Games For Breakfast Feat. TierZoo | Ep.73 | Gaming News

[music]
Good morning, Patch.
Good morning, Matt.
Good morning, WILL.
AND GOOD MORNING TO ALL OF YOU.
WELCOME TO GAMES FOR BREAKFAST, THE ONLY INTERNET TALK SHOW WHERE WE TALK ABOUT THIS WEEK'S GAMING and tech news, BUT THAT ALSO WE HAVE A VERY SPECIAL GUEST IN THE BREAKFAST NOOK. EVERYONE, please welcome the phenomenal creator of the YouTube channel TierZoo. Patch, what up, buddy?
Good morning, friends. How are we all doing? Great to be here.
We're so happy that you were able to make it to slide this monitor into our animated kitchenette and uh basically discuss all of the things that are going on worth talking about in gaming and tech and the things that we try to watch and enjoy to keep ourselves sane.
Well,
I'm so excited.
that that sanity bit is a little overrated. And yes, Glom, this is getting out of hand. Now there are three of them.
That's right.
Um holy moly. Patch, we So you've been

on the channel before for some charity streams and stuff like that. Um what what's been going on? I feel like you are one of my
[snorts]
dare I say not not not by chronological years of your specific age, but oldest internet YouTube friends. I would say.
Yeah, yeah. We go way back. That's true.
And and I mean what what's been going on? What's been going on lately, man? How's how's things been?
Things have been great. Um YouTube is still YouTubing, you know.
[laughter]
But I I put out two videos this year and one of them was a one out of 10 and one of them was a 10 out of 10, so you know, it's like [laughter] keeping me on my toes, that's for sure.
Yeah.
Um yeah, it's it's been good. Uh I'm working on some side projects as always cuz that's kind of just how I do. I've got one about um immunology that I'm hoping to kind of uh pitch to Nebula a little bit, but if not, just it's like a

short animated series.
Yeah.
Um, so I can send you guys that later if you want to take a look.
Yeah, that'd be great.
Um, but yeah, other than that, I'm also just still working on videos. I'm working on one about swordfish right now, one about beaks of like birds and animals. Um, and one about ostriches. So, yeah, lots of fun stuff in the works. How's everyone else doing?
We're good, man. I'm I'm just about to get caffeinated. On these days, Patch, I don't drink my coffee until the show starts. Um, and so now I get to do
got a nice French press?
I do. It's a French press day. Uh, Will, how you doing, buddy?
I'm I'm doing pretty good. I'm hanging in there. I'm feeling it. I'm vibing, you know. Everything's good for the most part.
Well, today we have we had to start with a story that Patch brought us. Uh, something that I will admit I don't know much of anything about. Uh, but I believe Will, you are you are versed enough.

Um, but I guess we should kick things off uh, just with with the with the initial statement of what is Bronze Man?
Okay, Bronze Man mode on on RuneScape. I'm a big RuneScape guy.
Okay.
Uh, and I guess to even introduce the concept of of Bronze Man, first I would have to explain Iron Man.
Who is on our graphic right now, just I tried to color correct it in a very poor way.
Precisely. Uh, and so I think the easiest way to explain Iron Man mode would almost be Have you guys ever played like a Nuzlocke on Pokémon or that that any sort of like challenge run of a video game?
Yeah.
And so uh, I think
Hardcore mode like on Diablo?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, so Iron Man is that for RuneScape. Uh, and in RuneScape, the the challenge is basically to play it as though it's a single player game. Uh to play it with zero trading, uh zero help from other players,

uh Ironman stand alone is the the the moniker that you'll hear. Um And so, like you can't you can't use the the merchant uh the the grand exchange, which is like the the auction house I guess of of Runescape. And so, you have to like not only do you have to get all your gear yourself, you know, you have to find your best sword, you got to get the best drops from all the monsters and stuff, but also you have to like catch your own fish and you know, farm your own herbs for potions and that type of thing. Uh so, it makes it like a way grindier game than it already is. Like Runescape's already an incredibly grindy game.
Yeah.
And so, the people uh who like the Ironman mode take it to a next level. Uh and so, what bronze man mode then is is a sort of in between where um you don't have to farm everything. You you can buy things uh on the grand

exchange once you have once [clears throat] you've obtained them once through normal means or through through Ironman means I guess in the game. And so, like once you've caught one fish, you can buy a billion fish. Once you've farmed one herb, you can you can buy more. And so, have to, you know, spend weeks and weeks farming to get enough potions to fight a boss.
Got you.
Um But, because you're still gating some things behind uh the progress of your actual account, um you still get the the fun element of like having to unlock like the best gear, the best weapons from actually fighting a boss as opposed to just buying it from
Right, as opposed to exchange.
Yeah.
Yeah, [snorts] because it is like it it's very easy to just farm enough money, like just like gather enough resources to buy basically anything, honestly. Uh if you grind for a even a

week. So Yeah.
And there's there's a clarification that may help because I know we've got a lot of 14 players and I know we've got a lot of wild players. Drops off of bosses are sellable and tradeable in RuneScape.
Generally, yes. Yes. And then they
Unlike in a lot of other ones.
Right. Yeah. Honestly, I think if they weren't, that would also have solved a lot of problems, but they obviously they can't They can't go back on that now. That would be a massive L.
also significantly older than either of the other games in conversation for being the most popular. Like the big three right now, if if if folks are unfamiliar, are Final Fantasy 14, WoW, and RuneScape. And they It's been that way for like a hot second. Like if you're playing an MMO, it's probably one of those three, statistically speaking.
Yeah, RuneScape is from 1999, I believe. It's when it first kicked off. Uh I'm not sure when WoW is, but I probably only a few years later, I would guess.

Like probably 2002 or something.
it was 2001, 2002. And 14's the baby cuz it was uh it's now Although it's been rebooted and all that jazz.
Mhm. [clears throat]
Um So So I'm looking down the this the runescape.com's updates and uh I do like how they So actually, before we move away from bronze man mode, so Patch, will this be something that you like are going to engage with with this or have you done Iron Man in the past?
I've even done Iron Man in the past a little bit. I I found it very difficult, to be honest. Um but I guess so the the reason I brought up as a story is that there there's like a little bit of I don't know if I'd call it controversy but like discussion and discourse about it is like they so they've both Iron Man and Bronze Man were at one point like unofficial modes in the same way that like a Nuzlocke in Pokémon is unofficial. There's no like actual setting in the game that you can enable to make it so if your Pokémon faints

it's deleted.
Right.
Um but Jagex, the creators of Runescape, have since actually added support for those systems to like make it so you can effectively prove that you've played that way like with integrity, you know, that you've never bought anything that you've only yeah. Um and so where it gets interesting with with the Bronze Man mode is uh part of it it's like it's like the integrity of the game becomes a little bit more wishy-washy once you like reach this in-between space between Iron Man and and the main game, particularly when it comes to to player versus player stuff because in Runescape when you kill another player you can take all their items or most of them anyway.
Oh, that's right.
And so the the question is like okay, well, do you allow like a a lot of people have made really compelling YouTube series based on this idea of like a PvP Bronze Man

account where like their main goal is to get is to unlock things through winning fights against other players. Uh which is not in Iron Man that doesn't work because in Iron Man you can't pick up anything that's dropped by another player. In Bronze Man you can and so the question becomes like well, but you could kind of just cheat then. You could just get your buddy to go die you know, to suicide things to
Right. Right. Right.
Uh and so then you could just take that stuff. And so like does Bronze Man even mean anything at that point? These are the questions that you know, the Runescape community is very focused on the integrity of of their uh challenge runs, I guess.
Well, that's so interesting because like I guess the I So, this kind of goes into the psychological elements of doing something like this in a game, even stemming back from Nuzlockes or other things like that, right? Like So, why why does one engage with a challenge mode? For me, there's probably two reasons. Uh one, just the love of the game and

seeing how good you can play it and make it like basically proving to yourself and spending time more time in something that you love doing, right? And then the other angle of it is, I guess, uh and this is true because in every online game, that's why there's skins and cosmetics and all that stuff, there's sort of clout. Right? Like the clout of you having done it. You have a thing that shows you did it. Your account says you did it. And therefore, people know you did it. It's not There's the internal validation of doing something and the external validation of doing something.
It's true.
It does feel like there's a really, really interesting conversation to have when you are doing one of these hybrid modes. Um I I'll say kind of what I think, but again, this is coming from someone who does not know the culture or the mechanics of this game at all, so it might be way off base. Um I think since Ironman mode exists, and that is something that is essentially at this point kind of

unbreakable between the internal validation and the external validation of it, because it just can't. Bronzeman existing, if you're essentially cheating or skirting around the rules of Bronzeman-ing, like I I guess here's the question, like does
Why are you doing it?
Yeah, like why like if I'm Bronzeman-ing, it feels like I want a more interesting, more difficult internal uh version of the game where I still have to unlock things where I can get dopamine hits of like now I have a fish, now I have this. Now I have that. But But if you're just going to take it from your buddy, then you're not going to get that. And then why aren't you just playing the regular game? So, I guess I don't like So long as there's the two hard like the locked versions, Iron Man and regular, right?
Yeah.
I I feel like for me at least in a game like this, bronze man being a little wishy-washy and not having the total external validation is kind of okay.
Yeah, I think I broadly agree. And it's interesting cuz cuz Jack's answer was

actually to make two different bronze man modes.
What?
[laughter]
One where uh you can't You still can't pick up uh items from PvP at all. Uh and you can only trade on the grand exchange. And one where it is allowed. And so, they've called one of them bronze man one man bronze man unbound. Uh and so, yeah. It's just like [laughter] It gets more and more granular.
They should just make different men, though. They should just like what like cobalt man.
I agree. Yeah, like they should call it something else.
Bronze Smokey Man or something.
Yeah. Yeah, they call it brass man or copper man, you know.
Well, that's not tin man, right? Cuz then you got problems. Right?
Yeah.
Those Those players are heartless. Um Bum bum bum bum bum.
I got you. I got you. I didn't want to reward you, but I understood what you were doing.
Thank you. Your understanding and and internal grown is really what I crave. [laughter] So, you know, that's that's

everything I want. Zinc man. Good. I like these.
Yeah. Yeah, there's more metals we can work with here. Yeah, there's a lot of design space here.
Chat, give your best metal man mode uh the name of it and what it should do in RuneScape.
Yeah. I saw rust man was pretty good.
Rust man's good.
Cool-Aid man, obviously.
Spoon man.
Yeah. Uh yeah. Okay, cool. Great. Rust man is just selling locked Iron Man. Okay, I like this is good.
see this is the funny thing is there's already like even Iron Man isn't intense enough for a lot of players and so there's like what's called the snowflake Iron Man account which is like where they add like an incredibly specific restriction that like no one else even is attempting so like they'll be like a specific region locked Iron Man like you can only play in areas where the you know where the dirt is a certain color or something like it's it's like really really granular because people try to be really unique which is fun. Um and there's been a lot of great YouTube series based on this but yeah.

