GrubbSnax 21: Bobby Kotick, Game Awards Nominations, and Returning the Flag

Yeah, it's the internet. You're busy. Let's do this. I'm Jeff
Grub I write for GamesBeat dot com. This is grub Snacks, And yeah,
it's been. It's been. It's been a couple of weeks. For
me, it's been. I've gone from having one sick kid to having another
sick kid, and now the first one is sick again, and now they're
both sick at the same time. I think it's it's a mess over here.
So I've been like scrambling to kind of keep up with things while also
trying to keep them healthy and happy. They're doing better, doing much better.
Actually, they're both laying over there on the couch. It barely qualifies
as a couch. I got it from like Target to put it into my
office, and they like sitting on it for some reason. But they're doing
good. They're not the ones not at school today though. That's we got.
We got both kids. We'll see how this is gonna go. I'm
I'm confident. I know you don't believe in me, but I believe in
me, and I think we're gonna be able to pull this off. So
grub Snacks, what do we do here? We talk about video games.
We talked about what's happening we you know, we analyze stuff. I don't
know. It's interactive show where you all ask some questions that you're curious about,
and I try to riff on those. That usually leads to more questions,
and we try to have a good time here just all thinking about video
games. It's kind of kind of the whole show to ask questions. There's
an ask a question button at the top of the page on GiantBomb dot com
something that I would appreciate if you would send into questions. Well, I
feel like we're on a hot streak of getting really great questions from the audience
for the last several weeks. I want to keep that up. First though,
I got a few things I do want to talk about, just a
few bullet points, I guess before I get into the show proper, we
could talk about what's happening Next week is Next Thursday is American Thanksgiving. My
favorite holiday. Actually, I grew up in Michigan, and so I associate
it with Lions football and family gatherings and all that stuff. And uh and
then Donkey Kong Country. I talked about that before. So yeah, it's
my favorite holiday. I'll be making food all day, and then it's it's
not quite the same when I'm the one making food all day because I like
it. My wife's like, yeah, whatever, and I'm like, well,
I don't want to not have that food, so I take responsibility for
it, but I still like it quite a lot. That means I will
not be doing a grub snaxt though on Thursday. The plan right now is
to maybe do it earlier in the week. We'll see if they have time
in the slot. I'ma waiting for Backlard to figure that out, but you
know, we'll let you know when we know. Does that work. Maybe
by the end of the show, maybe Backlard will hop into chat and just
say this is when it's happening, and that's fine. Okay, I gotta
I got other stuff happening here though, so let's h let's get into it.
Yeah, the first thing I do want to talk about, let's just
let's just talk about Activision and Bobby Cottick. There was a new report this
past week of from The Wall Street Journal talking about what did he know and
when did you know it? In regards to sexual allega, sexual assault allegations,
and sexual harassment allegations against some employee, some high high ranking employees at
Activision Developers. The key thing here here is, and really I think if
you frame this as this is exactly what Jay Brack was accused of and and
he had to step down from Blizzard, being the head of Blizzard under Bobby
Cottick, is that Bobby Cottick knew that someone Dan Bunting, one of the
key people in charge of Trey Ark, I believe U was accused of sexual
harassment and credibly, and he stepped in to stop HR from from firing him.
Basically, Bobby Cottick stepped in personally, so he's protecting abusers and U.
And then that go then they also that story also goes into a story
about him threatening to kill his assistant, you know, about a more a
little bit more than a decade ago. He he's not come out to deny
any of these things, either of those specific things. He just thinks that
the Wall Street Journal is portraying them unfairly. And we know this because he
put out a bunch of statements. I say a bunch of and I say
he did because there's one from Activision and there's one video of him speaking to
employees. The one from Activision feels very much written by Bobby Cottock and and
he had definitely had a say in how that was written. And U you
know, we also know that he does that because he also wrote that fran
townsend email that first got Activision in trouble when these when the reports of the
investigation from the Fairer Employment and Housing Division or whatever Department of Fair Employment and
Housing in California, when they announced their investigation, there was a fiery email
from fran Towns and saying how this is a witch hunt or whatever and all
these things. Turns out he drafted that email and then had her send it
out under her name. And then, you know, the final piece of
the thing, the most recent piece of the puzzle here is we found out
more about what happened in Jin O'Neill, who was the new cohead of Blizzard
alongside Mikey Barra after jal and Brack stepped down. You know, it was
going to be this man and this woman in charge of Blizzard, and it
was like, Okay, clearly they're trying to u take this new st up
forward and put their past behind them. It turns out they couldn't put their
pass behind them all that much because they continue to not pay Jen O'Neill as
much as Mikey Barra. There are there are people who for some reason want
to come in and make excuses for this, and I'll just say none of
those excuses are really valid. Here. She has easily as much, if
not more experience than Mikey Barra. She has been the head of a studio,
Vicarious Visions for decades. I believe the excuses are They're not valid.
Here's the point. And when she asked repeatedly to have a contract that was
equivalent to Mikey Barrow, she was denied until she handed in her resignation letter,
and she was as reportedly said things like she does not believe that Activision
will ever prioritize its employees first and put the people first in be able to
actually get past its toxic work environment. All this is to say that this
is starting to feel like the you know, the chickens coming home to roost
for Bobby Cottock and all that stuff. It feels like this is maybe the
beginning of the end for him. Now. I know that there are plenty
of reasons to think that's not what's going to happen because sorry, the kids
show stop. Let me see if I can get it back on for him.
There we go, because you know, these guys always seem to survive,
right And the Board of Directors has come out with in support of Bobby
Cottick and the people that other executives at Activision have come out and support of
him, but this does feel like the weakest moment in terms of his for
his chances of survival. And while it might look like they're going to be
staunch supporters of him right now, if things keep going in this direction and
there's no obvious like, oh, we we have moved past this, the
easiest thing to do would be to get rid of Bobby Cottock. Now it's
not just like again, the things that he's being accused of are the reasons
Jail and Brack had to step down. And I think just in those lights,
it's like there's some it makes no sense that he had to do that,
but Bobby Cottick doesn't. And Activission has the new zero tolerance policy against
harassment and all the stuff, but it's it's obviously not being applied retroactively to
Bobby Cottick. For some reason they haven't really explained that, and and they've
they've had these conversations with people with at with employees on and all hands meetings
at Activision, and they haven't been able to but they haven't been able to
adequately explain, adequately explain why Bobby Cottick is getting away with this when other
people wouldn't under this new these new rules. So this puts into place several
key things that really does threaten his tenure at Activision. So what one thing
is there is going to be a lack of morale among employees and people are
just not going to want to work for someone like that. This is important
because you know, you could say, oh, okay, so what all
the employees gonna do, are they gonna walk out? Well? They did,
Well are they going to continue that walk out until Activision has to change?
