[00:00] Vanessa Calderon: Nerf.ai, the week gaming broke.
[00:03] Vanessa Calderon: I am Vanessa Calderone.
[00:05] Vanessa Calderon: And if you thought your week was stressful, at least you didn't launch a major hero shooter
[00:10] Vanessa Calderon: and lose your job 16 days later.
[00:13] Vanessa Calderon: The industry is in a strange place right now where the highs are incredibly high, but
[00:18] Vanessa Calderon: the floor seems to be falling out from under everyone else.
[00:21] Vanessa Calderon: We have a packed show today looking at some absolute chaos in the development world.
[00:26] Marcus Shaw: And I'm Marcus Shaw.
[00:27] Marcus Shaw: It is a heavy one this week, no doubt about it.
[00:31] Marcus Shaw: But we have some massive reveals to balance out the studio drama.
[00:35] Marcus Shaw: From Keanu Reeves making a big comeback in gaming
[00:39] Marcus Shaw: to massive birdmen in Korea, there is plenty to talk about.
[00:43] Marcus Shaw: You are listening to Nerf.ai,
[00:46] Marcus Shaw: the place where we break down what is happening
[00:48] Marcus Shaw: at the intersection of tech and play.
[00:51] Vanessa Calderon: Um, Marcus, we have to start with the absolute car crash that is high guard.
[00:57] Vanessa Calderon: Wildlight Entertainment dropped this game on January 26th after a huge spot at the Game Awards.
[01:04] Vanessa Calderon: And now, just over two weeks later, the lights are basically being turned off.
[01:09] Vanessa Calderon: Most of the staff? Gone. Just like that. Is this...
[01:14] Vanessa Calderon: a new record for the live service to Ghost Town Pipeline?
[01:17] Marcus Shaw: It is definitely up there, Vanessa. Reports from LinkedIn posts by former staff,
[01:23] Marcus Shaw: like senior level designer Alex Griner, confirm that most of the team was laid off this week.
[01:29] Marcus Shaw: Wildlife says they're keeping a core group to support the game, but the math isn't mathin.
[01:35] Marcus Shaw: They went from a peak of nearly 100,000 players on Steam at launch to just over 2,400 concurrence this week.
[01:44] Vanessa Calderon: Right. That is a 97% drop-off in under 20 days.
[01:49] Vanessa Calderon: They tried to pivot to a 5v5 mode permanently last week, but I guess it was too little too late.
[01:55] Vanessa Calderon: It is just...
[01:55] Vanessa Calderon: It's sickening for the devs who put years into this, only to be shown the door before they could even finish the first patch.
[02:03] Vanessa Calderon: These are ex-respawn people, industry vets, who know how to build a world.
[02:08] Marcus Shaw: It feels like the market for hero shooters is just completely saturated.
[02:14] Marcus Shaw: If you aren't Overwatch or Valorant, you are fighting for scraps.
[02:18] Marcus Shaw: And when you look at the investment required for a game like High Guard, scraps just don't pay the bills.
[02:24] Marcus Shaw: The tragedy here is that the game actually had some solid movement mechanics.
[02:29] Marcus Shaw: But the player base just moved on to the next shiny thing in a heartbeat.
[02:33] Vanessa Calderon: And they aren't the only ones feeling the squeeze.
[02:37] Vanessa Calderon: Riot Games also cut about 80 people from the team working on their upcoming fighting game,
[02:42] Vanessa Calderon: which is still in development.
[02:44] Vanessa Calderon: It feels like the industry is in a massive correction phase,
[02:48] Vanessa Calderon: and the employees are the ones paying the price for these high-stakes gambles by management.
[02:53] Vanessa Calderon: It is a recurring theme this year, and it is getting harder to ignore.
[02:58] Marcus Shaw: Wild.
[02:58] Marcus Shaw: It's the human cost that really gets to you.
[03:01] Marcus Shaw: We see these numbers like 80 people or 100 people, but those are careers and lives disrupted.
[03:06] Marcus Shaw: For Riot, it's particularly surprising because they generally have a reputation for stability.
