Destiny 2's Sunset, Pay-Per Click Game Journalism & Star Citizen's Billion $$$ | Games For Breakfast

GOOD MORNING, MATT. AH, [screaming] GOOD MORNING, WILL.
TO ALL OF YOU. WELCOME TO GEEKS FOR BREAKFAST, THE ONLY INTERNET TALK SHOW WHERE WE TALK ABOUT THIS week's gaming and tech news, but we're also we can completely confirm that the wizard came from the moon. Came from the moon. Sadly, if you looked at this episode's thumbnail, that wizard is soon to be evicted and will not be keeping its place to cast lunar spells for the foreseeable future.
Now, I have an important question regarding this. Sure, yes.
Does that mean that in the future the moon will be more haunted because there is no wizard there to prevent it from being haunted or less haunted because the wizard was the one haunting it? Ah, excellent question. I think it depends on how our story goes today about Destiny 2 because if the wizard just

leaves, then also moon witches crazy these days. If the wizard that first just leaves and they were the haunter, then the Scooby gang won and they would have gotten away for it, too, if it weren't for those pesky kids. Whereas, if the moon wizard dies, then it would still be able to come back more powerful than we could possibly imagine. So, we don't really know exactly what's going to happen. I still think that it's important that we remember that there's a definite non-zero chance that the wizard will open a time capsule with an ancient witch inside and then we will need several teenagers with attitude to save Angel Grove. Ay ay ay, Will. That sounds like a terrible threat. Yeah. Ah, but also we're You know why we're okay? And I'll tell you why. It's because I've heard through the grapevine that a wizard is never late. They arrive precisely when they mean to and therefore we'll be fine cuz then they'll be able to get those teams together lickety-split and it will all work out approximately correct. Yeah. Uh

going to shamelessly piggyback off Tetris Freaks uh comment over in YouTube. Welcome in everybody who's HERE FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE it's Memorial Day here in the States. Uh the gaming news stops for no holiday. We're still here and we're still live and we still got stuff to do. Um so, yeah, we're here, but if you're if you're off, then say hi. If this is your first time live because you were able to have the day off from work, uh say hi. Uh also, great question. Uh The Moon Wizard asked me to choose the method of our destruction. Uh should I be worried? You know, great question. Did you imagine the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Because if you did,
we might be in trouble. Yeah. So, I I think we'll be fine. I think we'll be fine because we got a lot of we got a lot of Brads, a lot of Janets, a lot of Rockys. Actually over on Nebula, hello. Uh I'm glad everyone can actually meet uh here today. I know there's obviously

the holiday, uh but that's also a great time to remind folks that the live version of this show will be moving to Fridays in approximately how many weeks? We said the night Is it the 19th of June? It's the first one after we're back from break, so yes. Okay, cool. That is when uh we're I think we have one more Monday.
We have one more show at this time slot.
Yep. The first, and then we are the studio is on break from the 8th to the 14th. And then there won't be a show on the 15th, and we need you to not panic Don't panic.
will be a show on the 19th. Perfect. Yep. All right. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Also, uh I like this question here. What games everyone playing uh planning to play today? Tyler's playing Horizon Forbidden West, I see. Uh Tetris is saying Hades II. WE HAVE GAMES WHEN WHEN YOU HAVE a day off, chat? What games do you are you gravitating

towards these days? I sadly, not sadly, joyously am am planning a wedding, so I will not be having any time to to play any games today, I don't believe. But, I'm curious what everyone else is trying to do with some time. Oh boy, we got some stuff. Pragmata, excellent. Love love a Pragmata. Uh-huh. Oh, Feldar's playing a good game. Go to the grocery store.
It's a great It's a great one. Uh I like this one. This is This is my answer. The critically acclaimed MMO RPG Final Fantasy 14 now with a free trial that goes all the way to level 80 including the award-winning expansions Heavensward, Stormblood, and now Shadowbringers. Dear god, just play it already.
Also, Tipsy This is honestly probably never been a good better time to do that. Uh we'll be getting more into that momentarily. Yep. Uh probably
Oh, new guy. Uh Yep. I I've heard only good things. Uh Proby's attempting Ascension 10 on

Slay the Spire 2. Good luck. Uh we will be playing some Slay the Spire 2 later, actually, because I need to prep for a collab, which will be happening Wednesday night at a very unusual time slot. It is happening starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern uh this Wednesday. You can find it over here on Twitch. I'll be collabing uh with my buddy Jen is online, and we're going to play some Slay the Spire 2 co-op. So, if you're not around during the day and want to to catch us live later on in the evening, that's a good opportunity to do that. Yeah. Okay. Shall we Shall we begin, Matt? Shall we begin with the ceremonial putting on of the taking off caps? Yeah, uh if everyone would please rise or sit or do whatever you do to pay respects. Um F in chat, perhaps.
I probably absent chat, I suppose, but
[clears throat]
It's been a [singing] long day without you, my friend.

And I
[crying]
And we
[screaming]
Eyes up, guardian. There it is. My fiance closed the door. I did it. I did it. [laughter] She wants to spend the rest of her life with you, but not right now. Not right now. Not right now. Destiny 2, friends. So, okay. So, let's
Pouring one out. Yeah, pour one out. Let's Let's get something clear, straight ahead of time. Destiny 2 is not going away. This is tax for how loud you are. Oh, you taking some of my coffee? At least hold it up so people can see you stealing it.
[laughter]
Yeah, there it is. That's what you get for being so loud.
[laughter]
BUT DESTINY 2, JAMIE, DESTINY 2 is over.

And the door is closed again. Great. Uh the Okay, so, um you know, I I feel like we do approve the coffee tax. This is the best part This has been the best part of Jamie and Matt living together is Jamie's break-ins. AKA the Goblin Queen. She's taking some of my caffeine.
Yeah, um okay, so so Destiny 2 is being sunset. But the game is not going offline. That's true. That is a very important distinction between what we're about to talk about and a lot of other online persistent multiplayer open world games that choose to not call themselves MMOs and we'll fight about that in a second. True. Um Uh it's not going anywhere. It's just not going to receive any new content after June 6th. It's either a six or a nine, and I can't remember. Yeah. So, Bungie posted uh

this on their on their main site on on uh bungie.net on the 21st. Um and essentially Wait, so it's going to be the Yeah, to that end, June 9th, 2026, we will release the final live service content update for Destiny 2 to begin the new journey uh as a studio. AKA, uh a couple things we'll talk about later, but we want to talk about I think the game first before we go into the studio and what it means and what's going on. Yeah. Uh Destiny Destiny for me feels like this is strange. Destiny for me feels like more of an institution than even Halo does for for for gaming. Halo is ubiquitous for a time on the Xbox, I feel like, but Destiny feels like um like for at least a few years there, it was like

the game to be playing, at least in my in my in my gaming zeitgeist and purview. Um Also, I feel like if you're looking at sort of the Bungie of it all with between between Halo and Destiny, obviously one learned a lot from the other. Halo is more of a like a uh uh icon I like an icon / character-driven franchise, where Destiny has characters that were popular like Cayde-6 and Eris and all that stuff, but like nothing was really ever like Master Chief level because that's not really what the game was for. The game uh at when when Destiny 1 dropped I think in September 9th, 2000 14. Um it was something that I didn't know that I always wanted to play, I guess. I think that's That's where you know a game I think is special when it fills a a hole in your gaming profile that you didn't even know existed, right? Like and

I played that throughout the entirety until Destiny 2's drop. Will, you didn't play any Destiny 1, right?
not. I did play Destiny 2 but not Destiny 1. Cuz Destiny 1 was console exclusive and I didn't have a console.
I believe so, yeah. Yeah. And Finn, this is an excellent point. Admittedly avoided Destiny because it felt capturing. It it was. But in the same way that I enjoyed like a and to to Will's point later like an MMO's type capturing. It felt like a world that was always there even when you weren't even though missions you loaded into were, you know, instance-based etc., right? Like the the the hub worlds and things um were the things that kind of made it feel a bit more alive. Yeah. Um Yeah, I think uh
[laughter]
Destiny 1 was such a disappointment especially after they got rid of Dinklage. Even see the ghost edition with his in the VA. Yeah, uh

When they I forget when Was it Nolan North replace him? I got to let Zoe out of the room. Hold on. I I think that's correct. That That sounds correct to me. Yeah. Okay, sorry about that. Um Her Her majesty's needs must come first.
Of course, of course.
[snorts]
Um Yeah, I I um So I I I played the hell out of Destiny 1. I played the the heck out of Destiny 2 which was released on September 6th, 2019. So 5 years later and I believe was it D1 that said it was a 10-year Like they just said it out loud. I got to I got to double-check that cuz when that even when that was sort of announced, it was D1 or D2, everyone's like, "Okay." Uh Fun fact, no matter how popular or bulletproof you think your studio is, don't announce that your game will be a 10-year game. Just make a good game. Unless it's the game has already lasted 10 years and we intend for it to last 10 more, that's okay.
Yeah, it was. It was um the it's a very