They don't. They don't have to. Is one of the key things
here. Uh, competition for talent is so sky high right now that for
one thing, it's going to be difficult to hire new people when they could
just go work for another company that is not dealing with this stuff. The
other thing is employees that are at are at Activision right now could just leave,
especially if they are struggling to find people to come in and help them.
They're like, man, I could just go get paid more somewhere else,
maybe work remotely, and I could also be working with people who want
or I could be able to be easier to find the talent I need to
make my team work. I think there's a good chance that we could see
a larger exodus out of Activision following this, especially if Bobby Cootock doesn't leave
anytime soon. And then of course there are the things of like, okay,
so there are some shareholder groups speaking out. That's these shareholder groups are
kind of the same groups that have been speaking out from the beginning, so
that's not too much new, but still it's making headlines and that does help
make some waves and kind of feel like there's the pressures building on him.
And then you hear stuff like the reports out of Sony of Jim Ryan talking
to his employees saying, hey, we were not happy with the response,
and we hear that you're not. Like there's teams inside of PlayStation that actively
work on deals to give Activision money, right, there's like, oh,
yeah, we're gonna pay Activision money to get the co marketing deal. For
Call of Duty. That deal is not as big as it once was,
but there's still people who like that is their day job is to give money
to Activision. People at PlayStation are gonna be like, hey, we feel
bad working to give Activision money. We know it's just going to go to
this person who clearly does not really respect his employees and is not actually all
that concerned with making things better, and we can see through his attempts to
claim that he does. And so that's going to lead to someone like Jim
Ryan saying, hey, we hear you. We are We're going to voice
our concerns and make it known. That doesn't mean there's never been any problems
at PlayStation. Of course, there have been. There's you know, reports
out of Naughty Dog, reports out of Insomniac. But but still, like
you know, in terms of just speaking of what this means for Bobby Cottic,
listen, it's not going to help him. Does this mean that he's
really going to be outstred Uh? I don't know. I I'm more confident
of that now than I've ever been. It does it's it does seem like
it makes sense, But it's the reason I'm more confident that is, it's
not just all of these personnel issues and these and and the toxic work environment.
It comes down to the fact that where is Activision as a company right
now? Now? Yeah, you can look at some of their numbers and
for the most part they look pretty strong, but part of it feels like
it is a house of cards right where you have Call of Duty and they
are exploiting everything they can from Call of Duty. They're making multiple mobile games
now, they're making they have the Battle Royale, they have and they have
a Call of Duty game every year, a packaged seventy dollars sixty dollars Call
of Duty game every year, whatever it is. And that's that's like if
every studio working on that. And it feels like if any part of Call
of Duty starts to fall apart, that could really damage what Activision Publishing is
doing. And we might be seeing that this year with the with Call of
Duty Vanguard. That doesn't mean next year won't rebound. It probably will,
it could, but if it's like a couple of years in a row of
something like this, well that's gonna look really bad. And then what what
do you what do they have to fall back on now? The things they
have to fall back on, obviously are King and Blizzard. Blizzard's kind of
in a similar situation situation right now. They did just announce that they are
delaying games that didn't have release dates in Overwatch two and Diablo four. I
mean, those games will come out eventually, but does Overwatch two feel like
it's going to be like, give a lot of confidence and Overwatch two right
now? As a fan of Overwatch, because I don't Diablo four, I
feel like, you know, you could kind of figure out what a good
one of those is gonna be. Trying to recapture the magic Overwatch feels pretty
challenging though, And even if, like you do you recapture the magic of
Diablo four, like with Diablo, like Diablo three was kind of I mean,
whatever, they they'll make that work, but that's still not that doesn't
feel like a still like a strong roster of games that's gonna support them and
help them grow financially for the next five years. That feels like still kind
of treading water to a certain extent. But then you know, and even
King King is growing absolutely, but it's also kind of just still relying on
candy crush, Saga and it feels like eventually you're gonna get to a point
where you have exhausted the human race in terms of who you can monetize with
that game. Right, it's been out for a long time. It's gonna
be a decade here next year. And and so look, I mean,
and they can make more candy Crush games. They have, and they have
a model that works. I'm not that worried about. King point is,
though, is that, like you, we don't trust Bobby Codeck to create
an environment where people want to work and where people are treated with respect and
dignity. And while you and I care about that, and the employees care
about that, and you know, the workers that actually make these games,
that's like probably one of their number one concerns, you can't count on investors
in the board of directors to actually care about that, because the whole point
is exploiting people. But then you can't trust I don't trust Bobby Codeck to
be able to like navigate beyond where they are right now as as a game
making entity, Like what are they really going to have? What else are
they going to be able to make? Does this company seem like they are
going to be able to make something beyond call of duty another call of duty
obviously like another called duty in terms of a pillar of Activision's revenue. And
they haven't had wanted a long time. They used to have Tony Hawk,
they used to have the plastic instrument genre stuff like that, guitar Hero.
They haven't had anything like that in quite some time again, And maybe they
just shifted their strategy to Mobile and King and that's what the Choir and King
was about. But it doesn't it still doesn't feel like the ideas are coming
out of Activision. A large part of that is probably due to people not
wanting like the people who come up with good ideas and not wanting to work
for this company. And that's only going to get worse. So when you
look at this whole picture, to me, if I am on the board
of directors and I understand this stuff, to me, it's the easiest decision
in the world to just say, hey, we need people to want to
work for us more than we need Bobby Cottock actually, and things don't work
that way. The board of directors probably doesn't actually fully understand this stuff the
way that people who actually think about it every day do, like like us.
