#58 Remembering the mixed era of Kickstarter games

Crowdfunded games still happen, but there was a surge of them in the 2010's. For better or worse, many, many notable games were enthusiastically funded by fans. Yooka-Laylee, Shovel Knight, Shenmue 3, Star Citizen. We wanted to look back and remember that turbulent time of high hopes and occasional unmet expectations.

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SHOW NOTES
Links for some of the games we mention, in case you wanna look and go "Huh"
Lobodestroyo: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lefthanded/lobodestroyo-3d-action-platformer-game
Clive n Wrench: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1094720/Clive_N_Wrench/
Godus: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22cans/project-godus

TODAY'S CRUBCAST HOSTS
Brody: https://www.youtube.com/@RACROX
Justin: https://www.youtube.com/@WorldFamousJtart9
Moriarty: https://www.youtube.com/@reallycool
Sean: https://www.youtube.com/@Wolfkaosaun

CHAPTERS
00:00 How Yooka-Laylee bankrupted Sean (real)
11:26 Issues with early access / dripfeeding the content updates
26:20 Why are we willing to pay for unfinished games?
35:54 Game development isn't a respected process
42:20 The upsides to crowdfunding games
55:35 TheCrazyEven's Crubscriber Question of the Week

Creators & Guests

Host

Brody

Brody is the owner of the RACROX channel on YouTube. Ask him about the Spyro remakes.

Host

Justin

Justin is Jtart9, world famous Twitch streamer. He's so famous.

Host

Moriarty

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

Host

Sean

Sean is the owner of the Wolfkaosaun channel on Twitch. Talk to him about Garfield.

What is Crubcast?

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

Sean, how much money did you spend on the Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter, and was it a good idea?

That's the question we're asking today.

Oh, gosh.

So, this is gonna be a little surprising.

I spent $3,000 on the Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter.

What did that get you?

Uh, a lifetime of...

Hello, everybody, welcome to the Crubcast.

And today, we're talking about Kickstarters, Indiegogo's, and of the sort.

Both the good, the bad, and the why did you spend money on that?

I got a question.

Why did you spend money on that?

I wanted that awkward pause to, like, sit and hit me really, really quick there.

But with us today is JTart9.

Say hi.

We have Brody to the whatever side of me.

And then, the greatest creature of all time, Moriarty.

Say hi.

Hello.

And yes, so Kickstarter, man, boy, these sort of Kickstarter things, or even if we want to expand it past Kickstarter to FIG and basically any of the early access sort of-

Like fundraising.

Fundraised things.

Yeah.

I've been burnt by it.

I can't imagine there's other people who haven't been, you know.

I'm sure we all have our story of the game that made us stop using Kickstarter, right?

And so I've found it really interesting when you suggested the question of why do we keep supporting these unfinished games?

And I'm curious, what was the game that did it for you?

Do you mean like what was the first game I ever spent money on before it came out or the one that I was like, I need to take a step back?

What did you start with and what made you stop?

So, fun fact, the first game that I ever spent money on, it never came out.

It was called Lobo Destorio.

It was a Brody, I don't know why I would have expected you not to know that.

Because I know.

I know.

I have it in a video of mine.

I know it.

So it was supposed to be like a 3D platformer akin to Banjo Kazooie and never came out.

There was a lot of progress with it, but it just never came out.

And that was like the first game that I gave any kind of money towards outside of, you know, actually buying a game at my local GameStop or whatever, KB Toys.

What made me stop?

I wouldn't say made me stop, but made me be more cautious with what I gave money towards was, oh gosh, what was it?

Come back to me.

Come back to me.

ADHD is hitting hard.

I don't know what game was it.

Do you want me to tell you my stories about Kickstarter while you think about it?

Yes, please do.

Yes.

OK, because my story of Kickstarter is actually a lot less.

It's a lot less deep of a story because I've only kickstarted two things in my life.

And those two things are Friday Night Funkin and Rivals 2.

And that's it.

That's it.

That's all I've ever kickstarted.

There were other games that I was interested in kickstarting, but I never did it.

I only really did it for those two because when I saw how much money they were raising, I was like, oh, these are too big to like not come out.

So there was never that worry of like, will this money just be gone in the ether?

And I just lost like 50 bucks or whatever.

No, I got things that are like.

Friday Night Funkin, I have the vinyl that they gave me of the music from the game on my shelf.

So like, I already got my money's worth on that.

And then Rivals 2, they've been doing monthly betas for all the Kickstarter backers.

So I've been able to play the game a bunch of readies and the game's really, really fun.

So I know that those games are going to come out and I'm very happy to support them.

But anything else I look at it and I'm like, I'll buy that if it comes out.

Yeah, that is something that I've kind of learned throughout the whole Kickstarter Indiegogo.

Pretty much like fundraising games is, and I think it's very helpful for a lot of indie developers, like 100 percent.

But I've also kind of like learned how to be more cautious with it.

Because like I said, the first game I ever funded, well put money towards was Lobo de Shorio, never came out.

Wasn't like, you know, a lot of money.

But so like I was a broke college student.

50 bucks is a lot.

But Brody, you know about Lobo de Shorio.

How deep does your rabbit hole go when it comes to...

Not very.

Back in, I think, 2017, I mean, it does kind of play into my experience with Kickstarter, which is appropriate.

But back in 2017, I was thinking like, oh man, you know, where did the genre of 3D platformers go?

And oh, hey, there's some indie games and Mario are doing it this year.

That's pretty cool.

So I wanted to make a video that was highlighting some upcoming indie projects or some indie 3D platformers that I had played.

And Lobo Destroyer just happened to be one that I came across and I checked out the Kickstarter.

I looked into it.

I didn't give anything to it because I think it was way past expired at that point.

But yeah, that was definitely that was definitely one where I saw it.

And I was like, yeah, this looks like one guy is making it.

Hopefully, he can he can make that happen, which to be fair, one of the other ones I looked at was Clive and Wrench, which was one guy making it.

And he actually published that like that.

Like that one came out.

Yeah, I sort of highlights the issues of the platform, right?

Issues of fundraising in general, which is that you have both.

Right.

So I've done quite a lot of Kickstarter stuff.

Yeah.

And I went through and looked.

It's almost exactly 50-50 on things that were huge failures and things that were pretty good.

I supported Goddess, which is Peter Molyneux's game that was from the.

Horrific, horrific thing.

You know, turned out to be a mobile game.

Never came, never got finished and whatever.

It's one of those like famous, horrific Kickstarter things.

Yeah, I backed the Ouya, right?

Like that was a failure.

