratchet and Clank on the PlayStation 4.

And if you pre-order, you got this like iconic weapon from the second game.

And they never made it available.

Until maybe like half a year ago or something, eight years later, is that is that in the window of no, thank you?

Or are you like, okay, maybe now?

I mean, I, yeah, I guess that's fine.

I guess a few months I can see where you're coming from.

Right.

Yeah, it was a few months.

So like the what I'm referring to specifically is Call of Duty Black Ops 1, because I bought the special edition.

So not necessarily pre-release or pre, what are we calling it?

Pre early access, early access.

Thank you.

Not necessarily early access, but like I bought the, you know, epic edition of the game that they were like, you know, you it's $150 and it's like you get like I have the physical like remote control car from, you know, 10 plus more more than that years ago for Call of Duty Black Ops 1.

And it came with all of the old zombies maps where it was like, oh, you can play all of the zombies maps from Call of Duty World at War in the Black Ops 1 engine.

And I was like, oh, sick, right.

But they were like, you can only get it in this this special edition.

So I did.

I don't even need the special edition.

I didn't even want it.

I just wanted the game and the zombies maps.

And then a couple months later, like at the end of their DLC season, they released all of the maps.

OK, with that context, I understand a lot more.

That's something where it's like that needs to be in print on like the promotional image for the special edition.

Like this will come out three months later or something, right?

Which I'm fine with if they if they do that.

I've seen lots of things where it says this, you know, will eventually be available in game.

I'm actually more of a fan of those type of things where it's like you get this, but you could also go through and get it in game.

You know, like I enjoy that kind of a thing where it's more of a shortcut as opposed to like a prestige thing.

Yeah.

I found an article here and I think it's very interesting because it highlights why this is so prevalent.

EA in their most recent quarterly talked about the release of EA Sports College Football 25, which used to be the NCAA series, and it hasn't been around since like 2013, right?

And then they got the licenses back and they they're in a big game.

It's going to be the biggest football blah, blah, blah, right?

And they announced that they had 2.2 million players pay the extra $30 for early access of three days.

So actually, this is a good time to say.

Chimbus in the Twitch chat, which we don't usually acknowledge, said that the DLC that I was talking about came out ten and a half months later, which I understand, but it is, I think it wasn't advertised properly.

But more importantly, you can get in to our Twitch chat at twitch.tv/crubunderscoreofficial.

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Sorry, folks.

Did I miss anything?

Back to the episode.

So 2.2 million people paid an extra $30 to get it, which is shocking.

I mean, when you think about that, right?

Like that's that's an extra $60 million that they were able to get for basically a lot of money.

No extra work on their part, right?

For no extra work for an extra three days.

Yeah, it's shocking.

Like the only thing it makes extra work wise is like compressing the normal amount of work into three days fewer time.

But you would think that at that point the game would be done.

Although I don't think we've seen a done game release in in a while.

Done enough, maybe.

Quite a long time, yeah.

That's a totally different discussion, of course, right?

Like we talk about it a lot here, and it's actually one of my biggest peeves against physical, right?

Is that physical media doesn't really mean that you get the game anymore.

It means that you get a download key that's associated with a CD, and there's still a day one patch, and you probably can't play that game, right?

Like most of these games, when they print out their cartridges or their discs, it just associates the license with your console, and so you have to...

Not only do you have to keep the disc, the physical disc in, because it doesn't actually just give you the right to use that game, but also...

That's the worst part about it.

Also, it's going to download their day one patch, and it's usually unplayable without it.

Especially if there's any sort of online component where you have to stay up to date.

Yeah.

It's no good.

Dude, that's my other...

I mean, I guess I get frustrated with updates, really, to anything and everything, almost all the time.

It'd be nice to have, for example, one website that doesn't change its user interface, like, you know, for a couple months, right?

Like, it seems like every time that anything is just...

Yeah, this is generally agreed upon.

We finally learned it.

They like take it and they switch it up.

So anyway, I digress.

The point being that, like, if you're not shipping a game, at least in, like, a usable state, and then on top of that, you're asking me to, like, update, update, update, update, update.

Like, that is just a frustrating game experience, especially for people...

I have...

I am very fortunate.

I have very fast internet.

My PS5 is hardwired in.

An update doesn't really mean much to me.

It doesn't take that much time.

But for people with slower internet, for people who are like, you know, maybe can't afford like the high, high, high tiers of internet, like that update for them is probably at least half of their gaming time for that night.

And that to me is not good.

Sorry.

Yeah.

I know people here in West Virginia, right, who, you know, they have a family, they have a wife, and I talked to them about new games that are coming out.

And they're like, yeah, you know, I had to let it download like over the weekend.

And when she wasn't trying to watch like Netflix or something, right.

It's like, you know, I might get to play it tomorrow.

And I was like, oh, my God.

Yeah.

Did the people, when folks have to like actually like make an active effort and carve out time for gaming, like people with families and kids and responsibilities and even like carve out time for gaming, but just to like have the bandwidth to download the game in the first place.

Hold on, like the patches.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And then the thing is, the thing is, if you download that, there's a high chance that then, oh, yeah, maybe I can play it this weekend.

Then you get to the weekend.

There's another patch.

And that like is just like a pay twenty dollars extra.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

To get the patches three days early.

Yeah.

And that way you're ready for the release date.

Actually, actually, that I would do if it was twenty dollars extra to play.

And I'm saying this as a joke.

Like, I don't I do not mean this, please.

Like, sincerely, I don't sincerely I don't mean this.

But like if there were a service where it was like, OK, for this game, you pay twenty dollars and you never have to update it again.

Like I would I would do that 100 percent of the time.

Like, if they let me pay twenty dollars to get the finished game.

I would do that.

That does exist, at least.

That's called just waiting forever to play a game, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, a little patience, right?

Just waiting for it.

Yeah, but no, no, not even man, because like then you got like I've had games update years after, like, release.

I do think there's one final avenue to kind of talk about.

Yes.

With with early access.

Before we go on to a little bit of a chat about Gamescom, which is that there is already a propensity amongst video game developers to use their audience as unpaid beta testers.

How do you feel about the fact that there is certainly an amount of early access players who are paying $30 to be beta testers?

Dude, just hire beta testers for your game.

It's really not that hard.

But Nicco, what if you could make money and then have them test your product?

They pay you to test because that's what it is, right?