And also they are going to be planted there like they're gonna be it's
political, and they're gonna they're gonna have body Cotex back because he helped get
him there in the first place and all this stuff. So yeah, it's
a club or whatever. Still, though, it feels like if the pressure
can continue to build, the obvious choice here, like the shouting from investors
at a certain point, like the fiduciary responsibility that the Board of Directors has
to the investors, will come into play and things could still move. I
don't know. I'm like, I'm skeptical still. I'm hopeful, but but
skeptical still for sure, Okay, let's let's keep moving. Last week I
mentioned briefly that there's a codename another codename game at Microsoft called Vonnegut, and
it's some magg Jess Cordon brought up at during one of his podcast Xbox Too.
I think with Randal Thor and uh maybe mentioned all Windows Central What's or
twice. What I've heard is that that is Shadow Shadow Run related. Now,
Shadow Run is in a tricky place slightly due to rights issues, and
I think that's one of the reasons we haven't heard from the series in quite
some time. I'm not like a huge like Shadow Run fan, so I
don't haven't like kept track of like where the series has been in the past.
But like, look, when I looked into it, it seems like
Tops, like the card company, Tops, has the rights to the tabletop
game, and it maybe it has like kind of like a stewardship of the
brand in a lot of arenas. But in twenty seventeen, Microsoft did renew
its video game trademark, and it seemed like it put like it put things
in place to make sure that it still had active rights to the video game
side of Shadow Run. Now that that doesn't mean that it would be able
to necessarily move forward with a with a new Shadow Run game without like working
it out with everyone who's involved in in rights ownership. But there is like
an intersting tidbit here where Tops in August of this year trademarked a movie version
of Shadow Run, so that that was something that it's just done recently,
And to me, that suggests that the everyone might be working together here in
their own interest to say, Hey, we're Tops, we have this tabletop
game, we want to raise its profile. We're gonna make a movie where
we're gonna work with someone to make a movie based on it, uh,
and we think that's gonna help us sell a lot more cards. Maybe we
could do a video game at the same time, and Microsoft looking around probably
saying, yeah, maybe maybe we can make that happen. That's that seems
to be what's happening here. A lot of that that second half stuff is
speculation based on circumstantial evidence. But what I have heard is that Vonna Gett
is Shadow Run related. That that's not circumstantial. And then okay, so
More Combat twelve game comes up here, up comes up here. A lot
is you know. The reason it's interesting to me is because it might indicate
what's happening with Warner Brothers, what's happening with Nether Realm. That's the reason
I usually like to talk about it. But there's still like some question even
in my mind of like, are they for sure making Mortal Kombat twelve next,
or will Infamous or something Injustice gott always make mistake those well Injustice or
something else come out first. You know, we wouldn't normally get an Injustice
at this point instead of a Mortal Combat if things were on the normal schedule.
Are we on the normal schedule with another realm? And what I've heard
previously and I've told you previously, is that no, we're not. They
are looking in probably doing Mortal Kombat instead because it's safer for them in terms
of like if they get sold, they will get sold along with the Mortal
Kombat license, and so it just kind of makes more sense to invest in
that instead of invest in something that could be messy when it comes to rights
issues if they get sold over a third party. I've heard more than to
suggest that, yeah, Mortal Kombat twelve is the thing they are actively working
on, or at the very least they are actively working on Mortal Kombat twelve.
Who to say maybe they're working on something else alongside them. And the
things I'm hearing are like story related, and so I don't I'm not going
to spoil the story. I'll just say that it sounds it sounds like it's
continuing like the path of where they've like it's continuing the trajectory of what they've
established so far in that it's it's going to go from wild to even more
wild. I'm excited about it, just based on what I'm hearing Uh,
it sounds like they're going to continue to embrace what Mortal Kombat storytelling has been,
and I think that's absolutely absolutely the right choice. I don't necessarily always
agree with the idea that, oh, that last story was so you know,
bonkers, we can't do anything like that. How are you gonna ever
top that? It's a it's a creative challenge, but you have to try
to top it, like you have to. It feels like they they are
accepting that challenge. And I mean, what studio like this is the one
studio that, you know what fully believes in their ability to do exactly that.
So so yeah, I'm not going to spoil any specifics. There's no
reason to do that that I can think of. But it's I'll say that
it's exciting what I'm hearing, okay, and then there I have like a
couple have two other bullet points here on my list, But I'm trying to
like to think of any reason why I should actually spoil these either. So
again, when I when I come to you with the story, when I
come to you with like specifics, like a lot of times, the headline
that gets drawn out is this game is exists. You know, Jeff Grubb
says, this is being worked on, but when we have this conversation here,
a lot of times it's about like it's being worked on because this is
happening and the company wants to accomplish this, and these cases like there's two
other code name games that I feel like I could just tell you, but
I just don't know why I would do that, So I'm trying to like,
I'll keep working on it. I'll see if I can like draw out
more information for myself, and maybe we'll come back next week and I'll have
more to say, but I'll say next week if I If I don't,
next week might just be a show where we just come in answer questions,
maybe talk about what we're thankful for, that sort of thing, and go
from there. Not the tease. But I'm just like, this is where
my head is at with this stuff, where I could just say this studio
is making a game like that, and that's you know, it's interesting from
a certain point of view. But I'm like, I'm let me work on
it a little bit more, see if I come up with anything, and
then I'll come back to you. I'll just say there's there's more boiling here,
so if you want to come back, maybe it's just a hook to
keep you coming back next week. It kind of feels like that a little
bit. Yeah, that's fine, I think, And we'll see if there's
a good reason to talk about this stuff. But I think, okay,
that's gonna do it for what I have. Let's get to the questions.
That means I hit this button right here and it brings it up, and
it worked. It worked perfectly. There we go. All right, let's
scroll to the bottom here. And I saw a bunch of questions come in,
a lot of great questions so far. Let's get right to them.
This first one's from Slaine mc awesome. What are your thoughts on the Game
Awards nominations? And I will say that I think, for the most part,
I can't say too much. I was I was out there talking about
like what was gonna hap with Forts Horizon and stuff like that, and and
I was like talking about the way that the voting works and stuff like that.
