Apex Update | Games ReCAP Episode 018

Oh what's up everybody welcome to another episode of gains recap good morning everybody welcome back is our daily show where we talk about some of the biggest news in the game industry from the previous day and offer our opinion about what's going on what we think well who are us right does that make sense I'm Brandon Pham this is our Charles and welcome longtime game developer I think we need to start this so this is a game news from a game developers perspective we got to start with that I think people are finding us these two guys just got randomly now get on Twitch and started talking [ __ ] do that this is when they turn it off so at least they got that that going so again if you are watching this and you want to participate with us in the future on our twitch channel live twitch.tv forward slash blue underscore champs if you want

to catch any in any of this live chat live chat we literally pull questions and we talk to you guys directly and we are always open to other opinions and we always leave it on table to discuss if you are watching this not live you're obviously watching us on our youtube channel youtube.com/hpsupport us directly you can go to our patreon calm as well forward slash blue champs and to make games recap an audio podcast form so you can listen to us on a commute and other perks such as that so that pretty much covers from intro and now we're gonna talk about today's topic and let's go ahead and shoot this up a bit Bam Bam Bam okay so if there's thing obviously we don't have a guest for this one no guest for this one so you know one of

the things that we wanted to talk about today is the ever-changing ecosystem for these games as a service games like battle royale games obviously we're we're using apex as the launch but we also rope in fortnight into this topic as well which is you know they have this big map and then as they make updates now certain parts of the map will shut down or be destroyed and then they turn that into new areas where there's you know new design new levels or new little ways that you can interact with that level brand new like areas and so you always have this like this persistent world which is constantly in flux and so what that adds to the game or what that takes away from the game so that's what we're gonna kind of break down as our first op so III don't play apex enough okay right I'm glad you said enough yeah he plays it I played it I played it because it is it was the oddest shooter at some point and out of all the Battle Royale games it was the most attractive in terms of graphics and respecting the developers respawn and so I tried a few times but

it's just bad around isn't my thing I understand there's a lot of lowell times to kind of contrast with the exciting times with just two minutes of it it's just too much time right of me camping around i value the time that I finished my Netflix movies and stuff after airing it but other than that that's my experience that's how I go about it with that area so as I understand it's a major it's a big map that people shut certain sections off it's not like a completely new map that you jump in like fortnight especially I mean if you I would say fortnight probably in my opinion is one of the best at doing this and where you'll look at this hodgepodge yeah completely seriously didn't areas like the ice part the forest part ice a scary part the Halloween part the town part the city part right and then one day they'll be like you know what let's get rid of the town part and add the desert part I see right it's dunes you can take so it's always a big map it takes us a mass so it's not like a like a pub GI me Pub G is the one that has

different Maps pub well pub G is similar as well but they all have different areas that fin matically I think still relate okay right like the art style doesn't significantly change whereas for nuts our style doesn't significantly change but I mean like to say that there's a desert yeah and then to have I see area and right next to ya extreme just juxtaposition between concepts of areas so they have that going for them but they've also opened up a narrative in their world that allows people to think that oh that's just for tonight yeah any other game you would call BS yeah yeah yeah yeah so why I wanted to get into that is because it both helps and I think harms yeah as far as skill cap goes when you change something like that you almost introduced like a little bit of a reset as people are trying to figure out where the great sniping areas are where the vantage points are you know what kind of combos they can like hop through this window but then run up these stairs because they know that you're gonna try to hop out the window now they have the upper vantage point to shoot you while you're in the field yeah yeah you know like what are those little combos that people can set up and so that's what I love about investing time

into a battle royale or any type of game where half the fun is like knowing where you are and what to do when you're there like now imagine having to understand and learn that for this whole entire map I as a pro level anything like once I like know my combos or know my little tricks and strategies I can now play with flow like I'm in the zone I have a high level of efficiency because I'm just oh I meant tilted towers I'm gonna do this this this miss yeah and the same with apex right so then it's like alright well now we're gonna do a mini reset whenever you're in this area it's gonna now be like the desert town let's just you know we're gonna keep going with that as the example yeah so now it's like alright well I need to go and explore there it draws more people to that area to see what's going on but also you don't have those tricks and traps set up like you did before you don't have that muscle memory up to like how about the window run up the stairs look back out the window yeah you have to find and discover these new things because the geometry has changed your teamwork synergy especially in Apex will change because there'll be new opportunities for using the terrain and new or interesting ways so that brings

