The Top Selling Games of 2023!

He'll be bad. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this for
January eighteenth, twenty twenty four. 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 we find out what the best selling game of twenty
twenty three was, and Plans Versus Zombies is back. But first, please
join me in welcoming today's co host the Game Mess Mornings. It's Janet Choa.
Everybody, jan how are you doing? I am doing terrible and amazing
Grub. I've bought two more poker books. What the fuck? Oh no,
I've bought two more poker books. I think I'm as as poke poke
Poke poker is say, I'm all in on the hobby. Oh let me
tell you, Grub. Oh no again. I continue my blood fewed with
the nicest man on the Internet, David chen of the film cast Decoding TV.
Apparently he's gonna have a new podcast with Patrick Kleppik yep Shots at the
Scoops. His book recommendation for God what is it? The book even called
the Biggest Bluff I Believe by Maria. I just want to get this right.
Maria Konakova, maybe one of the best books I've been listening to slash
reading over the past like two three years. Okay, yeah, and even
if you're not a fan of poker, it kind of recontextualizes the game into
something that is incredibly appealing to me. The chapter I'm at right now,
yeah, no problem, I do. I mean, like I was already
like someone who likes poker, but like any sort of like fiction or nonfiction
story about card games and gambling, those are always so interesting to me.
I don't know what it is. Her metaphor for learning and discovering and becoming
good at the game of poker originally started out as like, you know,
Sunsu the Art of War, and then it evolved into your playing jazz with
your tablemates m and not quite of course, yes, exactly, yeah,
And then now she has gone to the metaphor from a new coach of like,
yo, this is like poker is kind of a narrative puzzle, and
you've got to figure out what everyone else is doing and why they did it
and how that fits into your specific puzzle. And it's absolutely amazing. Grub
I was playing in Embargo game last night for very long while I had the
World Series of Poker of twenty twenty three going onto the background. I'm a
broken person. Okay, okay, so far, so good. All of
that is acceptable. You got a new interest, a new hobby. This
is a normal thing. Are you going to accept the invite to the Chinatown
Poker games? Because that might be a pretty dangerous proposition. I had asked
my friend, who, by the way, I haven't spoken to in I
looked it up six years and and I asked like, hey, is it
is it cool if someone just goes to watch, rather watch and learn rather
than play. And he said, well, I got to ask the crew.
Yeah, And uh, you know I folks, folks that follow this
website. No, I have a very sordid history with San Francisco's Chinatown.
And I looked where he plays poker at the specific building, and it's very
close to a building that I have a lot of history with that I don't
quite want to share with the internet right now. Sure, sure, okay,
Chinatown gets down though, Oh of course. I mean listen, and
you can have a good time in Chinatown. You could do some fun stuff.
I'm mostly just worried about. I bet they play serious there, and
I bet it would be very easy to quickly lose a lot of money in
a Chinatown card game. Get go to Alipo Lounge for a nice my tie
if you're ever in San Francisco and just tell me you know jan Ochoa,
and then they'll kick you out apparently like get out of here. Well listen,
I'm I'm still very invested in this arc. If you need someone to
back your bank roll, I'll invest in that. You know, I'll just
eat my viig of course. Well this it's gonna be a good time.
I imagine imagine grub if a year from now, I only exclusively wear sunglasses
all the time. Okay, that would first of all, that'd be great.
Uh, you should get the sunglasses that look up the card player.
I think he was called lizard Man. He won I think the year after
Chris Moneymaker won, and he he had like the best luck ever, like
he went on such a lucky streak. But he had these glasses that had
the holographic like dinosaur eyes. Were those at the table? Oh, I
think it was a lizard Man. I'm pretty sure that was his name.
I'm all for this. If if the Lions go to the Super Bowl jam,
which is a big if it's a huge if there's a lot of really
good teams in front of them, especially the forty nine ers. That's the
team I'm most worried about, Packers all that stuff. But if they go,
it will be in Las Vegas. I will have about two weeks before
that happens to like like before like like I'll know they're going to the super
Bowl and then they're gonna play in the super Bowl. That's two weeks.
I might try to spend that first week like like raising money on like twitch
or something to see if I could go, And then I might go to
Las Vegas and try to see if I can go to the super Bowl.
But I might just go Las Vegas and I'm like, I have well I'm
there. Maybe I'll play some card games. I don't know. We'll see.
No, hey, Mike, what are you doing? Dan you do
let's go uh yeah, yeah, let's do Let's not do it, but
let's do it. But yeah, of course, of course, let's we
could find some reasons to go to get to uh A Vegas one way or
the other. Let's 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 era digital reporting. For all these topics, I'll
get the input of a bone to 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 Games Mornings, or find
therss on giant bomb dot com. Can also catch the show later with chapters
and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube. All right, we have a lot
to get into, so let's start the morning mess with the twenty twenty three
Sircana Report. Sircana, of course, used to be known as MPD.
This is from Matt Piscatella. The December twenty twenty three US video game market
highlights include annual US spending on video game content, hardware, and accessories reaching
fifty seven point two billion dollars in twenty twenty three. That's an increase of
one percent when compared to twenty twenty two, so still up. But we'll
we'll talk a little bit more about that. In a second December spending specifically
grew four percent to seven point nine billion, so that's quite a bit ahead.
So the rest of your dragging down, what was a pretty successful December
that Let's see here a video game hardware specifically in December was up four percent.
That was a big, big growth area for it, and then video
game accessories up fourteen percent for the year, though hardware was even with twenty
twenty two, and then video game content was up only one percent and accessories
were only up four percent. So twenty twenty three great year, not necessarily
growing rapidly in the console space for the most part. The best selling game
of December was Call of Duty Modern Warfare three, but the best selling game
of the year jan is officially now breaking Call of Duties like streak for the
first time in a long time for a game that didn't come from rock Star.