And apparently you're not supposed to do that if you're on the jury,
which I am, so Jeff Keeley let me know, and I appreciate that.
And I was in the wrong there As for the actual nominees themselves,
I am. I think it's a pretty good list for Game of the Year.
I like Hitman three a lot. It came out in January. I'm
not surprised it did not make the cut in the end. I think it's
like it's a game that appeals to a smaller but more passionate sort of audience,
and I'm fine with that. I think I feel like Hitman three got
its due in terms of people being really excited for it. I'm gonna continue
to keep going back to play it. And as for Forts Horizon, I'm
not surprised they didn't make it. And that's not just because it's a racing
game. I really do think it. Like the timing hurt it a little
bit. And this is not me speaking about that side of things, and
let's speak it like, actually, how about how we vote, Just like
you're out later than the year, that could be helpful. But if you're
any anywhere near when like you have to get like so many people playing the
game, and you know, I could speak out. I'll speak about it
from this perspective because this is not this is not has nothing to do with
voting the Game Awards. It has to do with publishers talking to us in
twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, whenever it was, whenever death Stranding came out.
Death Stranding was coming out. I think it launched November eighth, and
forts Rise of five launched November nine. Death Stranding was. You know,
it's a hide Hideo Kajima game. And I my hunch here is that Kajima
fully understands not just the rules, but like what they need to do to
make sure that they have a chance to get nominated. And so when Sony
was reaching out to us about cover covering in that game, they're like,
hey, who needs codes? We will get codes to anybody because we want
you to consider this for the Game of Awards. We are explicitly saying that
is the reason why we were giving you so many codes. And they made
a huge effort to push the game to say, hey, please play it
in time for before this date so that you could if you want to vote
for the Game Awards. That game gotten nominated for Game of the Year.
I've never seen any other studio or a publisher or developer to do that.
No one else has ever made it clear before that that was the reason they
were given us so many codes or whatever. It definitely didn't have when Forts
Rise and five where yeah, yeah, they handed out codes early enough,
but like it wasn't like, hey, make sure you get everyone on your
staff to play this so that when it's time for your staff to vote like
they like. It just seems like coachim understood, like, Okay, here's
how these teams are voting, and other studios don't quite get that. That's
and so when other studios come out with a game in November ish, I'm
not surprised when they don't quite make the cut, because you have to hit
that certain critical mass of people in the press playing the game before you can
make it. I feel like if it would have came out like a month
earlier, it would have had a much better chance. Now, still,
racing game making the game of the year, it's gonna be tough, obviously,
that's and that's probably Okham's racer here. The racing game. It's not
going to have that you know that that best picture sort of fee where like
that the best pictures never a comedy, never a sort of an action movie.
It's always gonna be a drama. Uh, there's definitely something similar happening
here obviously, but forts a rise of five maybe just good enough to break
through that that ceiling there, But in terms of the timing, I think
it was just hurt by that as well. All right, let's let's go
into this next question. We've got a couple about Bobby Kotick here and mostly
talked about this stuff. Is this the end for Bobby Kotick? And how
long we'll take for Bobby Kotic and start playing cancel culture and the will come
up for his bs? That one's from future creep. Yeah, I bet
if he gets like an extra interview at you know, some some like financial
press outlet. Uh, yeah, that's what it will sound like a little
bit, he might be like just out of touch enough that he doesn't even
like really know what that is about where where you know, he doesn't have
a social media presence, right, and he probably doesn't. He doesn't strike
me as one who speaks to young people all that often, and he probably
doesn't even like watch Fox News or stuff like that, where like, you
know, you get the other side of that. He probably just has his
billions and has his weird clubs and stuff, and yeah, that's another thing.
Yeah, hangs out with Jeffrey Epstein or whatever he's in Jeffrey Epstein's a
little Black Black Book, So that ever got explained, which is another weird
thing. But hey, like if you're the board of directors, why do
you keep someone around like that, Like that's you know, has those allegations.
It doesn't seem worth it. Mighty war canow. Hey, Jeff do
you think that Phil Spencer's recent comments on emulation and game preservation will lead to
anything tangible or is it just to continue building up goodwill toward the Xbox brand.
I actually think it's something different. I think it's just what he feels.
Phil Spencer's in a position where he made a promise to build Xbox in
a certain direction, and if you are to like take the temperature, like
if you were to give him a progress support right now, I feel like
you have to say that the Xbox Phil Spencer plan is working. It feels
like it's working with forts rise in five, the Xbox Series, x Cloud
gaming on Xbox One, so you can play Xbox Series games on there with
Halo free to play multiplayer, just both those games, setting records for Xbox
Game Studios releases, just everything it feels like it's working. So I don't
think he's just out there trying to build goodwill. I just think he's like
when I think about emulation and games and the way that, like the conversations
that we have with other companies, this just makes sense to me. I
guess I don't get why doesn't make sense to everyone else. And I feel
like he Phil Spencer definitely someone who is you know, he's an executive.
He's trying to position pieces to his advantage, of course, and there is
there's something of that there, but I think it's just if you ask him
for his on it, like i've I mean, if you've watched his interviews
with with Gersman at E three at Night or whatever. To me, he
struts me as someone who legitimately thinks about the question you're asking him and gives
his honest answer. And I feel like this is just his honest answer to
the question where he's like, this is important to me, I think it
should be important to other developers, and that's kind of how he framed it.
So yeah, that's that's my That was my read on it. From
casual Dear Senior Snacks no question this week, just wanted to thank you and
mister Manotti for all the work you're doing on nintim Dooggs, Game Suite Decides,
and of course grub Snacks. It's made a streussful year a lot more
fun. I appreciate that. Thank you, casual. Mike's actually going to
be streaming some GameCube games tonight for the twentieth anniversary of the GameCube, which
but anyone's got questions about GameCube, let's do that. I'm a big GameCube
fan, so yeah, you could check that out tonight. I think see
Black Vinyl Smash Bros. Is not new, So why is this the moment
when all the competitors are suddenly appearing? I mean, I don't know the
exact reason. My hunch tells me that it takes it takes that long for
people at other companies to one see how excited people get for new character reveals
and Smash Bros. And then two commence everyone else at their company that they
could capture that same magic by doing the same thing. Part of this is
also just it's just the way creativity works, where like, you know,
you get disaster films for years, but then all of a sudden you get
two you know, asteroids impacting Earth movies in the same year, right,
And that's just like the timing works out that way, like like the like
the exterior conversations, the orbital conversations that people who make games have with each
other, and they're like, hey, you know we you want to hang
out and play Smash Brothers with me tonight? Like hey, they have this
game is great, and they're like, they work at different companies and they
both like it. I mean, this is just like an absolute made up
example, but it's just the sort of thing where like people over time are
like, hey, we've been we play this game together all the time.