I I do I really love that games like Runescape that have such a such a a history to them are still getting modified and like new modes and that like the community is still like you know a community is healthy when half of them are mad about the new thing.
[laughter]
Yeah, exactly. It's like every single update someone on Reddit will post like oh well this devalues my particular challenge run by making it too easy now.
Yeah, I So will you be doing one of the various flavors of Bronze Man at this?
Uh I might give it a shot but I don't know. It's
[laughter]
I have to lock in on content now that I've uh now that I've hit a a 10 out of 10 on my most recent one.
Yeah, it's it those is that's the worst. That's the absolute worst.
You probably explain just briefly in YouTuber lingo 10 out of 10 bad, one out of 10 very good, 10 out of 10 do again only this time better.

[clears throat]
But many times to but many times it is uh how do you put it? Like you're at the whim of how the system is working currently or where the audience is based on it's like this is not like algorithm blaming it's like society blaming. It's like who's watching what when which feeds into the whole thing. I mean yeah, thumbnail title, all that [ __ ] but like it's just it's annoying.
Uh
Yeah.
And and and the thing if if you don't have a YouTube channels Brad, Janet, or Rocky over on Nebula, hello. Uh the the the back end basically shows you like a little teeny metric of like where it is. And one of 10 will give you like fireworks.
Yeah.
you're like, "Okay." And and 10 of 10 doesn't give you a special graphic. I think it should.
I think it
What's funny they've removed it because it used to have a bunch of downward red arrows. Do you remember this? It used to be like yeah, it it would show you like, "Oh, views, you know, 30% lower than usual." And it'd be a big red arrow. And

they removed it. They changed it to like a sort of light gray to not freak people out as much.
I don't know.
Yeah.
The it's it's not a fun It's not a fun system, though.
Man, either way it it stings all the same, you know, when you see the number and you're like, "Ah, well, that's that's not what I wanted."
I also want to congratulate Rabian on having the correct one. It's A and this year, man, like copper man, but everyone complains about it.
Yeah. That's That's good.
The true RuneScape experience.
There we go.
That's a very deep cut there. I like it. [laughter]
Yeah. Absolutely. Uh okay.
So, wait, hold on. There's one other thing that I do know a little bit about with this story, and that's the other part of it, which I was very excited for because cuz I just keep seeing a lot of pictures of dogs.
Oh, yeah. There's a new dog quest that's coming to RuneScape.
Is it just like a full-blown like What? What? Everyone in the chats and things on these message boards and stuff are just talking about the dogs. A rough situation, I believe it's called.
Yeah, I think that's the I think that's the name they're going with. It sounds

very cute. They've had So, they've had cats in RuneScape for like two decades now. But, they've never had dogs in in Old School RuneScape. There's like stray dogs that you can encounter, but you've never been able to have a pet dog in the game. Uh and so, yeah, I don't I don't know exactly what that's going to look like when it comes out. It's not out yet, but yeah, it's uh it'll be fun.
And then have they know have they announced when all this is dropping or no?
I think next month that
Do they do updates of roughly this size?
Uh, uh pretty uh frequently as far as I know. Like they do updates about once a month that are like decent content. They do they do updates every week, but a lot of them are smaller, but yeah, in terms of like real genuine game updates that add sizable content, like it's for very frequent, which is incredible after, you know, two and a half decades of existing. The game has really gotten massive.
They also have some advantages which a

lot of other MMOs don't, which is um and I say this with all of the love that it deserves. Uh, OSRS looks like crap. And so it is very
it looks like a game from the
Yeah, it's charming, okay? It's it has a, you know, very retro charm to it.
Sure. It is so low poly that it's very easy to program new assets. Um although I did hear at one point, we did cover this, uh that they are running out of item IDs because oh at at one point they were running out of item IDs. But like it is much easier to code an OSRS asset than it is to code something in any other MMO. Um so and and the other big thing is they're not bound by being a giant company um like Square Enix and Blizzard both are.
turn the ship whatever direction they want.
more nimble. They have a little less lift on this, which means that they get to do more continuous support versus, you know, WoW and 14 players who like have uh a calendar of like when the next

update is going to be and
Mhm.
Do you think this I I know we're going to talk about this this example I'm going to give in a story coming up. Do you think that this like Is this the same trajectory that probably like the folks over at No Man's Sky would want?
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean? Like cuz that's been going 10 years now. And like I feel like they constantly update and change and like I don't know they they iterate. Although does maybe RuneScape Old School RuneScape kind of sticks with more of its uh visual sort of original guts as opposed to sort of changing things around. I don't know.
Is No Man's Sky not doing that? Are they really revamping the visuals?
They've revamped it twice.
Yeah. And and and they've been One of the things that's happened is their new systems have been so far outside their original like lane that they've had to, right? So like capital ships or frigates or whatever have to

They redid how water works.
Right.
Like yeah.
Yeah. Just saying. Yeah. Like oceans now have waves and you can obviously as because they redid oceans they added fishing. Obviously.
We'll go back to No Man's Sky when we get there. I just I just felt like it was a it was a good
My last little defense of of RuneScape's art style is that I I I learned how to do Blender 3D modeling because of RuneScape. I was able to like there people made like plugins to download the assets from RuneScape and import them into Blender and like that alone was enough to get me back in to like give it another try and that time it finally stuck. So I got to give credit where it's due.
Also just I've always liked the look of RuneScape because like I don't and maybe it's the
nostalgia?
No no. I actually don't think so so like I was trying to think of like why and I know it's not the same type of poly maybe the same poly count but not the same type of poly sort of rendering but like PS1 era polygons, right? And the

way that like even textures looked on on PS1 games. Um it's funny RuneScape I know doesn't have the same type of of of texturing from what I understand.
Yeah, it is like a very distinct look where it's like it's actual materials on the like 3D models as opposed to like like the the PS1 is like very like UV driven. Like where it's like you'll have a flat image that's clearly been wrapped onto a 3D model, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That doesn't seem to be the case with Runescape for many things where it's genuine just like low poly's and also a low number of colors on the the models.
that might be what makes me have the the love for it that I do that I don't tend to have with PS1 stuff on the classic 3D, but I don't know.
Yeah, I I like the the UV look as well, but
Yeah, and and to and to be clear, I am unfairly picky about my video game graphics, and I also think that wow looks like crap. So, it's in good company.

Listen, Will, you have as [laughter] as our resident in indie trash monster, how dare you?
Look, where is my trash can full of indie games? I'm going to go burrow into it like a raccoon. Uh,
[laughter]
that is all. Um,
All right, MOVING ON.
MOV- MOVING ON. HEY, do you know what we forgot to do because
I always forgot to do the main course thing.
Yeah, we forgot to do that, but you know what we're not going to forget?
Yeah, the next bumper. Here we go.
Yeah, it's time for some breaking bad news. Okay.
Yeah, we have show bumpers after we forgot to do main course for Runescape, but cuz we were so excited.
Yeah. Oh, well.
All right, so
So, first up,
Hey Twitch.
Hey Twitch.
Can you just make stuff that like people want? [laughter]
So, okay, so so there's this interesting thing and there's multiple parts to it, right? And

and and here's here it gets weird. So, this Okay. With no warning on Wednesday Twitch announced just in the middle of the morning that all channels were automatically opted in to give consent for all of the content on those channels to be used uh in Amazon's We're going to be very specific about this. In Amazon's new generative AI
Same parent company, etc.
Correct. And just to be clear, this channel's opted out. We opted out immediately. I got pinged by multiple streamers. Uh one of whom uh the lovely, the delightful, the wonderful Alchemy came into chat and said, "Hey, Han, could you check your DMs?" And I was like, "Yes, absolutely I can." And then I opted us out. So, streamers are upset for a variety of

reasons. I I think the the substance of what I want to talk about is not even like that it's AI, though that is a thing that like a lot of people are talking about. Platforms continually make changes to the way that they do business, right? YouTube does, Twitch does, even Nebula does. Though Nebula's much better than either of the other two about it.
But they don't literally tell people what's happening.
Right. Twitch has this really nasty habit of changing the way that monetization or uh consent models or whatever work on channels, and then opting people in and not letting them opt out. Or changing it and then opting people in and then being like, "You can opt out later."
So
And and they don't ever like tell us in advance. Like they're like "And it's live now." And you're like I

But but why? But why though?
So, it's funny because every social platform at this point, I think, uh whether it's a social media platform or uh YouTube, Twitch, etc. There's some sort of like in the TOS, there's some there's some language at this point, and anyone can correct me when I am wrong, that like lets them basically do almost anything with your content that you're uploading. It's like part of the it's part of the Like you have license to it and all that jazz, but like I think even on YouTube's side, and Patch, you might know this too, I'm not quite sure, but like YouTube can essentially like if they wanted to do like a YouTube director or something, use a clip from anything on YouTube. I imagine it's fine, right? Does that feel
I'm sure they could. Like the the language is probably there in the TOS, but every time that I've done something

with YouTube, they do actually like go the Yeah, they do. I think just to protect themselves. Like they're not going to rely on the TOS, cuz no one reads it. Like I don't who knows if it would actually hold up.
Exactly. I I think that's the interesting part, too. Like like I I want to say that YouTube has always been uh far better than Twitch in this regard, where like they will like say "Hey, we want to do this thing. Are you down?" And you normally can say yes or no. One of them though actually uh uh a bit ago they did the automated um mid-roll placements on YouTube. I don't know if that hit you as well, uh Patch, when that that came out like a year year and a half ago. Uh we opted out of that because the the at current time, and it has gotten better, uh the whatever it was using to find ad breaks was not working well for animated content. Like it threw ads in the middle of ads, and like three up top, and three at the back, and none in the middle. Like it was real weird. Uh so, we opted it out.
Interesting.
Um it's since gotten better, but they actually a few months ago accidentally,

I don't know how, just opted all of our videos in, and now all those original bad placements are in the bad spots, and we're going back and manually fixing it.
For our entire
Yeah.
thousand video back catalog?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but but I guess my my point bringing that up is uh to your point, Will, these these services that we use, that people build their entire businesses upon, uh we are at the whim of whatever these businesses do want to do. Um we have to constantly adapt and constantly move around, and and obviously there's the the the difficult choices of like when a platform does something you like, how much is it to not use it anymore, blah blah blah blah blah. This is just Twitch and and and Uh I don't know if you guys please chime in when when you have something here, but like Twitch as a company feels like the most knee-jerk, even if it's not, like super quick based on announcement to implementation of

whatever they're doing. Like no time for feedback, no, "Hey, this is happening in 90 days." Like it feels very like, "And we're I we're going to turn this on now, say it once somewhere where someone's not going to hopefully notice, and just keep rolling." Like has anyone had any different experiences on Twitch other than that?
So, it it it gets a little weirder even. So, uh what while we're thinking about that, we should note someone uh a a a number of people who are familiar with the way that Twitch does business and are Twitch insiders, um and have contact with Twitch staff like on an anonymous basis, uh raised the red flag like a week ago that they were going to do this on unofficially. And a user voice got created. User voice is like Twitch's requests. Like, "Hey, feature request. It would be really cool if I could get a button that turned chat chartreuse for hype trains." And you know, you can

put that in and people could vote on it and they could be like, "Yeah, it'd be great." Or no, I think it should be mauve or whatever, right? Okay. One got put in that said, "Hey, if you're going to do this, we understand that you want to do this, but could you please make it opt-in?" That is to say, have it be optional and let everyone opt-in. And Twitch has said that originally there wasn't going to be a way to opt out at all. And that that user voice is the reason that there is an option to opt out. So, it is nice of them to credit community feedback.
That's good.
With with like making choices for new features. Um, but uh like it shouldn't have to be that way. Let's Here, let's even I want to use a different example cuz I feel like one of the like AI's a contentious thing and like that that clouds this some.