It's a very bad called shot to make, especially when you make two 5 years later. Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, and then they moved two obviously from a game that you just sort of sell into sort of a live service game with updates and and expansion packs like you'd buy for an MMO, but with no monthly cost to play the actual game. It's just free to play with too many currencies. And I think um despite the fact I my I that I really did love uh Destiny 2, I didn't get past I'm trying to remember the last expansion that I did. I think it was Shadowkeep. Or no, which queen? I forget which came out which uh came out, but I feel like I fell off probably Uh let's see, what year would that be? Um I don't know, like a few years after. Uh but Destiny 2 for the longest time was You know you have games that

are like the place where you like the only place you see certain friends? Yeah. I had a group of people uh that and this was after I was finished working at MTV. That I and one of them was actually a college friend who was who was in New York uh working in media as well. Shout out to uh a Scott. Uh the he and I would sort of get people together in that group that I would never see anywhere else and every Tuesday morning before we went to work, we would play like two hours of Destiny 2. Uh so like Destiny 2 is a game probably one of the only ones I got up early for to play with specific people because that was the only time it could be done. Yeah.
Um and and I was saying to Will before the show because both Will and I haven't played Destiny 2 in a very long time. Correct. Uh we we tried it once on stream just to sort of re-entering turns out to be a

giant mess. Yeah. Yeah. So. Um but even though we tried I tried multiple times with community members here at at the in the Extra Credits community of trying to like get me back into Destiny. Um because I want to or I wanted to. Um and the barrier for entry to to returning players or new player experience was just too high. But even beyond that I was saying to Will this one like I'm like emotional I think about the closing of the chapter of Destiny in general. Yeah. Um and I'm I'm curious as to why. Again, I don't play it. You know, like and to me the game sort of started a death spiral years ago, couldn't keep my attention or you know, again, that's that's maybe it's my life too sort of moving in different directions, but I still play you know, a

heck ton of night rain. So like I I don't know like it's it's all relative I guess. I think part of it may be that the despite not being master chief level characters, there were enough big larger than life personalities that like felt like they existed in a place. Yeah. Like Cayde felt like he existed in a place and that place like was a thing that would continue to grow and you could go back to, right? And I think a lot of us when um Commander Zavala's uh voice actor, Lance Reddick, passed, right? A lot of us felt something because we remembered Zavala from like whenever you played, right? Like an iconic character that was at the core of the story whenever you played Destiny 2, however much you played, he was there, right? And so I think that that's part of it. It felt It felt like one of the persistent like background players. Even if you didn't engage in

it, it was like a It was like that that neighbor that you always see taking in their groceries down the hall. You don't necessarily have to interact with them, but like occasionally like you share like the hey, we're in the same place. We're doing the same We're We're doing the same thing. Hi. I see you.
uh yeah, I think Mecca brought up a good point that I put up before that mentioned how in Destiny 1 one of their fondest memories is waking up early on Fridays to see where Xur was. If you didn't play Destiny 1, I don't even know if Xur was in Destiny 2. It all bleeds together at this point. Xur was an exotic weapons merchant that moved weekly. Okay. Um and yeah, like I think you know what I think what might This actually maybe helps me piece this together a little bit my my feelings on this. It felt to me or maybe just in my experience, Destiny 1 was the first MMO -esque game that I engaged with deeply on a console. It felt special because it was in a different place. Like I'd played WoW

before. Like I understood the mechanic and I've done things where you need to be places certain times whatever, but like there was something novel about being able to sit on my couch, chat with my friends, and and do this sort of persistent progression in world. And uh know there are other games around it that came out beforehand that would sort of count. I know like even Fantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast was technically doing it. But like I didn't do that, you know? So like this is the first one for me. Um And I think D2 for me had a special place and I've always I've always been pretty up front about this. Destiny 2 was the game that the only game that I had cuz I pre-ordered it like way in advance in a winter where I was alone in a very big apartment with like all of my friends had moved out and I was like running so low and there was uh you know, I was on like the ramen diet essentially until I could find more roommates and so it was like me and Destiny 2 and that was it. And and the friends that I made in Destiny 2 and

running the that first raid series was like what I had for that time period. So it has like that special place in my heart for for what it was on launch. Um and I fell off after that because I found roommates and things got weird and interesting and different and Sure. then 2020 happened and you know. Yeah. You know the rest. Um And I think I think I got a little bit more lost too. And I remember when I think we were probably I think we were doing the show when Destiny announced it would become free to play. Yep. Destiny 2? Um and I was very excited about that. That's one of the one of the times I tried getting back on board. But then I found the connectivity of the the packs you need to buy and the the like it always felt a little more complicated than a Final Fantasy XIV or a or a World of Warcraft where like once every four to six months there's a new expansion and like what would happen with that expansion

would be like you'd get release drops continually like that you didn't have to pay for. And for whatever reason Destiny's felt even if they weren't from a marketing perspective felt more chopped up. Yep. [snorts] Um and I didn't particularly love um, and this was a necessity to get it into free-to-play zone, the, you know, the currency-fication of it all. Like there's like four or five currencies that all mean different things, and some you have to get with real money, and others that, you know, it's just I can't stand that. I just don't have the time to engage with it. Yeah. Um, and I get I'm sorry. So, to that point, one of the things that they're fixing as it goes into this maintenance mode is exactly that problem that Matt's discussing, right? Which is kind of weird. Um, they are bundling all content together into one pack that you pay once for, and then you can just play Destiny 2 for as long as you want. Yeah, which uh, we'll talk about that very briefly, uh, not briefly, just in a second. I think Neo brings up a good point here, uh, about sort of the Warframe and Destiny

of it all. We made a video forever ago about just basically like Destiny kind of just sort of like letting Warframe eat its lunch consistently. Yep. Um, and Warframe's a great game, and I think Warframe is one of those games that despite its crazy complexities and really bad onboarding of new player experiences, for whatever reason, the loop of it, once you kind of get on They both have hurdles. I feel like every time I've dipped back into Warframe, I'm able to get over the hurdle. Not that I like getting over the hurdle, I just can. And Destiny I never could. Yep. Um, however, to uh, to Neo's point, I still think that Destiny and Destiny 2 have the some of the best feeling gunplay of any franchise ever. Like I'm I'm still curious to try Marathon to see if it translates over. If they could give me a game that was Destiny gameplay with Warframe parkour,

I might never play another game ever again. Uh, uh, John, what's our opinion on Destiny Rising? I don't think I have one.
Which was Destiny Rising? Yeah, I don't I don't think I have
us, but I now I must know. Uh It's a Oh, that's right. It's the mobile one. That That would explain why I don't know what it is. The John, have you Have you played [clears throat] it? Like, what's your verdict on it?
Yeah, I I haven't had time or interest in a mobile game in a very long time. Um mostly because if I'm gaming, I have my behemoth rig to just sit down and play stuff. I mean, I get the I get the draw of it, like a thousand percent. I'm curious how it translates on a phone. I might check this out just to try it. As long as you don't have to buy it, I'm

guessing it's free-to-play as well. Yeah. But I'm guessing it takes what? It takes You played it on your PC. Ah. There There is a There is a version of it that came to PC. Uh and it's But it started on Android and iOS. It's a NetEase game. Uh Flamey, I I agree and disagree. I don't think that Destiny and Warframe are really that comparable. I don't think the I think as time has gone on, the comparisons definitely veer. I think what both games were trying to deliver for their fans, what experience that is, and what feeling and vibe overall on the macro, I think is very similar. I think how they chose to engage with trying to get that macro vibe in all of their micro ways that their games actually function, I think is vastly vastly different. I think the um the other the the way that they are similar, and

the way that I generally think of them as being similar, is they are both dark fantasy science fiction shooters that are lifestyle games Yep. and have uh small group co-op. Mhm. Right? That niche is not overly wide, and that is the niche that they share, right? Where like, if I have a fire team, I can either go play Destiny or I can play Warframe, but either way I'll be able to run around and click heads with my friends and create a space wizard build, and that's close enough for most descriptions, though they do veer very differently once we get past that veneer. Yeah. Also, Odin brings up a great point, the PvP. Uh I know there is There is some Warframe PvP, correct? It technically exists and doesn't really. Right. And I I pumped, especially in Destiny 1, hours into Destiny PvP. The thing I really liked about it, and again, you can't do this