Like I'm paying an extra $30 for this game to get it three days early.

And it's broken.

Right.

It happens.

It happened with, god, I wish I could remember there was a game very recently in the last couple of months where the early access was just broken.

It was completely broken.

They ended up having to provide rewards to the people who bought the early access because it was just broken.

And I don't remember exactly what it was, but I do remember this story happening.

And this is somebody who ended up paying a premium to get the game early in order to beta test it and prove that it was broken.

Yeah, man, like that is it's just so sad.

I feel like I think there's a sad state of affairs in gaming nowadays.

We're like, this is the situation we've arrived at a point where people will like companies will get people to pay them to then go in and essentially provide them that valuable, valuable, valuable player data.

This isn't the one we're already was referring to, but I just remembered multiverses.

Multiverse, oh my God, what is it?

Pulled itself offline for months.

I think it's back now.

I think they added Beaglejuice.

But did the people who paid for that game in the beta stage like then get it for free when it came out or did they have to pay again?

I think they got it.

I assume, yeah, I assume they would.

Well, they wouldn't have gotten it for free, right?

They paid for it.

They got what they paid for.

But right, right.

But you never know.

Like sometimes like, you know, it came back into their library is probably the way to put it.

Right.

OK, because I know that they like had it up.

They let people pay for it as if it was just out and it was just there for months and months.

And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, yeah, by the way, it's gone.

I still think this is a real master class, isn't it?

Yeah, true, true master class.

I just think of our friend who paid $40 and just I don't think he tried, but just the fact that he couldn't play that game for like half a year or so just makes me laugh.

Forty dollars.

Well, and it it's even sadder because he really liked it.

He said at one point, this is better than melee, I believe was what he was on record as saying.

I put a calendar invite on my calendar for one year later after he said that.

And I did follow up with him a year later and I said, hey, do you still feel this way?

And he said, yes.

So you know, $40 well spent.

That's sort of the thing about a lot of these games is that there's always the opportunity for this bad game to be somebody's favorite, right?

Like music, there's somebody who that song that you heard and went, wow, that's a piece of shit, right?

Like that song is somebody's favorite song.

They listen to it 20 times a day.

So I think it's just, I don't know, it's interesting that in my opinion, I guess if I had to summarize kind of my opinion of early access, I think it is overall negative.

I don't think it does any good for anybody, right?

Other than the developers.

I think that it creates FOMO.

I think that it is necessarily predatory.

I think that what you're going to see is a split in your user base, right?

Like you immediately have haves and have nots, and if there's any sort of progression in your game, you have people who are instantly much further along than everybody else.

You can't play with your friends.

You can't do whatever, and even in a single player, single player actually makes even less sense other than, right?

Like if you're just paying an extra $10 to play three days early by yourself, the only people that are getting anything out of that are the developers, very short term, because they're also going to lose all those people who go and watch the stream and don't pay for it, because they can't.

Yep.

It's very easy to avoid, but a lot of people don't seem to avoid it, and that concerns me.

Yeah.

But what about you guys?

Any other thoughts?

I think my, to summarize my feelings on early access, I will simply give it a thumbs down, and yeah, thumbs down for all the reasons outlined in the past like 20 minutes.

Yeah, pretty much.

I think we kind of hit it from every angle.

I think the only thing we didn't say is that I guess we could have maybe accidentally had this misconstrued as something like a Hades, where it's early access as in they're actively making the game and taking in feedback, but not so much the three day thing.

But, I guess that would be clear to any vainist access.

That goes into the paid beta test thing though.

True.

Yeah, but you typically with those, you typically get like a discount, right?

So like if the game is going to come out at $30, you're paying $20, and then a year later, it comes out at full price kind of a deal.

Okay.

That's like not the worst thing in the world.

I feel like if you're going to do that, you owe these people a little bit of creative input into the game too.

They usually do have like a forum and stuff like that.

Like you'd be surprised.

There's quite a lot of games that are in like Steam early access or Xbox early access or something like that, where those games are what they are when they come out because of all of the work and thought of the players that enjoyed it and wanted to see it improve.

So I'm certainly not talking about those.

Yeah.

Right.

So Gamescom, yeah, Gamescom, and M and I watched the first hour or so together.

I didn't super catch the back half.

But honestly, it seemed more.

More hype than I thought going into it, because I had I was like, no one cares about any of the all the games that they had on the little promo image.

I was like, who cares?

What person?

Who's this for?

What person?

You know, like Indiana Jones in the Great Circle.

No, in fact, we put on we put on Indiana Jones at our mutual, our group vacation the one time and everybody like fell asleep or got disinterested within the first half an hour.

So like it's a big open room.

There's like a living room area and a kitchen area.

Slowly, everyone just naturally migrated into the kitchen.

And I remember just sitting there like, I've never seen these.

I guess I want to watch this.

I looked around and no one was there.

It's like, I guess I'm going to go to the kitchen and hang out.

And yeah, well, I was legitimately I was because we all all of us were like, oh, yeah, we haven't seen this.

Let's throw it.

It's a classic.

Let's throw it on.

And then it was and then we just did not care.

And that's how I feel about the Indiana Jones game.

That's how I feel about the Marvel game.

You guys told me to you guys mentioned the Marvel Marvel Rivals Rivals hit game trailer that just had the the guy doing four moves in a row.

I thought that was kind of lame.

It is a concord like though.

Concord like man.

It's a hit game concord.

I want to stay on the Indiana Jones thing for a minute because Indiana Jones, that trailer was one of the weirdest trailers I've seen in a long time.

It had Troy Baker, who is the voice actor, being an influencer for the game and saying, this is one of the best first player and it's like, but you're not involved in the game.

Like, I love and appreciate voice actors to death, but let's be clear that there is a distinct difference between what a voice actor is doing and what like a game designer is doing in terms of how well you can talk about what that game is gonna be like.

You as a voice actor may never have seen the game, ever.

Literally never.

Yeah.

My note was literally like, the game seems cool, but I don't understand this trailer, because it started up, this is the penultimate trailer for this like two hour thing.

And it starts out with like, I'm Troy Baker.

And I, you know, ever since I was a kid, I did Indiana Jones.

I was like, all right, cool.

Once it's going to switch to like the director, the developer, the art director or something, right?

Like, are we really gonna, yeah, are we gonna go through this and really work through bringing Indiana Jones to like a modern video game?