down the skill cap a little bit you know as people are like learning and trying to figure out plus also visiting that area means much more conflict so both games actually see that whenever the new areas are out people want to go see the new areas there's like the most fighting I find whenever I'm playing in those new areas is people like trying to discover and see what's what yeah I think it is a very smart way I'm a persistent world that you kind of swap in and out I think has more benefits than cons I do understand like you're trying to figure out in the map or getting used to a map that you've learned might be an issue right and so I see that yeah I mean it's a it's a system that works for other games why not adopt the same system and apart from that though I think I think because respawn is such a respectable company they've address the danger of continuously updating seasonally like

what fortnight has been doing you know epic and fortnight it hasn't really answered any of those expose articles and no one's really kind of calling them out on that that much right every every single company in the last year and a half that had had articles about crunch culture and all that had to have like a public response or statement well you just simply ignored it they were completely fine with a little bit of like internal knowledge about what happens over there and like what it actually takes and I say like a little bit because I got a peek I got a little peek when working on fortnight for a couple months to see like the churn and like how hard these people are working and like the people who I'm supposed to be contacting directly to get my work done yeah like the cadence at which we're actually able to sit down and communicate with each other it gave me a glimpse at like oh damn these dudes are [ __ ] work their work and it never unpleasant like knowing I worked with there was unpleasant or anything like

that but I think there was work being done on that game so what I propose is like what about like an Activision cycle where I'm sure fortnight makes all the monies yeah right instead of burning out a team of 200 plus yeah right to be the sole content developers could you do a 18 B team of like hey alright look we're gonna split the workload amongst two teams will literally just double the workforce yeah and so now everyone has an eight to nine to maybe 10 hour day versus like 6 7 13 14 15 ow yes because we're trying to get just this team to do yeah let's double the workforce yeah you guys will work on the desert thing you guys will work on the pirate thing and then we'll just you get season 15 they get season 16 you get season 17 they get season 18 it seemed to work for Activision on Call of Duty perhaps epic is doing that but maybe that might be a good way to introduce quality of life yeah and even though their production costs may seemingly double their quality of life I would say would also double as

your your half you're taking away half the amount of workload that these people are responsible for past what is considered reasonable so maybe maybe that might help I don't know yeah I mean we know what it takes I know we're kind of rolling into epic but it goes back to apex right these guys who who are moving while triple-a developers are moving as game as a service it's a trend it's it's actually a solution to the problems that we've been having with the triple-a industry just waiting for a $60 game making or breaking type of thing does not work right so everyone's kind of shifting towards the small this is the future epic is kind of forging the way so it's important for them to kind of be like a role model for how the success actually should operate right and so developers like epic obviously is hiring that very man we know I know they are they're hiring men they're constantly looking for outsourcing studio they're trying to fix the prom because they

themselves know that this breaking the artist is back isn't gonna work there's a few things that are working against them they're in North Carolina and not to hate on people who lives there and love it there but everybody else have some trepidation moving there that's I mean it's a silo town as far as development talent is concerned yeah if you go there you're literally worth working for editing and if you lose your job you will leave lost your house you've lost your community and lost because you're going somewhere else yes there's no game there's not a huge amount of game dev community or there although epic is very stable a big big and stable but it is one of those like it's a life force type of jobs yeah yeah unless you're you're cool with changing jobs I think isn't redstone out there as well doesn't matter epic is the only one it's like Disneyland in Anaheim right that's the reason why the town is still alright yeah so it's so that's working against them it's a lot to ask to go to North

Carolina with your family so then it's a very different setting right he talked about living the East Coast yeah it's very different in the way I moved here for a reason because I had irrational or that's it yeah gave me a studio or to New York but I mean for the most part out here yeah if I'm working in Irvine I have three to four choices yeah if I'm working in Los Angeles I have three to four choices if I working in north California I have three to four children yes for just the type of games that I like to develop yet let alone indie level or different genres of games right so the developers over there obviously I have no choice but to keep doing as they're told and they're great developers obviously ending up at epic so to a lot of them it feels like this is the way it is you know even if there's major success it's not successful dude we got to keep the success going epics just do a satellite California studio they make sure they have the resources there's a lot of

talent out here that I'm sure they would love to get their hands on yeah and make it easier for that talent to be interested in working for epic right I've heard that they had like an engineering support in the Marin area but not like a full-on like a Studios do not like a studio yeah I mean they're trying to build like a presence in LA but that's more on the enterprise side go but yeah there's no like serious consideration on they should I think that would be a create solution instead of trying to kind of piggybacking off of what you're saying before yeah and like look at like some of our friends who actually work there now both of them were LA based oh yeah definitely look I'm pretty sure their problem over there would be like more too many people are asking to go to California yeah yeah the whole all the resumes come from Carolina yeah pretty much I mean that's the realities of it I think I'm Sonya is in North Carolina them Soviet insomniac games they're in California I know but they had like any