One of the things that Twitch has done this exact thing for that I really hate actually like on the same level for me is there's an alert that users can purchase with bits that floods the screen with emotes on THE CLIENT-SIDE.
[laughter]
ON THE CLIENT-SIDE. I can't tell if it's happening, right? So, I could be sitting there having like a deep emotional moment for like a game [laughter] that I've been playing for like 20 hours and then all of sudden SOMEONE PAYS
IT'S
YES! YES! It's the digital equivalent of air horns. YOU'RE LIKE, "OH, THAT'S SO SAD. ALEXA, play Despacito." And it's just [laughter] like laughing emotes everywhere, right? Like, that kind of thing feels like it should be on a channel-by-channel basis, but because it relates to monetization, because it relates to a lot of other things, Twitch is like proving that they're notoriously bad about giving people control over

their own over their own channels, right? And I feel like there's got to be space for that, right? Like, surely they do not believe that they understand in their infinite wisdom the best way to monetize every channel, right? Like, because channels are different and unique. Like, I know you've streamed, Patch, and like your streams are different than my streams, are different than when Matt is streaming, or different than when Patch Notes is streaming, or is different than, you know, whatever. And I I I don't know. It's just It's a troubling trend that you that Twitch is like, "Hey, we're going to do this thing, and you have to complain in advance about a feature you don't know we're going to add in order for us to add an opt-out at all."
Yeah, I I um I I'm very thankful Twitch exists, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Uh at the same time, because they are continually not profitable, they are trying to And

Amazon is, you know, holding it up, cuz Amazon, spoiler alert, is profitable. Um it it's it's kind of it's it's, you know, it's it's always looking for a way to make that back. What I'm sort of interested in in this in this topic specifically is sort of like, okay. Yeah, you know, if if there's an opt-in or an opt-out of for AI to scrape data or episodes of something or whatever, like, that's sort of complicated enough as it is. But on Twitch, there's a very specific kind of thing that is actually being shown and/or taken the data from, and that is most likely a person or two playing a video game. Right? That's kind of what's here. What's the legal ramification? Like, what Because even God, it gets so weird. Streaming a video game is in legal limbo, right?
Correct. [laughter]
So, like, this adds another level of this like seven-layer dip of who owns what?
Right.
So, so, so let me let me give a concrete example, right?

and then I know Will you and Jeff are going to deep dive into this more. We wanted to bring it up here today, but you and Jeff are going to go more into that on Design Club on Tuesday. And then I know we're we're already running over, so we got to keep it true.
Yeah. I feel like the worst-case scenario here would be like like a video game company, I don't know, like Activision Blizzard or something, sues one of these AI companies for scraping or sues Twitch for scraping their data from their game. And then like instead of actually stopping that, it just sort of kills streaming in the process, you know?
Yeah.
That is that is actually the real concern. Yes, and that is that So, the reason that we're doing it on Design Club and not here isn't that it's a pressing thing, it's that Jeff and I are going to take some time to actually like do some research on this. Like, after we're done with this, I need to go read a whole bunch of stuff about this because it is real complicated. So, we're going to do a deep dive in the legalities of streaming and how this is going to affect that on Tuesday. The listing is already up on YouTube. That will be our

Design Club topic for Tuesday. I did also I did also want to say um before we move on to our to our next uh story real quick that Twitch staff I understand that the the the knee-jerk reaction here is to be upset at Twitch staff. Totally get that. I would encourage you all to take the following message from Twitch staff on the record into account when you think about it. This is from Mary Kish during Patch Notes. Mary Kish is one of the hosts of Patch Notes and a Twitch staffer. The opt-out numbers will help us continue to reiterate that our community is not receptive of AI in any new form. I'm sorry, but I am reading your comments and do hear you. She said this knowing it would be on the record in a public space. Please don't be jerks to people about this, right? I I understand that I'm probably preaching to the choir, but I understand that like some people may be upset with specific Twitch staff or Twitch staff in

general, or particularly after someone made some really boneheaded comments. The CFO made a comment that was like, "Yeah, well, of course it's opt-out. If it was opt-in
Well, that never happens in general.
no one would ever opt-in, right? Like, whatever.
Unless you paid them.
Right.
[laughter]
Probably what should be going on, you know.
Yeah. Be be kind to people, be ruthless to systems. Exactly. So, just Yeah, they know. They know what's up. Just keep that in mind and we'll talk more about it Tuesday.
Well, speaking of systems,
Yeah.
Patch, do you play or have you ever played Pokémon?
Indeed, I have.
Well, then I will be interested to see how you feel about this. So,
You're going to pick
[laughter]
the most saddest image from all of Pokémon for this.
thing. I mean, look, it it is it is it is uh essentially, y'all, um they are sunsetting uh essentially I I always get these things mixed up. There's Pokémon Home and there's Pokémon Bank.

Bank and sunsetting.
and they're sunsetting Pokémon Bank. Are you Patch, are you familiar with either of these things?
Uh sort of. I Yeah, like they're they're the sort of uh uh servers where you can like send your Pokémon so that you have access to them in future video games, is that right?
Yeah, so Bank is the one for the 3DS. Um
Okay.
It gets a little less sad when you realize that no one's been able to download Bank for a really long time because the 3DS store went offline.
I was going to say, does anyone still need Does there need to be two at this point?
And that's and that's sort of Pokémon company's um uh point of view is that there doesn't because that you can't get the new three You can't get the 3DS one. So, Bank is shutting down and Home will be the only way to transfer Pokémon around. Bank was also, let's be really honest, a little janky. It's Pokémon. It's never exactly been the most technologically robust thing.
Uh-huh. [laughter]
We're rolling on this here. Um but they are shutting down Bank.

And so, if you have Pokémon from older games that you're relying on the Bank to Home transfer to get them out of an old game and into a new game, get them there quickly. Um yeah. Uh
So, so this essentially and this is they gave an announcement, too. This is like in February of next year or something like that.
time.
Okay. Yeah.
See, I have enough time to procrastinate.
Yeah, exactly. You can procrastinate.
I will do it on the last day either way, but at least that day is further out.
Exactly. Exactly. Uh it's it's interesting, too, because like we've talked about how games sunset. Not every game can be
[laughter]
for like a better term, RuneScape and forever.
Like every the games do have to shut down, change, etc. And I think the Pokémon experiment of like moving your Pokémon between games has been a really, really valuable one and plays into the the the fantasy of what Pokémon is actually selling you. Like I think it's

actually
buy-in of like this this creature has been with me since I was, you know, 9 years old.
Yeah, like it's it's it's a Tamagotchi. It's a It's a It's a a Chao on the Dreamcast. That's not as ubiquitous, but still. Um I think that
forever in our hearts.
RIP Dreamcast in the arms of the angels. Um, I Salutes. Um Um, but no, I think that giving enough time here is good. Having one version of of being able to maneuver your Pokémon like and you can, I guess, between then and now, if you have a copy of Pokémon Bank, you can't download it anymore, but if you have one, you can move your stuff to Pokémon Home before February. Now, Will, you actually found an alt bit of the story here because this is obviously this is old technology that not a lot of people have that like you might be hearing about this if you are a person who used to play on the DS and be like, "Well, I don't have this downloaded and I like my Pokémon and oh no, like what

could I do?"
Yeah.
Uh
So, there's there's a group called Pokémon Rescue that is showing up at conventions now and they have all of the technology to get your Pokémon from any of the compatible versions to your Pokémon Home. Like they've got kits in like Pelican case
case. Yeah, yeah.
case that's like painted in rescue colors where they can like get your Pokémon from whatever to whatever.
Which I think is just Yeah.
Yeah. That Yeah, right. It's just like a really cool idea. Um, and I think that's like one of the best possible responses is, "Okay, great. We recognize this thing is coming to an end, BUT WE'RE LEAVING NO POKéMON BEHIND." YEAH.
I [laughter] really like that.
Yeah.
I think that's one of my, honestly, my favorite things about gaming in general is when something happens that might have to for numbers or whatever. Like I don't even blame Pokémon Company for shutting down Bank. Like there's I guarantee you there's not enough people

actively using it to maintain support for it and they have two things that kind of do the same thing, you know, and give people time, etc. What I love seeing is groups of passionate fans being like, "Hold my beer. Hold Hold my What's a What's a What's a Pokémon rev resurrection? Is it not potion? What the hell do they do?
Revive.
Revive. Yeah, hold my revive.
Watch that.
And like going through and just like actively in places where people would be most likely with DS's, video game conventions and things and like actively trying to help out people that want to do it who don't have the 19 different cables that you'd need, you know? Like it's just really nice.
Yeah.
But
Yeah.
All right, last piece of bad news and then we're getting into something brand new.
Yeah. Uh all right. Um speaking of things that are vanished into the ether forever. Uh among the first, one of the most notable cases of this that's happened in recent

memory, Aliens: Fireteam Elite on Switch no longer exists. If you bought it and you have it downloaded, that's great. If you bought it and you don't actively have it downloaded, you're out of luck.
Well, no, I
You're even you're even beyond out of luck. This is a This is one of the I don't know if you all remember this on the Switch one, they experimented with streaming games. You bought a license essentially on Switch for full price to stream the game from somewhere else.
Yeah.
Uh this is one of those games. You never had the full game locally on your system. You paid $60 for uh an access to this game somewhere else on another computer. And now that computer no longer exists.
[laughter]
So you have access, I guess, but to nothing.
Yeah. It's just another example. Uh it's sad. It sucks. They're They're working on a sequel to this game, I know, and they um there's there's rumors that

they're working on like a standalone version that like actually could run on the Switch and not stream, but who knows if this game is popular enough to even like um bother.
Yeah.
Um I I don't know. Had did Patch, did you ever mess with Stadia or any of that nonsense uh going back?
I I've never played with the like the game streaming sort of thing. The the like latency thing always seemed to like I don't know. It's It just ruined any any shot it had at at being playable for any of the games that I wanted to play. Like I'm sure you could do it for like like a Civ type game, you know, a turn-based kind of thing. But like any action game, like it's just not going to
Yeah. And that's that's that's a big problem with the US, right? We're geographically too huge and our infrastructure sucks too bad to like get this. You need like a whole country on fiber. So like Japan, Korea, like a smaller geographic country with better internet, it could work, but it doesn't work here.
Yeah. And maybe that's why I didn't give it a shot. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe I