Never should have done that.

Hold on.

You what?

I backed the Ouya.

You could have put that money into the Atari Amico.

All these.

I also backed Space Base Df9, which was double fine Tim Schafer's thing, which is the game that made me decide that he's a scam artist who's stealing from everybody, right?

These were all really bad experiences that I felt like my money got stolen, right?

Like just stolen.

You stole from me.

But then I've also backed things like there was a Project Fedora, which was a Tex Murphy remake, which is an older game, and they made a game called Tesla Effect out of that, and I was very happy to have a new Tex Murphy game, or a game called Universim, which was this sort of like God game, you know, RTS thing that also came out and ended up being pretty okay.

So like flip a coin, right?

And you're going to either get the worst experience ever where you actually get robbed.

I once backed in this...

I feel so stupid admitting it.

So during the COVID era, right, there was this mask that was being promoted on there.

I thought it was very stupid.

It was like a whole head mask, right?

Like a proper head thing with like, you know, I don't know what you would call it, a sphincter that would go around your neck, right?

And like, completely airtight, like your whole head.

Okay, so it's like a slipknot mask, essentially.

Right, imagine like a slipknot mask, but like just your whole face and head, and it was reflective, right?

Like a Daft Punk mask.

And I was like, oh boy, I could actually use that, right?

Like I could use that at conventions and things, and I could take photos, I could do a panel, right?

And I had like a little speaker, like the Razor mask that eventually came out, right?

So like I was very excited for this.

It was being run by a guy who just happened to be in Russia, and it started two months before they invaded Ukraine.

So like that money is just gone.

It's gone, it's been taken, and it will never ever come back again.

Gosh, yeah, no, that, all that, because in the beginning, as you were explaining it, I'm like, I see no reason to ever spend any kind of money on this, but then as you were like, yeah, I can wear this at like, you know, anywhere, like you go to a random party with that.

People are going to probably think like either, one, you're pretentious, or two, you're just a walking Tesla model at that point, but people are going to notice you and not know who you are.

They won't know who you are.

That's powerful.

I really enjoyed the idea of it.

I even bought one for one of the mods that I have on my Discord.

So I paid double for something that doesn't exist.

And that's what it is, right?

Like we both have sort of this community involvement and like, you know, the sort of democratization and this risk reduction for like products, right?

Because like if I'm a single developer and I come out, I can either do it like Eric Barone did for Stardew Valley and I can, you know, live in my girlfriend's basement for seven years, making a game and then be lucky enough that it makes me incredibly rich.

Or I can appeal to you and you can give me money and then I can make that game and actually buy food, right?

Like I think that's good.

There's a reason to want to do that.

It makes sense.

And to get sort of these games at a lower price or, you know, a discount or benefits or whatever, you know, what do they call them?

The stretch goals and stuff.

That's cool.

It's really cool.

I was going to bring up like, and I don't know how you all feel about this, is we're now in a time period where it's not just, you know, demos for games, but rather early access.

And I was wondering, like, do you feel that that helps video games?

Do you feel that it, like, kind of hinders them a little bit?

Completely depends.

Because, like...

I'm the game and the developer.

When I thought about it, I'm like, there's not many, like, early access games that I've bought, because if I buy a game, I want the whole thing.

It's a very...

It's a weird thing for me.

Not saying that I'm against it, but I'm just like, I don't want to pay for the game and not get the whole thing.

That's why I haven't played Hades 2 yet, because I want the whole thing.

If I sit down, I want to play the whole thing.

So I wasn't sure, like, how you guys all felt about, like, you know, early access titles.

You know, Justin, I know that, like, you...

You know, you brought up...

Fun Day Night Funkin, right?

Yeah, that game is an interesting case, because that game basically released itself as a game on new grounds.

And then when it got really successful, they were like, oh, we could just make this a game.

And then, yeah, they're taking their sweet ass time on it.

In the meantime, you have, like, a community of modders that keep making things with the game and are just making this whole thing.

And it's at a point now where the first thing that they announced when they were doing the Kickstarter is, like, we're going to have native mod support so you can play all of these mods in one place instead of having to download each one individually.

So, like, that's really cool.

But going back to your question, it's an interesting one because it really depends on the game.

Like, I don't want early access to a game like, let's just say...

No, Power World is a game that I would want early access to because that's one that it doesn't have, like, time gated content or a story that I'm trying to follow all the way through.

Like, I wouldn't want an early access version of...

Destiny.

Of, like, a random RPG.

Let's just say Super Mario RPG.

Like, I don't want early access to a Super Mario RPG.

As a random thing, that is actually how Baldur's Gate 3 launched, right?

And that was one of my problems with it.

You could only play up to, like, the first half of Act 1, and then you're done now.

Yeah, and it's like, why would I want to do that?

I'd want to keep playing the game.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I feel that so hardcore.

Gosh.

Yeah.

I think it's a thing where a lot of developers fall into certain pitfalls, or they try to do the drip feed thing and it doesn't keep it alive.

Like, I bought Rogue Legacy 2 immediately when it released in early access.

And then I decided, okay, well, I bought it early because I got it for the price, but I'm still going to wait for the game to actually come out in full 1.0, and then I'll play it.

And then that happened, and I was just like, I'm playing Dead Cells right now, man.

Like, I got sucked.

I don't want to play.

I don't care.

I don't know.

I just die, you know.

But the thing that I've seen it really work with is I think a game like Deep Rock Galactic where you're sort of meant to go in, do some levels, and they'll add basically new mission types, but nothing that ever prevents your progress in the game.

Like, they'll just add new fun things that you can just hop in, do with your friends, check out the new thing, whatever it is, and then hop out or do the do the new raid.

It's almost like an MMO style way of doing it.

But I don't think it ever feels like, oh, I'm playing something that's incomplete.

Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is like seeing that the developers are actually, or developer, because a lot of these do only have one developer, is that they're trying, they're getting something out there.

Even if it's just like little updates here, and they're like something, you're giving something, and that's like something, I just said that like four times.

But that is something that like is very important to say, me, if I'm backing something, I want to know that, hey, you're working on it.

You are putting in effort.

I want to see anything from you.

And sadly, we don't see that all the time.

Getting those Lobo Destorio updates, Sean?

It's been a while, but he's not making it anymore, which I am actually very upset because it looked really cool.

Someone's going to go look at Lobo Destorio.

You know, if this is the resurgent of Lobo Destorio, I'm going to be so happy.

I'm not going to lie.

What do you think I'd use this platform for?

If you can make it happen, Sean, then you might have changed someone's entire life trajectory.

