Fortnite Fumbles Darth Vader, Nic Cage as Madden & HBO drops MAX | Gaming News | Games For Breakfast

Matt. Matt, you have death claws. Matt, you got to wake up. Matt, you got to wake up. It's time to do breakfast. You got Well, it's like it's Saturday. No, buddy. No, no, no, buddy. It It's Monday. What? For the second time? Like, I didn't do this already over on Twitch. That's correct. It's like we didn't do this bit over on Twitch. That's Wow. Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. Yeah, it is. It is in fact time. I think it is in fact what? What? What? Time. Time. There we go. It's a matter of time. Yeah, it's only a matter of time. Welcome to the pre-show. I can't wait to see you again. Yeah, there you go. Welcome to the pre-show of games for breakfast this morning. We are uh what's the word I'm looking for? Uh, I believe the technical term is hella pooped. Um, from our stream, which we'll talk about

a little bit more, knackered, uh, exhausted, uh, sleepsies, uh, all of those things. But that that's not going to that's not going to stop us from bringing you the best breakfast and gaming mashup content of your entire GD lives. I don't know what that is. I don't know. It's a chocolate chip oatmeal bar. Oh, hell yeah. Great. What did you find it on your desk? What? You seemed very surprised about it. I did. I thought I was out of them. I lost one on my desk during Friday's show. And you found it right now. I found it right now. That's pretty great. It's a breakfast miracle, Matt. That's true. That's true. I I think everyone in Brad and Janet uh clapped hard enough and found you sustenance that will maintain uh at least you listening to me scream for the next two hours. I'm not going to scream. I'm going to speak loudly. Um as we're walking exuberantly.

Yeah, exuberantly. I'm Listen, we'll talk about the stream when we when we start the show proper. I uh am so excite that um the the the stream went so well and uh now we're back to we haven't done a breakfast in two weeks. Uhhuh. We haven't eaten breakfast in two weeks. Which reminds me, will um did we run the bumper before we started? Perfect. Perfect. I ran it before you joined. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Well, let's see. Let's see if all the old haunts work. It was great to meet you uh at PAX East. Who said this? What happened? Thomas Thomas Guzma said, "It was great meeting you at PAX East." Pax East. The PAX East also happened. We'll talk about that. The PAs of the East.

Yeah. Uh, thanks for thanks for uh saying hi. Yeah. Uh, Yuri says they missed us. Oh, well, we missed y'all too. We we missed you so much that we spent around 13 hours with you on Friday. I hate the duality of this where like part of me is like, "God, I'm so glad that's over. I can sleep for a whole weekend now." And then I didn't sleep for a whole weekend now and I'm still tired because I didn't sleep for the whole weekend. not there was no sleep that occurred during the weekend, but instead I was awake for any part of the weekend when I wanted to be asleep. Um, and and the other part of me is like, man, I wonder how I can do something uh that that tops all of the technical shenanigans that we did for my birthday. We can do it. I believe we have the technology. I mean, we do, but turns out that uh being on two incredibly powerful streaming rigs makes a lot of things

possible. A lot a lot more things a lot possible. Turns out being on a medium power rig that is haunted by the ghosts of my enemies. Also makes a lot of things possible. That's true. That is Yeah. Mhm. I still I'm real glad that we didn't have to like get the holy water squirt bottle for your PC because like man I don't I don't know what we do with that. Well, we made it and we'll talk about it. Is there anything else? Weirdly, uh it's the end of the month so I know this the pre-show could go a little short. We could just get into the show. That's true. Uh we could indeed for there there is no hype to be had over on Twitch. That is not an invitation to hype. That is an obation. There there is no hype. Uh yeah, we can we can do that thing. Um, so because I have this whole carffe ready and I feel like I'm going to need it. And by car I mean French press. Yeah. Which I guess is also a carffe. I don't want to think about it. All right, we're going to go to black. Then we're go back and we're do a show. I

think all of our and Will's energy will grow three sizes. Is this is pre-show. Will wait. Whoa. Wait. Hey everybody, wait till you see regular show Will. I got I got splinters under my fingernails from digging at the bottom of the bottom the bottom of the barrel this morning. Just it's going. We We can do it. I believe in you. I believe in me that believes in you. That makes one of us. All right. Great. We'll be right back. [Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. Oh, good morning, Will. 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 we get to announce a very, very happy thing

that happened last Friday. For any of you that were not here, that is right. We, the colloquial uh Brad, Janet, Will, myself, a load of special guests and and giveaway partners managed to raise $5,000 for Best Friends Animal Society, which due to their Best Friends Day, which I believe is going on right now. That 5,000 actually is matched. So, we raised $10,000 in a span of around 12 plus hours on Friday playing a crowd control uh run of Fallout 4, which was absolute madness. And I have been over the moon the entire weekend because of it. Um it was it was pretty amazing. In fact, uh Matt, I did I did some digging. They have a best friends uh day big overarching combined thing. I don't know what you want to call It's not an individual campaign, but it's like a it's a group campaign. It's an event over on Tiltify. And their goal

for the entire event was to raise $10,000 before matching. So, we set them halfway to their goal on day zero of Best Friends Day. Uh so, you know, I feel like we did we showed up. We did pretty good. We showed up. We showed up. Uh I'm over the moon. I'm super thrilled and thankful and thank you for everyone who came and hung out and donated and all to all of our partners who gave us giveaways to give away and all the guests that stopped by. We had a full docket. I think we had like 19 guests or something like that. It was a a little bit a little bit wacky. Also, uh Andrew has the vibe. So many Brahman spawn. I wish we could find out how many Brahman were spawned. I believe we get Oh god. I'm not going to dig it up now. Don't dig it up now. I think it just be if I have the answer by the time we uh do all of the YouTube after action stuff tonight, I will post it in the YouTube uh thing. But if you're over in the YouTube VOD right now, post your guess how many Brahman

responded on Yeah. How many Brahman were spawned on Friday? And I will post a pinned comment with both a link to the fundraiser if you want to donate because it's still live and how many Brahman we spawn on Friday if I can find out. And if I can't, I'll tell you that I can't. Um, also Twitch chat is over here being just their normal ornery counterproductive selves by starting a hype trade after we told them that they were too late. Show's already going. Hype train can't survive. Hype train can't survive. Can't do it. Not for for this side on the YouTube side of things. We will end up uh we have a a a hype train graphic that will I think you mentioned we might be able to make work at some point. Yes, that is a thing that is on my list of things to do now that we're not trying to get all of the tech for the birthday to work. Um, so for those who are unfamiliar, I changed PCs over the winter break, and we've slowly been adding more things in that

I've wanted to do, but the old stream PC just didn't have the horsepower to do it. So, we're slowly adding those things back in. One of them is dual streaming to YouTube. One of them is um some of the the new stuff that we do with guests. Some of it is a bunch of other things, but one of them is this really cool crowd uh not crowd control, hype train emote. Um so which we'll which we should be getting working. Also, side note, anybody who was at the stream on Friday, um how did it look overall? I we didn't hear of any technical issues on the dual streaming stuff from my rig. Um, granted we were playing Fallout 4, which is an older game and still checks out. Uh, but we also kind of broke Fallout 4 a bunch based on the crowd control and the spawning of 900 cows or whatever it's going to be. I'm just curious if people who were here actually uh Yeah, from everything I from everything I've seen, it looks great. The the only the only thing I've

noticed is that we could have tweaked volume levels slightly more and turned the game down more, but that's mostly because we did not realize the volume of sound that crowd control was going to be generating, right? The amount, right? We could have we could have turned crowd control down more and or uh the game down more and you up more, but that that like minor. Also, we did notice that on the VOD, just as a call out, if you want to go back and watch the chaos, leave it on during the day, hang out, whatever. Um, the uh we get cut off at 11 hours 55 minutes and 1 second or something, even though the stream went I think almost 13. Uh, I did, as in the um description, I put a timestamped uh element of the Twitch VOD uh basically there. So, if you get to the end of YouTube and want to continue to the end, you can click right there and it will take you to that point in the VOD just in case. We learned, you know, one of the things I'll be doing

tonight or this week sometime uh is uh doing a permanent highlight of the event so that that last hour and five minutes isn't lost um to to the to the Chronicle. Matt, did you know did you know I found this out from our community who found out uh because Pirate Software did science. Do you know if a stream goes longer than 16 hours, the whole thing just vanishes? Oh, really? The whole thing just to the goes away. Yeah. So, in the future when we do long uh when we do long charity streams, what we'll probably do is we'll do a planned break like six hours in. Sure. Uh, and we'll we'll have we'll like segment the YouTube VOD and we'll be like take the whole thing. Here it is. And we'll put a link at the end of one of them to the next one and we'll do it with an end card and everything. I have to do end cards and tags and crap for that. All right, it's fine. Lots of stuff. Yeah. Uh, I was also thinking uh

we could go through if we wanted to and um uh in all of our infinite time maybe put time codes when guests pop in on the pod. Oh, you're lucky you're pretty. You're lucky you're so pretty. You're so pretty, Matt. It's the glasses. It's the glasses. It's just Yeah, the the glasses make uh uh the everything better. Um Yeah. Uh what was I going to say? There's one other thing before we get started and move away from this. I don't know. I was uh so happy with it. Um oh, and yeah, Copper brings us Well, six years first of all, NX, congratulations. Also, that seems like it was yesterday. Uh but uh Copper brought up uh some of the volume was inconsistent with the changing of the guests and that's something that if we're ever doing something with so many guests is sort of there's no way like I would everyone on the back end of the charity stream worked for not a little under a month getting it all moving. Uh Jeff with all of the um the giveaway stuff and talking