It's the first time anything other than a rock Star game has outsold Call
of Duty in the for the year in the United States. You know,
it's a little bit shaky because the Legends Dell to Teers in the Kingdom at
number five for the top selling games of the year, but that's without digital
sales. You put in digital sales, it could very easily be up there
at the top, maybe just behind Hogwarts, Legacy or potentially even just ahead
of it. Not too surprising, I'll say it. Like at the same
time, Avatar The Frontiers of Handor debuted in December and it only debuted at
number six, behind Marvel Spider Man two. Hogwarts Legacy still outsold it in
December. So it's not like, Okay, just go get any huge brand
and it's gonna work. You're still gonna probably need a select handful of brands
that can push things over the top. Yeah, that's what I was going
to say. Looking at the top ten of top selling twenty twenty three games,
there's what three that are licensed games because we have Hogwarts Legacy, Spider
Man two, A Star Wars, Jedi Survivor point and I was thinking sports
games, discounting the sports games, yes, And I was thinking, Wow,
there's we're in this reality again, greb where license games are the hotness
right now. And that's discounting before we even move on to like trans media
where we're getting shows and movies adapted from games, because then that muddies the
pot even more. But you're right, just because you get a license game
is not a golden ticket to amazing gigantic sales. Like if you go get
the No, that actually might be amazing if you get the Maze Runner book
IP to turn into a game. I don't think that's going to translate into
millions and millions like the Hogwarts legacy games, even a very popular franchise like
the Hunger Games. I know that the Hunger Games format of Battle Royale has
been very popular with pubg Fortnite, Azy, etc. But I don't think
that specific IP turned into a game is going to be translate into big dollar
signs, right, Yeah, Like it's easy to imagine that they're like a
lot of the Hunger Games audience just doesn't care, isn't asking for a game
at all, Like that's not what's not there with their area of interest.
You know many are, I'm sure, but you're right. There's no guarantee,
no golden ticket. That's one of the things that Maphisktel brings up is
that there is there's a continued widening of the gap between what succeeds and what
fails. He says it is illustrated as a shrinking middle where there are games
that have that are at the top that's really really hit hard and succeed and
they sell a ton and then if you miss, you miss really hard,
and it's a kind of a disaster. And we've definitely we've talked about this
a bunch of times now where it's like, oh, yeah, that game
missed and it just evaporated and went nowhere. And then a lot of these
other games are hitting and then they're doing really well. I mean, like
a couple of millions sold for you know, a Dead to Island two and
things like that, But that's that's pretty impressive. But it's like, Okay,
that one hit that counts as a big hit, and that's actually a
couple of millions sold for a game like that that it's a huge hit acttion.
But then when you miss, like it really does feel like we don't
ever like hear about some of these games ever. Again, I don't know
if Avatar is going to like where Avatar is going to fall. Maybe the
IP does help push it into some weird new middle where like being a middle
ground game for Avatar actually still a very bad thing because that's probably an expensive
game to make, an expensive IP to license, and therefore, actually,
no, it still kind of counts as one of these ones that missed pretty
hard relative to its budget, Right, Yeah, I and I think unfortunately
got lost with a shuffle of December, where you know, proper timing would
have been to try and time it out with digital release of Way of Water
or some type of Avatar anniversary. The power of a wall wasn't enough.
But the thing that if, for some reason, if folks are getting super
upset that Hogwarts Legacy is a top selling game, they should keep in mind
this doesn't include digital sales, correct Grubb. So this does include digital sales
for everything except for the ones that are marked with the asterisks, so that
would be number five. The legend is all the Tiers of the Kingdom doesn't
include digital sales. Super Mario Brothers Wonder is the next one that doesn't include
digital sales. That was number twelve for the year. And then it's mostly
Nintendo games but also MLB. The show does include digital sales on Xbox.
I think it's here in small text or whatever. Maybe it's not on Steam,
but yeah, then Mario Kart eight, the nineteenth best selling game of
twenty twenty three, doesn't include digital sales as well. Imagine you included digital
sales for that. You probably do get to about that probably moves up above
stuff like that Island two at fifteen and MLB the show twenty three at fourteen,
stuff like that, So that's wild. Yes, the rest of these
include physical and digital. The publishers share that data with SIRCANA. Well,
I was going to say, I was surprised to not see Balder's Gate three
anywhere on this list, so that okay, that is a good point to
bring up. Balder's Gate three likely a Larryan published game, and Larryan likely
does not share their data with the CIRCANA. It's this includes digital data from
the people who share it, and then they don't try to map. It's
like has a kind of a line about this. He's like, I'm not
going to try to extrapolate. I'm not going to do any algorithms to try
to predict where a game would be. I'm just going to use the data
I have and then well I will share with you. I'll tell you which
the data I don't have, and if you get his report, there's another
tab that says, here are the publishers that share their data, and if
they're not listed here, we don't have them. So he tries to be
transparent on that side, so they just don't have that data likely. I
bet you bring Balder's Kate three in. It's probably right around you know,
Diablo four right around there, So I would imagine, yeah, because I'm
I'm looking at the four being number six, and I continually forgot that that
game came out last year, Greb. Now it did sell very, very
well. Diablo four had a huge, huge launch. I think we forget
about it because diabol is one of those games that is supposed to be kind
of ever in the conversation, at least in the first couple of years,
and it's like, oh no, there's definitely people playing it, but not
like we were expecting necessarily. Overall, the video game industry growing one percent
is below the expectation about three percent, which was Sircana's excuse me, Sircana's
forecast and sort of the industry's expectations that video games in the United States were
console and Steam and stuff like that, the stuff that's tracked would grow about
three percent. So it's like, Okay, things are maybe a little bit
slower, a little bit more stuck in the mud than was expected, and
it may maybe even like a little bit more so than it should be,
considering like the several big games that did come out that we were all saying,
these are massive, this is what we've been waiting for, and yet
not quite as much money spent on this stuff as we were thinking. Is
part of that, Jane, you think that people continue to diversify into stuff
like, oh, hey, we're all playing Lethal Company, and we're all
playing these things that aren't tracked by Sircana necessarily. I think that's an aspect
of it. But I also think that the the casual audience is not being
factored in enough, where those are the people that will buy a console for
one game, maybe two games. And we see that definitely represented here with
Hogwarts Legacy and two separate Call of Duty titles in the in the top ten
spot here, and also all these sports titles, right, And I think
that spending maybe tracking down despite these gigantic games coming out because of those people
now. And I don't mean those people in a derogatory are people, but
I'm just saying the even more casual casual gamers, the super cash folks out
there, are are part of the the bigger pot now again because of games
like this and PS five's being more readily available than they were during the pandemic
earlier parts of the pandemic, that that's why maybe spending is down. Yeah,
that's my assumption. And then Sirkana Memphiscatelli here's one of his answers,
and it's like, Yeah, this has always been humming in the background,
and I suppose by the end of twenty twenty three this is a bit major
factor. Fortnite, Minecraft, Roadblocks, GTA, and Call of Duty.