[03:11] Marcus Shaw: But even the giants are looking at their bottom lines and realizing they can't sustain the bloat from the pandemic-era hiring spree.
[03:18] Vanessa Calderon: Speaking of those giants, which leads us to the streets of Paris.
[03:22] Vanessa Calderon: Yes.
[03:22] Vanessa Calderon: Over 1,200 Ubisoft workers just wrapped up a three-day strike today.
[03:28] Vanessa Calderon: They are protesting the return-to-office mandate five days a week, no excuses,
[03:33] Vanessa Calderon: and the fact that they haven't seen meaningful pay raises in years.
[03:37] Vanessa Calderon: Honestly, given the studio closures and game cancellations Ubisoft announced recently,
[03:43] Vanessa Calderon: the staff is basically saying, enough is enough.
[03:46] Marcus Shaw: The Salivare Informatic Union rep, Mark Rushley, was pretty blunt,
[03:50] Marcus Shaw: saying CEO Eves Guillemot doesn't seem to understand his own employees.
[03:55] Marcus Shaw: When you have teams that are already understaffed and underpaid,
[03:58] Marcus Shaw: forcing them back into a five-day commute is a bold move.
[04:01] Marcus Shaw: and definitely not the good kind of bolt.
[04:04] Marcus Shaw: It has sparked a huge conversation about what work-life balance even means in modern game dev.
[04:09] Vanessa Calderon: Um, Marcus, let's pivot to something that doesn't make us want to scream into a pillow.
[04:14] Vanessa Calderon: Let's talk about the Baba Yaga.
[04:16] Vanessa Calderon: Sabre Interactive just announced a single-player AAA John Wick game.
[04:22] Vanessa Calderon: And yes, Keanu Reeves is actually involved.
[04:24] Vanessa Calderon: He is reprising the look and the voice.
[04:26] Vanessa Calderon: My inner Gen X is thriving, just thinking about it.
[04:29] Vanessa Calderon: We have been waiting for a proper action game for this franchise for a long time.
[04:34] Marcus Shaw: It is a huge win for Saber.
[04:36] Marcus Shaw: They are promising a gun-food combat system that captures the film's choreography.
[04:41] Marcus Shaw: It is set years before the Impossible Task from the movie,
[04:43] Marcus Shaw: so we're getting some prequel lore with the high table.
[04:46] Marcus Shaw: No release date yet, but single-player action on PS5 and Xbox Series X sounds like exactly what we need right now after all this live service fatigue.
[04:55] Vanessa Calderon: For real, if I can't clear a room with a pencil, I am refunding it.
[04:59] Vanessa Calderon: Sabre has a lot of momentum right now, especially after the success of Space Marine 2.
[05:05] Vanessa Calderon: They've shown they can handle massive scale and intense action.
[05:08] Vanessa Calderon: Taking that expertise and applying it to a tight, focused John Wick experience
[05:13] Vanessa Calderon: could be the perfect use of their tech.
[05:15] Vanessa Calderon: I just hope the narrative holds up to the action.
[05:17] Marcus Shaw: The involvement of Keanu is what really seals the deal for me.
[05:21] Marcus Shaw: Often these licensed games use a look-alike or a sound-alike,
[05:24] Marcus Shaw: But having the man himself means they are taking the source material seriously.
[05:29] Marcus Shaw: It feels like we are entering a new era of licensed games that aren't just cheap cash-ins,
[05:34] Marcus Shaw: but legitimate extensions of the cinematic universes they're based on.
[05:38] Vanessa Calderon: Exactly. Speaking of high-concept action,
[05:42] Vanessa Calderon: Krafton finally pulled the curtain back on Project Windless this week too.
[05:47] Vanessa Calderon: This is something that has been in the rumor mill for ages, and seeing actual details is refreshing.
[05:52] Vanessa Calderon: It is an open-world action RPG based on the Korean novel The Bird That Drinks Tears.
[05:58] Vanessa Calderon: You play as the Hero King, a recon, which is basically a giant, terrifying birdman with twin blades.