other president and yeah I think they built a studio for the Ratchet and Clank remember that little story they had like a few artists over there I'm gonna okay well I'm gonna look transitioning back to both I'll say respawn and epic because what we wanted to talk about is just that turn that constant motion of trying to make sure that there's something new something old something new simultaneously I'm a purist I love having a solid and a finite-state experience because that allows me to finally achieve Super Saiyan 3 which is like I know this map in and out I know my skills and my preferred ways to combat in and out and so the two combined being at their highest level means that I'm at my highest level of potential and I'm fighting against other people at their highest level potential so that one I still kill them you know what I mean I I know for sure like there can only be one and I'm the Highlander right I mean but that's just my selfish reason for why like you know finite state experiences this is 2019 and gamers are showing otherwise or at least prophets are

showing otherwise just making one map like we see in a Call of Duty where it's like hey we've made the map go play it we've made three other maps go play them but that's it we're working on new maps we're I think as a business model we're showing that people are shying away from that kind of support because they like having just like this huge gargantuan map that is getting tiny pieces of content updates so 80% of the map is the same every season maybe 90% I don't know what it actually breaks down yeah surface area awareness but there is some piece somewhere that is changing so it doesn't feel like you're a complete loss yeah I think it's a very smart way for environment to get the most usage of what you build that's why I think as environment artists we tend to love multiplier games for that reason where whatever we make we actually the player gets to see it more than once single-player yes we do appreciate having more of an intimate experience having more control in every single

corner to make it count for that one second but that is a passing through type of experience that we do hate where I spent how many months six months on this little corner and you just pad the player pass in three seconds yeah ghost town wasteful and you imagine like that times a hundred thousand in a single-player experience that's a lot of environments and compound that with it having to be a success to justify all that you know it's never gonna be as profitable as a multiplayer game and you know and like you kind of starting to touch on this the ghost town II yeah which is like all right cool eighty percent of the map is the same so if you look at a heat map of where player drop points are combat points of where a player I guess visits are happening the most in the highest frequencies yeah probably the newer areas or close to the newer areas and a lot of that old stuff is it's the old stuff I'm not going over there yeah I mean yeah so yeah it's does that mean we make smaller maps so that everything gets more visit I don't know

I'm not in control of that I think that's more of a design thing and generally where do you want the players being you can bring more attention to that well my thing but then you can still spend each odd rent per season to make that area count so it's not wasteful I'm not criminal on it right now it's still in the game people will see it you know I guess where I am as like you were kind of touching on this earlier which is like I have my twenty minutes to play this game after I finished my Netflix whatever before I'm going to bed I'm eighteen of those minutes are invested in getting to the two minutes of action and then it's done so in my opinion I've had two minutes of fun yeah eighteen minutes to get to that area I would love to just have 20 minutes of like high action gameplay through like a fighting game or through like any other type of experience where I feel like I'm in constant I think that's how most people play bat around against they play a fighting game during it or any other type of game that have a high action because in my experience man every time I play these games I can camp and yes

you can say that I'm not gonna be as powerful as last-man-standing but to say that I'm not third or second easily by just hiding in the bushes and just be able to snoop around that shrinking wall right like people say it's um again a game mechanic but it's also a cover-up yeah it's forcing you to not do that yeah it's trying to force you guys into conflict yes and that works for what it is I just I'm just not a fan I just haven't played a battle royale game that I loved so hopefully with Glenn doing his new studio he will pump some more ideas and interest and intrigue into it like I can imagine a scavenger type of feeling and story out of all of it I'm the most interested in pub jeez a steak I know it looks ugly right I'm not saying how it looks I'm saying that where it's taking place more modern it's the least boots the requires

lower amount of stretch of imagining it to the ground yeah exactly so I'm looking for a seat that's still like an empty spot if we're just kind of looking in the Battle Royale right but apex is doing a great job apex I would say would be the second closest season to successful yeah from what I've seen positively reviewed and I'm assuming like a lot of people are enjoying it yes not just obviously the reviewers who are like oh I'm gonna make an article about this but like the actual players are like no I'm excited about season 2 new here introduced and yeah like shout out to the management and respawn for like really doubling down on saying like look this is a symbiotic relationship we're in this together we want to make great product but we want our developers to want to stay here and make great product right so we're not going to over overly crunch we're gonna try to avoid that all together if if we need to push the patch we're gonna push the patch yeah our cadence isn't the dollar our cadence is sustainability right that I mean I like that 100% behind that type of a company and business model so shout