Call of Duty as a group, are so successful at pulling in players slash
player hours that it's becoming very tough to compete with just that glob of games
as a hobby, right, And of course we see that, right,
we know that that that's like, especially like Fortnite having that second third Wind
or whatever it's on now where it's like, okay, we have the most
players ever at this point, that stuff is going to suck the wind out
of the room and make it so that when you are talking to your friends
that you're like, should we hey, should we all buy this new game
that just came out and play that you guys want to talk about this or
whatever. It's like, No, we already all have investment in Fortnite,
time invested. We have a bunch of skins. Everyone's playing it again.
We just go hang out and mad again. It's a safe bet. I
think that happened in a big way. It's like like that happens because the
games are good right now. A lot of these multiplayer games are good right
now. It also happens because people or maybe are worried about spend the money
on stuff when the economy is not as quite as strong, or at least
in many people's perception perceptions, it's not quite as strong right on, And
you know, also factor in how big mobile gaming is, and how that
carrot on the stick is easier to digest than like seventy dollars per title.
Maybe it's five dollars per spind on the the gotcha wheel, right, yes,
of all right, well maybe my wife were a Husbondo will finally come
out of this space train if I spend this five dollars of this ten dollars
spaced out over the course of like I don't know every every like pay period,
right of, like all right, well here's here's my gotcha allotment of
the month. Yeah, or not even specifically a game in the mehoio versus
like Hong Ki or or God, what's the other game? Ginchin Impact,
Yeah, mobile transactions with other games. The all of the games that are
clones of popular games that have gigantic audiences. That continues to astound me.
Yes, the Clash Royale is still a big game. Clash Rail It's massive,
absolutely, Candy Crisaga, Clash Royale, Clash of Clans. These games
have been big for a decade straight and they continue to be big. Clash
Royal, Marvel Snap. I know, like the audience is like slightly dipped
from the initial boom, but like like the Pokemon Go kind of dip where
it's like, oh, like okay, this game could still easily make five
hundred to eight hundred million dollars a year, no problem, every year for
the next five, six, seven years. That does remind me. I
was listening to spawn Waves New show this morning on my walk and he pointed
out that Grand Theft Auto six the trailer on YouTube is now the second most
watch video game trailer of all time with one hundred and sixty million views.
I can't remember the game beat to get to that point. That was less
interesting though than the number one game, which has three hundred and sixty million
views. Jan Do you have a guess what that game is? Five Night
said Friday's that's a really solid guess. It's actually Subway Surfers. What Subway
Surfers, It's that one that is often Temple Run the Temple Run the but
like on subway tracks where you jump on stuff. Yeah. Now, if
you think about it for a second, you got it. Like they have
to be just like using that trailer in advertisements, right, It's got to
be like a part of their user acquisition strategy to just play that trailer in
front of other YouTube videos or maybe even like inside of other mobile apps as
part of their advertisement or whatever. Maybe just like links into that YouTube video.
I think that's what's happening, But who knows. Well, no,
yeah, I buy it, Jesus Christ. Subway surfers. What are we
doing for subway surfers? That's right. Subway Surface is one of those games
that like is on the bottom half of a lot of TikTok videos, So
it is. Yeah, it's either you're going through a weird Minecraft platform video
I want to do with one of those Minecraft platform and things. By the
way, Yes, it's either that Subway Surfers or maybe a handful of other
things grub. The newest one I've seen in the tech TikTok meta of exploiting
a Reddit post while having something going on in the background is Spider Man two
swinging. Yeah, of course, of course we knew it was gonna happen.
I'm down with that. I'm complete, I'm in favor of it.
It's a couple other notes from Matt Here the middle of Shrinking, we mentioned
that twenty twenty four likely to be bumpy. He says a lot is writing
on the potential of new Nintendo hardware, and I think when we have this
conversation a lot of times Jam, we're like, you know, maybe we
get new Nintendo hardware this year, maybe we don't. We probably we're probably
gonna get it. Nintendo's in a good position. They don't really need it.
I don't usually think about but obviously it's true. I don't usually think
about. Oh, the industry is kind of like counting on this in a
lot of ways. Now, third party doesn't necessarily always do super well on
Nintendo hardware. They've definitely done better on the Switch than they have on more
recent Nintendo devices before that. But it's like, man, no, this
next one takes off, it will least like it will can float like a
third party peripheral manufacturers, and then a lot of indie studios can rely on
the success of a new Nintendo hardware to help them sell a ton of those
games. And then some third like Lucky Select third party publishers will be able
to ride that wave something as well. Ubisoft usually does a pretty good job
of that. But yeah, the overall health of industry kind of riding on
Nintendo being able to replicate the success of the Switch. With that in mind,
it's like, oh, yeah, there's there's a lot of pressure on
that system all of a sudden. I don't think Nintendo cares, but the
industry overall like looking at that thing. You know, we saw that from
that Japanese report where they talked to a lot of Japanese developers are like a
lot of talk about new Nintendo hardware. Yo, that's what everyone's talking about.
And I kind of get it, Like, especially if you're a Japanese
developer, that is like where your games are selling in Japan is on Nintendo
hardware. So yeah, a lot riding on that. I mean, do
you think that you think it does hit the ground running and that we're good
to go and people can take a little bit of a sigh of relief.
Here. I think we're gonna hit the ground first. I think, in
classic Nintendo fashion, it'll be a little bit of a head scratcher. Sure
people will be like, well, this is stupid, and then slowly realize
of like, Okay, I'm good, I'm gonna I'm gonna continue to let
Nintendo cook. There are a bunch of bunch of oddballs and fun, fun
people over there, so maybe this will be fun. And then it'll wind
up doing Gangbusters grub because the thing, I don't know why I decided to
dive deep into this, but I dove deep into like a comment thread on
TikTok having a game discourse game discussion discourse over there, and if you think
it's terrible on Twitter, it's worse on TikTok. And then, like someone
broke it down, someone still has, for whatever reason, the mentality that
Nintendo is for babies. There's not the cheese pizza right now. In fact,
it is the whole fucking pie. In this instance, it is a
whole pizzeria. Because when this person broke down the sales and I think you'd
get a kick out of the scrub, specifically of Luigi's Mansion three. Oh
yeah, that's our influence right there, versus the like these Triple A games
and how Luigi's Mansion three blows it out of the fucking water. Stillm that
shut the person up. So I think Nintendo scout. I swear to god,
no one's vacuuming today. If if Nintendo can recapture lightning in the bottle,
specifically with the wondering pizzazz of what the fuck is the switch? Yeah,
also just leaning into Nintendo being Nintendo, because there's there's no other publishers
or developers really leaning that in that direction, right, not really that much?
