GrubbSnax 26: Holiday Questions and More

Yeah, it's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this. I'm Jeff
Grub. I write for GamesBeat dot Com. I do Grubs next year on
Giant Bomb. I want to talk to you about video games, but first
I need to talk to you about quiddache, which is just a horrible sport.
I remember it last week. That's what I wanted to start with.
As someone who liked Harry Potter a lot when the books were coming out,
I never liked quiddache. It very It annoyed me quite a lot. It's
just a really bad sport because one person could score like what like two hundred
points or something like that and and completely swing the whole like everything else that
is happening doesn't matter. And so if you read that and you're like,
oh, I want to play that sport in real life, you're just you're
you're doing something wrong. You've made a mistake. Somewhere along the line.
There are other better sports you could be spending your time on, obviously,
So yeah, quidditch probably one of the worst sports you could play. I'm
against it. I want I want to know the record that I'm against it.
Trying to wake up, I couldn't sleep last night. I need to
get up anyhow, I'm supposed to get a booster today. Let's see if
I'm gonna be able to make it. Hopefully i'll get a booster today.
So hey, I'm glad I can hang out with you. First, we
can talk about some video games. There's not much going on. There's not
a lot of news. Maybe you know, maybe I'll take a look here
at some reddits or something to see if there's anything worth talking about. But
I'm not gonna be able to bring you much. It's the holidays. People
are off. I'm not I'm not getting I'm not sliding in anyone's DM saying
hey give me them scoops. I'm letting people go spend time with their families
and stuff. So let's uh, let's get started. But if you do
want to ask a question, please do so. You can. You can
do that by going to the JohnBob dot com slash chat and hitting ask a
question at the top of the page. It's a good way of It'll show
up here on the screen, you'll be able to see it, and then
I'll try to answer it. I'll do my best to get too as many
as possible. I see they are coming in right now, and yeah,
all right, let's do this. So I guess you know, I could
start off by saying, Merry Christmas, Happy holidays to everybody. I hope
you are having a nice time of year. If you are working, thank
you so much for you continuing to work. I'm sure you're probably doing something
involving dealing with customers or something like that. Or if you are off,
I hope you're enjoying your time off. Let's let's get started here. I
will say that the Xbox games with gold for this month have Rate has Radiant
silver gun in it, and that's pretty dope. And Space Invaders Infinity Gene
Space Invaders Infinity Gene Mouth won't wake up. I don't know that, that's
just I just saw that, So I'm excited about that. That's neat.
You'm gonna go to the top for this week here, I was gonna talk
about like the games coming out in twenty twenty two. I think I've mentioned
I might have mentioned that last week. I couldn't remember if I said I
was gonna do it here or not, but I do have a list of
games there's suposed to come out next year. Maybe we could talk about like
what we think is going to happen with many of these, but most of
them are just gonna be like, hey, yeah, they're supposed to come
out next year, so who knows. I mean, like godivor Ragnarok.
I think it is an interesting one. I mean, I think that's probably
still going to come out next year, but we live in a world where
that could easily slip into twenty twenty three, early twenty twenty three, because
that game is gonna be you know, it's gonna be huge. They want
to do it right. Hiring is very difficult. Right now, that's good.
I mean, the things I might bring up for this game is gonna
be true for most games across the board. And uh, and that's gonna
mean that they that game that we have that they said might have come out
in twenty twenty one originally, right, Uh, might not come out to
twenty twenty three. That's possible. That's true for the Legend of Zelda Breath
of the Wild two. Uh, It's it's gonna be true for a lot
of these games. Horizon for a bid in Westwood want though, that's when
that is when we will get to play pretty early. I'm feeling pretty confident
about that not getting another delay. Uh you know what, let's uh,
let's see. I'm gonna pick out the big games. We'll talk about like
what their chances are of coming out next year, like where they are,
like with what their status is, and then maybe I'll just hop into the
questions real soon. Here Starfield that already has a date eleven eleven, that'll
come out, Pokemon Archias already got delayed a little bit, right, so
we'll probably get that. I wish I could, you know how much?
Let me bring this up on the screen over here. Let me find a
way to do that. I'll bring it into here and pop it up there.
Nope, that's the wrong thing. There we go, There we go.
All right, now we're in business. Okay. So I don't know
if anyone sees anything here that like stands out to them, let me know.
But I am really feeling excited about Nintendo's lineup for next year. Kirby,
Forgotten Land, Splattoon three, Zelda. I think they're gonna have a
lot of good stuff. And then there's also on top of that, like
you could expect Metroid Prime Remaster and the Legend of Zelda, Windwaker and Twilight
Princess should also all come to the console next year. I mean I was
expecting those those to launch this year, so hopefully that just means oh no,
they were just holding back on those and those will come next year.
Kind of similar to what they were doing with Metroid Prime, which is,
you know something like, hey, they probably could have rushed it out,
got it out this year, they didn't feel the need. They're gonna get
it out next year. Let's see. The least are just screen grabs from
Discord. So I'm like, hey, well, I'll put it in the
my document here and save it for later. Clisto protocol is an interesting one
because that we do know now dead Space is coming, and now these two
games, I don't I actually don't think they would hurt each other dead Space
in Collisto Protocol. If anything, I think the excitement for one builds up
the excitement for the other, and you know, I guess, you know,
we can look back to history and maybe that's not how it always works
out. Usually there's one winner that would probably end up being dead Space.
But if Clisto protocol is very good, I guess for people who are are
not remembering exactly what Clisto Protocol is it is basically spiritual successor to dead Space,
made by one of the people who created dead Space and his team over
at Crafton, which is the pub G company, And it takes place in
the pub G universe, which to me is very exciting because I need to
see what it means to be a dead Space spiritual successor that takes place in
the in the pub G universe, Like I just have to know what that
is. But I think, you know, the bigger thing here is that
if both these games come out this year, which is possible. I know
dead Space looked very early, but you know the thing I was hearing early
on is it would still come out around October of twenty twenty two. If
I'm saying, am I saying this year, I'm already onto twenty twenty two,
people catch up with me. I think that there's a chance that both
could come out this next these next twelve months, and if they do,
I do think they would only help each other. I think it just like
we're at a point where if you start streaming like Calisto Protocol and that gets
your audience really excited, you're going to be that much more willing to stream
dead Space, and people are going to be looking for more of those same
types of games. People are very much these days are into their third genre,
into their niche, and that means one game, like another game,
has a better chance to succeed if that last game succeeded. I think that
we're that we're seeing that happen with on my multiplayer games, where there's just
a huge contingency or in the most is a good example where once a Wow
competitor never stood a chance. Now we're in a world where there are just
millions of people who just play MMOs and they will try the next one and
give it a chance, and many of them will stick with it, and
those games will will succeed when when they never would have succeeded. Uh,
you know five years ago, Like you know, I'm looking like New World.
New World never would have worked five years ago, but now it does.
Breath of the while two I have here, Uh, I said,
I think that's still gonna probably make it next year. But you know,
we Nintendo last spoke about this game. What we heard was, hey,
we are targeting twenty twenty two. And when you speak about things like that,
it doesn't instill a lot of confidence. You think that, you know,
okay, they probably are eyeing that twenty twenty three release and expecting that
and they but you know, like they're still technically on track, but if
anything goes wrong, they know they're gonna pull the record and go to twenty
twenty three. I still think that with that game, you know, being
announced quite sometimes I'm ago and them, you know, I don't know.
It is still technically feels like a sequel, like more like one of these
expand alone expansions based on probably on the same map and all this stuff,
with new stuff in the sky, you would expect that to still try to
come out, you know, not five years after what would twenty twenty three
b that'll be six years, So you wouldn't expect that six years after the
last one. You can. Five years makes a lot more sense, right,
I guess that's working backward from some sort of logic that doesn't necessarily apply.
Like making games is messy, so you would need to to take as
much time as you need, and that's what they tend to do with these
Zelda games. Breath of the Wild two is going to be one of the
biggest games that Nintendo has launched since the original Breath of the Wild, so
they're not gonna If they need to delay it, they will, But I'm
still thinking November it's probably right Final Famously sixteen. When will we hear about
that next? I've been expecting to hear about that repeatedly throughout this past year.