with our partners, Will figuring out how all of this would actually function on a rig that he he's controlling a lot of it, but not on a computer that is in his home. Um uh and myself uh uh sort of man also Nick Dit who did all of our art uh having time to do that and um myself I was sort of the one wrangling all of the guests and trying to get everyone in. And it it I think anyone who's ever run a tabletop RPG before knows how difficult it is to get five people at the same place at the same time. Uh five adults. Uh wrangling 20 21 or whatever we ended up with with the with the duality cuz I know we had doubles up sometime. Um it just takes a long time and there was no way we'd ever have time to do like full audio tech tests with everybody. So I'll own this. I don't think a lot of people know this. I was auto I I was manually adjusting the audio for every guest by

ear without access to levels, without access to a volume leveler as they joined. So, I know it wasn't perfect, but I am also going to pat myself on the head and say I did a pretty dang good job getting it dialed in pretty quickly with no access to like actual data. I did that all by ear. So, yeah, I think so, too. I know some people if we had if it's funny will if we had one other person we probably could get them in a a preview place where that person like sort of moves their levels to be good before they come on. I've seen other things I've done but that requires one more person because you are also on the stream right we yeah essentially you you have them join what amounts to a digital green room and then you adjust their stuff against a known volume level there and then go from there. But uh there is no such third person. That person doesn't exist for us. So um so we do what we can and it doesn't and look it we we hit our goal. We did what we wanted to do. Yeah.

No, for sure. I do want to point out that that is why I'm not in tabletop games that we run. Um that that exact reason that you're talking about is so that I can just handle all of that. Which is actually, by the way, in case anyone's wondering, I really enjoy that. I do. I am ever so slightly occasionally bummed that I don't have to that I don't get to play. Um, but also I get a special kind of joy about being the Gremlin behind the scenes that like gets to do all of the cool tech wizardry stuff. So, pay no attention to the man behind the keyboard. Uh, and pay attention. Also, uh, as as Thunder and Grass are saying too, uh, yeah, Zoe does not count coffee. Uh, big up to the mods for for hanging out and and and basically keeping the the stream uh up and running and safe for the entirety of the uh of the nonsense. We know that is a big and we doubled their workload for no additional pay by adding YouTube. Although YouTube was pretty good. You YouTube was pretty good. I think a lot of people were confused maybe, but overall the data

says it was a net positive. Yeah. Uh so um there so so uh what I we we'll talk this we'll talk this a little we'll talk about it like a little more and then I'm going to do this. Aren't there tools for helping normalize volume? Yes. However, all of them depend on a person doing something. So, we have to determine how what the trade-off is between getting people in quickly and having it right immediat. Like, there's a trade-off, right? Like, we could spend forever getting it perfect, but that's not good because we we only have a half hour with each guest, right? So, it becomes a negative value proposition. Or we can do it fast and loose and it sounds bad and we need to find somewhere in the middle where it's fast enough and good enough. And here's another interesting side thing that I didn't plan for, but it's it's whenever we have

sort of these things, I'm like, well, is there a positive to the bad way we do it? And the one positive that I can think of is um especially for a stream that's 12 13 hours long um at moments where the audio gets loud suddenly as long as it's not hurting people's ears. Uh that is a moment where people had it on that where you like people will look back because there's a new louder voice. Yep. Uh that was not by design. That was just something I was like oh well maybe I can turn this frown upside down a little bit on that. But anyway, absolutely. Uh, and David, we're real glad that people found it because it was on YouTube. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, we uh we are trying to include YouTube in all kinds of our special events and stuff. And when when we do further special events, um I'll be there. Also, last note and then we'll we'll move on to our to our proper to our actual show, our stories. Yeah. [Music] U giveaway winners, you should be getting emails sometime this week. Um I'm not going to commit to a day this

week. Just get it done during the We're just going to get it done this week sometime. Um, so please look forward to it. Uh, as they would say over uh in Square Enix. Okay. Uh, Matt, are you ready to dive into all of the news of the week? I think so. Yeah. Uh, first off, first off foremost uh before we begin, did you have anything you wanted to share from PAX? Because we didn't have a show last week because of PAX. Did you have PAX news? PAX was dope. Panel went well. the oh uh the audio uh of the the adapter die panel featuring uh uh Sophia from Movie Struck who Indigo on on uh Overly Sarcastic Productions. Also Jeff Cat and uh Jasmine that bronze girl Bular is and Shahir Dow my my podcasting partner is up on the only podcast about movies uh RSS feed right now. You can uh do the commands and figure that out or just search the only podcast about movies. There's only one. And if you're watching this later, it'll be in the Well, yeah, we'll put the link there. Uh, but yeah,

you can actually um we we and by we, I mean the live studio audience uh decided which was a better adaptation, the Minecraft movie or Until Dawn. It was it was spoken. There were there were there were bows thrown and friendships ruined, but we got to the bottom of which is a better adaptation, not which is a better film. Um, so we will Yeah, I mean, one of them has a top has a record-breaking top 100 charting single and the other one doesn't. So, and the other one has a random crypted in the woods. Look, uh, we don't know. Uh, I'm sorry, not crypted, Kaiju. Um, aren't Kaiju just big cryptids? Yes. Anyway, check that out if you're interested. Packs overall went great. Uh, met a lot of great folks out there, some of which just spoke up in chat right now, which is lovely. um was really really fun and it's always great uh just to packs and cons in general feel lovely just because you get to kind of like I don't know see people you get

to see once maybe twice a year so it was it was really nice uh yeah all right cool cool cool cool cool let's talk about studio screwing up so uh first up this week Bungie Bungie recently released a marathon trailer and was like hey this is what it's gonna look like this this is cool. This is great. Every everyone was like, "Ah, it looks cool." And then this artist spoke up and was like, "Hey, hey, for nothing, um, you took a bunch of stuff off of work that I did in 2017 and I'm not credited anywhere and you didn't ask, and you plastered it all over the world with Marathon, and Bungie went, "Yeah, that's our bad." And good to them for doing it. Yeah. uh go to them for for for owning up and uh they have a bunch of u their statement and we got this over from IGN uh links in the show notes but basically uh they said they are they were launching an investigation

to see how it worked. They were looking at previous artists and workflow and they're going to try to prevent similar issues in the future. Quote, "We are conducting a thorough review of our in-game assets, specifically those done by a former Bungee artist and implementing stricter checks to document all artists contributions. We value the creativity and dedication of all the artists who contribute to our games and we committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. So I I I will say like Bungie as an organization, right? Um this is kind of a problem. Okay. So, um, how do you verify that someone who you say, "Hey, we need you to make some wall decorations, some futuristic looking wall iconography that we can use in sort of like a haphazardly plastered way all over this world to make it look like there are signs and, you know, directions and weird alien languages and whatever. We we need we need you to to do something like that." And how do you verify that they have actually done that themselves versus just grab something

off the internet, right? Like like for something that is this um straightforward, right? There's no in progress for this, right? There's no like it's essentially a couple of vector drawings. Right? Now, that's not to say that there isn't like that the work shouldn't be respected. It absolutely should be, but there's very little. It's not like a a full uh big illustration where you can see the roughs and you get feedback and everything. This is like, hey, I spent a couple hours doing this vector and it's totally my own original work, TM. Right. Right. So there there there is an understandable part of it where like how do you how do you check? Right. And it sounds like there was an artist that they caught doing this more than once and that person no longer works at Bungie. That's the subtext that I got out of the message that Matt read. So, uh, I I am at least somewhat sympathetic to the notion that they didn't know that this had happened. Yeah. And also, Shirro brings up according to Pirate Software, the art director of the art team had been had been following the artist for months. So, I don't think the investigation was needed. Uh, it's

funny. So, uh, what was I going to say? Basically, I have no doubt that many of the artists followed that person. You know, they probably were. They're probably if it the artists that weren't directly ripping them off were also probably looking for inspiration places. Artists follow artists. That's whatever. I think uh and this is not this is not handwaving uh what what Bungie did because this is a serious problem. And but what I'm saying is a lot of companies when when stuff like this is brought to their attention don't have as a robust as a like oh damn our we we did wrong. we are working on not doing wrong. Now again, whether or not uh they make good on that promise, we'll have to wait and see. Um but a lot of companies don't even bother doing that, saying something publicly about a mess up. So that's what I'm I'm hopeful here that this moves into a positive direction because they seem like they are taking

accountability. Granted, they are to a couple people point in chat, they are taking accountability in a very corporate speak uh way that seem that probably has to be done for a lot of legal reasons. Um, but again, a lot of companies don't even do that and I know the bar is low. They're hitting that bit of a low bar and I think uh hopefully they'll make good with this artist and uh pay more attention to their art pipeline and make sure that stuff like this doesn't happen again. Yep. Okay, let's talk about something happy. This this segment we now call will nerd out about MTG Final Fantasy for like a couple minutes. Uh I saw it at packs. Yeah, they were pretty cards. They're very pretty. They're very, very pretty. Uh not the mo like weirdly the most powerful card that I've seen so far or the most impactful card that I've seen so far is a card called Suplex.