SERI, Yeah, yeah, then I think they can. I think
they can pull it off again. And I think the we the outlier that
folks are not factoring into whatever the switch to or the next console switch plus
that is coming out is I think it is suspect that Nintendo has not done
anything again with a gangbuster like ring fit. Yeah. Well, and I
think I think they know right that you do one of those per console.
That's what they were telling you. Be stopped about Mario plus Rabbits, right,
do you want to just save the next one for the next device and
let it sell throughout the entire hardware generation. That's what we're doing, they
will do. I think they have a ring fit ready to go in year
one of the new device of the new system right exactly exactly is what they're
going to do. But also I feel like with new consoles, specifically grub,
we saw how people not necessarily plugged into games. We're getting PS fives
because it was the new hotness. I think that zeitgeist of I gotta have
it tech is also going to parcolate in a special way for Nintendo. Nit's
ito is good about creating at that urgency with four stops lescence. They whether
or not it never actually usually matters the stuff that they highlight and in the
first year about hey, this is what this thing can do. Here's the
IR camera. Here is you know, an IR sensor on the Game Boy
Color. Here is a nub on the new three of the SXL. All
these things where it's like they and I say they do a good job.
I think most people a gonna hear those things like all those things are fucking
stupid, And you're right, But in the lead up to launching those devices,
they somehow always find a way to make it feel like this, this
could be important, and I don't want to miss out on this because I
feel like I might be missing out on the next thing. And that fomo,
which is what four stops so lescence is one percent about. They're good
at like leaning into that and making people think that stuff's going to matter.
And then at the end of the day, the thing that always matters is
the games, and they're very good at that. And we sort of although
you know what everybody's wants, you switch, bullshit goes into the background very
quickly. We stop even like thinking about that game, let alone any of
those like hardware features that made it possible, and we just start playing games
again. And I think I think Nintendo for the next device very likely to
be very similar to the Switch. They will find some bullshits, like probably
multiple little things to emphasize about how this thing is different and how it's gonna
be this neat little new toy. You know, maybe Rob the Robot will
be built in again. They'll do something like that, and then again we'll
forget about all of it and it will be about the games. Here's my
new Bold prediction. Grub. I've been joking around for months, if not
years now, that the switch to will just be two switches taped together.
I've seen folks take this joke, and I'm offended, Like you motherfuckers,
I thought of this first. You probably thought we probably thought of it at
the same time. Uh. I think Nintendo's gonna be They're gonna lean into
the weird. You know what they're going to introduce into this, Grub.
This is probably bullshit. I know this is bullshit, but this is my
is my dream booking. They're going to introduce a watch, They're gonna introduce
some type of wearable into this. Did Sam Sung just release a ring?
So I mentioned that and I didn't look into it at all. I'm like,
fucking Samsung Galaxy ring sounds really fucking stupid, and I kind of want
it. They didn't think about the vitality sensor. Maybe that maybe they do
a watch with the vitality sensor built. Then mm hmm, it's back.
Where did that go? You know, I've been pokemon sleeping. What's that
gonna do? Grub? You know, they really got the ring fit to
like with a pilates ring, why not track me while I sleep. Yeah,
Nintendo already gets all my waking hours, they might as well get all
my sleeping hours as well. Only seems fair at this point. Yeah,
I stirred game and it's back. Let's go. Yeah. I think the
thing is we kind of know what to expect from the trajectory of PlayStation five
and the Xbox and then the wider like console space, and they're just not
gonna have the sudden surge and growth anytime soon. A new Nintendo device could
have something that looks like a surge relative to what they're doing, but you
know, we're gonna have to wait and see. And it's Nintendo. It's
always a roll of the dice when they have new hardware. It could turn
people off. We'll see. Oh here's the thing, Greb. I love
the PS five. I think Microsoft is doing doing wonderful things lately. I
love Game Pass. But the thing is, you know, the shit's boring
as fuck. It's well known, it's well troden territory at this point.
Yeah, give me the weird shit. I think we all need the weird
shit. This is dam I mean, this is why I get like into
my weird handhelds because I'm like, this thing is kind of stupid in a
lot of ways, and I love stupid for people thinking that I'm insane for
thinking that Nintendo might make a wearable Let's let's turn the clock back, folks.
Wasn't there a certain glove device that Nintendo put out that uh didn't quite
work out? Huh? If you can be back, if the power glove
coming back is what happened to twenty twenty four, I'm all in favor power
glove on? Was the power glove Nintendo? Like, were they actually involved
in that? They did like hype it up in their movies, so I
always I wasn't ever sure. I know Mattel was involved. I see.
The thing is I think about Nintendo and I think about these roof top parties.
I think about how they want to inadvertently have games be very social,
and I feel like street Pass was like a test of that. Yeah,
a long running test that was very popular with the subset of the community.
Fucking imagine like bumping wrists with a Nintendo Watch. Oh that's pretty cool.
Do you get just dug? Yeah? I got to check. Oh,
I like it. It just registers every time you get that DAP in there,
Okay, I like it. All right, we're gonna We're gonna take
a break. That's a lot of sir Kana talk. We'll be back after
this to talk about the rest of the headlines, including rock Steady Founders having
a new studio, Plants Versus Zombis three, and a lot more. Right
after this, we're back. We're back. And before we get into it,
I was Mortal Kombat Mitchthologies Mike mcquanchie started yesterday, and I did have
to check out this game for myself because I'm like, man, this looks
so bizarre and I haven't I don't remember what it's like after playing it all
those years ago, and I at first I was trying the N sixty four
version, and it's so much worse than the PlayStation version. Actually, it's
not just the cut scenes. It like it's stiffer, and obviously like having
this the sea stick or the sea buttons maps to the stick is bad.
So I could have remapped the controls and that probably would have helped a little
bit, But I moved over to the PlayStation version and I got through it.
You know, you know what makes it easier is watching Mike's struggle for
like two hours, and I'm like, oh, now I know what to
do. So I got through that first level on like my second try,
uh, and it was like so I'm like okay, and now I'm gonna
try to like see if I can like just kind of keep up with him
as he does this stuff. So once he beats the second level, I'm
gonna try to beat the second level because I'm just curious, especially because that'll
make it easier because I'll know what to do. Yeah, you know what,
folks at home, you can also treat Blake Club like a book club
or a gaming club. You should play along and share your tales exactly.
Come come and tell us and we can have a conversation while Mike is tearing
his beard hair out while he's touching his face and getting like paint all over
himself. Yeah me again. If you haven't seen this, you've got you
have to see it. You have to see it in your face too,
please, you have everyone has to paint their face as Kwan chi. All
right, rock Steady Founders have a new post Suicide Squad studio, which you
know, Suicide Squad not even out yet, They've already moved on from it.