And no, it was just Troy Baker the whole time.

I was like, well, it was so weird.

It felt like a YouTube feature ret and not a game conference trailer.

Yes.

Yeah.

I also, you know, you mentioned seeing the same move multiple times.

Four times.

I saw him punch, counterpunch the same move, I think, three or four times.

Yeah.

If you're doing a trailer, right?

Like, I get that you you only have so much animation that you can show, but maybe just don't show the same thing so many times in your 30 second, you know, little wild choices.

I'm not disinterested in it, you know?

I like Machine Games.

I think they've done some really cool stuff with the Wolfenstein games.

I'm willing to give it a shot on Game Pass.

Yeah, because I tell you, it doesn't look like a purchasing kind of game.

And we talked about Black Ops 6 on Game Pass, too, because I was I was like, yeah, probably won't buy Black Ops 6 because I haven't like they kind of killed the zombies community.

Like they ended the story that everyone cares about.

And now they're on like a news story that's tangential.

So like there's no reason for me to play it.

But the campaign, like they brought back the campaign and M and I were like, yeah, we probably play this on Game Pass.

I'm playing on Game Pass.

Yeah, I thought that the Black Ops 6, you know, like it looks really good.

But all Call of Duty's do look really good.

So it takes place in 1991 and it sort of takes place after the Cold War game, right?

So you see some of the same characters who are in Cold War show up, which I thought was very interesting because Cold War was pretty universally hated.

But they decided to not only make kind of like a direct sequel to it, but keep several of the same characters in it and then place it in 1991, which is, you know, ten years before most of the people who were playing it were even live.

And then used like 2035 technology.

Yeah, and then they have like homing knives and taser grenades and all sorts of stuff.

It's like, I just don't understand what kind of tone you guys were going for here.

It was so funny.

Well, so that trailer I tuned out.

But I do remember the guy was like crawling away on the floor or something backwards and he pulled out a remote control car thing.

Yeah, that's the one that I have, the physical one from Black Ops 1.

And he just drives it into this heavily armored guy and it explodes and everyone's like, oh yeah, that was good job, let's keep going.

And I was just like, what is the tone of this game?

I don't understand.

I can't tell.

So then, right, they get onto the motorcycles, right?

And they're indoors.

Now look, I'm going to describe this.

And for the listeners, this is going to sound awesome.

This is going to sound like the best thing that you've heard of action-wise in a while.

But I just, I can't see it playing.

But like, then we remembered it was 1991.

So basically, they're on the motorcycles.

They are indoors.

They start revving them up.

They have the guy from Cold War, like, put on his sunglasses and like say, oh, quip one liner.

And then they just start Michael Baying you out, like, through several sets of doors for the spectacle.

There's like, and so this is the problem.

When they get outside to do the like Michael Bay sequences.

There's already people there to fight them.

There's already enemies there for them.

There's already enemies there waiting for them.

And we were like, why?

We're like, who told them that they were there?

Like, they're already in cars too, ready to chase you.

And it's like, I don't know about that one.

Were they just sitting there like, they're going to come out any second now.

Like, and this was game play.

Like, this is almost certainly the first, like, hour of the game.

Like, this is kind of verbatim.

Yeah.

Right.

And it, like, I don't know.

I mean, it looked awesome.

It looked like, you know.

Sorry, I just I just love that one liner you mentioned, because they like rescue some guy or whatever the hell happens.

And he's like, you ready to go?

And he puts on his sunglasses in a very dark, barely lit room.

It's like, now I am.

What the hell are you doing?

Yeah, it's so funny.

I think I think Michael Bay should direct a Call of Duty game.

Sorry.

I mean, that's where this came from, right?

So Call of Duty, the very first Call of Duty.

Well, it was Medal of Honor.

I'm sorry.

The very first Medal of Honor was Steven Spielberg.

That makes sense.

Right.

That's where Spielberg, but he's not Michael Bay.

Like, that's very different.

Like, I'm saying Michael Bay.

Like, we need, like, yeah.

There were a couple of other things that I saw that I thought were really interesting.

I thought the Goat Simulator remaster ad was one of the best ads I've ever seen.

That was a very good ad.

Yeah.

It looked a lot like Cabin in the Woods for games.

Yes.

So it was like all of the memes from various video games and like glitches and stuff hidden as the monsters underground in a Cabin in the Woods underground prison.

I thought it was just so good.

And then you see the magneto thing at the end and the lights come up and then the goat is just standing there.

I love what they do with it.

I think it's really fantastic.

I don't play the games, to be clear.

Yeah.

I'm not like a fan of the games or anything, but what a crazy fun trailer.

It really sets the mood for everything.

I enjoyed that a whole lot.

I am just questioning what type of game Goat Simulator is.

Have either of you played Goat Simulator?

Yeah.

It's, boy, I can't name a game you would know, but it's sort of randomness.

Okay.

Yeah.

Like Roar XD type of tone.

Kind of.

You are a goat in the world, and there's things you can achieve by licking and headbutting.

Dude, it was just the photorealistic render of a human man in the Goat Simulator trailer, where I was like, what is this game?

It's very wacky.

It's hard to explain.

You really need to just kind of try it yourself.

It's very strange.

Was that supposed to be the Connor guy from Detroit Become Human, or did it just happen to look almost exactly like him?

I think it just kind of looked like him.

But I suspect that if we were to go through it kind of on a frame by frame thing, we would find so many different Easter eggs and memes in there, because that's very much goat simulator, what they do.

There was a lot of care put into that.

Another one that I thought was a very interesting trailer was Starfield's Rev 8 trailer.

Oh, no.

This is the weirdest trailer I've ever seen.

It is so tonally dissonant.

It is so confusing.

It is very, very weird.

This is the one where they focused on the car and made it, we're going into space and the car is floating around and racing on different planets and like doing jumps and stuff.

It was so strange.

And then all of a sudden, combat being shot at.

And then immediately after that, horror noises.

Oh, it's terrifying.

It was so like tonally dissonant.

I missed the start of it.

And I almost for a second thought it was, was it Gran Turismo 6 that lets you go on a moon rover on the moon or something at some point?

I thought it was a racing game.

Yeah.

I was like, this must be a GT7 thing or some racing game, right?

And then all that happens.

And I was, yeah.

And then you see the combat and you're like, what is this?

And there was a moment in my head where I was like, this looks like Starfield, but it can't be right.