It's like, you know what?

No, Wolfkaosaun paid me 50 bucks to make Lobo Destorio.

I don't think it was that much.

I don't know how much I spent.

It wasn't that much, though.

I can't wait to see Wolfkaosaun appear as a voice in Lobo Destorio because he was the YouTube resurgence of the game.

I did almost pay that for Yooka-Laylee, but speaking of Yooka-Laylee, Moriarty, how do you feel about like early access titles?

Like, do you feel?

Just tell me what you feel.

Tell me what you feel in general.

It's a little bit of both, right?

So, like, there's a game called Zombicide, which I backed, and I wanted this game to exist.

I thought it was a very cool concept.

And, you know, like six years later, it sure is a great game.

You know, it became very popular on Twitch for a little while there.

I don't know, man.

Like, I feel like I want to support art, and I want art to exist.

I want these things to be something that is in the world, right?

And I want for it to be there.

I just wish that there wasn't the chance that I could back something and then die and never experience it.

I could see that.

Because that's a real risk.

I don't know if I've ever thought that in my life, and now I'm going to think that for everything I back.

Yeah, because like, I mean, you could be spending this money and then die, Sean.

You know, at the same time, I don't need it when I die.

You know what?

I'm helping someone create art, even if it's not going to come out.

It's going to create something.

When you think about it, if you pay enough to get your name in the credits, like, that's your legacy.

You live on.

Your legacy is Lobo Destroy, Sean.

Bro, you're going to see JTART9 in the credits of Friday Night Funkin after I die tomorrow.

And you're going to be like that good guy.

There are a lot of games out there that I'm happy exist, you know?

I just, I don't enjoy it when you get something that is abandoned in its unfinished state, right?

And there's certainly a quality concern.

There's a reason why, you know, what, in 2010, when everybody was jumping on Kickstarter and the other indie...

I don't remember the other one.

Indie something?

Indiegogo.

Indiegogo.

Indiegogo.

And then there was also the Fig one started by the scam artist of Tim Schafer.

And like, you've got these sort of...

During that period of time, people were like, oh, hey, we're not...

We're supporting these things because no one else will.

We're supporting them because no one's gonna make these movies.

We're supporting them because no one's gonna make these games.

No one's gonna make these products.

Everybody's, you know, after the hundred billion dollar thing, no one's willing to do the two million dollar thing.

And we're gonna make the two million dollar thing a reality.

And I really liked that idea.

I really liked it, and I wanted to see it done.

And then what happened is there's too many failures.

The fact that you can look up, you know, Kickstarter fails, Kickstarter fraud, Kickstarter scams, and all of these will deliver you a different list of top tens.

Yeah, like one's gonna have Star Citizen.

Oh my god, Star Citizen, the money laundering of money laundering.

What if I spend $30,000 on this ship?

It's insane.

It's absolutely insane.

It's just stock market for that game.

It's insane to me.

It's insane.

It's a billion dollar game, and it's not out yet, and it never will be out.

So, like, there is sort of this...

I'm not opposed to Early Access in and of itself.

I'm a little bit, I don't know, hedonistically greedy about it, and that I wish I had it now.

I want it for me.

But I'm willing to accept that I'm paying forth for an idea that may never fully come out.

Yeah, Early Access is one of those, like, if I know I'm going to buy the game, I'll buy Early Access as long as it comes to the actual title.

But beforehand, I don't really like to do it unless I have a bunch of other friends who are playing.

Like, Valheim, Valheim was Early Access, and a lot of people were playing that.

And people were playing the mess out of that, so I bought it, really enjoy it.

But for me, and I know we've been kind of talking about a lot of the negative side effects to what crowdfunding can do to video games and our wallets.

There's a lot of great stories out there as well, because, again, this is art.

And while you're kind of risking them not putting it out, there are so, so, so many good things that have come from it.

Like, for example, did you know that Divinity 2 was crowdfunded?

Yes.

Not a lot of people know that.

A lot of people think that that game just existed.

And after the first game, they're like, well, we have enough money, let's just go out with it.

Then you have Bloodstained, which I know so many people are into that game.

I played a little bit.

Didn't really play Symphony of the Night, but there are so many good things that I think come from crowdfunding, from sites like Indiegogo, Kickstarter, that it does become like this weird mixing pot of people with good intentions and people that just want attention slash money.

It's a blessing and a curse, you know?

Yeah, well, I mean, there's the case of what was it?

The wonderful 101 remaster where they put that up on Kickstarter because they were like, they said like, oh, we need we need your help.

We need money.

But it was like that was just a campaign like that.

Wasn't they didn't need that money to get that game made.

That was just the use Kickstarter for publicity, which plenty of indie games do use Kickstarter purely for publicity more than the money it gives, which I think is fine.

But for for a game as big as Wonderful 101, it just felt picky.

Was I can't was Hollow Knight also on Kickstarter?

I believe so.

Yes.

But this was the well, yeah, it was Team Cherry's first game.

I don't think that they had any prior like funding.

I think, yeah, I think it was on Kickstarter.

There are a lot of big games that tend to go through there.

The problem for me is not so much that these games are going through early access or Kickstarter or anything.

It's when they're there for so long that it's clear it's not actually anything more than an excuse.

I'll tell you Seven Days to Die, for example.

The game came out in 2013.

It went through 22, maybe 23 versions, 24 versions, something like that.

After a certain point, it's not in early access anymore.

You are just releasing updates and it is now an updated game.

Now, thankfully, Seven Days to Die is, you know, OK.

Like, it's not a broken game.

Is that still in early access?

It's still in early access.

I had no idea.

Well, I think it's finally in 1.0 now.

But like, you know, 10 or 11 years of early access.

Project Zomboid, which I incorrectly were called a zombicide.

Project Zomboid has been out since 2013, you know.

Phasmophobia is still considered an early access game.

Oh, that's right, yeah.

And I'm sorry, that game came out.

Yeah, that game came out.

So there is a problem for me with that.

Like, isn't Lethal Company also early access?

Lethal Company, all of those games, you know, even for a while, PUBG, which, I mean, like, I'm sorry, once you're out on Xbox, and that was why it wasn't on PlayStation, if you recall, is that PUBG wasn't early access game.

So like, there is, you know, a certain amount of this sort of pre-release, early access, beta alpha, Kickstarter period of time when games come out, that there is too much opportunity for quality to be low, for the scope to continuously creep, for funds to be misused, for it to just be an unfinished or abandoned game.

And this is, you know, assuming that the game ever actually comes out.

This is even taking out the concept, which we've been primarily talking about here, I think, of games that maybe don't even come out yet, right?