could have given it a shot
I don't know. Yeah, who knows? But yeah, it's just sad. Uh hopefully they come and become on back. But this does bring an end to our bad news section of the day. Uh Patch coming up This is This is in the show notes. Uh you brought this up before and I'm so curious about this and it actually gives us a chance to use a a bumper that we don't normally do. So let's let's let's let's let's head over to Nerd Court.
Objection. Hold it.
Yeah.
Okay. Patch, you told me you had a hot take on the Twitter box.
It's true.
What happened? What'd you say? What's the take? And then I think we should all we should all try to like talk through it a little bit.
It's true. I've been apparently fighting for my life. People have been accusing me of dying on this hill
[laughter]
for an an opinion that I to be quite honest hold very weakly and don't actually care that much about.
That's the best kind of nerd fight.
is you know, yeah, exactly. It's like I

feel like we could have fun with this one. Some people can't just let good things exist. Um, you know, [laughter] Uh, anyway, so my hot take is that uh, I've I've kind of gotten a little bit frustrated uh, seeing like sort of crossover events in uh, games that I've been playing that been trying out for the first time. And a lot of these happen to be indie games, so I specifically named indie games in the tweet. Um, I think I don't really see this sort of thing as much in in AAA games anyway. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I I find it kind of just obnoxious when I'm playing a game and I'm really having a good time and I'm experiencing it for the first time and then I get to a part of the game and it's like, oh, this is actually a different this is a sort of almost like an I don't know if you can quite you can quite call it an advertisement, but it's like a collab. It's like a a piece of content that was designed just to to like I don't know. I make the fans of that game happy or something. You know what I

mean?
So, can you give an example? Give Give an example what this off?
Okay, yeah. So, the the particular example that that I think made a lot of people mad was me calling out Terraria. Uh, which is not a game that I've ever played, but I've seen it pop up in several of the games that I have played. Um, I think I mentioned in particular uh, Don't Starve Together and now also I've I've been playing through Palworld um, for the first time uh, just this past few weeks. And yeah, like now I've I've encountered like genuinely difficult boss fights that are from from Terraria.
[laughter]
Not from the like I'm doing the fight. Yes, in Palworld and in Don't Starve. It's very It's It's It's easy to walk into a a significantly more difficult encounter than you might anticipate. Um, and yeah.
And I imagine that if they're like many of the crossovers I'm familiar with, that if you have played Terraria and are

familiar with those bosses from Terraria, you know, like their secret weakness or their attack pattern and you have like a distinct advantage and if you you or at least you like it more because it's from a thing that you know and like and if you don't know it and you don't like it, you're like, "What is going on? I don't I don't even."
Yeah, I had no idea. It's and it's just like the way that these things are often integrated just to me, I don't know, it just kind of bothered me a little bit in that they don't feel well integrated with the rest of the game where like the all the enemies in the like for example in Palworld there's a like a dungeon. There's a bunch of dungeons around Palworld. I don't know if you all have played Palworld.
Not yet.
But like uh there'll be like instanced areas where you can go like fight a boss and the boss will be like a new a new pal that you could catch and that's cool. And then I I so I I exploring Palworld, I I made it to this cool little island that I saw off in the distance. I'm like, "Oh, like what's what's up here?" And I get there

and it's Terraria. I'm like, "Okay, all right, sure. I'll give it a shot." And then I enter the dungeon uh and like all the monsters in the dungeon drop this completely unique resource that is not usable in any other context other than spending it at the Terraria like crafting shop or whatever.
Yeah, I hate that.
And yeah, it's like look, I can I can understand if you're a Terraria fan, this is really cool. Congrats for you. Love that for you. But for me this is like if if I was playing if I was playing Dark Souls and I like made it to a cool new area. I like worked really hard to get to get to this area and then it was all like Zelda monsters that dropped rupees instead of souls and I could only spend the rupees at the beetle shop instead of [laughter] you know, at a bonfire. Like it it's like a complete diversion from the rest of the like the diegetic mechanics of the game. So like that to me I just I I'm not a fan, to be honest. I'm just not a fan. I I think that's like that insane of a thing to say.
In fact, it's funny. I could argue

either one of these to be perfectly honest. I think the thing that throws me more into the camp of what you are saying is the specific like the thing that that piqued you off on this, the specific currency thing.
Yeah.
Is is really annoy- like any to be honest, I don't like it when games add any currency just in their regular game. Like any new cur- like I oh, now I need these kind of space box, cool. Like and but now if it's like themed and you can only get it with the crossover, I could see where that is annoying. The other side of the argument
Uh-huh.
would be with so much um hubbub, I mean it's funny.
[laughter]
We all We all did this. It's our fault. Um and I mean that with everyone here, Brad, Janet, Rocky, all three of us. Uh there are so many crossovers in so many games, many of which and the one that I think would probably crossover between the three of us and we've talked

about many, many times is Universes Beyond in Magic the Gathering.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Uh we've I I I I will assume that we've all been guilty of buying maybe perhaps a Commander deck or something from various packs that are in that thing. Am I right, Patrick of you?
Oh, I love Universes Beyond. I'm I'm the It's funny. I know I know it sounds like a complete contradiction. I am the target audience for Universes Beyond. I quite enjoy Universes Beyond. Uh
Excellent.
Especially when it's a thing that I like.
Yeah.
You know, I've never but I've never played Final Fantasy and I still liked the Universes Beyond Final Fantasy stuff.
And maybe the difference is a game of Magic is it truly I mean don't get me wrong that the original lore and story of what's going on with Magic and the different realms and worlds and all that stuff like that's very interesting. But because the very the very idea of it is literal planeswalking, you can adjust narratively in your head that yeah, I can put Spider-Man and tack it onto these rules or whatever and it works.
The mystical plane of New York City.

New York City.
I I do think that Magic the Gathering is just like uniquely well-suited for crossovers and it just works so well. Like you can you can come up with literally anything from like an animal species to a superhero to like the Mississippi Delta or something like really esoteric and you could you could conceptualize how to turn that into a Magic the Gathering card in a way that you couldn't with even most other card games that I know. Like I don't think you could do that with Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokémon. Maybe you could sort of stretch things, but Magic I feel like just has a system to incorporate anything and that's really cool and I think that's always been the strongest aspect of Magic the Gathering. I I do like I honestly I love the first-party characters of Magic, but they've never been as iconic as Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh or like a lot of other big franchises, but the the systems in Magic, the mechanics of Magic are just like the absolute best of any card game as far as I as far as I'm concerned. So
Or the most if if not the best I would

say like the most the most infinitely skinnable that I have come across. Like you can you can make any like and again, I keep going back to the Spider-Man set cuz that's the one that I'm the most familiar with even though it's not a good one. Uh like the way that Magic cards feel from Final Fantasy or The Hobbit or Spider-Man or Marvel, like they skin an ability that you if you know Magic and you know the character or the place or whatever, you're like, that makes sense. Like they're really, really good at that. I think when they slip and I think where Spider-Man specifically did is when the business side of things gets in the way and they absolutely need to get X set out before Y set and they have to hurry and rush and do all that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The big problem with Spider-Man was the set was too small and [snorts] they needed more cards. And so the cards that got added were kind of low quality and if it had just been a Commander product, we would have been fine, and no one would have complained.
I certainly have issues with Universes Beyond that I things that I don't like about them. I don't like when there's 15 different versions of the exact same character.
Yes.
Just printed on different like rarities

of the cards.
Spider-Man. The Spider-Man one.
Right. Yeah. It's like okay, which which Spider-Man is it again?
plays Pauper, it's really funny to me that two of the most influential cards are Spider-Man and Leonardo, because both of them have common versions that you can play in Pauper now.
But let's let's go back let's go back to the initial thing about like So so I think So and I think both Magic and Fortnite and and the larger AAA space
Super Smash Brothers.
Super Smash Brothers has done has has taken gotten us used to the idea of big IP smashing into big IP, and then we go forward. I think it does I think maybe by its very nature of an indie title, like I understand why people would want to do it. Like it works for the big folks. So I'm sure it helps and works for the smaller ones. I think the interesting thing is maybe I This is completely anecdotal from the science lab in my own mind. Maybe the fact that both properties are smaller, such as Palworld and Terraria, right?

Maybe because it's not as ubiquitous as say a Final Fantasy into Magic the Gathering, you're going to get maybe a bit more people that are a bit irked by being pulled out of the bespoke indie or or smaller game experience that they wanted for another smaller game.
I I I think that it's it's something even more than that. So I played Mon Hunt World, right? Monster Hunter World, right? That's what this patch is from. Um and uh in it, there's a Witcher crossover.
THERE'S A MEGA MAN CROSSOVER.
I wasn't even going to get to that, but sure. There's a wit like even the Witcher crossover, right? So like
[clears throat]
the the quality of crossovers is almost independent of the size of game, right? Cuz you can have absolutely god-awful nonsensical crossovers. I'm not particularly thrilled that we're getting two crossover raids in the same expansion in Final Fantasy 14. We're getting a Final Fantasy 7 normal raid series and Evangelion alliance raid series in the same expansion in

Evercold. And if you're fans of those, that's great, but like we're losing out on opportunities and I'm not sure how well getting the mech Shinji is going to play into a 14 audience, right? So I almost feel like it's it's um it's irrespective of the size of the game. It's the quality. Right? Cuz like as a great example, Balatro did the Friends of Jimbo thing, right? Which I thought was a really good way to do a nod to other stuff because it's card backs and it's Balatro and Balatro is kind of very um abstract.
like the Dave the Diver Kings in in Balatro.
It's got a different
that is like pretty unobtrusive at least, yeah.
Right. Yeah, and it's a cool way where like if someone's a fan of like Dave the Diver or Vampire Survivors or whatever, they can play with different cards and it's a fun nod, but it doesn't You can also just ignore it, right? You can just play with the vanilla cards if you want.
Yeah, it's like a sort of opt-in type of thing. Whereas I think the the reverse

of that scenario where you have Balatro in Dave the Diver is a bit less so. Whereas it's a bit more like, okay, now you're playing Balatro in the in the game.
Yeah.
Uh and unless you specifically Like this is the one thing like optional I think is something that means different things to different people. And I think as like when I'm first trying out a game, like I don't know what to avoid in advance. If I wanted to avoid like if I would just want to keep a a pure experience or whatever, uh I'm not going to know, oh, well, you shouldn't have visited that island in Palworld. Sorry. Like that's Like that's not really a fair criticism. And also theoretically in in all these exploration games, everything is optional if you want. You know, the game itself it's it's all built on exploring and and you're you're meant to go out and interact and and poke fun at everything. And so to say something some of the things are optional like well, you could just stand there by the bonfire if you want and you know, do fine. You're not going to die.