This can't, this has got to be something weird.

What is the one of the strangest ads I've ever seen?

I can't imagine anybody who would see that and be like, I've got to get Starfield now.

It was just so bizarre.

I put it off this long, but that sold me.

So bizarre.

Re-animal by Tarsier Studios, which is the people who did Little Nightmares and Little Nightmares 2.

So one of the things that I found, and this is my conspiracy theory, because they showed Little Nightmares 3 later on, right?

And Little Nightmares 3 also had two player characters and a bunch of bug enemies.

And I suspect that at some point, Tarsier was working on this and left to go make their own game, which is this Reanimal game.

There were too many similarities between Reanimal and Little Nightmares 3.

It looked so similar, like to Little Nightmares style.

Reanimal, by the way, the coolest, most horrific character designs I've seen, right?

Looks sick.

The Little Nightmares 3 ones are not nearly as cool.

The ones in Reanimal are terrifying.

That creepy goat, oh my goodness, is that goat creepy?

That is the creepiest goat I've seen in a long time.

Very, very cool.

I'm super curious, though.

Like, I'd really like to know the background of what went on there, because their games are too similar for there not to have been like, you know what?

Screw you, Bob.

I'm going to go make my own game.

Yeah.

And then he did.

And then release it.

The announced it the same day just for cloud.

Same day.

Yeah, just for cloud.

Dude, Path of Exile 2 actually looks really fun.

Looks so sick.

I was saying to Em earlier, I've never played like an isometric, like sort of beat them up hack and slash type of game, PvE.

Would technically be an ARPG, action RPG.

Yes, I've never played one like that, and I had always been interested in trying to pick one up.

And I think Path of Exile 2 might be the one.

Interesting.

It's coming out in November.

It's going to be free.

And or maybe it was October and it's going to be free because Path of Exile grinding gears is free.

It's owned by Tencent.

That's just what they do.

And, you know, they they sell cosmetics that are very expensive.

And Path of Exile 1 is one of the most.

Big games, it's really hard to like is huge.

This game is is probably if you wanted to complete everything, I think you're looking at thousands of hours, right?

Like actually thousands.

The average game play of like somebody who likes the game is going to be in the hundreds of hours, and they still will not have touched even in, you know, a sizable portion of it.

It's massive.

It's famous because of its skill tree, which is like, oh, thousand skills.

Yes, we talked about it the other week.

I remember now.

Yes.

Yeah.

Path to Exile is cool.

It's a very cool game.

It's one of the few games I've ever played where you can make a character that's truly unique, like truly unique.

You won't.

You won't because you'll look at that skill tree and you'll be like, no, I'm going to go find a guide.

This is insane.

But you can.

You can make a character that is completely never before seen.

And that's neat.

It's very cool.

I really like that.

I did look over at one point.

Sorry, shifting a little bit.

I looked over and I saw the Squid Games game.

Oh, from Netflix.

It's a mobile game.

I don't know what to think about that.

It's Fall Guys with Squid Games character skins on mobile.

I was just like, who is this for?

You know, like, because the thing is, I mean, I guess Squid Game didn't the season two trailer just like drop recently or something like that?

I think season two is coming out soon.

And then you've also got, you know, Mr.

Beast's Squid Games thing that destroyed the Internet.

And Squid Games is there, right?

Like they did their spinoff show and the show still shows up occasionally on the top 10, whatever.

I mean, the show is all right.

It's a good show.

Like, I'm probably going to watch the second season.

I enjoyed it.

I thought it was good.

I don't know that it's like...

I thought it was good.

I don't think its bigness is proportional to how good it is.

I don't know if that makes sense.

I think that makes sense.

I think it's too popular for what it is.

It was very, very popular.

I think a portion of that is that people hadn't really experienced Korean drama yet, like Korean television, man.

I love it.

I think it's some of the best out there.

They're making some really innovative stuff.

If you go onto Netflix and watch Korean movies, boy, they are wildly ahead of everything we're doing in Hollywood right now.

It's really, really impressive.

Squid Games was good.

It was a little bit, I don't want to say tropey, but you knew what was happening.

There were cliches there, right?

It wasn't at the point where it was fully blase, but.

Yeah, right.

Like the the the tropes to me like and and just conventions like don't super matter to me, but like just the I mean.

For what it is, right?

Like, yeah, it I don't know.

I think it's too big for for what they did with that story.

It's certainly too big to to certainly absolutely.

It's way too popular for a mobile game.

Yeah, we're more popular for that.

What about Peter Molyneux showing up?

They let him out of the dungeon to talk about Masters of Albion.

Boy, this.

OK, so there's basically nobody else that you could bring up other than Peter Molyneux that is going to get a worse response from me, right?

Peter Molyneux is a scam artist, in my opinion.

Godot was a scam.

The square thing, what's in the center of the square, whatever, the cube, whatever.

That was a scam.

Every game he's done in the last several years, everything from 22 Cans was a scam.

Every single one of them was a scam.

I don't think he should be a la-

like, in a perfect world, he would have been sued.

For Niko and people who aren't as familiar, because he hasn't been around for a while in such a way, what's like Fable?

To convey the issue with Peter Molyneux, is there like a single easily digested-

because like when I think of him-

In Fable, you're going to be able to plant a seed, and then you're going to come back, and it will be a tree.

You will plant a seed in this Xbox game, you'll go off and play the game and come back, and there will be a tree there, and it's like, oh, that sounds cool, useless, but cool.

The whole world, you'll be able to do whatever you want.

If you save somebody, they can grow up and own houses.

You'll be able to come back, and the whole world will change because of your actions, Niko.

You, you alone.

You will go out there, you will be the hero.

How is that a scam, though?

because it didn't do any of that.

Yeah.

Oh.

Okay, I see.

You play the game and like burp at someone and be like, well, this is kind of cool, but where's all the stuff he talked about?

He doesn't do any of that.

Right, right.

And every game, it progressively got worse.

Multiple interviews out there being like, well, I guess I might have overposed a bit too much with that, I'm sorry.

And then he just comes and does it again.

And it just keeps happening.

Okay, Fable 2.

This time in Fable 2, you're going to be able to plant that tree.

I know we said we could do it before, but you know, the technology is finally here.

We're going to be able to do it.

We're going to be able to make it a thing.

And then it doesn't happen.

And as in our chat, in Twitch just right now, Project Milo, Project Milo was faked.

