Design Club: Industry Shenanigans! GTA6, AI in development, and the 1400$ PS5!

Good time zone, internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only game design show on the internet that features floating cat feet. I am your humble host, well joined as always by my pal Jeff. Say hi to the people, Jeff.
Hi to the people, Jeff. Hey everybody, I am Jeffrey Zackin, the studio director of Extra Credits and more importantly for this longtime game designer and video game analyst. Because today, like we occasionally do, Will, my esteemed co-host and I will be jumping in to talk about things going on in the industry from more of a like design perspective as opposed to Breakfast, which does it I will say more as will and as a shock jock like game industry enthusiast perspective. We prefer morning zoo. Thank you very much. But yes. Yeah. Um yeah, we have a soundboard. We have a soundboard for breakfast. This doesn't.

Uh and I'm really I'm really excited cuz I think we're going to get um some very different analysis on some of these stories. Some of which we've uh talked about before um and some of which we haven't. Also, if you've missed breakfast, I know we missed the past two weeks. Uh there will be a breakfast this Friday assuming that everything continues as planned. Um but yes uh there is a breakfast schedule for this Friday. So please do join us for that. So in the field of uh industry shenanigansum
let's talk first about our your everyone's favorite secondhand gaming store GameStop. Oh, we're diving right in.
Yeah. Well, we got
no warmup, no preamble, right into the GameStop. GameStop,
okay,
has decided to increase the price of

PlayStation Fives, used PlayStation Fives, a normal, brand new PlayStation 5 Pro is $900. I have the GameStop site in front of me. You can see it is washing me out something horribly.
So 900 is sticker. So if I went to Costco or Amazon or Walmart or wherever, this is the price pros get sold for.
I believe that is currently correct. However,
okay,
it is unavailable. If I were to purchase it,
Mhm.
pre-owned or refurbished, first off, I would get a discount if I were a GameStop Pro member. That's a whole thing. But the list nonpro price for a pre-owned or

refurbished PlayStation 5 Pro is $1,400 US or nearly 50 no more than 50% more than a base model or that than a new model.
Well, this makes sense. There must be so few refurbished PS5 Pros that by from a scarcity you'd have to raise the price to
you can currently add a PlayStation 5 Pro to your cart and you can't buy a new one and that feels so weird to me like
there's a couple things going on but a yes
it's so weird right? Like where are we at in like I just want to call this out from like like because you've you've looked at a lot of console data over the years.
Can you think of another time like this where the secondary market for an

existing current gen console was priced so far above the the the I the I guess the firstand market, right?
Not at anything except at launch. Like there have been cases actually with many many consoles where for the first couple months due to demand and there not being enough supply
people were basically scalping. They'd go they you know I can buy my three Xboxes from Costco you know or whatever the limit was and then they'd go resell them because everybody would run out of them because they didn't make enough. And so first couple months, yes, demand was in often cases and especially with Nintendo stuff. Nintendo is famous for under under
stocking their hardware.
Yeah.
Um but we're we're not at launch.
No, we're years and years.

Yeah, we are years and years from launch. And this is one more carry-on effect or of supply chain woes and graphic card gobbling by other groups that are really interested in getting graphics cards.
Yeah. And I also think there's another interesting factor that's driving this, which is you only have like a month. Like you're under you're under a time pressure if you want to be part of the biggest media launch. What people are saying is like and we'll talk a bunch about Grand Theft Auto 6. I got a bunch of stories cuz I am very interested in hearing a lot of Jeff's background info. I know a lot of Grand Theft Auto 6 stuff. But if you want to be part of what people are calling the biggest media launch in the history of media launches,

you have a month to get a console because it's not coming out on PC. On console,
they've announced it's going to come out sooner on PC than people thought.
Sure, but that's not launch.
It is currently
Yeah. only coming out on consoles,
right?
And specifically the Xbox and the PlayStation.
Yeah.
Not the not the Switch.
Right.
So,
unless there's something I didn't hear that got announced recently.
I know. I think the Switch 2 might light on fire if you tried to put Grand Theft Auto 6 on it.
Um I I think it's it's just it's fascinating, right, that like the combination of all of these factors, right? We've got um increased demand
combined with a supply bottleneck, meaning no new PlayStation fives are they can't keep PlayStation fives on the shelf long enough for them to be a relevant uh comparable purchase, right? Like

there's no comparison, right? Yeah, I would love to buy a new PlayStation 5, but I can't because no one has them. There's also a little bit of GameStop being the dicks that they are because
there's an interesting thing. I don't know based on GameStop's contracts with Sony, and this is an I don't know if they're allowed to sell the console for more than X% markup. M for the first for the you're talking about for a new console.
Yeah.
However, that contract does would not apply to something similar to video games like say you wanted to go buy a copy of the latest Last of Us or

Call of Duty or whatever. If it's Call of Duty, Activision has their MSRP. This game costs X and GameStop buys it for Y and they make the difference.
Yeah.
And they can discount it below MSRP if they want to, you know, make it a something to try and get people in the store. If GameStop buys a used copy of Call of Duty, you know, they're buying it, you know, here's the MSRP. They usually buy it for this. They're buying it for this down here because they don't pay people anything, right?
And they get to set the price of whatever they want. between. So if they're normally selling it for this, they can set the price to this and the margin they make is much wider,
right?
Because you know they're buying it for say $5 instead of $35 and they're selling it for60 instead of 70. So, if they're doing the same to consoles, which they currently are, there's a good chance that because of

the high markup, they might just have an internal policy, which is until we sell out of used PlayStation 5 Pros, we are not we're just hoarding the rest of these because we can make a lot more money, we're just going to force the market. And it would not surprise me that they might actually have some, but they're only selling their used ones at this point
because if you if they can make twice as much money per sale, that's the kind of stuff they do. They don't seem to care about uh consumer goodwill at this point.
Yeah. Actually, I was in and like that that definitely tracks. I was in a GameStop the other day um and I asked my friend if they wanted me to pick them up anything and they jokingly said a new copy of Pokémon and I said, "Jokes on you. GameStop doesn't sell video games anymore. They only sell TCGs and TCG supplies." Cuz that's flipping true, right? like GameStop's model of um

trying to make as much money as possible. Like the biggest markup per sale
is is rampant, right? Like they have physical loot boxes now. Do you know this, Jeff? They have physical
I I Yeah, I I was by recently to check out half a year ago to check out some Pokemon plushies for my child. But um so answering Christopher from CH come back comment. Uh yeah, resale is entirely not bound to the MSRP.
Yep.
They can set they can price it whatever they want,
right? Because
typically nobody prices it higher than the MSRP because then you could just go to another store to get it.
Yeah.
But in a scarcity environment, especially for used ones, which are nothing to do with Sony anymore, um they can do whatever they want.
Yeah. All right, let's play a quick uh just just a quick little gut check game,