We can probably make one of these, or like I think my company could
make one of these. Uh you know, let's we talk about it.
And they get that confidence because everyone's just grown up playing this stuff and now
they're in positions of power where they can make it happen. And then also,
Smash Brothers is winding down right now, and so if you have one
of these games and you've been working on it for a year or two,
which I think is probably the case with the with you know, with obviously
with both the Nickelodeon game and with the WB game, you just wait until
now to strike because people are going to be like obviously the Smash Brothers audience
not really gonna be going anywhere. But if you were slightly more casual on
Smash and you have an affinity for w B characters, now is the time
to strike, right if you're WB and just kind of that's what makes sense.
So I think that's a huge part of it as well. All right,
from a from Una strike, Una strike, do you need me to
order a bottle of Arby's vodka for you? I'm just saying Christmas is coming
up, That's all I'm saying. They you know, I've been trying to
get them to listen. I'm not shameless most of the time. I'm very
conscious of that. I don't try to be like, I can't be a
dan Rychord. I'm not completely shameless. But for Arby's, it's almost like
part of my character now to be shameless. I've asked them like straight out
send me the Arby's vodka. No response. They sent me the meat sweats
you've all seen them. We didn't even ask for those. They were just
say hey, like do you want this stuff? Like what's your address?
Like okay, but I'm just saying I will not die before tasting the Arby's
vodka. So uh yeah, Christmas is coming up, all right, let's
keep going, uh from et what will be the video video game mechanic in
twenty twenty two? Year of the blank? I don't know. I'm bad
at these. I'm good at like diagnosing them when once the year is over,
but I mean, of course who's not. But like trying to predict
what it will be next year, I don't know, it'll be something like
the Year of social pressure or something like that, like, oh, you
know how you had like your your clash of Klan's guild and how everyone had
to like work together to make sure that everyone was getting the maximum maximum XP
and if you weren't contributing as much as everyone else, you were a detriment
to your team, and like an asynchronous multiplayer sort of way. It'll be
like the year of something like that. But usually that's not how it goes.
It's usually something much more simple than that. You know, Year of
the bow is is the best example. We're definitely having the Year of the
hook shot right now. It feels like right the year of the grapple hook
or or Is this like the third year of the Grapple hook. Uh?
Yeah, I was just year of wall Running again, because wall Running is
Jason and Jason and Discard say he's tried to get me some of they're sold
out. What the hell? Okay, I'll just say, let's a social
media campaign to get get me some Arby's vodka. Thank you, Jason,
I appreciate that. That's incredible. Let's see uh feature creep. Did you
did you make fun of Mike's Kingdom Hearts asked publisher name for me? When
he so, we do do that fantasy critic thing where you can, like
you you draft games and then you get points based on their metacritics score.
And his publisher name is three fifty eight over two Games or whatever the hell
that stupid Kingdom Hearts video game name is. But he did that, I
groaned and made fun of him at the time. Absolutely don't he knows,
he knows what he did, and I made sure to put him in his
place. X put name here. X did Microsoft offs the shadow drop Halo
Infinite just to try to try and distract everyone from the absence of one versus
one hundred news. Absolutely, they had to cover their tracks they had.
They knew people would be very upset if that did not come out immediately after
after leaking, and so they're like, hey, we got to counter this
this news out there. What can we do? What do we have?
Do we have anything they can kind of this news? And at first they're
like, no, there's nothing, and then eventually like, well, I
guess we could release Halo Infant and it's ready, right, Like, it's
not ready. I'm sorry, I'm creating a fiction in my head here now.
I'm like, I could do all the characters if you want from Doug
Foot, Will Pregmatta Be become this generation's deep Down? I mean, it
feels like it easily could, right, I mean to me, it feels
like deep Down didn't even get like the oh it's coming out next year.
Oh, and now we're delaying it to the year after that. It feels
like they showed deep Down and then never talked about it again. I'm probably
missing remembering that, I guess for people who might be unaware, deep Down
was a game they showed at the PlayStation for launch event or reveal event something
like that, and it was a really impressive technical demo of a man holding
a torch in a dungeon and there was a dragon SI, no kids are
fighting? Yes from Nylock is money exchange for game Awards Best of Categories under
Jeff Keeley's the Game Awards never uh under Spike TVs VGAS. I'm less certain.
I don't want to like cast dispersions. I don't want to say that
without concrete events, I wasso say that that I've been I have been told
that before I've been able to prove it. I mean, and it just
wouldn't Looking back at Spike TV or whoever was running that stuff, you know,
Jeff Kelley was involved, but like he was not the person who was
in charge of making sure that show made money at that time. I mean,
would you put it past them? I mean, and there are shows
still like that to this day. There was, I mean, I think
it was like on CBS or something like that, and it like it ended
in like Network TV, probably during the day, on like a weekend or
something like that, but it during the day, and I remember there being
some pr people there being like, this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen,
and then then quickly realizing that all the categories were built around who was
marketing, who like who paid the market during the show, and that's not
the game Awards. But it's like that stuff is still happening, just it's
it's filtering out to other places. Now future creep people found out that slobs
sucks. Are they in any real trouble. I don't know. It feels
like they're kind of too ingrained. As the easy go to solution I had,
so this is stream labs obs. I had my hunches about stream lab
obs, even though I've never like looked too closely. And so when people
were suggesting something for for Mike to use when he was just getting started streaming
for Extra Life, I was like, hey, you just get obs and
plugging obs dot live from stream elements stream Elements. It has made it clear
that they don't think it's a viable business strategy, just sort of monetized creators
like micro with micro transactions and stuff like that, and to me that seems
like the right strategy. They're gonna try to make money through other things whatever,
And everyone's like, no, stream labs o BS is so simple.
