Game Mess Mornings 09/22/23

Yo, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this for September twenty two, twenty twenty three. For the next hour or so, let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live with me Jeff grub Today, Ubisoft whispers and announcement of a new game Into the Wind, and game developers call out Unity for anti competitive practices. But first, please join me and welcoming today's co host a Game Mess Mornings. It's Tamore, who's saying, everybody, tam how are you doing? I'm suffering right now. You discovery about some Japanese bloodborn T shirts that that you have to import. You're paying, You're paying a premium Propaganda Panda and the chat dropped in a link which you know, with no remorse for your safety or sanity. I trust Propaganda Panda, and I click the link of thinking it would be like a nice image, just thing torch Torch, which is torch Torch dot JP. You're gonna do your wallet and there are so many, so many things on this and I put every single T shirt. Oh down, Oh there's more. Oh no, okay, let's see here. Oh my lord, you gotta bring this up. Yeah, I'm about to let's go to Oh there it is. Oh that's still that dude. There's ship in here that will never get made. There's anywhere ship. So that's the dodgeball thing again. Reopen closed tab. Don't worry about it. Don't worry, pretty little head about it, taim, it's all. There's a there's a there's a T shirt for Vaulter. Okay, let's see here. Look at that. There's a lot more T shirts down here. There's a Murgo's Wetness T shirt. That's insane. It's just I think they got it all. You're got to collect them all. There's a father gasco In T shirt. I listen, I've always said this blood is basically pokemon. This is a violence inflicted upon me. Some of these aren't even low. Okay, there they go. Yes, there's the father. Guess going, dude, I want that crow hunt. There are so many T shirts. You cannot buy all of these tams. You're here's the good news, because there are now so many T shirts. You do know you have to pick and choose, right. You can't get them all, do I? Jeff Ham that's like a thousand dollars in Japanese T shirts. Dude, I went to the father Gas going one and the choices it gave me for sizes were WM and W l Oh, hell yeah, there we go. What does that mean is it? Do you think it's women's medium and women's large? Maybe I don't. I do wonder why some of these T shirts are at the bottom as opposed to the top, and usually I feel like they do that when they begin selling out of the popular sizes you can get in heather gray, though, which is the best color? Yeah, heather gray sounds like an adult electricy Yes. Yeah, big fan of Heather Gray follower on the hub. Uh dam you listen. You gotta make your financial choices however you need to do. I cannot sit in judgment of you. I have like two or three more Yetti T shirts coming still, one where I think there's a couple of characters from Warrior, very excited about that, and I keep telling myself I gotta stop. I have enough, but I don't. It's time to stop. It's time. I did everything right. They still sent me seventeen shares. All right, before we get into this message, explain what we do here most weekdays. I Jeff GREB will help piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart. If you were watching live on twitch, welcome, You can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game Mess Mornings, or find the RSS on giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello, YouTube, fixed the scene real quick. Okay, we have a lot to get into, so let's start the Morning Mess with you. Besoft is making The Division three with Massive Entertainment from Rachel Kaser over at games Beat The Kaser Beam. Ubisoft revealed today that Tom Clancy's The Division three is in the works Massive Entertainment, the series's long time developer, is leading work on the new project while supporting the Division two. Longtime creative head Julian Garritty is also returning to the franchise, as he will be executive producer on the franchise and is overseeing pre production work on the new game. The company revealed the news in a press release revealing Garretty's new position. Currently, he's working as the creative director for Star Wars Outlaws and will be part of the project through its launch sometimes sometime in twenty twenty four. Massive Entertainment is also working on an avatar Frontiers of Pandora, which launches in December. Garretty says he wants to tell other stories set in the Division universe. In a statement, he added, we may have over forty million players, but the Division is still in its early years as a franchise. There are so many incredible stories to tell, places to explore, and people to protect. In addition to the mainline entry in the series, Ubisoft also plans to release The Division Heartland sometimes soon, which is a spinoff title, a free to play title and developed by Red Storm Games. I think for mobile, yes, oh no, Mobile is the Resurgence one, Heartlands a different one. We got a lot of stuff stuff happened over in games, yes, Tim, This one like simultaneously surprises me and doesn't surprise me obviously. They're making a sinquel to a Tom Clancy game of any kind, let alone. The Division a fairly popular franchise that has a lot of dedicated players, and yet at the same time Ubisoft's been moving more toward licensed games. I mean that the massive teams making a Star Wars game. So it's like, oh, you know, are they afraid of continuing to build up their own IP. It's like, no, the Division is established enough that they're going to keep investing in that, right, yeah, yeah, it makes perfect sense that they would want to do another Division. I think of the the pivot to live service game that they've done, I think Division is probably the most popular, right, Like, they're the Tom Clowns, the other spinoffs what was it called the Ghost recon Wildlands and that kind of stuff. I don't think it comes close to the performance of a Division. But Mike, so this makes perfect sense. My concern is Ubisoft. Ubisoft does that thing that they always do where they overcommit to one franchise and to the detriment of others. Ubisoft the company that's making twelve Assassins Creeds. That doesn't sound like them. They seem to be in a better place with having Star Wars on the side as well as well as a few other you know, not potentially as exciting titles as well in the work works. But I still I still am concerned that they're like they're going to be like Assassins. Division is new Assassins. Let's go where is that Division movie? What's going on? Yep, that's gonna happen too. I know a lot of people love Division two. I like in a way that I'm very surprised when this announcement like snuck out yesterday and people were like, oh my god, yes, Division three. Yeah, there are some freaks out there for Division. I did not know Division was hitting with people like that. I enjoy playing it, but I do not feel that way about it. I played it for a little bit and then I think that was one of the games that remind that was kind of like my breaking point for ship with numbers and boards. Oh sure, yeah, yes, yeah. I think as people play a lot of games, there's always a point where you're going to get to there and then yeah, I totally understand that you mentioned like you're worried about them going all in on on like one, one or two franchises. That does remind me of one of the leaks, leaked emails from Phil Spencer that I saw last night for the first time, And I don't know, you could explain to a lot of this. I'm gonna read and I think because basically, once you hear this, I think people will be able to understand what's happening with all of these publishers. So I'm just gonna go for it real quick. The creation of digital This is Phil Spencer writing an email. The creation of digital storefronts like Big Philly. Spence says the creation of digital storefronts like Steam, Xbox Store, and PlayStation Store eventually democratized access for creators, breaking physical retails lock on game distribution. Triple A publishers were slow to react to this disruption. The TRIPWA publishers did not find a way to leverage the moat that physical retail created in the digital realm in a way that had them continue their dominance of the game marketplace. They have not found a way to effectively cross promote. They have not found a way to build publisher brands that drive consumer affinity the way that Disney has in video. They did not They did not create a social platform that would allow them to reach beyond their aggregate IP monthly active players without a