It was faked.

It was supposed to be a connect game where you could talk to a virtual creation.

Think sort of like the girlfriend apps that people have on their phones now where you can like talk to your girlfriend.

Only it was supposed to be like a seven year old child.

Right.

So you could talk to Milo and he would play games with you and you could throw balls and what and none of it was completely faked.

It was not even like vertical sliced fake.

It was literally fake.

It didn't exist.

And they were showing it to people, highly scripted, completely fake.

He is a scam artist.

And then he went on to do 22 cans where he puts out a game called Godot.

Absolute scam, literal, literal scam.

He took money from people for from Kickstarter and and I don't know, bought fucking blow.

Like it's it's it's a scam.

He's a scam.

I was just amazed to see him in an onstage capacity at a major event in 2024.

The trail he was going to do that and and and and the the curiosity what's in the cube.

And then he's taking Goddess and turning it into into Goddess Wars.

And and this is a scam artist.

Everything he does is a scam.

And I don't know what he's doing here.

And then he shows this Masters of Albion, right?

Where he's like, it's a god game, just like Black and White.

And you'll be able to go ahead and pick up things and you can customize every building and you can make all of their food and all of their clothing.

You can customize everything they have.

You can make a bread sword if you wanted to.

And then they showed the just absolute worst looking combat I've ever seen in a game.

I want to explain the the cube thing for Nicco.

They released an app, kind of a game, kind of an app.

It was a Willy Wonka-esque, like, tap away at the cube.

Everyone gets like a tap a day or something, basically, right?

Whatever.

Like, you can't just sit there and tap at it.

Like, everyone has to take time and basically, someone gets to the center and that's one lucky person and they get an unspecified reward.

Someone gets it and it's, what is it, like the ability to make a major decision in the design of like his next game or something.

So, what it was, was you get to control the weather in Goddess and, and you'll get a portion of the sales.

Yes, and the game never came out.

Game never came out because it's a scam.

Scam.

That sounds like a scam.

It's very funny.

Like, he's just a scam artist.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Anyways, Peter Molyneux showed up.

Yeah, he was there for some reason.

And shows just the worst game.

It looked really bad.

That was the thing with the narration.

Like, you were impersonating him and making it sound exciting.

But when you go watch the video, he's like, rolled out of bed, like, oh, in the next game, you'll be able to do all this and I'll be in the second.

Sound excited or get someone else to do it.

So bad.

Man, Chris, that's got to be your next character for for if we ever do baggage again.

Oh, just Peter Molyneux.

Yeah, dude, Peter Molyneux old like and just like, yeah, so I'm talking about video games today.

We're going to be talking about a game where you can do anything you like.

You can even plant a tree.

Every time anybody says anything, you need to be like, you could do it better.

You can even plant a tree.

You'll be able to change the song.

You'll be able to customize this.

Be able to make the song your own.

You'll be able to get a slice of slice of the profits.

Speaking of games from weird people, any hype for Borderlands 4 from you guys?

There's nothing.

They need to show us something.

I think that they put this together over the past week.

I think this was the thing where it was like, we need to put it together today.

because my question is, because the movie.

Yeah.

Is the game, and I know you guys don't know the answer to this, but is the game going to be photorealistic?

No.

because that's what the trailer indicated.

It was interesting.

The logo for the very first time, and I'm a huge Borderlands guy.

I've played all of them for hundreds of hours, way too long.

I did not know that about you.

All the Tiny Tina's, every DLC, I've played them all.

I love Borderlands.

What was interesting is that the logo for the Borderlands 4 did not have any cell shading, which they've all had cell shading before.

They brought up the mask, and it wasn't.

It was photorealistic.

Well, I mean, that was a video, right?

I accept that that one might not be in game, but the logo wasn't cell shaded, and it's always been cell shaded.

And so I'm sort of curious.

It sort of felt like it was hyper 3D when they showed the logo.

So I don't know if they're doing something different, or if it was just, you know, whatever trash Randy could get out the door as fast as possible.

I mean, maybe it's his noted friend Kevin Hart.

Is executive producing, maybe.

Do you think maybe they're going in the more realistic direction?

because they're like, Oh, maybe the movie will go well.

I don't know.

I really don't.

I mean, the movie, right, was such a huge failure.

It's the biggest flop of the year, I think.

And it's one of the biggest flops of video game history.

because you got to remember that it cost 130 million dollars before marketing.

And that means that it probably cost, you know, 200 million dollars.

And then it made 8 million dollars back.

Pretty bad.

Not including, of course, the international pre-sales that they did, which amounted to like 85 million dollars, which thank God for that company they managed to do it.

because boy, that movie is going, it's dead.

It's dead.

It's already coming to streaming.

It's already coming to streaming.

It's been out for a week and a half and they already announced it's coming to streaming.

Oh boy.

Boy.

Anyway, so.

Yeah.

Okay, so we'll see about Borderlands.

We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see about Borderlands.

It's interesting to me because they may actually do something different and they haven't done anything different since Borderlands 2.

It'd be very interesting.

Thankfully, they didn't show off any of their stellar writing because boy, they.

It was a good timing for it though.

All the movie fans would be like, oh, it's just like the movie.

It's just like the movie.

It did feel like a bit of a self-serious trailer for Borderlands, which was like totally not what I'm used to from that.

But this is the thing.

This is why I feel like it was something where after the movie bombed, they were like, we need to promote Borderlands 4.

I know that we don't have anything to show, but we just need something and it needs to look good.

And I think that's why it wasn't cartoony.

I think that's why it wasn't jokey.

There was no dialogue because there is no dialogue.

I think it was literally just get something out so that we can turn the story away from Borderlands being the biggest flop and bring it back.

because you got to remember that Borderlands is what makes Gearbox.

It is the only property they have that makes money.

It's the only property they have that people like.

because people don't like Aliens Colonial Marines, right?

People don't like that because it's bugged, as far as I know.

It's all bad.

You got to understand.

Every game they've ever made other than Borderlands has been actively bad, right?

Valid.

What was the game they made that turns out it's just Valve's Deadlock now?

Oh, I can't remember.

But it was the MOBA first-person shooter, but it was the third-person shooter.

Battleborn.

So, like, you know, like they failed at everything.

They're a failure of a company that just happened to make Borderlands, right?

And you got to remember that they came from Valve.