So
Yeah, I I I I think I think in the case of Blasphemous it literally means there is an options menu where you pick.
Yeah, exactly. I and that's what I'd prefer in like for example in Don't Starve that that also exists for the Terraria thing and I think probably for the other ones too. There's also a Blasphemous crossover in in Don't Starve. And I think those are enabled by default, but you can switch them off which so now whenever I introduce a new player to them, I tell them like hey, you should probably switch that one off until you've at least experienced the base game and then maybe if you like these games go switch them on.
What a theme for today.
Yeah.
[laughter]
You're opted in until you're opted out.
Well, you know, exactly. It's like these to me read as like pre-installed mods for the game. You know, like there's this the Skyrim you know, where all the dragons are are the Thomas the Yeah, the the Thomas the Tank Engine.
But even even to that point even to that point the Skyrim on the Switch which I do have and actually really really love on on that even the Switch 2 update made

it really really great. But like that made like you can get the Zelda armor in the Master Sword and the and the Master Shield and I was like I don't want this. Like [laughter] I it's
In the base version of the game?
Yeah. It comes with the
Okay, that's wild. Yeah.
Yeah, and like look, it's fine again, that is optional. I can choose not to put that on or go find it or whatever. Um
I I I think for me the the best ones like I'm I'm totally the the the Slay the Spire 2 stand and that's fine. I'll I'll continue to stand Slay the Spire 2. But like sometimes it it can be done well in a way that doesn't need to be opted out with. The the Slay the Spire 2 crossover is so subtle, I bet a lot of people don't even know it's a crossover. There's a there's a event where you can choose one of three dolls. Um Daughter of the Wind, Mr. Struggles, or Bing Bong.
Okay, we know what Bing Bong is.
Bing Bong is from Peak, Mr. Struggles is from uh Backpack Battles, and I don't legitimately even know what Daughter of

the Wind is from, but we like Slay the Spire 2 players just like blow through that now, and we just like know
Are they missions? Are they items? What are they?
They're They're relics. They're items that you get that are incredibly powerful. Um Bing Bong doubles the number of uh if you would add a card to your deck, instead you add two copies of that card to your deck.
But that even feels correct. So, not having played that game, but that even feels more correct than the than the Pal World Terraria thing, because like that like you've just described to me three essentially like dolls in other games that now are relics in this game, right? Like so like that at least from a from a like a narrative perspective makes sense. Magic other universes coming into Magic from a narrative perspective makes sense. I'll even say, let's even look at the and I know one was a crossover and one's more of an intercross thing between Monster Hunter and The Witcher. What does The Witcher do? Hunts monsters. So, it kind of makes sense. What does Mega Man and Monster Hunter have to do with each other? They're both from Capcom. Like there's I

don't want the helmet and the and the and the arm blaster. Like I just don't want it.
mean you don't want it in uh what's the what's the mall the the mall crawling game?
The mall crawling game?
zombies game on Xbox.
Yeah, Dead Rising.
game. That's one of my favorite games of all time.
you can get the Mega cuz it's also a Capcom game, you can get the the Mega Man arm blaster, and it's the best gun in the game.
Yeah, but I think
comes from a toy store in the game. Like I think you find it in a toy store.
I think that's right, but you have to unlock it through a thing. It's one of the best guns.
Okay.
I do remember like the Nerf blaster in the game. Or like yeah, I think it's that, but
Anyway, Patch, I don't think you should be getting lambasted for this. I think there's a bunch of reasons pro and con. I think
What? New ones?
people like this, like I'm glad for them, you know, I I wish I had more fun with them. And some of them I do, you know, as I said, I love universes [snorts] beyond the list of Smash Brothers, those sorts of things. It's just some of the ways that these crossovers are approached, I just I

could do without.
It's what you're buying for the game is. And if you want to be immersed in the game that you bought, you don't want a secondary game to come in and be like, "HEY, I EXIST, TOO."
YEAH. And some of it is also just like, especially for the new player experience, I think that is really important. And so it it doesn't necessarily even need to be like a crossover. Sometimes I've played I remember playing Ark one time, and like for the first time trying it out, and I noticed my inventory is filled up with a bunch of like Thanksgiving and Christmas-themed like outfit swaps, and I'm like, "I just turned this game on. I don't know even how to work my inventory yet, and you're filling it with junk. Like this takes up an inventory slot, but I this that's a very limited resource. What is this doing here?"
Yeah.
So, you know,
Yeah.
Helldivers 2 does have a Warhammer war bond, which, you know what? That one I'm going to I'm going to give credit to. That one works.
All right. Let Let's move on to We We talked about some We've talked about some bad news. We've talked about So, we've fought about a little nerdy

thing here. Oh, we have to get We have to talk about the law now, don't we, Will?
We do. We do.
[music]
You've two different legal-themed bumpers.
That's [laughter] right. Yeah, that's what we do. Now, you have cuz they're in court now.
We might have had too much art time one week, and we realized it.
And now we have things. Thank you, Nick. Um So, good day. Apparently, in Australia and New Zealand, the new Halloween game is not going to get a rating and therefore cannot be sold for a very specific reason. And that is because in the game, there is drug use. It's not for the violent murders or anything like that. But no, no, no, it's totally fine to slice and dice depictions of human beings. It's It's that someone in the game smokes weed. Now,
It's the devil's lettuce, man.
devil's lettuce. But my my point here is now that the story is and why GTA 6 is

on this story, too, is it's got sort of like Australian fans of Grand Theft Auto worried that perhaps due to the drug use in GTA 6, it also will not get its release there as well. Um I have a theory about this. I I I deep dove into the actual What is it?
Is it a law theory?
It's It's It's a um It plays into the mechanics of the digital substance use in in a very specific way. And that is in the new Halloween game, apparently. So, I'll I'll have to I'll have to back up. I don't know if either of you or or Brandon Jenner or Rocky are familiar with Grand Theft Auto 5 or Grand Theft Auto Online at all, but you can in those games in your apartment uh drink some whiskey or smoke weed. And and you can be there. And what that does in the game is if you drink enough,

your the vision gets blurry and you stumble around. If you smoke too much, you get slow and it gets blurry in a different way. I would say in those games, it has a what I would say a narratively correct mechanical disadvantage.
Yeah.
In Halloween, apparently, if you smoke, you get to see special pings of where Michael Myers is. So, there is a There is a real incentive for your character to be high the entire [laughter] time.
I mean, if I was being chased by Michael Myers, it might help.
So, I'm wondering, and I don't know, maybe this idea doesn't hold water. But, I'm wondering if it's not a neutral or a negative thing that happens when you smoke in the game, it is actually a mechanical positive, which would then like promote the use of it even more. Does that make sense?

Like, that's why I don't think GTA 6 has anything to worry about. Plus, it's a juggernaut, and it'll just pay its way through anyway. I don't think it's going to happen.
Yeah.
Uh but, like, does that make Like, that was kind of my takeaway of this story?
I I I think that that that makes sense, and that idea holds water there. I agree.
Did [snorts] I just Did I solve it?
Yeah, [laughter] I think you did.
I think we I think we can call this one a wrap.
LET'S MOVE ON. YEAH, I DID ONE. I GOT
IT'S REALLY INTERESTING. YEAH.
YEAH, I know. I I think it's really cool.
I'm just thinking I'm just thinking back to all the other like instances of like alcohol and like I don't know I haven't seen weed in a game before, but like mushrooms I think have are pretty common in survival games. Like, you eat the mushroom and you
Or Mario, you just get bigger.
Well, sure. Yeah, exactly.
Uh the other thing, too, like the last positive depiction I can think of. And actually, answer in the chat if you can think of these. The last positive depiction of smoking something that gave you a benefit that I can think of is Metal Gear Solid. And that was when when you smoked the cigarettes, the smoke would show you the laser Your health

would go down.
Uh
But, the But, the smoke would show you where the laser mines were. So, like, that was forever ago. I don't know. Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Interesting. Interesting.
Phantom cigars in Metal Gear Solid 5. Yep, yep, yep. Hobbit video games where mushrooms heal Well, yeah, mushrooms heal you all the time. Anyway, it's just a fun little nonsense story and I think I figured out why.
Okay. All right. Well, then I think that means that it is time for us to get on to some good news.
First story is what we were talking about before, Big Walk.
Yeah, Big Walk has officially hit a million copies sold in six games, which is a massive triumph for House House, developers of Untitled Goose Game and now of a Big Walk. This is one of those games, by the way, that I know precious little about on purpose because it is a puzzle game and I desire to know, as per usual, absolutely nothing about it when I play the game for the first time, other than

it is a goofy game where you and your friends take a walk and there's puzzles involved. That's it. That's what I know. But I think it's really cool that it's a million copies.
That's crazy in six days for a game of this size.
days.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Patch, have you have you You said you haven't played it. Have you Have you bought it yet?
I haven't bought it yet, no. But, yeah, I I'm a big fan of these sorts of Well, I mean I typically don't love puzzle games. I didn't know it was a puzzle game until you just said that. So, now maybe I'm out, actually. Um, but I do think it's it's kind of incredible because these these developers have been working on this game for you know, half a decade or something, right? Like it's a significant undertaking. This wasn't just something that was pumped out like an asset flip uh, by, you know, some newbie developer. No, it was like a legit like massive thing. And like they managed to, I feel like, time it perfectly where they're like they're hitting peak, you know, friend slop. You know, that's that's like the

term. That's it's all the rage these days, you know, the all everyone is all into these mecha chameleon and peak and all this sorts of thing. And so for them to you know, have been working on this for such a long time and then finally you know, it's ready to go right as everyone is doing these sorts of things is is awesome.
It's really cool.
Masterfully executed.
I I I and how many people I think like 12 people can play it what's it's something crazy.
Many.
I've seen some pretty I've seen some pretty big stacks play.
That'd be very very fun. We should we should get a time we should all do it. I I I really do want to play this game cuz patch I I said this in the pre-show one of my favorite friend slot moments was you me and uh um spectacles was uh
Yeah, Harry and Philip.
Yeah, yeah. We we played peak the one time the one time I played peak. I've only played it once.
Uh-huh.
And we beat it.
We did. We we peaked.
And I I I feel like I was I want to play it again but I feel like I'm just going to fail every time.