lock on physical distribution. The role of the Triple A publisher has changed and become less important in today's gaming industry. Over the past five to seven years, the Triple A publishers have tried to use production scale as their new mote. Very few companies can afford to spend two hundred million dollars that in Activision or take to spend to put out titles that Call of Duty or Red Dead Redemption on the shelf. These Triple A publishers have mostly used this production scale to keep their top franchises in the top selling games each year. The issue these publishers have run into is these same productions scale slash cost approach hurts their ability to create new IP. The hurdle rate on new IP at these high production levels have led to risk aversion by big publishers on new IP. You've seen a rise of Triple A publishers using rented IP like Star Wars to try to to try to have to lead to risk aversion to try to offset the risk. Excuse me and that he also mentions Spider mamisony Avatar with Ubisov. This same dynamic has obviously played out in Hollywood as well, with Netflix creating more new IP than any other movie studio. Specifically, the Triple A game publishers starting starting from position of strength driven from physical retail, have able to create any real platform effect for themselves. They effectively continue to build their scale through aggregated per game profit and losses, hoping to maximize each new release of their existing IP. In the new world, where a Triple A publisher don't have real distribution leverage with consumers, they don't have production efficiencies, and their new IP hit rate is not disproportionately higher than the industry average. We see that the top franchises today we're mostly not created by Triple A game publishers. Games like Fortnite, Roadblocks, Minecraft, Candy Crush, Clash Royale, Dota To, etc. We're all created by independent studios with full access to moving forward. Triple A publishers are milking their top franchises but struggling to refill their portfolio of hit franchises. Most Triple A publishers are writing the success of franchises created ten plus years ago. And you know, Tam, we talk every week on the show mostly and things happen where it's like, why are publishers behaving this way? This way? Why is EA a company that just struggled with the Star Wars license now going into all these other licenses still like they're now they're doing Marvel Games. This explains it all. Creating the risk of creating a new IP when the budgets are this high, are so scary to these companies that it's much more worth it for them to go out there and get these rented ips, And it just explains the general risk aversion I think I think we see from these big companies, which is like when we talk about, like, what where's the next billion dollar game going to come from? It's almost certainly not going to be one of these companies. It's probably not even going to be one of the major platform holders. Could be probably not, It's probably going to be someone doing something new on Steam Early Access or something like that. In light of that, like, I feel like this completely illuminates what Ubisoft is doing right, Yeah, absolutely, between Avatar and stall Wars that they are, they all one of the many companies that is doing that is it's kind of essential at this point for for most major publishers and developers to have at least one license property available to them, the one bank of bole thing they can either milk or milk and spin off into various other things. I mean, like Sony's got one, it is Spider Man. Microsoft has one. Maybe it is Indiana Jones probably hopefully. Yeah, Nintendo doesn't need one, probably because well, I guess they have Mario, right, he's a movie star. Is everywhere like that. He's the closest thing that they have to a Spider Man, the differences. They own him, so it's entirely their own. Yeah, so it's it's it is essential these days. It's also incredibly unfortunate. On the one hand, it does mean that we won't have a lot of breakthrough new ips in the way that they used to be. I you know, how likely is it that we'll see a new something like Years of War for example. It's not super high. And it also means that the knock on effect of not having those ip appear and then become massively successful is that the exposure of video games is somewhat stifled and diminished because we had opportunities where there were times in the past where you know, the big discussion would be around video games are absolutely popping off. Duta makes more money than any movie franchise, and that's when everyone started paying attention to video games and being like, we should work with video games a bit more now. It seems to have reversed where everyone in video games is trying to make the most of movie IP or comic book IPS, which means that we've become a kind of you know, a leach on other ips and other industries, which is not what we want to be. We want to be in a situation where we're creating kind of new things for people to love. That's just keep taking the kind of like large scale development stuff. I think we are still doing that on a smaller scale. I bet like there's a trillion companies that are trying to get the rights movie rights, TV right, tajites right now or something like that. There's probably so many people after whatever, you know, Vampire Survivors or whatever it may be, the smaller indie games. So on the other hand, it does provide a good opportunity for smaller mid tier to low tier or but indie game sorry not low tier. Nothing's low tear, everything's harder. Yeah. Yeah, it does provide them to attain a level of success that previously would have been like scooped up by major companies like they they are now able to be in a room with you know, and overall talent movies. I mean that is healthy. That is definitely healthy, and that is the that is the thing that keeps me from losing it all and being like, we've got to stop making license games. There's studios out there that are making their own thing and it's proven to be popular, and it's also being done in a space where there's they're less risk averse and they can take risks and and create something weird and different and new. And then there's like developers that are kind of like in the middle there somewhere which they have high production values. They're known as major developers, and they're being weird and freaky, like Remedy to a degree, remedy and like Alan Wake and Control and that kind of stuff. They're like super freak SCEL there. And then I would also argue PDPR is one of those companies where they are huge. They probably like, yeah, they probably are essential to the economy of Poland at this point, but they aren't one of those studios that like them all of them. Given the recent stuff that happened or I say recent, but it's been years now with Cyberpunk, they are also doing weird things with those games. They are doing good things with those games and credit where credit is? You know, do they stuck with that game and they made it exceptional again again they kind of rebuild their reputations. So they all still studios doing that. And I bet everyone out there is like, we need someone that cyberpunk pie. Yep, I think you're ready. It does suck, but also it's not the end of the world. It's not the end of the world, right, and it's it's a phase, right. I think that I think the Phil Spencer email properly identifies and not like brings the sufferings says. I get the part about the big spin not paying off, but not the part where a triple A is available everywhere and so it subverts the democracy of online stores. That's not what he's saying. He's saying that, like because spending a lot of money on marketing. Yes, anyone could do that if you have the budget. The point it was making is that these these companies have not built that brand affinity like a Disney or like a Nintendo, where you show up because it's the brand. I mean, honestly, if anything that has moved backwards. Think of a company like Blizzard, which was once that they had that mote of like we are a castle onto ourselves. People show up for Blizzard games based all that's somewhat, but it's diminished. It is greatly diminished. And now people show up as it's Diablo four, not because it's the new Blizzard game, and so like that's what like these publishers have really struggled with that building an identity. Does EA have a fucking identity? Maybe on the sports side maybe even that's questionable, but the rest of it EA Entertainment, No way is that there are people showing up because they're EA fans or Ubisoft