in a free-to- I mean, you can, but it's so difficult to balance the value propositions. The thing I loved about Destiny 1 PvP, and some of Destiny 2 before it went free-to-play, was you could, with the cost of your admission of the 50 bucks, 60 bucks, whatever it was, grind and try and get the guns like the Black Spindle, or get like any any possible weapon that you like thinks you get to get a some sort of competitive edge based on your play style. Uh uh and then you could take it into multiplayer. And yeah, the the stats of it would shift slightly, but like, you kit it out gear that you found in single player. And you could take it into multiplayer.
It's got a very um uh how do I put this? It's a more uh wow style PvP experience than it is like a Fortnite style PvP experience or a Halo style PvP experience, which is that those things are sports, right? It's got

that like RPG PvP versus to some extent versus like Halo, where you all load in and you are all on equal footing with whatever the map or your loadout gives you. Yeah. Uh and Odin again, uh the sort of again, the open world is super unique in the MMO world as well, making the world feel much more populated without the issues that channel lists can give. Yeah, agreed. Like I think there's a lot that Destiny and Destiny 2 did very, very well. And I know I also from from the corporate side of things, I think that a lot of the inability to pivot quickly enough in a direction that would be helpful for the ecosystem comes from how Bungie as a company has been traded around like commodity and bought and given up and independented and then bought again. Like I think when you have a constant high-up corporate shakeup,

how you try to keep any semblance of a plan you've been working on for your 10-year game is is a fool's errand. You can't do it. So, um Yeah, and I I Meredith, I think I that's kind of what I'm saying, but I actually don't I don't know if I fully and again, I don't have insider information or anything, but just from an institutional perspective, I don't think I blame Bungie for this. I think I blame all the people that bought and sold and threw out Bungie for this. Because every time that happens, what Bungie has to do to maintain itself changes. Yeah. And you and pivoting like that is hard enough doing it once or twice. I think they did it four times. That sounds correct.
Um and that's um that's that's hard to deal with. So, like, I don't know. I I I am legitimately sad about this

more than usual when I hear of a game, especially one that I don't still play, uh going under. Um though Will, so talk So, what exactly What is exactly is happening on the 9th? Essentially, what goes on sale? What goes on Where is Destiny going?
Okay. So, the the uh update expansion, whatever you want to call it, the the the final finishing touches patch is called Moment of Triumph. And they are re- polishing, reconfiguring the game to be functional in an ongoing sort of persistent state without further updates for a very long time. So, for instance, the director is coming back. The director went away. It's now the hub again. You can go to the director and pick whatever content you want to do, as an example. And they're releasing the second version of Pantheon, which is like a boss rush mode, where you can

play all the different play against different bosses, and they'll be in automatic weekly rotation, and there'll be rewards for that. And there are going to be um new um new abilities, new whatever. They're overhauling the portal. They're doing seasonal events. They've got Eververse set up to be a daily rotation, so they'll have a weekly rotation. And like, so they're making a lot of changes to make it rewarding and worthwhile to stick around and play Destiny 2. Also, they're bringing back Sparrow Racing permanently, which a lot of people were very hopeful for. So, um So, that's all happening. They're also going to be um I cannot find where they say it, but somewhere they mentioned that there will be a complete pack of all of the content that's going to go on sale, so you can buy everything at one price and that there will also be a

discount on content cuz it's essentially content locked that will be happening on June 9th. And then that will be the last major update. Obviously, they'll probably pick push hot fixes. Um
to to to what is happening and there will be security updates, but there won't be any new content after the 9th. And I think as far as updates go, this seems like a pretty good one actually. It feels like this is taking it and making it into I really want to say, and this is going to sound really weird, the kind of game that Team Fortress 2 is. Where there are things the things that you can work on, there are achievements that you can grind for, but it is a social game where you drop in, drop out with your friends and you work on stuff and there are contracts and other things to do, but like that's not really the point. The point is that you all show up and you eat ramen in the tower together. Just like the point [laughter] of Team Fortress 2 is that you lead a team-wide

conga around the entire map and get the enemy team to join in rather than actually playing the game, right? Like that's that's the point. Um I do not know. Someone in chat is asking, "Does the content pack improve the original content that got vaulted?" I don't know. I It does not say. I can't imagine that it does, but it might. Woo! Uh yeah, and to Tetris's point, Tetris has brought up Penny Arcade's really nice comic about it today. And yeah, that's a That's a really, really nice comic. Um if you go to Penny Arcade, their one that today for the 25th Say 25th? My god. Um Yeah, I hope that this is where it lives. Like it will you and I were even talking about like you know, one one more final thing when this comes out if we grab this pack of everything and just seeing if we can like Yeah. get through it like
get get get in and poke around, right? Cuz like
enjoy the experience from a new like I

would trash I would trash everything that I had before it would be a new account essentially. Um and I would want to try to get through it from from a new from a brand new player because I basically am now. Yeah. Um I agree. And I think that this is this is I want to be very clear a really good send-off into this eternal sunset mode, right? It it is a it based on what I'm seeing for the patch notes, it looks like they are they really thought about this and they went, "Hey, how could we make this a game that people will still log into and still enjoy even if we're not making content for it for a really long time, right? How can we make it so that without our inter like without any interaction from us as developers, the game will just continue to work in a way that people enjoy?" And I think they've got it. Well, it there's a couple there's an interesting thing here because what's the best thing for I think someone asked us what the best thing or what we hope for the Destiny franchise moving forward. Something that never excites me

and I know that I'm in the minority here or maybe not is the the ever-present consistent never-ending world. Yeah. Nothing to to quote Vision from the seminal film Avengers Age of Ultron, nothing is beautiful because it lasts. Like endings are what make things not not not the ending itself, but the fact that it ends makes something special, makes something complete, makes it feel like it's not just you being especially in a world where story can be uh essentially commoditized commoditized What's the word I'm looking for? Can be sold to you, commodified, thank you, consistently forever. At a point you're like, well, what at what point does it stop being a story because you want to tell it and it's good and you want to keep telling it because it's the product? Yeah. And to me, even though I know the story of Destiny 2 was good, many people told me that. The marketing and the style of it and

the fact that it was sort of free-to-play and the way that they sort of did their announcements and launches and roadmaps and everything always kind of made it feel like and and I think a lot of that, again, not Bungie, is sort of the corporate passing of the football, made it feel like it was just, oh, we're doing this because it makes money and this is what we have to keep doing it. And listen, from a YouTuber, that's like often times, sometimes you get into lulls and you have, like sometimes you just have to make the thing to keep your people in your company paid. Like that's there's no, anyone who says otherwise is is very, very wrong. Like, you know, you do that so that when you hit moments of specialty and things that you're passionate about and that you can keep doing, you you the goal is to make as much of your stuff that you do on a consistent level special. But everything can't be special because then nothing is special. So, um I think along with sort of what Will is saying here and I think he kind of convinced me with this, I think that this sort of end game push in

a sense of like, nope, here's the game, it's done, go play. Is actually the thing that's going to make a lot of people more excited about Destiny 2 than they were. Because before, it was background noise and now it will be a finished experience. Yeah. And that's going to get a lot more mileage, I think, than just having a constant hum of game radiation in a already crowded marketplace. Yep. Um 100%. And and the last thing on that is even though there's some bad news coming uh if the company is smart or the companies that own the company are smart Sony. Sony, don't make me regret being a Sony pony, you piece of uh they could take the resources and the money that they are saving by doing this and put it

towards something that they're excited about or a future of Destiny, etc. Even though there is no announcement right now at all of anything close to a Destiny 3. Like it's not even on the table.
have in fact confirmed that they have not thought about or begun working on anything called Destiny 3. Which a lot of people were immediately jumping to. They were like, "Oh my god, this means Destiny 3." No, wrong. And it's good that they were honest about it. Yeah. Correct. They could have They could have put up a uh uh a trailer of beautiful mountains and a logo across them and then we wait years. A 10-year plan. Um Uh I did I did want to I'll just as as we move out of like retrospective thoughts on Destiny 2, I did just want to curse all of you with the knowledge that I was gifted by the internet. The entire Destiny franchise lived and died between Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto 6. YOU'RE WELCOME.
WOW. YOU know what I hated

at first uh about Destiny 1 that looking back it's so quaint and fun and I wish I didn't naysay it at the time was the Grimoire. The Grimoire on your phone where like all the lore wasn't in the game. You had to like look it up with cards you unlock in the game that go to your account. It seems like such an extra step. But man, that seems like a novel and fun little thing today. I don't know. Yeah. Uh okay, let's let's get on to some of the the bad like if this is the good, um, let's let's talk about the bad. So, we got two two weird pieces of bad stuff. One. Uh, there are a bunch of layoffs incoming. Uh, Jason Schreier has the story at Bloomberg. Um, it does not look good. Um, this does not look like a decision that was made because they've got something cool on the horizon. This looks like a decision that got made cuz Bungie's running out of money. Because people were like, "Hey, does this mean Marathon was doing well?" No. No, it doesn't. At least not