Where I'm putting in my money, and six years later the game comes out.

Once they actually come out, there's still a significant chance for a problem.

Now, this may be our culture, because we've started to accept day one patches.

We've started to accept the idea of unfinished buggy games coming out and, oh, we'll just fix it later.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a pretty good example of that.

It's a great game.

Honestly, one of the best RPGs you could play.

What a shitty release.

The console version.

I remember I got I got soft locked in that game, and whenever they finally fixed all that stuff, much better.

But yeah, you're right.

It's we are kind of so used to that.

And when it comes to like, you know, these games are Kickstarter, you kind of expect them to not need that day one patch when you've been under development for seven years.

Like you release and then you need, you know, that patches kind of kind of weird.

And another thing that like I've noticed, at least for some games that I put money towards is.

Like you said, it takes like six years to come out.

It kind of feels like it's from the previous generation where they didn't really update anything or kind of like move with the times.

It's just like, hey, here's the vision.

We're going with it for the next six years.

And it is both a blessing and a curse because it's like, well, you stuck to your guns, but at the same time, you didn't add too much.

I don't know.

It's.

Well, it's not like we can ask them to change, right?

Because then you get Duke Nukem Eternal forever, rather Duke Nukem forever, where it's 14 years because we changed our engine 17 times.

I think that.

At a certain point, you just kind of have to lock into something that you're making and just say, we're making it, it will come out.

Because if you keep trying to update it with the times, it will never happen.

It just won't.

Actually, yeah, you're right.

Well, that was an issue with The Last Guardian, where they kept developing that game so long that it went to the next console.

So they had to restart development because they were like, OK, well, it doesn't look like a new current generation game anymore.

Or do you have the technology that has the dog AI or whatever?

It's better now to go back and remake it from the scratch.

Yeah, because The Last Guardian was very much it was a PS2 title on a PlayStation 4, which did not get a lot of people interested early on.

It's one of those games that like even then, when I played it in the beginning, I'm like, I.

Why did I buy this day one?

But day one is really rough, man, right?

And like it gets worse and worse to once we start the OK.

So I'm going to go off in a little bit of a tangent here.

But I would say that that even having a game that sticks to its guns can be bad, right?

They can be very bad.

I'm going to give you an example of that, which is Shenmue 3, which was quite terrible specifically because it was a very good Shenmue game, right?

Like, boy, Shenmue 3 is the most Shenmue game that a Shenmue game could ever be.

And that's why everybody hated it.

It was too Shenmue, right?

To the point where I almost say, like, it feels like that was intentional on some level.

I think on every level it was intentional.

They wanted it to be a Shenmue game.

Yes, and they did not update it and modernize it whatsoever.

So, like, I'm willing to give quite a lot of leeway to developers who are doing this because I understand that there's a lot of problems and a lot of, you know, I've long said it, more games should be canceled.

Right?

I think more games should be canceled.

And Kickstarter is proof of that, that more games should be canceled.

My problem is I don't really like paying for you to discover that you should have canceled this game.

Right?

Right.

That's really the issue for me.

As soon as Kickstarter hits that threshold that the person that started it said, we will make it at X amount of dollars.

As soon as it hits that threshold, you're not getting that money back.

Oh, yeah.

No, it's gone.

And even beforehand, you might not get your money back ever.

If they don't hit the threshold, they don't take the money from you, period.

They don't even get the money to start with.

Yeah, they don't get it.

Well, that's only on Kickstarter.

Because they started putting protections on this stuff.

You can't just do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that makes more sense because I back stuff on other sites as well.

So that makes sense.

Okay.

Yeah.

I never knew that.

So I guess it comes back to that question of why are we willing to pay for these, you know, unfinished games?

And I guess for me, there's like two parts there, right?

Sometimes it's okay.

It comes out okay, right?

Like flip a coin and sometimes it's not a bad decision.

But I think it's also sort of this incessant hype cycle that we live in, right?

Where I am always looking for the newest, right?

I've recently started to vocalize that like my kink is novelty, right?

Like I know that what I really want is just new experiences and new things all the time.

I don't really want to experience as much as I can all the time.

So for me, having a Kickstarter thing is like, oh boy, that's something I could do.

That's really cool.

I'm willing to put my money forth to have this new experience that I'm not going to get anywhere else.

And I'm willing and capable of doing this.

So here you go, here's 20 bucks.

Put my name in the back.

I want to see my name come through.

I want my name in there.

Yeah, exactly.

You know what?

Give me a title to executive producer for an extra 10 bucks.

Yeah, here you go.

So like I understand that and I get it.

And I'm willing to do that.

And I'm willing to kind of get into that.

But I think that it leads to a whole lot of negative behaviors as well that ultimately not only harm me, right?

I'm not only the one losing 30 bucks, which I can afford the 30 bucks, but not everybody can.

But also because of things like overcrowding and saturation in the market to now, how many farm games are there?

How many cozy farm games are there?

There's too many.

There's too many.

Sean, there's too many.

There's at least seven.

If you've watched any Nintendo Direct in the past four years, you will notice how many cozy farm games get put on the Nintendo Direct.

I don't know why it's always Nintendo Direct, but it always has like five of them.

Yeah, people just see like Stardew Valley, and they're like, I need to make that, which don't get me wrong, Stardew Valley is a great game, and I do like a lot of farming sims.

Nobody can hit that for some reason.

I think it's because people are just trying to find like, okay, I want to do exactly what that is, instead of like working on your own, not your own vision, but like, it kind of feels like people sometimes may be chasing that fad, or like, well, they haven't come out to start, which it happens, because like you're not gaining development, you need money to make that happen.

You need money to exist.

And if that's your passion, you got to find ways to make money in any way, shape or form, which sometimes does lead to what if we just like ran after, I don't know, what if we just made a Pokemon game, but like, I don't know, or like a farming sim.

Not to say that like you can't make it your own or that making those games is bad, but you can sometimes tell when a game has soul and when it has none.

And that's what I look forward to whenever I'm trying to find like a game, not trying to find a game, but like when a game crosses, say, my Twitter feed, and I'm like, someone's putting a lot of effort into this.

If I see effort, I am more inclined to give it a shot than something that just kind of looks cool.

If that makes any sense.

There's got to be some soul and some passion.

I will actually, I'll give you an example of something that I've recently backed as an early access product, right?

And that's a game called Sulaco, which our friend, our friend Travis the guy, he did the trailer for it, which was very exciting.

And it's an incredibly cool game.

You know, it's built on on GZ DOOM.