[laughter]
Yeah, they they have added significantly more stuff to peak. There is a new there's a new biome there are new secrets. There are new badges and items and everything. [snorts] I watched I watched someone play some of it [clears throat] and uh
My favorite my favorite thing was that run was so touch and go. Like I felt like we almost were done.
it's such a memorable experience. Like I one of the criticisms I hear about these you know, friend slot games is like you play them once and then you're just not going to play them again. It's like who cares man? Like these are very memorable. I love them.
That's one of my top 10 gaming experience I think ever was that like two and a half hours or whatever we did and we like just took it and it was like I I love it so much. Um I I so I'm very much looking forward to playing uh big walk. I think it'll be very fun.
All right. Uh Up next in uh news that is causing many an artist to rejoice. ArtStation is no longer under the Epic label. They have been sold. ArtStation and Sketchfab have both been um sold out

from under uh Epic to I'm going to make sure I get this right. KitBash3D for an undisclosed sum. This was one of the concerns that a lot of people had about Epic sort of controlling share of the market. And also one of the things that Jeff and I talked about when we talked about the possibility of Disney buying Epic as a long-term acquisition. I still stand by that conversation as this is likely going to happen and it's going to not be necessarily the best cuz the House of Mouse is Um And so yeah, ArtStation getting out from under that means that ArtStation will remain more independent. And I like it. I was That's all right.
a little announcement. Yeah, I bought a lot of 3D models from ArtStation, so it's good to see that they're still doing well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Good stuff.
All right.
Now we're going to go back to the conversation we were talking about a little bit before. Uh, does anyone get this reference other than me that I've that I've built into

this? Anybody? Any Bueller? Brad? Janet?
You Bueller?
What are we looking at here? I need I need someone to get it. Someone has to. There's a 7-second delay. No ideas. Everyone's shaking their head. Fine. I'm not saying it. No Man's Sky,
[laughter]
the Mario movie. Oops. No. No. This is about No Man's Sky. Okay. Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay. What is it? Ninja. What is it?
Okay.
The story we're going to talk about is about 10 years of No Man's Sky. But the joke that I'm very effectively having to explain and yell at Chad about is 10 years. 10. 10 YEARS. 10. WHAT is that? Someone's got it. There we go. Has Has anyone seen the film Grosse Pointe Blank?
No.
You It's so good. Watch Grosse Pointe Blank, you monster.

don't watch movies, Patch, so that Matt can get upset at me for not watching the [laughter] movies. And it's a bit it's
don't really watch movies. I know what you mean.
It's really I I I guarantee you you would both really like it. Anyway, now we'll talk about the video game or whatever.
[laughter]
Okay, great. Um No Man's Sky's 10 years old. Uh and they've come a very long way. They've got a 10-year celebration going on. Um I saw they they released a trailer that was a list of all of the updates that have come out in 10 years. And Sean, buddy, I know you're listening out there. Let us give you money for some of these, buddy. Like the number of free content updates has been absolutely absurd. But
Has anything on No Man's Sky cost money?
I've not paid any money for anything I've gotten in No Man's Sky since I bought the game originally.
Yeah.
I think you might be able to buy some stuff for cosmetics, but I haven't needed to.
Yeah.
Um

Nice.
Patch, you ever messed with No Man's Sky?
Um I I'll be honest, a friend bought it for me once, and I played it for like 15 minutes and
[laughter]
I didn't really like it.
I did.
So same. Uh uh a friend of mine gave me their old PS4 copy. I then did again got the free update to the PS5 copy. I think I bought it on PC eventually cuz Will and I streamed it for a bit. And every time, it's so interesting, every time I've bounced off a decent amount.
[clears throat]
Um but it's it's interesting because whenever there's a large update, I go back and I I find myself getting lost in it for about a week or two weeks, and then bouncing off again. Um [clears throat] there's something I think really lovely about the way that this game is and gets released that is both good and bad. I think it's really difficult to Like I I've never been able to vibe or wrap my emotions around like whatever the story is in No Man's Sky.

It does just seem to me like an infinite sandbox that you can have fun with possibly with friends.
Uh-huh.
That's correct.
Is there a Terraria planet that I can find?
There there absolutely is. You just have to It's It's It's procedurally generated so your your chances of finding it are infinitesimal.
Well
Which actually would work out for you.
Right. Yeah.
Uh I mean so one of the one of the interesting things is that in 10 years uh the the folks at Hello Games estimate that we have visited [snorts] less than 1% of all planets in No Man's Sky. So the the way No Man's Sky works, if you're not familiar, is there is a set It is a set seed generation per galaxy. Spoilers, THERE ARE MULTIPLE GALAXIES. OH, THERE'S THE naked Zoe.
Zoe! Yeah, she's good.
She needs
Continue.
I'm sorry. She was just crying so I had to pick her up.
No, no, you're okay. Um she has needs. She is of course the star of the show.
Um
So [clears throat] uh there's a bunch of stuff that's being

explored. Sean says, by the way, in an interview with PC Gamer, which we'll link in the show notes, uh that he does still enjoy booting up the launch version of No Man's Sky, which buddy
I'm glad someone still has it, you know? That's lost media otherwise. So you
Yeah, that's like nostalgia-pilled. Um
Yeah.
But one of the interesting things, too, is that in this interview uh Sean talks a little bit about why we don't know anything more about Light No Fire. So Light No Fire is the upcoming game from Hello Games and we Since it was announced, we've we've gleaned the understanding that everything that they add to No Man's Sky is a tech demo for them adding a similar or identical function to Light No Fire.
What a great dev cycle.
Yeah. Right.
Like how cool is that? You can actively in your popular game test out mechanics that you want to put in your next game.
Right. So like fish and and everything

else. Um it is
No, just fish.
Just fish. Actually, Light No Fires is just that. It's a giant planet where all you do is fish. Um So that Right. Fine. Nothing wrong with this. Everything is great.
I'm I'm hooked.
[laughter]
Pungeon for you.
Um my my title in Final Fantasy XIV is the final fish. You can literally set a title for yourself.
Final Fantasy XIV?
[snorts]
Fort fish? Don't listen to them, Zoey.
Good job, Pat. You done so good.
[laughter]
Um so okay. So they announced it and then we haven't heard like anything since we we got told that Light No Fires exists as a concept.
Are you familiar Have you seen this trailer at all or gotten into this at all, Patch?
I think I might have seen this. Was this announced at one of the you know, E Obviously E3 doesn't exist, but
No, but like Game Awards or something. I don't even remember.
I'm pretty sure I remember seeing

something about it.
Essentially, it's what if No Man's Sky's infinite sort of like procedurally generated thing, but one planet.
Ah, okay.
So like you get real nitty-gritty.
One fantasy planet with dragons and adventure.
All right.
And that kind of thing.
I can work with that.
Yeah.
So it was announced in December 2023 [snorts] and we have heard nothing since. Like [clears throat] almost 3 years of complete radio silence. And the reason is that too many people heard about it when they initially announced it, they were like, "Oh, yeah, we shouldn't say anything else. Okay, y'all know it exists. You put it on your wish list. Great. We'll keep We'll keep working on it. We'll let you know."
Well, look what happened last time.
Cuz Sean has Sean has learned his lesson from 10 years of development to say less. Say fewer words. Say no words, actually. Light no fires, say no words.
So, he's upset that his ad didn't underperform? Is that

basically what
He's worried [laughter] So, one of one of the big failings of No Man's Sky's launch was, of course, that Sean overpromised and underdelivered at launch.
Yeah.
And and so, he has learned the lesson that enough people know about it and are interested in it that he should just say nothing and then deliver them the thing that's kind of like what he thought it
he's mad. I think he's just saw it and he's like he's satisfied already. He doesn't need to hype it up anymore.
Right. Yeah, he's like, "Cool. Great. The hype exists. You know we're working on a thing. Great. That's enough." We will deliver you a game.
like the hype train could still be for No Man's Sky and this other thing coming cuz they're so intertwi Like, I don't know. I just really I really like this style of development. Like, it feels I I don't honestly know how they stay in business not charging anything for No Man's Sky. But, uh it I mean, those cosmetics or something or just new copies of the game to new people must
uh No Man's Sky's on Switch, too, and like
Yeah.
Mhm.

I don't know. It's great. Uh I'm very glad I even though No Man's Sky is one of those games that I consist I consistently bounce off, I also like going back to it from time to Playing it in VR is awesome.
Mhm.
Uh
[clears throat]
it's really, really fun.
Yep.
Okay. Befo- Before we move on, so on the topic of games celebrating their 10th anniversary
Uh-huh.
uh their 10th birthday, rather. Uh can y'all think of another game from 2016 that it just celebrated its uh
Uh
its birthday. When you think of 2016, you think of two things. In my opinion, you think of two things. You think of the 2016 election and one other thing. What is that one other thing?
Dude, I don't remember what I had for breakfast.
Hold on. Hold on. Are we talking in gaming? Like
Yeah. Yeah. What were we all doing the summer of 2016?
Pokémon Go.
Pokémon Go. Yes, correct. Well done. Yes.
10 years.
10 years. 10 years.
Yeah. Jeff was Jeff was telling me about a story that I didn't have time to add

to our notes cuz he and I were talking about it during our meeting last night, but they they had a bit of a faux pas in which they gave out a mega Mewtwo to a bunch of influencers at a special limited influencer event. And then the entire community went you're new at this cuz it was Scopely, not Niantic cuz they just they just sold it. And they were like, "Hey, you're new at this. Wrong. You did wrong. Do better." And then they were like, "Oh, we're so sorry. Here's the question. Take the bait. Don't We're sorry."
It was pretty amazing.
Yeah.
Uh it was funny. When Jeff and I were at Gen Con, every I don't know, 3 hours or something. It was it wasn't interruptive or anything. He's like, "Oh, hold on. Me, Alex, and Kazumi got to do this raid." And I was like, "They're not [clears throat] here." And I was like, "Oh, yeah. I guess you can kind of like jump into other people's raids now, not in the area."
signal for your buddies and remote them in. Yeah.
Uh very fun. But yeah, no. Good good job games lasting 10 plus years.
Yeah.
Killing it.
All right.

All right. Last last second to last story before the game. This will be very fast.
Mhm.
Have you heard of DuckDuckGo's new sunglasses?
No, but I want to.
that I have. Are these like meta glasses?
They are the antithesis of meta glasses. They are just sunglasses. They have a no Wi-Fi, no battery, no anything. And they look fairly style I don't know. I love when companies are just like, "Nah, joke product. Go." Like I just I saw this and they have a very funny video. It's in the show notes, you can go check it out. Uh just sort of like pitching cuz like in [snorts] a world where surveillance is just going to just keep getting worse and worse and worse, I just like the idea that they're still like normal life and sunglasses. Though, they did miss the opportunity to say normal ducking sunglasses.
True. True. Got to
That really should have been it.
Minus points.
I just thought that was very funny. It came across my feed. I was like, what the what? I was like, duck duck go exists still?

[laughter]
Absolutely. Okay.
Last story, this is one for Will and probably Patch.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, it's time for a magic moment.
[music]
What's happening?
a good bumper. I love the costume the costume on your character.
I did I did tell them to make me dark magician, which I [laughter] thought was great.
It's good.
Okay. So, a bit of a shake-up in data in magic. So, there is a website called EDHREC, which is a data compiler on all of the deck building and deck tracking websites that have become ubiquitous Magic the Gathering um over the past couple of years for Commander, the most popular format. And in Commander, you choose one legendary creature of all the legendary creatures that have ever been printed in the history of Magic the Gathering to lead your deck. And there's been a shake-up.

Previously, the Ur-Dragon, aka the biggest dragon ever, um
[clears throat]
led the most decks. And it had been that way for a significant period of time.
That's crazy cuz it's five color, right? Is that
is a five color dragon. It costs four white, blue, black, red, green. The big reason to run it is that it has an eminence ability. Eminence is a broken mechanic that they never should have printed to begin with, but they did, so now we're stuck with it, that says if the Ur-Dragon is in your command zone, all dragons you play cost one less. You just get a free discount on dragons because you're playing with the Ur-Dragon as your commander. Um so that's cool. Uh but it's the Ur-Dragon's no longer number one. Now Y'shtola, Knights' Blessed is. Y'shtola is a um uh is the face commander for the Final Fantasy 14 precon that came out last year.