on PC. Marathon's really not doing well on PC. It might be doing okay on console, but we don't have numbers for that. Marathon's already under 10,000 daily uh, on SteamDB, um, which is like something I would consider a representative sample, right? Of all of the Steam players playing uh, playing games. Uh, currently there are 6,784 people in game in the middle of a day on a holiday in several countries that play Marathon, and it has a 24-hour peak of 11,000. Uh, it's it's tw- it's all-time peak on Steam was only 88,000. It's not doing well. Uh, and it's not generating
Even though from all accounts, people that have played it have told me they like it. Yeah. Um, so, yeah, that's not great. Um, so, it does look like they're going to be suffering some pretty heavy layoffs as Destiny 2 wraps up. Um, I believe one of the sort of upshots was that there would be a

um, there would be a way to like have people pitch different um, projects or reasons that they should stick around, but a lot of people are just going to be leaving. Yeah. Uh, and that's that's not
Again, that's not official. That's just what the sort of writing on the wall, and Jason is very rarely wrong when it comes to these sort of things. That is correct. Uh remember, Sony acquired Destiny for 3. 6 6 billion dollars. And it's not made close to that. Well, it it it has not made it has not made that cuz I think the the losses at least so far and I don't know exactly uh how this is gutted out. The losses since 2022 I think are 766 million, which is bad but not like nothing bad.
I I I think again
[sighs]
it's that like it feels like it's

[sighs]
they think that making it smaller with less people will save the money, but I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think it's Yeah. just going to slowly make it harder to make something special again. Yep. Uh Yeah. Uh new guy, uh what was Sony thinking? Bungie doesn't make money. You know what they were thinking? I'll tell you exactly what they were thinking. They saw Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard King and they're like, we need something. Yep. This is a this is something. Ooh, this is something they used to have even though they let them go. Um Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I I I think Madashu has it exactly. They were hoping for a live service genre. Yeah. I think it's right. And they would have had one if it was 20 Not really a live service per se, but like 2017 20 19. Um Yeah. Yeah. And then
So yeah, there's a petition over here. 180,000 have signed it. That's not going

to probably be nearly enough to do anything. Look, I don't think that like Here's how I know Destiny's not over. Whatever it whatever it becomes, that's a whole 'nother thing. Uh Marathon is an old Bungie game. When would When did the first Marathon come out? I You know, that's a really great question. I'm going to look that up right now.
series
1994
Yep. And then the most recent one before the one that released March 5th uh and it had the incredibly incredibly [snorts] poor fortune to launch simultaneously on PC with Slay the Spire 2, um which is a phrase I did not think I was going to say ever. Uh was in '96 with Marathon Infinity. Wait, that had Slay the Spire 2? Uh yeah, so March 5th was the day that

Slay the Spire 2 released and it overshadowed Marathon on Steam. Oh, the new Marathon. Sorry. Yeah, I I got confused we were talking about '96 and we were like, "Slay the Spire, what the hell?" Um
correct. And and I think RC's got this, right? New Marathon isn't anything like old Marathon. It's just a different game with the Bungie known IPs name slapped on it. Yes. And that's part of the problem and why Marathon hasn't done super well is that Marathon is a PvP game for a franchise that's historically been PvE. Yeah. Right. Um So
I'll let the cat in now. I'm going back and forth. I had to put the cat out. I let the cat in. I just keep hearing the thing.
Wha- While we're letting her majesty back in, uh there is uh as a matter of fact, a position with about 180,000 signatures for Sony to develop Destiny 3. I feel as though those people grotesquely underestimate the number of signatures they would need to incentivize Sony to develop a Destiny 3

given the track record of Destiny 2 and the current track record of Bungie. Um It It's They're off by about a digit at least.
Yeah. And probably double. You need to like double or triple that number and add a digit, like at least, in order to really get somewhere. Um Oh,
[clears throat]
yeah. Well, could you put Ryan's thing on? My hands are kind of busy right now. Ryan says, "I'm not sure Destiny is is not over because they might bring Marathon back as a great metric. They can't bring a franchise back if they already have one to make it." True, but I'm saying like the the the IP itself. Sadly, or not sadly, I don't really know, IP doesn't ever seem to die. Yep. It just goes into hibernation. Yep. I don't think we're going to I I have no high hopes that we're going to get something remotely like what Destiny 1 or 2 was from the Destiny franchise ever again. I agree. But that doesn't mean that stories told in that space or in that world will never come back. Yep. You know. And

then lastly, there's Bungie infighting. We should probably should address this real quick.
Sure.
So, a lot of Destiny fans are upset at Marathon because Marathon came out and then Destiny 2 got sunset and they were like, "Oh my god, it's Marathon's fault." So, they went and tried to review bomb Marathon. And you remember when I was talking about how many people are actually playing Marathon, right? And it's not very many. This is the Steam review score. So, they tried to review bomb it. The whole bunch of people from the Destiny community went and review bombed it. And you can kind of see like the little red down vote thing on the far right-hand side of that. And then like all of the people who had ever bought Marathon all came and left positive reviews. So, it's this really funny like weird Bungie infighting thing that's happening over the Marathon review score because Destiny 2 got sunset. Really weird. Just just another incredibly weird facet of

the way that people's minds think about games online. Just [snorts] doesn't make any sense to me, but there you have it. It's insane. Yep. Uh makes no sense. Yeah, just yeah. I'm I'm I'm kind of with last of Avari here. Let's just don't. Just Yeah, yeah, let's just don't. Just don't. And that, dear friends, is sunsetting of Destiny 2. It's a bittersweet ending, right? Like I'm real glad. This is definitely not the worst ending Destiny 2 could have gotten. They could have just pulled it. Right? So, like having it be a persistent online world that continues to function, that continues to have a place for players to do their stuff indefinitely, by the way. Destiny 1 is still online. You can still play Destiny 1. You can still play Destiny 1, right? Like that's great. This is This is not

This is not like Destiny 2 is going away. This is Destiny 2 is doing the same thing that like Final Fantasy 11 is doing. Final Fantasy 11 is looking at ways to make new content in an MMO that's older than a non-trivial part of our viewing audience. Yeah. Right? Like if it's around and it keeps existing and it's still online, it could come back later. Right? It is being sunset. That does not mean that there won't be a sunrise. It just means that for right now there are no plans to make more content. And I think that's actually as Will said, kind of the best news in a realistic setting that Destiny 2 could get right now, regardless. Yep. So, don't cry because it's over, just smile because it was. Eyes up, Guardian. Well, maybe we'll do some content around uh around the final patch or the final package or however they're going to name it. And uh we'll see. Maybe maybe Well, maybe this is the start of our of our Destiny 2 era. Who

knows? Yeah.
Cuz we know we can finish it. Yeah, that's Yeah, that's a good Yeah, that's a good Yeah. Yeah. I I agree. Um Okay, now is time for us to do fake ads for things you can't buy while Twitch chat gets some real ads for things that they can buy. We're doing this to keep pre-rolls off over on Twitch so that when people roll in, they don't roll into 3 minutes of ads, they roll it directly to our smiling faces. So, we're going to do this planned ad break now uh while Matt and I do some stuff that you can't buy. Cool? Yeah. All right. You got one, Will? You had one from the pre-show.
Here we go. And three, two Hi there, everyone. Will from Extra Credits next to Matt from Extra Credits who just introduced me as Will from Extra Credits who's going to do this ad. Have you ever wanted to take my patented class on shutting the hell up? Well, don't worry. I'm releasing the patent to the public. It's just Will's class on shutting the hell up now. I You The

patent belongs to all of us. I shouldn't be holding on to this to this incredible technique that will save you money and save you players and keep you from getting sued into oblivion over stupid crap you said on the internet. No, now everyone can shut the hell up and not actually need to pay me royalties. Just Just shut up. Wow, Will, that's so That's so nice of you. That's just really kind, I think.
gift to the world. That's really, really nice. Um What's that? Oh, uh I've just been So sorry. I've just been told that I'm uh not going to do the ad read. Hold on. Uh give me 2 seconds. Someone else is going to come in and do the ad read real quick. Give me a moment. Hit the Hit the Hit the sound. Hello, this is not Matt from Extra Credits. This is Matt's legal counsel from Extra Credits next to Will from Extra credits sitting where Matt from extra credits used to sit. I have been

informed that Will has decided to unpatent his patented class on shutting the hell up. However, that is actually something that Will cannot legally do due to the fact that he has actually patented it before and people have licensed that patent in the past. You are basically devaluing the ability for those people to make money off of a license off of the patent that you did and therefore, I think that that might be something that you actually can't do. So, more people will not be shutting the hell up and therefore, they'll be still running their mouth quite a bit. I don't know if this is actually law advice or not because nothing I've said is actually legal. I'm running out of breath. Thank you for my time. Goodbye. Okay. Yeah. Um Did that make sense? Oh, oh, we were doing it again? We're doing it again. Hi there, everyone. Will from extra credits next Matt from extra credits. You just came back from Matt's legal counsel from extra credits when the Matt's legal counsel walked off and the Matt returned. Uh here to tell all of you that my [music] legal counsel that Matt's legal counsel should have taken my class.

