Elden Ring Meets A24, ActiBlizz Lawsuit Ends, Lies of P Gits EZ! | Gaming News | Games For Breakfast

I definitely didn't get distracted in the 5 seconds between when we hit go live on Twitch, when we hit go live on YouTube. My brain is totally a welloiled machine of focus and drive. And I didn't get distracted looking up a map of what parts of the world are at day and night. We also didn't get distracted by uh speak singing the lyrics to Toto's reigns down in Africa. um nor to imagine. Yeah, there was a lot of Yeah, there was there was a lot of stuff that didn't happen. But also, hello. Good morning. Also, happy Memorial Day for folks in the US. Yeah, good morning. This is This is the best way to ring in your Memorial Day with your cookouts or your existential dread. that. Yeah, I was gonna say with going to the pool, but you know, focus, commitment, and sheer will. That's correct. I am also

John Wick. That is that is correct. Johansson. Fair, fair, fair. Well, we have a phenomenal episode for you today. Um, phenomen is it going to cause a phenomenon, dude? A phenom, if you will. All right. Um, if I I'll just I had three different thoughts all of which I can't say. Yes, it will be a phenomenal episode. Will Oh boy. Happy breakfast to you as well, Miss Inkwitch. And good morning. Good morning. Good morning. We were what we were trying to figure out beforehand was was there anyone that this stream is their bedtime stream? Um, and we're figuring out where the daylight line is and who would be going to sleep to the duet tones of us speaking andor singing to you about video game news of which there is much. Oh, so parts of Mongolia, maybe a little bit of Russia,

maybe a little bit of Russia. And of course, if you're in either the daylight circle or the nighttime circle, your sleep cycle is your own business. So to if you're a researcher at McMmero station, how you doing? Boy oh boy, do we have FTC news about active blues for you? It's really going to affect your research is what I'm saying. Mhm. I missed if you got this up or not, but um Janet uh Oh, I can't. Interesting. What can't you do? I was gonna pull up Medusa skirts on behalf of all of Janet heads Twitch chat potty cactus. Uh I was gonna say, do you do you have do you have gaming news or or do you have a cactus? Janet, I have gaming news. J also Janet. Yeah. Well, look. Uh I'm trying to think. Is there

anything else we need to do in the pre-show before we go to the show show? I got to thank Punching Bag for 49 months. Kim for bitties, THC for 59 months, Mean Ninja for 420 bitties, and there's a new Brad. Brad, say hi. Be nice. Please don't lick him. Oh, hey, Shing Girl for 12 months, maybe. Um though I've observed it and now collapsed the waveform. Uh Neo Whizmaster as well for the tier three for how many months? 90 months. 90 n 90. I don't I didn't think I was 90 months old. Is this like one of those things where you're like how many seconds old are you and you're like a million and you're like wrong. I guess I guess that is the conversation I had with myself when I was trying to debate whether I was 90 months old. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Exactly. All right. Um I like this. Remember we don't have any room in our apartment for it. That's correct. I also love that there's this like cross talk that only happens on screen at our discretion between Brad and Janet. That's great. That's right. Uh Twitch and YouTube are two starcross lovers um in in the streaming space and we are uh currently thanking Neo Whismaster for 20 gift subs. Thank you. Deeply deeply appreciate that. Yes. Uh and I did like this. Did I miss the leaderboard? I'm slipping. What? I don't I don't I don't know. You were you were being generous. You were giving other people the illusion that they would hope, right? Yeah. A glimmer, a belief, right? Um, well, very thank you. Thank you so much for that. We very much appreciate it.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Listen, if if if Brad and Janet over on Twitch and YouTube want to build a secret tunnel, by all means, please do so. You may have to invest in a VPN or talk to your internet service provider before you figure out how exact if we're talking about a digital tunnel, a digital secret tunnel. No, I think they're talking about a physical one like a physical se that's more work then you need to learn to whistle right so that you can also whistle the theme to the greatest movie about digging a tunnel, the great escape um while digging a tunnel. So, you can whistle Toto's Africa. Uh, I Fun fact. Yeah. I can't whistle. I can't whistle. Here's your fun fact. I couldn't whistle. And then I taught myself to whistle one summer while I was working at my old job. Yeah. Cuz I was

wandering around outside a lot and I was like, great, I'm not around anyone for significant periods of time. Yeah. See, kind of. Yeah. But I can't like do a tune. You'll get there. I could be a dolphin. That's about it. Um, I mean, I'd trade you I'd trade you in a heartbeat for being a dolphin. Yeah. Um, ah, dolphins. Dolphins have the best We are going to There is a new Echo the dolphin game rumored to be being made if I'm tying this back to video games, but uh, dolphins have the best PR manager, I think, of all of nature's creatures cuz dolphins are jerks. They're super jerks, but everyone loves dolphins. It's because they're It's not It's not unlike that scene from Finding Nemo, right? Where it's, "Look at me. I'm a flipping dolphin. I'll do a flipping trick for you. Look at me." Yeah. Right. And then And they also fight sharks, right? Which I mean, people like because they're afraid of sharks, but really sharks are just water puppies that are very confused,

right? Like yeah, they're confused water puppies. That's fair. That will kill you, right? But that in that way they are like a puppy if you wrong puppy wrong time, right? It depends on the size andor uh ability to move through liquids that the puppy is. That's I mean that's fair. If hippopotami weren't waterborne, they would be the hippopotami of the ocean. They're cool to look at and the little ones are cute, but don't get bene between it and the little one or it and the food. Also, Jacob, you're not wrong. Pandas also have a damn good PR team. You know, we really should find all of these PR teams for these animals. Um, and hire them. Hold on. Can we volunteer to be those PR teams in one of Patch's videos? [Laughter] Here's the thing. Can we pitch patch this video? He just he can get the

regular ones, right? No. Can we pitch the video? We should pitch patch We should pitch tears to a video about the the the It's not ranking the animals. It's ranking their PR. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Which animals are perceived better than Which animals are perceived? Yeah. The public relations for the sloth is tight. All right. Um Okay, cool. Now that we've thoroughly derailed our brains and Janet, let's do a show. Hey, I like that. I feel I mean, we're going to go to the void for a moment so the show can start proper and then we'll return from the void either stronger or crushed into a zepptometer of matter. Well, I'm vamp for a second. I'm vamping. Uh, I sparkle in the sunlight while also drinking ironesque liquids that sometimes ta smell like sulfur when they're dry. Vamping. I have sharp teeth like

I'm over here dying and I also have to deal with this. Do you see the conditions I'm forced to work in, chat? Do you do you see do do you witness witness? I did exactly as I was asked. I I don't know why there's the animosity here. You know what? What? [Applause] [Music] That wasn't the opening. That was just Why was it the opening? Cuz remember in the pre-show when I had to relaunch OBS because it was doing the thing. It didn't reload the thing. So, now we have to do it again. Chat, one second. [Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. Ah, good morning,

Will. Good morning to all of you. Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show. We talk about this week's gaming and tech news, but that also when we do the show open, it's this it's correct the absolute first time. And we never just do a tribute. You got to believe me. I wish you were here. It's just a matter of opinion. Oh, good god. Welcome and good morning to all of you here. I like how that went from pop star to man in suit adjusting papers at the evening news. Hello and good evening. This is the evening breakfast news. Hello and welcome to games for breakfast, [Music] right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No, it's totally that. Right. It's 100% that we we're Yeah, we It's that level of gravitas. Yeah. Right. Pump and circumstance. Yeah. Sure. Right. Exactly. It's those things. Uh well, we have a great show today. It's so great. My arms are cut

off. Arms are always cut off. But but they're more cut off today because of how great the show is. Okay, just go with it. Just go with it. You know what, Matt? I believe you. I appreciate that. Also, happy Memorial Day yet again. Uh it's time for Memorial Day coffee. Um there's extra in here cuz I think we're going to need it. What? Which one are you drinking? Oh, actually, real quick. Monster energy drink. What are you drinking right now? Ultra Fantasy Ruby Red. She will they ever knock it down to just like grape like do do we need No. So ultra so on the nomenclature regarding the names of monsters. Um Ultra is the sugar-free line. So and then and then they need to name it something that they can like at least claim is unique, right? Cuz if it was grape, then it would be the same flavor as lots of other things which are just grape. And they need to be unique, right? They must have pizzazz. Must be green. Green. Green. Okay. Super green. That's fine. That's