out to everybody there hope you guys are doing well enjoying your fourth of July had nearly off and didn't have to cheer because you're like we don't have to work today yeah yeah there's other studios unfortunately that yeah holidays just mean this day other people are enjoying themselves but we have a deadline that we have to achieve right so I mean that's just real [ __ ] in the game industry man yeah and I think respawn got a lot of flack when it came out of the gates because a lot of their interest was bought right all their marketing money went into streamers playing the game day one which isn't so so but I played it I mean it is a solid game like you there isn't any if even if they bought it and people tried it they would exit it immediately yes so and I think gamers need to understand that its respawn didn't buy opinions they bought attention yeah they didn't they didn't pay people to say this game is awesome yeah go play it oh my god all my followers if you're in my squad you know bosz double-click the

like and then go plate like that's not what happened yeah they paid people for their platform to just focus on the game yeah and then they let the game speak for itself that's paying for attention that's not paying for likes that's not paying for support right because if people trashed it they trashed it right and that was the risk yeah that's the difference that people have to understand is like everybody thinks oh they paid streamers to like it like no they payed streamers to give it a shot great different story it's a different story and I think they handled it really well obviously they could have just really looked at the dev team like what how do we keep this going let's work day and night basically following the lead of epic right this is how they made it so successful so fast and they decided not to and which is great because they still have a player base that wasn't there or non-existent before yeah that's still strong that loves the game for what it is willing to stick it out for season 2 three months doesn't sound like a lot I mean it's a regular DLC type of drop for

a smaller studio like respawn respawn is probably 200 to 300 I mean that's small compared to thousand developers on these type of games usually respecting their talent that they've been with for years and years back to all the way to Medal of Honor days they had an internal discussion and said hey man we see how people get burnt out we have a good player base let's just keep building off of that every three months be healthy come up with good ideas we'll still be around and yeah I mean it's the non Activision type of mentality I think for tonight right now is taking the Activision mentality is like just keep pumping out every month interest and they burned it right hundreds of millions of dollars every month I mean it's hard to kind of say they failed at maintaining that I mean they've earned a billion dollars in two years you know it's interesting too me is that I'm seeing the shift away from traditional marketing and traditional interest in like print media

on games right now you know the new journalists are the streamers who were playing the games early day one yeah like this respawn deal with streamers is probably drumming up way better support and more unique visits than a polygon article like yeah how did we enjoy this game yeah I'm sure ninjas daily streams of him playing whatever game totals up more than the the visits for people reading the like IGN's review of name that ninja was playing nobody reads anymore guess it's it's changing its changing along you're getting the opinion of somebody that you've grown to know and love and trust yeah like right as they have it right as this feel it's unfiltered it's not edited it's not like oh let me take this inside let me loosen up now let me send it to my editor who's telling me that like this is okay I can print this right I mean it's still heavily influenced by opinions sure I I don't know I don't know what the measure is right now because as soon as a streamer says I don't want to play this anymore there's a correlation now with

the data that the game itself gets less and less concurrent players oh 100,000 percent so that's the influence is dying the influence is crazy so like I wonder if there's something is that dangerous do you think is it just part of marketing what the impressions right obviously impressions that a streamer has is huge right is it anything different than before where you have a gamer essentially one person kind of dictating the success and failure of a game I will say this it to me you know from the business perspective I actually don't care that it is or it isn't I just understand that that's just the way that it is right now you know I mean so like I understand that that's just the market now it's like if ninja is playing my game every day for two months I'm super happy yeah right all those people are seeing my game being played hopefully seeing this person have fun shout out to all my subscribers today I'm gonna be playing yeah cool great that's publicity for my game that I

didn't pay for yeah and then the day that he stops if I see a substantial drop off of people interested in playing the game I just have to understand like that's how it is now oh yeah because that's one major person who is no longer generating impressions from our product I see that's just this mark when your billboard comes down for coke people in that area where the Billboard used to be yeah are thinking about coke less that's just I mean you know so like I guess not to shoot down the question but that's just more like how I would look at it was like well you know what glad that I had that window and I understand that it's not there anymore oh yeah but yes the streamers do have a lot of power because I guess the underbelly is hey hey Brandon Stream rests all you got three million people you know pay you half a million dollars to stream for five months yeah like sign this contract don't tell people you know just keep streaming my game for five months every day yeah okay cool yeah right versus you organically being like I've had my fun with this game two months yeah you know now I'm gonna stop I want to try out this new game called you know yeah yeah Dreams on ps4 when it