Matt's legal counsel should have taken my class and shut the hell up. I get to do whatever I want with my class on shutting the hell up. So, maybe I just won't enforce my patent rights and just tell everyone that they can do it and I'll hold on to the patent, but they won't need to do the thing. Listen, it's mine. I can do it. You shut the hell up. That's really the important part, right? Is if if I get to control shutting the hell up, then then they should shut the hell up and and let me do the thing. He says he'll see you in court. Uh
[laughter]
Is this is this where we lace up our our sick basketball shoes and have a run on
Yeah, he's going to say this is not legal advice. He's going to see you on the court and it will be Uh what's the what's the lamest court? It's not a basketball court. What's the lamest sport? Squash court. Squash court? Squash. Um Although although squash courts are also used for high alai, which is like one of the most like amazing sports. So, Squash is the

the food court. See you in the food court. The golf court. Pickleball. Pickleball court.
Wiffleball. Yeah.
[laughter]
Wait, I'll see you on the wiffleball court. How was there court for wiffleball? Okay. Great. Yeah, putting shut the hell up into creative commons non-commercial by attribution share alike. Yeah, exactly. What is this? The Rusty Quill? What is going on here?
100%. Okay. So, uh we've got some other stories that we're going to tackle. Uh let's dive into them. Number one. A bit of meta commentary on the way that gaming uh journalism works. The Gamer has decided that they don't like people or money or
No, I think they decided that they like money more than people, but that that specific want and/or desire has clouded their ability on or their their thought

process on how they can actually make money. Yeah, so um Valnet owns Polygon, Game Rant, Open Critic, Collider, and a bunch of other stuff. They are doing a new contract with The Gamer as of the 21st. Uh and the writers of The Gamer are now only really getting paid if their articles exceed a view threshold. There is a the new contract is saying that. Yes.
Uh they before they get paid regardless I think a bonus based on view like clicks and etc. This new contract at The Gamer would make it so uh that if they didn't hit a threshold of at least a thousand clicks, uh they wouldn't be paid for their writing at all. And then everything every amount after that would essentially be paid per click. I think I I forget exactly what

the rate is, but the contracts have been divvied out to people to replace their current contracts. Many people are saying this is essentially like soft layoffs cuz no writer, I think, in their right mind would sign said contract. Correct. Yeah, clickbait is Yeah, I think I think Minashi has actually got it. Um clickbait is now a job requirement at The Gamer, right? So, all of that to say that uh I won't be referencing Gamer articles anymore, and you probably won't see us talk much about them if this is how they're going to treat their staff because wrong, incorrect. Sometimes I'm I'm down to like be like, "Hey, let's think about all of the" No. No. Mhm. No, you do work, you get paid. That's how it works, in dollars. Not in exposure, not in in potential future earnings, not in uh No, you get paid in dollars for work that you do, or I don't consume the product. What a hardcore indictment on the management of The Gamer? Um and

specifically Valnet if they're letting this happen because here's the sad truth if you're going to make content as a a form of profit, if you are the uh you know, the the higher-ups there and things aren't happening or working or whatever, it or or or you know, it is essentially on you to ensure that they do. Um you can't just arbitrarily be like, "Oh, no, we're changing it now. Uh I don't want to do the work and figure out why things aren't working or make it work better, so you just better make it work better or you don't get paid." Like, that's not exactly like it's on that That's not how anything works. Especially, that's not how um No, that's really not I was going to say in this particular case like you have the bonus bonus you have the additional complication of something being a creative field. Yep. Talk about the the entire drive of destroying someone's want for creativity. Like it's all you're doing here is essentially

rewarding the most slop you could get people to click on and not read. Yeah. Your product is now eyeballs on advertisements more than it ever has been. Right. Um Yeah, this is this is gross. Um I don't think there's any more to say about that. It's just gross.
just it's like I guess the you know, to a PSA to the choir here. Um We can when we pay attention. I fully believe this. Nine times out of 10 realize when something is like clickbait slop and what when something isn't. And I think I have you know, trying to make sure that when I see like a thumbnail or an article or something where I just like where the headline like you know, you can just tell now when a headline is more than the sum of the parts of the story. Yep. I just try not to click those or I look for a different source.

Do you know what I mean? Like without even looking or clicking on the article cuz I don't want to reward Yeah. I I don't want to have fallen into the trap cuz at the end of the day it's bait, right? Um So yeah, just watch what you click. Yep. Support sites that support the actual people that make them and not the robots that three people own. Uh yeah, that seems right. Um I saw a YouTube video titled Wrath of Khan is a bad movie and I was like that's bait. Actually, I think there's a video out recently that's Wrath of Khan is a bad movie and it actually has like salient arguments to support his point, but yeah.
There was some uh hold on. There was like but like this is my other thing. Like as as again on YouTube you're always looking for the thing that makes people want to click the thing. Like like there's nothing wrong with that. Um I want to see if I can find uh oh uh by Rasputin uh fellow fellow Nebula person a day ago.

They have a uh a game that is it's a picture of a biotic commander swinging across the words that just says bad games in big letters. So you get that then underneath that kind of rule and then the best mechanics from air quotes bad games. That's a banger title. That is that like the whole package there works and is uses the emotional grab of what could be clickbait for something that is absolutely not clickbait. Yeah. And that's what you want to that's what you want to reward. We the thing is we always say it's not clickbait if it's true. But the problem is not every We run into this with Games With Breakfast. Like with thumbnails and titles and things like that. There's a million ways we could sort of lie and get more clicks, but people would stay less and it wouldn't be an honest show. Yep. So yeah. Anyway, I like it when it when you see examples of that. Also check out that video. It's very very good. Yep. Um yeah. Okay.

Uh next up we got to talk about Vanguard Riot anti-cheat. So Riot Riot's on this Vanguard anti-cheat thing for a while. It's when I stopped playing Riot games cuz it's a kernel level uh anti-cheat that activates on boot. Unlike Easy which only activates when you're playing the game, Vanguard has to be on from the second you boot your computer until you turn it off. Um and there are more allegations emerging that it is taking some pretty stream extreme measures to try and get people to conform with uh Riot's idea of what is and isn't okay when you're playing the game. Um there is a There's an update now that has potentially

um made Vanguard more aggressive and begun to interfere potentially with the drivers for uh SATA and NVMe um hard drives. That's insane. Yeah, so huh. There's there's a a firmware that's used to disguise cheats called DMA. And DMA is a driver that essentially in part runs your hard drives. And that is one of the things that Vanguard is like disallowing or or or blocking. And so um by some accounts, Vanguard suddenly triggered an I am I O M M U restart warning in game after which the DMA firmware became completely unusable even without the game running or after uninstalling Vanguard. The only fix is a full OS reinstall.