They were a company that made Valve Half-Life spin-offs.

They made Blue Shift.

They made Op Four.

Two very good games.

But they needed somebody there on top of them to make the games good, because it's not mechanically that they're bad, right?

They make good mechanical games.

It's that they always add in Randy Pitchford's stupid humor.

Randy Pitchford.

He has the absolute worst sense of humor out there.

He just likes to talk about poo all day long.

And that's cool that you like that, bro, but that can't be what all of your games are about.

And that's all of their games is too much.

I mean, he's friends with Kevin Hart, so he's got to be.

He's not friends with Kevin Hart.

Kevin Hart didn't even shake his hand if you remember.

No, but there's that picture that always goes around of the two of them being friends, of Randy dunking on Kevin Hart.

They're best friends.

They love each other.

Yeah, they're best friends.

There are three other things I want to talk about, not because they're super interesting.

One is interesting, but two were interesting to me.

Journey to the Savage Planet's sequel, Revenge of the Savage Planet, I'm very excited for.

It's FPS Metroidvania, and it's a co-op FPS Metroidvania with kind of this goofy...

Do you remember High on Life, the game that was created by the guy who...

Rick and Morty, man.

Justin Roiland.

Yeah, yeah, it was created by Justin Roiland.

And that kind of vibe, right?

Picture that vibe, but without, again, the randy type of humor in there, and you get kind of the aesthetic look of Savage Planet.

And if you take that and then make it a Metroidvania with platforming, it was very cool.

It was super neat.

I really enjoyed it a lot.

It's a good, like, co-op game to play with somebody that you just want to chat to because very low impact, right?

Like, there's not a lot of combat.

It's not like the puzzles are super hard.

They just tend to be like endurance.

You just got to do it, right?

And it's the type of thing where you can be playing with somebody for a couple hours and really enjoy yourself.

I like that a lot.

Civilization VII looks gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

If I had friends, I'd play that game.

If I had friends?

You can play Civ by yourself.

Why would I?

That's not...

That's what most people do.

That's not...

I wouldn't...

I'm not interested.

When you play multiplayer, Civ turns into hour-long things.

Which is actually my concern with this game, to be clear.

I am concerned about the late game, because they showed a lot of wonders, and they showed close-up wonders, and they showed a whole lot of unit-on-unit battle, and they all seem to have rocks and slings and stuff.

There were a couple of things later on.

But they really, really need to address at this point, and it's something they've needed to do, address since Civ IV, and they didn't address it in V or VI, and I doubt they're going to address it in VII, is late game turn length.

They need to flatten out the experience, because early in the game, you are talking about seconds for a turn, and late in the game, you're talking about 30 minutes.

It is a 30-minute turn.

I see.

It's too long.

I did not know that about Civ.

It's too much into micromanagement.

Yeah.

I was sitting here like, maybe I'll ask what a good entry point is, but hearing that, I'm like, maybe not.

And it gets really like, it's fun.

It's if there's one on on like a Game Pass or something or like a PlayStation or whatever, try it out because it's a good game.

Civ Rev is probably my favorite, honestly, because it's super, super low.

There's not a whole lot of like dealing with all the right.

I'm sorry, revolution, civilization revolution.

There's not a whole lot of like the micromancy stuff and the turns do end up kind of keeping short throughout.

But when you're playing Civ VI, right?

We're talking even on quick.

We're not talking about marathon here.

Even on quick, a turn is going to be 20 or 30 minutes in the late game is just too long.

It's a long time to sit there and be constantly clicking over, click, click, click, click.

God help you, if you're in war in the late stages.

It just takes forever.

There's a reason that, like, you know, I've been playing Magic the Gathering a lot.

And there's a reason that we don't play with five people in a commander game like we only play for Max, because it just takes way too long.

Like, actually, it's the inverse issue.

It takes way too long between your turn.

Like, so the between when you are making an input tip and then the next time you have to make an input, when you add that extra person, it just adds so much more time.

And I feel like waiting 30 minutes for one person to do a turn is super egregious and perhaps not habitable for the average person.

Thankfully, with either five or six, they did concurrent terms.

So you can play at the same time, but it doesn't matter.

There's still going to be turns where you're sitting or going, I've been done for a while.

How long for you?

Well, I'm still doing my thing.

And okay.

All right.

It's going to be a while.

That's a two into the weeds.

Does it have a mode where you can kind of just make your turn and close the game and then the other person makes their turn?

And then you get back to it.

So I guess it would be like a play by email or something like that.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be cool.

That'd be super cool.

I think they do have a play by email, but I haven't played their multiplayer in a little bit, but I know that they did tend to go along those type of things.

But you're still talking about very long-term games.

Yeah.

You know, a Civ game, if somebody ever invites you to play, hey, do you want to play a co-op Civ?

They are asking you if you want to give up the next several weeks of your life.

It's a big ask.

Yeah.

I played Civ V once or twice with people, and so first of all, I didn't realize how far into like the future Civ goes because we were just stuck so far in the past.

And then we played it two, three times and then just never picked our game back up because it was just like, yeah, what are we doing?

You start with cavemen and then you end with giant death robots.

Yeah, it's it's you got to play it like D&D.

I feel like if you're going to play it, it's got to be like a risk, a risk party group, you know.

It is, I'm going to tell you, Chris, here's the fun, this is a fun thing about Civ.

It is faster to play the board game.

Oh, that makes sense actually.

That makes a ton of sense.

It's actually faster to play the board game.

That's wild, isn't it?

I see.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then I guess the very last thing that I super wanted to talk about, and then we'll see if you guys have anything else.

Secret Level, the Anthology animated series from the Lev Death and Robots creator.

This show looks kind of incredible, actually.

Very interesting.

I'm super excited.

Let's see, what's it called?

Secret Level.

Secret Level looks really, really good, and they chose to, well, there's some games on the list of 15 games that they're gonna talk about that maybe don't belong here, but it looks really, really good.

And it's basically Love, Death, and Robots, but video games.

And there's gonna be 15 episodes where each episode focuses on a different video game.

And I'm just gonna read real quick the video games that they're gonna do, because I think they're really fascinating.

There's gonna be Armored Core, Crossfire, Dungeons and Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World, specifically the Eternum One, the new the new update, Pac-Man, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, Warhammer 40K, and then two special ones, Concord.

Concord.

Yeah, yeah.

Free Gunners, baby.

PlayStation.