[06:05] Marcus Shaw: Wait, what? A birdman king leading a thousand-man army?
[06:10] Marcus Shaw: Vanessa, that is the most video game sentence you've said all year. I love it.
[06:14] Marcus Shaw: The big technical hook is their mass technology, which allows thousands of soldiers to clash in real time.
[06:21] Marcus Shaw: We have seen games try this before, but usually with a lot of shortcuts.
[06:25] Marcus Shaw: Krafton is claiming this is all simulated in real time on the hardware.
[06:29] Vanessa Calderon: It's built on Unreal Engine 5, so you know it is going to melt some GPUs.
[06:34] Vanessa Calderon: The art style they showed off is stunning.
[06:36] Vanessa Calderon: It has this very distinct East Asian fantasy aesthetic that feels different from the usual Western tropes we see in RPGs.
[06:43] Vanessa Calderon: The world building in the original novels is incredibly deep, often referred to as the
[06:47] Vanessa Calderon: Witcher of Korea, so the potential for a massive franchise is definitely there.
[06:52] Marcus Shaw: Yep.
[06:53] Marcus Shaw: It is a single-player experience with no live service elements, which, given our first story,
[06:59] Marcus Shaw: might be the smartest move crafting could make.
[07:01] Marcus Shaw: They are leaning into the narrative and the single-player immersion.
[07:05] Marcus Shaw: It's bold to take a niche novel and try to turn it into a global AAA blockbuster, but
[07:10] Marcus Shaw: if they pull off those massive battles,
[07:12] Marcus Shaw: People will show up just for the spectacle.
[07:14] Vanessa Calderon: I mean, I think players are hungry for those big, polished, single-player adventures.
[07:20] Vanessa Calderon: We saw it with Black Myth Wukong, where a unique cultural perspective combined with top-tier visuals just exploded in popularity.
[07:29] Vanessa Calderon: Project Winless seems to be aiming for that same lightning in a bottle.
[07:33] Vanessa Calderon: If you want more updates on this and other stories, you can check out nerfed.neurlnewscast.com for the full breakdown.
[07:39] Marcus Shaw: No way.
[07:41] Marcus Shaw: If they actually managed to get thousands of NPCs on screen
[07:44] Marcus Shaw: without the frame rate dropping the single digits,
[07:47] Marcus Shaw: that would be a technical marvel.
[07:49] Marcus Shaw: I'm cautiously optimistic,
[07:51] Marcus Shaw: but we've been burned by mass tech promises before.
[07:54] Marcus Shaw: Still, seeing more diverse stories from different cultures
[07:57] Marcus Shaw: getting the big budget treatment
[07:59] Marcus Shaw: is something we should all be rooting for in this industry.
[08:02] Vanessa Calderon: Seriously, just give us a finished game
[08:05] Vanessa Calderon: and let us play it. What a concept.
[08:08] Vanessa Calderon: That is the wrap for this week's Chaos on Nerf.ai.
[08:12] Vanessa Calderon: From strikes in Paris to bird kings in Korea, we are covering it all.
[08:18] Vanessa Calderon: It has been a wild ride, and we really appreciate you spending your time with us.
[08:22] Vanessa Calderon: The gaming world moves fast, but we'll be here to help you make sense of it.
[08:27] Marcus Shaw: Thanks for hanging with us. I'm Marcus Shaw.
[08:29] Marcus Shaw: Keep an eye on those Steam charts, and maybe hug a game developer if you know one.
[08:34] Marcus Shaw: It sounds like they could use it this week.
[08:36] Marcus Shaw: We will keep tracking the high-guard situation and see if that core group can actually keep the game afloat,
[08:43] Marcus Shaw: or if it's truly the end of the road.
[08:46] Vanessa Calderon: And I'm Vanessa Calderone.
[08:48] Vanessa Calderon: We'll see you next week on nerfed.ai.
[08:51] Vanessa Calderon: Stay cool, stay gaming.
[08:53] Vanessa Calderon: Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed.
[08:57] Vanessa Calderon: View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com.