On this show. We've talked about how when we got a PlayStation direct
or whatever what do they call ps PS, now's when we when we got
a state of play that's it. I got it. Eventually. I was
like, hey, we got to hear about Fantasy sixteen at one of these
or you know, the PlayStation showcase. It does seem now like Square Enix
is focusing on some other games first, and then once we get past those,
we might start hearing about Final Fantasy sixteen. Again. The big one
right now seems like for Spoken that's coming out earliest next year. So once
we get past four Spoken, maybe they're like, Okay, now we're all
in on Final Fantasy sixteen. That game's not three years off, you know,
I know, we we heard about it in twenty twenty, right in
the lead up to the PlayStation five. That game's not like three three years
off from now we should be hearing about that game because it should be coming
out relatively in like the next year to eighteen months, right, So if
that's the case, then we should hear about it beginning by three next year,
we should definitely be hearing about it, or you know Sony's E three
equivalent, which takes place a few weeks months later. So when I say
A three a lot of times, I mean like E three proper for Microsoft
and Nintendo and the publishers, and for Sony, I mean they're stay,
They're a showcase that happens, you know, later in the summer or in
the fall. Ghost Wire Tokyo is is one that it's it's been delayed,
and it's got it's going through a similar sort of promotion and delay cycle as
Death Loop. You know, it's got the same publisher Microsoft and Bethesda,
and it's got the same deal of being a PlayStation five exclusive. So I
think that though, I think we are at the point where, you know,
the last delay has happened for this game, now we used need to
start hearing about it again again. And that's where it's like, actually a
little bit weird that we haven't seen so much of this game like we did
with Death Loop, but maybe they're like, maybe they're a little bit more
worried about showing this game off because maybe the game is more about surprises than
Death Loop was. But I do expect Ghost Wire Tokyo to come out when
when they say it will, and you know, early next year, and
we'll get get a chance they actually see what this game is and and yeah,
I mean it's it's the new one from the team that did and I'm
not I'm not gonna be able to remember the name that the whole game that
from Bethesda, Blood Demons. I don't know. I'm gonna check chat here
in a second. You guys will tell me. But I expect to come
out early next year, and we should get it. Gotham Knights is one
that I'm actually I need to just look it up. Which one's coming up
first, Suicide Squad or Gotham Knights. Looking it up right now, I'm
using being for some reason. That's why I'm failing right now. Gotham Knights
release date that just says twenty twenty two, and then Suicide Squad killed the
Justice League. It's also twenty twenty two, but we've seen a lot more
from Suicide Squad and that's rock Steadies game, and that's so that's the one
I'm expecting to come out first. But I don't know if they've explicitly said,
like we're like, what order they're going to do this stuff in?
Yeah? Did it again? You know what? I think I can just
go to studio mode and let me try this. See this transition will work.
There we go, all right, there we go. All right,
So I'm checking chat. I'm gonna just check it with you guys, because
Ghost Wire Tokyo the one where we try not to think too hard about why
the super enthusiastic developer left the project mysteriously become upon becoming pregnant. Yeah,
I mean, and she you know, she was looking for a bunch of
other places to work, like during that whole thing. I don't know if
it's necessarily I mean I would actually at this point, I do assume,
right, you assume the worst. But at the same time, people leave
companies all the time. I think that's one of the things we've seen over
the last few weeks of doing this show is you know, there's usually one
story every week or two about a creative director leaving about going somewhere else,
or you know, even like from high profile projects that seem like they're pretty
far along and people are like, hey, what does this mean you I
happened with Dragon Age, it happened with a few other things, and I
just right now a lot of the like I guess that happened a little bit
before. It was like all about Oh, there's a ton of money everywhere
and you can go wherever you want. So yeah, maybe she was leaving
for her because you know, it was a toxic environment to be in.
Or maybe she was leaving because you know, she found better opportunities. I
would be assuming, so I'd be hesitant to do that. But you know,
it is mysterious. You're right, it is a bit curious at the
very least. All right, Yeah, that Tunic is coming out. Yeah,
that's one. I played that demo. I'm looking forward to that one.
I'm trying to see if there's anything else from this list that I super
duper want to talk about it. If not, we should just get to
the questions. That's what we should do. Let me see here, all
right, see if Stars see if Stars coming out? That's that the indie
game that has that really great RPG art style that showed up in the Last
Indie World and has been in previous Indie worlds and was supported on Kickstarter,
And it looks fantastic, and if it's coming out in twenty twenty two,
I'm gonna try that. I don't know if I have. It's not necessarily
my type of game, but it just looks so beautiful that I can't help
but want to play it. Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge. That's a big one
that I want to play. I thought that one was coming out early next
year, is it not? Am I wrong about that? I gotta I
gotta look it up. Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge release date? They just say
twenty twenty two. That's a shame we get that in like January. I
hope we wake up on New Year's Day and they tell us exactly when that's
coming. Dot EMU Final Fantasy Origin. I guess this is a story we
could talk about real quick. There's not, I mean not much here that
most people aren't figuring out for themselves, you know, Final Fantasy Origin or
no, this is Final Fantasy Origin, Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, Final Fantasy
Pixel Remasters, will begin coming to consoles like Switch and everything else early next
year, so you're not gonna to wait much longer if you've been waiting holding
out for the Switch version. Those will start rolling out early next year.
It'll probably come in the same order that it's hit like the PC, so
one, two, and three first or something like that, and then you
you'll have to wait a while to get something like six h six is just
now hitting the PC, right or that early next year as well. I
think they delayed that one, right, so yeah, but as they're as
they're delaying that the release of that on PC, those games should begin rolling
out on console pretty soon around that same time. Going through the list,
still, Advance Wars reboot Camp. I'm excited about that. Advance Wars is
one of my favorite franchises. The Cuphead Deal, see Stanley Parable Deluxe,
Aaron Breakfast, Let's see Shovel Night Dig that that just came out. That
doesn't that that doesn't doesn't go on this list. Our Raiders I hope that
does come out, and then Matroid Prime one remaster. Yeah, all right,
let's get to the questions. I feel like you, if you,
if you guys are interested in any of these things. You can ask it
and I'll answer it. Let's let's go back here. Let's set up the
answers are the questions here. I moved it around too much, so i
gotta move it back in place, and then I'll transition over here. We
go, all right, We did it all right, So let's start with
the questions. You know, I'm gonna answer a few of these at the
top because I think they're pretty relevant to what we were just talking about.
From Kane High Wind zero nine. Will the Final Fantasy Remasters also come to
Xbox and PlayStation? My understanding is yes they will. They're gonna come to
all the consoles. I just if they come to anything first. I think
it will. Actually, they might come to Xbox and PlayStation first and then
to switch later because that maybe people will triple dep or something is what maybe
Square Annex is thinking. But I bet they'll come out all around the same
time. I see Real Johnny with an at saying what size of steam deck
should I buy? And how should I save a lot of my money for
it? Instead of going to the gas station and buying four sixteen ounced red
bulls every single day, Real Johnny, what you should do instead is take
half of that money, only get two red bulls, spread them out.
You know, you gotta you gotta just give yourself a little bit each day,
take the half that money, just save it up, and then get
the big one, get the big steam Deck. I wish I had a
chance to like do all the testing on the steam deck and really know,
because I bet even that eMMC version of the steam Deck, which is you
know, the same kind of storage that the switch uses, look, it's
not gonna be It's not gonna be anywhere in good near as good as the
more expensive ones that use SSDs. Definitely not SSDs. I wish the switch
had an SSD. It's like my number one most requested feature for a new
switch. But you know, if you're trying to save money, if you're
trying to make it makes sense. And if you could deal with a little
bit of loading, I bet the performance of that of that low end steam
deck is gonna be just fine. You're gonna be happy with it. And
you can put a giant SD card in there and have a ton of storage
and place things off there, because you know, basically SD cards are just
about equivalent to eMMC flash. It's basically the same thing, so you're gonna
get the same performance off. It's just like you do on the switch.
Actually, the switch loads games from SD cards faster than it loads it from
its internal memory because Nintendo cheeped out on the flash so hard. But yeah,
I think that if you can swing it, go for the big one,
the five hundred and twelve gigabyte. But I guess, I mean that
depends on how you play games. How do you consume games? Are you
a one game at a time sort of person? You know, even two
games at a time, Thinking, maybe you can go with a smaller storage
side size if you have like one online multiplayer game that you play a lot
of and one game that you like go through at a time and then you
delete it. If you're very vigilant about that sort of thing, I think
you'll be fine with the middle version of the stack. I personally went with
the big one. That's the one I pre ordered. I need it because
I am not vigilant about anything, let alone the games on my heart my
storage. So yeah, just ask me more steam deck questions. I feel
like I could talk about that thing forever, all right, let's see from
Chile ninety two, do you think Nintendo will make a Super Mario the Movie
the game. I what I want from them is and this is what I
wanted as soon as I played Super Mario Odyssey, which is very much about
Mario going on this journey to all these places that are very different and weird.