Um, and lest you worry, yes, the ghost train is in the set and suplex destroys the ghost train. You're welcome, internet. They they've got it 100%. Um, also speaking of suplexing a ghost train, you're interested in Final Fantasy, uh, I will be starting Final Fantasy 6 immediately after this stream. If you're watching it over on YouTube, part two will be playing again on Wednesday and Friday of this week. So, um, you know, you get to watch me suplex a tra I've been given strict instruction that I'm not I'm not to defeat the ghost trade in any way other than suplexing it and then using a phoenix down on it. You're welcome. Um, so the one of the things that I think has been really interesting is that the preview season here has gone very interestingly in a way that I think is like they're finally hitting their stride with Universes Beyond. Mostly because I think that Final Fantasy is a better crossover than a lot

of the other Universes Beyonds they've done, right? more than um certainly more than the Marvel ones that they're going to do. Um it's it's been really it's been a really good preview season. It's been a lot of fun and it's been really nice to see a lot of people getting super interested in the not competitive side of Magic, right? Like there's been a lot of preview seasons where people like, "Oh, this is super busted." Or, "Oh, I can't believe they did this or whatever." And this has been a lot of joy, a lot of fun, a lot of seeing different characters represented that people really love. Like if there's a named character that you love from one of the Final Fantasy games, they probably have a card in this set. And they've been doing a really good job of making those cards interesting and not super overpowered, which I'm I'm kind of a fan of. So, I was looking at what these what the the pre um what the what the the commander decks cost like retail and it's a little bit

crazy at this point, is it not? It is higher than normal. So, that that is the downside is that um the because of the license there's a frog in my throat. because of licensing fees um that go along with this. The cards are more expensive than normal. That is true. Um they the some of the commander decks are more expensive than normal. The premium commander decks are in the this is stupid price range, but they're premium they're full they're full foil commander decks. So they were always going to be in this this is stupid price range because you don't need them and you probably don't actually want them because the foils curl still. never really fixed that. Don't buy them. Um, the one that's really getting me is that the comm the collector boosters sure currently selling for double MSRP. Normally MSRP is between like $3 and $400 and they're currently selling for $800 for a box of collector

boosters, which is yeah, wild. I do worry um I mean this isn't by any means the the the thing that's going to knock the the tip over the tower or whatever. But like I do worry that Magic is already sort of nickel and dimming a ton. And as as successful as this set is going to be with the extra 20 or 30 bucks for a commander deck or whatever it is, like I'm I'm worried that now they're going to think this is like the the this is the way. And like there's only so many properties that I think will support this level of fervor. and the ven diagram of crossover of lovers of both properties, Magic the Gathering and Final Fantasy, right? Like yeah, I I think the literal only other the literal singular only other franchise that would generate this level of fervor in a

crossover they're probably never going to get because it's got too many of its own card games and that's Star Wars. I literally think the only other IP like they're never going to get Pokemon and they don't want Pokemon. Pokemon TCG is their main one of their main competitors um I think the only other franchise in the world that would generate the amount of fervor that Final Fantasy has here is Star Wars and I don't think they're going to get it. So I don't think I think this is going to be an outlier, right? Like I don't I really hope you're right that they don't try and like you know I mean they're gonna like I I think they're when does the when does the full Marvel set come out? Uh so the next Marvel set is Spider-Man. Spider-Man. And it's later this fall. Um I bet you they're going to try to charge the same amount for Spider-Man. Oh, they are. They already are. We the the the universes beyond price is different than the in universe's price pretty firmly at

this point. Yeah. Uh League wouldn't do it. Uh I don't I don't think League does it. I think the I could be 50/50 on that. Why don't you think League would would would off would be a thing that would bust people over. Um couple reasons. One, League already had a card game and it didn't do well, right? and they have a new card game and it's not going to do well. But think about that. Think about it. Why the reasoning why it didn't do well is I mean it could have been multiple reasons, but it probably was because the gameplay loop was not as fun as say other collectible card games. I think that's possibly it. I also think there's a fair chunk of it that there's not as much overlap between League players and card players as Final Fantasy players and card players. Yes, possibly. Well, for one, Final Fantasy for the most part, again, someone's going to tell me I'm wrong, blah blah blah, is

turn-based, right? And so there's that turn-based overlap. You're actually going deep. You're you're saying because the majority of Final Fantasy games are turnbased systems that you think it would it it matches better to people that like turnbased systems. That's an interesting read. Yeah. I mean, I think there's other things to it as well. I think demographics, age groups, the length on IP has been out. Weirdly, I I I feel like when did Final Fantas when did the first Final Fantasy drop? You don't want to know. I think it's 87. But this is important. Okay. Yeah. 87. December 18th, 1987. And Magic the Gathering. That's great. Uh 93 92 93. So we're talking about Yeah. 93. August 5th, 1993. So um we're talking about a a difference of six years, but then

proliferation since their release. So these are two considerably ancient IPs that are coming together here. I think that's why they think Spider-Man will work because Spider-Man obviously is older than than both of them. Yeah. I I think that that um yes, these are both also progenitors of their genres. Final Fantasy is one of the main progenitors of uh turnbased JRPGs, aka by the way any game where you kill gob with the power of friendship and um magic is the progenitor TCG, right? Yeah. Like it's very hard to argue that Magic isn't the OG TCG in a meaningful way. So, um I I think that like that is part of it. I also think that just the the mechanical synergy here is so strong. I also think, by the way, this is another one. The lore matches the the the lore matches up way better. Like the

the Final Fantasy feeling matches up way better with the magic feeling than like Spider-Man's webs slinging around. Like what? Are we going to get New York City as a as a card? Like, are we going to get like New York City as a town? That feels weird. Like, that's a land that you can play. Like, turn one, New York City, turn two, Spider-Man. Like, whoa. Okay. Like, there's more dissonance there than there is with Final Fantasy. Sure. Um, there's a lot of reasons why the ven diagrams of these two IPs work very well. I just and again I have been long out of the like actual collecting magic game. Um I still play on occasion at conventions with friends. Um but the this was the first set where I was like oh like for instance if there was at packs commander decks available to buy. I don't know if I would have done it for like $89. I I feel like I probably would. Okay. So so okay there I do want to clarify there are two commander decks.

Well, there's four, but there's two, right? There's two there's two flavors of commander decks. Yeah. Um, the black commander decks are the premium ones that are all foils. The white commander decks are not. And the price the white ones I believe are the $89 ones from what I've seen. Unless I'm reading it wrong. I absolutely could be. Well, I pre-ordered them. I didn't think they were that much. They could be. I love Will just blind buttons it. Maybe I'm wrong. I know the other ones were in the three-digit. We're in the triple digits. Okay. No, I've got it backwards. The white ones. The white ones are the the the other ones and they are currently going for and the problem is and this is the other problem. Wait, what's the number you threw up in your mouth a little bit? the number I'm seeing to pre-order these all surge foil commander

decks, all four of them, a package of all four of them. And this price, I cannot stress this enough, is not set by Wizards of the Coast, $1,424.94. Well, Wizards does set the price. This one's a market price. This one is set by an aftermarket seller. that that price is not the wizard's price. Um, you know, Matt, that's a really great question that we don't have time to get into. We could do an entire episode on why Magic supply chain is stupid. This is stupid. Yeah. But no, what what tell me how much one of the nonfoil pre-order commander decks cost? Same problem between 90 and 140, but that's not the MSRP. And you will be able to get them significantly cheaper because that's the pre-order price and because the supply chain is stupid right now. So, if I go to my friendly local game store two weeks after these are released, I'll be able to get these commander decks at a normal commander deck price is what you're assuming?

Hopefully, yes. That's that's my hope. Again, what one of the big problems and this has been Brooklyn Strategist. They'll see in three weeks or whatever it is. Uh, did I know that one of the major MTG distributors is going bankrupt? Yes, you're talking about Diamond, right? Is Diamond or Alliance? One of the major TCG distributors is going bankrupt and there's a big problem. Um, yeah. Uh, do these have MSRP? Sort of. Not really. So weird. No, it's it's extremely weird. It's extremely weird. It's extremely bizarre and it is one of the major weaknesses of Magic. Which is why I cannot stress this enough. If you are not diehard into Magic and are thinking about playing Magic and playing for the Final Fantasy set and seeing if you like the experience and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I love Final Fantasy. Maybe I'll actually like Magic the Gathering. Please, for the love of all that is good and unholy, play on Arena. Just play the freeto-play experience on arena. Maybe buy some packs there. Maybe spend a

little bit of money. But please do that before you wade knee deep into the wretched hive of scum and villain that is the Magic the Gathering MSRP fluctuating surge pricing thing. um in physical uh Agarero says 70 for non-foil commander decks is roughly it but it that is also still more expensive than a normal commander deck right again I don't buy them a lot yes it yes it also depends and again yes it dep how much more expensive depends on which level of commander deck because there are multiple level of commander deck they there are some that where they'll do like a set and two commander decks and those are generally cheaper than the ones where they to just four or five commander decks like on their own or like the big commander decks for a year. They've done there's been a bunch of stuff they've It's all gradations at least they eliminated the set booster so now it's