Ruby Rod. Anyway, any Yeah, that's what it is. Why? If there was a monster drink called Ruby Rod, I would uh a thousand% drink that without question. I I my my fear my fear is that I would drink it and then I would wake up and my entire closet would be full of cheetah print. Uh fear? Yeah, that sounds like a solution to a lot of life's problems. I I just wonder how well it'll green screen, right? Like just like everybody, if you know how well cheetah print will green screen, you should message us on blue sky. That's right. let us know exactly all of the experiments that you've done and and how we might be able to better get Will's new wardrobe showing up crisp and clean. Now, I will say that like there are there are other factors to consider. For instance, um I had a professor, his favorite theory was that if you had two different plaids, right? So, if you had

like a plaid pajama top and plaid pajama bottoms and they were different plaids, you got it. Y and you waved them back and forth near each other, observers would be unable to ascertain your location because their eye would be unable to perceive all of the plaid clashing. You would functionally be invisible. So I also wonder about that. So if you got that answer too, I guess. No, I mean like if that would happen, right? Yeah. and you happen to be watching, this is your opportunity to get back in touch and and uh reconnect with the student who still believes in many of the teachings that you you gave. Um I do like this. How fast is this plaid? It everything feels like space balls when we're talking about speed and and visibility on Plaid. Yeah. Yeah. There's only one man who would dare give me Raspberry and that is Wilbur B credits. Will, can we get to the first story for the day? I suppose if we must

uh though I regret to inform well I'm happy to inform is a follow-up from last week's um show. So last last week we talked a lot about this Darth Vader AI. We had some comments about how people thought it was hilarious and cool and or stupid and people seem to be kind of divided on this. One group of people very much do not like it uh is um the Screen Actors Guild. Uh, the Screen Actors Guild has actually filed a unfair labor practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Epic over using an AI powered Darth Vader instead of giving that work to actors who can actually do a Darth Vader voice. So, oh yeah, I was going to say, uh, basically, uh, SAGA announced that they had filed an unfair labor practice charge, right? And they said, "We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned uh renowned

roles. However, we must protect our rights to bargain and terms and conditions around uses of voices that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did work for matching Darth Vader's iconic rhythm and tone in video games." So what they're saying basically is they're not coming down against the the Jones estate selling the rights and being able to do this. It's also there's a secondary issue of protecting the rights of their members who currently would have gotten that work if this did not exist. Um, granted, um, uh, basically SAG after said that Epic and Lava Productions quote, "Chose to replace the work of human performers with AI and did so without quote providing any notice of their intent to do this and without allowing the unions to bargain over fair terms." This all comes to us from Kotaku, by the way. You can see the article in the show notes. So, chat's chat's got um a couple of uh thoughts going on. One of them is that um this is uh correctly that this is not

about whether or not James Earl Jones gave permission to do this, right? That's all above board. We stipulated that when we talked about this last week, that all of this is legal. That's never been the question. The question is whether or not it's ethical. Those are different things. Um and similarly, SAG's uh unfair label practice charge is essentially um this is sort of a litmus test I think in a lot of ways because it's a very big very high-profile case where they can say hey it's cool if you want to do that but you can't like the they're in charge of all voice acting. So when you're replacing voice actors with other stuff but want to use voice actors for some things then they kind of get upset spaghette which is good right that's their job as a union. This is kind of like a grievance except it's external to a it's sort of like a union grievance I guess. Yeah. Um and it'll be interesting

to see if if and where this goes. Uh because I don't know I the and SAG After by the way is also currently on strike against a few large video game companies like uh for voice work right like and so this is sort of in in putting putting in line more grievances there because there is no legal wrongdoing here with the use of the voice as it was sold correctly and and that is all fine. It is just that no one here's the thing. Uh Fortnite didn't have to consult with SAG ARA before they did this. There's no legal thing in there, especially because right now there's no deal signed. Yeah. But what this is is a big slap in the face to the possibility of getting that deal signed and modified to make this a place where both actors and people who want to sell their

digital uh likeness rights can be happy, right? Um yeah, it's it's uh yeah and actually no, you basically said that like it's a little shaky standing there considering they're pretty much not part of the deal. The thing is though, and this is this is why we're at such an interesting influx, right? Or or congruence of events, AI as it stands now is, and who said who knows if it'll get there or not, it probably will, but like cannot replace successfully, and by successfully, I mean to equal the monetary value of uh all voice actors in video games. It just it's not quite it's not there yet. Um what SAG after is trying to do is get ahead of that issue and be like we know this is coming. We need to make sure that there are protections put in place for all of the people that we represent. And and I think because we're at this touch point, if if the if the strike continues

and if people keep pulling back, that will basically hurt the ability to train these AIs on those things in in a certain way. Again, there's lots of stuff out there already that could be done, but like it's a matter of when you start fighting back and against what. Does that make a little bit of sense? This is also just a really good um PR move for SAG. Uh because this like sort of in the same way that we were talking about it, right? Like we're talking about it because it's a big deal. because it's a big deal. This is kind of the perfect time for SAG to choose to like, hey, you're not allowed to do that and we're going to be visibly about you not being allowed to do that rather than doing it in a bunch of smaller cases where they might have won, but they don't get the visibility for their cause. Right. Sometimes it is better to visibly win uh fight a losing battle than it is to win a uh invisible one. Yeah. Uh in in in things like this. And then Retrash brings up a really good

point. Do they expect actors to join games in real time to act as Darth Vader? Right? Like if if this is uh Oh, you got something. Well, I got something, too. But why is that the assumption, right? Because they could have just made a big complicated Darth Vader voice pack like they've done for other characters in the past, right? They didn't need to go in this new direction. Well, the exercise this this is where it gets really interesting. Truly, the exercise is using an AI chatbot to be Darth Vader. Right. So it's a new kind of I new kind of technology that they are using and implementing in the game, right? So that someone can talk to this character and and respond in in unique and sometimes offensive ways. Um and the issue there is you can truly never get a uh voice actor to do exactly that to be someone on real you just can't do it. There's too many, you know, etc. Right? So, how do you then how this comes down

to what provisions and and um things can be put in place for actual regular voice acting work with SAG ART knowing that stuff like this with new emerging technologies that actors couldn't possibly be involved in real time with, right? What are the things put in place to maintain safety nets for actual human voice actors while the work moves in the opposite direction in some places? Right. And and and to be clear, the reason that um this I mean uh Dan's got a great question here, right? Why why should Epic listen? Uh it's because SAG does have leverage, right? Because Epic does still use voice actors. So the idea would be while you may have done it for this experiment, unless you're willing to for us to sort of um blacklist you from getting voice actor work, which has happened, right? Then um you got to knock this off, right? There is leverage that occurs there, right? And like

again, whether or not it's ethical for SAG to tell a company what it can and can't do in terms of technological innovation is sort of a different bigger ethical moral question, particularly as it pertains to AI, but they do have leverage that they can use to say no, you can't. And this isn't technically through courts. I believe this is through the National Labor Relations. Yes. board which is a nonjudicial entity but there is a like complex labor union there can be consequences based on what unions decide to do I really like this comment because it kind of brings something else really interesting before it's Fortnite's doing too much why do we need to talk to Darth Vader it's funny so I both really love Fortnite for this and I really don't connect with Fortnite for this not just Vader but like Fortnite does a lot right? Like it is it is beyond uh just a game at this point. It is it is a place to hang out. It is a place to uh see

your friends. It's a it's a place to do there's racing games. There's all this there's so many different elements of Fortnite. It is a smorggish board of things. It's truly a digital third space at this point, right? They don't need to do any of this. But they but like Okay, here's a fun question for Brad and Janet. What if this was a dedicated non-fortnite Star Wars themed game where the plot was you are Vader's Sith um what's the word for a Sith underling? Is it apprentice? Yeah, it's apprentice. All right. You play as it's like Stariller, but like we're doing it now, right? Yeah. Um, and in that game you have an AI Darth Vader that talks to you. And the goal of that that thing is to make it feel like the the pure reason that experience exists is to make it feel more true that you person playing the

game are Darth Vader's apprentice. Right. Okay. As opposed to, hey, here's Darth Vader running around in Fortnite. You can chat with them. if there was if there was something like an artistic intent that accomplished artistic impact as opposed to like, hey, it's a funny party trick. But this is interesting because you could argue on both sides, pure artistic content, intent of experience or fun party trick, why it would be pro or against the union's problem with the art form being done. Like there's this it's super interesting and you could argue both sides of both cases. Correct. And and by the way, when we're talking about this, we're ignoring all of the other myriad ridiculous issues with like power use and like establishing the greater trend in like should AI be used. That's not the question at stake, right? We're purely looking at the SAG after versus epic conundrum, right? It just that bit, right? cuz I swear if we don't put

fences on some of these things, Matt and I and definitely chat will sort of just wander out into like new territory and then it gets weird. So, we're put fences. Hey, fences, SAG and Epic and that's it. Okay, great. Awesome. Anyway, it'll be curious to see if this uh dust up uh moves a needle in a new direction. uh the the space for voice actors in video games in the next god two to three years probably even less is going to be very interesting to see and I hope that uh SAG after gets some protections in there for their actors because at the end of the day um it's the techn is only going to get better and it was trained off something so hopefully they can get some some some protections put in for new voice work being done in video games. Yep. Absolutely. Okay, cool. Next up, Matt, we just talked about it. Do you know video games are art?