This is from Michael mcwerdo at Polygon. Rock Steady Studios founders Sefton Hill
and Jamie Walker have established a new studio in London called one hundred Star Games,
which is described as a triple a studio startup that will consist of only
one hundred of only one hundred industry veterans and emerging talents. One hundred Star
Games has not been officially announced, but it is listed on the corporate data
website Endole, with Hill and Walker listed as directors, and according to the
company's website, which appears to have gone live in October, it's hiring for
open positions. One hundred Star also has a profile on the great Place to
Work place Great Places to Work website, which indicates it has around twenty five
employees and describes the studios ethos to create a small team of only one hundred
industry veterans and emerging talents who are committed committed to crafting cutting edge gaming experiences
that inspire and captivate players worldwide. Hey, you can do a lot with
one hundred people on a team in the games industry. How do you feel
about this? Like mandate be Like we're gonna have one hundred people in that
set. To me, it's a little bit strange. But I guess if
you come from a studio that probably just experienced extreme the feature Creep and this
with something like Suicide Squad, where it's like, Okay, we're gonna do
this with that game, and I guess we're gonna try this, We're gonna
try this, And now it feels like this monster of a game that is
unwieldy, at the very least having a strict limitter on what you can do
because you're like, no, we're not going to hire more than one hundred
people. I could see how that is enticing. What do you think?
I can see how that's enticing. But I also feel like it's an odd
call out to make. And I don't want to say it feels like a
cop out, but it feels like, Hey, if the game we make
isn't ready at launch, or it doesn't it isn't well received, you know,
it's because we only had one hundred people. We're working real hard here,
and it feels odd to purposely limit yourself. And I know there are
games that come out there are single devs, lethal company primarily. I believe
one dude but when you're aiming for the Triple A in perhaps a Triple A
game that is a license game in the future, it just feels odd.
But I also see the appeal of like, oh, this is a this
is a killer murderer's row of devs. We all know what we're doing.
But I also hope those people aren't being exploited. Yeah, and Chaser and
Chat mentions this, and this is definitely something I was thinking to, Yeah,
you're gonna have your one hundred person team, and then you're probably gonna
have another three hundred contractors in external studios and people making art for you and
all this stuff that you hire out. And so the people in the number
the name, I guaranteed there will be more than one hundred people and the
credits of whatever game the studio puts out as long as the appropriately credit people,
and yeah, that's of course we're gonna end up there. So does
kind of make this feel a little bit arbitrary and also maybe a little bit
limiting. And it's like, Okay, well, these contractors that you're working
with externally, you're basically just telling them straight up there's no chance that this
work is gonna end up with you working for us. We already have one
hundred people. We're not gonna hire you. It all feels strange, weird
for the people internally as well, right of, like, all right,
we're a hundred right now, Like where's I haven't seen Steve in a while?
Are we at ninety nine right now? She has? She? Have
you chicked in? Sheila on slack? Or like someone someone new get to
get hired, and you're like, does that mean one of us is getting
fired? What the fuck? Right right? You know? And and are
they at a strict one hundred no matter where they are on the ladder of
like say they bring in a sea level person, right of, like,
hey, this person's gonna help out with finance, shouts out Mikayla. And
then are there gonna be people on the middle tier of the ladder hating Michaale
because she's a fine person. Stop hating Michayla exactly. Michaela's great, she
has like three great kids. Uh. This is also I think maybe not
too surprising that they these fellows here Sefton Jamie like left during suicide Squad.
They left sometime last year and they're like suicide Squad's in great shape, We're
fine. I'm like, uh huh, sure. They definitely seemed like they
were leaving to get out of having to see that game through. Maybe they
didn't, maybe they were happy with it and they just wanted to try something
new. But their new thing is a new Triple A studio. It's probably
gonna make games pretty similar to what they made before. And of course they
could get that because they that's still where the market's at, even with capital
being more expensive. If you are a senior developer who has shipped games,
especially like best selling game of the year games, you're gonna be able to
start your studio up and immediately become a Triple A studio. That meaning that
you could hire one hundred or more people in your first year before ever shipping
a game, and that's becoming more and more common, and that a big
part of that is because there is so much industry acquisitions in the industry.
It makes sense to invest in this stuff because you know that you could maybe
one day get a big exit when Microsoft or ten cents or a Google it
comes back in the industry. Suddenly it's like, well, we need to
acquire people against now we're back in games. With that acquisition stuff out there
on the horizon. These companies can feel more comfortable being like, no,
we are going to go for it right away, and we're going to matter,
and we're not going to start small. So that side of it's still
interesting. I'm curious to see, like, you know, how how this
strategy of limiting to one hundred uh shows up on the screen in the game
itself. If they want to scale back the scope of their games as well,
probably one for that as well. If they want to make like,
uh, like a smaller game like Seafood, I feel like from from those
studio heads, it could work out really well. Yeah, I think they
would. They probably find a way to like, you know, make it
make the game feel big. Budgets one hundred people still a lot. That's
a lot. That is a you know, maybe at these days it's on
the lower end of a Triple A studio, but that's still like a big
Triple A studio, or at least your games have to fill Triple A to
justify having that many salaries, because I mean very quickly that stuff adds up.
I mean, it's London. If they're maybe there're maybe they have a
lot of remote places and remote workers or something. But if you if a
significant number of those people are in London, that's some of the most expensive
labor in the world. Uh So we're probably talking at least one hundred thousand
dollars per year average employee salary at least I think, And then you're talking
one hundred people per year five six, seven years for a game. That
stuff adds up really fast, and then the game has to be big enough
to justify that. So we'll see. I hope they're able to ride this
line because I wouldn't mind them being able to be like, hey, let's
scope back, let's scale back, let's focus on what we know we can
do the best. That probably is where like a new studio like this should
be focusing. I think that's what got us something like the finals, right.
Former Battlefield developers are like, hey, we're not going to just immediately
make a shooter with destruction, and then they started making something and then they're
like, you know what, we started experimenting with a shooter with destruction in
it. It's like, okay, maybe you should put that out first,
Like, yeah, that's what we're going to do. And we get the
finals and it's a big the massive success. It's like the second most played
game on Steam right now behind Lethal Company, you know, not hunting the
perennial hits. So we'll see if this new studio one hundred Star Games is
able to put something out here and kind of be able to judge it at
that point, at the very least, glad that these people are able to
move around and maybe probably get a significant amount of investment and maybe a pay
race and all the stuff after leaving rock Steady Studios after so long. Give
me a dark Man game? Oh yeah, you were speaking my language right
now. I love dark Man. I think was there a dark Man game
on like Super Nintendo or something like that. I'm gona look it up real
quick. Dark Man. That's a video game? Dark Man confused Dick Tracy
for some Definitely on Game Boy. Dick Tracy is the dark Man for sure.