all play boosters. There used to be two kinds of booster packs. Now there's only one again. Thank you. There's a reason why I there's a reason I don't actively play Magic. Uh and there's a reason just like there's a reason why I don't actively play Destiny. getting on board. As someone who plays Magic daily and who loves Magic and who absolutely crashed out over Tilt last night because I had an hour. I played over a dozen games over the course of an hour and I went first twice. I had 10 games where I went second and two games where I went first. And currently in the standard meta game, that's a massive deal. Um, win rate variance is about 10% on go first, go second. It's real bad. Um, yeah, but I actively play Magic. Don't like save yourself. I like big cuddle monsters. I actively play Magic. I do not actively buy Magic products. I think

that's kind of that's kind of where I'm at. I have decks in the apartment that I like playing on occasion. uh just you know or and al and also uh drafts at at conventions and things are really fun. Yeah. Yeah. Paying for the experience of doing a thing is very different than like paying to like sit on packs and hoard them. Um totally unrelated for, you know, reasons. If you want to get the vicarious experience of opening packs without actually spending money on packs, I'm currently working on getting my card cam up and running and I'll probably open some of the stuff that I get for Final Fantasy because it's too late for me and I'm trying to help you save yourself. It's too late for me, Matt. I'm gone. It's too late for Will. We've lost him. That's right. If you'd like to watch him fall endlessly into the void. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. come on back when you want to watch me fall off of the door raft at the end of Titanic and just fall into the ocean of Magic cards. Um, that's cool. You can do that. That's That's entertainment, right? Um, oh, RC,

that's a great question because I've never used it. Um, does M I mean, I'm sure it does. There are a plethora of ways that you can play without owning the cards, but yes, it it translates reasonably well into tabletop simulator. There are tables set up. There are game files you can download that let you play in tabletop simulator and you can download card or a deck into tabletop at least. Yeah. Cool. Yep. All right. Well, will I look forward to watching you spiral? Yeah. When is it when does it release? Uh the pre-release is on June 6th. The actual set is out June 13th. Great. Um also my favorite card Oh, I did want to slip this in. My favorite card is that there's now a card called instant ramen. Oh yeah, you'd mentioned this. Which has flash, so you can play it as an instant and it's ramen. That's all. Doesn't matter what it does. Doesn't matter what it does. It's an instant called ramen. It's amazing. That's all. There you go. All right. Next story.

So, this is a steam valve hack. Yeah, it's good. I I Googled it. that the pipe is hacked in with a with a with a steam valve in the pipe. You just so good. Okay. So, there was a report that was going around last week that some amount of valve data had been compromised and the sourcing on it wasn't great and uh the the the reason I took it seriously was that there was a website uh XDA devs that posted it and they have been reputable in the past. Also, regardless of whether or not it's true, here's a good practice that you should get into. Every time it sounds like someone's stuff might have been compromised, change your password. Just like it takes it takes moments, just change your password. Like even if

nothing actually got touched, even if nothing was compromised, you're not changing your password enough. I guarantee it. Unless you are one of the people who is like and you know who you are if if you genuinely don't need that advice. Like there's a group of people who like change their passwords monthly and use like extremely long secure passphrases and like all that jazz. Sure. If you're not one of those people you're not changing your password enough. Change your passwords. Change your passwords. Change your change your Steam password because your Steam passwords like all your stuff. Yeah. Change your password. Uh it's funny. I guess Team Zone analysis, this is coming to us from IGN, says it was a leak of older text messages, the one time like codes, the SMS, like the SMS things you get sent. So, like it's just it's not anything to worry about. But to that point, it's always good to bring up for all of the reasons that Will just said. Yep. Also, enable Steam Guard. Steam Guard's great. You can scan a QR code to get in from your phone. Uh, okay. Yeah, 2FA big and clever, but

not text message to FFA. Text message 2FA sucks and is useless. Anyway, um okay, Matt, this one's all for you, buddy. What did I do? What? [Applause] [Music] All right, we're not going to say we told you so. Oh, but we did though. Oh, y'all. Max. You all know Max, right? Your boy Max, right? Premium streaming service Max. That is both a human name

and the thing you'd put in front of something else to make it seem bigger, not its own thing that would be a streaming service, right? Um, yeah. Who is Philip? Philip off. Who is Max? Who is Max? Dark Wasp. That was all Matt's part. Uh, hold on. Chat's moving too fast. Told you what. So, a while ago, Yep. uh HBO became HBO Max and then I listen I don't know if it was Zazlav or not. I have no idea who made the call, but as as Discovery was merging with HBO and all of the premium Discovery shows were being brought on to HBO Max, they decided why not in the slurry of content. HBO being the uh home box office known far and wide. This is a sign that I modified of course that like you used to put like in hotel room like

it used to be like a big deal that HBO was like free in in a hotel room, right? Because it was premium. The whole the whole thing the whole understood property of the brand HBO was that it was premium content. It was better content than you could get on cable. It was better content than you could get anywhere else. It was the home box office anywhere else in your home, I should say. um for for uh television shows and movies. Now, about two years ago, they decided, whoa, well, hold on. What's the most important part of the brand? HBO. Great. Let's get rid of that and call it Max. And I don't know if I know anybody who actually called it Max. Like, it was always HBO. Uh, recently announced, now that I'm done laughing and giving a history lesson, recently announced, uh, Max is changing its name back to HBO Max. Warner Brothers Discovery announces. Now, the the statement here uh, and we'll have the link to the again the IGN

article in the description is choice. Um they uh announced how does because they started with saying how great Max is doing. How phenomenal Max is doing. Is it though? Uh well it it it I imagine it's probably doing very well. They have great shows. Like they truly do with the mashing up of Discovery. They also have a lot of slurry of garbage. But I think here's what I think. I think they are on they could see a path to profitability if they know that their name can be sort of matched again with quality. And so now they're throwing shade at other streaming services that are doing the same thing they announced they were doing up until this very moment. Um, there's a quote that says, "Thanks to the enormous amount of hard work, investment, and refocusing the strategy of the programming that is working best, like HBO, recent box office movies, docky series, certain reality series,

and max and local originals." I don't know about any of those. The depp prioritizing of other genres that drive less engagement or acquisition is is paramount. Um, and they said they they were trying to show that because people associate the HBO brand with quality content and content that is worth paying for in a in a sea of options, which again we've talked about in the past. It's not enough in this space to have the most stuff. You need to have a few things that people cannot live without. They're doing that roughly and live without is you know I'm being facitious but like their their slate is that where especially when thank you guy paramount is a different company uh they now are seeing I think the writing on the wall that the slurry of content is not enough between series to make it feasible to maintain like you can constantly have signups but your churn I bet you their churn when they turned to max got way harder.

uh even if they had saw more signups for things like The Last of Us or or House of the Dragon or any of that stuff, White Lotus, um when those shows end, if you don't have other quality things, stuff that is up to that level of of polish and instead you just have a bunch of reality shows, people don't stay. Yeah. Um, returning to the HBO brand, they continue uh into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from their offerings. Uh, it it it is also a testament to Warner Brother Discovery's willingness to keep I I love this. I flipping love this Warner Brothers discoveries willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach leaning heavily on consumer data and insights to the best to best position itself for success. They're boldly going back two years where no one has ever gone before but them two years

ago. What a boneheaded move. And if it I mean two years ago. This is putting things back on track. Yep. Um there is talk, just so we're clear, and people might I've been ranting for a minute. People in chat might have brought this up. Um there was a rumor, and I have not dug enough to know how true this is or not, so take this with a grain of salt, that the reason that they did drop HBO was they were worried about various contracts on higher level prestige shows having the word HBO, if it's playing on HBO, that means X, Y, and Z in a contract. So they changed the name. I don't know how much that would hold up in court, nor do I know the validity of that accusation. It does seem like something that could happen. Again, I I do not know. But many but some people, I won't say many. There was a couple folks that popped up online were like, "No, they're doing it because X for Y." Because there's no other logical reason why they would change it to Max from HBO because HBO has the brand clout and Max

is uh the word that comes before headroom. Yeah. I was going to say Goofy's kid, right? Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, so, um, there there very well could be that and maybe with, um, all the lovely deregulation that's just coming down the pipe, depending on where you're coming from, uh, maybe they're no longer scared of that. Who knows? Again, I am I am reaching here. But at the end of the day, I'm glad HBO is back in the title of the streaming service that does offer good stuff. Now, the name matches what they do more. Again, this has been the equivalent of Will ranting about Magic, but about a old premium cable service that is now a streaming option. Back to you, Will. We both get one today. All right, next up. I don't know. Hold on to your butts. Hold on to your butts. Hold on, Will. I want I want to call something out very quickly. You put in the show notes, there's going to be a Madden movie. Why though?