What I really wanted was for them to release DLC that included Super Mario
Brothers the movie Land, you know, and so you go there and it
looks exactly like the movie and Dustin not dust Dennis Dennis hoppers there, d
I get my dh is mixed up and yeah, and it's just and all
the billboards are there, and it's in the bob bombs are actually like little
toys walking around. I want them to make a Super Mario, Yeah,
a Kingdom, that's what they're called, a Super Mario Brothers the Movie Kingdom
and release it as DLC for Super Mario Odyssey. We deserve this, is
what I'm saying in my heart. That's what I believe that we deserve this
from Obsidian cityan gr Obsidian groove mind is what I'm gonna say. Happy Holidays,
Jeff will Final Fantasy seven remake ever make it to Xbox consoles, or
should I just play the PC version? Apologies of this has been asked before.
If it has, I can't remember. I think that there is a
chance it will come eventually, but it still feels like it's a ways off.
I wonder if I wonder if the deal itself between Sony and Square Knicks
actually prohibited now or if it's just sort of discouraged as Square Nix continues its
deals going forward with with Sony, where they're like, hey, you can
like Sony saying hey, maybe yeah, you can go waste your time making
like porting this game in Xbox, or come on, sit down with us,
Let's talk it out. Let's you know, let's let's talk about the
next deal, the next major deal you and I are going to make for
your next game, because we are looking forward. We have a ton of
money that we have set aside to spend on third party exclusives, and you
are one of the biggest publishers out there available, both willing to do this
and has the games worthy of us spending that much money on them. Bethesda
went bye bye, so we have even more money to spend on you,
and do you really want to put that stuff at risk by working with Microsoft.
I think that might sound vindictive, but these companies are very competitive right
now. I think the leadership of Sony takes these these these deals that they
do have in place very seriously, and uh they they rightly point to the
fact that the PlayStation is you know, is popular across the world and sells
more than the Xbox across the world, and so you know, why,
why wouldn't you want to work with number one? I do think that there's
just something similar to happen that that happened with with elden Ring, and I
wouldn't be surprised if a similar sort of conversations were happening across the board with
other publishers. And Bandai Namco is one thing, and Square Nix is another.
But Square Nix is also in a situation where they try stuff all the
time and their games fizzle out, and they don't want I think they wouldn't
want to risk like certainty, the certainty of Sony's paychecks, because when they
try to put out Avengers and it sells three million copies in its first you
know, a couple of months and really comes you know, it really is
a failure in their eyes, you know, that's a lot of money.
They they've said, you know, explicitly that they lost a lot of money
on that project. And then they put out Guardians of the Galaxy and it's
pretty you know, it's getting word of mouth buzz and it's critically acclaimed,
you know, for the most part. And then you know that game sells
one to one point five million copies through the Black Friday weekend. That's pretty
rough too. I mean, it's it's you know, pretty okay for a
lot of other games. For a major licensed game, it's not very good.
So you know, and we've seen this happen. I mean, and
this is the same company to put out Bell in Wonder World and The Quiet
Man and Left Alive, and you know, we've gone over this repeatedly.
Square Nick seems like they're in a situation where if they didn't have Final Fantasy
fourteen, they would be in a lot of trouble. But then they also
have these deals with with with PlayStation that I think they are really wanting to
rely on. And you know, you see when they go work with Microsoft,
what are they doing. They're they're taking guaranteed dollars to let Crystal Dynamics
help make perfect Dark. That's when they start making deals when they have those
guaranteed dollars. So I think that any chance, like any chance Final Fantasy
has of coming to the console, I think Sony will be right there in
the year saying, hey, sit down with us first, let's have a
conversation. First, we really want Final Fantasy to be associated with PlayStation this
generation. And you know, Final Fantasy seven remakes sold five million copies on
PlayStation before Integrade. We don't. We haven't had an updated numbers since then.
It probably sold quite you know, I would assume it would sell quite
a bit better since then, but I don't know if it's been on MPD
or anything like that. Maybe the month Integrade came out, it was on
MPD or something. You know, they also put it on PS Plus,
so there's you know, the original version. So still a lot of money
changing hands. But but you know, the point is, it's like,
I don't I don't think they're even convinced that Final Fantasy other than Final Fantasy
fourteen can make them a ton of money. Right now. They're like,
oh, you know, five millions pretty good, but it's not selling Spider
Man numbers. It's not selling like a lot of other Place Station exclusives that
were rated as highly as Final Fantasy seven Remake was. So if Sony's willing
to pay us money to guarantee a certain level of success, we need to
treat that as as gold and not mess that up. So when you know,
when we circle back and say, okay, so what does that mean
for Final Fantasy seven Remake coming to Xbox? I still think it comes eventually.
And the last time I talked about something this way was the Genesis Games
More Genesis Games coming to the Nintendo Switch Online, and then later that day
last Thursday, they announced those that was happening. So hopefully later today they
announced a Final Fantasy seven remake coming to Xbox. But I do think it
will happen. I just think it's going to take a little bit more time,
you know, maybe another maybe another six months or something like that,
maybe until Final Fantasy's sixteen comes out, maybe even until Final Fantasy seven Remake
Part two comes out. That could be a long time. But I do
think we're if you're if you are playing on Xbox and that's where you want
to play Final Fantasy seven Remake, you're probably in for a little bit longer
of a weight, and I would recommend actually probably well, depending on how
good the PC port is. I haven't looked into it too closely. Just
a rumbling night I've heard. I heard early on and I'm sure like Digital
Foundry has already done something on this. I'm not sure if the PC version
is all that great, but if it is, go play it there.
All right, I'm working my way down. I'm gonna start with the more
free quod questions today. We gotta everyone's just hanging out. Let's just have
a more you know, snappier interaction here. So ask the question of questions.
Come in, I'll answer them. If you want to ask your question
again, please feel free to do so. U feature creep any thoughts on
a gagnum So I don't know what that is, let's google it. Oh
no, oh no, chant is gonna have to catch up with me and
it's gonna be oh god, I hate you guys so much. Just come
on, let's get let's make this happen. Let's uh, let's enjoy ourselves.
Let's see here. Okay, I'm just gonna keep I'm gonna keep moving
on with my life. You guys can have your fun oh my god.
Okay, so from Chile, what do you think? Oh no, that's
a way. I already answered that one. It's just Kevin V. What's
the mood on Hogwarts Legacy? Hogwarts Legacy is I think one of these weird
ones where w B is like, now there they go, there goes Chat
catching up with me. Now, uh yeah, laugh it up, fuzzballs,
laugh it up. Uh. Hogwarts Legacy is one where you know they
are in between a slight rock and a slight hard place. Like there's an
audience out there that's just gonna buy Harry Potter stuff they're making. There's a
new Potter movie coming out, The New Fantastic Beast is coming out. There
is a TV show because like I just got YouTube TV recently, and so
I'm seeing commercials for TV and there's a Hogwarts like game show or something like
that. And you don't hear any backlash for any of this stuff. And
I think that's because, excuse me, you don't hear any backlash for this
stuff, because I think the gaming audience is very tapped in, very willing
to to talk about this stuff. And then there's a like much more casual
audiences out there for something like a TV game show, and they just aren't
having these conversations regularly, so it's not coming up that that that JK.
Rowling is a transphobe and you know, what does that mean for this game?
And what does that mean for my enjoyment of the game? Should I
even be excited for it? Like how do the people working on this feel?
This stuff is mostly lost on audiences that are just like showing up for
something as casual as a TV game show. But that audience also plays games
and ignores the conversations that we have. And I think everyone involved with making
and publishing the game knows that and it is counting on that. But the
gaming audience is still very loud. The gaming audience is willing to take one
thing and make it and bring it up to the focus and say, hey,
this is we want to talk about this. We're not happy with this,
you know, we're not happy with JK rolling? How could you how
could you put more money in her pocket? Like how could you do something
like that? And so it will be a difficult to navigate. And then
is the feeling on the game right now is you know, there is working
at working under the WB label at all right now is still tumultuous. We've
talked about that for the last several months. That's still the case. That
has not gone away. It's still tumultuous. And then on top of that,
you have this thing where it's gonna be tricky, it's gonna be sticky
to navigate the promotion of this game, and who's gonna want out if you're
working on this game, who's gonna want to go do interviews? Who's gonna
want to go say hey, yeah, I'll be the one that's gonna talk
to the media and risk getting a question about this and having to have all
the media training that goes involved with making sure that a good answer comes out.