It's on ne S as well. There we go. Okay, I'll
make you play that on what's our what's our license to thrill? Wait?
Wait, grub. If dark Man is terrible, Dark Dan, Dark Dan,
I hope it's long enough. And he guess to play the game with
bandages all around his face? Oh shit, Yes, Okay, okay,
you're onto something. All right, let's go. He's listening, right,
He can't he can't hear he can't lets he's got the broken finger. How
can he hear anything? Plants Versus Zombies three Welcome to Zombibia is coming this
year. This is from Steve Watson GameSpot. The next Plants Versus Zombies game
is slowly approaching, but getting ever closer, just like a zombie. EA
and PopCap have announced that Plants Versus Zombies three Welcome to Zombibia has soft launched
in the UK, Netherlands, Australia and the Philippines. This latest phase of
testing will set the stage for a full worldwide launch sometime later this year.
While Plants Versus Zombies has been known better excuse me, there's been no better
for its Garden Warfare series of shooters recently. I suppose that's true, Plants
Versus Zombies three goes back to the series's roots. Get it as a tower
defense game. Boom, You'll protect a neighbourville from encroaching zombies, getting up
to the usual sorts of garden based traps and defenses. We're all returning favorite
plants alongside new ones PVC three also adds new elements like streamlined combat, a
customizable neighbourville in an episodic narrative with new characters, and Lord to expand the
world. I like, I liked a lot of PopCap games. I was
definitely a pegol person. I really also do like I liked Plants Versus Zombies.
I think I played some Plants vers Zombies too, and enjoyed it.
This this franchise, the series very popular worldwide, one of the most popular
gaming ips in China. It turns out Plans Zombies huge in China, massive
the merchandise, and this was like definitely true like five years ago. But
I have no reason to think it's probably it's waned all that much, other
than because there haven't been many new games. But it was massive in China,
So I'm almost a little surprised it's taken this long to get back to
it. But I think maybe it just took a while for a North American
based company like EA to be like, let's shift resources to appeal to China.
But we'll see. Were you ever a Plants Versus Zombies guy or a
pop cap at all? I was going to say a questionable sentence about Pegel.
We all we all love to be peggled. All right, thank you,
welcome, I'm here for you. I was going to take out the
ellie and just go. You know. Yeah, I grab much like everyone
else, very very into peggal one two Plants Versus Zombies. I was a
Plants Versus Zombies two defender for a hot second. I liked that they had
a bock choy that punched. But yeah, Plants Versus Zombies one occupied so
so much of my time when that originally came out. God, I I
know going back to it, it wouldn't quite be the same, but I'm
interested to see what like a Plants Versus Zombies three would look like. And
hey, you know, gaming trends are cyclical. Maybe we're going to go
back to tower defense soon. Yeah, I mean, what did have tower
defense recently? Oh it was Steam World Build had a tower defense stuff,
and it's like the caves and things like that. It's like, to me,
it's like that's probably where tower defense pops up these days, is like
a smaller gameplay element and a larger game having this section where it's like no,
yeah, yeah, you're gonna set up some towers and ship but this
is not a tower defense game. Come on, we're not one of those
plants versus Zombies three obviously going to be a plant a tower defense game essentially.
Did you ever end up playing any of the Garden Warfare games. I
have friends that love those games, and I never spent much time in them.
Yeah. I remember liking the first one enough. I thought it was
pretty decent in terms of like a class space shooter. H The second one
I don't remember as well, but the first Garden Warfare I have, I
have fond memories of it was it was definitely one of those games where you
jump into a game with randos and you'll get good games where people are playing
their class and other games where like what the hell are you doing? Mm
hmmm, Yeah, it's uh. It was like, Okay, I like
this, I like the look of it. I think this is a good
idea, and I'm like, ah, if I'm gonna play one of these
shooters that's kind of not one of the main shooters, I'll probably just go
to Star Wars Battlefront two or whatever, maybe go back to Titan Fall two
something along those lines. All right, Moving on until Dawn is being turned
into a movie, This comes from Eric hittlback Thuru at Game Reactors. Yeah,
that derision right there is the worth it because like, isn't it already
a movie? Basically, the successive Sonic The Hedgehog, Castlevania, Cyberpunk,
Edge Runners, Uncharted, The Last of Us, and the Super Mario Brothers
movie have made it extremely popular to at least announced movies and TV shows based
on video games. Yet again, most of these are adaptations of games and
franchises that require quite a few changes to make sense in a non interactive format.
But here's an exception. The Hollywood Reporter has the honor of confirming that
the Supermassive games Until Dawn is being turned into a movie by director David F.
Samdberg who did Shazam, Lights Out and Annabel creation. Gary Doberman,
who I believe wrote it, and the nun is doing a pass on the
script. And then Blair Butler, who did the invitation in Hellstorm, originally
wrote a script. I guess Gary Domerman is going to work on that or
get a pass on that. Screen Gems and PlayStation productions. I believe our
both Sony corporation entities are gonna be producing the film. You know what,
duh, why not make this a horror franchise has the potential to be very
cheap to produce and has a huge return on investment if it hits, and
then you get a franchise, and then this is like the easiest one to
imagine that synergy of here's a movie, here's a game, here's a movie.
Here's a game every single Halloween for the like the next ten years.
So yeah, it makes a lot of sense. What do you think?
Yeah, yeah, it's just one of those I saw this headline yesterday and
I thought like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, all right,
and you look up the names it's had to this. David F. Sandberg,
you know those Annabel movies, They're okay, very successful, very successful.
Same thing with Gary Doberman, Dubermanuberman with the Annabel franchise. I'm not
super familiar with Blair Butler, but you look at these people. These are
established names, uh in the horror genre. Do you retain the same actor
as grub Right? Right? So Hayden Pannetarry was in the original until Dawn
and raymy Melick Malick. Yeah, I mean probably the real answer is almost
certainly no, right, and yes, like Raymy Mallick more expensive now Hayden
Panetarry probably probably not more expensive. Probably you probably get her for about the
same you could have got it for the game back then. Maybe a little
bit more a movie, but like going the going rate for movies is not
gonna be some astronomical figure. I don't know the rest of the cast,
but yeah, I think there's a chance that's so return and some are different.