I have no problem with there being a Madden movie. I don't either, but I don't think it's going to be profitable. Like, I don't know that there's enough clout left in the Madden name specifically with the new generation of people who play Madden to make this movie profitable. Like, that's that's my that's my genuine concern, right? Like it makes sense if Madden was still a thing that people that was like much more recognized, but I don't Madden hasn't even cracked the news cycle for a while. You're thinking about video games only though. John Madden in the realm of football is is incredibly ubiquitous. It's why he's the video his name is the video game. Right. That's fair. Reminder for everyone not in the US, we're talking about Hand Egg. Keep going. We're talking about hand. Nice. Um, yeah. You throw Nick Cage and Christian Bale in as uh John Madden and Al Davis. Uh, and and look, this is the other

thing. You know why it's not going to make money is because it's a movie. I think that uh I imagine it's going to be released on Prime. Um, I'm not quite sure, but uh Amazon MGM is unveiling their first look at at these two. like they're they're making this. It if this is a movie that goes into theaters, who knows? I have no idea. If it just goes uh onto Prime unceremoniously and then sort of disappears, it will go the way of Electric State. That's right, Electric State. The Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt vehicle that cost $240 million that no one has talked about once before now. Um, also great graphic novel, just apparently not something that cracks the zeitgeist because things get released on Netflix and streaming services to again in a sea of other nonsense and your your value prop is way less than say something that you know is in theaters because it is premium and

you can only see it there for a limited amount of time. I I just like uh Andrew's suggestion. It's going to be Madden Max. Wow. And then Furiosa can be the QB. No notes. I'm in it. I'm in it. Better. Better than whatever they're gonna else they're going to come up with. Let's do it. Yeah. I don't I think I I I just I genuinely don't I don't see the profit happening if it goes to theaters. Probably not. I imagine this will go straight to streaming. And also, this is the this is the most depressing thing I'll say. I hope all day. uh profitability on a single movie like this doesn't matter when it goes to streaming. Yeah. And it sucks because the people that make movies, any movie that gets across the finish line is an absolute miracle and you want them to succeed and do well, but like it's just one of those things that will happen because they have a budget to make a thing and then that thing is made and then that thing is up for however long until it disappears and doesn't get a physical release. Yep. Like so maybe like and again I have no I have no

problem I think to be perfectly honest I know I know nothing about John I don't follow football so I don't know anything about John Madden's life. I also really loved for instance the Tetris movie which talked more about the acquisition of the rights and the story behind it. I would love to learn the story of how Madden went from a a football legend to uh uh uh you know coaching through through Super Bowls into being the face of one of the largest video game franchises of all time. Madden Max is now called Madden HBO. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's a bonus. All I can think of, by the way, right now is and his name is John Madden. No, I I um I his name was Robert Pollson. Um I Robert Paulson I don't know. I I'm a and maybe maybe I'm being a softy on this because I'm just a sucker for anything Nick Cage is in. Um and I think Nick Cage would probably make a really good

John M. Like this picture gives John Madden like even though it is very clearly Nicholas Cage. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Wait, hold on. He's also the man who popularized the Turduckan. All right, now I got to see it. If they include the Turduckan story, then I'm all over it. Right. You got to If if movie contains Tuckan, uh, look out my You should probably exp No. You know what? No. No. Google Turducken. I'm not explaining Turducken. I'm not explaining it. We're so far past. Turduckans are too far away from a breakfast food. That's right. That's why it's not in our purview here. That is That is a holiday dinner. Yeah. Uh, no. Okay, cool. Great. Anyway, eternal eternal I'm glad you asked your two internet dads. Go ask wherever your internet moms are. That's right. Yeah, we don't. No, it's No. All right. Anyway, moving along quickly before this turns into an introduction conversation. So, I love I love the internet so much.

All right. So, recently, as you may or may not be aware, Pocket Pair and Nintendo have been slugging out in court over whether or not Pocket Pair uh violated patents. patents, not trademarks, not copyrights, patents that Nintendo put in place based on largely, but not exclusively Pokemon's Legend RCS after after Pal World was released. And because Nintendo has all the money, uh, and the Pokemon Company has even more than all the money, they've been kind of, uh, beating the absolute crap out of Pocket Pair and Cord. And so, as a result of that, Pocket Pair patched out a bunch of mechanics in PAL World that Nintendo claimed were infringing on their patents in order to sort of like make this go a little easier. So they removed the ability to choose a PAL that

helps you that you glide on because that was one of the things and now it instead you pull out a glider and the PALS give you bonuses to gliding, right? So they like they very quickly hacked out as much of the things that Nintendo claims are infringing on their patents as possible. Cue the internet who said, "Man, that's really stupid. We have all the files from the way the game used to be. What if we just made a patch that said nah? So they made a patch that says nah and now there's a mod that lets you put all of the things back in that battle world took out. To be very clear, they don't put everything back in the way it was. I believe what happens now is like you still mechanically need that glider item in your bag and now you can glide like you used to do. Also, you can't throw the ball to summon your pals anymore. you now can like look at the direction where because what how they patched it was your pal would just appear next to you

instead of you throwing the ball to the place now the patch lets you look to a spot and the pal will appear there. Yeah. Um so it's it's not just like it's it's trying to get back as close as it can to the native way it was done but it is not onetoone correct accurate. Yeah. Absolutely. Of course, it's it's not going to be like exact one to one, but it is really funny to me that the internet's response is that's stupid, so we're going to undo it. Oh, sure. Right. That's the funny part to me is that like and this is sort of the problem that Nintendo's going to run into, right? They can try and stop it, but it's out there and it will continue to be out there and they're never going to get rid of it. They're just going to make it not profitable, which is I think is their goal, right? Yeah. the we also have to remember that like I don't think that Nintendo N cares terribly much about PAWorld as an individual but it believes based on legal precedent that if it doesn't go

after Pow World for doing these things more and more will pop up and they will lose their right to do so like it it it feels like an opening volley to try to make this not happen again and so they're going to keep it going I think um listen people keep modding, keep doing stuff. We'll see. It's It's curious because at what point, and I am not uh a legal enough scholar in this or any space to know, but at what point does Nintendo start like clamping down on like they won't clamp down on the game's mods, per se. Well, and we have pretty hard evidence of that. There are two incredibly successful, wide ranging, currently expanding Pokemon mods for Minecraft. They're not like Pokemon like Pal World. They are direct IP infringement. They are you can catch all of the current Pokemon in Minecraft. Like you get to choose a starter and

it's called Pokemon and it uses all of the same designs for the Pokeballs and you can do all the things that Power World just got told that they can't do, but they're in a mod for Minecraft. And so far Nintendo's been like, "That's cool. You You keep doing you." I feel like because the game is intrinsically because Minecraft as a game is intrinsically different than Pokemon as a game, even though you could do things in Minecraft that Pokemon does where Pal World essentially, again, I have I've played 10 minutes of Pal World. Will, you've played more, so correct me when I'm wrong, but like Pal World, didn't you play a little bit of it? Oh, I'm thinking of Temptem. Wow, my brain. Yeah, you're thinking of tempam, which was then then Brad and Janet, correct me when I'm wrong. Pal World's gameplay loop, not not what you can do about like base building and like, you know, assigning jobs and things, but the gameplay loop is fairly similar to Pokemon, right? Like what you do, that's what I think they're kind of

going after. Um, again, could be wrong. Yeah. Yep. Uh, okay. Good news. Up the Union. Uh, we have two Union stories uh this week. Uh, both of them in my opinion. Good. Uh, number one, the Overwatch 2 team unionized. Good job. Good. Good job. That's a big team in a very big front-facing part of Blizzard. That's like that's a large team. And they're, by the way, Overwatch nearly 200 developers. basically anyone who doesn't have anyone else reporting to them. Yep. Uh Overwatch 2 also is like on the rise. They did come out with a new game mode that's doing pretty well. And by pretty well, I mean it's wildly popular. Have you heard about this, Matt? No. There's a new It's It's like a stadium mode where you earn points by doing your job. And in between rounds, you use those points to upgrade your hero. And they're adding more like each hero has specific upgrades. So, like I I

watched um someone play like a couple like a half hour of it and like Mercy can split her healing beam as an example or Moira can get longer range on the little tether thing or so so it's a MOA kind of. Okay. It's got it's got some mobile elements and it's it's kind of interesting. Why am I blanking on the the the shadow dropped beta game from Steam? Deadlock. Deadlock. Thank you. So, they saw Deadlock maybe. But what if we take little bits and pieces? Deadlock is also sort of in a very interesting place. We haven't talked about it for a hot second. Deadlock radically continues to change itself up like that they they are the the reason that it's still in a beta is that Valve is like ah we didn't like the way this is working so we threw this whole thing out and redid the whole map again like or whatever right so

um so yeah I I think it's uh I think this is good for Overwatch. I I hope that it it brings them much uh negotiating success with Microsoft and Blizzard. Good job. More unions. And also, this is a very, this is a very big, very forward-f facing, very public company and IP that's unionizing, right? This isn't like one department of a QA company that handles QA for one thing. Not that those people shouldn't unionize. They absolutely should, but like it's harder to point at them and be like, "See, they're doing it. You should, too." Here, the Overwatch 2 team just unionized. Why doesn't your studio have a union? because they certainly should because if the Overwatch 2 developer team can unionize, everyone should unionize. Yeah, I like I I I want nothing more than to be invested in Overwatch again. Uh so hopefully I mean again I I I truly believe that when uh your people are

taken care of uh you make better work. That's basically what it is. So Matt, what do you got? Will what? I have sinned. What' you do? My brain is so tired. I forgot that ads were happening. Oh no. Oh no. Indeed. So, uh, as as a mayulpa for for my sin, we can do we can do some ads now that everyone will see now that we're back from proper ads because I somehow missed the bot announcement that there were going to be ads. How dare. I know. My bad. My bad. All right. Well, as penants, you will now do the first ad. That's right. Here you go. You ready? Yep. I got it. You can't buy this. That's right. You certainly can't buy awakeness. That's right. You could buy caffeine. You could buy sleep and you can buy all kinds of things, but you can't buy the concept of being awake because I would pay a lot of money for that. Someone sell me awakeness, please. Just I hear woke is big in the the news