No. They are. They are. Did you know video games are Okay, second up. Second up. Do you know that art is political? All right. Well, I've played exactly one video game in my entire life, and that is Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. And I have to tell you, there's not a drop of politics. No politics in that video. Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. the the the game about a former child soldier who is now an international mercenary attempting to stop a plot concocted by a uh nanobot enhanced US senator to unleash a nuclear war on the world. Definitely not definitely not political. There's nothing there's nothing political there. And and will I'm frankly I'm offended you would even suggest it. Right. Okay. Great. Awesome. So, in news that video games are art and art is political. Um, therefore, by the way, all video games are political. That's just true. If you don't like it, you could be upset about it, but I'm

right. Um, politics are the interactions of human beings. Correct. Uh, and all art is political because all art is made uh in interaction with other human beings in a state in the world and says something about the artist's experience. So, Geogesser, you might be like, "How in the world? I'll get there. I'll get there." So, Geogesser was invited to participate in the esports World Cup in real. Well, can you can you also explain what Geogesser is? I I can indeed. Geogesser is a game, which is absolutely fascinating to me, where you are placed randomly somewhere on a map. In most cases, competitive geogesser is played on a world map. You are placed somewhere on a world map in Google Street View. And you need to determine from Google Street View with varying parameters, how many steps you're allowed to take, how much you're allowed to look around, how long it takes, where in the world you are, proceed. It's been

done for video games. It's done for a lot of things, but it's it's usually done for the the actual Earth. Um, and there are some people who are pretty dang good at it, who are good at like, oh yeah, that telephone pole that's only in Bellarus. And you're like, "What?" And they're like, "Yeah, and it's this town cuz I remember that this town is the only place where they hang the flags this way in Bellarus." And then they're like, "Click." And you're like, "It's 10 meters from there." And they could have guessed anywhere in the world. How? That's geoger. So, um there uh there was going to be uh an esports uh World Cup geogesser event in Riad. And some people who made the maps that are often used in competitive geogesser said no. Now, here's the truly interesting part. Well, they didn't say no. They they they complained about it and they pulled their maps. Right. I guess that's intentionally saying no.

Correct. Right. Right. Here's the very interesting part. The people who made those maps do not work for Geogesser. Their community, it's a community-led effort to make these maps that people play on. And the community map makers could with essentially updated the maps to be black and said, "No, we don't want our work to be used at an esports event in Riad for sports washing for Saudi Arabia. And and that's not new. We've talked about that in the past that plenty of people have had objections to Saudi Arabia's um using esports to sort of sports wash away a lot of the serious allegations that have been leveled against them by the international community and particularly because a lot of the allegations against them concern um rights of uh women and queer people. And would you believe that in esports there are a lot of women and queer people who couldn't participate if they

had to go to Riad because they'd be in danger. So a lot of people have been protesting in a lot of ways and now um Geogesser uh has has spoken up and said, "Oh yeah, we hear you. We won't go. Thank you for telling us how you feel about this. We're gonna not we'll we'll let you know what we're going to do with all the stuff that we had planned for the the World Cup, but um you've made it clear as our community that you don't think this is a good fit for us. And we totally understand. This is what we thought. What they originally thought was that this was going to be an opportunity to tell everyone how interesting and cool the like learning about the world is. Right. This is competitive geography. Right. Right. Like this is competitive. Like learn about what infrastructure looks like, learn about what vegetation looks like around the world to learn more about the world to get good at a video game, which is kind of cool, right? That's like a cool idea and I can understand that

being a way that they want people to interact with the world, but their community was like no because the benefit of the increased visibility for Geogesser is far outweighed by the sort of detriment of rubber stamping the sports watching problem. And yeah, look, good on good on Geoger and Geog community for standing up for what they believe in and not just going with the flow. It's funny because like obviously um Will and I were chatting about this a little bit before the show and it's like the geogesser is obviously not uh the largest thing going from a monetary perspective going to this uh esports world's uh thing in Riad. Like I mean obviously like I think Blizzard, EA, and Epic all have stuff there I imagine. Um like the big the big the big. Yep. Um, and I mean they're not going to pull anything that's just kind it's just or I I would be very surprised if they did.

But even though this is sort of um not as big as those things, it is good because we're talking about it. Hopefully other people are talking about it. The people on Kotaku who we get this article from are talking about it. Um, and it's important to remember sort of, how do I put this? So, Geogesser is big on Twitch, right? Uh, so much so that it was invited to participate into this this thing, which means it has a it has a sizable pull. Yeah. Um, I think it's important to remember when you have a thing, be it a a channel or a game or a movie or a community or something and you have the opportunity to grow. Even if you take that opportunity, you start going down that path and your community says, "Ah, nope." On at large and mass, um, and you listen to them, you can always like in the long run, it's much much better to

kind of pull back. You know, it's funny. Um, I don't know if you saw this. This is a little bit, it's um, it's gaming adjacent, but um, Adam Conover um, uh, did a paid spot for this, uh, crypto tech thing called the orb, and everyone basically went after him and he did, in my opinion, a phenomenal follow-up video apologizing for it and thanking the community for for like calling out calling him out. And I think we I think when mistakes are made or or you go down a path that you don't it isn't necessarily the best for whatever you have in your community. Um moments like Geio Guesser pulling back here or Adam Conover coming on and being like, "Hey, thank you for calling me out. I effed up." Like those are really strong important moments for the people at the center of these communities. And uh I don't know. I I'm glad that this story I'm glad that Geogessor did this because

now that's a bigger thing. No ukulele apology. Yeah, he didn't. Yeah, no ukulele. Two out of 10. He didn't I don't know if he knows how to play the ukulele. So, uh I don't know what he did with the money, Phil. I believe he he didn't take it. Yeah, he just didn't take he did. And by not taking because some people like, "Oh, we should have taken it and donated it to charity." Uh he did not take the money. So he wouldn't and that meant that he could actively and truthfully talk about whatever he saw, right? So he does in his video. Yeah. Right. So that that that in case you're wondering like why don't people take the money, it's because not taking the money opens you up to more freedom to to say stuff. Um so yeah. So I think this is really good. Um I think it's really good for Geogesser that they have a community that's aware of the impact of their of their game. I think it's really good for a geoger that they listen to their community. Um, and uh, I'm just really happy. It's really good. I'm no I'm no good at geoger. My brain can't focus for like beans on like where we are. It

would be like guessing like uh, I'm somewhere in subsaharan Africa. Wrong. Incorrect. You're in Mongolia. And you're like, I don't know how I got those wrong, but I did. Um, yeah. So, um, next up, speaking of things that are difficult, or not or not, as the case may be. Hey, who knows what this game is? Someone knows it. I I'm pretty sure someone knows it. Someone knows it. Yeah. Uh, we can't move on until someone says Brad got it. That's lies of P. That is correct. There we go. So be a soul like game and souls like games have been notorious. I'm gonna go with notorious. Notorious for uh no. Sorry. Yes. Go fight you. Um for not

doing accessibility or difficulty settings terribly well. that's sort of been a weakness of the genre um as a whole for a bit. Um they're they have taken steps to make the game easier in some ways, right? And and the community has taken steps to like make it harder for those who want it harder. Allah, no summons in Elden Ring, right? Summons are there to make the game easier, both because you have someone else doing damage and because those summons divide aggro between the summon and you, right? So like summons are a a way to make the game easier if the player wants it to be easier. That's a whole option, right? Or like mimic tier or whatever. Oh, mimic tier. Um, but they don't explicitly have difficulty settings. People have modded them in. There's a apparently there's a difficulty mod for Elden Ring where you can set things to 25, 50, 75 uh or 75%

of their health and outgoing damage and all that jazz, but they've never really come first party in games till now cuz Lies of P updated and added difficulty options. Well, is is in their is in the process is in the process in DLC. And I thought that it was the the the the the quote from director Giwan Choy uh was perfect. We wanted to make sure a wider audience of players could play the game. I told VGC, "We have a lot of feedback from customers and from our developers. So by making development adjustments and introducing these difficulty options, we can offer the experience to different types of players. This broadens the base. Period. That's it. I think this is a really good move. I think this is also a really good um uh I think this is just a really good

step for a big game that got a lot of publicity to say, "Hey, we should do this. We should make the game accessible to as many people as possible because we think our game is good and we want more people to play it." Yeah. I find And then there's It's funny because like You can go all around with the like the intent of the gameplay experience and blah blah blah blah. Like let's let's even say that that is what's being argued about when when it's about difficulty things when I don't really think that's entirely the case. You could very well cordon off different styles of things quite easily. But now the creator of this isn't a mod. The creator of the game is coming back and uh and adding something to the experience that they find important. aka the intent of the experience of the game. Like the the will of the game has come back and added this thing and people are mad because they think it doesn't speak to the intent of the

game. Is a snake eating its own tail there. Like the creator did the thing, right? This this reminds me of um there used to be a pretty controversial scene in Super Hot and the developers uh updated the game and took it out. Yep. And they were like, "Hey, we don't we had an idea for the artistic intent behind the scene when it came out and we don't think it's landing the way we wanted it to, so we're taking it out." And people were like, "Yeah, they had to do it cuz cancelled or whatever." And the developers are like, "No, we're artists. We we saw our artistic intent wasn't being met. We're doing a different thing and people just completely miss when the artists do that thing. Right. See, uh Ky Clone says, "Souls always have a bad feelings within me." It's see they always leave really good feelings within me. But there's an interesting thing here. If the if the goal of a game, and this this is very clearly not the goal of every game, and that's totally fine.