Which for some reason those aren't combined into an episode.

They should be combined.

But I think the fact that you see PlayStation there is why you also see Concord there.

They were really hoping that Concord would be the big next thing.

And obviously they were willing to fund an extra episode of this show to just talk about Concord.

Is it just a bunch of documentaries, or is it like...

No, no, no, no, it's like little animated stories Oh, Lick Vignette.

told over like 15 to 30 minutes in the world.

Pretty cool.

So when they do an Armored Corps one, it's gonna be about the world of Armored Corps, the characters of Armored Corps.

Yes, okay, that's sick.

Nicco, there's an episode with Kratos in the city.

Or at least a part of Kratos.

So there's some God of War stuff, if that peaks your interest.

I think the Armored Corps peaks my interest.

I'm probably not gonna watch the ones for the games that I don't really care about, because I don't...

Sifu feels like an odd man out here for me.

I feel like that was a nothing game that no one really talks about ever.

I think it won Indie Game of the Year that year.

Yeah, I like it.

I think it's a really interesting game list all in all.

I feel like it covers a lot of different things.

Yeah, it feels like there's something for everybody here.

There's a couple on here, I feel, that are kind of out of Concord's clearly out, right?

Yeah, that one is.

But we're so watching it.

But we're so watching it.

We're so watching it.

Crossfire makes sense because it's the biggest game in the world.

A lot of people forget that Crossfire is the biggest game in the world, it's the biggest game in the world.

Dungeons and Dragons, yeah, of course, it's Dungeons and Dragons.

Makes sense.

Exodus, maybe.

Honor of Kings is a weird one.

Yeah.

Honor of Kings is ten cents, it's biggest, like this is the most profitable game, I think in the world.

It makes ten cents, something like five or eight billion dollars a year.

It's crazy how much money Honor of Kings brings in.

It's a MOBA.

It's just a MOBA clone.

Oh, this is a MOBA.

Like it's not even...

A lot more than ten cents.

Yes, it's more than ten cents.

It's...

Yes, yes, that's true.

So, it's interesting to see it here because it's like, I feel like they chose this because it's the biggest game, not necessarily because it has anything to talk about.

But then I think about, you know, League of Legends TV show Arcane and how they were able to create, you know, characterization for characters that had none, right?

Like they had none.

They had nothing.

They had voicelines.

So, maybe Honor of Kings is able to do that too.

But for now, that is one of the ones that I am curious about, like, negatively.

Like, curious, negative.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mega Man could be one of the best things to see.

Like, that could be incredible.

I guarantee it's going to be fun.

Yeah.

And maybe it could be the best Sonic movie we've ever gotten.

If you get what I mean from that, like, it could be that fun, lighthearted kind of thing.

I'm very excited for the Mega Man.

New World Eternum is a weird choice, but I guess Amazon does have a lot of money and this is an Amazon game.

And I think Secret Level is going to be on Amazon.

So, it makes sense.

Yeah.

Right?

It makes sense why they would be like, you're also going to do one about New World, our game that we keep putting a lot of money into.

New World is a weird game for me, because I think it's really, really fun for about 10 hours.

It is such a good time for about 10 hours.

And then I get this really hard drop off, where it's like, oh, this is what I'm doing forever in this game.

And that just kind of kills it for me.

And the thing is, I think anybody who picked up New World, it's free, it's free to play a game you can go play right now.

I think that you get 10 hours, and then all of a sudden, either you are the biggest fan, or you're just like, I'm doing this for how long?

Okay, I'm done now.

because it doesn't change.

There's no change.

The vibe is the same at level one as it is at level 100.

Okay.

And one of the coolest things they did in this game, just because I think it's interesting, the entire economy is player driven.

The entire economy is player driven.

There are no go sell things to a merchant.

There are no go buy things from a merchant.

It is 100% through their auction house.

Every single thing you do to other players.

Wow, that's kind of a weird choice.

It's kind of neat.

Wow, I feel like that's at least unique.

There's a couple other games who have tried to do that, but New World definitely is the one that I can think of that did it the most successfully.

Obviously, the biggest problem with the player driven economy is scarcity, right?

Everybody needs that thing, so I'm not going to sell it, I need it too.

And then it becomes very, very expensive, and it typically becomes the type of thing where you need to go out and just get it yourself.

Right?

It's not worth it to do whatever.

But New World is large enough that they were able to kind of get past that.

The problem, of course, being that because it's large and you need a large population to run the server or else the economy dies, it is the most lag filled just garbage when you're in a city.

It's almost unplayably laggy in the city.

It's wild.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Yeah, I'm excited for the show.

It's nice to see.

It's just kind of appealing for it to have to have a limit, right?

It's not like, oh, this needs to maybe set up seasons, right?

Like we've talked about the Yakuza series and then immediately becomes like, gee, I wonder how they're going to handle two and three and five and eight.

I like the idea of them having to kind of be like, okay, we're telling this story in this specific timeframe.

And that's it.

Yeah, right.

Maybe we'll do another one in like a season two, but for now, it's this and that's very appealing.

Self-contained, one to one, like you just watch it, you get it done.

We're here.

We're in.

We're out.

Not just that, right?

It gives you a lot more freedom, right?

And that's one of the things that I like about it, is that you could kill that character and it's fine, right?

Like you may not want to, but you can.

And if you do, it affects nothing.

It's not canon.

It's just a story.

And you can see these things and kind of enjoy it.

You know, they're doing a thing on Spelunky and Spelunky could, the guy could get trapped inside.

He should, in fact, get trapped.

It's a game about dying a lot.

It would make sense for him to die.

But if you're doing a movie, right?

Oh, well, season 12, you can't, you can't have him dead.

Sifu, naturally, he's going to get older, right?

Like that's the whole thing about Sifu, is that he has to get older and then die, right?

If you don't have that, then you're kind of missing out on the core thing of it.

Warhammer, they're doing a Warhammer 40K thing.

If that character, if the show, that episode doesn't end with the character surrounded and about to be taken out, right, in a horde, then it's not really a great Warhammer story.

A great Warhammer story, no, that hero is about to go down and he's going to tell a goddamn story when he's, you know, it's going to be something that people want to talk about.

Yeah, so I'm very excited for that kind of stuff.

You know, Unreal Tournament, how do you do one of the original arena shooters without shooting people?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's why I'm excited about this.