And it's fascinating what they were able to do with this, like, 15 year old game engine.

It's incredibly cool.

And it's got a lot of soul and a lot of whatever.

I don't think you can finish that game, and that kind of sucks, right?

Like, I haven't gotten to the end, but I don't think that I can, right?

Like, I think there is a point where it's just like, okay, the rest is coming soon.

Yeah.

But I'm okay with it because it's so unique and so cool and so interesting that I am totally fine with the fact that I have put my money out there for something that I may never be able to complete or that I may never, you know, live to see the completion of.

Yeah, and I think that's the biggest thing that, like, I want people to get out of today is that, you know, sure, there's a lot of, like, you know, bad stories and, like, man, we got scammed, X, Y, Z.

But, like, if you're a developer or, like, wanting to be a developer or putting your money towards something that you believe in, you are helping art in some...

Hi, Mocha.

I know you agree.

But you are helping someone create something that possibly could change lives, that, you know, you are helping get that art out there.

And that is so important.

And there's something very admirable about that to me.

I mean, I think the toughest part about a Kickstarter or a crowdfunded game in general is that a lot of times people will come to the board with an idea for a game, and then when they get the money, they won't know how to manage it.

And that becomes a lot of the issues that come up in a lot of these situations.

By its nature, a crowdfunding platform is going to be most open to someone who is inexperienced as a developer.

By its very nature, the people who are going to be going there and they're going to be saying, hey, look, me and my wife or whatever, we're going to make this game.

I'm going to do the art and she's going to code and we're going to make this game.

But we don't work for Activision.

We don't work for Sony.

We're just random people in our basement and we're making a game.

And so these sort of lower barriers for entry for the game development can lead to these inexperienced teams that are struggling to deliver and struggling to understand how to handle the management.

And the thing is, this gets much worse once we start adding in things like those stretch goals that I mentioned, which introduce scope creep, right?

Where all of a sudden now you're expected to not only deliver a game, but a game that's fully voice acted with 650 hours of cut scenes and also it comes with its own peripheral.

And you're like, that's a lot more than $56.

I don't know how you're going to do that, but you said you're going to do it.

And you can't not do it now, because now people will always know, hey, they promised that.

Right, you're the liar.

You're the people who lied on your stretch goals.

And so there is this sort of, it's a mix of both, right?

It's both a lack of accountability, where we have no way as consumers to say, hey, you didn't give me what you said you were going to give me, right?

And there's no accountability on behalf of the developers themselves, where like, yeah, I didn't give it to you.

What are you going to do about it?

But also an inexperience where maybe that's not the right thing.

Maybe you shouldn't be giving me a physical, you know, $650 statue for my 37 cent contribution.

Like, maybe that's something you just shouldn't be offering to me.

But why are you know, I'm going to take it.

Of course, you've offered it to me and I expect it now.

And does it mean you're always going?

Again, it comes down to sometimes you don't get it.

And that's that's something that like, okay, I guess I'll just be personal.

Like I'm, you know, making my own game right now.

I'm kind of like looking at how kickstarters work.

And me as a person, when it came to like YouTube and stuff, I would sometimes be like, oh, hey, a video is coming out this Friday.

And then it took me a little extra to get it out.

And that's kind of make me realize like how game development works, too.

Except worse, because I, the game I'm working on, my character had a hard time moving for three days and I couldn't figure out the problem.

But anyway, it's one of those like also had that problem.

Problems creep up out of nowhere.

Like you can have like, okay, I'm playing for this, this, this, and then out of nowhere, some big thing happens and everything's screwed, like right then and there.

It's, I don't know, game development's so cool to me, but oh my gosh, the littlest, the littlest thing.

You know what mine was?

I put a colon instead of a semicolon.

A lot of people don't really respect game development, right?

They really don't.

So, one of the things that, oh man, people love to talk, and again, I'm just going on digressions here, I'm sorry, to all of our listeners out there who are like, but I thought you were going to talk about, no, no, we are going on an adventure.

Video game licensing, okay?

So, whenever a new game comes out and it has a licensed character or something that isn't going to be there, people go, oh, why couldn't you just, you know, keep Marty McBride in Street Fighter 17?

Why can't he just be there?

I mean, he's already there.

Why can't you re-release it?

How come it had to be pulled from stores?

People don't really understand one of the things about game development, which is how many things there are in it, right?

It's not just, like a movie, a single piece of footage with some audio on it.

It's sound effects, it's artwork, it's the gameplay itself, it's the physics engines, it's all these other things that are underpinning the game, that also have licenses.

This is one of the issues that I've got with game preservation, right?

Which is like, if you open up a game and you see 50 different brand names on a screen all at once with Havoc and PhysX and this and that and this and presented by this guy, all of those different people who are involved in this game are rights owners who are going to be giving you a hard time about keeping something in that game.

And so, if you've got something that's licensed or something like that, boy, is it difficult.

And the reason I bring this up is to say that making a video game is very multi-discipline, right?

It's not just going in there and coding a physical game, it's going in there and coding a physical game.

And so, you need a physics engine, because that physics engine is one of 50 parts.

You also need the sound effects and the music and the voice lines, and you also need the artwork.

And boy, you need the animation if you've got artwork.

And that means that you need whatever, hitboxes, right?

Everything has to be done by somebody, which is why when you look at a movie, it can have three names at the end.

It can have the actor, a director, and a camera guy, right?

And you can be like, oh, and the director edited everything.

That's pretty cool.

Making a game, you look at a AAA game, there's like 5,000 names.

Yeah, and half the time, there's people that are missing off of that because they got fired.

They left before the end of production.

Or they got let go, yeah.

Or like they're a freelance worker, so they don't get any recognition in that.

There's just a lot of people who are making these games.

And they're making it for a decade.

It is a miracle that any game comes out at all.

It is actually a miracle.

So to say, oh, look at, you know, the early access Kickstarter game of something.

Yeah, I understand that it takes a whole lot.

And you're now asking these same people to potentially manage hundreds of thousands of dollars of backer monies and rewards and actually getting it out on time.

And then they've got pressure to release, which, you know, if you release it too early, that game is broken and you've now cyberpunked without, you know, having said a project red as the backer.

And you're done.

Right.

You're done.

And that's why it's so important to like, you know, reach out to community and like try to, you know, give things a look forward to, which we at Crub official, underscore official on Twitter, I mean, Twitch.

Wow.

Probably Twitter too.

I'm stupid.

But we have our pick.

Oh, go ahead.

No, no, no.

It's just Crub official everywhere but Twitch.

Yeah, except for Twitch.