If the goal of the game, like Lies of P is is basically flat out stating, is we want to get the most people playing as possible, putting in options like this will get more people playing. That's just it. You can, and Dark Souls and many Souls likes have not put those options in and at the choice of the crater have limited the people that play those games. There's a reason why there's a lot of different reasons why um Elden Ring kind of cracked out of the the Dark Souls like niche into what I would consider like truly mainstream. And it's to Will's point, even though it is there is not intrinsic difficulty settings like a slider or easy, medium, hard, hurt me daddy or whatever the hell the the other ones are in Doom. Um, there are mechanics in Elden Ring that make the game much much easier. But of course, even that is obtuse like in most Soulsike games, right? And the

community also has a capital O opinions about it. They're like, "Oh, you didn't really beat the game. You used summons to to which I I urge I urge those people. I urge them with every fiber of my being, go outside, find some green leafy vegetation, some ground cover lying across the, you know, the area right outside and put your face in it and just roll around just I also want to call out something that I I I am guilty of and I know that uh many people are. I think the people that complain about those sort of things are a very very very loud minority. I we we often call them up because we've seen a tweet or like a thing or something. I don't think that is the majority of people that are actually playing these games. I think it's the majority of pe of the majority of a very small minority who has uh the time and energy to be mad about a thing that wants to complain about uh something that might help other people enjoy the thing they're enjoying. I think one of the problems is that um while it is true that it's a very vocal,

very small minority, because of the degree of vocalenness, right, it comes across like it's a it's a problem that shows up significantly when we're talking about these things because they're so loud, right? It it becomes a thing that needs to be addressed in at least in some degree. Yes. And the reason it is so loud and needs to be addressed is again I'll go back to us. Like people like us bring it up. Like if I it's because it's a story because we disagree with it or someone's being loud and dumb. Like it it again there's no like one causal point that you take out and this all fixes it. It's just it's I always want to make sure that when we are calling out an action that we don't like making sure that we also say like we also know that we also are feeding into this cycle. Yeah. Like it's it's just it's just a very minor accountability regardless. Hell yeah. Liza P, make the game you want to make

like great. I think it's cool. More people more people will play it. Yeah. I like I like Blum's uh idea. Instead of algorithms trying to sell us weird stuff, I wish someone would make an algorithm that would make the previously loud minority to be a lot less loud for for things like this. Yes. Yeah. For for things where there are people trying to gateep games and are like unless you you know, it's always funny to me too. the the people who are usually the biggest on accessibility for games like this are the people who are at the very tiptop, right? Like the people who are like, "Ah, yes, I beat Mellennia twice hitless at the same time. Once using a dance pad and once using a controller. I think the game should be more accessible and have difficulty settings so that more people could play this beautiful game that I love so much that I beat Mellennia Twice Hitless once with a dance pad and once with a controller, right? That's that's what we want to see. We should be uplifting those voices as

well. We should be saying, "Hey, like the these are people who are absurdly good at the game." And they're like, "Yeah, you should you should do that." Anyway, um good on them. Good on them. All right, it's time Matt Stop and Shop. Oh, I mean, maybe. Oh, yeah. Good use of a meme. Good use of a meme. It's an older meme, so everybody checks out. It also isn't entirely accurate, but I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't not. Right. Most fair. So, we were pretty sure this was going to happen uh following the election uh and um stated goals by the current incoming administration of the United States executive branch to change the way that it was doing business. And the FTC is now following through. They have dropped their

um the appeal is over essentially like the the the last bastion of kicking and screaming to prevent Active Blizz from owning or from merging with Microsoft or getting bought by Microsoft. What? It's been so long I don't even remember what the original deal was, but Active Blizz Kiss with Microsoft. Okay, now they bought him. Yeah, FDC says it's fine. You You two can go make out. It's cool, I guess. Or rather, they're going to be grumpy about it, but they're going to stop trying to fight it in court. Yeah. Also, that is not Billy Mays. That is Andrew N. Ferguson, who I believe is the Federal Trade Commission's um uh chairman. Okay. Uh here's the interesting thing with this though. I am I am I don't want companies to be bought and consolidated. It's going to make a worse product. We all know this. This is not the precedent is there. This is not up for debate. Um the interesting thing and I I even

though I in my graphic made it overtly like oh well this FDC chair let it through, right? Um and and while I do believe that something like this would be easily let throughable in the current administration, um I actually think that this decision weirdly even from a legal perspective is not because of corruption in the current administration. I think that if you look at what has happened with Microsoft since it bought Activision Blizzard and the fear and the thing that the FTC was saying and that other companies were working with the FTC to say is like well now Microsoft's going to hold its most valuable properties away from other people like they're going to hold Call of Duty, they're going to hold all of these things. They're gonna they're going to choke out the competition and Microsoft said no we wouldn't. And Microsoft has kind of been doing, and again, this is not me singing the praises of a

corporation. This is just what they're doing, has done the opposite. If anything, Microsoft has kind of shot themselves in the foot for any sort of exclusivity that they could remotely have. They've been putting stuff on PlayStation. They've been putting stuff on Nintendo. They've been doing a campaign saying anything can be an Xbox. like they they are not doing the thing that this FTC FTC challenge purported purported purported that they would be doing at least up till now. So therefore, outside of all of the current minations of the current administration, there's no there's nothing here yet that is remotely like what everyone was afraid of. That's not to say it's not going to come. That's not going to say that they're not being smart about something. They're waiting for the next generation or doing these things happen over long periods of time, not just a few years. But I found that very interesting because it's like, oh, all the things that they were afraid were going to

happen kind of the opposite's been happening. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And social, you bring up you bring up this exactly, right? The problem isn't that they are. The problem is that they could. And maybe this is a long play. Like maybe they're doing this to make this deal go through, right? So that's why we need to make um we need to uh suggest a new uh chairperson of the FTC. Um maybe the FTC should buy Disney so they can be watching Wizowski. Always watching. Just like that. It'll be great. The FTC won't let me me or let me be me. So let me see. They try to shut me down when I was at MTV, but it feels so empty without I can't There's nothing rhymes with me from Activision Blizzard. No freaky. It doesn't matter. Yep. Uh I think this is I don't know. We We'll see how it goes. It It'll be interesting. I'm sure the FTC is going to pop up uh

in in in the games and tech space again reasonably soon. Um I just get that intuition, but we'll we'll see. Uh, okay. I'm checking the time. I'm checking the time. All right. We got more time before ads. So, you did. You tried. It's true. So, lots of people had this kind of question, right, which is that the the Switch 2 does have USB accessory support, right? Because you can plug in a USB camera. You can plug in a lot of things via USB into the USBC. There's two ports. Wow. Well, and uh we don't I don't know that we verified how many ports are actually on the dock. Oh, I don't know. But there's two on the console. There's two on the console. There's one on the top, which looks really stupid. There's one on the bottom plug in the dock, which means there's one port when it's Wait, why does it look stupid on the top? Just cuz of the Oh, you just mean when something's plugged into it with the wire going up. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, the wire looks really stupid coming out

of the top. So anyway, but uh one developer has now confirmed that if you don't want to use the the Switch mouse, you can use another mouse as long as you can get it to, you know, plug into the Switch. But it will have mouse support for nonJoy Con mice, which is good cuz the more I look at it, the more my hand hurts thinking about using a Joy-Con 2 as a mouse. Like, will it work? Yes. Do I want to do that? No, I don't. I have a big chunky 12key. Like I don't, you know, big big chunky 12 key. Like I don't I don't want to use teen tiny little blade. Nah. Just nah. Like it's a cool idea and for the people it works for it's great. I just think it's going to hurt my hands. Um Well, we'll be sure to test it as soon as either of us get a pre-order for the Switch. Right. Well, oh, by the way, by the way, by the way, if you got a pre-order from Walmart Oh, what happened? They're

cancelling a bunch of them. Whoa. So, pre-orders, we are now in the pre-orders get cancelled phase, so please be on the lookout. Um, also, apparently, um, Best Buy is going to have stock day of or uh Best Buy and or Target are going to have stock day of, but it's going to be physical delivery only, so you have to like go to the store. The morning I'm not doing it. I'm not. I'll wait. I feel like we are both too old for this. I feel like waiting in line for consoles is a young person's game. And I feel like we al like yeah, I could go do that and it'd be great and cool and wonderful and I do want to play those games with friends, but like we'll still be playing Night Rain. So like Matt and I could both go wait in line for Switch Twos or we could jump on here and play Night Rain. I I just Here's my thing. I really, really, really wanted to do a Nebula group 24 player race like on the opening weekend. That's my And I know that won't happen now. Like I wanted to

really organize it with a bunch of people who got Switch twos, but I just I I don't I don't see it in the cards. I my my thing from Nintendo is not going to be in. My my connections have dried. Um we'll get them eventually. Yeah, it'll be fine. It'll be cool. I mean, like, if if the game is good, then it won't matter when we get it, right? Cuz like we've played games that are like older and I'm playing FF6 right now. I'm playing Final Fantasy 6 and you know what? It still slaps. It slaps a little harder because of the pixel remake stuff, but like it still slaps. Well, wait. It'll be fine, right? Patience. Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh, T Wait, hold on. Min says, "Target keeps testing your bank account. If you pre-order, if it fails at any point, they cancel it. But the testing also ties up funds for a bit." Yo. Whoa. Way to go, Target. Just batting a million. You know, Target canotically a business right now that's doing very well. Um, true. This true. Uh, we got into the one

absolutely god awful boss fight in six uh last week and it sucked. Um, anyway, I'll be very excited once this I I eventually get a Switch, too, but it it will not be on launch day. Yep. Uh, okay. Next up, Blue Sky news. Reminder, you can follow both of us on Blue Sky, and we sometimes say words, and you can say words back at us as we say words, like convincing me not to buy a $300 Expedition 33 jacket. Um, don't do that. Yeah, in this economy, Chad's convinced me not to. Uh, they did a good job. Um, what's it look like? I'm not telling you because I'm not going to buy it. It's fine. I'm gonna look it up. No. Expedition 33. Why? Why are you doing this? No. See, now you're going to want one. And you haven't even played the game. I haven't played the game. I'm not seeing a $300 one. Or is this a custom one on Etsy? Yeah, I got a c It would be a custom one on Etsy just cuz I don't I don't trust it. Oh, yeah. You don't need it. But it's cool, though.