Jeff.
Yes.
If I go to eBay right now
Mhm.
and I look for PlayStation 5 Pros
and I look for completed listings.
Okay. Um, will that be more or less than $1,400?
Um, I'm guessing less. And here's why I'm guessing why. On less. Um, there's variability. At least with GameStop, you know, you have a place to go take it back to.
Yeah, that's true. and you know that you know that their refurbishment process is an actual thing where buying a used one on eBay actually wait sorry we talking a used or

used
my guess is it is slightly less than um GameStop
okay currently I'm seeing used PlayStation fives PlayStation 5 Pros with some amount ount of Autramra sold it today at between I'm seeing about $850 and about $1,400. But there are play there are people who are selling them for less than um for for less than eBay or for less than GameStop, which is kind of like wild to me, right? That like GameStop really wants to make money. Like that's their whole thing. Like it's every company's thing. It's more transparently GameStop's thing. GameStop's thing has been we desperately want to make all of the money we

possibly can so we can check notes buy eBay. Still laughing about that. Um and they wouldn't put it at this price if they weren't selling it at like if it wasn't selling at this price, right? because they're in complete control of this,
right?
So, I'm curious. Actually, I'm not up to date on my current PlayStation hardware. So, I was just looking at Costco online and Costco online in stock right now. You know, PlayStation 5 Slim um for $650 or $700 depending.
That's the lower end version there. Um, the PS5 Slim is, I think, a little less powerful. There are three. There's the the slim, the digital, sorry, four. Standard, digital, slim pro, uh,

and I believe the slim is one of the least great ones.
Okay. Okay. So, yeah, the original released in 2020, the Slim 23. The Pro released in 2024.
Yeah, it is a significantly less powerful GPU.
Um, it has less great wireless. It has a smaller hard drive. It does not have upscaling.
It does not have uh it has slower rasterization and retracing. So, it is
It's funny. It's so weird to me cuz I'm The whole point of a console generation used to be that the game would stay or the the hardware would stay the same so that people could design games for a generation and the game would work. Like you knew your target spec cuz I'm looking like the Slim came out three years after the original PS5.
Yep. And it looks like it's just better.
Yeah. But it's not as good as the Pro,

which is what everyone wants,
right? And then the Pro came out a year later,
right? Like it just it it feels so It feels so weird to me, right, that we're at a spot like God, this is it's just bizarre. Right. I think that's like my biggest thing and the thing that I really want to drive home is to have one of the leading retailers of physical gaming goods listing a used console at more than 50% higher than the new version of said console due to scarcity and increased demand before a single specific game launches. We are in like
weird once in a-lifetime like economic circumstances that cause this to be possible.
But and also a management mentality

because
Yes.
Let me flip this for a moment.
Sure.
Will do you think if Costco gets a pallet of PlayStation fives that they're going to change the price or are they going to put them out for their the price that they were already going to do? Like, do you think Costco would ever jack up the price for hardware?
No.
Do you think Walmart, like, as much as I love to dislike them, I don't think Walmart would jack up the price on a national campaign like
I don't think they would either.
I don't think Target would.
Yeah.
Like for a lot of these um stores kind of their ethos is we are going to get you wellpriced goods. Like that's what they sell
people. I think if customers at I think if a Target or a Walmart customer ever found out that the prices were being jacked up due to demand specifically by the retailer like not

not other factors
not being passed along to the retailer right which is a thing we've kind of come to expect I guess.
Yeah. But I think the PR hit on those companies, like they're not going to do it because their whole thing is we bring you reasonably priced goods.
Yeah.
And so GameStop is this anomaly where that isn't their corporate ethos, which is weird because 20 years ago it would have been.
Yeah. Yeah. you know, 20 years ago, they would have been like, "Screw it. We are competing with these other groups in this market. We are, you know, we want customer loyalty. We want you coming here to buy our, you know, your games and your hardware." Um, and it's just weird to me that that's changed so much.
Yeah, I agree. I absolutely agree. Um,

yeah. Uh, also this I'm going to respond to this. Demon Work says the the PS5 was uh just fully software jailbroken.
That's a minor factor. I I I think you're greatly overestimating the impact that that will have on a nationwide pricing structure. Like it it is a factor for certain. It's not nearly as big, right? That's a thing that's bigger in our circles than the group of people who's looking to buy. Like this is targeting people who don't already own a console that will play Grand Theft Auto 6, who desperately want a console
upgrade from Yeah. to it. But yes,
who who desperately want a console and Grand Theft Auto 6 and anyone in that bucket is not in the conversation about jailbreaking the console. I agree it's a part of it, right? But it's so small compared to the effect that Grand Theft Auto is having on the market, I think. Um,
and it's funny, you know, one of the groups that this I think is going to hit

the hardest, um, military.
There's been a whole bunch of talk about how certain army and other groups are like giving soldiers time off for Grand Theft Auto or other things. There's a lot of people, I bet, coming back from deployment or other things who are going to be looking to pick up. Like when you think about it, who needs a console with one month notice?
Yeah. Right. Not Yeah. I'm kind of think thinking my way through.
You know, it's got to be people who for some reason didn't have one before
and weren't interested in buying before
or weren't able to buy one. Yeah.
Mhm.
And it's not just going to be military, but like it's going to be groups when you think about it. And it's also going to be a lot of parents of teenagers, you know, like, "Okay, you know, Timmy, do well for your first month of school and, you know, we'll get you a console so you can play."

And that squares, right? Because um parents traditionally not the best at understanding the pricing structure and sales model of video games,
right? Like that is a market. Now, I suppose that that's not entirely true given that millennials are parents now, which is weird. I don't know what to think about that. I was at a wedding over the weekend and many people my age have like multiple kids and I'm like I don't I don't know what to do with that. Thank you. Anyway, um yeah, this is just this is super bizarre and um uh I I thought this this would be a cool place to start for our our discussion of industry shenanigans is is how absolutely weird um this console pricing disparity is. Um but
and honestly how kind of scummy is GameStop is being
Yeah.
on what they're doing.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's it's not it's a very predatory practice. Um no,

like just just don't just just don't. Thank you. Um but
actually I'm going to the last thing that makes it possible though.
Mhm.
It's the game.
Like the for a lot of people, this is going to be the game that they're going to play for the next five plus years. This is their new lifestyle game. They're excited to be in on the beginning, you know, when they're excited to talk to their friends about it. And for a lot of people, even those who don't spend a lot of gaming, an extra couple hundred mentally for the thing that they're, you know, this is the thing they're looking forward to and they're going to play for, you know, not a month or two, but years.
Yeah.
Like they're going to be pissed, but they're going to get the console and they're going to forget being pissed about it.
Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's very true
and I think GameStop is kind of counting on that.
Yeah, I also think that that's very true. But let let's talk a little bit

about Grand Theft Auto 6 because um the developers of Grand Theft Auto 6 recently had a a fascinating article um with the folks over at Love Magazine. Um and uh it's part of issue 27, but we'll have a a link. Um, they did publish just that interview online so that uh, Grand Theft Auto fans could read it. And the thing that struck me, and yes, this is partially a fluff piece and like partially like marketing for the game. Um, I I just think like there's some really interesting stuff that we often don't talk about because of how like monolithic Grand Theft Auto is, right? GTA has been like such a big thing. We sort of just think about like it cooks and then it's done. and we don't think about the process that it goes through

to go from being like, well, we need another Grand Theft Auto game, uh, right, and then all of a sudden there's a Grand Theft Auto game. Um, and the article, the the interview goes a fair bit into the amount of research that they do and like they go on like trips to places where the game is set and they have teams that do different things. Um,
and also, well, as a quick note when we're talking about this,
Grand Theft Auto 5,
Yeah.
came out 13 years and a one month ago.
Yeah.
Like,
it's in middle school. Grand Theft Auto 5 is in middle school.
It is now a teenager.
You are now dust. You may proceed to blow away in the wind.
Yeah. Yeah. But so and you got to figure like I know that they didn't immediately switch to working on GTA 6 because
GTA 5 did a whole bunch with their online and expanded out things.

Yeah.
But it is not unreasonable to say that probably at the latest one year post GTA 5 release.
Yeah. They were already like the senior people at um Rockstar were already starting to think about GTA 6 and actively putting together pieces.
Yeah. I mean, Red Dead Redemption 2 was 2018 is the other thing to keep in mind is that they
But that's
I don't think the same team
Yeah.
that does Grand Theft Auto does uh Red Dead Redemption.
I I mean it's the same studio. I would imagine that they've like there's like part where you can have some people doing concept for the next game while the team that's making the current game finishes it up, right? Like it's like
there are probably people who were working on content and maps and art
that moved over, but I bet not as many as you think.
Sure.