You know that that stuff. It weighs down on people who just want
to make games. These are people who who just took a job and for
the most part, have no interest in putting more money in JK. Rowland's
pocket. They're just interested in their own bottom line, just like we all
are. And but you know, when they look around that it's gonna hurt
morale somewhat. And I think it's why we continue to not really hear much
about this game, because they're just you know, who wants to take that
job of the of the public facing side of things. It's not one that
most people are gonna want to have to work on. It's now a little
bit all right, I can't believe you at me with a gag on.
I hope you're proud of yourself from a very Why haven't Microsoft Why hasn't Microsoft
released Halo Infinite player numbers? If they were good, they'd be shouting about
it like they did with Fortza, right, I mean, they are good.
It's it was one of you know, they're good, But I think
I wonder if they're you know, are they greats? Are they as good
as Fortsa? I mean there's I would expect there to be, like,
yeah, probably up there with Fortsa, right, forts I had ten million
players in the first couple of weeks, right between the all nine multiplayer and
in the campaign. They're probably getting there. I wonder if it's just like
it's a little bit more complicated with Halo than it than it what was with
Fortsa. Where Halo is this free to play multiplayer thing and then also something
you could buy for sixty dollars and then also something you could just play through
game pass if you just want to play the campaign and these disparate audiences maybe
might be a little bit more difficult to explain that story of like how how
to quantify each of these segments, But it's not that hard at the same
time, So I don't know. Maybe it just comes down to the fact
that it's the holidays and they're just working on the game, and they that's
you know, what they're focused on. You know, I did hear rumors
that there was they were going to talk about numbers this week. They haven't
done so by now. I wouldn't expect them to do so before the end
now, before the end of the year. Maybe next week. I don't
know. I guess there's a chance next week because next week, you know,
we'll be after Christmas, will before the new year. But I think
a lot of people are gonna be off next week, So yeah, I
think there's just a chance that I don't know, maybe early next day.
If we don't hear about it early next year, maybe we could start to
worry about this game. But and it's chances, but I think that overall,
it's just based on the vibes and the steam coldcurrence on you know,
like when the multiplayer launched, and you know the way the game trends and
stuff like that, I think it's probably pretty safe assumed that it did about
what sports it was doing. From Mondolish, Jeff, what are you What
are your kids getting from Santa? Yeah, Santa started rapping. He let
me know the other day and he got he got one of them a what's
it called one of those cameras they actually prints it out, not a Kodak
way and maybe that's a Kodak brand one, but the ones where you wave
them in the air to make them to make them dry. I don't know
that my kids love like all sorts of arts and crafts projects that I mean,
honestly, if they could do crafts all day, they would, So
I got them a lot of Santa got him a lot of crafts stuff,
and then the camera's part of that. They'll be able to print out their
own pictures and put them in the crafts and stuff. I got twenty of
those pictures to go along with it. Off off the dish. Those out
like very sparingly, because if if you like, you give them something like,
they'll use a whole glue stick in like five minutes. They are just
like like a cartoon beaver like like like on a tree that just like consumes
it. Like that's how they are with like everything. So I'll give him
a few of those pictures at a time. I also got him. I
got him a Quest the Quest two the VR headset, because they love to
play with my my original Quest, So I got them that and we'll will
now we'll have both and maybe we could do some like multiplayer VR stuff.
As a family, everyone in the house uses the VR headset, so now
we have the better one. That'll be nice. I'll play resume before they
can go on. They like to go on like virtual roller coasters and stuff
like that in the videos, or like into space. Or my two year
old who is obsessed with VR, so I have to like be very careful
because you would just do it all day. She gets to do it every
couple of weeks at this point, but when she does, she loves to
go over New York City and see the buildings all below her, and so
she gets like she's like, hey, VR city, City City, and
so she'll get a chance to do that on the better headset as well.
What else did I get him. I got him a bunch of stuff.
They're spoiled. I got. I got my wife a MacBook Air, the
M one. She was asking for that because she has like a ten year
old MacBook Air from work and they gave her. They gave her her another
one, but she wants one for her like personal stuff because she likes to
keep stuff very separate. So like, here's your own, now you can
actually use it. And I'm that was that was like her big present.
So I'm very excited about that. And then yeah, I don't know if
I think of anything else, I'll drop it because it's exciting. I'm like,
I am very much like it's hard to wait for me. Like when
I'm giving people stuff I want to just as soon as it shows up from
Amazon or whatever, I'm just like, yeah, here, here have it.
But now I'm being good. It's all most of the stuff is getting
wrapped up and and yeah, ready to go. I'm excited. Just a
couple of two more sleep still Christmas? Right, that's fun? Uh?
Well, Jeff, what is Jeff getting from Santa? I did by myself
earlier around Black Friday a seventy five inch High Sense TV just because I'm like,
I want I want to something that's like I actually don't need an old.
I was testing an old for a while, sent that back to LG
and I'm like, you know what, I just want a I want a
big TV that's pretty good and has like good features on it and stuff like,
you know, a good OS like Google Android TV or something like that.
I looked around the High Sense once seemed prety good. I went for
the seventy five inch one and we sit pretty close, so it's like massive
in front of us, and uh and then yeah, that that's been that's
been fun. I told my wife what I want for Christmas is a a
lift pass to snow what is it, snow mass, Snowmass, snow Mass
in Aspen. Yes, when I've gone, when I've gone ski or snowboarding
out here before, it's been at you know, closer places. I'm like,
I want to just go out to this one in Aspen because it has
the one of the longest continuoust trails in the continental United States. And I'm
like, that's that's my ideal I wanted. I'm not into like I used
to be when I was a young man. I was into like going very
fast and going down black diamonds and stuff like that. What I want right
now is to go up the lift once and have it take like a half
an hour to get down. That's what I want now. And I remember
doing that holiday valley in New York and I'm like, well, we live
in Colorado. There's got to be a long trail out here. So I
looked it up. I'm like, a ski lift pass to to a snow
mass would be fantastic. And she doesn't do it. I'll get it myself.
But it's like it's also difficult because I'm like, hey, yeah,
give me a thing so I can go away from you and the kids for
a day by myself, and you have to deal with the kids all day.
So it's like two gifts in one. It's a tough ask. I
get it. We'll keep asking and we'll keep answering some questions from rosif is
the reason you want? You know? What Santa is getting everyone is that
you are Santa. I will say that on Chris subceive there might be some
donning the suit a little bit in this house. For the first time ever,
I my befour year old is she has told me that she wants to
peek downstairs when he's here, and I'm like, h Well, maybe I
can play into that a little bit, and you know, it could go
bad, but it could go great too, So I'm looking forward to it.
Hopefully they're not upstairs watching this. They usually don't, so yeah.
From Future Creep, where is Rocksmith Plus? Wasn't it supposed to be out
this year? It is now? That's now it's twenty twenty two games?
So that they delayed that a few months ago. You know it's Rocksmith Plus,
so it didn't get a ton of coverage, but I do remember them
delaying that. I think I could be making that up, but I'm pretty
sure that's the case. From Kan Kane High Wins or nine? How would
you rank these games from best to worse? Donkey Kong Country Too, Super
Mario World, Joe, She's Island. Okay, that's tough. I've played
quite a bit of Donkey Kong Country two, but I've never beaten it,
and i've never and I really liked Donkey Kong Country one. But I realized
something I was driving the other day, and I'm like, I might have
realized this about myself before and forgot, but I realized again why I didn't
play it and why I never played Middle Gear Solid two because they changed characters,
and I was, I'm this weird loyal thing, loyalty thing where I'm
like, no, I play those games for this character and I don't.
I want more of that character out. How dare you change characters on me?
I want to play a Donkey Kong and I want to play a Solid
Snake. I'm not that way anymore. Excuse me. I had to hold
the cough button and sneeze at the same time, and that's that great.
My kids are sneezing a lot, so I'm like, I'm definitely getting sick
too, huh. I feel fine where we could do this show, but
I'm like, oh, that sneeze is is ominous. But yeah, I
if a game series changes out characters and I really like playing as the previous
character, I'm like, I'm not playing that because I was. I was
a stupid little shit. So I've never played Medal Gear Solid too, not
really, not all I've played. I've started at a bunch of times,
and I've never really played Donkey Kong Country too, So I'll put that as
the worst, even though it's probably pretty good and honestly, honestly, on
this list, they probably actually is third. This is tough for me.
Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island. For a long time. I think Yoshi's
Island easily would have had this because it's like, oh man, this was
just so fresh at the time, and you know, I kind of came
out at a point where you were hearing so much about PlayStation and Saturn that
it was a n sixty four really that it was like, oh uh,
it's the Super Nintendo even worth getting new games for. And then you get
Yoshi's Island and it's so fantastic. I love Yoshi's Island, but I think
at this point, when I go back and I want to play a platformer
on the Super Nintendo, I want I wanted to be Super Mario World at
this point, so I go Yoshi's Alan and then Super Mario World and Super
Mario World is just it's it's the ideal for me where it feels great to
play. It's got that awesome skill based flying mechanic. You know, once
you get the scale down, it's pretty easy. But still it's like it's
not like, oh, you're just gonna fly and like fly over the level,
Like you gotta get the timing down and the better you are at the
timing, the more you could continue to fly. That's great. The overworld
map is second to none, Like it's the best overworld map, getting to
Star Road, getting to the secret stages, getting to Soda Lake, all
that stuff. Like I am somehow I came. I never got guides,
but I got a guide for this game somehow, and my parents must have
got it for me for like Christmas or something. And I remember having all
the information about like how far Mario can jump in this game compared to the
other games, but I didn't look at like how to get most of the
levels because I didn't even like realize I don't think that there worse like hidden
levels And it's one time you find the key and you're like, oh wait
this now, now this this thing is going in this direction instead of that
direction, and I'm wait, wait, so are there other things like that?
And I started looking the book. I'm like, wait, there's like
this this level that I played this game a bunch of times at this point,
and now there's this level that is I've never seen before. How do
I get to it? And going to find Soda Lake and finally getting ninety
six and uh, and then beating all the special levels and training it into
the Fall mode or the Halloween mode and having all the characters put on masks
and have the Piranha plants turn into pumpkins. It was just it's such a
good game. It's what I want from a platformer. And whenever I get
like a new whenever we get new Super Mario Brothers games, like literally new
Super Mario Brothers games, and then also other recent recent Super Mario Brothers games,
I was always I'm always disappointed that the overworld map is not as interesting
as it was in Super Mario World. So yeah, that's how I'd rate
them. Uh From play game James Patty, do you know anything about the
Wizards of the Coast owned studio Archetype Entertainment headed by x BioWare people. I
don't. I'll look into it. I'll ask around and see if there's anything
to know, but uh, yeah, I will say that I'm not surprised
that there's like x BioWare people you know, at a studio like that x
by where people are everywhere. They have started studios a ton over the last
couple of years. In the last few years, last two years, x
BioWare people have been popping up in a lot of places. I think there's
just a lot of money ready to go to these people if they want to
start their own studios or you know, or join on join new startups or
new ongoing concerns from granted us. Do you know anything about the game of
Brandon Sanderson has been working on. I don't know. Brand Sanderson is the
set of fantasy author Brandon Sanders a little bit out of my wheelhouse, isn't
it? Isn't he working on Elden Ring? Is it that him? Just
joking from a funt mom, Mister Snacks, You've talked about DK ninety four
a lot. Have you put much time in into the GBA follow up Mario
versus d k Uh Not? Not much. I always assume it always looked
so much like Lemons to me that I was like, that's not what I
want from my Donkey Kong ninety four follow up. But I've heard that maybe
that first Mario versus DK is is more like Donkey Kong ninety four than I
realized. And if that's the case, so much should tell me and I'll
go, I'll go try it out right away. But I just I never
I was just like, Man, Donkey King ninety four was so good.
I want more of that. Oh they're going in this different direction. I'm
not even gonna try it. It's how I was. How it was.
I was like, I mean, back then, you know, I had
to pick and choose my games, and I'm like, uh, I'll just
go there's other other things I'm excited for. I'll ask my parents to get
that for me instead. So and then eventually when I had a job,
I'll just buy this instead. Do you have a favorite Christmas memory related to
video games? From permanent side? I, I mean it's you know,
usually it's like getting games. My biggest video game holiday memories come from Thanksgiving
and maybe my birthday because I got my my nes for my fifth birthday and
I got U and then I got Dunkey Kong Country around Thanksgiving, and so
I associate Dunkey Kong Country very much with Thanksgiving and going to the Basement Planet
while we had that party. I talked about that in on Thanksgiving episode.
On Christmas, it's usually it's more of a blur because we would get a
lot of stuff, like you know, we didn't get a lot throughout the
year, but on Christmas, we would get a lot of stuff, So
we were always very fortunate in that way. And then it was just like
NonStop, like setting stuff up. And I'm trying to think of the nes
or the ans Gay for my birthday. When did we get a Super Nintendo.
I have no memory that that might have been for a Christmas and that's
probably why I don't, because it was part of that blur. And then
the Nintendo sixty where I was a Nintendo fan boy as a kid. I've
talked about that before. The Nintendo sixty four I got as a as a
right when it came out. It's the only time that my parents ever got
it for me on the day it came out. And so that wasn't Christmas,
that was September or whatever. It was so like in terms of hardware,
maybe the game Boy. I think the game Boy I got on Christmas,
and that was a surprise. I don't think I knew that I was
going to get a game Boy, but the game Boy was so cheap.
It was like like ninety dollars even back then, that was not much for
something like the fur to give your kids, like a piece of gaming hardware
from Nintendo. It was like such an obvious thing to do that my parents
went for it, and I remember I played Tetris and Heineachi Alien. I
can never say the name of that game. Haniako Honey, he an Kio
Alien. Those are the games that got me well, I mean came with
Tetris and then they got me Heineachio Alien, which is actually apparently a much
more I thought there was a game that no one else knew about. I
guess in Japan it's actually a pretty big deal, like it was like one
of the early arcade games or something there. But yeah, so I think
that's probably what I associated most with is the Game Boy and the Game Boy
packaging. I have like a at this point, I have a ton of
like sweaters and stuff to have that original game Boy logo on it. And
I very much associate positive memories with getting that system, getting the packaging,
like not just the system itself, but like opening up the President and being
really surprised that I got it, and uh, yeah, I guess you
know what. A few years ago, my wife didn't surprise me with a
PlayStation four. I'm a few years ago and that was like how long it
was, twenty thirteen? It must have been the Christmas of twenty thirteen that
she was able to get one, and because I was like, uh,
you know, I got an Xbox one, uh, dead kid. Basically
that's when I still have that one over there. It's got the QR code
on it. Microsoft sent that out, and uh and PlayStation sent out SENTU
some PlayStations, but is still I was still worked at games Beat then,
and but you know, those went to the office and I was working remotely,
so you know, Jason Wilson and Dean Takashi would be you know,
would take those ones home as they needed them. And and so I was
like, Okay, I'm gonna save up money, my money, I'll get
a PlayStation four as soon as I can. I'm excited about this thing.
My wife, though, it was like loves to get me big presents for
the for the holidays and stuff like that. So I remember that that was
a really good one because that was like I just had no idea she was
gonna do that, and it was like so surprising. It was such a
nice gesture. I'm like, this is so expensive. We didn't have as
much money back then, so it was like, yeah, it was just
really nice from COSBA Where is Wolfenstein three? It's been four years. Any
chance we'll see it in twenty twenty two. I I've lost a lot of
hope on Wolfenstein three, which is a shame. I love Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein
two, the new ones, the Old Colossus or the New Colossus, what
was it in the Old Blood whatever? I love those games, all of
the stories, all of the characters, all of the upgrade mechanics, at
least in the first one. I don't know. I want them to finish
that story. I think there's y they've done an amazing job to I mean,
god it coming that game coming up, Wolfenstein two coming out when it
did, and just being able to tell us what was happening in the in
America. Uh, you know, even before they knew what was going to
happen in America was I don't know, it blew me away. I want
more Wolfenstein. But they are working on God which with Indiana Jones, and
they're definitely working a lot on Indiana Jones that like that game is far away,
but they wanted they want to get that game out within the next five
years, so they're really working on that. Do they have another team that's
working on something else? Well, I mean, yeah, they were working
on Quake like they were they were doing they had a team that was working
on content for that Quake remaster, and they did a whole new campaign for
that. And there's a chance that maybe they were doing that because they were
preparing for another shooter. Is it Wolfenstein or is it maybe they are there.