fans. Even so it's like, now these that's where the companies are like, okay, now, so the way we do compete is bigger budgets and bigger marketing spend, and that has made the stuff risk averse. What's what's an easier thing to market? It's Spider Man at Star Wars and Avatar, not the new thing from Ubisoft. And that's that's the point here. Uh yeah, I also feel I also feel like in the same way that you know we were just talking about, I wish video game developers went for smaller or mid tier ips and ye did good jobs with them like it's technically that's kind of what cyberpunk was, right, a mid tier ideas exactly what cyber punk was like. If you were into the board games and like role playing tabletop stuff, you probably knew of cyberpunk. But I don't think you and most people who are playing Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven knew of cyberpunk, but now they definitely do. And like, there's there's ips out there that garner a lot of love that either just passed over or just get treated like dog shit like one of mine. One one that I keep bringing up is Avatar the Last Airbender, Like it baffles me how a good Avatar the Last Airbender game has not been made Like that thing is massive. All we've had is just the cheapest, crappiest games. So I don't understand why someone isn't like looking at those kind of ips and going, let's try make a game like you know, are out of this. You know it's got some love, it's got people like it, and and check it out. There's a game. There's a Netflix series that I wish someone would make game out of, Like it's it's had two seasons already. It's really really good animated series. There's actually another season coming out this month. It's called Castlevania. Have you heard of that? I mean, I've heard people mention it in past. Why is no one making a video game out of that Netflix animated series. It's unreal. Me and Me and Mike Gun are on another show today, a list of the top five best games of two thousand and three, and I just kept looking at Aria Sorrow, just be like, man, we were getting one of these every single year there in the early two thousands, and they were banging. They were so so good, and we were eating and feast and it was amazing. You could just do that again. I just want to believe that we can live in a world where you can just do that again and it would pay off. But yeah, yeah. Ubisoft Sale clears the final obstruction for the Microsoft Activision merger. This is from Ali Welsh, a Polygon. It now appears clear that Microsoft will be able to complete it's sixty nine billion dollars acquisitions listener within the next month. Competition and Markets Authority, the UK Anti Trust body, remained the regulatory hold out, with the with the legal authority to block the deal. It now says it concerns. Its concerns have been substantially addressed by Microsoft's latest proposal. A. Microsoft has handed the CMA a major concession. The cloud gaming rights to all of Activision Bizzards games will be carved out and sold separately to Ubisoft. Microsoft will still theoretically be able to play Activision Buzzard games on its own cloud gaming service, but despite owning the games, it will have to go to Ubisoft and bid for those rights, like any of its competitors in the space, and it won't be able to withhold them from other services. The CMA, which was worried about the deal's potential to close out competition in the nascent cloud gaming market, seems satisfied, saying the prior sale of the cloud gaming rights will establish Ubisoft is a key supplier of content that cloud to cloud gaming services, replicating the role the Activision would have played in the market as an independent player. Yeah, this, I wonder for Microsoft seem like an extreme move. It does seem like kind of the thing that they didn't want to do, but they pulled the trigger. They did it. Uh, and now this deal is probably going to go through TAM. I know we've talked this to death, but it does feel like it might actually be closing now, and the glue closing would happen in mid October. This is a preliminary ruling, and then they'll have their final ruling in mid October, I think October eighteenth. So here's the thing, right, I know a lot about news. I am. I have I have many, many years of providing my perspective, teaching, and analysis of news. I know that we are on a new show right now where we discuss the news, but I'm I'm also someone that likes to be as honest as possible everyone. Yeah, I don't. I don't give a fuck about any of this. Yeah, I mean, but what else is there possibly to say at this point? Okay, good for you, Yeah, exactly, you did it. Good job. We are going on it's like more than a year or whatever. I honestly can't remember anymore. So I wish I could just skip forward to the dystopian future where everyone owns everyone, because the process of getting there it's just like mind numbing. Yes, it's way way worse actually somehow. Yeah again, every you point out consalidation issues, point out that active was already a problem. Whatever, we'll see what happens it is, it is like it will be interesting, Like I think there will be a discussion to be had once it's like right, once we start seeing what it looks like. Once, once we start seeing it what it looks like, once there's a certainty. It also relies on technology and ideas and and and like lifestyle changes in our the way we consume media that are haven't not not even haven't come into fruition, are barely taking root, like cloud gaming. Like I'm sure there's a lot of people that are like very very gung hole on the idea of cloud gaming. I understand it's never going to happen. People are the vast majority of people who play video games aren't playing cloud gaming video games. You know what they are doing. They're buying iPhone Pro, Max's fifteens or whatever that can run these games. Natively, they're buying those exactly, they're buying smaller hardware that can play their powerful games and look nice like the iPhone or more like more relevant to us, like the aces rug, the Steam deck, that kind of stuff. That's where it's moving for us to switch to a degree as well, that's where it's moving for us and they can keep pushing and preparing for this cloud gaming thing as long as they want. Good for them. Don't make your future business bets everyone's problem. Like this fucking just like you know what I'm saying, Like, once it's done is done. You know Microsoft that leak with the new Xbox that has an element of cloud gaming built into it, right, I mean, that's the next time I want to seriously take a look at this again, buying any sort of major change the Codema game, right, the Cogima game from Xbox, it's going to use the cloud. Well, ye, will that Cojima explain what he's going to do with that ship, because you know that's going to be wild. If Cojima says it's good, then we'll take it serious exactly. That's the bug, right, We are waiting for him to come back. He's in the review booth right now. He's got his head over under the tarp looking at the camera like, yeah, no one say anything about cloud gaming until Kajima comes around and does it first. That's gonna be the that's the kind of like Winter Soldier trigger phrase to activate everyone's interest in cloud gaming. When Kajima comes and goes, did you like it. Yep, And he released some funky new trailer and at the end it's like it just says cloud cloud game man, and I have I have brought transferring to the cloud. I would be so excited. If you call it transferring to I would lose call it like He'll call it like global weather, transferring cloud or something like that. And that's the coolest shit I've ever Thank you, sir, Thank you sir. Could we have another? All right, Yeah, let's let's move on again. We'll talk about it again in a couple of weeks when they do approve it. Sorry, that's how it goes. EU game Dev's ask lyric regulators to look at Unity's anti competitive bundling. This comes from Kyle Oreland at Ours Tennica. In the wake of Unity's sudden fee structured change announcement last week, a European trade group representing thousands of game developers is calling on governments to update their regulatory framework to curb what they see as a looming market failure caused by potentially anti competitive market behavior. In an open letter published that last week, the European Games Developer Federation goes through a lot of the now familiar arguments for why Unity's decision to charge up to twenty cents per game install will be bad for the industry. The Federation of twenty three national Game developed the Game Developer Trade Associations argues