Yeah, that's why I was like, I realized that as I was saying it, but we have our Patreon where we...

I realize that we haven't done it yet.

Yeah, you can back us on Patreon.

Yes, which we actually just released a side content thing today.

It is a tier list between me and Brody.

Brody, do you want to talk about it real quick?

Oh, that went up today.

So Sean blindsided me with quite a topic.

It was what happens to 3D platforming mascots when they work after or when they've worked at Hot Topic.

Yes, because yes.

And we're going to be doing much more things like that, such as Pokemon Cast or I almost said Pokecast, but that's what it's called.

Podcastemon.

Podcastemon.

I know, I realize that, like as I was saying, my AD issue is hitting hard.

We're going to have podcastemon.

We have me and Chris going through Mikoto Shinkai's filmography.

We have all pre and post shows for each and every episode that you're listening to right now.

Mario Party, anything you could want.

Nico Talking Music with the Boys.

It's all there.

You can get access to it.

I think, M, it's five bucks a month?

It is five dollars a month.

It is indeed five dollars a month.

That I knew.

Ten dollars if you want all of the audio stuff.

I think people have been making this mistake every time we plug in.

I think it's video.

It is ten dollars if you want all the audio stuff.

Ten dollars for all the audio, five for all the video.

Yes, yes, yes.

So, as you can tell, that was all ad-libbed by me because ADHD started hitting and I had like 30 things to remember.

But see, that kind of shows how much we have because I had to remember so much.

And there's a lot that I didn't even mention.

It also goes right into another talk about the same thing, which is the pros of this, right?

Which allows for sort of flexibility, the ability with crowdfunding to give developers more creative control, right?

More flexibility over their projects.

And that's because when you look at it, right, are you going to trust EA to put out a new revolutionary game?

Really, right?

Like, are you looking at EA going, oh boy, you're just creating all of the newest, smartest, coolest things?

Or are you looking at them going, wow, that sure is another FIFA game.

It just doesn't have FIFA as the name anymore.

Now it's FC.

Don't worry, I've bought Madden the past four years.

There's no point to buy a Madden, right?

Like, once every ten years and you'll get the same game.

Although they do have NCAA football coming out this year, and it's also...

That actually is interesting, yeah.

Like, NCAA football is interesting because that game hasn't been seen since 2014.

And they're actually doing stuff.

2013, right?

Yep.

It was 2013, TK14.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, like, that's a decade of that game not being out.

But regardless!

We're not talking about EA games.

We're saying that EA doesn't make...

They just make slop, and that's fine, right?

The pros of Kickstarter is that you're paying for someone's vision.

You're not paying for what will make a corporate conglomerate the most money.

You're paying for what this guy thought would be a cool thing to do.

And sometimes a lot of game developers that fall out of favor with other companies, like...

Let's just say...

I know that the guy who made Parappa the Rapper put up a Kickstarter that didn't actually get the money to go.

And you get things like that where you're just like, hey, this developer who's been out of the game for 10, 15 years wants to make a game.

Do you want to pay money to kickstart that and make it become a real thing?

And that's how you get things like Bloodstained, because the guy who made Symphony of the Night wasn't working on Castlevania anymore, but he wanted to make another Symphony of the Night.

Yes.

So you're able to have these sort of niche games and genres and allow those niche games and genres to find an audience and secure funding, which is very cool.

And it sort of caters to these underserved markets, right?

Because there's a certain number of people out there, and that number is small, who are going to be interested in yet another Tex Murphy game, right?

One of those people is me, and I am willing to pay the money to get that thing.

And if I'm willing to pay a premium to receive it, then hey, I get that game and it gets made, and that's incredible.

And that's very cool, right?

And on top of it, and this is something that maybe we're not the perfect cast to talk about, but it does also allow for the opportunity for diverse sort of viewpoints to come through that would not normally come through the traditional gaming sort of machine, right?

There's a certain type of game that is never going to be made, right?

It's just never going to be promoted by even a Microsoft.

It's never going to be made by an Activision.

It's never going to come out by a Sony.

But you can go and you can play these games and they're going to cost you $5 or $10.

And they're not going to be great.

They're going to be games that are that experience.

And they're going to sell to a thousand people, right?

And without sort of this monetization policy or program platform, you may not see those because not everybody can take off, you know, a year to go and make their dream project game.

It's very cool that you've got that.

You've got this sort of improved communication, hypothetically, where, you know, you can speak with the developers and the developers can speak with the players and you can put out, you know, different versions of the game.

I know that when I mentioned Sclaco, right, they put out a demo six, eight, ten months ago or whatever.

And then they were like, here's what we're thinking.

Tell us what's wrong with it.

System Shock, the remake from Nightdive, famously they put out a demo and then they watched people's YouTube video.

I made a YouTube video about it.

Nightdive watched it.

They completely changed the game.

They made it better in every single way.

So that kind of communication is something that you don't really see in the traditional video game development cycle, right?

Yeah, we just don't get that.

You don't like you rarely see like a AAA company do that.

Like, for example, like the only one I can think of immediately was Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, where they realized that the community really wants couch co-op.

And they added it last minute.

Like, okay, well, you can do it.

You can do slit screen here.

And that was it.

That is like the most recent and one of the very few times that like a AAA company would do that.

Whereas like single developers, like they take a lot of things that you say like too hard.

And they are willing to, you know, work on that stuff where the AAA games like, well, it sucks for you anyway.

We're going to give this game to other people.

I think we even got a much more recent version of what you're talking about, Sean, just today as of the day of recording.

And it was the Marvel vs.

Capcom collection coming out.

How long have people been begging for those games?

Oh, yeah.

Even just purchasable.

People just wanted to buy the game.

They didn't want anything changed about the game.

They just wanted to be able to get it.

And it was again, that also goes back to the conversation we were having earlier of just all those licenses on a game makes it basically a miracle for it to exist.

Marvel vs.

Capcom is that Marvel vs.

Capcom is, oh, my God, how did Capcom manage to get Marvel to agree to putting out all these things again, because it existed for like two years and like 2008, 2009, and then never again.

Right.

And also, like we were saying early in the pre show, like I brought up the joke, like I wonder like how much, you know, Sony's like, well, I'm not gonna let Xbox do this.

But then again, that like that was a joke, but that also comes down to licensing.

Like there are situations where a company's like, you know what, you're gonna have to spend a little extra money to make that happen.

Blah, blah, blah.

You're 100% right with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just, it is crazy.

But like, yeah, the thing about crowdfunding too, for me, at least personally, and this is the game that made me think a lot about this topic in general, it was multiverses.