Are they working on a new Quake or something like that. It's tough
to say. I'm just I was hoping that, like in the in the
time between Wolfenstein two and when we heard about Indiana Jones, they had gotten
so much work done on Wolfenstein three that they were like, well, it's
inevitable, we need to finish this first and then we'll really start in earnest
on Indiana Jones. It doesn't seem like that's the case there. I had
not heard much about Wolfenstein three one way or the other, and to me,
that indicates it's probably not in active development. I hope that's not the
case. I hope it's like maybe it's just a small team and they'll come
back around to it as they have more resources, or they'll hire up and
be able to do both at the same time. But I'm not I've I've
reduced my hopes for Wolfenstein three, and you asking me about it, I
would recommend you do the same. It's a shame and I hope I'm wrong,
but that's where I'm at with that game from Zekritz. I'm just going
to reask this, so sorry if it shows up twice. No, no,
no worries. That's what we're doing today. This is great. What
video game villain would would be better replacement? Would be a better replacement for
Santa Bowser, Doctor Robotnick, Liquid Snake, Donkey Kong or Tom Nook also
happy Holidays? Do we have to take like their greed into consideration and they're
like they're temperament because that's tough, because I would I would say did for
Robotnick because he has like the flying machines, and for some reason, that's
like the first concern that pops in my head, like none of these guys
are gonna be able to operate a sleigh with reindeer? Uh so, like
who can who can fly? Like? Right? Like who has got something
that looks like a slay what you know even a little bit? So I'm
like, okay, Doctor Robotnick. He's also kind of reddish, right,
right. So, so like we're in the We're in the whoss he's got
facial hair, Doctor Romatnick in terms of like look and equipment is is the
right answer, but he also feels like the most cartoonishly evil here, right
I mean liquid and again, yeah, and so I think still he's probably
the right answer, but maybe also Tom Knook, I don't know why.
I guess I want to say that. I don't know. I just saw
the name and I'm like, Tom nuk is Santa is a very funny idea
to me. That's where I'm at right now, everybody, Now, I'm
honestly got doctor Robotnick is the right answer from gun Dato on the scale of
ha ha really to never gonna happen? What are the odds from ever goes
back to armored Cores. It's not zero, It's not zero, but it's
not It also seems like it's not like it. This does seem great because
they really know how to sell a fantasy from game right now, right like
I mean, elder Ring is the most anticipated game of the year two years
in a row at the Game Awards. It is a game you just say,
elden Ring and your life shifts as I found out personally, like I
was doing fine, I start talking about Elder Ring and suddenly a million very
passionate people showed up at my door on Twitch or whatever on YouTube and wanted
answers and and that. I mean, listen, anything From does is probably
going to generate that sort of excitement. But if you're Bandai Namco working with
FROM, your PlayStation, working with FROM, and you're gonna say, hey,
we're gonna back you. We're gonna back you with some money on this,
but we want to go in this certain direction that we know has worked
before. I think that's what and what ends up with you leading to or
that's what leads with you ending up with a bunch of games that are going
to be sort of in this similar wheelhouse as a Dark Souls from now On.
The way that would change is if FROM really really really wants to make
an Armored Corps and as part of the deals that it's making to make these
other games predicate it's those deals on being able to make an Armored Corps next
or simultaneously while they're working on these other games or something like that. But
you know, FROM puts a lot of effort into these games. Elderm Ring
was a major hurdle for them, and they've really struggled to get that game
into a situation, into a position where it can launch early next year and
hopefully live up to the hype. And so if they have to like pick
and choose their battles, they also might be hesitant to choose Armored corcause that's
like almost starting from scratch when when you know, and maybe that's a challenge
they want to tackle. Maybe it is, but also humans really love knowing
how to succeed when they can when they face up against the problem, like
definitely makes us like more they supposed to, like more endorphins and dopamine than
being encountered with the problem and knowing exactly how to solve it and be like
this is my I know this and so like will they will they want to
like risk that go chase after Armored Corps, I think hopefully at some point,
And I do think that there's part of them that wants to. But
with those sort of like hey, we know how to do this. Everyone
knows we know how to do this, so they're willing to give us a
lot of money to do it, And also like you know, we have
a lot of fans that show up for those specific games that those pressures could
be a lot and build up and be like, hey, they are the
kinds of things that could prevent an armored corps from actually happening. From Weese
Man fifty four, not a question, but just wanted to tell you,
great job in the show this year. Thank you so much. I really
appreciate that. We's man. Can't wait to see your takes on the industry
in twenty twenty two. Cheers, Grubby, Thank you so much. Yeah,
yeah, and I have have a great new year and everything. I
really appreciate that this show has been a lot of fun. It's been really
cool to just sort of, you know, gather up some information and be
like, that's gonna be really good for grubs. Next, I'll bring it
there. We'll spark some conversations, we'll spark some questions, and then we'll
spend the rest of the hour, you know, hour an hour and a
half answering questions either related to that or something completely off tangent, and who
knows, who knows what we'll end up talking about. And that's one of
my favorite things to do when it comes to this business. And this hobby.
It is fun to think about for me, and it's cool to hang
out with people who clearly like thinking about it as well. So yes,
I really appreciate having the opportunity to do this show from Kane High Winds zero
and nine. People always talk about die Hard being a Christmas movie, but
is a Lethal Weapon a Christmas movie? I think Lethal Weapons more of a
Christmas movie than die Hard because it's what is it? Black? What's this?
What's the director's name? Lethal Weapon writer? Because he wasn't the director
of that one, Shane Black. Shame. All Shane Black's movies are Christmas
movies, right, iron Man three, Lethal Weapon on a Kiss, Kiss,
Bang Bang. They all take place during Christmas, and they also like
deeply involved, like like Christmas to a certain I guess maybe not Iron Man
three as much, but yeah, they all take place during Christmas. So
yeah, I think if Diehard is a Christmas movie, those movies definitely our
kiss, Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang is one I actually really like to
watch around the Holidays and leave the weapon too, So yeah, but you
kind of run out of at a certain point, you run out of time.
And my favorite, my favorite Christmas movie I've said this before is Christmas
Vacation. We haven't even watched that this year, so I'll put that on.
I put on a home alone for the kids. My four year old
really got into the Santa clause with Tim Allen, like of course, it
spawned the conversation of like, did Santa just die? Like she's in that
mode right now, So that was a fun conversation. But you know that
we got to talk about Tim Allen going to jail and and you know,
trafficking cocaine. So just you know, there's ups and downs to these movies,
from Ogdo Octo ogto any chance we see something for Sony that's actually competitive
with the Microsoft Game Pass on their back competent offerings. Getting the sixty frames
per second and some older games would be huge for me personally. Sony has
great engineers. Sony has some of the best engineers in the business. If
they dedicate resources to giving those engineers a chance to explore those technical possibilities,
they could do it. Uh, it just comes down to, is that's
something that Sony is interested in spending money on accomplishing and I don't I don't
know. That's that's up in the air now. They've they've sort of like
moved back like previously they're like, hey, bringing back you know, back
APAC games or bringing back older games at all wasn't worth it because this is
old trash and I hate it. I'm Jim Ryan. But he's changed his
mind because he's he's he's sees the landscape and he's not some he's not a
kind of guy that likes like sticks to an answer because he gave it once.
If he sees a chance to make money, he'll go for it.
Now that begs the question, right, would they make more money if they
were to create a backward compatible system that was capable of playing older games at
a higher frame rate? I mean, I don't know, I don't know.
I think this. I think just having those games might be enough.
And then anything like there's gonna be a huge sort of the return on investment
is going to diminish on every little investment they make after that, Like,
once those games are available, that's that. And you know, we're seeing
something similar with Nintendo. No, Nintendo's trying to get They're in sixty four
ROMs like Up and Running and trying to improve them and stuff like that.
But that's just because the backlash against that was so loud. If PlayStation comes
up, games come out and they run pretty good like how they're supposed to
run, most people should probably be pretty happy. And any sort of new
tech that Sony might layer on top of that would have to be like a
real concerted effort. And I just don't know if they're in a place where
they think that it's gonna be worth like is that juice going to be worth
the squeeze? I don't know. Bingo Papadopoulos question mark, I'm gonna say
yes. I'm gonna say yes to Bingo Popatopolis. Um, I'm going to
open my heart to Bingo Papadopolis. I am I saying that right? I
think that's right. That game looked like my jam a little bit. That
Bingo Papadopolis's pool golf game or whatever it was pay pinball golf. I like
really bad hard games, and that looked like a lot of fun. So
I'm planning to try some of that game. I just like, I don't
know when i'll get time because I'm not gonna stream it and steal Jeff Bacilar's
thunder. But uh, but yeah, I'm I'm I'm you know what,
Yes, I accept Bingo Papadopolis as my lord and savior. Merry Christmas,
mister b crick oldink. Do you think Epic will make fuser free to play?