Okay.
Um about 15 months ago. And it is now the number one most popular commander in all of Magic the Gathering and bordering on the most popular commander in the history of the format.
How do they find that out?
So it's aggregated data. They They have agreements with all of the deck-building websites. So like Archidekt and Moxfield and some others where they get daily data dumps of all of the decks that have been built and then they do a bunch of really interesting data analysis on what cards are popular with which commanders and which cards are in prominence and which cards you might want to build with which commander, right? Um and so this is this is the data for the past 2 years um and the number one most currently popular commander in the world is now a commander that's less than 2 years old. Which is wild, right? Like it's wild for a bunch of reasons. One, it's wild that it's Universe Beyond commander. Two, it's wild that it's a commander who's a

character from my favorite MMO. That's just weird to me. Uh and three, it is a little weird that it's not a kindred commander. Um a lot of the most popular commanders tend to be like type-o, right? Edgar Markov, the now in number three is vampires, right? The Ur-Dragon is dragons. Uh Krenko is goblins, right? Like you have specific types.
cat warlock.
Right, but it doesn't do anything for cats or warlocks. So, it's
Yeah. Um and uh the reason that a lot of people suspect, and I I can't tell if this is salt or genuine feedback, is that Shala kind of does everything. She draws cards, she does damage to your opponents, she blocks. That's really all you need. She gains you life. That's [snorts] really all you need her to do. She is
Kind of a one-stop shop as far as a commander is concerned.
Um
I I agree. I I think it's basically a combination of that and just like character appeal, basically. Like the

artwork, I think is like people don't play ugly-looking cards for their commanders. And so, yeah.
in in fact, uh I'm going to look it up real quick. The um the anime This is not the anime version, this is the base version. The anime version of uh Ishala Knights Blast, cuz there are two versions of Ishala, so I need to um I need to specify. Uh the anime version of Knights Blast is currently $190 for the non-foil version. And if you want the foil version, it'll set you back a cool grand.
All right.
Time to go proxy, boys.
Yeah, yep. Absolutely.
So, yeah, I think that's part of it. Um I think her her genuine appeal, but it's also just weird, right? Like this is a major shakeup, right? Throughout a lot of release a lot of releases, these commanders have been on top of everything, and [clears throat] now uh

Shala is number one. It was a big deal when she passed some some famous ones, Kaalia, Krenko, Atraxa, and now she's number one.
Right.
You know, so it's interesting.
I do think this uh will be probably pretty short-lived. Um I think they'll If it's this easy for someone for a new card to overtake the number one, uh, just by nature of just being like a a good-looking character that also does draws you cards and provides value,
Yeah. I wonder
That's that's a low bar.
I wonder if this is a symptom of more new players coming into Magic from Final Fantasy. Do you know what I mean? Like so you're getting the regular Magic players that realize this is a good commander, and you're getting the what Universes Beyond is actually trying to do, like is get new players in. I wonder if this is sort of like if like if we'll

see more Universes Beyond commanders become number one if they're both good and also Jean-Luc [snorts] Picard or whatever.
So, um, some other Universes Beyond commanders, Sauron, the Dark Lord, is it number eight? Fire Lord Azula is number 12. The Wise Mothman from Fallout is number 15. Toph, the first metalbender, is 20. Cloud X Soldier is 24. Kefka Court Mage is 25. Sephiroth is 27. And the last notable one is that Frodo and Sam are number 34 of the Yeah. Or of the of the top decks.
I would suspect if they ever do a Legend of Zelda Universes Beyond, uh, and the Zelda character card, uh, has a similarly generic value engine type effect, that would probably become

the new number one.
Yeah. Oh, Vivi's also number seven because war crime child.
Vivi is cracked, so that is I built a Vivi deck. Vivi's broken.
Yeah, Vivi is Vivi is a war crime child. Um
Yeah.
But uh she was also the reason why if you here's your here's your fun corollary. If you have bulk if you have bulk cards from Shadowmoor from the Lorwyn block from around the year of Lorwyn, you should look for a card called the Helm of the Gas Lord. It is a card that's never gotten a reprint. It's a common from I think Lorwyn block and it's now like $10 and rising because it's a one card the entire table hates the game combo with a Stola. And she's the most popular commander right now. So, please go look in your bulk and maybe make some dosh on the secondary market.
Amazing.
Um
All right. While we set up this next segment, here's what I want everyone in Brad and Janet to do. And actually uh Rocky, you can message us on Blue Sky and do the exact same thing. I want you to tell us either your favorite Magic

Commander or the best wrong answers only Magic Commander that you would like to see.
Yeah.
That is what I would like uh in the chat while we set up this next section. Patch, you have you have made it through the gauntlet of Games for Breakfast to a point and now the true challenge begins.
The final boss.
The final boss. Will, if you'd please run the specialty bumper we've never run before on this show.
Yeah, absolutely.
[music]
That is right. It is a guest side quest.
That's right.
be wondering gentlemen, why why is there a cute dog on the screen below us? That's so crazy. We we know Patch, you are excellent at organizing specific things like like skill trees and armor and attack and and and and survivability and all that stuff into tier lists, right? Like it's obviously your bread and butter. You know you you know the drill.

Of course.
we wanted to do something similar to that but a little bit different. And because we know we could easily do the like oh, what's the survivability of this or like could this thing beat that in this particular thing. So, instead we wanted to make the tier list of the video game animals you really want to pet.
Okay, very good.
[laughter]
So, so you're going to be the arbiter of this. We are going to have discussions about various things. Um, but but first and foremost we wanted to sort of like get a we wanted to calibrate this game, okay?
Uh-huh.
So, this right in front of us is a Nintendog. Where would you put a Nintendog on the tier list of video game animals you really want to pet?
Well, hold on. Wait, we got we got to we got to show you our specialty tier list, right? Obviously. So, if if we take a look here, we can see that we have the the the the list, which is super pettable,

is S tier,
amazingly pettable,
Uh-huh.
but I want to pet it,
Mhm.
can't I pet that, don't pet this unless you're nasty, and even I [laughter] wouldn't pet this one.
Okay.
All right, so
Are you guys Are you guys going to be mad at me if I put everything in the top tier?
Uh,
[laughter]
oh, we no, but we also think that it's unlikely you'll put everything in the top tier.
might.
And that's okay. [snorts]
All right. Well, I'm definitely petting that dog, so
All right, great. Excellent. Well, we'll put
We need to start off with the top tier.
Yeah, here we go. We'll put this dog in in in the top tier. All right, um
Uh-huh.
Next to calibrate, hopefully the other way, and if it's not, I'd really like to hear your explanation of it. How about
You show me a spider?
No, a Thwomp.
Yeah, it's big, it's spiky. If you pet it, it could like crush your hands, right? Like where where are we putting a Thwomp?
[sighs]
Yeah, no, I don't want to pet a Thwomp.
See?
[laughter]
See?
You raise a good point. You know, cement, So, look like they're made of

cement.
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.
it's a very cold, you know, unforgiving surface. Uh
[laughter]
it seems good to lean against, it says uh one of your one of your characters.
It seems good to lean against.
Does that count? Yeah, I could hang.
Does it? It's up to you, Pat. This You put it where you want.
Me and the swamp, we go way back, you know. [laughter] We've been there.
Also, while while you're thinking, I should inform the audience that I I Matt and I had a moment where Matt said Whomp and I heard Whomp, and we were talking about two similar but different Mario characters for a moment.
Oh, yeah.
Dear god, why are those both they like That was like they're spiky, and I was like, "Whomps aren't spiky." And he's like, "Whomps
Whomps Whomps fall.
Yeah, that's right. Anyway.
Okay. Yeah, what are my What are my options again?
I mean, you can have S through E. S through E. It's We just named them different. They all start with the same letter.
Fair. Okay, yeah, it can be the the bottom two then.
All right. S S makes sense. E E T E tier one. We've calibrated.
Yeah, see? All right.

Will, bring up our next one.
As as the the certified tier list guy,
Yeah, right.
uh You never get grade E in school.
No.
It's It's It's A B C D F. You skip the E. There's no E. You can't do E.
All right. Next up, the best boy, Torrent.
Is that uh
It's Torrent.
Yes, Torrent. Yeah.
What What do we How do you feel about Torrent? Torrent's Torrent Torrent's strong. Torrent is is your best best companion, lovely mane. By the way, this is a picture of the Torrent fig bob, which I found out existed while I was doing research for this, and felt I should say.
Nice. So, it's the action figure version of Torrent, but we are talking about actual Torrent if Torrent actually existed.
So, how pettable is Torrent? I mean, he's got those goat horns, right? And you wouldn't want to pet him wrong or he'd kick you off a cliff.
Yeah, I might be a little bit intimidated, to be honest. I would try, you know. What was the I forget what the options were, but yeah. I would I would give it a shot.

Okay.
If it looked at me a little little aggressively, I'd be like, all right.
We thinking A or B?
Yeah.
Yeah, probably probably probably B.
B. All right. All right. B B B. Here it is.
to No offense to the horse girlies in chat.
No. No. No. No. No. I mean, this is this You know, we're coming along. We have We We We've bracketed in our our our We're doing good.
Yeah, this next one's going to be a little bit tricky, though.
Okay.
This next one is a slime from Dragon Quest.
Okay.
[laughter]
Yeah, right? Like we we
Yeah, how how sticky are the slimes in Dragon Quest? This is the the ultimate question.
How sticky does it look?
Let's
it Yeah, is it like a fidget toy? Can I squish? Is it like squishy or is it sticky? These are
Oh, interesting. Is it like one of the sticky hands or like
I'm saying. Yeah, it's like
to slime you? I would say because its name is slime. It is viscous.
It's pretty slimy. Okay.
It's not like a stress ball.

See, that's what I was going for. It's like if it's like a stress ball, if it's like a fidget toy that you can just pick up and toss around and squish it, then I I'm doing that all day.
I love how chat is all over the place on this. Some people are like, it's S tier. Some people are like, it's definitely D tier.
Someone said A tier.
[sighs]
Uh I don't know. I don't like I don't I don't like sticky things. So, I'd probably
what we'll do. You decide what it is, and then you put it where you want.
Yeah. Okay. Then I'm putting it in D tier.
All right. Excellent.
I [laughter] don't want to touch it. I'm good.
Uh next up, uh
It gets a little weird. It gets a little weird now.
We're going to get a little weird with it. Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sonic I'll pet Sonic. I'll pet Sonic all day.
All right. Cool. So, Sonic Sonic goes in F tier.
Well, I mean, does he Well, does he have quills? Cuz hedgehogs have quills.
He does have quills. You'd have to him in a specific direction.
You can't You can't mess it up. It's a high skill, high reward type pet scenario, you know?
But people are saying S, so I think they

agree.
Sure. All right. All right. We can roll with it.
Now Now, we couldn't talk about Sonic without also also asking you pet Shadow.
About Shadow?
Would you pet Shadow?
Shadow even more. Shadow I'd pet him even more. [laughter]
OKAY, SO SHOULD WE MOVE SHOULD WE MOVE SONIC to A and Shadow to S?
bump We can bump Sonic down to A and Shadow to S.
So, what Let's Let's check in. This is This is where we're at after Sonic and Shadow.
Good. Good. Sonic Shadow just kicked Sonic down the list.
Great. Okay. Great. Excellent. Okay. Wonderful. Good. Good. I like it. Okay.
Next up.
Next up. If you've played any FromSoftware game for any length of time, you are undoubtedly familiar with uh these little guys.
These [laughter] little
I'm going to say Patches.
No. No.
Pet Patches' bald head.
No, not an animal.
No. Can I pet it with my sword?
Maybe. Um Yeah, this is a basilisk. Uh they kill you.
They petrify you with that stupid uh black mist.
Right. I like I like the idea of punt them into the sea.