seems cool yeah people have to disclose that their own when there's being sponsored I think the disclosure is if you're doing a commercial like if if I paid any big streamer like if i'm like hey markiplier play my game for a year i'll give you a million dollars all you have to do is just play it you can have your own opinion or whatever you're not anything misleading I'm just paying for your participation I don't think that has to be disclosed okay what does have to be disclosed if he's like oh wow this game is the greatest game I've ever played this is awesome no this is great and then by the way this play experience today is brought to you by the people that made the game I've been sponsored to share with you you know what I mean like that is where the disclosure happens because it is falsely misleading and generating sales yeah such a thin line if you say it on your own and wasn't paid there's no there's nothing illegal about that that's just you yeah having an opinion yeah my opinion is this fantastic books if it feels it feels a lot better that's kind of has I'm sure I mean we went back and there

was some kind of legal problems with that not just through YouTube but we go it's all new there's a lot of new territories being unearthed and I will say that I'm happy that legislators trying to protect that can be unknowing consumer okay so I'm happy about that if the game is worth its salt you'll get all the things that you want out of it pay for people to find it like that's that's the new thing I'm noticing in anything that you do to try to gain publicity these days the whole organic I made it they will come nah man those Kevin Costner days are over right it's not that anymore it's make it good then find the best the marketing way to pay and tell people that you've made it good and then they and then they will come because everyone has built the baseball field everyone has built everyone has seen that movie yeah everyone has built their baseball field you know what the super Sayan evolution to that model is just say is good and they woke up fire festival that's the new market was it

Ponzi Ponzi yeah well his name was Ponzi rate it was named after dude Oh the original yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he he revolutionized the model oh so smart you mean I mean smart practice of skewing say real I don't have to do any of it look what is my goal to get the money it's gonna cost me money to build the thing so I'm just gonna say I built the thing get the money yeah star citizen you think we're jokin but I mean that's the way it is now how many Kickstarter cut and runs and we survived as an industry yeah man Kickstarter is 2 million is gone you know tweet from your iPhone yeah yeah yeah I mean that's it that's a part of my outfit in my tan you know I'm working real hard out here

trying to find out why the game is not oh sorry yeah we pretty much we're done we've lost all the resources I wondered the percentage of people that looked at Kickstarter that looked at that Emily like we can ponzi-scheme this as Lars is the one who are Legion and really trying to build its Otakon 2019 right so the business savvy people will look at that there they're just bad people in the world yeah like how many times do our grandparents get called talking about oh my god your grandson is lost and he's drunk and he's this yeah grandma I need you to send me money yeah they're like it doesn't sound like my grandson but because of the hysteria I can't really tell but I don't want my grandson to be in trouble I'm gonna send them you know they help me scammers have been around ever since money yeah right yeah it's nothing new yeah so people see any opportunity for like to drink that sweet nectar and have free money yeah without work yeah they're doing it just like you said well I'm gonna tell people I built the feel that's the that idea is not new man so yeah man we're gonna roll deep

fakes yeah on them on them on the minute II and oh my god yeah it's a twister it's a twister so like those two combinations alone is enough for people to kind of it's scanning is on the rise yeah have you like have you seen good deep fakes we're kind of getting on top of here but I've seen them like I understand it's insane it's all YouTube now and now people are just completely taking the the deep fake off the title yeah dude I was watching a Bill Hader thing yeah and yeah wow he's really good with that face but nowhere in the description a title and I saw that same video and I think that was the artist who did that one and I call him an artist cuz it's art yeah the artist who I believe made that video and I forgive me because I don't have it right in front I think was like control-shift face or something like that yes into huge YouTube repository of like these really cool and interesting deep fakes yeah because he's like hey I just wanted

like continue and push this yeah and he's like makes these good deep fakes but you watch me like oh [ __ ] ya little fuzzy but like you can see the potential yeah hard you've got a camera yeah it's gonna be my goal to make it impossible to be fake I gotta try my hardest but that's not a change I wanna talk but this is how how is legislation not controlling that part what can they do like what what stops control-shift face from just making a video uploading and getting out there and then the people that like right like that the lie gets around the earth twice before the truth gets out of bed right so if the deep fake is good and people believe it it's already it's only a matter of time people are gonna launch nukes because our president says something well I can't the biggest deep fake experiment performance art of all time Donald Trump actually doesn't exist