Unless you're cosplaying, right? Yeah. No jacket. Yes. SKA plushy. That's true. Correct. All right. So, um the uh one of the things that I think is really cool is that they are going to be doing offplatform discoverability, which is wild. So, for anyone who remembers ye old and bad days of Twitter, one of the things that you may have seen was creators on Twitter posting things and then posting in a reply to their own tweet the link to whatever where they're wherever they were live. That's because Twitter was um using its algorithm to bury any post that linked off Twitter. Um there was some com No, it was I believe still is. Yes. I don't Okay, true. I also don't care what Twitter is doing because I'd rather not be on social media at all than go on Twitter right now. I don't know if you've been there, but it is officially the bad place and we will continue to not go to the bad place. So, um, so there was a bunch of problems

with that and it became very hard to use Twitter for discoverability despite being one of the places that a lot of people had originally turned to for discoverability for places like Twitch, right? Because Twitch has god awful onplatform discovery, right? Twitch does not do a great job with it. There are a couple of tools that they use and that's about it, right? Unless you're a front page um as like part of one of the shelves or you're front page on a carousel or you're in a directory that's really hot or you know do a ton of networking. The platform itself doesn't offer you discoverability. And Blue Sky said that's stupid. Hey, what if we what if we introduced a feature where you can you can put a link to to like a streaming site in your bio and when you go live people can see on blue sky that you're live and leave blue sky to go watch you where you are making content. Yeah.

Yeah. Mind blown. What a social media sky with actual offplatform discoverability. My mind it reels. It's pretty great. Uh I do worry like I there's been some reports about blue sky. Nothing nothing bad but just like how it's not growing as fast as it kind of needs to to survive. I think what's it at 1.8 mill users or something like that. I I don't I don't remember what the actual or what was that more? Hold on. I'll find out. Yeah. But like the I think this is a good way to get more people to sign up overall because if they can make it the place that you go first, even if you leave it, chances are that you'll stay and interact or you you'll be trained up to actually use the platform. You know what I mean? Um Yeah. 36.1 million users. 36.1. I knew it was bigger than that. Yeah. Um there and and

you know it is the number of daily posters is falling off a little right. There were about a million people posting daily and like there that's what I was thinking of. Sorry that's where my number was. Yeah there there's like it's it's falling a bit but like that doesn't make it dead. I didn't No one ever said it was dead. Yeah I know. I I I have been seeing people saying it's dead. No no no. It's just it's a matter of you want you want it to be able to survive and continue and and the sad truth about a social media platform is it does need to not exponential growth and not whatever but in in its infancy and blue sky is in its infancy. It does need to grow and generate enough hype to get more people on it if we want it to become ubiquitous. And and truly, I think this decision, even though it is sort of a um uh sideways kind of decision, like how could getting people to leave your platform be good for your platform, it's

great for your platform if you can train enough people to go to your platform before they do anything else. So, I hope that's kind of what's going on. Yeah. Um I love Blue Sky. I'm a huge fan. I like it. That's where I'm at. Yeah. Uh, what is Dead May Never Die? Is Blue Sky planning to IPO? Not to the best of my knowledge. Yeah, as of now, no. But you never know. Well, they've also, here's another thing, too. Blue Sky is also um a reminder the test platform for the backend protocol that powers Blue Sky and the app protocol that powers Blue Sky. They have also successfully tied into other platforms all using the same sort of backend. So they all talk to each other, right? It's not as federated as Mastadon is because Mastadon is too federated for its own good. Um, but it is like they they they are working on an

open standard for letting social media talk to each other. It does feel a little bit like the social media I would want to exist in Cyberpunk. We played Cyberpunk last Thursday. I can't stop thinking about Cyberpunk now. I blame Matt. Um, hey, you're welcome, Chum. Ah, thanks. Uh, okay. We are going to do um we're going to do ads here in a couple of seconds. Uh, please look forward to it. We're going to do some ads here to tell you things you can't spend money on, while some of Twitch chat gets ads for things you can spend money on. So, please look forward to that. We'll do about 3 minutes of fake ads. Will you get about three minutes of real ads to keep pre-rolls off and then we will resume the show or we not? You will miss nothing. If you don't like ads, you can go refresh your beverage, pet a cat, get a snack, do all those things. We'll be back in three minutes. Uh Matt, would you like to go first? No. Okay. But I will. No, I will. I can go

first. You want to go first? Yeah, I can go first. Okay, go for it. Hi there, everyone. Will from Extra Credits here to sell you responsible use of social media. Did you know that you can not social media all the time? Did you know you can social media a little bit, not constantly plug it into the back of your head like it's some kind of Ethernet jack and your skull is just like a new internet device? Did you know that you could social media sometimes or once in a while? My social media is currently full of pictures of cats and bodeas and bunnies. You don't you don't need to like be constantly worried about creating content or following or liking things. You can just do it do it once in a while if you want to. That's good. That's good. Um also, uh Oh, sorry. I was going to say I

was going to vamp for you while you were thinking of not being able to stop thinking about a game is my life. Nice. There you go. Yeah. Big big big same. I'm gonna play it again. I think I'm gonna play. All right. Well, hey everybody. Matt from Extra Credits here. Is your time just too busy and you can't play Expedition 33? Well, do I have a deal for you. It's called B Sad. That's right. All you have to do is just look at all of the things you have to do, like I have in my own life, not being able to play Exhibition 33 while all of my friends are very much enjoying it. And then I'm like, "Oh, gee, I'm kind of sad about that." And then you've automatically gotten something for yourself out of the deal. You have caused another emotion in the chemical soup that is your brain to be triggered by a fear of missing out or FOMO. But don't worry, because Expedition 33 will still be around when you have time. Here we go. You can't buy sadness, Will, but you sure as hell can rent it. I'm pretty

sure you could buy Sadness. I don't know. I'm pretty I'm pretty sure you can buy Sadness. Uh Tony says that was more of a PSA than an ad. Yeah. Yeah. But they're ads for things you can't buy. So yeah, they're like PSAs. Um, also the ad timer over on Twitch is being stupid and I can't tell exactly how many ads how many minutes of ads we're actually in. So, you know. Hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits here. Do you ever have to figure out how long your ads are going on and you rely on something on Twitch, an Amazon subsidiary, to tell you how long those ads are going, but they're never accurate? Well, then do I have a product for you. It's called Don't Give a Because when you don't do that, all you have to do is just vamp or talk about whatever you want. Like the Elden Ring movie, which we're going to be talking about soon, and I have a lot of thoughts. And you don't have to worry about when the ads are triggering or when the ads aren't triggering or when Will is going to tell you that the ads are done or when you read Just Be Sad,

you'll get an insignificant portion of the Expedition 33 experience. I think I understood the assignment. You did. Exposition 33 is at the end of the day extremely French and depression is very French. Surreal depression ex incredibly French. Uh that's right. Um yeah yeah. [Music] Uh I also liked Red's comment. Xbox 33 just went out for some milk and a pack of cigarettes. I'm sure it'll be back. That's right. That's that's right. Also, we forgot to mention at the top of the show, but we'll mention it now as we come back from ads because this is a period in time when people are like generally paying a reasonable amount of attention. There is no breakfast next week. I don't know why I thought that was so funny. Yeah, no breakfast next week, but we'll be back the following week with a piping hot serving of all the news you can use or or abuse or snooze upon. Yep. [Music] Um,

also next week is going to be bananas. Banana nan. It's just bananas. Okay, that's that's that's all. We'll figure it out. Sorry. They they debuted Midgar's card. I'm very excited. Anyway, all right. All right. Moving on. Moving on. Uh, we are It's funny because Oh, yeah. We're on this one. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So, uh, Embracer Group. This might Matt was like, "Why are we talking about this?" And I'm gonna tell you why I think we're talking about this. I think this might be the last time we talk about Embracer Group. We can only be so lucky. I Yeah, I kind of think it might be. So the reason I think it might be is this feels like the moment of actual like curlosion uh for Embracer Group. Um so we we'll