So your computer's not bricked, but it is non-functional until you do one of the most annoying fixes possible.
It's drywalled. Correct. Now I I want to I want to bring up another uh another thing. Are there legitimate non-cheating reasons to have DMA on your computer? I'm going to go I'm going to I'm going to issue a controversial statement. I don't really care. I don't I don't really care. If your computer if if your anti-cheat messes with something that I put on my computer for any reason to the extent that it's going to like mess with my OS, I don't think I want it on my computer because I don't want it like it's a it's a case it's an example that like I don't I don't want that. Right? I don't I don't want I don't want a piece of software that has that capability for any reason on my computer. Right? I do like Medusa's. Maybe it's just me, but if your game requires that level of

anti-cheat, maybe your game maybe it's your game [laughter] that's the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um the Huh. Riot is now gloating over making some hardware that's been used to cheat at Valorant uh completely useless. Um and uh they They are denying that they're that that it's been this aggressive despite accounts that it has been. But of course Riot has to say that. I just think it's like regardless of what Riot's intention was, I'm inclined to believe the veracity of multiple statements that say that people had a severely negative impact on their PC for whatever reason, right? Like the most an anti-cheat should be able to do is tell me I can't play their game. Yeah, like

there's no problem
The limit is you don't get to play our game. That's it. Yeah. Uh the second that there's something that damages actually hardware or causes you to have to do a reinstall or any of that stuff, that I think does I would imagine I have to check this, but does get into sort of like legal territory. Like if it can be proved. Again, proving that is incredibly difficult because The
[clears throat]
most people in charge of the laws don't understand computers, um but they or I should say most people that would be determining cases on that. Um you're essentially distributing software that damages things people own. Yep. So Yeah. I [snorts] uh so yeah, I don't this this this a good this a good uh yeah, this a good reminder. Maybe not maybe maybe don't. Maybe not this. All right, next up we've got a brief update on the Arena Union. So
Oh, yeah. Uh the several weeks ago, the

Magic Arena team voted to unionize under Communication Workers of America. Good, great, excellent, awesome. This is the team that makes the um more popular digital client for Magic Arena on PC and mobile and everywhere else. And they got letters. They got letters from from Wizards that were like the
From the moon. the worst cringe anti-union like please don't letters, right? Um Hold on. Uh So that it's like all factually true, but not helpful, right? And like is worded in a very scary way, right?
Uh I would see it's funny. I would posit it's worded in an incredibly weak weak and not scary way. Like like there are and have been and sadly will continue to

be union busting letters that go out all the time like it with veiled threats and things that are like like truly um abhorrent in some ways. This letter feels like it was trying to ride a weird line that doesn't exist of like not threatening but getting the information that would constitute a threat across and all it does truly if you read the whole thing you can go to let me find the it's in the show notes where the the the blue sky post where this is from from the dev. Um all this does is be like unionizing seems like a really awesome idea if I'm getting this wet noodle of a threat letter. Right. I also want to point out that one of the big issues with this letter is that they get something wrong. They get like a very fundamental thing wrong. The letter presupposes that the Arena union wants

communication workers of America to represent them. Which isn't how this works. Right.
They want to form a union that would be part of the overall union of communication workers of America but they still maintain the right to collectively bargain as the team. Yeah. And this is like talking a lot about CWA and I think the um it it's just it it really feels like Wizards is shaking in their boots. Um so a reminder if you can voice voice your support publicly for the Arena union. If you're if you're someone who plays magic or engages with magic or whatever bringing this up repeatedly and telling people that union good is is my small part of and they're they're going to keep throwing like no please don't unionize until the vote happens and then hopefully they'll just cry salty tears and collectively bargain with the entire Arena team. Um so you know

Yeah, it's it's it's what a what an odd what an odd little um compliment threat. I have no idea what to call it. I I just it's it's useless except for honestly helping the side that they don't seem to want somehow. All right. By show of hands or hype, how um how many of you have heard of a game called Spellcasters Chronicles? Now I know those two words are probably in a series of other nerdy things that you engage with but specifically for this question that Will is positing, you need to have heard of them both together as one unit Spellcasters Chronicles. Spellcaster Chronicles pardon the the Chronicles are plural. Yeah. Okay, great. So no one Yeah, only

because it was in the news last last week. No, but it sounds cool. No, I just heard of them right now. Does that count? Okay, great. Excellent. Wonderful. Okay, so if you have no idea what it was, Spellcasters Chronicles was Quantic Dream's MOBA. Now and you might be like Quantic Dream, aren't they the people who made Detroit become human? And I would say yes. Yes, they are. They are the people who made Detroit become human and they did make a MOBA and it was several years in the making and it lasted a grand total of 3 months. It was out for 3 months on the market a MOBA multiple years in the making and they yanked it and they're shutting it all down. I've never played it. I know nothing about it. I'm at their website right now. I'm sorry that it is stopping. I think

I've even read just in the beginning of the story that some people did like it and thought it was good. Other people thought it was fine but buggy and other games did the thing better. It doesn't really matter one way or the other. Here's my God, here's my pitch to any dev who is making a brand new IP specifically in a loaded space like the MOBA space or the hero shooter space or the Battle Royale space or extraction looter space. Don't name your games two incredibly generic words. There's nothing wrong with how this game looks. In fact, it has a pretty neat art style that like the colors pop a little bit so much where you're just like, oh, it's this feels like a mobile game kind of thing, but if you look at the character designs a little deeper, they do actually look really nice. Um it feels like just another game, you

know, point in the MOBA space. But I'm looking at Spellcaster Chronicles. It's like the font they use is a hair off of the D&D font. Um and I'm just like I can't help but How does a group put so much time and money and effort on and this is the high end I think, but like Spellcaster Chronicles feels like a temp name. Like you have to I hate I'm bringing a lot of stuff back to YouTube now, which is stupid. You have to think about what you're going to call your thing before you make your thing. Spellcasters Chronicles tells me nothing truly about the vibe of this game other than there's magic in it. Mhm. And the space is too overloaded for that. Um and I'm not saying like and again, we've

talked about uh high garden marketing. We've talked about all those stuff. Often times these games don't have huge marketing budgets. That's a whole another thing. But like the things you can control truly is the name of what your thing is. Yeah. Um I I'm not trying to come down hard on a on a game that's being uh shut down. Again, it's just it's another game onto the pyre, which sucks because I know a lot of people worked hard on it. Um and by all for all intents and purposes, like I'm just looking at screenshots, it looks neat. I will say it does have uh significant shades of uh Warmachine and Hordes. The character in the front that's about to get blasted by a purple spell orb thing looks just like a troll spell caster from uh Hordes. The Privateer The original Privateer Press game, now Steamforged. Like it this looks to me like a remix between World of Warcraft and um

and League. Yeah. Like and that's fine. Like there's nothing wrong Everything can't be the most innovative looking thing in the world. It just looks clean and good. You need to be somewhere between Spellcasters Chronicles and Kingdom Hearts 2.0 Decky Venti Caffeinata Epic Star 11.7. Yeah. I also want to make it very clear, naming something is very difficult. But if you're going to put this much time and money into something, I think it's worth taking the time to figure out what you're going to call it. Chat is also very correct in that there was clearly insufficient marketing spend here. If nobody in chat has heard of it, or very few people in chat have heard of it, or most of you heard of it in the context of it shutting down, there is a key failure of marketing here, right? Like that I I don't I don't know how else to put it. Like there's there's enough of you here that someone

on odds should have been like I played that game and I thought it was okay. If it was like a free-to-play game with any amount of marketing spend. Right? Like someone should have at least installed it. Here's here's my question. I need I need Brad and Janet on YouTube and Twitch and you can message us on Blue Sky if you're watching this over on Nebula good old friends Rocky. Um I want you this is this is a hard assignment but it should it's an easy one to type but hard to nail down. I want you to send me the most and and these have to be real games that exist. This isn't a wrong answers only thing. I really want you to think about this. What are the what is the most successful game you can think of that also has the most generic name? Hi. I'm trying to think of one right now. Minecraft.
Minecraft. I don't know if I count I I that it did

It's funny cuz now that's so ubiquitous. Right? League of Legends a lot of people are saying. Guild Wars. Oh, that's a good one. Bravely Default. Bravely Default.
Dark Souls. But like some of this stuff Fortnite, Portal, Halo, Quake all of those things OverWatch. I would posit that that those are all good names that give you a vibe and invite you into discover more and you find what they are. Destiny very interesting.
Triangle Strategy. Apex Legends. Very good. But even Apex Legends I feel like it does like Does it Spell Crashers yeah. Apex Legends says to me that I'm going to be in I'm going to be controlling very powerful people probably a few of them cuz there's only a few in the Legends of the thing and I'm doing it. Spellcaster Chronicles tells me nothing. Like I don't know if if you didn't tell

me it was a MOBA, I wouldn't know it was a MOBA.
Oh, The Finals. Yeah, that yeah.
Oh, yeah.
The Finals.
I don't even know what that is. I do. It's it's really funny. Uh or it's it's really funny that like some people immediately know and some people don't. It's funny and a lot of these things and and and maybe this is a games history kind of thing. A lot of people have said Final Fantasy. Right? Because it doesn't It's also very not true. But like I wonder if those things are specifically like they work because they were invented in a time when the space wasn't as filled. Yeah. It's also And this is something, too. Disfunc says Payday, okay? So Payday on its own with just the word, you're absolutely right. But every piece of marketing and the way that Payday is written and the images behind Payday tell you it's a crime game or it's a GTA style game, right? Like you're you're going to be robbing people. So like that

does it. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, I these are all great. Thank you for doing it. It's just interesting. Code Vein. Hold on. I love this one. I need to bring this up. Firstly, I'm sick of hearing about Apex. Want to hear more about Monkey Apps or I don't know. Chinchilla biceps.
Chinchilla biceps would be great.
Chinchilla biceps coming to you later this year from EA. I'll even say this, it's Quest 64 works. Quest initially tells you it's going to be an RPG. By the way, Quest 64 is a garbage pile of garbage.
It's so bad.
bad.
But I knew what I was getting when I rented it from Blockbuster. I was a child. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Okay. Uh Let's let's move on cuz we got to Thank you for doing that, by the way. I very much appreciate it. Yeah, very good. All right, on on kind of a similar topic Steam is is overhauling its tags, um which I think is actually really great.