That's a good question, because then they could just sell the songs individually,
like yeah, and that that and that shouldn't I mean that probably shouldn't
change the contract with any of those songs, right, I guess the songs
that are in the like that there had to be a free to play version,
right, and they'd have to make deals to get certain songs in that
free to play version. Maybe they rotate in and out. Maybe it's sort
of like a radio playlist or something like that. There goes chat with Bingo
Papadopolis. But I, you know, may yeah, why not make Fusure
free to play? That game is a really cool tool and and sort of
a fun thing to play around with at parties. Maybe you can hook it
up into your Spotify or something like that and play play with stuff that way,
and hey, now you get access to these certain songs because you made
up because they made a deal with some third party service. I don't know,
I think there's a chance. I don't know for sure. Uh from
Octo PS. Discovering the grub cinematic universe was one of my personal highlights of
twenty twenty one. Shout out to kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Also that thank
you Octo and uh and yeah and for some reason I read the bang also
in my purple vision looked like banjo, and so shout out to the banjo
shirt. Also that I'm wearing things like this thing a lot. This one
is not also any sort of copyright in Frenchman. This one's a legit one
I got this from. Was that was that fan the one the thing that
makes all like the little chatchkeys like officially I can't remember, like not fan
Duel. That's a gambling website from Visualizer. Hey Jeff, been loving grub
Stacks. Thank you so much, Visualizer. It's been a gift to discover
the game mess through this show. Marry Christmas now. I'm happy that you
guys have been showing up. Also a Visualizer, I know you show up
for the for the Game Speak Decides podcast and last thing the Hindogs every once
in a while I appreciate that. Yeah, let's scroll down see if there's
any other questions worth answer it. Otherwise we can get out of here.
We've been going for an hour and five. See that. And I know
we got a bunch of questions earlier that I didn't actually even look at.
From voice inject, Hi, Jeff, Happy holidays. If your kiddos were
caught shoplifting, would you rather they shoplift bone Storm or a league of hollows?
Putting challenge? Yeah, Lee, Carvelo's putting challenge the one I want
in the shoplift. I always wanted to play that, you know, it
was just like it was like a text adventure golf game on the Simpsons.
I can't remember exactly how they played it, but I remember wanting to play
it as a kid, even though it looked bad. That's how much like
video games as a kid, I'm just like, that looks bad, I
want to play that. Let's see, would you rather play thirty minutes of
Quidditch or five hours of Mario Party with Dan reicher Now, I've I've played
two and a half hours of Mario Party with Dan Reicherd on his stream once
a few months back when it in the game, right around the game when
the new one came out, and it was truly it was almost like it's
almost awe inspiring how it works out for him, Like, yeah, he
is good at the mini games, yes, but like there was like a
series of things that were happening to me on the dice that just felt like
the least lucky, like the most unlucky set of circumstances you could possibly have,
Like I got one five times in a row or something like that,
and I would end up right in front of the square that I needed to
hit. I would just stop right short of it or something like that.
And then we get to the end and they give out the star for most
Unlucky, and then Dan Record wins that as well, even though he was
clearly very lucky throughout. It's like, how are they counting this? Like
that he ends up with whatever it was, it was just like mesmerizing to
be like everything goes his way. This is insane. He's so lucky that
he wins most Unlucky. So while it's torture, it is truly torturous to
play with him, it's also something that I you know, I'm almost like
it's it's like that that that's that awful smell that you can't help but keep
smell him. You're like, uh, you know, like is that that?
Now I'm doing this because I'm not doing this because I'm smelling my fingers
and this because it's the reference to what's her name is smelling her nail polish
in that American Hustle movie where she talks about how that kernails has that I'm
like trying to explain myself away real quick where she's like, oh my no
polish. It's smells sweet but also sour and you can't help but wanted to
smell that bad smell or something like that. That's what playing Mario Party with
Dan Reichert is, like best kind of donut Kane high Wind zero nine.
I've gone I've I started looking jelly donuts recently, and I never liked those
before, but I think it's because we have we have a good donut place,
Lamar's near us that's very good at jelly donuts, and I usually get
it filled like strawberry jam or something like that. But I've also those are
like maybe they're like too much now, Like I've gone through that phase and
now I'm just back to like I like a chocolate iced at donut or something
like that. My kids love donuts. Like tomorrow morning, Lamar's is open,
I'm going there. We're gonna go get some donuts and my kids will
be very happy, probably probably making a new Christmas Eve tradition. We used
to on Christmas Eve. We used to go to habbachi. We'd go to
a habachi grill, and that was one of my favorite things. Like my
family started that one, like like when i'd go back home, they started
doing that, and we kept it up as we've been out here in Colorado
and it was great. And then the pandemic hit and now we're like,
that's like the worst environment for for to like be in, and the kids
can't get vaccinated yet, so it's disappointing. But we went on the Christmas
train this year, like we were like, Okay, everyone has to wear
the mask because it's mandated by the TSA. We'll go do that. We
won't do the habachi grill. I don't know, I don't know how I
got on this topic. I'm talking about like our new Christmas Eve tradition of
getting donuts. I basically I'm just like sad. I'm like, man,
I would love to go back and do that. We don't like to go
out to eat all that often, But on Christmas Eve doing that getting dressed
up kind of nice, you know, putting on Christmas clothes or whatever like
that. I've enjoyed that from trelusion. Now blitz ball, that's a sport.
Yeah, why aren't the kids playing blitz ball? Cowards mock buckets?
Hey, jeff Jeffy grub miss, have you heard any of about anything about
Square Nick's filing trademark for Gets? What the hell does Square and explained to
do with gets in the twenty twenties. I bet it's gonna be like a
mobile game. I bet. I bet it's a mobile game, or maybe
maybe like Epic in Fortnite are like, Hey, we're gonna do a like
a retro game sort of event, and we're gonna bring back characters from the
nineties or whatever that people could play as. I bet that's it. I
bet Gex ends up in Fortnite before twenty twenty two is through? Uh from
Gandato, what's the deal with the Accusa judgment never going on sale even though
every other game in the expanded series does. That's a good question. I
don't know. I wonder if they're just like testing the waters on how long
they can get away with keeping a higher price. This is something that we've
talked about Sony being very interesting and wanted to do, but third party publishers
haven't had the same luxury of being able to even try this. Maybe Sega's
trying it, Maybe it's something. Maybe there's something and contractual that's causing that
problem or something though I don't know. Oh, this is something I did
want to talk about. Let's do this and then let's get out of here.
I'm glad you brought this up. Paul rat Paul Graham, Paul W.
Graham. Ubisoft lost and estimated twelve percent of its workforce in twenty twenty
one. Where are these people landing and what tangible effect has this had on
Ubisoft projects. It's gonna cause delays, it's going to cause you know,
the games to miss their like their targets in terms of performance and and you
know content, it's gonna cause a lot. It's gonna cause a lot of
than twelve percent of of workforce is massive. It's significant for a company like
Ubisoft. I've talked to the past, like Ubisoft has something like fourteen thousand
employees or something like that. It's some mad number, and that's like way
more than Google ever put on Stadia. It's way more than Amazon puts on
its games. Like it's almost like, you know, I think Google has
like it has more employees than that, but it's not by much. And
think about all the products that Google has. They don't just make one kind
of thing, They make all kinds of things. And yet they like,
you know, fourteen thousand is not that far out of reach what Google is.
I think. So even if it's like even it's like one hundred thousan
employees at Google, let's just say, I'm going off the top of my
head, I can't remember, Like still, that's like fourteen percent like to
just make video games. And that's why I like, Stadia never made sense
for Google because they weren't going to increase their workforce by fourteen percent to just
make video games. That wouldn't make sense to a company like that. So
for you your stuff to lose twelve percent of that you know, it's one
hundred, it's like two hundred people. That's it's or to two thousand people.