Yeah. But regardless, th this game is GTA 6 has been in development, I would say, for at least 12 years.
Yeah,
possibly longer. There's a good chance that Well, anyway, we don't need to get into that.
So,
for a very long time.
Yeah. Um, and I think in the process of that, right, we've been talking about the Grand Theft Auto 6 launch for two years, probably in some capacity or another, and the impact that it's going to have on this year's launches for like a year, and it's stopped being, at least in my mind, and I'm interested in in how you feel about this, Jeff, it stopped being a piece of art and just started being like a nebulous cultural phenomena. It's just like this thing that's going to happen sort of like a national holiday or like Christmas, right? It's like it's not it's not a thing. It's an event and then it will pass and then we'll go back to

normalish, right?
Yeah. It's it's weird because it's you're talking about it's like GTA 5 and the other GTA are so so much almost their own thing in their own genre in the same way that
here's a weird comparison.
Some of the sports games are like NBA and um
Madden.
Madden and a couple of the others like
there are people that just play Madden.
Yeah.
Or just play FIFA.
Yeah. Like when you say video games like oh I play I you know I play Madden that's their thing.
Yeah
GTA is like that I think for a lot of people
I agree
they might dabble in some other things but GTA is their game in the same way that for some people it's League or it's Fortnite that that's kind of the thing that they've settled on and they keep going with.
Yeah. And they've also always done a good job of having some social commentary and being kind of topical

and a little bit funny and a little bit edgy. And their art is like their art gets put around.
Yeah.
And they have this weird style that's noticeable. Like
they're semifoalistic, but they're also not.
Yeah.
Like it's it's a very unique style. you look at that, you're like, "Oh, that's a Rockstar game." Specifically, that's one of the Grand Theft Autos.
Yeah, I agree with that 100%. Um, the the the thing that got me thinking a lot about Grand Theft Auto 6 as like an art piece rather than a cultural phenomena is this is this question. Um, the interviewer is um, let me make sure I get their name right. Casey and Meyers, Mayors, excuse me. Um,
wait, say it again. Caseian mayor
um
I don't think I've ever heard the name Caseian before.
Uh
is that a
I
male or female interviewer by picture?

Uh I don't have a picture.
Oh, never mind then.
So
I was curious if that what
Yeah. Um so um they're interviewing Rupert Humphre uh among others. Rupert Humphre is the senior vice president of narrative.
Mhm. Caseine asks, "The American Dream has been a constant in GTA world for decades. Has it collapsed or just mutated into something you have to satarize differently now? And what is its new shape?" Rupert says, "Some would say the American dream collapsed a long time ago. With GTA 6, we told an immigrant story that was supposed to be a kind of sorry, with GTA 4, we told an immigrant story um that was supposed to be a kind of hollow commentary on the illusion of America as a land of opportunity. And then we sort of doubled down on that with the cynicism of GTA 5. Maybe the American dream is more modest now. It's a house for your family and your loans paid off instead of wild success. But maybe today this is just as out of reach for the average person. Miami and southern Florida particular front line

for this battle between astronomical wealth and unbounded ambition creating a pressure cooker for all kinds of insanity. I really wanted to like talk about this because I think it's with AAA games. Lots of people, I'm so guilty of this sometimes, will just dismiss AAA games as being wholly or in part about serving mass market mediocrity for the sake of reaching as many like people as possible, right? I'm definitely guilty of that sometimes where we like talk about AAA games like dismissively or derisively simply because they're big budget games. And this really drove back for me this idea that Grand Theft Auto 6 like no, they actually have a political message. Like it they're actually keenly aware that this is capital A art. Like all video

games are art, right? Ju just just to go through that really quick. If anyone hasn't heard this trait of logic before, uh all video games are art because all video games are made by people who are influenced by the political uh situation that they find themselves in at the time that they are making it, which inevitably influences the thing that they are making. And all art is political. So all video games are political whether or not you like it. Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Um, but like leaning into that and talking about the American dream as a fundamental thing in a game that I'm more used to seeing clips of people like rocket jumping a bike over a city, right, is so fascinating to me cuz I think it's like
three people in bikinis dance under them and a flamethrower shoots,
right? Yes. And I think part of it is that a lot of AAA has to be that way because of the budgets. You know, if you're spending $200 million on developing the game and another $200 million on marketing the

game,
you need to make $400 million
to break even.
Yeah.
And you know, that's not even the case for Rockstar, for Grand Theft Auto 6. I believe this will be the first billion dollar development game with it. But um certain studios may have AAA budgets or S tier budgets but don't necessarily make that style of oh I've got a like Rockstar is going to make enough money off of this because it's going to craft a game that you know they haven't put out a game like this in over a decade. Like they're not pumping out a Call of Duty or a Madden every year,
right? They're taking their time in crafting it.
Famously apolitical video game series Call of Duty.
Yeah.
Anyway,
like another group to compare them to might be CD Project,
like
who's going to put out Cyberpunk or The Witcher with, you know, five years between releases

of what they're doing and is going to craft knowing that that one game will do well enough that they can go in and craft something that's artistic and a masterpiece. it. There are certain studios. Blizzard used to be like that where, you know, Starcraft and then Warcraft and then World of Warcraft, you know, those were AAA games for the time, but they weren't pumping them out. They were coming in and they were well-made games that people like, "Wow, these are masterpieces of what they do." Well, maybe not WoW on launch, but wow as it grew.
Yeah. But I think s like AAA because AAA is a budget. So S tier is also a budget and to make that back you need to do certain things because otherwise you put your studio and publisher out of business,
right?
But that doesn't mean certain groups don't do the long we're making a masterpiece versus the hey super expensive game here here here.

Yeah.
Kind of thing.
Yeah. And I think Rockstar's got a good history of that that I think I personally have been losing. Like Red Dead Redemption 2 has a lot of messaging. A there's a lot of messaging in there. There's a lot of politics in there. There's a lot of like really good gripping story in there. And I think it's very easy to lose sight of that again as like we begin talking about this as a cultural phenomena,
right? cuz like I don't I don't know. Do you Can you think of another game, Jeff, that has abandoned I will say its selling points in favor of simply like existing. Like I'll give you an example. Grand Theft Auto 6 feels like it's to me like it's marketed the same way that the iPhone is.
Mhm. Doesn't matter what it doesn't matter

what the selling point is. It's the next numbered thing in that sequence of things that you buy. You buy iPhones. The next iPhone is coming out. You will probably either buy this one or the next one. When you need a new iPhone, the selling point is it is iPhone N + one where N is the number that you own.
iPhone but better.
Yeah. Right. Exactly. And so I feel like is that like do sports games do that? Do other like
I think sports games have that a bit because part of the sports game is the current roster. Like I think most people aren't like, "Wow, you know, I want to go play Madden 2013 again because the roster that year was
like
it's, you know, they slowly move forward with the features,
right?"
And then but then it's also like and here is, you know, who's on, you know, the Dallas Cowboys for, you know, 2026.