yeah he has never been the president he's scary he's still playing golf at mar-a-lago and it's been a deep fake the whole time drinking on it to Banksy that's what that was a piece of performance art that be oh my god yeah the one artist I could pull it off banks it's a scary time right now that's why I think going back to topic right with Apex doing what they're doing I think they're doing it in a respectful way and in a responsible way for these type of games and I think out of all three let's say a pix pub G in fortnight all right those are the three leaders right now I think respond is doing it the most correctly yeah Pub jeez just ugly so they're just they're out right but seriously that they're a small developer trying to learn the ropes of triple-a development okay right and they're hiring triple-a development to kind of strong-arm in

back into the race because they have the advantage of being the first one out they have a strong Chinese market buying into the mobile version the smartest things they did since launching and they have enough time to turn it around with talents like Glenn Studio go to kind of make pub G relative still and I will say in their favor also I personally haven't yet heard an article of like pubs you guys overworked pubs you guys yeah missing vacation hours yeah oh this is well they're in a South Korea okay well yeah well South Korea look we hear stuff from South Korea you told me there were North Korean I'm they oh yeah and I know this respected North Korea as I know if nothing gets out of North Korea we have no I don't think it's that wasn't mine or that was because they're so closed off yeah they don't really share willingly right yeah that's right if eclis the bed right so Dennis

Rodman yeah let us know let us know what's going on over there but South Koreans in general South Koreans Chinese Japan develop Japanese developers they just crunch culture is like their everyday life and ours those are the workouts those guys work to the bones so it's hard to kind of hear about anything different because that's all they're industries yeah there's like maybe there's some cultural protections right which is like you're complaining there's a lot of pride with people in their jobs I mean how many times have we heard about Japanese men that lose their job just hang around and just keep that lie up for King I mean they had centers for for these Japanese men and businesses to click like basically food on the streets did these little shelters for businessmen in suits anyway so to show up for like eight

hours yeah to the Apple dude there's some people there's just so much shame then they go home yeah to a wife who's wondering why the bank account exactly oh there's so many stories with that so that's just the culture over there right can I ask you a quick question then now do you think if and I'm not gonna point specifically at any individual group of people yeah I'll just compare this to like if it's a traditional home of like husband wife let's just say if that husband was able to be like you know what I was gonna tell the truth mmm-hmm hey babe it ain't working out you know I gotta look for a new job don't you think she's like okay you know what let's i wouldn't you rather have that person be like I failed yeah I don't have the job anymore all right but I'm gonna work and we're gonna do yeah you know I mean I didn't want the partner to be able to have that and then that's a real man right there yeah exactly exactly if I can look you in the eye and tell you the truth yeah you know what I mean and you like take it okay well what are we gonna do yeah that's who I want right there well yeah

I mean it's uh it's it's super selfish right it's like I don't want people to see me a certain way that I failed and I don't want to disappoint other people and it's it's a very tunnel vision perception about yourself and the whole thing is about yourself you're not thinking about the family and you know kind of grouping together and then I'm figuring out a better plan I got no problem telling people when I don't have a job yeah because I know enough people who are like who've worked with me on a job to be like oh well [ __ ] Larry's free yeah let's go talk to him yes let's do this thing man that's the steps to towards a solution I think a lot of people who are in that situation have so much shame and put the weight on their own shoulders and they'd rather just die off than create a solution for themselves to all our Japanese businessmen and the business senators right now they're listening to this podcast it gets better keep your head up go tell your partner the truth starts it

hit stop sitting on that pen indeed.com wants to do something hot jobs calm I'm sure they're kind of doing that but they're trying to go a bit as non dismal it's super destructive in their line that breaks my heart yeah it's terrible I got no lies that I'm keeping up oh yeah it's I'm unemployed right now we are full-time in making podcasts videos on the side and educational content that's where all of my monies are supposed to be coming from right now exactly so yeah I'm glad respond is our is a is employing enough people to keep the game going and taking it easy when they have taking it easy when they have to smart being smart I I think there's a lot of attention on the season to still there might have been I think the graph of concurrent players being the measure of everything now for games is very dangerous is it dangerous ruler is this the after Activision