You can just gotta use it, and we're gonna get past this stuff eventually.
And when people go to Google what's the easiest thing to start streaming with.
They're probably mostly gonna find stream labs. Stream Labs will probably just have
to double down on like on marketing, and instead of having just Pokemon,
they'll have a bunch of other creators faces on their stuff and keep making deals
with the biggest streamers. And when all when all the streamers talk about using
stream labs like that, they'll just have to like pay a little bit extra
money right now to pave over this. And I think they're gonna be fine.
That's not great news because stream labs is is kind of shady. And
Okay, you want a banana, all right, all right, monkey,
you can have a banana that's good for your tummy. That potassium is gonna
help you out. Yeah, there you go, kittle. Yeah, now
my fingers are covering in banana. All right? What was I saying?
Yeah, stream labs not in any real trouble. I don't think. I
mean, I don't have like a dog in this in this fight, dogg
in this hunt, dog in this fight. That feels like I'm talking about
dog fighting. I like that. I don't have a fighter here that I
really care all that much about. But I do use stream Elements personally,
and I've had good experience with them, and I've talked to them in interviews
and stuff like that, and they seem pretty straightforward and responsible. Not that
they haven't had their issues. I feel like they've had some problems in the
past, but they've dealt with them pretty upfrontways. And it's not like stream
Labs where they are sort of building their company on the work of on top
of open source like branding of like OBS in a way that was untoward and
then there's obvious issues beyond that. If you use stream Labs, though OBS,
and you're like afraid to change, I think you should go to OBS
just get good obio studio, and again plug in OBS dot live if you
want. But if you keep using stream labs, I'm not going to judge
you harshly. That's just not how I feel about it. Hey from so
Scay, Hey, Jeff, how big of a game do you think Starfield
is going to be? You think they are gonna let us actually fly the
ship or is it just a fast travel system. God, that's a really
good question. My hunch is that you're gonna get to fly the ship and
it'll probably feel like like actual space travel, like you are actually flying between
you know, planets and spaceports and all that stuff. You know, they'll
they'll turn it. They'll they'll have the option to fast travel, they'll have
an option to skip a lot of that stuff. I bet. But I
think they're gonna go for it. You know, it's it's it's it's time,
right, We've we've had no Men's Sky. We've seen other games do
this stuff. You know, there's plenty of games that are uh that are
doing that. You just now you need to pair that up with a Bethesda
open world role playing you know system, right, and I think the time
to combine those two things is now. I think it's possible. Hey Jeff,
how oh no, it's the sociate again Ado game. This is the
third time for its snubbed in a road despite being the highest rated game this
year. Fire Emblem and Flight Sam are other notorious snubs due to genre.
Is it in the TGA's best interest to kill game of the Year altogether and
just award by genre? I don't think so. Honestly, I think the
genre awards make even less sense at least. I mean, genre is you
know, you know, with all due respect to the genre dicks out there,
uh, kind of becoming more meaningless than ever. And I think the
genre decks will admit that, Uh, you know what, whatever game has
RPG elements, right, So when you when you talk about RPGs, it
feels, you know, it's a it's a weird category. And when you
talk about action adventure versus action game, the I think the categories need an
overhaul. But I think you get rid of all the genres and it's said
you come up with more interesting categories. The show feels very old fashioned and
and and it's just like why, Like it's momentum, right, momentum is
trying to carry the momentum is just this is the path of least resistance.
You just keep doing the same thing you did last year and you do it
again this year. And is this really the priority? The show is exists
to celebrate gaming, And honestly, when people talk about that, when you're
talking about celebrating gaming, they want to get excited about new games coming out,
and that's where most of the effort goes. And I don't think that's
a real criticism of the show. I think that's just achnology and reality.
But if I were personally in charge of it, I would overhaul the all
of the award categories and come up with more interesting stuff. Game of the
Year is just always gonna have the stuff gets snubbed and and really, at
the end of the day, at the end of the day, does this
stuff matter all that much? Yeah, it stinks that like a game as
good as forts a Horizon or a game as good as Firing blem and Flight
sim like they don't have They feel like they won't get there as that specific
accolade, even though in a lot of ways they might deserve it, but
they are They could still point to, Oh, look at all these other
awards we won. Look we are the highest rated game of the year or
whatever. Look at that, Like that's actually worth something too. In a
different way, I don't think you have to like throw out the Game of
the Year award because certain games tend to not win it. It's it's not
great, but it's also just not worth being like, oh, we have
to work backward from it's unfair to getting rid of it. We just have
to maybe find other ways to celebrate these games. Okay, she frustrating you.
I'm sorry, dude, She's just not feeling good. I know she's
making you yell. Okay, listen, why do you want to sit over?
You want to sit over by me for a little bit? Okay,
all right, yeah, oh sorry, dude, Okay, you all right,
okay, all right, let's keep going here. From Hey, it's
Dale. What's going on with Platinum? First, they lost their project with
Microsoft, they were removed from their work on The Grand Blue Game, and
the reactions to Babylon's Falls Beta have been poor, to say the least.
At least they showed Bayo three is still happening. Yeah, I think they're
just in a they're in a growing pains sort of time where they want to
go from being the work for higher you know, mercenary developer that they were
before, to something where they could figure out how to grow big enough to
publish their own stuff and and be a viable business that is that you know,
doesn't have to rely on these contracts going forward. That's that's going to
be a challenge though, and it's clearly causing them some problems, and it's
not necessarily a natural path for them where it's like this makes sense, we
could just keep growing in these ways we've grown in the past, we're gonna
be able to do this, and at the same time, while trying to
like grow their business out in that way, they still have to maintain these
relationships they already put in place, like developing Babylon's Fall and bayonet A three
now with Nintendo and Bayonetta three, like Nintendo will step in make sure,
hey, we do we need this and this and this, we know what
we need from you these other games like working with Microsoft. The reason the
Platinum game with Microsoft falls apart if they're having similar issues at that time,
is there's a huge language barrier. We talked about this recently with like contracts,
but in terms of like negotiations, but those we talked about how negotiations
get renegotiated throughout the entire development period and if you if you if you have
to first figure out what you want from a Platinum if you're a Microsoft,
then relaying that from English to Japanese regularly through meetings like that's a big to
do every single time, and so it's it's easy to see why that falls
apart. And it's also easy to see why Nintendo could still kind of pull
out a Bayonetta three from Platinum right now. Because they're the closer relationship,
no language barrier, that sort of thing. But you know, in terms
of like what does this mean for Platinum long term? I think they'll probably
get this stuff sorted. They just need to get past these current contracts they
have right now and then really focus on what they want to be doing for
real going forward from bad at Games Search next. What is for lunch today?