that the new fee structure will make it much harder for small and midsized developers to build reliable business plans by significantly increasing the game development costs for most game developers relying on Unity services. The organization also probably worries about professional game education institutions that may need to update their curriculum wholesale. If there's a mass exodus from Y's engine. Many young industry professionals and this is a quote who have built their career career plans on mastering Unities tools will be put in a very difficult position beyond simply being bad for the industry. Though, the EGDF argues that Unity's move might be anti competitive in a way that demands government action. The group takes a special exception to Unity's history of bundling it's game engine with services like analytics in game chat, ad networks, and mediation tools, as well as user acquisition tools and more. That kind of bundling creates a significant vendor lock risk for game developers using Unity services, which also makes it difficult for many game middleware developers to compete against Unity. And this is something that we mentioned when this was still happening, that one of the things Unity was doing, Hey, if you don't want to pay this fee, is this fee scary? Well guess what if you use our ad services, you don't get that fee. That's like that felt like them strong arming using their market advantage it to get people to use more of their services so they can make even more money. And it's like that feels very anti competitive on its surface. Obviously that could be litigated, but that's what they're saying, is that this bundling is a problem. Do you think that governments in Europe, regulators in Europe will kind of like take this up. Do you think it's a possibility. I hope. So. I feel like I feel like more developers in Europe should kick up a fuss about it to help it along, because it's definitely necessary. I mean, like I would it is. It's one of those things where it's so stupid that it makes me feel like a naive child, where where it's one of those moves where I'm like, why isn't someone stopping daddy? Why is this happening? Someone get the bad man? Yeah, unless like it makes me angry in a way that like this is a catastrophic move, like this is has the ripple effect of this isn't like, oh no, a bunch of people have to pay, you know, a little bit of money to update the access to this thing. Is you could kill game studios, kill like the livelihood of multiple people, small teams, big teams force them into basically giving a working and making games for minus profits, and it is like it is destructive in a way that I'm like, how it is. Isn't a regulatory body seeing just the statement and going what are you doing here? That's crazy? We're going to have a word with you. Can I talk you on the side, mister Ricatello? What fuck are you doing? Like you keep doing this shit? Stop it? But like it, I hope that they do that. I mean the EU regulatory body is I think that it's not super reliable. In the past, I've seen like it has come come in and taken proper measures to try and investigate things. At the same time, I have also seen them look the other way on things that seem like they should be up in their ass trying to figure it out. I feel like the important thing here is like a consistent and persistent pressure to do it, and I think that it doesn't specifically have to be European developers that do this. I would like love to see the global game development community come together and start like campaigning to do it, not just for EU, but like target every regulator in various different parts of the world where Unity operates or developers that use Unity operates and have a petition their local governments in whatever way possible. You know, it's limited for people who are outside of the countries or outside of the regions, but you can still help bring attention to it and and and hopefully create more of a movement in addressing the issues here or at least taking them. And the thing is like, unless an actual government regulatory body gets involved, these companies and corporations won't do anything like because when a government gets involved or a regulatory body gets involved, it hurts either their bottom line, their wallets, the stock, their perception there whatever it may be, or it's potentially puts them in jail. So those are the things that really, really really will make them rethink what they're doing. Us bitch and moaning on Twitter will do some of it until government appears and it's like you better stop that. They're not going to take us seriously. Yeah, and it's establishing those guardrails for now and into the future would be you know, have a permanent positive effect as opposed to like, you know, these these outbursts. Yeah, I think they're scary to companies. I think Unity is definitely in this position where it's scared of the reaction for sure, and that's that's effective. But it doesn't necessarily mean the next person to come down the line, the next company come down the line, will have learned this lesson that Unity is learning right now, and like, will Unity actually learn this lesson? And that's still yet to be seeing. They still I don't. I still don't think they've put out that messaging that they promised to do so over the weekend. Man if I obviously john Rick on the on streets, this on site, let it be known, fucking Man's a menace just Leggis the world has never seen before. Oh I'm not gonna hit him or anything. I'm just gonna be like incessantly annoying to him, and I hope that he goes away like this man is a menace. All right, let's go ahead here. Game Boy Advanced game, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror is coming to Nintendo Switch Online. This is from Chris Scully and over at VGC. Kirby and the Amazing Mirror will be added to Nintendo Switch Online next week. The two thousand and four Game Boy Advanced Game will be added to the Switches game Boy Advanced Library on September and twenty ninth. Nintendo has announced the game's plot revolves around a mirror world. Blah blah blah. This is like the twelfth game added to the Game Boy Advance offering no Nintendo Switch Online. You can also get Fire Emblem Kirokurokuro in TAM's Favorite The Legends Aldo with the minis capt Mario and Luigi, Superstar Saga, Mario Kart's Super Circuit Circuit, Metroid Fusion, Super Mario Advance two four, and then Morio Ware Inc. Mega Micro Games. I love the Game Boy Advance. I was like at first, I was like, man, I'm just glad to have any Game Boy Advanced games. Now it's like adding one at a time for Game Boy Advance is kind of rough. Could you please just had a few more because I don't love Kirby in the Amazing Mirror. It's not one of my favorite Kirby games. So it's like, yeah, I mean lessen, I get it. We went five minutes without a Kirby game being released on the Switch and someone and Nintendo flipped out. It was like, we got to fix this, but maybe I add another game in there at the same time. Even two games at a time would be nice. But like SKay, yeah, every month Kirby and a different game, like just just do that. Yeah, and when you run out, when you run out of Kurby games, just starting, yeah, and then release a game. Tubes got doubles to those. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because like I don't know at this point, Like for me the Game Boy Advance. I love the Game Boy Advance. But like we said earlier, I think ninety five per cent of my time with the game I advanced was Castlevania games like Castlevania and Pokemon games. That was pretty much it. I don't believe I played much other than that. Like I I definitely played like I'm a couple of like Mitrofusion and Marrio Car and Marry Advanced, but briefly, you know, it was Metrofusion is the only one that has a lasting impression. So for me, I'm just like the one I want. The ones I want is Castlovania and they released a collection. So I'm just like a man, cool what you want exactly? Good man? I like a DS collection, that would be fantastic. Oh dude, there you know that they're going to give you a DS collection in maybe twenty years times like, oh man, there's two screens. All these things have one screen. That's a lot of work. I guess we'll do it eventually, but taughami, grow up, you know, grow up. Indeed, everyone's grow up, especially especially John Rictello is, especially John Ricotello that this game added to the Game Boy Advanced Collections. So it's on that extension or expansion tier, which is fifty dollars a year, not twenty dollars a year. Valve doesn't expect to launch