effect of ever every year thing about it right respawn to Call of Duty like inventors cut away from Activision lawsuit wise start respawn instead of respawn create the culture to be what it is hmm destiny to developers in Bungie right super happy about signing a 10-year deal X many hundreds of millions to make destiny halfway through hey we got it from here we're going to do it ourselves you guys are crazy yeah and then you hear hey you know we're not pushing the patch out because we care about development given up life and quality of life and think that's true - their biggest studio contributors for for product coming through Activision yeah both kind of seem like they're setting up their culture this way immediately after being with Activision is there is this are we sensing a pattern here it's a conspiracy getting tired of this there is a conspiracy right it is true it's funny that respawn went to EA as a as a

solution right yeah used to be well still is in some regards we had an episode dedicates to their lip glosses they're always trying to push the envelope right with that stuff but I would have to agree that respawn has a lot of creative control and over what they do so that's the only reason why they probably signed on the whole time right but yes it isn't setting up their culture is definitely the after-effects of working with Activision on that model then working on titanfall trying to do kind of the old model in this new era of games as a service wasn't as successful right as they hoped it to be they're great games right in every regard but the way it was kind of set up by EA in between major titles didn't help the case and I wonder if that was kind of some EA force move same hey because I

sure day one they want to respond to be owned by EA I mean and they're like no we were gonna you want to deal with us you got to do it our way I'd do it your way and now they force them in a corner worth hey man you're titanfall games aren't doing well you need to keep paying your bills right let's renegotiate that's going under our our banner I take it back it's not the after Activision effect it's just the it's the non lies I fair game development event yeah right it's the hey you publisher you value us as a team give us money we give you product ya know not only are we giving you money but we're giving you mandates dictation and game design yeah I'm sure yeah I'm sure like at the beginning of respawned that you were feeling pretty pretty good about themselves you know it's like hey we had a lot of interest people want to see what we're doing next they have a lot more on the table to negotiate with after to send my flops right they did pretty well but I'm not enough where

they thought like hey we're doing call duty numbers again when I look at if I just look at my experience playing titanfall 1 to titanfall 2 my enjoyment has a positive trend yeah it's a great titanfall one enough I really enjoy titanfall 2 so I have no qualms with respawn for the product that they made then when I look at how it gets executed time to fall one shirt it's an exclusive it doesn't have single players so people were like all right whatever cool but there was a dot - there was adoption there was a community behind it people liked what titanfall was it was fresh it was unique and it brought some new things to the industry time fall - way better execution way better product but complete dud as far as marketing goes that big thing about people not even know it was on ps4 because they just assumed that titanfall wasn't exclusive right like that wasn't a stigma that was broken and I the marketing team yeah that you know to consider that game of flop and failure with how its release schedule was like in between two juggernauts of a game yeah that fans have been waiting for for four or five years yeah

let alone just a one year game that you know or an updated game you know competing with colony alone like no you also got a computable was a game that came out Red Dead or what was the began that with Grand Theft Auto right I think it was was a Grand Theft Auto Red Dead for titanfall typing titanfall 2 was like it wasn't it was between us it was between us I don't remember it was Call of Duty and what it was called Duty and Battlefield okay yeah yeah it was like it was all sci-fi shooters got anywhere right in between it was like the second to me and then they were the explosive to Microsoft one as well versus the perception was yeah thanks for correcting me so it wasn't that they were going up against the five-year gains they just went up against two very big annualized games room right dead smack in the middle yeah like two weeks after one and then before pretty much something like that yeah ain't the best window in my opinion exactly and so they got bought because they had no choice in my opinion and they are doing a lot better with not having to worry about they have a Star Wars game that sounds a lot better than

it looks hopefully slight Jeb is a total jad man a man I I respect them as first-person shooter pioneers you replace that gun with a lightsaber it's a whole different game and it looked very rkt to me so I've heard that there are a lot more gameplay mechanics around that okay but but looks like you've seen so far what I've seen so far the fighting part is a big part of it yeah and it looks stupid yeah right so I I hope that this won't kind of bring them too far back from what they're good at apex is obviously people are loving it I mean it was supposedly taken from the courses of title three right which is the smartest news they did they've done to get away from the $60 model I think every job all you developers need to

move away from that model yeah and and and and before you even start to finish your three to four year game you know as soon as you have like a stable build put it out there somehow someway get some testing going before you your whole team has to look for a job right it's a it's a different world right now and you got to get that interest built up and maybe till you're 1.0 launch or whatever which is what they're doing right which is very smart they're innovating them epic are both kind of leading the way for triploid developers right not to think about their games differently my bet is this game is still gonna outsell any Star Wars game that came out on ps4 or ps3 this one that's my bet apex no no Star Wars the Star Wars game their respawn is doing you're saying their Star Wars game will be the best one out of titanfall one - no no it'll be better than Star Wars Battlefront - it'll sell more copies I say battlefront 1 you think so I think so you know what I think we'll neither