Like, it seemed cool at first, but the more I've sat and thought about it in a few hours since this has happened, right, I just kind of get more excited about it.

I don't know.

Maybe it doesn't turn out well, but it's interesting.

I think Keanu Reeves is going to be a part of it as well, so that's always fun.

Oh, Shadow the Hedgehog.

Relative to what we've spoken about on the pod in the past and in the pre-show today, talking about the ILM, the volume, which is their digital set for people who don't know, taking the soul out of some things.

I love when we have properties like this, anthologies, what have you, that allow people to put the soul back into something.

It's super, super good to see.

And I think, you know, as long as Amazon lets them do it, which it seems like they generally do, fingers crossed, I'm optimistic.

Aside from that...

So let's go on to our Patreon question of the week.

Yeah, I was going to say it.

I was looking at everything else I got here, and it's like, uh, Monument Valley 3?

I didn't even know there was a 2.

So it's that tier kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, there are a lot of games.

I know I kept notes of the whole thing on my Discord.

I wrote them all down because I know most people don't like to watch these things.

I'm sure you guys did the same.

So if you want to see any specific takes, I guess go join another Discord on top of everyone out there.

So Patreon question of the week.

Patreon question of the week.

You can add your own question and please do for, I think you need to be at the $5, but is it the $1?

$2.

At the $2 tier, you can add a question.

You can add as many questions as you want.

We encourage that, actually.

We really like it when somebody goes on and adds 10 or 15 questions because it gives us a lot more variety.

Sometimes we combine them and sometimes we ask all of them.

It's good.

So this one is actually one of the few that we've gotten that's aimed at a specific Crubber, and thankfully he's here.

I was really...

Oh, no, no, it was my Patreon question, because I'm also a patron.

I'm really curious.

I asked the question.

What?

OK.

Ruin my whole segway.

Sorry.

Buckets, aka, all hail Buckets, aka, Niko, aka, that one right there, asked, what's the weirdest thing you still have committed to memory?

Yeah.

So OK.

So let me just say the logic that I used to pick this question this week was that we want to give the people their money's worth.

We don't have a full four-man pod.

So, you know, bang out one that I've been wanting to know about you guys, because why not?

I have an answer if you guys want me to go first.

Yes, please.

OK.

So actually, OK, I'll add two answers.

The first answer, I don't think I can say on air because it is the opening monologue, essentially, from J and Silent Bob's Strike Back.

He does this like song where he's starting off just like saying the F word a whole lot.

And then eventually, they come around to these two kids buying like a bag of weed from them, and he stays in song, but like not a serious song, like it's diegetic, like he's like, I don't know.

And then he ends the journey at Morris Day and the Time singing Jungle Love.

It's like, and I know like most of it, if not the whole thing.

I've seen that movie like maybe 10 years ago, and that opening scene just like stuck with me for some reason.

The other thing for me, and I know this is going to sound like a cop out perhaps, but like I know a surprising amount of the dialogue verbatim from the movie The Other Guys by Will Ferrell.

It's the movie where Will Ferrell and Marky Mark are like the B-tier cops to The Rock and Samuel L.

Jackson, who die at the beginning of the movie because they were chasing a criminal and they like dive off of the end.

They like dive off of a building head first to like try and catch these people.

It is a crazy movie.

Great elevator room pitch, though, I have to say.

I've never heard of this movie, but I'm like, okay, that's a fun idea.

Dude, there is a super enjoyable.

It's a couple things that didn't age well, but otherwise the rest of the movie is still like prime middle budget comedy.

I miss them.

I love them.

I think we need more.

Do a desk pop.

Do a desk pop.

Exactly, dude, a desk pop is like the best meme of all time.

Like, okay, Chris, a desk pop is when you fire off your gun at your desk.

So obviously it's not a real thing.

Not a real thing.

But in the movie, because they're the new guys, the other people are like, yeah, we all just fire off desk pops sometimes.

Why don't you do it?

He's like, are you sure?

He's like, yeah, of course.

And then he does it.

And everybody's shocked that he shot his gun in the middle of a police station at the roof.

It's that kind of humor.

Oh, and it's the movie where Mark Wahlberg learns to do ballet dancing in order to make fun of people.

And he's a really good ballet dancer because he learned it just ironically to make fun of people.

Farrell literally is like, you learned how to ballet dance ironically?

It's so funny.

The Samuel L.

Jackson death scene is one of the funniest moments in comedy cinema in a long time.

It's really worth watching just the first 20 minutes alone.

Aim for the bushes.

Aim for the bushes.

It's very, very funny.

And I realized, I watched it like two years ago, and I realized I know like most of the dialogue kind of like verbatim as I'm watching it.

Well, I can tell you, I guess since Chris is handling some tech issues right now that I had I guess with this question of the weirdest thing I still have committed to memory is more of a fact than anything.

And it's a weird fact, too.

I know that at the beginning of Google's history, Bill Gates was receiving four million emails a day.

Wow.

That's, I don't, like, I don't really know why I know this fact, but I know he's receiving four million emails a day, and 80% of them were asking for money.

And that's really funny to me.

And it's just one of those little factoids that's like stuck in my head, you know?

God, imagine having getting four million emails a day asking you for money.

You wouldn't even be able to get, like, at that point, it's just nothing.

It's, like, literally nothing.

Wow.

Yeah, that's so funny.

Chris, you wanna tell us yours and then walk us out?

Yes, I do.

I don't have anything specific I can think of, but I will remember inane, one-off, just occurrences on the internet.

That just seems to be what I think of.

Like, I watched the little pizza degreasing video once, maybe eight years ago, and I can still recall perfectly in my head him sadly sitting on his carpet looking up at his camera, patting Domino's pizzas with a paper towel, which I guess when I say that out loud, how could that not imprint on your mind?

I didn't even remember it until you started saying it, and then it's like, oh yeah, no, I remember that too.

He'll be like, oh, I buy five pizzas, you know, and I put three in the fridge, and then I degreased the pizza, and he just sits there for like 15 minutes just patting pizzas with paper towels.

It's stuff like that, that.

I think you've determined my dinner for the night.

Yeah, I am actually, I have a pizza on the way.

I kinda want some pizza.

I'm gonna order it as soon as we get to that exclusive post show that you can access at patreon.com/crub.

Folks, we good to wrap it up?

I guess so.

I'm still going, but we'll go.

Everyone, have a good night or else.