steam Deck two in the next couple of years. This comes from Tom the Machine Ivan at VGC. Valve says it doesn't expect to release a true successor to steam Deck in the next couple of years. So that's according to Valve coder Pierre lou grefa greface, I'm going to say, who's currently working on the handheld, which launched in February twenty twenty two. Right now, we're kind of looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for the next couple of years, he told CNBC. We think that it's a pretty sweet spot in terms of being able to play all the experiences from this new generation, and so far the new releases are coming out with great, great experiences on Steam Deck. Obviously, we're working with developers on future releases and we're monitoring the feedback there, but so far, I think it has been pretty good on the horsepower front. He also told The Verge it's important to us that the deck offering a fixed performance target for developers and that the message to consume customers is simple where every deck can play the same games. As such, changing the performance levels not something we were taught taking lightly, and we only want to do so when there is a significant enough increase to be had. This is probably the Steam Deeck already feels like a console given a console like life cycle instead of a smartphone. Or tablet or computer life cycle is probably the right call in my opinion. What do you think? I think this is probably I think this is probably very accurate to what their plans are. I think Valves will also in a position where they control the hardware and the software delivering it, and the actual software that is running the thing is also something they have intimate knowledge with. Yes, so they were one of the few companies to kind of really make optimize games new and games from the future for that device. It just is a matter of them needing to commit properly to that endeavor like they have to. I assume they already have it, like they have mentioned like this, this person, Pierre lou is probably part of a wider team that is speaking to developers and being like, all right, this is what you need to make this run. What is your game? Looking at their own hardware and then messing with it. I also felt like, for some reason, the Steam deck feels like it is or the Linux operating system that it runs on. It feels like it is more capable of being tweaked and you know, having different dials and knobs tweaked and to turn to kind of keep up with the changes in technology to a degree, because if we think about it, like a lot of the games that I play on it are they're PC games that look really nice, but they're like bump down to seven twenty in most cases, and they still look fantastic, Like they look great because they're the smaller screen, so there is power to be played with there still, And I think like as Valve spends more time with the architecture, hopefully, and then you know, game developers get better at optimizing their own engines, and you know games on unreal and epic figures out more like, oh, this is this is how we can make this run smoother and all those kind of things. Like I feel like the steam Deck definitely has at least two, two or three years left in it before they put out a new one, and even then I imagine the steam Deck will still the original Steam Deck will still be very viable. I think, barring this, I've believe this is accurate, barring any sort of hardware issues that emerge after a prolonged period of time, because we haven't had it long enough to know the right term impact of build quality, build quality and that kind of stuff. Like something sometimes I pick mine up and I'm like, this is too hot, Like I'm worried about how hot this is, and we don't know, like it's it's been fine so far. You tend to run very warm. Who knows if three years into its life cycle one day that getting very hot just makes it pop or something like that, and at that point they're like, oh shit, we gotta make we need to rush out another one of these or like update one, or I imagine they've done they kind of due diligence and stress testing, which every hotwin manufacturer has to do, but still is As games get more demanding, who knows it could be a game that is like, you know, out the new generation's version of Crisis, whereas make Sure Pecs go nuclear and show like that. Well, I mean, I think you're like the thing we were talking about, like them working with developers and how they probably have a team doing that, and I think we see the evidence of that. The thing started off with like, yeah, if you moot up a game, many of them are going to be automatically set around steam Deck, And now we're at the point where we're getting Cyberpunk and it has a steam Deck preset option in the game itself that you could just select. That is my favorite thing about I think the steam Deck is a fantastic piece of hardware, and it opened the door for me to consider the hardware like it, which is why I have the Asis rog ally which transparency they sent it to me. But I just had no interest in playing one previous that, like they were the iannos and stuff like that. There was plenty of stuff like that, but once I played steam Deck, I was like, oh, this is where we're at. Now, let me see what else is out there. And I love my rock. I played that thing a lot. One of the most impressive things about the whole steam Deck kind of ecosystem is how dedicated Valve has been to working with developers to make sure that their games are doing well. I think the first time I saw it happened was elden Ring, Yeah, which was in review phase. Like I was playing elden Ring while I also had a steam Deck, which I don't believe was out yet, so the steam Deck haw yeah yeah. And like during the review phase before elden Ring reviews went live or the steam Deck was out, there was an update to make elden Ring work and running smoother. Understanding was running it was running so nice. And the reason that happened is because they looked at the releases and went, this is a big game. People are going they know, right, they have that data, right, they know who has a Steam Deck, and they know who's wish listing games, and they see a lot of people wish listening this game, maybe even through their Steam Deck, and they're like, well, let's go talk to that studio. And it's like that is a pretty big advantage and like then they have the team that can execute. I mean, what they did with elder Ring was they have that that proton layer that like causes Windows games to run on Linux, and what they did with that, it's like, we know the shaders that elden Ring is going to try to build when you're playing that, we'll just pre build them for people and install that into the proton layer so that when people are booting up elder Ring, it's ready to go. And it's like that that was not happening on other platforms. So you're getting this bad stuttering in the early days of elden Ring on everything else, even powerful PCs, and it wasn't happening on the Steam Deck. And I'm like I'm just gonna keep playing here. Yeah, it's thirty fransom a second, But Tom, this is great. I'm having a great time. Yeah. And like you said, like Cyberpunk has got a pre build pre set in there, and I was playing Cyberpunk Fundam Liberty on the on the steam Deck and on the rock ally and on the steam Deck. It plays efectly well, like, it plays really nice and the kind of at least I had no issues with it. I did crank it down, turn off some of the effects, as I do with a lot of these things. And as that continues, like I hope that valve, you know, it's stays committed to that stuff I'm waiting for. I don't know. I don't know if they have done it yet. I haven't checked in a little while, but something for bodles Gate three would be great. But even playing that Bald's Gate three just vanilla without any sort of extra work done to it works well enough. So that's the thing that I find most impressive. And I think that's also what is going to give the steam Deck, you know, mileage beyond what we expect and and and beyond where even where we're like, all right, I want a new Steam deck. Now, I was probably going to be able to be like, well, we can make these next few games come out and be like performing really well. So I don't think we need it yet. Yep. I think that's right, and it's uh, I'm very happy for this to just kind of settle in this like this is the performance spec that you should be targetinglopers. And I think developers have fully seen the benefits of doing that, of of of targeting the Steam deck, and more people buy your game because people with Steam decks