Yeah, but also like what about the kind of choose your own adventure
nature of the game. I I think they get cheeky about it, and
they have like one little section that is like that feels like choose your own
adventuring and it's like someone imagining that they did something and like oh it ends
terribly like oh well what if we did that differently? Oh what if we
did this instead? They probably have like a gesture towards that in the movie.
But other than that, you just play it as a standard horror film.
Why not, like that's what that that that those fans of that genre
want. They just want more of that stuff. They want like new novel
feeling horror films every year, So deliver one of those. Yeah, well
they should just pull a clue grub. Oh, that's a that's not a
bad idea, that's actually fantastic. We haven't had a lot of that,
right, m m yeah. I think like the most recent thing actually is
probably the mild very in different versions of across the Spider Verse, where there's
like small minute things that happened from screening to screening. Right at least,
that's what was I believe. I remember seeing being reported. I didn't realize
this was Blair Butler from Attack, Attack of the show. Yeah, Blair
Butler's. Yeah, he's a j oh she right, right, she that's
right, Blair Butler's and then she's married to someone else from Attack of the
Show. I can't remember. I believe Blair Butler. That's right. She's
been working on a bunch of films. Did she help, right? Yeah,
that's yeah, that's cool. Wow. I uh, let's see,
I did see someone mentioned uh uh mount nevermind, I'm moving on from that.
Okay, let's do this next story. Microsoft can be a good publisher
acrossed all platforms, including Sony and Nintendo. The CEO says. This is
from Darren Bontus at GameSpot. Microsoft is expanding its game development plans as in
as it's explained in a new interview where see Satia Nadella explained that the company
aims to become a quote good publisher across all platforms. These comments come in
the wake of Microsoft finally closing the deal on Activision Blizzard, a process that
took more than a year to complete and face numerous legal challenges along the way.
We've been at gaming. We love gaming. In fact, Flight Simulator
was created even before Windows, but we were number three, number four,
and with Activision, I think we have a chance of being a good publisher.
Quite frankly on Sony and Nintendo and PCs and Xbox and Nidela said to
Bloomberg, we are very excited about that acquisition closing and very glad we've got
it through. This is like an answer like that. It's a pretty standard
interview where they'd say, hey, what about gaming, how do you guys
view that now? And Satia Nadella being the CEO and not being Phil Spencer's
like, hey, here's how I view it. But this is like puts
them in that situation where it's like, yeah, they have Xbox, they're
going to continue supporting that that platform. Game passes their main focus and at
the same time, they are now suddenly one of the biggest third party publishers
in the world with Activision, and they kind of have to be thinking about
both those things. Do you think like the gravity of one or the other
wins over time. Do you think like Activision's success maybe under Xbox kind of
draws Xbox more into the third party realm or vice versa. I guess I
never thought about how we've talked about Blizzard, Activision, and Microsoft for so
long now that I haven't actually entertained the idea of what that looks like in
the future for Microsoft and Xbox as like a third party publisher. Yeah,
I think they'd be fine. I feel like they've broken en up relationships at
this point where it's odd for me to think about Persona kind of having like
a weird and I don't mean this in a bad way, but like an
association with Microsoft now because of it heading to game Pass and I'm like,
oh shit, Like that's pretty tight to be able to try all of well
not all of the personas, but most of the modern personas through game Pass.
Oh what if I played that on ex cloud grub Yeah VR, Yeah,
it works really well. Huh, get those social links going and get
those social links up in your brain. Oh no, right, Yeah,
I could see this Microsoft pivoting to become like a bigger third party publisher.
And I mean it kind of feels that way right now with their relationship with
games launching day one day and date on game Pass, like with Capcom and
everything. And yeah, I don't know. I just I don't think about
Halo or Gears of War now when I think about Xbox, and that feels
weird. Yeah, it's the kind of thing where I think it's like it's
gonna be like this ecosystem and like a legit ecosystem where it's like one thing
feeds into the other thing and then that feeds into the next thing. And
it's not necessarily about like, Okay, we need to move Xbox in this
direction towards what Activision is doing, or we need to move Activision towards Xbox
and what it's doing. It's like, no, like Activision. Success is
going to enable more stuff to go into game Pass, and game Pass to
success is going to enable Microsoft to make more games and variety variety of games,
like huge games and some smaller stuff that is going to make a lot
of sense to put on the switch and the PlayStation, and whether that stuff
is High Fi Rush, Pentiment or anything else, or big live service games
like Sea of Thieves, and it's like that, okay, and that stuff
will eventually in a couple of years end up on these other publishing or other
hardware platforms, and then in the meantime that that will just lead back into
the success of Activision and Call of Duty being everywhere, and if you want
to get a good deal on it, we'll call Duty is going to be
in game Pass and all this stuff. So it feels like they have this
self perpetuating machine that can make them a lot of money as long as they
can continue to like land some punches in many of these games being good,
you know, getting the quality of Call of Duty backup's got to be a
private already of course. Uh. And then priority is going to be making
sure a lot of these first party Microsoft games actually feel as important as they've
made them out to be. And if they could start doing that stuff,
it's like, Okay, they have all the other pieces there to make a
lot of money and to be a massive player in the game space going forward.
Whatever that ends up looking like exactly is not going to matter so much
as oh, the bottom line is there, and they feel they feel very
happy about the amount of money that they're making in gaming. Do you think
these console warriors that are still defending tribalism over console platforms, do you think
they are infuriated at this prospect and the future of Xbox and Microsoft that they're
not willing to see. Yes, they're infuriated. I think part of it,
Yeah, definitely, part of it is they they want the communication to
be there about like, hey, what's going on here? Is hi Fi
Rush feels like a a almost a mascot for Xbox at which that's how we
treated it. So why is this feel so it feels so weird because of
that that it might end up on the switch and we kind of want you
just explain what you're doing here, and the Microsoft's doesn't really do that.
They talk a lot to their fans and then they get really quiet about this
stuff when fans are like, hey, I'm feeling anxious about this, what's
going on? And at the end of the day, it's like they have
actually explained it a bunch of times. They aren't that concerned about this console
race that you hold so near and dear, and they've basically moved on from
it, and they're asking you to just move along with them, and you
keep refusing to do that. They're not going to keep answering the same question
over and over again and there, and they're especially not going to offer it
up just to make you feel better when the answer is lying out there right
in front of you and you're ignoring it. So yeah, it's definitely something
that I think that these fans are frustrated by, but it's at this point
it's their own fault. They need to kind of wake up and see what's
happening. They're too Delulu grub. They're a little Delulu, just a tiny
bit. Okay, last couple of things here, Larry and Boss says the
studios games won't come to subscription services. This is from Tom iven at VGC.