see. Um Video Game Chronicle uh brings us this story, but they are um they have spun off into sort of three large subsidiaries, right? that are all their own thing and are now spinning out of the main conglomerate. Um, two of them. So, uh, Coffee Stain Studios, um, publishes Deep Rock is first party for, um, Satisfactory, a couple of other games. Um, is sort of their like indie label thing. Sure. Um, they're getting spun out as their own thing and instead of being known as Middleear and Friends, it'll be known as Fellowship Entertainment. That's a

little better. Yeah. And that's going to be doing Lord of the Rings, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Metro Dead Island, Killing Floor, Darksiders, Tomb Raider, and more. And more. And more. It sounds like a YouTube video title. Uh, and so they're they're um those sort of feel like solid units, but I don't know what else Embracer could say that would move the news needle. This kind of feels like it. They're like, "Yep, this is its own company. This is its own company. We're done here. We've successfully milked all of the capital that we could possibly milk out of all of these things that were producing things that you liked and now produce fewer of them. Yeah, I just it's funny when you have all these companies and IPs sort of shuffling as much like a card deck like Embracer Group kind of has with them. I just like it feels like the damage is done and now who

knows what's next. So, like, uh, I I don't know. Like, uh, cool. Like, uh, you know, the thing I got out of this story, honestly, is the renaming of Middleear and Friends to a to just be Fellowship. Uh, Fellowship Studios. What was it? Yeah, Fellowship Entertainment. Entertainment. It's better. I don't know. Um, like I hope this means that these properties get the attention and and passionate developers on them that they require to keep moving forward and not be sort of like the um the leftovers, you know, like of of previous gaming times. I would love a new Darksiders game or a Tomb Raider game. Um, uh, I would love some good Lord of the Rings games again. Um, I'm trying to

think the last really, really great Lord of the Rings game that I played. Probably uh, Shadow of Mordor, but that was WB. Mine was the Third Age, which was a Lord of the Rings JRPG where at the end of it, your party of legally not the Fellowship fights Sauron. The great eyes, by the way, while other things are happening, but you know how the eye just goes out when the ring is destroyed? That's actually cuz your JRPG party was busy fighting Sauron. That's so funny. It I swear I'm making none of this up. You can look up the third silly. You think about you think about the 14 hours of the extended edition and what they had to do to like get there, but it's actually just a JRPG fight that ends it and the ring doesn't really do much. Like it's like I don't know if you've seen the new Mission Impossible movie, anybody. Uh but there uh there are two movies sort of happening in tandem in that movie. And

it's like that's what we're seeing here, right? Is is the ring is important. It has to happen, but also you get to punch God in the face. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Yeah, those qualifying as a JRPG. Yeah. Uh, yeah, we all know your thesis, Will. That's true. Uh, anyway, I just thought this was an interesting note. I feel like this is probably I I'm hoping this is the last we hear of Embracer. I would like them to be done. Thank you. I'd like them to to make a game or something or do something with with all this stuff. No, I would just like I would like more games to come out of the little the the the subsidiaries, but like I don't want to hear about Embracer anymore. I'm done with it. Not as powerful as the power of friendship. That's true. Uh, okay. Speaking of friendship, it's the place where you go now on your iPhone to hang out with your friends. Yeah. So, this is kind of a weird story. We've talked about this story, I think,

since the beginning of of Games for Breakfast, back when it was called Extra Breakfast. That's correct. This is Well, that's because this story's been five years in the making. Yeah. So finally after all of this nonsense between Fortnite trying to take money and Apple saying you can't have the money and them going to court and saying Fortnite says that Apple is taking too much of the money and Apple says no we're taking the right amount of money and the judge and the everything and all that jazz. Now, um, Fortnite was told that they could reapply to be on the App Store, and Apple rejected their first proposed version to be back on the App Store. And Fortnite and Epic went to the judge and said, "Judge, they're not letting us back on the App Store." And the judge said, "Apple, you have to let them back on the App Store now." So, Fortnite's back on the App Store and climbing the charge quickly because everyone's been trying to get it for the past 5 years and can't. And also they got a bunch of

free press out of the back and forth tit for tat with the judge and letting them back on the app store. And I think this also might be the end of this story. this might be it where so I yeah I have never released anything on the Apple um the iOS store but I do know that the cut the the the previous terms of service where you couldn't like basically have your currency or what you're selling in game not be bought through Apple um apparently you can buy V-Bucks straight from Epic now in that app and it works fine and uh it's I'm curious to see what ripples this decision has um on other people's monetary offerings well in the iOS store. So, one of the really big ones is

that um and this was a problem that a lot of people in sort of our bigger spheres were talking about on socials for a while was Patreon. Patreon was going to uh have to to charge additional fees to let people manage their subscription through the iPhone app because of the way that everything was worded and now they're not going to, which is pretty big. That's great. Um, also I don't know if it's going to end up this way, but it may end up that Twitch and YouTube um don't need to uh have different costs for um mobile transactions and desktop transactions. By the way, if you're ever on Twitch or you're ever I don't know what the cut is on YouTube, it's probably better because you're doing if you're on uh Android. um subscribing, buying bits, buying a membership over or a super cheer over on

YouTube. Um those are all cheaper on desktop because there aren't platform cuts on desktop, right? Same reason. I imagine that those will be shortly to follow. Yeah, I think this is a honestly um a really good move for not a really good uh outcome not only for Epic and Fortnite, but for the majority of people trying to release things and make a living even mainly small small creators uh off of iPhone apps. Um I there is a sort of and I don't know enough about the the legality of this world because again I haven't interacted with it. There is a sort of safety in having your monetary stuff go only through Apple. Yeah. Because now you have to be and this is fine, but as a consumer you have to be more savvy on on who you're giving your credit card information and relationship to. If you

want to, you can still buy through Apple. You'll just have it'll be an upcharge because it's going to cover whatever the fees are that for for using that service. Yeah. So like like with Fortnite and Epic, Epic is a known entity. It's big enough where chances are I mean other you will get what you are paying for whether or not individuals find the right amount of value for the amount of US currency. That is neither here nor there. But like it's not like they're going to be taking all your stuff and bailing, right? Like Yeah. Whereas uh now this opens the door for other pe other groups maybe even some less scrupulous ones to have their own payment systems which again you could go after legally if you wanted to. Here's a version of Snake that with a microtransaction for a million dollars like the good old days of iOS, right? God like the good old days of IO. Do you remember Do you remember chat? There was a DLC and there was a microtransaction in micro in one of the games for like hundreds of thousands maybe a million

dollars that was like literally just to say that you had it like it was just a a visible display of wealth and then No, it was an app. It was an app on the when the iPhone first came out. It was an app just called like shiny gem or something. Yeah. And the app was $10,000. Yeah. And you just got a gem. It was just an image of a gem. Insane. Now granted, those things, you know, stuff was been on is still on the iOS store and will still be on the iOS store. It's just now if you have a payment uh relationship with someone outside of iOS, it might be harder for if and when you get scammed to get unscammed. Yeah. Perto NFTs. Yes. Exactly. Correct. just as useless as the You know what's funny though? It's I wouldn't even call it a proto NFT. It's dumb as hell, but it's honest at what it was. It never lied to

you. This is $10,000 and the app is a picture of a gem you can look at on your phone. It's not like you'll get to trade this. It's going to go up in value. No, no, no, no, no, no. It was a JPEG you looked at when you clicked a button on an app and it said that straight up. So if someone bought it, I mean other than not understanding that and of course you should be able to get the refund for this horrible thing, but like listen, it seems NFTTS I think are wayier. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh yeah. So I I don't know. I think this is I sort of don't feel like the story is fully done. I feel like there there might be another chapter. The other the other big thing, by the way, that that goes into all of this that that is sort of a behind the scenes is um Apple is not going to get a lot of grace from any judges

anymore. They weren't really getting a ton to begin with, but they have been caught willfully like disobeying court orders. Now, um the judge was not happy uh and and expressed that very clearly that Apple had was willfully disobeying uh direct uh instruction regarding the the fi finalizing out this thing from the bench. Uh and they needed to fix that now. Um so we're gonna we're gonna see how like the the next time they show up in court. I don't know that they're going to be able to find a friendly judge. I don't know what Apple's next big court case is going to be, but this one has dragged on long enough and has been big enough in the public eye and they've screwed up with the judge enough that I think it's going to be a problem for them. I'm curious where Apple is. Now, we're going to we're going to get out of the fence here for a second. I'm very curious where Apple is going like

because they obviously exploded during due to innovation, right? back in the day and now it does seem like they're taking good ideas from other people and sort of polishing them and making them, you know, uh, accessible in their ecosystem. But like the Vision Pro, obviously that didn't do what it was supposed to do. Um, the Apple intelligence, no one seems to care about their version of AI. Or maybe they care about it just as much as every other Gemini, whatever the hell is going on when it's all baked into this nonsense. Um, they're not the iPhones and the eyewatches, uh, the Apple Watch and the, you know, earpods and stuff like those are all cool, but they're all kind of the same. We're buying the same thing with a better camera or a new biometric feature or something, but there's nothing like like nothing and this is