Like I don't play enough of those kinds of games, but for my friends that do, like that's part of the important part is it's the slow incrementation of the game, but also the current setting.
Yeah. It it just feels so interesting to me that
I'm trying to think of other games that were cultural phen like
Halo.
Fortnite for a while.
Yeah.
Was a cultural phenomenon.
Yeah. World of Warcraft was a cultural phenomena. Like certain games like EverQuest was big, but it was big in the gamer community.
Sure,
World of Warcraft escaped containment, right? Fortnite escaped containment. Like if you're looking at things that escaped containment,
if you've ever had a Simpsons or South Park episode written about your game, it's escaped containment.
Yeah. Uh Angry Birds for a while escaped containment. Pokemon Go escaped containment. I think it's the only Pokemon title I would say that did like

all the other Pokemons were huge but you didn't see
random people walking around the mall who didn't look like gamers playing. So very few games escape containment. I think four at least four five four and five for Grand Theft Auto did. Maybe maybe all of them have, but there's very few games that escape containment in that kind of way.
Yeah, it it's just this article, and again, I'll I'll put it in the in the um description, um really does a lot to help me bust through the it is the next Grand Theft Auto game into like why should I care about this game? And I honestly think that like saying a little more at least for my particular
desires when it comes to being marketed a video game in a genre that I don't normally play. Not a huge fan of giant

open world games. Not a huge fan of modern like games that take place in the modern day. Not a big fan of for the most part third person shooters. Deadlock's an exception. They're growing on me. Um, uh, it it has really brought me back to the place of like this is a game and these are selling points. Is that something that normally happens? Like
I also wanted to ask
I think they're marketing to different groups. Sure. like when you're putting a message on the Goodyear blimp
or when you're, you know, showing at a baseball stadium on the big, you know, digital board, um, or other places,
the jumbo tri,
you're telling people the next one's coming out.
Yeah.
Like this is building hype and awareness.
Yeah. So, I guess
you're not doing selling points for that. When they when Grand Theft Auto did their, you know, here's 24 minutes of gameplay, that was going to a different group of

people. Yeah,
that was being like, "Hey, come check out how cool our, you know, new game is 13 years after the past one,
right?"
So, I think it's probably what channel you're watching the marketing roll in.
Okay?
Because in the same way that they spent a billion plus dollars for development, my guess is most games of that scale have equal amount marketing spend to development spend.
Yeah. So, if you're going to go spend a billion dollars on marketing, like you're going to have whole different vectors coming in with whole different groups doing different initiatives.
I just cannot fathom what a billion dollars in marketing gets you. Like, I cannot even begin to understand the level of market saturation that a billion dollar in marketing gets you.
Even if they do a half of that,
sure, same problem. Yeah, that's a ludicrous amount of money. Like that gets you that gets you in front of like every eyeball in the US

or possibly the first world.
Yeah. Yeah. That just Oh, it's Yeah. Gets you a halftime ad. Yeah. That Yes. I think this is it. A billion in marketing doesn't get you a halftime ad. It gets you halftime.
Yeah. Um
Yeah. And so like this is why it's interest like it's an interesting thing but like I was reading through the article. It's really interesting too because like will can you imagine coordinating a creative project of that lasts 10 years of development or with you know over a thousand people working on it.
Yeah. like it the the amount of the challenge of aligning a thousand individual people's
in an open world game because that means it isn't like here's the linear story progression you know let's that's an easy thing to chop up and divide up

but openw world game of this sort like
they have a writer's room for pedestrian chatter
there is a team of writers for pedestrian chatter. That's their job. That's it.
But also something about that tells me a different thing, too.
Yeah.
Which is that implies to me that you've got to be able to follow the pedestrians. In other words, this isn't oneline sound bite.
Yeah. This is, you know, a couple of people walking down the boardwalk talking for a while.
Yeah.
About a thing.
Yeah.
Because you don't put together a writer's room for pedestrian chatter if you know they're doing sound bars.
You know, man, what do you want for dinner? You know, as they walk by and that's all you're expected to hear,
right?
So, that's at least what that implies to me.
You're not getting Skyrim guard. Um

Yeah.
took an arrow to the knee,
right? Yeah. Exactly. You're not getting that. I did have another kind of unrelated question that I I thought you might uh be able to shed some light on too, which is we've got all these very fancy titles for people in this interview and I wanted to like maybe get your input on that. So we've got like
and again let me preface preface this by saying these are thousand plus person teams.
Yeah. Which means that organizationally, you know, it isn't just a design team or an art team,
right?
You know, the art team is going to have the character artists. They're going to have the environment art. They're going to have the animal or excuse me, human characters, animal characters, environment, vehicles, props, weapons, visual effects, cinematics, UI to like incorporate it all together like and there are good chances that

some of each of those group Oh, and like within characters that's also going to mean modeling, animation, rigging, clothing. So like somebody who might be, you know, senior or lead artist of, you know, character animation might be because they're going to be animating, their team's going to be animating 4,000 models across 10 years and that person might have 60 people under them.
Yeah.
And so like some of these titles are going to get really big because the department sizes, you know, this isn't a lead artist who covers everything. This is a lead artist who's going to probably by necessity cover a very small slice of what you would typically think of for development because there's so much development in that.
Yeah.
So I'm I'm laying the groundwork. So hit me with some titles.
Okay. So we've got two game writers. That's pretty self-explanatory. Um then we have a
two what? Sorry.
Two game writers. Just two writers that they grabbed out of a writer's room. So that's great. Then we have a senior vice

president of narrative.
Okay. So vice president means that they're actually part of the corporate like the upper management structure.
Okay. So there's there's like the people I guess my question is does the person who's the senior vice president like typically actually write the game? Like are is are words that they have committed to the screen going to be part of the game or is that someone whose only job is oversight?
Um different and different parts. My guess would be that as they're putting together like their story bible and narrative beats and other things that they're actively writing at the very early part of the game when they're laying out, you know, hey, we expect this to be a 100hour game. You know, we're going to put together the story beats. You know, we're going to for where they move and the tasks and the ongoing story lines and, you know, they're part of that team working out the skeletal structure. Okay. Maybe they actually similar to like a lead animator

put down pieces of it with other groups that are going to come do the twins
where in other words like key frame key frame key frame and somebody else comes and animates the frames between where you see the arms move.
Yeah. And so my guess is at the beginning they probably were doing some of the writing for it and that later they've moved on to they have whole teams that do that and they're reviewing, reading, editing, making notes and possibly being the person who's holding it all together from all of these different groups and kind of shoving it forward, kicking and screaming.
Yeah. And then we've got um we've got a vice president of art colon dynamic. So that plays into exactly what you were talking about how the art department is not the art department. It's the art department which is dynamic art and static art and character art and and art and art and art and art and art and they're all different things.
Um and then

it just feels weird to me. We have the head of development/costudio heads of Rockstar North.
It I don't know. Head of development. Is that like does the buck stop with them? Like because it feels so weird to me that you have like vice president, senior vice president, senior vice executive president for the third adjunct studio, whatever, right? And then the person in charge is just Dave, right? Like head of development. Does is it one of those things that gets simpler the higher up you go or is it possibly and one thing to remember too is Rockstar has a lot of people who've been there a long time.
That's true. And so at some point too, like people like to get promotions and as your games get bigger too, I don't want to say it's like inflation along the way, but you also have to know

like at a certain point, sure you have, you know, the heads of development. They're not making individual like choices down there, but they probably have 12 different teams or 20 different teams all funneling in, each of which has its own head.
Yeah.
They all meet to talk about where the game is going. My guess is the head of development sits just over that,
but they're all in the room chatting because,
hey, the person doing environmental art
Yeah. may not necessarily have the exact same idea as the person who the lead writer in charge of all narrative combined with the person who's running online gameplay.
Yeah.
Like somebody needs to be sitting above them to be like, "Hey, slap slap slap." No, this all has to integrate well. Yeah.
You know, quit, you know, quit being territorial. Get your stuff in. And yes, we do all have to work together. And what can we do to make this synergistic and not
like say for example, Sony is famous for