Um I just wanted to bring this up because it's it's a thing that really matters. Um so, I I just I also want to claim victory. I just want to claim victory. So, if a game is like Vampire Survivors or 20 Minutes Till Dawn or um uh Everything is Crab or an- um any number of of games in this milieu there was some discussion over what those games should be called. And some people said, "We should call them survivor games because you survive for a period of time and they're like Vampire Survivors." And I said, "No, we're not doing the roguelike thing again." And Steam AGREES WITH ME. THOSE GAMES are now on Steam called bullet heaven games, which was the name that I was using for them. And so, I feel quite vindicated. You did it.
I feel I Yeah, it's I alone did it. I I Willerber E Credits did the Did he do

it? Legal says you did it. So
Yeah, see. Yeah. Um So, uh there are there are new tags. They've cleaned up some tags. Um there are things Steam [laughter] store tags removed by Valve include things like crowdfunded, Dungeons & Dragons, feature film, Games Workshop, Illuminati,
[snorts]
rogue-vadia, rogue-vania,
rogue-vadia. So, uh they they are revamping the tag system. This is going to impact the way that some games are um are are are done. Um there are now language learning games or espionage or samurai or falling blocks, or um woosha, or whatever.
Capybara, there's only I think one or one to 13 games so far that have the capybara tag, and I like that they're keeping it a little fun. Yeah. Um yeah. Uh so, I'm I'm excited that they're doing this. I think it's good. I think this is a really interesting

experiment in seeing if this affects the way that people think about games. Um but either way, I'm very excited to have new tags to peruse when I'm looking for the next game to play on stream. Yeah. Well, they've also removed the not safe for work tag. Correct, but they have replaced it with I thought they replaced it with something else, but they may not have. Well, I was doing that as a transitional element into our next story. Oh, I suppose we could also do that. Kickstarter. Um had a had a brief a brief moment where they were like, "You can't do not safe for work content on our platform anymore." And a large number of creators and backers and lots of people went, "Are you sure about that?" And then Kickstarter said, "Our bad. We heard you. Please keep spending money on our platform. It's just that Stripe really hates it when we try and fund not safe for work projects through them, and it's

causing a bunch of problems, but okay, we hear you. We'll we'll continue to let you do the not safe for work things on our platform." Uh so, this was I I will say this is closer than it should have been. Like, people shouldn't have
Well, it's also not gone. Also, by the way, David, hello. You made it. Welcome on in. You never arrive late. You arrive precisely when you mean to. I guess wizards are the theme of this show today.
Yeah. Um This happened with with with itch and not with itch with um I don't know with itch and Steam and a couple of other places, too.
and like a bunch Yeah. Basically, credit card issuers and groups petitioning them causing essentially basically making credit card companies the arbiters for I guess what's appropriate air quotes. Um and that is a precedent and a place and a way that we should not be doing. Their only job is to move money and scrape some off the top like the

like the parasites that they are. Um That's fine. That's what we've all agreed to with the credit card model. That's the convenience. We pay for the convenience and they get a cut. Uh they don't get to decide what we get to spend our money on as long as it is something that is not you know obviously not illegal in the grander scheme of the law. What they are doing here with Kickstarter Kickstarter basically tried to pull what other places did based on Stripe the issuing company giving them guff. People fought back and now they're not like fighting Stripe on this. They just had Stripe and them come up with a list of things that would they say they can delist projects or cancel projects mid-project and you better hope that yours doesn't fall into those things. Now, the problem here still persists. I don't know if any of you have ever run a Kickstarter. But essentially if there's a pull plug because the credit card company doesn't like you button, you could run and work for a year to pitch a Kickstarter that then is in its

third week out of four and then all of the sudden based on something that they do or change or whatever, then it's just gone and they won't process your payments with the credit card. Like this is a bad precedent that is not a it is made the Kickstarter platform less safe for truly anyone to engage in. We're going to And this sucks too. We're planning on doing a Kickstarter uh later this year for our calendar for the next calendar that we're doing. Um for the next year history. I I now we have to pour through not that any of our stuff is remotely what we would consider not safe for work or anything that would be affected by this, but the fact that there's a lever that a credit card company can just pay and now we have to dance around this thing that is not based on anything around the law. That's a huge other hurdle for people doing larger projects on Kickstarter. So, no wonder people are getting pissed and and and speaking up. Yep.

Ironically, they have become safe less safe for working. Yep. Yeah, correct. So, uh I'm glad I'm glad they backed off. I'm mostly glad that enough people uh got good and loud and upset that caused Kickstarter to back off. Good. This is a great example of when companies start doing a stupid that you don't like. Yeah. Be incredibly loud and obnoxious to them. Just like as a company, just like hey at Kickstarter, why are you doing this? Hey at Kickstarter, right? Call them, email them, send them snail mail, like whatever, but be annoying, right? Let them know that there are enough people that care that they shouldn't do this. They essentially like and again, this is a victory because now it's not a Kickstarter blanket thing. Now while it still can happen, it's pointing the ire

at the right place. It's going to be harder to get that message across, basically, but at least it's there, right? Like it's not it's not the person uh it's not it's not the company that's doing the crowdfunding, it's the company that um essentially empowers the other company to do crowdfunding. Yep. Right. Speaking of ludicrous things in crowdfunding. A billion dollars. What is happening? A billion dollars. On the 24th, two a day ago, I guess, right? Yep.
That when this happened? Star Citizen officially crossed one billion dollars in crowdfunding for a game that like doesn't really exist. That my brain is broke. Okay, so how they did this essentially

um Imperium made They also you can track it just be in the show notes. You can track like the the donations and everything on their website. They're being pretty transparent about it, so it seems. Uh but essentially they offered a new financial milestone that shot them through here, which is essentially a new ship priced at And again, there's a ship you cannot fly or use in game yet. I just want to be very clear. Goes on sale for $5,000. Now, it's not just any ship. You actually have It's called the Anvil Odin capital ship. And it's And it went on sale as a quote limited vehicle concept pledge. Uh according to them, this means the ship is in development, but it's not yet ready. You'll get a rental ship until then, but also you have to be a um a founder, per se. Uh you have to be the Odin's founder club, and this requires writing an actual essay explaining why you want the Anvil Odin. And then they get to approve you to buy it. Now, look.

I'm not mad at that part. I actually think if you have an exorbitant, gigantic digital purchase in your game that costs $5,000, the least you can do is make people jump through enough hurdles where they question buying it for a little while. Yeah. BUT COME ON. IT'S ALSO meant for a crew of 33 to 65 plus human players. So, like you would captain it and then you would have the ship like
a guild ship. You get your entire guild to fly one ship. Again, in a game that is not out. Oh, no, I'm sorry, the alpha is out, right? You can play an alpha but not this ship in the alpha.
this was so good. Hold on. Uh Agar asks, "Is this stay-home syndrome?" I don't know. I look I don't want I don't want any game to fail. Yeah. But this is this I don't know. I look I don't want I

don't want any game to fail. Yeah. But this is this has been going on for a while and a billion dollars a billion dollars. Yeah. It's GameStop, right?
Do you know how many games you could fund with a billion dollars that have actually come out? Like I think so so this is this is very much like a lot of other crowd-funded MMOs, right? Cuz it's a crowd-funded MMO. And they're just taking longer and longer to deliver because I think they know that unless they deliver it perfectly, they're going to lose a lot, right?
Feldar just nailed it. Why would they release a game this is way making way more money than a game ever could?
Correct. Yeah. They just got to keep working on

something, right? Forever. It's cuz a dream can be anything you want.
Right. It's only when it actualizes it becomes a real thing do you find out that it has all kinds of problems. Right? Yeah, it's yeah, the feature yeah, it's feature creep the game company. Yeah, I have eight friends and we have no tangible experience. We can deliver a game and it'll be better for a billion. Exactly. We are in such an odd place. Like It is the business model now. Like this is THIS IS UH RIGHT. I just I don't know, man. Like
Even if this started in pure earnestness, which I might even say it might have. I think it did. Why would you Why would you pivot now? Yep. And every time they do this, by the way, every time they add a new pledge item, every time they add a new thing, they