[laughter]
Yeah.
E tier for punt them into the sea.
still have the ability to uh to turn me into a brick of stone, then I'm going to put them in uh in E tier.
Yeah. All right. Great. Excellent. Uh E E tier it is. All right.
Otherwise, I'd Otherwise, we could hang, you know? Pet the This is like a hang. amphibian, you know? Like a little frog.
Frog. All right. Okay. Z tier awful wretched creatures.
That's true. Next up.
Ge- A gentle petting with as your comment, exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh next up, the cat from Stray.
Stray? Yeah.
Did you ever play Stray?
I did not. Um
Beautiful game. Uh you play as literally the cat in a world uh to sort of a cyberpunky dystopian future where there aren't any people, but there's robots that look like people.
Mhm.
Mhm.
It's either it's either either S or A for me. Um
What are the factors?
Well, so it's a stray cat. Is it does it have fleas? Is it sort of stinky? You

know, these are the questions. I've had I've had encounters with fleas before. Not pleasant, I'll say.
I like how chat chat has just decided chat is all trying to pet the
But it doesn't matter. Chat doesn't get to decide.
I know. I I would just be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that chat is trying to pet the cat.
I think I think A is a fine thing just to be a little bit wary. Especially if you have other animals in the house, you want to be careful.
Yeah, I I had my my dog came home with fleas one time after spending time with with a friend's pet. Um and yeah, that that was a that was a bit of a annoyance.
Okay.
Uh yeah, we'll stick with A then.
Okay. Okay. All right.
All
All right. Just sticking on the theme of cats for a moment. Um Bubsy.
[snorts]
Are you familiar with Bubsy?
I'm I'm sorry. I'm actually not familiar with Bubsy.
Bubsy is a is a three is it like a platforming mascot? I forget for what company, but uh I MEAN IT'S PICTURE a Sonic X attitude, but if you don't know this cat

Uh-huh.
Yeah, just based on vibes. Would you pet this cat?
I mean the vibes actually look sort of sharp.
Yeah.
Perhaps not [laughter] uh
Very claw forward.
the most cuddly of demeanors for for a cat. I I'll go I'll go C on that one.
All right. Actually, we got our we got our
Similar similar to Torrent.
Okay. All right.
All right. We're we're we're in the back end here. The next one is the Skulltula, which I always say wrong.
You missed one. No, you missed one.
one.
It's easy to miss though cuz it's a Displacer Beast.
Beast.
Yeah, we went three cats in a row. My bad.
Yeah, a Displacer Beast. Would you if you could pet a Displacer Beast?
You could also ask could you?
Yeah, see I've always wanted one and I I am a sucker for things that look really interesting and fun to look at, you know, sort of otherworldly.
Not not pictured by the way for our audience's sake. Uh displacer beasts have little tentacles with teeth on them.
Yes, and they also appear to be in

multiple places at once.
Right. So the question, like even if you want to, could you pet it?
Yeah, petting petting the displacer beast would be a skill challenge in of itself, even if it didn't want to kill you on the spot.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The the displacer beast in B tier.
B tier.
In B tier. The forbidden scritch.
Yeah, exactly. [laughter] Okay, like you have to earn you have to really earn the
You really do.
Yep.
Uh-huh.
All right. Uh let's go now it's the skull the skulltula. Skulltula?
Yeah, skulltula. The the the big the big old terrifying spider skull things from Zelda.
Are you a spider guy, Patch?
I love spiders. I'd be afraid of hurting it. I mean, if it's that big it's probably not going to matter. But like I so I I used to actually have a tarantula and we would never um I would never pick it up even though you could theoretically. Um because like I'd be really afraid of dropping it just because like if it ever moves in a little way that's you know, I want to I want to love tarantulas but at the end of the day this is a thing that

has fangs and I I can't not think about the fact that it has, you know, massive fangs on it. And so I'd be afraid of not like, you know, and dropping it or something and hurting it or something. But you know, the the skulltula could probably handle it, you know, you could probably
It's pretty hardy. In fact, I I would argue if if I remember correctly, if you try to hit it without it spinning around, it every weapon you have just bounces off it.
Bounces off.
Yep.
It's a good point. Okay, yeah. We I'm going to I'm going to put the skulltula in A tier then.
In A tier. All right. I like it.
Controversial. Let's do a let's do a quick check-in as we as we move on. Let's Let's see this is this is where we're at, chat. This is this is what we got for our for our tier list currently. I I mean
Actually, the Skultula and Shadow are two surprises for me, but I like it. [laughter]
Absolutely, 100%.
to keep them on their toes.
Yeah.
Yeah. Next up, the bestest boy,
this boy.
Uh Cerberus from Hades.
Yes. Yes, I've always I always pet Cerberus whenever I
Cerberus, yeah.
Yeah.
Uh yeah, that's a that's a easy S tier

for me.
Okay, great. But only the head that likes being pet, by the way.
They're They're three heads.
There's three of them.
Yeah, there's only one that likes being pet. Don't pet the other ones.
Uh if you didn't know who Bubsy was, I'm curious if you know who this next one was.
Do you know who Gex is?
Is that a gecko? I I I've definitely seen this image before, but I don't I've never played the Is this a game?
Yeah, there's a series of games. Uh from I I I think right before PS1 and then PS1.
Mhm. Um I actually love geckos. I used to own a gecko. Uh they're really fun to like have like cling on you. Like
Yeah.
You can like hold them and they like they you know, they sort of hold on to you
What kind of gecko is that?
have the sticky uh toes. So, I mean, for me for me a gecko is is S tier as well.
All right. Okay. All right.
to be really careful cuz you don't want to if you grab them the wrong way, they can drop their tails. So, you
Right.
Okay.
Good note. Good note. Something you wouldn't have to be careful with that also can stick to the ceiling. That is a

Licker from Resident Evil.
Oh, no.
[laughter]
I'm trying to get a closer look here.
And you're not familiar with They have huge claws. They walk around on all fours. Their tongue is huge, and their brains are exposed.
It's going to be a no for me, dog.
[laughter]
Oh, okay. All right.
Uh
He gets the replacement of F.
Yeah.
Yeah. Excellent. Okay.
Last three, Patch. Last three, home stretch.
Okay. All right.
The goat, but specifically the goat from Goat Simulator.
This is important because it's not just a goat, it's the goat from Goat Simulator.
He's kind of a jerk.
Yeah. [laughter]
Would you pet a goat that's kind of a jerk?
[snorts]
I feel like me and the goat go way back, you know? We'd be we'd be chill.
[laughter]
Okay. All right.
All right.
Uh
Okay.
[sighs]

I love goats. I'd put him at the top.
All right. Excellent.
Goats. Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Uh now we got we got two hard ones to to end things out on. Okay? Number one. He who devours the world, Jörmungandr.
Jörmungandr. [laughter]
The world serpent.
Uh-huh. I feel like it doesn't even count as a pet if you like
No, no. It
It's like a microscopic
It's an ant. Yeah, I mean, you you could get you could I mean, I guess it's petting. You'd be petting dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. That was just
huge. Yeah.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.
Yeah.
the experience you're having, not the experience it's
Right. Yeah. Would you
I suppose. Yeah.
Would you Would you Would you try
quite the experience.
Yeah.
I would give it a shot. I'd put him
[laughter]
a bit more intimidating even than than Torrent or the
Yeah.
What was that other thing I put there?
Just place your bets.
I'd say D tier. Yeah.
D
All right.
Okay.
All right.
All right. Last one. And this is a controversial one. I picked this cuz I think it's it brings up some very weird

conversations.
MR. MIME.
[laughter]
THIS IS THE SAME AS PATCHES OR IT'S LIKE I would like to, you know, do a little
Because Mr. Mime, technically a Pokémon,
Yeah.
but can also be people?
It's weird.
Yeah. Any of the humanoid ones. It's like petting like like Machamp or
Yeah.
or Mr. Mime would be
Mr. Seal Ash KETCHUM'S MOM.
YEAH.
[laughter]
WOW.
YEAH, I I put it C tier. I give it a little tap.
C tier.
Okay. All right. Excellent. So, just just just to wrap up here, we've got we've got our our tier list, right? So, we've got Nintendogs, Shadow, Cerberus, Gex, and the goat from Goat Simulator up in S tier. Sonic, the stray, and a Skultula in A tier.
I like that a lot.
Yeah. Torneko just plays a beast make B. C tier is Bubsy and Mr. Mime. D tier is

a slime and Jormungandr, the world serpent. And E tier is a Thwomp, a basilisk, and a liquor.
We should have named E tier to be F tier to be F that I wouldn't pet it.
We should [laughter] have, but we didn't think about that because we got lost in the sauce.
We were making this yesterday.
Patch, thank you so MUCH FOR COMING ON Games for Breakfast today, man. It was a delight.
It was. Truly. And the feeling is mutual.
Uh please please let everyone know all of the wonderful things you do and where they are.
Can do. So, I have My main channel is called TierZoo. You can find that at youtube.com/tierzoo or on Nebula. Uh same uh same name.
[laughter]
Uh I have a side channel called Zeer 2, which is me in the flesh talking about whatever the heck I feel like talking about that day. Uh that's a lot of fun. Um and yeah, I'll probably stop there. I

got a billion other side projects, but yeah.
Sure. And feel free whenever whenever one of them is coming out and you want to talk about it, come on back. Everything you do is phenomenal, and I'm very happy. A, it's it's wonderful when you meet cool people through this job like we did so many years ago, and it's also wonderful when all the work that those people do are things where you like, "God damn it, that's cool. So, thank you very much for for for being here and doing all your stuff. It it is it is awesome.
Yeah.
Um I guess that just leaves us Will with our traditional sign-off.
Yeah.
Um Patch, so what we do here on Games for Breakfast
[snorts]
is uh we do the same sign-off every time. It's never different to foster a sense of community and try to make sure everyone can do the thing. Now, I know you don't know it, so it's totally fine. Um but uh the the end of the show is always the same, so everyone at home can do the same motion and just enjoy it and whatever.
It's not a cult, though. Don't don't

It's not a cult. Definitely not a cult.
So, with that in mind, everybody, thank you for watching Games for Breakfast. Enjoy your weekend, and always remember
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