doing walled territories, all of whom hate each other.
Yeah. Oh god. Uh and then I guess my last question on this was um
you have people who are going out on the media tour who going out to interviews.
Yep.
In gaming, do you have the problem where people just get a fancy title for the interview? Like if you're sending someone
usually in gaming. I've seen it definitely in other things.
Yeah. So,
but that's also why you said there were a couple just with the title writer.
Yeah.
Because one of the things game studios absolutely do is figure out who is both good at development but also good at talking to external people.
Yeah.
Because not every developer even high up is necessarily they may be good internally at their job. They may even be good at communicating internally.
Yeah. But that does not necessarily mean that they are good at media facing.
Yeah. I think Yeah.
Even back as a young developer on EverQuest, I was toted around on a lot of press tours because Sony marketing

knew I wasn't going to embarrass them. I was a game designer even before I was like a senior, you know, lead designer who they could comfortably bring out to things and I would talk coherently and intelligently about the game in such a way to make it look good.
Yeah. And not necessarily to say the stupid thing that caused Sony PR to then have to come
fix things or
right Men in Black everyone with the little memory eraser. Yeah. Uh this is a great example. Hello Games and No Man's Sky. Just because you're a senior developer, maybe don't talk to the press.
Maybe don't. Maybe don't. Sorry Sean. Just
Oh yeah. So like it sounded like you know they when Rockstar is doing their multi-million/billion dollar press tour they are pro they have probably vetted certain devs
which are allowed to go out and do things.
Yeah, absolutely. Uh okay, let's talk about embarrassing

media snafuss that happened over the past couple of weeks.
Okay. Capcom.
Uh, actually, will hold on. Yeah,
I need 30 seconds before this. Can you give me 30 seconds? I want to jump into Yeah, I could absolutely do that. Chat, we're talking about uh Capcom in the Resident Evil engine. Uh, you can fill yourself uh in on this. Yeah. Senior lead executive vice head of development. That's right. Um, yeah. Uh, also someone said, uh, give yourself a fancy title like stream overlord. Listen, listen, listen. Yes, that's exactly it. That's 100%. I also have two. One of them is streaming manager, right? Like the title you use in some places. And and to give a little context, it's not unheard of in other places for someone to be given a fancy title immediately before going and doing like a big high-profile interview or a

big high-profile media tour so that they appear more important even though they might not have been before. Right? If you have someone who's like decently competent at the job part of the job and who is also good talking at the media, you might make that person the senior chief vice president of uh media relations like right before they go on camera, right? That's that that's the question I was asking. So,
man, I almost had a real dangerous thing. I was coming back in. Look what I almost stepped on.
Oh, no. That's a very sharp center.
That's a very sharp synquil. Yeah,
that is
man.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay. Sorry. Capcom AI,
right? Okay. So, okay. So, this is this is complicated by a bunch of things. One of the things that it's complicated by is the fact that the original article is [ __ ] the original interview and everything about this is in Japanese. So just keep that in mind that there is a fair amount of translational issue um

that's at the core
cultural
and yeah translational and cultural issues um that made this into like a really
giant story that's actually not why I want to talk about it because I find like the whole like oh someone mistransated an interview in Japanese and then it blew up to like not be the most interesting story. Um anyway uh so Capcom uh had a conference event for engineers in the games industry and they started talking about how they wanted to um improve the re engine.
Mhm. Which is their proprietary engine I believe.
Correct. um and uh they want to find ways to use AI in that process and so there are two things right two big things um one of them is

one of the problems with messaging this in general
whether or not it's mistransated and the other one and the one that I really am looking forward to Jeff's take on is is this a blockchain thing or is this actually a real improvement? So, what I mean by a blockchain thing is when blockchain came out, everyone was like, "Oh my gosh, you can blockchain this." And people
Hold on, I want to caveat that.
Yeah.
A whole bunch of non-game industry people
sure
said that and a whole bunch of game industry people said no. But then a whole bunch of the noname industry people came in with lots and lots and lots and lots of money.
Yes.
And certain game industry people were like
fine.
Yeah.
Because for a while it was hard to get your game funded
if you didn't have the word blockchain in it. It wasn't that a lot of the game developers wanted it. It was all of the money was wrapped around that. Similarly to how a lot of the money right now is

wrapped around AI.
Yes. Um,
sorry. That's a sore point for a lot of game devs. I wanted to clarify.
No, that's a good one. But one of the problems with with blockchain is that um you could almost never point to a circumstance where blockchain was a substantial or even noticeable improvement in any way over using a database.
Yep.
Like you just couldn't do it, right? you couldn't point to a place where like blockchain was actually making some part of the game better, right? Because all of the things about like, oh well, you could take your item between games. Sure, but the games have to accept the items. So, it doesn't actually
like you could just do
makes goes it makes a blockchain game and says you can take this item anywhere. Blizzard isn't gonna be like sure you can bring that into WoW. when Call of Duty is not going to be like, "Yeah, you can bring that into
Yeah,
you can bring your Wander fireballs into the next Call of Duty." And
yeah,
Need for Speed isn't going to be like,

"Yeah, you can bring your Wander like
Right." So, um, by the way, uh, I I was corrected. It's not the Resident Evil engine. It's just the RE engine. Sorry. They have a picture, the article that I'm reading from has a picture of, uh, Grace in it, uh, from the latest Resident Evil. So my brain went Resident Evil and that's not right. Um so they are focusing on improving efficiency during the develop. I want to be very clear about this. They were very upfront and they said we're not generating assets using AI. So we're not talking about like a computer make me a video game that's super cool where everyone could do a sick kick flip and also punch God into the sun. computer, make make me the best video game ever. Make make me game of the year, right? Like, it's not that it's it's not even like generating assets in

any way. The things that they're talking about are other parts. Um, which I think is really interesting. But I do think that leads us to sort of the first thing, which is it's really hard right now to talk about AI without a whole bunch of clarifying conversation because one thing unfortunately means a lot of things. And some of those things a lot of people have problems with and some of those things almost nobody has a problem with. And like I'm I'm struggling to think of like again have we had something like this in the past in the games industry like has there been something that's been so
blockchain was really divisive but it was mostly external money and people coming in versus game develop game developers a vast majority of whom weren't interested but we have

these every couple years. This is my everything will be
dark. You know, everything's going to be a MMO. Everything's going to be a console game. Oh, everything's going to be a PC game. Oh, everything's going to be a mobile game now. Oh, everything's going to be free to play. Oh, everything's going to be a live service game. Everything's going to, you know, have blockchain components. Everything is going to have mods that allow players to, you know, go in and craft pieces to add to the game and so they can like the industry every year to two feels like it has a new everything will be combined with the X is dead. I mean, I can't tell how many times I've heard PC's dead, mobile's dead, you know, premium's dead, like each of these and it's no, it
just different.
Keep going.
Yeah.
Or it may get reinvented a little bit.
Yeah. But um
so
yeah let's see yeah pre- Steam

there was many many talk much much talk about the deathnull of PC and basically digital distribution solved it um
anyway history but so yes there's definitely been divisive andor wave stuff like and you can look at the number of, for example, a couple years after League and Dota came out, almost every major publisher had some sort of MOA in the works. Like every single one
and a lot of them died before they came out.
Yeah. That a lot of money was spent on that because they're like, "Oh, wow. This game doesn't look like it's that hard to make and look how many people are playing and we can keep have them playing for years and years and keep selling them things."
Yeah. And
um MMOs were that way. live service games. Like we've seen the amount of live service game like
these are just
Yeah.
trends.
Yeah. So speaking of like this