And that game wasn't crowdfunded in the sense that it was on a Kickstarter, and they were raising money that way.

They released a beta to like, they released an alpha that you couldn't show to anybody.

It was like behind closed doors.

Hey, tell us what you think about the game.

What do you like about it?

And then they released the beta, and it was anybody that had access to the alpha immediately gets into the beta.

But if you want to get into the beta, you got to pay us 40 bucks.

And then that beta ran for almost a year.

And then they said, OK, thank you for all your feedback.

It's going now.

You can't play it anymore.

I was like, remember, I remember that.

Whoa, like you made people pay for this now.

So at what point is that not like just paying for a full game?

At what point is this?

You just paid to be a Kickstarter backer, but you weren't actually a Kickstarter backer.

Yeah, you were pretty much paid to be like a quality assurance person.

You pretty much just paid to make sure that worked.

And that's one of the biggest fears, too, that I remember because they took it off.

And I remember people really questioning whether that game was actually ever going to come out.

I remember that being a fear for a lot of people.

Is this ever going to exist or is it just that was that?

Because I think the player count fell off of a cliff.

Because when Merlin Versus first came out, it was like 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, which is the most for any fighting game ever.

And that's wild.

Then it just like fell off a cliff.

Like the hype died out.

It was gone.

And then they said, okay, we're taking the game down now.

And people were like questioning, is that like, okay, are you going to go and release it at 1.0?

Or are you taking it down because you don't want people that you don't want shareholders to see that nobody's playing this game that you're spending a ton of money on?

Yeah, gosh.

And you talk about stuff like that happening, and we talk about broken promises, whether it's stretch goals or just the Kickstarters themselves not ever releasing.

One thing that I'm very interested to see, because it's a promise that has been made and it hasn't been made good on yet because it hasn't the criteria hasn't we haven't reached it.

But back when Hollow Knight was a Kickstarter, because I remember because back when it was being a Kickstarter, they had these free DLCs that were planned as like a stretch goal.

And then they had a big paid DLC expansion that was going to be, oh, you play this big DLC starring Hornet from the main game, but you play as her now in the expansion and it's going to be this big DLC.

You got to pay a little more, but if you if you pay on Kickstarter, you'll get it for free.

And when they started developing that, obviously the scope ballooned to, oh, this is Hollow Knight 2 now.

This is a sequel.

It's going to be a new game.

And what I've heard is that they're going to honor that original.

Like if you paid whatever the threshold was to get Silksong as a DLC for free, you're going to get the game as well.

Well, I'm very curious to see if they make good on that.

That would be the second company to do that, because Yacht Club did that with Shovel Knight, and that hit every stretch goal in the book.

And they just then spent five years making every single one, every single stretch goal that they said that they were going to do, and then did more.

And Yacht Club is the shining example of how to do a Kickstarter, right?

But that was also like right time, right place, right people, because those were all, I think, way forward.

They were all way forward devs and everybody that left way forward, and they just said, we're going to make our own game, and Kickstarter let them do that.

And that's like the, look how amazing Kickstarter can be kind of example.

Yeah.

And then you look at something like a Mighty No.

9 and just kind of question where everything went wrong.

Which I will say, though, that they said, hey, we're going to make this game, and they made the game.

And like for me, for example, like I know, like, you know, people make jokes about the whole Yooka-Laylee being a Nintendo 64 game, you know, because it is, but like I, you know, I really appreciate that they were like, you know, we are going to make Banjo-Tooie.

We're making Banjo-Tooie, dang it.

We're going to make, you know, XYZ.

We're going to do what we want to do.

And sure, it didn't really connect with everybody as, you know, we all wanted it to, but it was one of those things that like the developers had a vision and they just went for it.

And, you know, I respect the mess out of that.

Even if it doesn't always like connect with people.

I think it's awesome to see while, you know, the Kickstarter made so much money.

I think it was at the time the highest raised Kickstarter or something like that.

Yeah, Yooka-Laylee was.

Yeah.

And then we go from from at the same time, it still wasn't a lot of money to make a game of that scope on necessarily.

Not impossible to do.

Obviously, they did it.

But like a lot of that game shortcomings, I could see being like, OK, well, we got our Kickstarter money, but that's all we have.

So we got to make this game with this.

And what I loved to see that turn into was while the reception to the game itself was perhaps lukewarm, it sold and it sold enough for them to make impossible layer and them to go, OK, with an actual budget, we can make a good ass game.

Yeah.

And then they started, you know, also helping publish other games like Demon Turf, for example, which is so many good things about that.

And so it's like these little things that you can like fund can help so many other people, because I don't think I wonder like where Demon Turf would be if Yooka-Laylee didn't get the support it got, you know?

That's not to say it wouldn't come out, but like, I mean, Playtonic really helped a lot with that.

And it's one of those like really cool things to see like the smallest contribution, even like for like a retweet.

Super helpful.

These things that like we think are just so miniscule, seeing by the right person, you can help art exist in any way, shape or form.

And it's really cool.

It's really interesting to me.

And going into the idea of being able to sort of talk to the developers as they make these things and give them feedback, Playtonic actually just opened up their public Discord.

They just made a public Discord, an official one, and they opened it up.

And it's funny because I see a bunch of people floating there.

I went in to have a Demon Turf thread and I went in there and I'm the only one.

I think that is posted in there besides the guy who made Demon Turf.

I was like, are you still the only person that has posted in there?

I think one other guy did that was like, yo, what that guy said.

That's how I feel.

Just pointed at him.

Yeah.

You said, yo, same.

Ultimately, we should be supporting art.

I think it sounds like.

Yeah, 100%.

Be wary.

Kickstarters are not guaranteed, but support art.

Yeah, support art.

We do have a Patreon question of the week.

This one comes from The Crazy Even.

What's a big game or small game, if you can think any, that you wanted to experience, not necessarily for the first time, but at the time of its release?

I've been thinking about this.

I think that the game that I would say is The Orange Box, specifically to play Portal, because, boy, Portal is one of the most spoiled games ever.

Everybody knows everything about Portal.

Everybody knows that the cake is a lie.

Everybody knows Still Alive, right?

Like, it is one of these games that has sort of entered the zeitgeist to the point where you can't have an original, I guess, spoiled experience anymore.

I just think it would be very neat to be able to go through and play The Orange Box and play Half-Life 2 and experience the bad Team Fortress 2 and sort of all these things that nobody really can experience fresh today.

What about you guys?

Oh man, I could tell you mine right off the bat.

It's Melee, Super Smash Brothers Melee.