of those games sold 20 million copies well okay so what's the closest competitor uncharted like what they're making yeah like what kind of what kind of is an action-adventure I would be comparing this game to an uncharted to a God of War and to like a Tomb Raider even if mechanic wise there's differences Assassin's Creed for me it feels like yeah there's a lot of Uncharted developers there they recruited a lot of Naughty Dog guys over there and a lot of naughty guys got a few of them went back tonight so I don't know what that means but uh well that is truth man so I don't see it ever hitting Internet numbers I'm just saying a vault in early copies of all the Star Wars games that we get on ps3 on my ps4 yeah I'm gonna put money and say that this game is they're gonna outsell them cuz I actually don't think the Star Wars games have done well enough as the mmm they never done while that battlefront is definitely the only one that has done well PlayStation 2 battlefront - you

ain't touching it yeah well Knights of the Old Republic was really nice to do Republic was good nice yellow but that was RPG century I didn't see any RPG elements in this game it's more a story it's you're you're gonna you're gonna go through a story you're gonna unlock areas do some puzzle and Samantha lean you're gonna Nathan Drake your way through the Star Wars universe it's not even Nathan Drake like following through with your lightsaber right this dude was like swinging he's like better than Yoda then he's like throwing is like a boomerang lightsaber it's the Leviathan axe from God just take your time man like a Star Wars game is all about taking your time and everything has a as a giver laws type of approach to game play if I'm gonna force and I'm gonna sit there I go I have to see the intensity of the constipated pace and why you're building up yeah while you're building up that power you know exactly it's you're you're drifting you're risking exposure to your physical self like I want that game you know it's it's

a tough call right camera up in there the importance of everything that you do as a light saber carrying Jedi has been conveyed in the films right like when I look at any of the films that I considered great and I look at how often they fight how often there's diplomacy versus actual combat yeah way different than what people are trying to sell us in the Star Wars versions of video games they think that it's all about just being the ninja version of a Jedi and flippin hop in force doing all kind of Perry and all this nonsense [ __ ] which will sell a great commercial and make it look like the expendables version of Star Wars yeah I want literally the Star Wars version of Star Wars yeah yeah but you know I might be in the minority so I don't know I don't see them no man there's a reason why these Star Wars games don't don't sell as well I mean there's a lot of Star Wars fans obviously and most of them play games so there's a reason why none of them really has have worked right so I was looking

at respond to like figure it out and then when I saw is like oh yeah they respawn they have no place to be doing like I would trust more of the this spiral team to make a game because that's their platforming you know Naughty Dog any of those guys that are used to it's a different type of game though yeah I'm still gonna play it I I'm I'm waiting for that like Shining's oh wait before I'm game oh look I love the lore of the Star Wars universe I love the history I love the importance that it means to me and I love the idea of being part of that fantasy and buying into it and having an experience in there yeah done well yeah that is like a very key point done well I don't like a lot of what I enjoyed about Star Wars is like plot twist is the diplomacy is seeing how conflict arises how it clashes and how it settles yeah I'm less interested in like the last 18 minutes of a Star Wars movie being a six hour game experience right can't do it

yeah well respawn congratulations on season 2 without killing your dev team we congratulate you would hope that becomes like this becomes a huge revenue source I know EA is very happy this is their first and only game finally as a game as a service that is coming in away from the sixties autumn on they're probably changing battlefield right now to kind of do something like they should man who so uh great ei presents battle fall yeah exactly man so if you are liking this and in your arm use watching us we're live on Twitch every date any and Pacific time go check us out on twitch TV for slash blue champs if you are catching any second this year partly watching us on youtube.com forward slash blue champs if you want to support directly go to patreon.com/scishow to get all our other shows a week early at least ad free and if you want to just

subscribe on Twitch as a twitch prime subscriber we love that too those five dollars you have lying around if you have Twitter prime free subway for us give it to us man gets half I do have exactly it but it's lunch for the day yeah we started each end what does that mean what so that ends this game's recap we are gonna turn this off and turn it back on to go to backseat gamer if you want to find out which game we're playing you got tuned in in about 5-10 minutes alright see you guys thanks for watching well you gotta end it with the Oh like a joke yeah okay real quick real quick when you use a dry erase marker and on the board and then you're done consider yourselves recap there you go

[Music]