I haven't thought about it too much. Do you have any thoughts?
What do you want for lunch? Oh, you're not hungry? Okay,
I don't know. Maybe we'll do arbis, Maybe we'll do Arbies. I
actually haven't had it in a few weeks, so it's feeling like an Arby's
Night from the Unseen Shadow. What do you see actually happening with Activision?
Will this finally be enough for Bobby to deploy his golden parachute? And will
his leaving actually be meaningful change for the company? I mean, that's the
other thing we need even talk about. I mean, there's no guarantee that
it will be meaningful change. I think it would be an opportunity for there
to be the exactly that, But an opportunity does not mean it's a guarantee
for future creep. The kiddo's feeling any better, it's hard to tell.
The one is definitely still pretty sick. This one was getting better and then
had a rough night again last night, and she was tired yesterday, and
she cried when I dropped her off at school. She never does that,
so, uh, we'll see. I don't know. I haven't gotten sick
from them yet, which is weird. Usually that always happens when they go
to school and they bring something home. But if she continues, if she
has another wife rough night to night, she definitely is gonna go to the
like not er, what's the other one? The urgent care? All right?
From Hey dude, it's well, what are your favorite GameCube games?
Let's see. I have a a bunch of games open on a website called
vims right now. Because of that stream MIC's gonna do and I was gonna
play some stuff with him. See if there's any stand out here. I
have a BMX Triple X definitely not one of my favorites. Battalion Wars was
okay, I actually didn't play much of it. I'm trying to think of
like deep deep cuts. I like Star Wars Bounty Hunter a lot. Actually,
it's like a surprisingly good game What's Your Head? Codo? When you
sit up, what's your Head? I like the incredible Hawk Ultimate Destruction.
That's a good one. Uh, The Lord of the Rings The Return of
the King was good. Metro Prime is my favorite though. Metro Prime is
my favorite game from that generation, one of my favorite three D games period.
Metro Prime is my favorite. I like Windwaker whole bunch like I do.
I'm okay with Super Mario Sunshine. I definitely liked it more than than
I do now. A lot of that's just like trying to go back and
play it after having different sort of controls and then having that having those camera
controls again, being like, ah, this is actually a little bit frustrating.
NBA Street Volume two is it was a really good one on the GameCube.
Played a lot of that. Uh, Paper Mario a thousand Year Door.
Never beaten that. Actually, Like unfortunately, I've started a bunch of
times, gotten pretty deep and a bunch of times, and I've enjoyed myself.
I just I didn't play it at the time, so I've been like,
I'll like start it on Dolphin or something like that, and then I'll
switch computers and forget to bring that save along or something. Gladius, this
is a surprisingly good one. It's a Lucas Arts RPG that has the timed
battleheads of of a Mario rpg. It's very good. I'm sorry, I'm
just going through all these tabs I have opened. Tony Ox pro Skater for
Spider Man two is a good one. Beautiful Joe got a bunch of a
bunch of great games on there. The disappointing. The most disappointing games on
GameCube are Wave Raced, Blue Storm and ten eighty Avalanche. They just did
not capture the magic of the N sixty four games. But yeah, that's
that's a list right there. Though. Those are some games, all right,
let's keep going. Tokodou ASK's Titan Ball three more likely if Battlefield twenty
forty two is a big miss. I mean it's like, what does that
mean? More likely? It's probably slightly more likely than it would be if
bat Battlefield twenty forty two is a massive hit, right, Like that just
makes sense. Vince Zampella is a key figure at EA now, in charge
of respawn, in charge of uh, what's not danger close what do they
renamed dice La two whatever they renamed dice La two. Oh my god,
I just saw Christians question. I think it's I think it's slightly more likely,
but I'm not gonna don't don't think that it's gonna be happening anytime soon.
And really it is the more like, okay, it's yeah, I
would say it's more likely, it's still not as likely as the as them
just like trying something else. I'd almost say that they'll try Middle of Honor
again before they would do Titan Fall three. Uh. And and I know
these are different studios we're talking about, like, yeah, Response not going
to work on. Well, they made a Medal of Honor game for VR,
but that was more like a last minute deal after the after Respond got
acquired. But I just like, in terms of like where Mike, where
EA would put its it's publishing budget for another shooter, Titan Fall three still
feels pretty far fetched at this moment. Ripple effect, Yes, thank you,
thank you, miss mister mccrinkldink. Uh, let's just answer this,
Krim Christian and Argentina, Jeff, why didn't you recover the flag last night?
So listen, I got turned around. All right. My team took
the flag in Halo, and they had it right next to our goal,
and they were just trying to like they threw it and then the other team
didn't return it. There was no other team around, and uh, and
they were trying to get our flag back to our base so we could score
a point. And I spawned picked up the flag and started running it towards
our base, which I thought was on the other side, and so actually
I was running it away from our base. I'm very stupid, all right,
Can we just we could just say it, all right, that's what
it is. That's why I didn't return the flag or recover the flag because
I'm stupid. It felt bad and I'm not proud of Oh no, that's
okay, I'm not stupid. That's right. You're right, and you shouldn't
talk about yourself that way. Thank you, kiddo, Thank you. All
right, let's keep going from Shadow twenty eight. Will that would be a
new Destruction Derby. What's it Destruction All Stars? Like in that franchise.