this is the way technology works, but like nothing has worked as well as the magic rectangle in your pocket, right? Because that changed the way society functioned. So if your business model is based on that or in a lot of different ways, I'm not saying that Apple's in trouble. I don't think it is. I'm just curious what the plan is. Right. you know. Well, I I don't think they've been I think the Vision Pro was sort of their last hailmary shot at being known for innovation. I think they might just be known for doing the same thing like now, right? Like I don't I don't know that there's any more. I don't know of what other new product they could reasonably introduce that wouldn't be incredibly well I mean it could be incredibly dystopian right but like then that's its own problem but I don't I don't know what else there is right they already pioneered the tablet market so we have we have large form portable computing

small form portable computing desktops they've already got the I and I'm I'm like one foot in the Apple ecosystem I used to be all the Uh, I have a PC cuz I liked it for streaming and for gaming and and on uh for the amount of money I could spend for video editing and rendering. It was just cheaper to get a PC and and sort of get one that worked for me. Uh, my um laptop is Mac. I don't think I've ever found a laptop better than a MacBook Pro. I just haven't. Like I if if there and I've I have bought and returned multiple PC laptops um because I would I wouldn't mind getting out of the ecosystem. I've also had Android phones. They're for me it's just it's not as smooth and and I will take and again this is all personal preference. I'm my opinion is not the correct one. Um but like they still have an ease of use in certain areas that I feel like is not easily matched uh enough where I now live in two ecosystems and it is a bit of a pain.

Like I had Shahir, my podcast uh partner for the only podcast about movies, sent me a really great uh 360°ree walkthrough we did um at PAX like talking about the episode that we did for the panel and I'm going to post it on YouTube as a short on the only podcast about movies channel. If you're not following that, maybe look it up. Uh, and I realized he had texted it to me and I couldn't get it unless I wanted to go find my laptop, open it up, get it from there on iMessage, I couldn't easily get the message of the link and I was like, can you please email me that they like there are problems with not living in an ecosystem, right? Yeah. Um, I I will say uh from a hardware perspective, I'm I'm totally on board with the MacBook Pro. I have one that is stopped getting updates and uh one of my weekend projects sometime when I get time is to uh and you know what I I'll even let Brad and Janet help with this. Brandon, I need a Linux Dro that goes on a 2013 MacBook because the hardware is

fine, but it's out of support for Apple, so it's not getting like updates anymore, even security updates. Um, my next big my next big project that I'm going to do at some point, who knows when, is I'm going to start looking into Plex servers. Yeah. Uh, for all of my physical media needs. Um, which I have an old iMac that I think can run it fairly well as long as I'm not encoding or streaming off or encoding off of it live. Speaking of Matt, yeah. Is your better half using the internet right now? Oh, I don't know. Yeah, we might want to. Or Steam. No. Oh, maybe not Steam. I am I'm I'm slowly being broken apart. They got to me. They found out I was using iOS and Android at the same time. That's right. Will tell my story if I disappear. Uh, okay. Uh, once upon a time there was a

guy Yeah. Go. There was a guy named Matt. Um, he used to work at MTV and then he found a cat named Zoe. Uh, and then it became her story. Uh, and then Zoe audition to be the mascot of a channel called Extra Credits and everyone fell under her hypnotic spell. Uh, and then, uh, after that, um, she successfully convinced everyone into thinking that, um, they should make the entire, uh, studio be all about her. Uh, and she was successful in this venture. So now we can't do anything without Zoe. That's right. I thought I was coming back. I thought the story was bringing me back and it didn't. I'm going super low, but no one is downloading a thing, I don't believe. Okay. Well, that's that's great. Um, can you refresh me? Uh, you can refresh you in in there. Uh, right click on your There should be like Yeah, right click on your face. Uh, yep. Show stats. Show stats. Top of stats. top of

stats should be um send key frame to viewers. Send key frame to viewers is not at the top of that window. Oh dear. Well, hold on. Let me let me see what I can do. I'll ask Hey Jamie, are you downloading anything? Okay. Nope. Not her. Oh. Oh. Oh dear. Well, that's You know, we'll try this. Is that Well, that's helping. helping a little. I don't know. This is the content you come here for is my bit rate problem. I mean, it's it's getting better. It's getting better. Clap if you believe. Yeah. Okay. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're fine. We're we're recovering. All right. If if my bit rate starts going down before we talk about the next story, I'm going to be very upset. Yeah. No, that's fair. Uh because the next story is Matt's big story uh for this week. So, basically, um, we don't know where Apple's going, but Fortnite's back on iOS to stay in

climbing the charts, and you can once again, if you really want to play Fortnite on iOS, I don't get it. I'm curious about it now. It's funny, I took this screen grab uh, and I was like, do I download this and try cuz like I can't imagine, has anyone in Brad or Janet in either of the chats played Fortnite on an iPhone or a or a phone in general? Like, it can't be. How is it? How is it fun? Like, how do you Okay, left tenant. You did it. You played it. And quote, "It's not great." I would take Dan's word on it not being great. But I wonder like, okay, this in my head, not playing Fortnite would be better than playing Fortnite on a phone if that was the only way to play it. But it I I I have to be in the minority here because tons of people play Fortnite on mobile. I don't get it.

Yeah. Only seen uh Aaron brings up Yeah. Only seen kids outside playing Fortnite and Sean Fortnite has some industryleading UX designers. That I think that's why I'm curious about it. Like Oh, I'm going to cough. Yep. Tax says uh that um the the FOV is terrible. Yep. That that that's probably true. Yeah. And all you know is your phone gaming. Yep. That's very true. Yeah. Uh people are saying that you can play with a controller, right? You can pair a Bluetooth controller with your phone. That makes sense. Yeah, that'd be fun. Maybe. I don't know. I might download it. I have a Fortnite account that I ignore. I have one skin and it's a Borderlands Psycho. We played on stream for a while, but we only got paired with bots because we're both scrubs. Yeah. Also, there was a report that there's like it's something, again, this is all apocryphal and hearsay, but something like 86% bots. Yeah, probably. I don't know. Like, if I'm

going to play about Who knows? I I have I have many other games that I would rather play than Fortnite. So, yeah. You know, it's funny. Fortnite almost gets me with every skin it does, right? Like I I was like, "Ooh, John Wick, that'd be fun. Oo, Sabrina Carpenter, that'd be fun. Ooh, Scorpion, that'd be fun." But I never make it past only Only one game has gotten me to install the entire thing and then had me hover over the purchase button, and that was Call of Duty Skeletor. And then I opted out of it, and we wrote an Extra Credits episode about it. James wrote a really good one based on that called Skeletor Wants Your Wallet. Um, anyh who. Yep. Hey, go play Fortnite on your phone. Or don't. Yeah. Or don't. I'm not I'm not your I'm not your real dad. I'm your one of your two internet dads. That's right. Hey, internet dad. Yeah. What up? Your turn. Oh, chat. Okay. Okay. Okay. They made Matt's Borbose kiss. Just so we're all aware, they made movies and Elden Ring

kiss. And now Matt's going to be totally action figures. Yeah, that's going to be totally normal about it. This is Elden Ring and this is movies and it's um Okay, so it was announced, first of all, there was a lot of rumors going around. Rumor had it that there was going to be an Elder Ring movie in the mix, and everyone's like, "Okay." Um, and I too had that very same uh that very same reaction. Uh, however, now uh it is real and it could be magnificent. Uh, there's going to be an A24 Elden Ring film from director Alex Garland. Now, up until hearing uh Alex Garland's involvement, I was basically thinking like all the everyone made their own memes of Jack Black from the Minecraft

movie. I wanted to make my own for this show. Um which I think I think I nailed what we'd all be worried about if an Elden Ring movie. The only thing I'm missing is uh Tom Holland in there somewhere. Uh and maybe Chris Pratt, but there weren't enough like multiple characters. Right. Right. Right. Um, Zenaia. Zeniah has to be in there as some random like character who speaks like once so they can claim that Zenaia is in the movie. Yeah, it could be um uh Zenaia as Ronnie. Um, there we go. That's it. Yeah. Um, or Zenaia. I I would say Zenaia regardless. Um, Alex Garland uh pictured actually we can go to the next the next uh slide. Will this is Alex Garland and I don't know just a show of hands who is familiar in chat with Alex Garland's work. While you're saying that I will say there's a couple

really interesting things that have come up about Alex Garland in in in his quote gamer cred uh that uh I've really really enjoyed. one, he has been uh he's been on record giving interviews about uh his experience with Dark Souls and and he describes Dark Souls, like the Dark Souls franchise as like living in a dreamlike lore that you're terrified of, but you never want to leave in a certain like I'm I'm um I'm paraphrasing, but he has he has a very deep uh appreciation for the Soulslike games. Um, and and then two, he there was an AMA a while ago, I forget, but I think it was during the press conference of Civil War, but uh he or maybe it was a little bit later where he was saying he was having a hard time stopping playing Shadow of the Eurs, I think, this property. Um, I'm just going through chat right now. Most people are not. Some some people are um