media right now. I would like to buy some woke because I need to get woke up. It's not It's not happening. Um, I I deeply desire to be more woke than I am or more awakened or however you kids say it. But please, please, I'm so tired. Chat, please. I'm so tired. I beg of you. Give me your sleep now. Please. Thank you. Wow. Okay. Okay. Also, also, also, this might be one of my favorite follow-ups to a story we've done. I've searched what a duck is. Feels like a violation of some core tenant of the universe. You're right. It is. Congratulations. Now, you know, and you can't unknow it. Also, before I do my ad, speaking of missed announcement, Matt missed me sniping his resub about 45 minutes ago. Thank you, Daft. It's become I I can't keep up. I can't do it. And because you know what? No, this is

what happened. This is over on Twitch that people snipe and sub my Twitch account to the EC channel. It's because it's during breakfast now. I need to get it out. I need it to go away from being in breakfast and then I'll pay attention to it a little bit more. All right. Um, wow. Wow. Oh, I love it. Yes, that is that is it. Both wakefulness and wokefulness. Hey everyone, Matt Credits here. Listen, my cohort Will was just talking about how he really wanted to be more woke. Getting awake to make sure that he is fully functional and ready for the day's breakfast or streams or anything else he has to do. Well, regular woke won't do anymore. In fact, that is why I bring to you Woke Max. That is right. There is a gentleman you can hire named Max who will come over to you and wherever you are, shake you violently until you are

awake, giving you the maximum amount of wokeness that you can possibly take. And making sure you're being awake lasts all day. By the way, we just changed the name. It's now just Max. I hope you don't mind Max coming over. Perfect. No notes. All right. Great. Awesome. uh this advertisement for subscribing to the channel so you can see those advertisements every week brought to you by I can't read. Uh our second union story is that the VFX workers for Marvel and Disney ratified their first union contract. That's another that's another very and like the contents of the contract are important but not the main thrust of why I wanted to talk about this. The cons of the contract are great and important and wonderful and I'm glad that it's ratified. Again, this is another big case of this is not little itty bitty mom and pop 10p person union. This is a large union with big high-profile

projects that are handled under it. Good. More of this, please. Right? If you could be like, "All right, Marvel and Disney movies are made with union labor." It's really hard to be like, "But we can't make profits if we have a union or whatever the current excuse is, right?" Um, so I think that that's just another really good win for for unionization in the industry, especially for VFX artists. Um, especially for that. Yeah. That needs more and more and more and more and more and more and more. Yeah. And more y 100%. Uh, one one I know we have a few VFX folks in uh in our regular community as well, so hopefully this will be also like um Woke Max. Did you mean John Oliver? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Great. Uh welcome, welcome, welcome. That's what he screams at you when he comes over to your house. That's right. Uh okay. Next up, uh Elden Ring is getting new DLC, and it's probably the

Switch 2's fault, which is kind of cool, actually. So, Elden Ring Tarnished Edition is going to be the edition that's available on the Switch 2. Cool. Good. Excellent. Obviously, it's one of the bestselling games of the past couple of years. It's going to be on the Switch, too. Um, the cool part is that there are going to be new classes and some new cosmetics, and it looks like those are all also coming to PC as well. New classes just feels like a good easy lift for DLC. Your classes don't do any like like you you spiral out of your class in Elden Ring and any of the Souls Borns uh so quickly. Uh, it doesn't truly truly matter. Um, the here's here's I I Okay, I love that the Switch 2 is getting it and is getting little little bonusy stuff. Okay, I I I might be in the minority here. I actually don't want them to sell these extra things to other places. This

game is if they gave it away for free, I'd be totally fine with it. But what I think this is I pray that I am wrong. I think this might be the beginning of horse armor in From Soft Games. Funny you should mention that, Matt. Part of this DLC is cosmetics for Torrent. Great. Which is fine. Again, like I like that there's a special edition for the Switch 2. Uh I let me rephrase. I both like and dislike that. But if it's happening, then I I I because the game is an older game that's now being published and you get the expansion thing and it's all sort of in the in the in the Tarnish edition, I just just give any anyone who owns Erd Tree and Elden Ring, just give them this stuff. Just give it to him. Yep. Like and I I I do worry, especially with And again, please don't get me wrong, I am so GD pumped for Night Rain. Like I think Night Rain is going to be a

phenom in that space, but I think one of the reasons everyone was so psyched for it and the reason why they gave it so much, no pun intended, grace was that they said like straight up that this game was going to be a complete package that you pay for basically once and then you will get to play the game, right? And that's not to say there wouldn't be an expansion like a full DLC, but like this was not going to be a cosmetic nickel and dime fest. And the second that these games start to do it, uh, I feel like you're really going to go full um, god a Morton Joe with this and be like, you know, do not become addicted to water for you will regret its absence. I feel like once this happens and they see how much money is able to be made, pieces of this are going to be are going to be chipped away in order to

make more money and sell things in a in a less complete package than we're so used to games fromoft doing. I and again I really hope I'm wrong. Yeah. Like they and and and truly everybody gets one. Fromoft has really been standup through and through throughout my entire fandom of them. And if they do this and they sell this oneoff thing and it's whatever and it's fine and I'm wrong, great. You got your one. Like cool. I just precedent is a is a [ __ ] Like it's just it's it's it's it doesn't feel good. I don't know. Maybe I'm being too No, I think that's fair. That's kind of why I phrased it the way I did, right? that like they're using the Switch 2's release as an excuse to try and get $10 to $20 out of the 30 million players who already have Elden Ring. Yeah. Right. Because the current projected price according to um Kotaku is somewhere between 10 and $20 for the new DLC which completely optional mostly

cosmetic. Like you can do that if you want, right? But like like I'm more likely And this is stupid from a financial perspective on my part. I'm more likely to buy the Tarnished Edition on Switch 2 than I am to buy a $10 expansion for my PS5. Yeah. And I'm not buying it for torrent skins. I'm buying it so I can play it on the go on a Switch to like, you know, but like it feels like it's included as part of a larger purchase. But also, I don't know if I'll buy a tarnish edition because I don't know if it's actually been said that it will be available on like if it's actually on the physical card or if you download it based on owning the card. Yeah. By the way, there is a there's a story that I want more info on before we do it. Uh, imagine this that I'm waiting for more information that suggests that one of the reasons that the um there are so many game s like the game key cards is that Nintendo is currently limiting the size of cartridge that they're sending out to people or

that they're giving to developers and that many games won't fit on that cartridge. That story needs a lot more verification, but there there there may be more to that story. And I just bring that up as like a, hey, that story may be more complicated than people don't want to put their game on the cartridge. I would be very curious to hear more about that considering I have I'll say this I'll say this publicly. I don't have a Switch do pre-order yet, but I did pre-order um I wanted to vote with my dollars uh Cyberpunk on it because Cyberpunk is entirely on the card. Yeah. And if they can fit Cyberpunk and Phantom Liberty onto the card, I have a feeling they might be able to fit a couple more games onto that card, too. Yeah. Um I Yeah, because both versions I have Cyberpunk on the PC. Uh I don't own obviously a physical copy of it, and I think it's really cool to actually have it on the cart. Yeah. Um anywh who um and someone brought up I

want to bring this up. Um, I I'm so sorry. I don't remember who, but someone in the pre-show brought up the story about Nintendo sort of side eyeing or sides sliding in some information about being able to remotely brick Switch Twos. Yeah. Um, I have not done enough research on that. I heard whispers into it. Maybe that's something we'll talk about as the Switch 2 becomes uh the release starts coming more. But I did get the email that I am in the pool to get my pre-order. That's cool. Oh, did you? Yeah, that those emails went out on the 16th. We were tired. Wait, so you're in the the pool that will get access at some point. Oh, I have that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I got another one. Was it on the 16th? This this weekend? Yeah. It's like, "Hey, we know you're here. You don't get one yet, but we see you." Yeah. Anyhoo. Yeah. Uh Okay, cool. Let's talk about this week's main story, which is Fortnite has given us a fantastic case

study in why letting the internet interact with a public facing generative AI is a terrible stupid idea. So, Fortnite got the legal nonsense handled to bring the Darth Vader James Earl Jones voice AI thing, which to be very clear, James Earl Jones did sign off on. This is James Earl Jones signed off on it. His family has signed off on its use. I believe he was paid very well for his voice likeness rights and that is everyone's right to do with their voice if they would like to. Correct. So that's not the issue, right? There's no there's no issue of legality in in doing this or compensating an artist or getting an artist permission, right? Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. But then they let it talk to the

internet and then they had to pull it down and patch it because people were getting it to slay like to say like some pretty horrendous slurs in like minutes. Like not hours, not days, minutes. Time to slurs, minutes. And this is sort of a thing that I feel like is probably again one of the highest profile examples of like well what did you expect to happen? Like did you not expect this? We have other cases of this where like people have done like AI driven VTubers with like Vocaloid sort of like TTS kind of stuff and they've been tricked into saying slurs as the streamer on Twitch and getting banned. Like this is not new news, right? But the fact that Fortnite did it and then screwed up and thought, "Oh, surely this won't happen." is sort of the big deal. I have a theory. Sure. Um I think they

knew exactly that this would happen. I I I don't think this I think this was always a possibility and I think that then they get news stories about it. Now it is air quote fixed. Um, I I just think that's kind of what it is. Like I guess here's my because otherwise let's say this didn't happen. Let's say that a Darth Vader talk to you AI was in Fortnite and it worked fine and it had the safeguards for this children's game uh in place. Right. Cool. What? Look, show of hands, Brad and Janet. Who wants to talk to an AI in a video game? Like, have a conversation. Like, verbally just chat back and forth to it. It I'm not saying in other elements. I'm saying like in a game of Fortnite or or or a shooter or or I

mean, Fortnite is a million things, too. Let's be very clear. Like, why? Like and and if and seriously if you do I would love to like this is not a call out. I I can't fathom a reason why this would make this particular game better or more immersive at this point. AI bots like this all do from a from a grammatical structure uh thing kind of all sound the same and a little less than human and you can kind of and that's not to say that it won't get better, you know, all that jazz. Uh and this is my point. This is actually uh ifix says I want to break it as fast as possible because why not? That is the only reason I can think about to have this in a game right now in a game like Fortnite. Because it's fun and memeable and silly to break it. Now, there is a joy to that. I'm I'm sure.