Yeah. I'm I'm going to take the second cuz you brought up MOBAs. This is your fault, Jeff. I get tangent now. Um uh they they released the new Deadlock update.
They redid the entire map. It like all has like full 3D terrain and everything else.
They're releasing six new characters. They're doing voice lines for everyone. and you still can't pay money for the game. I I will hold up forever that Deadlock is the number one example of Valve money at work in the best possible way. We are going to get one banger of a game that's going to be between multiple genres.
And it only works this way because Valve has Valve money to just yea development forever. forever, right? It's wild to me. We'll talk about that some other day, but like and when it finally comes out, I want to do a postmortem on the early access cuz it's been incredible to see what they've done. Anyway,
and yeah, and actually one of I think

the most interesting talking points as we do that is the reason I think it went up so early is because they have Valve money.
Yes.
But they can keep it in that stage effectively forever.
Yeah. They could never make money on that and that they could never make money on Deadlock and that would probably be okay. They'd be bummed, but like Valve's not going to die as a company because of it. Like we'll just move on to the next project. So, um,
okay. So, Capcom says they're going to use some AI in development. It's not going to be for art assets.
Correct. Instead, it's going to be for, get this, things that machine learning and LLM are actually good at. Cuz fun fun fact, most of the machine learning stuff not actually good at making art. That's how you get like six-fingered people and like, you know, stuff that looks like it's all one texture and like there's Yeah, there's a bunch of problems. So what Capcom has said is that they are um they're releasing re

docs and re log tools as open source tools on GitHub and they're um trying to get models trained on those tools so that um they will have machine learning tools to assist with internal play test of levels. Um, they will be able to play builds, log issues, analyze data, detect visual and gameplay bugs and issues with memory or performance, and then suggest a potential fix that someone would have to go and manually implement. By the way, let me be clear. At no point is the AI actually touching the code. There's a tester that says that runs and says, "I played through this level. I found the following problems. Here's what I think is probably going on. Have fun. Right.
So, let me tell you a story, Will.
Yeah.

Years ago.
Mhm.
In the Matrix.
Okay.
Actually, in the Matrix,
in the Matrix online. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Um, there was something called headless clients.
Sure.
That there was a a dev in charge of
that every time a new feature of Note got added
Mhm. for example, we have doors that can open. He would go write a basically a bot specifically to test whatever that feature was. And every time a new build was checked in, thousands of bots would get unleashed into the game. And one would go test every door it could find. One would start hyper jumping to make sure hyper jumping worked. One would click the button to make sure missions still, you know, started when you hit the button. like you know one would hit the inventory and try and move an item between spaces and this was basically an automated testing system. This was back in the early 2000s.

Mhm.
And the amount of man-hour that saved because when they checked in code and suddenly doors didn't open, they knew right away. They knew within minutes that somebody had broken a fundamental part of the game. Sure. And it didn't go, you know, it didn't get not found for three weeks with other people building code on top of it,
right?
Because no, how many no matter how many human testers you have,
as your game gets more and more complex, it's harder and harder to test everything,
right?
So what he wrote was not AI,
right?
And it wasn't actually even machine learning at that point. It was
script.
It was Yeah. basically a script with some minor amounts of autonomy. Automated testing solutions like that have scaled over time to the point where they started has using LLMs and other things that can basically look at the inputs you're putting in and run varants off of this. And so like gamedev and much lots of software dev has been using

something similar to this for a very long time because even though you could hire an army of humans to go poke at it, why would you hire an army of humans to go poke at this when there are programmatic solutions for something? And this isn't like highquality jobs we're talking about either.
You know, this is do I hire brute force to go click does the door open after every build,
right? This isn't people play testing the levels for uh for quality. This is people play testing the levels for functionality, right? We're talking about functionality.
A lot of games pre this or like that's what they did. There would be an army of low paid late teen to early 20s sitting in a big testing room where they know cool then you know Twisted Metal came out you know here is the test plan for 40 people to run through every 3 days when a new build came out.
Yeah.
And it was awful.

Yeah.
So I mean it would just so anyway like people use testing and automated testing for lots of things. This feels like an evolution.
Sure. like this is not this isn't going to steal jobs in any way because people are already doing this,
right?
Capcom is saying out loud, we're trying to make it better and I'm sure there's lots of groups already doing this.
Yeah. I think the um and I think one of the improvements to my eye at least seems to be the and here's how you might fix this, right? part of it, which I think is a useful time, right? Because if if what it's doing is essentially looking at readily available online resources and saying, "Hey, I found this bug. Here's the relevant documentation."
It's probably not even as complicated as you think because when something breaks, you usually get um you
you almost all the testing suites will

spit out an error code.
Yep. that will roughly tell you where the code was breaking because you know this code is a logical thing. It follows its way through and if it like hits this point and stops you can see where the you know where the error happened where the bug was.
So this is honestly probably reading the dev log or the output logs on there looking at it in context and like machine learning can do something pretty similar already. Yeah, there's a non-machine learning tool I use for ve something very similar all the time. Um, the program that we use to stream, OBS, open source broadcasting studio. Uh, it runs way more things than you think it does, has an absolutely amazing tool. You can upload a log file and then hit analyze and it's got an algorithm that will go through and look at all of the flags in your error log and say, "Here's everything that your log shows. here are some things that might be causing a problem that you're having and here's

how you fix them. And that's entirely algorithmic. It's not AI or machine learning at all. Right? It's just this is the next evolution of that in a very
useful way.
This to me feels like a honestly a good use of AI. It's in a custom engine that they're building themsel which, you know, they're putting it out to the community for some extra testing, but it's also going to mostly test on their own thing.
Mhm.
So, it's it's a tool made by the developers who are going to use it for their own use to basically make a thing that they're already doing better for the purposes of making a better game.
Yeah.
And the humans are still in the loop.
Yes, that is correct. That is the assessment.
So anyway, that's my take off of the information I've seen.
Yeah. And I I think I agree with with everything you just said. I think this is and this is one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is because I think the hammering out of all of the

nuance in the different ways that expert systems, machine learning, LLMs, small models, however you want to call like all of the different fine gradation in the field of machine learning
all getting reduced to and it's all AI and it's all bad. means that it that some people absolutely flipped out over this. They like absolutely flipped out that Capcom was like going to be Persona Nrada because they were going to be doing stuff. But really, everything I'm seeing suggests that this is just Capcom touting like a new a new programming suite of tools like, "Hey, hey, we gave all of our programmers this cool thing so it's easier to run bug testing." And all the programmers went, "Yay!" And then they made a better video game. Like
I can tell you already almost every programmer is getting AI assist on their coding.

Yeah.
Like that's just where the industry is now.
Like and it's it's not it some cases it's writing their code, but it's usually you know filling in things as you're typing and double-checking to make sure like what you're doing or you're like hey I got this this and this. Can you write me a linkage that gets between these? It's take it that's already happening.
Yeah.
And like Capcom is saying this about their engine, but Unity, Unreal, all of those are now getting AI built in by the groups doing it specifically already for things like this.
Yeah.
Oh, you're having trouble getting this hooked up to GitHub. You know, let me let an agent help you, you know, get your GitHub repository set up. Oh, you're having trouble integrating this asset pack. Let's have it look through and see what flags are coming up to help you fix, you know, this coming in. Like there are some that are like proposing to do art or a couple of things, but most of these coming in are helping you navigate a complex system. It's an

advanced It's an advanced integrated tutorial in a lot of cases for instead of spending time looking up the answer. There is a a there's a um an LLM agent of some kind that helps you do it. Now, will some people still object to that? Yeah,
of course.
And but I think there's room to have a reasonable discussion about that. like because there are fewer in my mind at least ethical quandies over using it this way as opposed to computer make me the best video game ever and also make it win game of the year right like that's that's not that's not even remotely what we're talking about though there are several people who are suggesting that they will be doing that in the near future and I wish them so much luck on that because anyone who says ah yes I will simply have AI I make the next game of the year. I think doesn't understand either of those concepts at all.
Humbly from my point of view, I don't

think they understand either of those concepts at all.
It's funny. I actually had a shower thought the other day about a really good use of AI that I may try for the thing I'm eventually will get to building more of,
which is as I built to a certain part, I think I'm actually going to have it start doing reviews to look for accessibility issues. I think that's a really great use
because there will be things that I will not think of
that if I basically ask an outside group something that's used to crawling the web and looking for issues
you're like hey can you mention 10 you know accessibility issues for this in ways that I might make it easier to use for more people
like I think there's I think a tool that you can ask questions to and might come back with suggestions can help with blind spots but like hey Cool. If I can make my game more accessible to more people, but like I might look I might ask it for control schemes.
Yeah.
That I'm not thinking of that work better for people who are using non-standard controllers.
Yep.