Excuse me, two thousand people. That's huge. That's massive. And
so where are they going? They're they're going everywhere in Montreal. This is
the thing. I think Axeos, I think Steven Totila reported on this,
and I've been hearing this exact same thing the last few weeks, that Montreal
is just a madhouse right now with so much money flowing in. Ten Cent
is a major one. There's some other publishers who are similarly similarly putting money
into starting new studio studios in that place. And if you are someone with
any credits to your name at all, you can go to ten Cent and
probably gets a significant pay increase to go work for them on a Montreal studio
game from them, but it goes away beyond ten Cent. There are just
investors who know that Montreal game development is super hot, and if you want
to super hot, and if you want to go start your own studio,
the investment is there right now where it's very easy to do that. You'll
get a ton of money, You'll be able to like higher up, way
faster than you would have been in the past, and so there's just all
of these up You have every option if you're in Montreal, and this it's
pretty similar in most of the cities where you be. Stoft operates, but
it's especially true in Montreal, and so this is like indicative of what it's
like everywhere. So that's why I'm focusing on Montreal's also the one I'm most
familiar with, which is based on what I've been hearing. And so you
have this thing where there is so much money flowing in to creating and buying
studios and staffing up studios that it's very easy to just go get a pay
raise. If you want to make more money. You've worked at Ubisoft for
two years, you shipped the game, Go leave now because someone will give
you a fifty one percent increase to go work somewhere else like it. You
know, it's scales, but like some people are getting paid twice as much
as they were getting paid at Ubisoft. You know, even if you're getting
paid twenty five percent more, that's massive. The Ubisoft would struggle to sort
of make that make sense for them because they have so many employees, like,
oh, if we do this for this one person, that stuff's gonna
start. That domino effects gonna fall quick. Now it's gonna fall for them.
They're gonna have to pay more. They are starting to pay more.
That's the one way they can keep up. But then there's the other side
of things, where do you want to continue to work for a company that
you've heard has protected did toxic people in the past, and you don't Most
people don't like if you have your choice of employment, and there's people saying,
hey, we'll give you a pay praise if you leave or if you
don't never go to ubustoft in the first place, And you're like looking into
you Google these companies and you're like, hey, what have they been in
the news for recently? Well, it's like, okay, I mean,
Yves Gama was talking about trying to make this place a better place, and
then people found out that he was protecting certain people and it seems kind of
nasty. And then also they're like going after NFTs and stuff. Not that
like ten Cent wouldn't do that, but whatever that's been in the news for
this stuff. It's just like a lot of bad news surrounding Ubisoft that makes
it really difficult to hire these companies. Like for a long time, they
could get away with the like relatively low pay, even if you know,
high paying, high high pay compared to other industries, relatively low pay,
and they could get away with bad behavior because people were just so desperate to
work in video games, and so these companies could exploit that and they have
and they did for a long time. We are at a point where gaming
content is at such a premium that the people that create gaming content are at
a higher premium than they've ever been before. And so if you are a
company in this space, you need to Yeah, you need to show up
your pay, absolutely, but you also need to walk the straight and narrow
line of making sure that the generation coming up right now that it's going to
want to work on games. Gen Z, what do they care about?
Do they care about the way we behave as a company? A lot of
them? Do a lot of them really care? And though and not not
only that, they will let you know that they don't care about the way
you've been behaving, or that they do care and that they don't approve of
the way you've been behaving, and they'll leave and they have no loyalty to
you. This is something that we're seeing a lot in a lot of industries,
and gaming especially, And these are the people that are going to replace
the people who are senior staff right now who are going off to create their
own studios, because there's no upward momentum for them. A lot of times,
like I wrote this story for games Be years ago about how why so
many like in movies, this is this the analogy I kind of went with,
I'm losing by voice, so maybe we should stop here pretty soon.
But all right, here we go. In movies, if you direct an
indie hit, there is a very good chance you might end up directing a
Marvel movie or a Star Wars or any number of blockbusters, and then you
can go back and direct another indie movie if that's where your passions lie.
Like you could move around. There's a lot of ways to move up and
down and to get your pay day and to do to work on the projects
you want to work on and have a say over your career, and and
to do so in a studio system that has, you know, that involves
some of the biggest corporations in the world. And then a lot of that
stuff is based on the way the unions have structured that industry. In gaming,
you get up to be about seeing your staff at you be soft if
you're a your producer, senior creative director and you look around me like we're
making we're making what five games a year, maybe five big games a year
at the most. The directors on these games, like, yeah, sure
a lot of directors do leave, but there are a lot of people just
below that waiting to take those spots. There is nowhere for me to move
up. And in my story, basically I just wrote like, hey,
there's no upward momentum for these senior staff unless they go and create their own
thing. And this is like around the time like Cliffy b left Epic,
like he had done everything, He's gonna do it epic working for this one
corporation. He's like, now I'm gonna start my own company. That's the
only thing that makes sense. That's actually the only wagon go up. It
didn't Bossky didn't exactly work out for him, but it was the one way
that he could do something that would be bigger than what he was doing before.
And that's just sort of like the creative impetus behind a lot of people's
decisions, and so fundamentally, like the industry is just designed in a way,
like the structure of the way people come into these positions is a little
bit broken. Well, it's unsustainable I think, because it churns through staff
and As you get people that are more and more skilled and more capable of
producing the kinds of games you need to make, you run out of spots
to put them, and you run out of ways to reward them. And
that's that's a recipe for where we are right now and gaming, where you
know content set of premium. People want to play games. People want to
play a lot of games. People want to play a lot of different kinds
of games, and a company like Ubisoft is struggling to figure out how to
capitalize on that because they don't know how to keep creative talent around. And
so yeah, it's gonna be a problem for all kinds of studios, but
I think Ubisoft specially it's because they are They're so massive, their games are
so big there it's gonna be really hard for them to sort of shift and
figure out where to go next. And also they seem it seems like a
place you wouldn't want to work if you have any sort of desire to work
for a company that takes responsibility for its actions. So yeah, okay,
let's uh, let's wrap this up, guys and gals. Let's see here.
Octo quick question, Jeff, this is a good one, what's your
best guest for when we get our first call of duty less year. I'm
I'm gonna call my shot, and I'm gonna say twenty twenty two. I'm
gonna say it because I think things are going to fall apart for Activision worse
than they already have. This is like maybe hopeful a little bit. Not
that I want Called Duty fans the suffer, not that I have any grudge
against Called Duty, but I want I don't want people to go to work
for Activision until they until Bobby Cottock leaves. And I think I think Actors
is probably gonna be dealing with many of these same issues we just went over
with be Soft, And there are a lot of companies that would hire you
if you want. If you worked on call of duty and want to go
work somewhere else, there will be a lot of companies that would hire you.
And I think there's a chance that maybe things fall apart for them so
hard this year that they can't get call of duty out on time. Probably
not, almost certainly not. But I'm gonna I'm gonna say, Tony,
I'm sticking to my guns. Twenty twenty two, there will not be a
new major call of duty. There will just be war zone map and a
war zone map, and that's it. That's my hot take. Everybody,
It's almost not. There's no chance in hell it happens. They will move
mountains to make sure that doesn't happen. They will, they will buy studios,
they will, they will hire every single, every single sort of support
studio on the West coast, on the east coast, in Mexico, in
Europe to make sure this doesn't happen. I think there's a chance. I
think there's a chance. Okay, let's wrap this up. Thank you everybody
so much for watching. I'll be back with another new episode next week.
We'll see if there's any news. Maybe it'll be similar to this. It
could be a chill hang sesshure, right, we could do one of those
again, and then starting early next year, we'll definitely move back with some
news. There's gonna be stuff to talk about. Gaming is gonna really pick
up pace very quickly in twenty twenty two. I know we went over some
of the games earlier, but you know, January maybe a little bit lighter.
But I mean, I'm you know, i feel like I'm already sort
of starting to hear about like, oh, here, here's some game codes
for February stuff you want to start playing, like I got you know,
I got that seafood demo early, like super early, that's coming out in
February, right. I think they maybe they moved that to March whatever.
It's hard to keep track of. Now. The point is, February is
packed. We all know it. There's not gonna be a lot of breathing
room. And so when stuff like that starts popping off again, there we'll
be news. We'll talk about it here. We'll see what we can see,
you know, about the future, try to figure out what's going on
in this industry. And I hope to bring all of that to you guys
here in the new year. But yeah, we'll be back with another New
Year's Eve. Spectacular New Year's Eve Eve, I think. Is how we'll
do it. Is that when it happens. Yeah, so yeah, that'll
be fun. So until then, have a good one, take care of
yourself, and goodbye, and all praise be to Bingo Papadopoulos. I'm messed
up, messed up. I'm gonna turn off studio mode and now hit this.
Hi, everybody,