like to buy games. It seems like, so's it's going to work out in your favor. Portable get This is a complete tangent, but it's I had a scary revelation the other day and and it was like it was one of those moments where I like, I had a cold sweat and my hair was on the back of my neck was standing up. I had. I've had multiple moments in the last few weeks where I thought to myself, I wish I had something that I could play my PlayStation five remotely right now, And then you're gonna get one, aren't you. I'm getting I'm getting one. It's happened. It's been so like every time, Like when it literally came out, I was like, no, show, I'm not doing that. That's a scary story, right. It was like I was like, shit, I'm one of those people. I'm falling into it. Yeah, well, and I I blame I blame the Steam Deck, I blame the aces rug. I was just sitting there and I was like, oh, I would love to be able to play it. I can't remember what I think it was like Armored Core or something. Sure, remember what game it was. I have since got that on PCs playing that's where I've been playing on the right. Yeah, but like I've still been like, oh I could I could bang on my my PS five and play a bit of that right now. So I have a feeling there's a PSP in my future. I'm getting one. Actually, I hope so only sends us one and then we'll see it. We'll take it from there. But I'll probably blame everyone for myself. Every time I've had that realization, I've stood up and walked into my hallway just like, go take a breather. No, it has one of those full bodies, like almost floor to ceiling mirrors where you can see you and tie yourself and I've gotten real close to myself. Yeah, I've just been like grow up and you know, well listen, we'll see, we'll see if that's gonna work. It sounds very powerful, so I hope you're able to convince yourself not to make any rash decisions. All right, let's move on here. A new Lord of the Rings game, Tales of the Shire, is coming to consoles in PC. This is from Tom. I've been at BGC. A new Lord of the Rings game, Tales of the Shire, has been announced for PC and consoles. It's being developed by New Zealand based special effects and prop company Wait to Workshop wet A Workshop, which is what's a Workshop which is perhaps best known for its work on The Lord of the Rings in Hobbit films, and will be published by Take two's Private Division label. Still yet another Lord of the ringstang that's not under embracer. Your cozy Hobbit life awaits you in Tales of the Tales of the Shire, a heartwarming new the Lord of the Rings game due out in twenty twenty four on console in PC. And that's messaging from Private Division. There's a teaser trailer for the game which is listed as coming soon on the publisher's website, and it's just a kind of showing someone drawn in a diary, sort of like what's his name does in the Hobbit Bilbo below. Yes, Hey, this seems like it's got a good owned to it. I like this idea. I'm also interested to see a game from Wedda. I know that they I think Unity bought part of Wedda, but I don't I think this. I think it's the part that's not owned by Unity. I think, but I guess. I'm not sure. So massive L for John Riccatello once again, except that hold that L. Hold it close to your chest and feel it. Oh boy, I don't know. I can't listen. I know Lucy's feelings about about all of this. I know she's a big, big into all these things. How are you feeling about a new, yet another Lord of the Rings game after the Golumn incident incident, we'll call it. Honestly, I'm I'm just really happy for Lucy. Yes, I feel like she needed this. I feel like she want this is one of this for a right a long time, and she deserves this, you know, And I'm glad that it's especially off the column which I witnessed the the emotional and physical impact that game had on just psychic damaged under her. It was it was like watching Harley and Quinzel transform into the Harlequinn character, where like the Get That game, Gollum was the joker on her, where like she began being like disappointed and confused, and then by the end of it was like laughing maniacally and swinging a comically large hammer around the office, and we were like, what happened to her? And it was it was Gollum's here physics, apparently that happened to her. I am also very excited at the idea of what a workshop doing a game, because obviously the working movies is legendary, right and this is also a spin on Lord of the Rings. That one is fresh, we've never seen it before, and also two is like just it's it's it's interesting. It's something that you know, people didn't expect to see coming, right like, and even I'm interested, like I like a Lord of the Rings. I am not fanac about it. I don't want to play any Lord of the Rings games anymore, like I don't the ones that I enjoyed were Shadow of Model and that's it. That was the only lord. I want to play Return of the King for GameCube again. I kind of want to do that. But other than that, that's that's your that's your. Thank you for respecting my decision. I respect that I will not be joining on you on this endeavor. I understand, but I do play. But fine, Fine, this is something that is like I will definitely give it a go. It's more if only, just to support them and and like say, tell the industry at large that you don't have to retread old ground repeatedly. But yeah, it seems like also it's based on the like the mad mumblings that Lucy was making during like the airing of this. This isn't based on the movies. It's based on the books, which Embrace said doesn't have the full license. They cannot hand out the licensing to other that's still the family doing that, right, And the steal obviously feels like it was in the works before anything was happening with Embracer anyhow, so probably doesn't involve them. Yeah, so I'm I'm up for this then sure, I'm like, yeah, cool, go for it. Yeah, I think something different right for me, these big properties are best off when they are being treated a little bit more like Warhammer and the early two thousand Star Wars stuff, where it's like, just try everything, just throw a million ideas at the wall, and so when you get a Gullman it sucks, it's not that big deal because you're going to get another one from another studio in another genre in like three months, and that one might be your jam I. Warhammer, Warhammer forty K both do a good job of that, and they have a lot of missus, a lot of missus, but there's occasionally one where I'm like, I am I enjoy this and I'm not even a Warhammer person. So and I think, you know, Star Wars is trying to get back to that sort of that cadence. It seems like John Drake speaks to that in a little bit and how difficult that is with with the lack of developers out there to actually make deals with. But you know, there's definitely more in the works. I always hear rumors about new Star Wars things in the works from from other studios, So I think doing that with one of the rings would be very cool. You know, I want to see I want to see I want to see you remember when they used to do like licensed versions of like puzzle all games, arcade puzzle games that we play, like, Oh, here is a Star Wars Tetris, that's what I want back again. Absolutely liked like Yoda stories, a little Tamagotchi with Yoda, Like yea, yeah yeah. The next Star Wars game I want is Star Wars Pegel. That's it all right, man, I kind of want everything Pegel, though anything with peg would be great. Oh God. Speaking of running ideas into the ground, Banda Nanko seems to have a good idea about like how to handle this. He says, every publisher, they say, every publisher has to focus more on their own expertise. This comes from Marie Delissandri at Games Industry app IS. Banda Namko is planning to release several games this year that includes Armored Course six Tech and eight Little Nightmares three. But they are also folks who are on explaining their presence in the UK where they see a lot of potential for their animes anime IPAs. But they are now they don't know, they don't I have I have done a video on this on YouTube. I'll try and find it drop it Namco. I listen with the most amount of respect Namco Bandai. The anime ips need to be taken away from them. I think that the video. The video is called please stop turning anime into arena fires, because that's what Namco Bandai does. So Banda turns turns every IP into the same fucking game, and it is infuriating to me. It's one of the things that makes me maddest in this world. And that's what I'm talking about earlier when I said people aren't looking at all ips and Namco Bandai has unfettered access to some of