Um, but I just don't get unless the the point was like getting people to say silly things or outrageous things. Ice Ice brings up a point. To be fair, the AI might be more polite than other players. Sad but true. Um, but you can bl like this is the thing actually actually that I that brings up a great point. I agree. I think it I bet you this AI is way more polite than a lot of Fortnite players. The difference is other Fortnite players are players interacting with the property. This is something that the property is progenerating. Yeah. Proen generating. Yeah. Putting out there. Um, yeah. Actually, TAC brings up a great question too. Some of us older gamers don't want to talk to real people cuz they're terrible. Why would we want to talk to a clone on internet behavior? Yeah, it's all it is is paring what

people would answer back in these situations. So in truly until AI becomes legitimate AI, like something that's actually thinking and not just scrubbing uh artificial scrubbers, um ass uh would be what it would be called. Um, sorry I keep getting distracted by everyone's lovely comments. No, these are great. I guess even if the guardrails worked perfectly, Darth Vader addressing you as Sabrina Carpenter is kind of inherently funny. Yeah, you're not wrong. U, I just other than having sort of memeable moments, which again is a form of marketing, which again is what I think this whole thing's point was. I don't think they were terribly worried about what would happen because what they get to do is be like, "Oh no, so sorry." Wow, that's crazy. We fixed it and they'll patch it as as use cases happen, but those things still get through. Um, I don't know.

Like I I sorry if I'm sorry if I missed anyone saying that they that they liked this. Um, yeah, a dark has it kind of guys that nailed that. Like I kind of want AI, not AP. If if we're talking about conversational, like if like I would love it I because that's you're talking to something else that can talk like a person. Uh, also Aspen brings up a great point too. I don't want AI to be a companion. I want AI that does all the mind-numbing secretarial work that my ADHD brain can't handle. Sure. Correct. Valid. Yeah. like it. Okay, what do you got? Will this feels like the force trainer, which seems appropriate. Okay, so who knows? Okay, so they had this toy for a really long time, and it might still exist, and I don't know if they still make them, called the Jedi Force Trainer. And it was a headband that you put on, and then

you could focus on making a ball levitate. And the I'm not kidding. The headband would do some kind of telemetry analysis on your skin conductivity or whatever is happening inside the headband, right? And it would make the ball like it would turn on a little fan, the ball would go up, which is kind of cool as like a novelty toy thing, right? But it also isn't fundamentally doing the thing that it claims that it's doing. It's just a stupid party trick, right? Like you're not actually gonna get to like get wisdom from Darth Vader or like anything. It's a stupid party trick. The difference between the force trainer and this is that Star Wars fans who want a stupid party trick and they get the force trainer buying money for a piece of technology that people have actually hacked to do some pretty interesting things based on the telemetry from the headband. like people have hacked it to do other stuff versus

this which is just lighting rainforest on fire. Like the problem isn't that it's a stupid party trick. Star Wars fans are very used to stupid party tricks. The problem is that it's a really stupid stupid party trick that costs a lot more and is much more destructive than the stupid party tricks that Star Wars fans are used to. Yeah. Does that make sense? Like that's my primary critique. Like it was never going to be like lots of people want to be a Jedi or a Sith. They're like whatever and buy like spend way too much money on a lightsaber or like a Jedi robe or like Jedi merch or whatever. Like there's a reason Disney makes an absolute crap ton of money off of the little kyber crystal things where you can like maybe get a black kyber crystal and like that's a whole deal, right? Like whatever. Um the problem with this one is that it's worse than those and more damaging than those. Well, and also if they like tell me how you know this wasn't to make an actual like character of Darth Vader without telling me you actually know this wasn't to make an actual

character of Darth Vader. Like if you were going to put an AI Vader in a game and you wanted to be true to the character that you were being, I don't think Darth Vader would actually talk to most people. I think Darth Vader as portrayed in all of the films that he was portrayed in would have someone talking and saying something ridiculous or trying to prompt him and just force choke him and move on. Like this is not true to the character. This is Darth Vader getting into a banter a banter session about Baja Blast. Darth Vader would not do that. And therefore you're you're breaking the immersion already and it becomes more to Will's point of a cheap parlor trick like that is like oh isn't that funny? It's a meable moment. Darth Vader's now talking about Baja Blast, but also like talking about how it would be uh the the official drink of the Empire or something. Again, nothing that Darth Vader would say. And if you want a great example of characters having inworld banter that doesn't use this, look at rivals. The number of pairings

of different heroes and rivals that are continually getting new voice line interactions when you're in the waiting room to start the match is going up and up and up, right? And like they could have just done a bunch of Vader lines for all of the different Star Wars characters and some funny ones for different people and given work to one of the two voice actors who have taken up the mantle of being Darth Vader, by the way, without using generative AI. There are now two voice actors who are considered the authoritative voice actors for Darth Vader, and they didn't give either of them work. They gave it to an AI instead. Also crappy. Um, like it doesn't it doesn't do the thing. Like Vader's never going to do the coolest line that Vader's ever done, which is in the comics, by the way. Uh Vader gets surrounded by a whole bunch of uh rebels. Um and the rebels are like, "Give up. You're surrounded." And he says, "All I am surrounded by is fear and dead men." And then kills all of them because Vader is just a stone cold awesome like bad guy. And I'm not

talking like again, I want to make sure I'm not like I I have lots of pros and cons to Fortnite as a property. We've talked about it on the channel in both these live episodes. We've talked about it in uh the my Skeletor wants your wallet episode thing that we did uh on the animated side of credits. Um the the thing that I am talking about here is you are now taking skinning a character running around in a funny shooter that includes Jar Brinks, Sabrina Carpenter, um uh Subzero, and uh I don't know who the hell else is in it. the to the talking banana guy. Um, you're you're you're putting all those together. They're normally just skins. This is making something that is supposedly supposed to be like the character interacting with you here. And that because because it fails intrinsically on the like I would have similar issue with the I would have less issue or my issue

would be lessened if this was say on Deadpool. Yeah. In a world Ryan Reynolds sold his his voice and let people do whatever they want. I pray he never does. But let's say that all happened and this was a Deadpool that is talking to you. Yes, that at least makes narrative sense and you could argue an art a crappy but still artistic reason as to why you are doing it. Doing this for Darth Vader is ridiculous. Yeah, and I agree that Ryan Reynolds wouldn't. However, what I do think Ryan Reynolds would do would be to get a Deadpool skin and go into Fortnite and yell at people as Deadpool. Sure. Himself. Like anyway, um by the way, I do want to point out that the the Brad and Janet are merging brain cells because back to back over on Brad, we got correction, Darth Vader could fill his back to tank with Baja Blast and at the same time Tac over on Janet said Baja Blast back to tank. So, we're all

on the same page. Everyone's on the same page. Everyone's on the same page. Anyway, this is just an interesting thing. Uh it's the occurrence is bad. The implementation, I think, was not careful on purpose. Again, I don't think it was malicious. I just think that they knew what would get people talking, like ourselves, talking about it. Uh, and, uh, we're going to see more of the stuff continually in our gaming space, uh, moving forward. Um, it's kind of interesting. When we played Fallout 4, when I was prepping the Fallout 4 character for the charity stream, I mentioned to Will when I when I prepped my character how amazed I was. And I remember being amazed back in the day and it still gave me a sense of amazement that I put my name in as Matthew. And when you're talking to um Cogsworth in the beginning of the game, your AI, your your robot butler in Fallout 4, they recorded up to like two or 30 hundred common names uh for Cogsworth to say and speak to you. And so he goes, "Mr. Matthew." And like I jumped like I was like, "Oh, cool." But

then I thought about it and I was like, "It'd be so easy now to do that with AI." But once it's This sounds weird and I I want to bake this idea more. I'll just say it here and then we can move on. Um that moment is special to me because I know how much actual human work went into making it work. Yeah. A voice actor recorded a ton of lines. It wasn't just a quick thing. There was like actual effort and dare I say sort of like even the soul of speaking someone's name. Um, and that still felt special to me to this day. If someone in for if an AI Vader said my name in Fortnite, it would not have that effect. Yeah. Because it's not serving the story, the plot, anything. Y um, and I just find that interesting that a game as old as Fallout 4 uh, gave me the feeling that I think some of the designers of this might have wanted if it was more uh,

cohesively gelled together as the experience you're getting. Yep. Agreed. Okay, that brings us to dessert. Speaking of Baja Blast, the ultimate dessert drink. So, uh, there will be no spoilers for Expedition 33. Save the exist of a character who is in all the promo material, so don't worry about it. Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Um, the developers of Expedition 33 have asked people to be on the lookout for fake offers for SEA plushies because SKA is a very cute, huggable character who's in the game. We will say no more about anything. Just this character exists. Great, awesome, cool. Um, and so they have said, "Please be on the lookout. You know, people are offering fake ones. Also, hang on to your money. We're totally making a real SDA plushie." which is great because I very much would like to hug an SA plushy. I'm very I'm looking forward so much to when I have a I I need to finish Final