increase their backlog. Right? Cuz now they have to build the Odin. But I guess all they have to do, truly, to not get sued into oblivion, is deliver something that kind of does the thing that it says it does. The game doesn't have to be fun. The game doesn't have to work particularly well. Or they And they never release a timeline. They just have to keep working on it. They just have to keep working on the idea of the game indefinitely. Which is so incredibly bizarre to me. It's so odd. And I know they have Squadron 42, which is sort of their like their single-player version game. Is that right? That they've kind of done alongside it. And the version that is out of Star Citizen is free to play during their celebration of something. Yep.
I don't know. But yeah, they have concepts of ideas of a game. Correct. Okay. I'm not even saying I'm not even saying that like the game is inconsequential. Yeah. Like

it doesn't matter how good or bad the game is. They're never going to stop. Right. It's never going to be done until they disappear. Right. But I just want to point out because I feel like it's poignant and and correct.
[snorts]
You know who didn't have a billion dollars and did make a giant multiplayer online space game where you can fly a ship around and fight pirates and explore planets and do stuff with your friends? Hello Games. Because at this point No Man's Sky is like every continues to grow towards everything that Star Citizen promised it would be except they did it and they won't take more money for it. So like in the sci-fi world of video games there are two extremes. Star Citizen which

keeps taking money and not giving you things for it and No Man's Sky which keeps giving you things and won't take more money for it, right? Like it's wild to me. Um So Star Citizen campaign I think kicked off in 2012. It did. I backed it in 2012. No Man's Sky release date. No Man's Sky came out in 2016. I'm just trying to put some timelines together. Yep. Yeah, I actually L I I agree. Uh I don't know how they finance the work. Like I their sales numbers can't be that good consistently. Is No Man's Sky feels like a game that like everyone who's going to play it already owns. Does that make sense? Yeah. I don't know if that's true or fair, but in my brain that's kind of how it feels.

Yeah, it is it is a very small team and they continue release it on new platforms. Yeah, the the amount that they do with such a small team is kind of wild. I would I I would love to find like a [laughter] legitimate Like I like this one. I like Thunder's. It's a genie. Sean found a genie and he keeps tricking him into giving him more wishes. Yep, that seems great. No Man's Sky generated 40 million in revenue in 2022 up from a couple years before. Yeah. And it is also worth noting that the way that No Man's Sky is built is designed to have incredibly low server overhead. They take advantage of the way that seeds work. So, the entire universe each galaxy of it is seeded the identically and then generated identically and independently when you load them.

Yeah. Rather than needing to pull that from a from a thing like changes get pulled from a server, but the the game like the seed generates the world independently which lowers a lot of overhead. Sure, sure, sure. That's something I've I've been meaning to try out the No Man's Sky. I believe they did a PS5 Pro update for the PSVR 2. I want to see.
they also did the thing where you can catch creatures now and there's a bunch of stuff. Yeah. I No Man's Sky for me is like the ultimate throw on a podcast
[laughter]
and just vibe out.
Yep. Anyway, I a billion dollars for Star Citizen. Here's hoping. Hey Will, so what are you going to get when it comes out? Like the smallest ship. But you get the game in the smaller ship?
the the game in the smaller ship. Will you take me for a ride for it when it comes out?
Okay. Uh in 2034. Yeah, that seems right. When no one can find the makers of that game we're living on a small island I'm in

off the coast of somewhere where they can't you know legally exercise anybody not exercise extradite extradite. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about today's dessert story which doesn't seem like a dessert story but I feel like is one of the most poignant examples of the concept that games are art and that art tells difficult stories. Okay. Uh This is a game called dream zone a pillow. And it is a story made by a Palestinian developer about the Nakba. Which is an incredibly difficult story to tell. Is it incredibly difficult like period in time to get across to anyone who is not incredibly familiar with it. Yeah. And to have a developer choose to use

games as a medium to help convey the history of Palestine and the history of the Nakba through gameplay is beyond wild to me and I think I have not seen a game in quite a while that has been such an incredibly powerful reminder of the idea that games are capital A art and that art is an incredibly important part of the human experience when comes to understanding people who live in places that aren't any place like yours. This is a game I'm not going to stream and I can't say I'm eager to have the experience but I am intellectually looking forward to the notion that I will be able to understand better as a result of playing dreams on a pillow when it comes out. Uh Yeah, it this is a a bit of a similar sort of thing here about this war of mine because I believe it is a stealth game.

Basically, if if you're not familiar and this is not going to be an actual history lesson here. Uh essentially the Nakba which means something along the lines of like catastrophe in Arabic or something like that is about the time in 1948 during the Arab Arab-Israeli War and the establishment of the state of Israel and all that stuff. Basically, the the displacements and of of the Palestinian people. Also, if you're looking for more on that, there was a phenomenal phenomenal film last year called All That Is Left of You. That is That shows the three generations of how that affected a family. And um And again, another piece of difficult art. Again, these are not things that are like you're playing to unwind. These are things you're playing to understand. Yes. Uh or to better to try to better understand. And I think no matter where you land on whatever political, moral, religious spectrum, uh

more understanding and less sort of like head in sanding is always something that is helpful for I would argue anyone's point of view. Mhm. And I think games like this, if it delivers on the promises that what they're saying it will, etc. Um showing a time in Palestine that like you don't get to see anymore. Um and talking about how people existed and lived and then had to leave there, I think is incredibly important. Um And in if if that just those simple things about what this game is being is a problem for anybody, I would ask that person to question sort of their own logic logical fallacies and moral obligations as to what they're trying to purport. Um, yeah. Also, in the show notes, we'll have the Kotaku article

that is an interview with Rashid Abuideh, who's the game designer, the Palestinian game designer who is working on this game. It tells the story both of like his story and why he's making the game and how he's making the game and how he's feeling in the current state of of uh Palestinian life. So, I think a really great snapshot into games as capital A art and I'm I'm like I said, I'm not eager, but I am anticipating its release.
No. Yeah. Um Yeah, I you know, Amph, yeah, I would be scared to look at the reviews, too, but like I think I will say this. Good art art that is effective makes people feel things. And sometimes the things that it makes people feel are uncomfortable, and

sometimes the things that it makes people feel are angry. Because they have a they they they have an emotional response to something, right? And that is a desired outcome of a piece of art. Right? That like the worst thing a piece of art can do is make you feel nothing. Right? Like being boring is probably the greatest sin of art. I have not seen it yet, but that's exactly how people have been reviewing Mandalorian and Grogu to me. Yeah.
It's literally like it's it makes me feel nothing. I'm like, OH, NO.
YES. SO, AGAIN, really looking forward to it. I'm not going to read the reviews. I'm just going to give this developer money for a product that he's made, and then I'm going to play this off stream and probably cry a lot. That's generally how I'm feeling like this is probably going to go is I'm probably going to cry a lot. Uh and I'm looking forward to that experience and to understanding better. So, that is going to do it for our show this

week. A reminder, uh there is one special event coming up this week, uh which is that Wednesday evening 7:00 p.m. Eastern, late late for uh for all of you Europeans, in the evening for all of you uh Americans. Um I will be jo- uh joining Jen is online and playing some Slay the Spire 2 multiplayer. Different time slot for the stream that day. I'm going to sleep in so I can stay up a little later. I conked out around midnight last time and Jen goes nice and late into the evening, so I'm going to try and and go the full distance this time. Uh so please join us for that. It's going to be great. I'm really looking forward to it. All right. Yeah. Well, this has been a lovely Games for Breakfast. Thank you so much uh everybody for coming and hanging out and chatting with us live. Again, please, if you liked anything or wanted to keep this conversation going, please do so in the comments if you're watching this VOD over on YouTube. Or if you uh want to after the fact, everyone over on

Nebula, if you want to message Will or I about any of these stories or any of the other stories that uh essentially you think we should cover next week, please do that over on Blue Sky. We have our little Blue Sky things popping up at some point. I just kept talking and hoping that that was going to happen and maybe I can will them into existence if I just keep moving my mouth and keep words coming forward. Now, Will's probably just making me talk. Nope, that's the game we just talked about. Now, we're going to keep going. There it is. Thank you.
Oh, is it? That's funny. Uh please message us over there uh and let us know what you think about these stories and anything else you want us to cover. I GUESS THE LAST THING TO DO, DEAR FRIENDS, is our not patented but always repeated and it's that we all do exactly the same every time because especially some of you people who are just joining us for the first time or the first time live, you get to engage with this at the same time as us and that's the whole point. We want to bring people forward into a sense of community for the week and make

sure we're all going forward with a lot of positivity and good vibes in an activity that we all know intrinsically by this point how to engage with with one another at the exact same time. So with that said, thank you so much for watching Games for Breakfast and always remember, you may be a small soft man Zavala, but you hide some powerful tusks. Eyes up, Guardian.
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