the biggest animation ips in the world, and they make the most bottom feeding, low effort games ever. Like I still maintain the best Naruto game ever made has been made by Ubisoft. Like they at least tried, Bandai Namco is just I would maybe allow them like that last Gundam game was interesting and different, but like they just they're like a yo yo. They will make one decent, little different idea but then go straight back to arena fighters and I'm sick of it, man, I am sick of it. I respect that they tried with one piece. The latest game but like I want more of that. Why isn't there a good my hero academic game. Why isn't there a good one piece game that is, you know, actual taking one piece. Seriously, it's the biggest IP in the world right now, Like Netflix is just eating so well off of it. Do a half decent game that isn't just a arena fighter and isn't just you know, that same old tired format that everyone keeps making. I do not believe that Namco bandaces any real interest in making the most of their anime ips. I think that they will continue to milk care for them and for as long as people don't put up a competition IPS and IP holders in Japan seem to be just very cool with giving band Dinamco access to it because Banda Namco has their fingers and a lot of pies and it's huge in Japan, Yes, but it is. I just want you all to know that they are absolutely doing you dirty, man, Like you're getting nothing out of this and it's just putting out like the lowest form of adaptation of your games. You deserve better than that. And that's like kind of I mean, that's basically they're like every publisher has to focus on their own expertise, implying that that their area of expertise are these anime games. And it's like, you call that expertise, but what that looks like is a formula that you're just sticky too, over and over and they talk about like later in this article, the Delosandre wrote that they don't have the whole thing here, but she writes that they explain over Ben and Am because like, oh no, we're happy with that. We're getting more and more variety within these anime games, and I like I see that, like that's maybe the right idea, like when you start like, okay, yeah, our expertise is anime stuff, so let's try a bunch of different stuff in anime. But they're not doing that. They're they are definitely not doing It's funny because like I think their anime output is not good. I think the other game output is excellent. Yeah, Like I looks like hot, hot, hot, hot shit. How can it looks like tech and the teching games are absolutely popping off, Like Armored Core is fantastic, Like it is an amazing like project for them, Like they also do like good RPG still like Tales of Verise. You know, they just announced new DLC for a Tales of Veriz is superb as a game they have outside of anime stuff, I think Bandanamco is excellent. I love like keeping an eye on them. I take them very seriously when it comes to their their other games that they publish. It's just the anime stuff is and also like Little Nightmares and stuff like that as well. That's that's a good move in investing in that. And obviously they publish Elden Reman, which is a big deal. It's a good idea. Yeah, working with from is a great idea. So I buy them. I buy them as a publisher. I don't like them, and I don't trust them as an anime game adapt right, And that's and that's kind of what we like, not getting into that rut, not being risk averse when it comes to spanning, spreading out your wings in your area of expertise. Like, I don't think anyone is necessarily suggesting every game that they have to try it needs to be completely different from a completely different source material or something like that. Yeah, you can have your lane, but trying new things and doing different things in that lane is kind of what we're looking for. Yeah, do the thing. Do the thing we want from you in a surprising way. Is where I'm at with most of these companies. Yeah, I guess the discussion that we're having here is a kind of retort and rebolt to their statement that every publisher has to focus on their expertise. Yeah, as as they define their expertise as anime games, I don't think that's their expertise. Maybe is what they believe. I think their expertise is in non anime games, like having a variety of good RPGs and working with from and having that kind of like yeah get and having tech can be like a crown jewel in their in their arsenal, and then focusing on like classic titles that they might have still knocking about. That is what I believe that their expertise is, and it's broad enough that I don't wouldn't describe it as an expertise, Like the anime stuff is is what they think they're good at. But most of the people around the world are just like they're like disappointed, sadly buying these games, being like all right, I guess this is the only way I'll be able to play as no Uto or Lucy or whatever it may be in a video game for the next year and a half. And yeah, that's that's that's all rebuttal to that. So maybe every publisher doesn't have to focus on their expertise. Maybe now teket Set sold ten million copies, very Teck techn is incredibly good. Like it's one of those ones where it's like, I fully anticipate that next game is going to be exceptionally good and great often be super super well. Like there's a confidence in the way they make that tech and the techn games as like they're just like they know, They're like, we're gonna make this game. It's going to be amazing and a huge success, and I'll be surprised if it sucks in like in a major way. We have a pull from yesterday that we're gonna get too. Do you like when celebrities do voice character voice voices for characters and video games? Now that's for two years ago. Excuse me, Hey, there we go. You should watch the latest episode of spot on that that's going up today right now, that's going up today, which is me and Lucy talking about celebrities as voice actors in games and the damage it does it can do very cool to the industry, very much looking forward to watching that. Everyone catch that over on game Spot on YouTube. Do you like Let's okay, I'm reading again. Do you want KU's on switch? Is actually the one from yesterday? Forty three percent say yes, that would be great. Fifty seven percent say no, I'd rather play it somewhere else. That seems fair that there is an audience that would play it on switch, but people probably have already been very happy with where they're playing yet Kuza. Yeah. I think these days the audience people wanted a portable version of the offer, and that exists now exist Deck and the rog and Iron, all the all the other portable PCs. Basically, there's a new pull up which Tim Clancy series? Do you want a new game from the most? Oh my god? How has this got multiple choices? Jeff understand, I need I need division for me. I need you to do this for me. Is this is this today's Paul? This is today's Paul. Remove Ghost Recon. Okay, we could we could do what you'll have to repost it, but we could do that. Okay, remove ghost Recon, remove ghost Recon, remove Rainbow six, Okay, remove the division, post a pole, post the poles. We'll fex it. We'll get that done everybody, and that'll be the pull for Monday when we do another Game US Mornings here on giant bomb dot com. Tam, why do you tell people what you got going on? What is going on today? So? Yeah, as I mentioned, we've got that episode of spot On going up. As we as I talked about, it's about celebrities and voice acting in games. We talk about kind of the recent bad and the recent good and how it is better for the industry to create their own stars instead of trying to bank off other ones. And beyond that, there's a bunch of reviews that I put up on Game spot On the Giant Bomb side, we had Jeff Jeff Bizarre Adventure go up again this week. It's for two more episodes of Cowboy Bebop. I think there's a upf happening today. Is it Party Animals or it's Party Animals? Yeah, yeah, we're gonna make that happen. We're gonna get it's eight players, but there's the room can have four spectators that we can rotate in, so we're trying to get like twelve people in there and rotate or as many people as we can and keep that going for a couple hours. Should be fun. Yeah yeah, and then another week we'll begin that will be it. Yeah, all right, the new poll is up. Thank you jan Ochoa for the help there. How much how much time we go? Can we can? We keep going for a few minutes? If you got an interest? Oh yeah, interesting email here? Okay, yeah, absolutely, let me just time. This is a splinter cell is one option and the other option is sorry, Tam, we have to have at least one other option. I'm going to vote for splinter cell. Okay, yeah, good. I appreciate that the splinter cell was winning the other one by a landslide. I mean it was only twenty votes, but it was ninety percent of we're voting for that compared to the other three. Tam. So think I think you might have some people in your corner. Okay, good, damn? What's up? Okay? So I received an email which is one of these research companies has done an investigation and as always completely pointless and this is actually quite fun to talk about which video game characters would be the richest if they had real life jobs. Okay, was that if they had real life, like so if they had different jobs and they have in the games or something. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read this out from super Mario to Lara Croft. Have you ever wondered where your favorite game video game planners and villains would rank in the real world job market? Enhancement He's rubbing banks. Game enhancement provided secure cheats, very reputable scenes. Looked at some of the world's most iconic video game characters and calculator how much each would earn if they landed their real world dream job. Their based character earnings on data from salary comparison size as well as publicly available data. Are you using data? Yeah? Yeah, to find average year salary for more than fifty video game characters? Okay? Do you want to know who the twenty? Do you want to know the top ten? I've gotta if you think it is interesting, I want to hear every single one. Okay, Okay, Number ten immediately, blad is immediately bad. Okay, let's go. Number ten is o'clock. Oh my yea space engineer who is given a yearly salary of eighty four thousand dollars. Okay, no way, there are so many like, there's so many like princes and ship and I've been games that have like kingdoms and stuff, landowners whatever. Number nine is more more Tom Goff from the SIMS. He's saying wealth code or whatever. Yeah, yeah, he's got eighty nine thousand. Number eighth Bounty Hunter off of Morgan ninety thousand and five hundred and eighty five dollars. I'm sure I'm assuming that's a private inflation adjust did but adjusted? Okay, Number seven Research Associate Scientists Gordon Freeman ninety one thousand and ninety seven dollars. Oh, next one, Number number six, LAPD Detective Cole Felts. Well, we all know how overpaid the event lap DA. I mean ninety three thousand, three hundred and six above board payments. What is happening here? Okay, number five, This is the fifth highest earning video game character according to this research company. It must be if they have they have real jobs in games or something like that, because it's yeah, okay, all right, whatever, okay, NYPD Detective Max Payin, Yeah, just rolling in is barely holding down a job like that is ninety six thousand, six hundred dollars right in this family scenario we have to recognize that Max Payn would have and fired like by now, so yeah, maxpen one hundred will be fired for like killing everyone one, Yeah, blowing up buildings. Yeah, he's on drugs all the time. He would fail the very first drug tests. At number four, CIA Operative Alex Mason from Call of Duty? Who's that one hundred and six thousand, nine hundred and five? This is this was written by AI. There's no way this wasn't written by AI. I like, I like where this is going. Sure, I don't like where it ends because okay, damning indictment of all existence. Sure, in the in the video game Joan market, it's just completely down back. Here's here's a top three, Okay, okay. At number three, virologists Albert Wescabert is way earning one hundred and seventeen thousand, five hundred five, way more than that with those patents. He's earning one hundred and seventeen K and literally killing the entire world with what he's doing, Like he invents an apocalypse surd on investment, Like if you're going to destroy the whole world for just a hundred like listen, you know, like that's just not really a good return, I think, okay, okay. At number two, I'm glad he's getting the bag. I don't know how he's getting the bag, but it is Special Forces soldier Solid Snake, who is apparently earning one hundred and thirty nine thousand, six hundred and thirty private military contractor. Right, I guess maybe that man. That man doesn't shower and eats ramen mostly. That's right. He's not doing much these days, man, Like I don't think he's he's not holding down a Special Forces soldier job. His big accounts not like super stacked, even though he just like he just loves living like I mean like first, like this is before attacks, so he's getting taxed to fumerican. Secondly, my man's death finely. Not working for the government. He's proven that he does not trust all the US government many times. So you can make more in the private sector anyway. At number one, and there is a huge gulf between. Of course, there is second place Solid Snakes only one hundred and seven thousand dollars or whatever it was. The number one earner earns four hundred and thirty two thousand, five hundred and twenty four dollars a year. Okay, yeah, the Smoking Man from Mass Effect close but not close enough. It is a CEO, which is a damning indictment of the video game world. The CEO they're making away more than fucking four hundred thousand dollars. It's at number one is Handsome Check from Borderlands, which is upsetting in so many You know what the worst part of it this is, even in the video game world, the highest paid person, if they somehow came into our world, would be a CEO. You know what. The other worst part of this is the top ten is pretty much all white males in a way that is like, oh my god, anything it's possible in video games except for equality for women. That one's still pretty tough to render. Unity just can't handle that. I think the only woman or the first Uh yes, So there's two women on this Bellagoth from the SIMS who is a bellagoth? Is a female? Right, and I'm hopefull sounds like it, Yeah, hopefully not mis gendering, but intelligence researcher, sure sure this virtual maybe female is seventy five? Is Mario on the list? No, bitches a plumber like he makes some like he probably makes seventy year At the bottom of the list is a two two people joint earners and one of them is a woman, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine's what team members earning sixty two thousand, five hundred and thirty forty three. Number nineteen is Sam Fisher. That's unfortunate. You know what? At number sixteen, this is a bizarre like I don't know how they got like processed. This is Homer Simpson. Who is this the first time we've actually like potentially had a wage for homeless Simpson because it does list him as a nuclear technician and according to this, he earns sixty nine thousand, six hundred and forty eight. Nice. Oh, this is pre inflation stuff. This is before like the wages started going up. This is this is based on the Simpsons Hit and Run. But like if Simpsons Hit and Run is fairly accurate to the to the Simpson's universe, so that might be the first time we've ever seen how much Homer earns. That's yeah and really mean it shows how springfields in a bubble where a man working a job can provide for a family of five that's crazy within a dog and a kid as well. Also, like absolutely done, dirty master Chief. My man saved the universe. Mrple times. He's getting sixty nine k Jack, he doesn't need anything else. Yeah, he's fine. Yeah, Hey Tim, I think I'm ready to call bullshit on this list. Yeah I agree, Yeah, I trust it. Before we dip out, I'll give you the five lowest owners real from three fight. My man's walking around Desmond miles from Assassa. See my man's laying down in a virtual Yeah yeah, clouds strife, Big Sword doesn't talk to anyone. Terrible class money link from Zelda, always fucking falling through portals and like going becoming a kid one day and adult next day. Not employable, selling feet on mine. That's how he makes money. Yeah. The worst lowest owner is pac Man, which makes sense. Pills popped day. He's getting serious. He's just about clearing twenty K. I hope he gets as a security got in. We're all pulling for you, buddy. You get your act cleaned up. We're all gonna have your back air all right. Thanks for watching, everybody, Tam, thank you so much for taking your time talking to me about video games today. Man, I really appreciate it anytime. Thank you everybody for watching this dregs day's best day. You're the best audience in gaming. Until next time, have a good one, take care of yourself and goodbye.