That's a game that I...

I mean, so the way that Melee has evolved over the past 20, 25 years, you can't get base Melee anymore.

Once you play Melee the way that it's played nowadays, it's a completely different game than what was originally intended when the developers made that game.

So I would love to go back in time and play that game, but just as a normal playthrough of Melee, instead of knowing all the techniques, knowing wave dashing, L canceling, pivoting, all that kind of stuff.

I think that...

It would be like going and playing Destiny 2 today, right?

Like actually being able to play any of the first 75% of that game.

Missing now.

Right.

Because now Melee is 10 characters, the roster is 26.

So like, you quit, you...

Like if you're picking anybody other than the top 10 to 12 characters, you're just, you're not playing Melee.

So being able to play that game again without everything in the back of my head.

And like playing it back in the day, when there are no preconceived notions.

Because when I used to play that game all the time in like high school, senior year of high school, we had like a lounge.

And someone brought Melee.

And like, everyone was like, I'm going to pick Marth and Jigglypuff, because I just hear those are two good characters.

And I'm like, I'm going to play Link.

And I would get my ass beat a lot, but I would also just have fun.

Have fun.

Yeah.

Like for me, like when Melee came out, it was strictly just like playing with friends, hanging out.

I never did any kind of Melee game play like competitively.

I never never interested me.

Brawl was the only time I ever was like, you know, I'll try this competitive Melee.

Never.

So like I, I'm kind of happy that like I have that because I don't know how I'd feel about trying to play Melee competitively.

But for my game, it immediately came to mind.

And I thought of like a couple other things like Sly Cooper and whatnot.

But for me, it would be Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, because I recently played it in the past like couple years, and I can see why so many people liked it.

And I want to know how it would have been to experience it on the Dreamcast around when it came out.

I want to see what other people saw back then, because it was critically praised.

So I look at that game, and I'm like, I wonder how much I would have loved that game, and if that would have made me a Sonic fan throughout my entire teenage life.

Would I have been so hyped to walk around with a Shadow of the Hedgehog shirt?

I don't know.

But I feel like you'd be hyped to walk around with it today.

Yeah, well, your view of it, having played it in a modern setting, is it's a product of its time.

And you can put yourself in that mindset as much as you want to, but you want to experience it in the time it was a product of.

Yes, and I want to experience it in that mindset as that young...

I don't even remember what year it came out, but as that young kid, I want to experience it as that young kid and just see what happens afterwards.

Am I going to enjoy the rest of the Sonic games?

Am I going to...

Oh, gosh, am I going to...

No, no, I just sort of think...

It would be a potent mix.

Would you be a Sonic fan?

Because imagine Rawr XD plus Sonic fan.

That's too much in one, I think.

Yeah, no, I was an InvaderZim fan.

But what were you saying, Justin?

I was saying, would you have been a Sonic fan?

I mean, like...

I don't...

probably?

Maybe?

I don't know.

It's one of those, like...

He's already done spiky blue hair.

Of course he would.

That's true, actually.

You know what?

He did do the Sonic cosplay in real life.

Shawnic.

Shawnic.

That would be his YouTube name instead of Wolfkaosaun.

Yes, Shawnic.

youtube.com/shawnic.

That should have been you.

Shawnic the Wolf.

Yep, Shawnic the Wolf.

There we go.

That's it.

I've thought a lot about what my answer would be.

I'm actually very surprised.

All of you picked entirely single player offline games, which is not how I went in thinking of it, because I was thinking like, I could say the any of the Souls games that I wasn't there for on day one, because those are, I think, to really engage with the strand type elements.

You got to be there day one and really get in the zeitgeist, talk to people, theorize, not know what's going on in the game, which is what I love so much about Bloodborne, when that was the first one that I picked up, and I picked it up around launch, and that was awesome.

But I think my answer is actually Rainbow Six Siege.

And that is a game I have been playing since Alpha.

Like, I've been playing that game since the Alpha, day one when it came out, you know, like years, I played it for years and years and years, you know, I fall off for a while and I come back, fall off, come back, but I would play that, I would go back and play that at day one, because the way that that game has evolved is not bad.

I don't dislike the way that it's evolved.

I think it's evolved to be a very healthy game because of what they've done, but they changed a lot of the maps that I liked from the beginning.

A lot of the new characters that they've added have completely overshadowed, like, the first set of characters that were in that game.

And I liked those, I was sold on that game from the Alpha going in and saying, okay, here's the guy that gets rid of grenades, and here's the guy that can blow up the doors, and here's the guy that can sneak and find all the intel.

And here's the map, the house, house specifically from Rainbow Six Siege, I think is my favorite multiplayer map of all time.

And they redesigned it and made it bigger so that it was more fair to the defending team, because it was so skewed in favor of the attackers.

But it made it so fun.

It was such a fun map.

I was going to say that that sounds such a fun imbalance that it would have been ridiculous to do.

And sure, it would have led you to be angry a couple of times, but it would have been so fun to be on the opposite side sometimes, just to be like, now it's my turn.

Yeah, I don't think these things need to be balanced all the time.

I think it's fun to be like, okay, you're on the attacking team, you're going to have an easier time just going and blast them.

Or it's fun to be like, okay, you're on the defending team, you're at a disadvantage on this map.

So when you do win, it feels amazing.

Yeah, and I think that also kind of like ties into what Justin was saying early with like melee is that like, you know, the competitiveness kind of skewed a lot of what the game was where now it's like, well, you have to make sure everything's balanced.

And now if you're not doing this, it's not XYZ.

And I think we do kind of miss that with a lot of games nowadays is you don't really have like that imbalance.

Everything needs to be like an even playing field for everybody.

No, I just want to be able to like go beat up like my friend online and not in real life, but I want to go beat up my friend online and then like have them try to beat me up like the next, you know, next stage, even though I'm going to get off of Discord and not tell them.

You know, I don't know.

I'm taking the win and I'm running.

Yeah.

Got to end on a high.

Got to end on a high.

Guys, time for me to head out.

I got work in the morning.

Sean, it's two o'clock.

Yeah, I know.

Very good.

So if you enjoyed those answers and want to ask your own question, don't forget to go to patreon.com/crub.

You can ask us as many questions as you like.

Yes.

We always need more.

Please add more.

Yeah, it can be anything.

You can literally ask me, you know, what color is my favorite pair of socks?

So Justin, if you had to summarize, what would you say the reason why we keep buying these unfinished games is?

I would.

I would.

Do you want me to hit the bumper when I start talking?

Because I have a one word answer.

Okay, Brody, hit me that one word answer.