I'll read some of these quotes real quick. Whatever the future of games
looks like, content will always be king Shfinn, Yes, Finn Vinki said,
but it's going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription
becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market
and what doesn't direct from developer to players is the way. And I think
this is right. I think this is definitely right. An anytime we can
have more direct from the creator to the person buying the thing, the better
human nature does and does end up with us getting stuff like Amazon where it's
like a free two day shipping. I'm just gonna go get whatever's on Amazon.
I'm not gonna shop around. I'm not gonna go find some random website
and hope for the best. People do prize convenience over a lot of these
factors. But gaming has a lot of momentum built in built in where people
are like very happy to go to like accepted like games distribution platforms, but
take chances on games they aren't fully aware of that, especially on my stuff
like Steam and things like that. And I think that that momentum will carry
forward. And I and my assumption here is the actual way that all this
looks like the future of gaming. What it looks like is fins starts talking
about. Here is exactly what it looks like now. Subscription subscriptions are an
option. There are something you can do and all the games you can get
in the subscription service. You can continue to buy separately if you want to,
and most of them you can also get physically, you know, some
are digital only. That's been the way been the case for a very long
time now, since the middle of you know, the two thousands, where
where we started getting Xbox Live, Arcade games and things like that. But
having these options available is a good thing as long as they don't begin like
shutting things off, and it does become that situation where it's like, okay,
we you can't succeed unless you're on game Pass, and now this the
keepers of that platform are picking winners and losers. That would be a huge
detriment to gaming overall. It's just it doesn't seem to me like we're at
any risk of that happening right now. Jan I don't know what do you
think now? I can't see that happening either, especially when when folks are
clamoring and clambering to get Balderskate three onto consoles. I don't see that immediate
future. And I applaud Larry and for sticking to their guns, But I
also don't see like a platform holder like Microsoft chewing them away because they disagree
to be on game Pass. Yeah, right, And it's like I think
for a lot of developers, and Vinky from Larryan acknowledges this, a lot
of developers feel much more comfortable, like financially stable when they make their game
pass deal. And a lot of developers have said that, and they're developers
who are making games that are much smaller than fucking Balder's Gate three. And
it's like he completely recognizes that. And he's not like saying we have to
dismantle game Pass. He's explaining why he doesn't think Larian's games are going to
show up on subscription services anytime soon, if ever. And I'm like,
okay, yeah, I want there to be a world where a lot of
publishers are saying, here are the reasons why we want you to buy our
games every game on subscription services. Sounds good up to a point, but
then we get back to that conversation we've been having sort over the last week
or so, about that race to the bottom and about eroding the value of
saying a game is important enough to me to actually spend sixty to seventy dollars
on it, and once you sort of lose that luster, that magic of
believing a game is worth sixty or seventy dollars. It can the whole house
of cards can come tumbling down, and suddenly we are in a situation where
it's like, ugh, this kind does look like the rough world of movies
and musics where we don't we aren't taking any chances anymore. Agreed, All
right, Ace Combat seven is coming to the Switch. That's wild. It's
launching in July. The next Sonic game is a fall Guy's inspired spit off,
that's the rumor. And then apit Do's PC and Steam Deck controllers now
have the Hall Effects censor. The SWITCH version I leave already has that,
but now the PC version is getting that as well, and they just relaunched
that. It's fifty dollars. I love the eight bit oh ultimate. It
is at the controller I use the most. That's the one I have sitting
right over here. Dpad is like pretty good. No dpad is great these
days, most of them are like okay to good. This one's good.
But at the very least it's a great controller otherwise, and it's very comfortable
and I like using it. And now Hall effect senswers guarantee almost guarantee you
won't get stick drift ever. Pretty cool? Okay, Jan, that does
it for the news. I'm going to get the pull up here in a
second. In the meantime, why don't we tell people we have going on
on giant bomb dot com. What we got going on immediately well near immediately
after this is you and Dan Reichert are going to embark on a grand adventure
of whatever the hell is Taiale of the Sun. We're gonna find out for
ourselves. I still don't know. I'm looking at a screenshot now because I
got to make that page later today. We are talking looking over the Xbox
Developer Direct at noontime Pacific three Eastern. After that, well, we will
immediately roll into voicemail dumb truck tomorrow for you, PF. I believe it's
going to be a pow world world grub. That's right, our world world.
The plan is for you, me, Nicki and Sean to The game
is supposedly multiplayer, so we will try and multiplayer this up and BombCast Revengeance
as well tomorrow. Another episode of game this morning tomorrow as well. That's
right. The week. Yeah, we were packing a bunch of stuff in
here right now, and that Tale of the sunstream. Tale of the Grab
is going to start basically right after this off to get set up, But
just stick around with us if you're watching it live, and if you're watching
later, just check out giant bomb dot com or our YouTube channel for all
this content. Let's see here the pole question from yesterday? Are we free
of Billy Mitchell? Now? This came up because I settled the twin Galaxies
basically and got his scores half reinstated to the historical database. It's not on
the actual list right now for Donkey Kong, but he seems satisfied with this,
and he's like, I'm gonna move on to my other pressing matters or
however you put it. And I was hoping we'd be free. But only
eighty six or eighty six percent people believe we are not free of Billy Mitchell.
Fourteen percent believe we actually will be free. I think I had to
go with no, we are still not going to be free of Billy Mitchell.
How do you feel, Jan? We will never be free of Billy
Mitchell. He is gaming's villain. Yep, yeah, you're right. He
is the number one heel and has been for decades now, all right,
new poll question, have you ever played plants versus Zombies? Yes or no?
We'll discuss that on game mes mornings here on Giant Bomb tomorrow morning.
Speaking of that, one more time, stick around, Tail the Sun,
Tail the Grub. We'll be getting that going here very soon. All right,
Jan thank you for hanging out with me today and talking about video games.
Man, I really appreciate it. It is my favorite way to start
a Thursday morning. And then last thing here apparently oh no, I clicked
on the chun lee doing a squat linth Never mind. This other link here
says that Remedy and a rock Star settled that the dispute over the trademark last
year, and the thing that people found where there was a dispute is outdated
and they've worked it out. So there you go. No news to be
seen there. All right, everybody, until next time, have a good
one, take care of yourself. You're the best audience gaming. Have a
good one. Bye bye,