I never looked I never played Destruction All Stars, but I always thought it
was like a Destruction Derby sort of cousin or something like that. I would
say probably probably not, probably not from leaves. Hey, Jeff Dragon,
Age four is supposedly a sequel to Inquisition, But will our choices still carry
over by the time four comes out? Inquisition could be ten years old.
Probably not. I would say they'll probably do something like canonical choices and just
build on that. I don't know. You know that that audience, that
audience really cares about that stuff, and if byaware could make it happen,
they will. They'll they'll find a way to support your choices if you want
to carry them over. I don't I don't know how important they will actually
end up being to what they make, but they'll probably try to support that
for you if if you if they can, Hey, Jeff Dragon it,
Oh no, that's the same one the Duke can do. Can video game
journalism handle another straight white male named Jeff? Or are we at capacity?
We'll take a vote, the Jeffs will take a vote. We're meeting soon
and we'll see what we can do. We'll see if there's any room for
any new ones. You know. That means we will definitely have to kill
one of the older ones. But that's just how it goes. That's part
of the deal. That's part of the deal from Pudge. How hard would
it be for Xbox to do another batch of back compact games in the future.
Are the licensing licensing issues truly that tangled? It's not. I don't
think it's that they're tangled. It's that the you know, I'm trying to
think of the analogy that I want to use. It's like peak oil,
which I guess if you weren't maybe maybe that term's coming back. But I
remember that I first heard that term when I was just getting out of high
school in the early two thousands, And basically what it means is it takes
peak oil is the thing where it takes one barrel of oil to extract one
barrel of oil out of the ground, so then it's not economically worth it
any longer. And a similar thing happens here where the amount of effort it
takes to convince a studio that is less willing to make stuff happen, or
maybe does not have lawyers in place working on that exact property anymore. So
you would have to provide You would have to provide them like reason and maybe
money to be able to pay for those lawyers, and then money on top
of that if they want, like, you know, money for their time.
It basically just like the amount of money take to make the stuff happen
expands to a point where it's no longer worth it. And and that's not
necessarily about it be entangled. It's just about like getting people at the table
in the first place, and having them sit down and and having them have
lengthier and lengthier conversations if they are less and less willing. So yeah,
uh from you shouldn't have thrown on the xbox, then I'll see if I
can fix it. From future creep. What's your favorite holiday movie? My
favorite holiday movie is Christmas Vacation the National Lampoons Variety. I think that is
the it's the perfect Christmas movie. My favorite Thanksgiving movies Playing Strands and Automobile
Automobiles. That's a great movie, But my overall favorite holiday movie at Christmas
Vacation. It's the perfect one because most Christmas movies are about someone who does
not fully embrace the spirit of Christmas. And I think that that's when you're
going to watch a Christmas movie, you chances you're someone who's fully embraced Christmas.
And so how much do you are you going to relate to that characters
struggle. I don't you know, you know, embrace the holidays whatever.
I don't think you're gonna actually relate all that too much to relate to that
all that much. What Christmas Vacation does is it centers on a character who
loves Christmas so much that he wants everyone to have to have all the same
warm feelings that he does that he remembers from his childhood, and he's it's
so important to him that it's the best Christmas ever for everyone, and so
he puts all this stress on himself, and everyone else feels that stress,
and it causes a lot of funny situations, and the movie's really funny because
of Chevy Chase's facial reactions, which are just some of the best in any
movie ever in that movie. But really the reason we can relate to the
character is because of that stress he feels because the holidays and still trying to
find some good even even when you're experiencing all that. And I find that
so relatable. That's so perfect. Uh. From Jeremy Hervey, do you
think the hand that do you think the handheld emulation stagnation is tied directly to
chip shortages. I'm trying to I'm not sure exactly what you're speaking of.
It you're talking about like the stagnation of of handheld emulators, like like the
Ambernick stuff, and how we're kind of stuck on the same the same chips
that they've been using for a long time, which we have been. But
there is some movement there some of them, if this is what you're talking
about. Some of those new handhelds I think they're doing, like the Retroid
Pocket two plus, it's like five times more powerful than the one I always
talk about, and that's that's significant. That's a huge jump. And so,
uh, there was a period there where those all the handheld devices were
using the exact same chip set and and sc So you're right that there was
some stagnation, and I do think that was probably related to chip shortages.
A lot of that is related to the companies in that space. Those Chinese
companies, they go with what works. They're not they're not trying to be
they're not trying to be Apple and being called brave for moving the headset jack
or the headphone jack. They're gonna look around see what works. Can we
do the exact same thing only cheaper and sell it for the same my money
maybe or maybe a slightly cheaper and still make a profit. That's their business
model, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that they were going
to keep doing what works, and that's what they were doing. I think
she's asleep. All right, let's keep going. This is fine, this
is how it goes, This is this is working with while being a dad
from Luter Jennings. What's the internal reception to a Battlefield twenty forty two?
Like, is EA disappointed? Disappointed? If? And if so, what
will they do to get it back on course? I think they're going to
try to do what they can to like make sure they could update everything and
uh and give it like a chance to succeed. All right, we might
have to cut this show a little bit. Sure, hang on, let
me let me check on these kids real quick, and then we'll maybe have
to call it a day. Okay, yes, yeah, it's gonna be
time to wrap things up. We got we're having uh yeah, we're having
problems and it's time to handle them. So thank you. Yes, poor
babies, hang on, Ninga, you should come up here. Okay,
all right, so that's gonna do it for this show. Thank you everybody
so much for watching. I'm sorry that we had to do it so fast,
but we'll come back with a you know, we'll do it an extra
long h question and answer your episode next week because my wife will be home.
She's off of work and so she could take the rapscallions and then you
and I we'll just talk. We'll talk it out and we'll do an extra
long session where we're just answering every question you guys have and uh yeah,
and we'll also talk about what we're thankful for and all that stuff. So
let me, you know, let me see if they're got an answer from
now. Okay, we'll find a date in time, we'll let you know.
But until then, let's go take care of ourselves for real, get
some rest. Everybody, have have a happy week leading up the Thanksgiving next
week. I'm looking forward to it. Until then, have a good one,
take care of yourselves and goodbye. No wait, let me hit the yummy yummy