Like there are things that I that can happen for a somebody doing a small project or a small budget project that can make it better for more people that I think are going to be really interesting uses.
Yeah. Um, yeah, there there's there's a bunch of stuff. Yes, there's the the the whole conversation about Epic and Disney is something we'll probably talk about Friday first, chat, cuz uh we're going to get there. Um, but not today, cuz that's that's like a whole conversation of, you know, of itself. Um, but I do think that I
I want to throw out there though, it's going to be harder and harder to make games without using AI because AI is getting built into all of the tools,
right? But I also think that there's a big difference in using how do I put this
using there's using
right there there's using AI as a talent enhancer and using AI as a talent replacement and I think what a lot of

people uh object to and I'm I'm definitely on the side of this is replacing talent with AI saying yeah
I don't need to pay an artist to make music, art, whatever. I'll just generate it. That doesn't feel good to me, right? Someone saying, "Well, I'm coding this and uh this is the thing that I'm I I I use the built-in AI tools in Unity RE, you know, Unreal, whatever, to help me troubleshoot the the thing and to write bug reports for me because I'm a solo dev and I let it run all night and it came up with a thousand bugs that I fixed the next day."
I'm pretty okay with that. Actually, that seems fine, right? But it's it like and and again there's this problem of communication that really comes distilled in this that the whole industry is going to have to come up with new I really think it it's a point where the industry needs to come up with

a better way to talk about this because the communication is much um the the communication is becoming so difficult, right, that we've spent more of this time talking about the communication than we spent describing the cool new tool that Capcom has come up with that will help Capcom programmers make better games, right?
Yeah. Like from what I read about the Capcom one, it seems fine. And it honestly is probably what a lot of other game engines are already doing.
Yeah, I think it'll be cool. I'm I'm really looking forward to hearing how well Capcom manages to pull it off and to see if other studios copy them
because yeah, games with less bugs seem okay.
Yeah, absolutely.
And as I said, also this is an expansion of a tool set that's been, you know, I've seen people doing for over 20 years now.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is not this is not um and and I also want to point

out uh just a very important thing too. um they uh this is Capcom's own in-house engine, they have the rights to do whatever they want with it. So when they ask a system, right, a model to train on their stuff, everything is guess what? Above board and totally legal and not feeding books into the AI wood chipper,
right? Literally in some cases, which as a book lover, great. Um we probably have time for one more. Jeff, do you want to do the
I'm good with either one.
Okay, let's talk about the the the the collector boxes cuz I think I think that'll be interesting cuz I I I think I got real upset with it and a bunch of people got real upset with it, but I think you have a better take on this that like might be a little more level-headed.
So, well, cuz it just pissed me off. like it was just like but and and I I I think having sat with it a while I think

I have a more nuanced take but I want to hear yours first. So let me set the stage and then we'll throw it to you. So
all right
if you didn't hear Grand Theft Auto 6 is it going to have a physical edition at launch but it will have a $400 box of swag that does not include the game.
So wait hold so back they're doing so they're doing digital only editions. Uh there. Yes, it is a digital only.
Yes.
Does that mean you can't go to GameStop, Walmart, Target and buy it? Do you have to buy it
or buy a case and it has a code in it?
I believe it will. Uh you will buy a case, it will have a code. It won't even have a disc to my understanding. It's just it it will just be a download code.
This doesn't surprise me based on both a the size of the game and b the fact that they're going to be updating it continually. Correct. And so whatever you have on the disc is going to be outdated
immediately quickly.
Yeah. Right. Uh and they could do the physical game code key, but that I

imagine they're trying to cut down on the secondary market because they're trying to make as much of the again, we talked about this earlier, roughly$2 billion. That's with a B dollar they're probably spending between development and marketing for this game.
So I think they have a spot for now for groups like GameStop that like to buy used things. Yeah.
And they're happy to cut them out.
Yeah, that's true. So, uh, so they're releasing. So, digital, they're doing a digital sale, but they have, what did you say they have, Will? They have a $400
collector
physical collector's edition.
Physical collector's box full of stuff of various quality. It It's It's a swag box. It's a swag box that's definitely, in my opinion, not worth $400. Um,
well, but look at that alligator.
That alligator is
It's an alligator holding a martini and

it's pink.
Sure, but that's like
sunglasses, a fanny pack, a Vice City ball cap.
Yeah.
Is that a mirror?
Yeah, it's overpriced.
Yeah, right. It's It's overpriced. parch. Uh people in chat are quite correctly pointing out that um they uh they they have replicated everything that was in the box for about $40 in 3D printing supplies, which yeah, but
well, I could represent replicate everything in almost every game box for like 20 cents. And Jeff, how long have games been doing physical collector's editions with useless swag?
Um, they've predated the seventh gen console. 7th gen was where I we saw a lot of them come out and those launched in 2005 and 2006. Um, with collectors like the Halo Collector's Halo Collector's Edition was

pretty cool. Some of the Blizzard ones for Starcraft and Warcraft were pretty cool.
Sure. Um, I have a chainsaw behind my green screen that wasn't included in the Space Marine launch box, but they made some for like showing around. Like games and cool merch around the game have been around. Man, I want to go pull my chainsaw out and bring it over. But um,
Right. But but merch has been a part of this for a really long time. And a lot of people, including me, got kind of annoyed at the $400 collector's box.
Yeah, that seems Well, it's not for me,
right? It's not for me either. And I think the reason that there's an annoyance is twofold, right? And I think this is this is kind of an interesting thing.
Can you think of another collector's edition that didn't come with a really fancy version of the game that approached $400?
Oh, wait. So, the game isn't in the box.
The game is not included. It is a $400

merchon box.
Okay. So, they're selling swag. Yes, but they're calling it a collector's box, but it doesn't have the game in it.
That's a tricky titling because there have definitely been
things that I can go to GameStop and Walmart and Target and, you know, other places like that and buy like I can go buy any amount of Pokemon gear or statuettes or other things. Um, I wonder if it's just the fact that they're calling it a collector's box and in past cases, those have been things that specialty stores would carry that were both the game but also other merch that came with it.
Yes.
And in this case, they're dropping the game comes with it.
And I think so there there's two things. one for $400 that does not include a digital copy, right, of a game that's all

digital feels kind of bad, right? Cuz it's not even like the manufacturing cost of the disc or the disc license or whatever. You can literally write a code on a slip of paper and chuck it in the box and people would be happy because it's the same copy they'd get any other way. So, it feels particularly scummy.
Oh, right. I think it's actually done for a whole other reason. Thinking about this.
And what is that, Jeff?
I think they're actually trying to make it a box that you can buy anytime.
I think if you already own the game, so you download it day one, hour one, right,
at midnight when it goes live.
Yep.
They want people to do that and buy it and not be like, "Oh man, that $400 collector's box that I want is sold out.
Maybe I won't buy the collector's box cuz I already bought the thing." Like if you've already bought your, you know, $95 Call of Duty box that did come with the game, you're probably or if you