Fantasy 7 Rebirth before I grab Expedition. I just I need to for my own I can't have two to two to I know they're different style games, but they in my brain they fit in the same like slot and I need to finish one before I get there. I'm very excited to to get into it. It's going to be really good. I'm actually considering um I found out that I missed something in the prologue, which means I can't 100% a run. So now I'm considering playing the whole thing again on expert mode off stream now that I've rolled credits on stream. Uh and I got to tell I got to tell y'all the number of games that I've actually considered doing that on is very small. I normally cannot do that. My brain just won't. It starts screaming at me. Yes, but here I might. Who knows? So, we'll see. Um, yeah. Okay. I've been thinking about doing a stream before before um Oh god, why am I blanking on the new house marquee game? Uh,

SOS. SOS. Uh, the the spiritual successor to Returnal. I'm debating doing just a series of streams on my own will. I won't drag you through here. um uh to try to actually platinum Returnal because I I would like to platinum Returnal before uh Saros comes out. Um I've been wanting to do I haven't tried I haven't platinum the game since Dante's Inferno on the PS3. Um I picked it because it was easy. Yeah. Um and I think it'd be very very fun to do. So there's something to be said about like going back into a game and trying to do all the things, especially when there's a game that you love so much. Yeah, correct. Um, and the and the other reason uh is that is this comment um like Hami says, "Yeah, I missed a lot." Of course, I missed a lot. I'm playing on stream. Yeah, I cannot overstate how hard it is to get everything without bogging the stream down to the point that people stop watching.

Yeah, because I could play methodically and no one wants to watch that. We already had problems with people not wanting to watch because I played too early, right? But like again, one of the problems with enjoying the game is that making it into content is a huge struggle, right? Particular for something that's as spoiler heavy as Clare Obscure. Um I did I loved I saw a streamer post a tweet that they were getting into the act one and they couldn't wait to do their lore through and they had a whole notebook for lore and I was like, "Oh, you sweet summer child. You need like three notebooks." Um I'm I'm super Yeah. Anyway, uh so uh that's that's really cool. Next up also um Tekken. Two desserts. You get two desserts because you didn't get one last week. That's right. Uh yeah, two desserts. Tekken. Everybody knows Tekken. Everybody knows Tekken. Everybody knows Tekken. Everybody loves Tekken. The devs of Tekken have said that they are trying to cross over with

a famous franchise and they're having no luck contacting this franchise because the franchise isn't really one who does crossovers. Um, and that is that the devs of Tekken 8 think it would be really dope if you could fight in a Waffle House. Um, and I salute them. I salute them. You know, here's to you real Tekken devs of genius. Real Tekken devs of genius. Yeah, right. They're correct. I do want to have a Tekken fight in a Waffle House. And I won't be satisfied until I can suplex someone through a table as king in a Waffle House. Like perfection, right? That's it's what I I need it. I need It's so good. It's such a great like this is all win. I love this idea. Anyway, hopefully it becomes a big enough story where Waffle House listen. It's interesting and we we we uh in we ran into this two years ago

or whatever when Baja Blast became a channel. Not Baja Blast when um Martinell Martinelli's sparkling cider became a bit of a meme here and I was like man I I can't I really want to be sponsored by Martinelli's and that's why we have on Twitch one of the tags is not sponsored by Martinelli's yet. Um, but it Jeff actually got a hold of them, I believe. And it's just something like the way that like different places like a Martinelli's or a Waffle House are just not set up to do cross promo in an efficient way with something like a YouTube channel or a video game, right? Like especially older older franchises or older businesses. Yeah. Uh so it's funny that this tweet has blown up a little bit. Yeah. Um because maybe someone at Waffle House will uh will see it and be like that could be pretty fun. Yeah, absolutely. I I 100% agree. I'm I'm very I'm I'm hopeful. I you know, I haven't played Tekken in a very long time. I would probably get Tekken just to do this. Tekken Tekken 8 seems really

lovely. I watched some of the some of the tournament at packs. Um and I I don't know. I it's just I only I only have so much time and it really is Mortal Kombat for me. But I uh I think Tekken has offers a lot of cool stuff in the fighting game space. That's where I'm at when I'm not busy tilting out. Uh I am currently trying to get to mythic and standard on arena and that takes a very long time because you stop getting real good win streaks once you hit diamond and people start like actually knowing how to play their decks. Sure. No, no shade to people below that, but like the level of interaction in Diamond is significantly higher than the level of interaction below it. So, um yeah, and sometimes like Kyle uh Kyle brings up sometimes these companies apparently Arby's had an amazing social media run on gaming which is cool. Like when they get it, they get it. Wendy's obviously goes hard. Um but not every company has that. So a and a social media account is

different from an integration. You know what I mean? Like so who knows? Maybe we'll we'll have uh Paul versus King uh in a Waffle House one day, but it will not be this day. Yeah, absolutely. And that dear friends, I almost made Matt go away. That would have been bad. Why? Because I was Oh, cuz I have meetings and I have to do all the work that I didn't do last week. A thing and I almost made you disappear instead of that. I see. Um friends, that's going to do it for our show today. Thanks everybody for joining us for uh the returning breakfast edition of Games for Breakfast. Yeah. Uh I guess the only thing left, Will, is our is our patented ending that is the same every time we do it, right? Well, yeah, I got to I got to real quick I'm going to pitch this because I'm super excited about this. I know I'm real tired. I'm so excited to play Final Fantasy 6. Genuinely, if you're a Final Fantasy 6 fan, please come hang out. We we're taking um we talked about this a bit last week. It's a bit of a risk

because there's no directory for Final Fantasy 6. It's just people who love the game coming to see someone who's brand new to the game play it. Please consider coming play and hang out. Right. I could be So that's starting if you're watching this live, that's starting right after we get off here on Twitch. If you are watching on uh the VOD on YouTube later or if you are watching uh via Rocky on Nebula, hi everyone. Uh if you're interested in watching, we'll do that. And I'm sure the VOD for that will also be over on Twitch even after the fact. So yeah, come hang out if you'd like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So So that was that was my only pitch and now now we can now we can do the ending. Yeah. Now we can do the ending. Jokes on you. That's the part of the ending we do every time. It's always the same. And we do it to to garner community to make sure that everyone feels like they are together in this um wonderful uh smorgish board of of of content uh that we all come together to make including you Brad Janet and Rocky. So until next

time, stay waking, rousing, stirring, arising, uh opening one's eyes, perhaps maybe realizing there could be something or emerging from ignorance perhaps. All of those things you really do need to take to the max. [Applause] [Music] Yeeha! Yeeha! Nailed it! Yeah! Yay! We did it. We did it. We did indeed, Chad. We did. I was impressed that we managed to do a not um loose fit loose fit show after a stream. Yeah, I was more awake yesterday than I am today. So, I had the energy yesterday to do the planning and today I'm I will admit I am much like a small dragon. Um

nice and that is that is okay. Uh well, you go forth and enjoy Final Fantasy 6. Uh I will go forth and enjoy Final Fantasy meetings. Um is that enjoy? Yeah, we'll be fine. I'm I to be perfectly honest, I'm looking forward. This is the first week in a while where I think and there's a slight chance that I'll be jinxing this even by saying it. It seems like it's just a regular work week. Yeah, that that is kind of the the vibe. So, here on Twitch, it's going to be a regular week. We have design club on Thursday. Uh Janet, I'll have the thing up. I'll have the pre-stream thing up tomorrow when Jeff and I decide on a topic. I've decided I'm going to hold that till Tuesday when I know what the topic is so I can tell you what the topic is when I put it up rather than putting up one that's a placeholder. Um, and yeah, it's other than that it's scheduled pretty much as as normal. Thanks. Thanks. It's been a pleasure. Cool. Uh, speaking of, let's say bye to Janet. Goodbye, Janet. We'll see you all Thursday or next Monday or whenever we see you. Also, the VOD is up for the stream if you want to watch it and then

Oh, for the the stream when the Yeah, VOD ends. Sorry about that. Watched this hour and 45 minutes and thought, man, I would really like to see Will for another 13 hours. Just me. Not Matt. Just me, apparently. Did I not say both of our names? No, you just said me. Oh, well, we're the both there. Okay. Along with like a ton of other people. Yeah. Go check out that VOD. And uh you listen, you can still donate to Best Friends Animal Society VR link if you'd like. If you missed it, uh any amount will help more animals in need. If you want to know exactly how, there are multiple times in that VOD that tell you exactly where your money goes. Yep.