talking about exod annihilation. Okay. So, people recognize him enough, but I want to go through because I was very much not excited for this when it was announced until I heard he was involved because Alex Garland is one of the is one of This is actually a sad thing to say, is one of my favorite directors that I continually forget about. And I I actually want to say I think that might be one of the highest praises I can give a creative andor filmmaker because it's not about him. It's about the stories that he puts forward. Yeah. Like a lot of times like Christopher Nolan, you remember Christopher Nolan, not necessarily the element of Oppenheimer X Y and Z, right? Like there it's it's so there's a there's a a real compliment to the art when the artist is not the thing in the forefront of it. So obviously the first thing that came to mind uh is Xmachina which is a phenomenal film. If you have not seen it, you absolutely should check it out. But there are um

obviously that takes a place a lot more in a realistic uh formality than Elden Ring realistic uh of sort of like a tech a tech titan gone arai uh with future tech. But the vibes in it I think are quite soulslike if you if you kind of drill down into like the mystery box of it and it feels like there's so much more lore even in the small house that most of this movie takes place in uh that you're slow you're you're very much rewarded for like diving deep and thinking about more. Also, the acting in that movie is phenomenal. Phenomenal, right? Cuz it's it's three people playing off each other in a house. Like, it's barely legally not a blackbox film and it manages to feel like so much more than a blackbox film. A thousand%. Uh, and then uh we'll go into I think it's Annihilation is the next one I have on here. It is indeed with Natalie B. Uh, and if you want to go into exploratory vibes, going into a literal, I'm getting

a little too literal in this, but like the golden fog wall in Elden Ring, they have to walk through a blue soapy fog wall in this to get into the realm of annihilation. And there's already the equivalent. I heard someone saying like the different kinds of animals that like everything's mixing together in Annihilation. There's like essentially already rune bears in it. So, he's already got that like down. Yeah. Um, but again, it's sort of like going into a place that we are not familiar with, but you know that there is a reason why everything is put together. I think he's proven it here that you can just that applies so well to Elden Ring. Um, next up, I forget what the order was. Oh, this was a a series that I have not seen, but I've heard good things of. It was a Hulu series, but I think you can find it on Apple now. It's called Dev. And and it's it is basically uh I from what I understand he directed eight episodes of it, but I think he was the executive producer of it. Uh and there's a bunch of Dark Souls II footage used in the background. So I'll just use that uh as as my thing

here. I've heard good things. Has anyone seen Dev Bobation? Bob, you saw it. Uh and Blue asks the real question. Who will Pedro Pascal be playing in the Elder Ring movie? If it's not Redon, I riot. Um, has to be something where you can't see his face. Uh, yeah. Uh, so yeah, let's keep on moving down the line. So, Men is another film I have not seen, but I've actually read a decent amount. And if you men is like from what I understand it it is the it is the it would be right at home without spoiling anything of it. It would be right at home as like an Elden Ring side quest like a quest that is going on in the background or a thing that's happening. Uh and it's very pertinent and uh pointed to a lot of different things. Uh let's keep it moving. Civil War. Look, uh, the the way that

the lore of Elden Ring, written by George RR Martin, is put together is entirely it surrounds a couple different wars and multiple pieces of two different families, sometimes three depending on the splintering of it coming through and the complex comp political minations that you as the player and hopefully whatever the per purview of the the POV character in the film would be from are now waiting through the consequences. is of all of the things going on and you're not seeing the big picture. You're in the thick of it in the middle of the the consequences of what is going on. I think he nails the vibe entirely there. Mhm. Um and then uh Warfare, another this is a film I have not seen, but Shahir and a couple of my friends sort of have. Um, this this is an interesting piece to talk about because what this movie uh does from what I understand is uh truly kind of show you the the re the

day-to-day momentto moment horrors of war. It is not um a sort of like hurrah actiony event. It is the oh god sort of version of it. And I think that that level of gravitas is important because while Elden Ring has a lot of like big scale action that you're always a part of, there is always a takeback of like what it all kind of means if you're interested for the lore. Last night I was playing Elden Ring. I wasn't feeling very well this weekend and I was playing Elder Ring and I got to the shaman village in Erdree. I'm not going to spoil what that is, but it is a it is a place where the experience of the game changes and gives you a a feeling that you were not expecting from the medium. And uh I think uh films like warfare sort of speak to that as well. And then of course just for sheer badasserie, the man wrote Dread. Pete trees. The man wrote Dread. Peach trees. The man wrote the Carl Urban film Dread.

And if you haven't seen Dread, I'm not gonna say anything else. Go see Dread. In fact, the only the only uh sort of mark on on Alex Garland's record is the following frame. He did actually write DMC. And I was not a fan of the writing of the DMC. I think that's 2013 remake. Uh, but that I'll let it slide because everything else about this guy, this is the perfect human being to make this movie. Now, I who knows if it's going to be good. So many bad things could happen. Yeah. But man, like when you look at the at the body of work from this gentleman, I do not believe there is a better human being in the general Hollywood system to make an Elden Ring movie than Alex Garland. Okay, so get hyped if this is the kind of thing that gets you hyped like it gets me hyped. I I will be taking questions.

This has been Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Uh that's kind of where we're at. Yeah, it's real good. And and I think the announcement of this is is well timed, right? Because Night Ring comes out this week. Yeah. Um speaking of which, by the way, for for everyone, Brad, Janet, others, um that's actually a topic of some discussion. Matt and I were going to play this week. Matt has other places he has to be, which is why there won't be uh why there won't be a breakfast next Monday. Sometimes, chat, there's a video game you've been waiting for for a year. Uhhuh. And then and then your your real life for things that you love and that are very important. uh you have to you have to prioritize those as opposed to which does stink because it is I I feel like by its very nature Night Rain is going to be something that like I will now rather than be in the beginning of it I'll have to play catchup

which which it it makes me feel sad season. Um, so so Friday we actually have a a vote and and and maybe we can do like sort of an informal poll here by show of um spamming chat. Do you all want to dive into Night Rain with me? Because I've never played Elden Ring, so I have some catchup to do on that front. Would we like to make three stacks of Elder Ring Night Rain on Friday or Final Fantasy 6 and finish it out? Maybe. We're going to I'm going to play a bunch of Final Fantasy 6 today and on Wednesday and we might finish it out, but I don't know. We will have some left to do, but we could do full stacks on Friday or that. There's also a chance that I will be back Monday afternoon and will we could play in the evening. Yep. We also have a couple of people we've asked to be our third because the other Night Rain news is that the devs forgot that duos exist. Um, and so you can only queue as solos or as three people, but

you cannot queue as duos. So, we're gonna make our own three stacks. Um, I agree. It won't feel right without Matt. That's why I'm asking. It's seriously I will be fine if people play it without me. I just I I my original goal was to make it so I worked my ass off and got like the majority of the work done for the week that it released. I do not think that is possible anymore. Uh but we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Yep. We'll figure it out. Um so that is going to do it for our show today. Thank you all very much for joining us for this meandering tale of um weird legislative action, weird judicial action. Well, I guess it's mostly judicial and unions and politics and video games. And then a very good interesting piece of news about an Elden Ring movie that will probably not suck. So that's good. Listen, everything is in line for it not to. A million things

could get in the way. That's true. A million things could get in the way. Um but we'll we'll find out, right? We we'll find out. So chat, all that remains to us now is for Matt to do our patented uh extra Sorry, not extra gamster breakfast sign off. You mentioned extra breakfast earlier. That's why it's a Yeah. Um to to sort of draw us together as a community and to bind us into like one cohesive family as we as we go forward into the week and the week after this until we see you again on June something. 9th. We'll go with June 9th. Uh hey OWD by the way congratulations and welcome to this being the first live show you see. I'm glad you were able to catch it because you weren't working. That's awesome. Yeah. Um well well luckily uh OWD you can now join us right yeah in the thing that will just said the community building exercise and you all know it you all love it I don't even need to preamble it anymore so here we

go thank you for watching games for breakfast we'll see you in two weeks and until then first we Elden then we ring let's Elden ring [Applause] [Music] I can't believe you made me put that on my hard drive. I hate it. What a fun show. Yeah, great show. What a fun show. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Yuri. I thought it was good. It was it was Thanks for being here. It was a little um I feel like some of our best shows are the ones where we're talking about the news we want to talk about because there's enough space to talk about the news we want to talk about and not like the thing that we have to talk

about because it's so big that there's no room in the news cycle for anything else. Yeah. Like that's real big. The titling and thumbnail for this one are going to be rough. Um but we got to figure we'll figure it out. Yep. We'll meet up later and and do that. So, um, hell yeah, chat. Uh, right now it's time for us to say bye to Janet. Janet, uh, if you want to come over, I'm playing more Final Fantasy 6 today. We're, you know, I'm going to be totally honest. Over to Twitch. Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't I don't remember where we are over on Twitch. So, come come over while I figure out where we're at for Final Fantasy 6. Um, and I will see you all. There should be a design club on Thursday for Janet. So, please join us for that. I'll let you know. I'll put up the the pre-show thing as soon as uh Jeff and I know what the topic is going to be and we're going to decide that tomorrow. So, uh please look forward to that. So, yeah. Uh Janet, till then take care of yourselves. Boy.