already bought the game, you're probably not going to go buy that $95 version that has $30 worth of merch in it because you already bought this or $25 whatever.
Yeah. Because you already bought the game which costs this and the other one that costs this much and comes with, you know, theoretically that much of merch,
right? is its own thing by taking the game out of it. Like this is a box of merch that goes along with the game.
Yeah.
And I think they're specifically doing that because they want they don't want people not buying the thing because they already got the game in a different way.
I think that's fair. I think the IR comes from um three things. One, it doesn't include the game. two, it's very expensive and the game is also very expensive. So, it feels and as people have said, the value that's in the box does not seem commensurate with the price to a lot of

people who are doing the analysis of how much the actual merch in the box is could be made for, right? So, it's a prestige purchase which kind of annoys I think some people. And the last one, and this is related to another item that isn't in the box, but is related to the box, is that they're Grand Theft Auto 6 is moving away from physical copies, which people in general are not necessarily a fan of.
Mhm.
But they're they have this big physical merch push that includes a big physical merch box and a physical vinyl copy of the soundtrack. And the palpable irony in a game saying we don't believe that physical media has a place in gaming anymore but will press the soundtrack onto vinyl is like I can taste that irony. Like the irony is like right there on the tip of my

tongue all the time. Like it feels like I am swimming in the irony here that
I don't know. I think there's a difference between like I like I do have physical copies of games.
Sure.
But I also have a whole Steam library.
Sure.
And I'm not saying I would buy a physical copy.
Behind my green screen I have a officially licensed Slay the Spire little light up glow thing of defect.
Yeah. which is cool, but I only I don't own a physical copy of Slay I don't know if you can buy a physical copy of Slay Fire. I think it is a digital only game.
Yes.
So, I think there are people who want physical
merch for the game.
Sure.
That don't care about the delivery method of the actual game itself.
Sure.
Because there are people who like vinyl. Like vinyl is its own whole collector's thing.

It just feels in I I think the the initial feeling is and I think this comes a lot this comes down to um a lot of not giving Rockstar the benefit of the doubt right now. I think Rockstar is is catching a lot of strays and just not getting a lot of benefit of the doubt at all right now. Um because of the impact it's having in the industry and the amount of the news cycle that it's taking up and how easy it is to take cheap shots at Rockstar because they're such a big company. Um, but the delivery feels like the initial emotional reaction is why a less useful in many people's opinion physical media for the soundtrack instead of the physical media that I, in this case, the hypothetical person I wanted for the game that I was told I wouldn't be able to get. Right? It it feels in congruous and generates like this really heated emotional response of like right

I don't think it's I don't think they've done anything unreasonable. I think at worst their communication about the way that they're doing this is at fault. Right. That like
And it's weird too because so I went to San Diego Comic- Con this year and I went to PAX West.
Mhm. at San Diego Comic-Con. Pretty much the only video game stuff there this year was there was a there were a couple of groups like Boware and some others with their merch stores. So you could go in and you can buy your N7 jacket and some other things packs at least half no twothirds probably of all of the big publishers that were there half of their booth included a store. There'd be the part you could line up. There'd be the part you went around and you could go buy. And they did. They had vinyl. They had collector's boxes. They had statueets. They weren't selling the games there because they knew you could get the game. You could go download it on Steam or on PlayStation or Xbox

whenever you wanted to. That wasn't the value for people showing up at packs. It was being able to pick up these cool collectibles for a game that they loved.
Yeah. And I think this is Rockstar hasn't put out a game in a really long time. They don't have an excuse to show up at Comic-Con or at PAX or other places, you know, with a merch booth.
Yeah.
Um, so I think they're jumping the gun. I think they're getting all of this ready for their next couple years of showing up at these kinds of places. like here here's cool things you can you know we've the wave one is coming out with the game. There will be other follow-up waves coming out but this is an industry trend we've been seeing if you go to places where places that have physical people and participation and when you're there you pick up physical things.
Yeah. And so this is an actual industry. Like I said, it's kind of surprising to

me. Like when I walked around Comic- Con to see there aren't as many game studios there as there used to be, but they were all stores selling merch for their games and a lot of things at packs as well.
Yeah.
Even indie ones like Devolver had a store.
Yeah. And I think again it's not Merch is fine, right? merch is
it's just the title because because they called it a title that often has had games in it in the past
and I think it's uh and again it's the um it's the move away from the physical launch of the game into more strongly into the physical space and because Rockstar hasn't released in so long and because there's existing eyeire around the lack of a physical copy and because um Rockstar uh because GTA 6 is often being paired uh rhetorically with uh Sony's entire move away from discs next

year. I I think that because those two things happened in close proximity, I think Rockstar is kind of uh being saddled with the emotional burden of this is their fault even though it's not, right? Their reasons for not wanting to do discs are very different than Sony's reasons for not wanting to doing discs. Rockstar's number one reason for not doing discs is it's the biggest media launch ever. And they don't want
supply chain issues
and they don't want supply chain issues and they don't want anyone to leak the game.
Those are the two big ones. And like, you know,
I can't think of a way to solve those two problems that isn't a digital only release.
Actually, I think there's a third one.
I think they want to kill the used game market for GTA.
I think that's probably true. I think that is high on their list. I think the amount of money that they have equivalently, I'll put it in air quotes, lost,
right,
by people possibly buying the same disc two, three, or four times in the 13 years since

Yeah.
the last game was released is something they looked at and they're like, "Screw it. We don't have to let GameStop do this anymore."
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that that's it. Yeah. And so, yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. It just it's a $400 it's a gameless $400 merch box in a time when everyone is squeezed for cash for a game that's also expensive. Yeah, I think it's I think the majority of the outcry um and this isn't my case. I'm just kind of got my hackles up over it. Um I think a lot of the the people who are very upset with it are people who want it who can't afford it.
I think that's likely the case because it's expensive. It's a collector's item. It's a it's a thing that's priced out of their and they're they already feel like the game is expensive and they want that because it's cool and shiny and goes with the game that might be the only game they play for the next year, but they can't afford it and then they'll all be gone and that is generates an emotional response for them. Yeah.

Okay, Jeff, I think that's been a good industry shenanigans roundup.
Yeah, I was just kind of looking at chat on some of the there's one issue. So, I want to throw um uh let's see.
Yeah.
Or when I say lost sales um
for specifically for GameStop, when you go to GameStop, they will often try and push used games on you for a new letting you get a new game.
Yeah.
Specifically because they make the money off it in a better way.
Yeah. So even if you go there saying I'm going to go buy a copy of this game, there's a good chance that there you're basically the people in the store have been ordered to say here here's your thing, you know, hey look, it's $5 cheaper than the other and it's just the same specifically so that they can cut out the people who made the game, right?
And make more money themselves.
Yeah.
So I'm not my version of loss there. And

again, that's why I was kind of air quoting it because I just want to clarify this is that GameStop is actively trying to undercut the developers and publishers of games by buying basically buying used games and reselling those and just pocketing all the money rather than selling the game of the people who made it.
Yeah. Um,
so just to clarify what I meant by
No, I think that's that's a very good clarification.
Yeah. But
and I'm I'm pretty much always going to be on the side of the devs in the pubs. Um, versus
GameStop on
GameStop's losing a lot of goodwill. Like left, right, center, up, down.
They're making their own loot boxes out of graded card slabs, which is gambling on gambling on gambling. Uh,
yeah.
Yeah. Uh, okay. I think that's going to be it for our design club today. Thank you everyone so

much for joining us as we discuss some industry shenanigans. Um, we will be back on Friday with another episode of Games for Breakfast. We will also be back next Tuesday with another episode of Design Club. So, please join us for that if you're interested in some Slay the Spire 2. I'll be playing that tomorrow here on the channel. uh trying to improve my win rate error. The next patch comes out and everyone's win rate tanks again. Uh so until then uh take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and I think that all that's all that is left is for you to say bye to the people, Jeff.
Bye to the people, Jeff. Thanks everybody. Have a great week.