Hasbro Management Crit Fails, Videogame Workers Union Debuts & Minecraft Live | Games For Breakfast

I will not be brought down will by big desk telling me I need to clean my desk I feel like your complaint was there's too much stuff on my desk right I can't find anything or a place no no I see it all the problem anyway good morning everybody hello uh YouTube is here J Janet is present and checking in uh hello Janet hello Brad eventually well oh no no hello Rocky not yet not yet no this is the this is the live exclusive part of the broadcast welcome to the pre-show for I think the first time YouTube chat AKA Janet that's correct uh um for those of you who don't know us which is very likely and possible it's who knows I'm Matt pronouny him I'm the show owner narrative extra credits who are you hi mystery man I'm a man of mystery internationally

uh known as well hi also use he him pronouns I'm the stream manager twitch Overlord live streaming producer type guy uh who's currently inated with too much data about this whole going on data data data and this is the pre-show where uh twitch chat AKA Brad knows full well what goes on here um it is basically will and I sort of coming down from the hour or so of prep we do before the show uh and uh just getting to chat with everybody seeing what's up uh what's going on over on the twitch side of things will uh thanks Matt over here on the twitch side of things you can see me standing in front of a normally of a suspiciously normal street corner moments before it was inundated with twitch chat I'm in twitch chat up to my ankles Matt back to you in the studio I like I like the concept of twitch chat up to my

ankles yeah right right right authorities say we should evacuate we will not be evacuating that's right um yeah uh things are going well everything everything seems fine seems good the machines are working yeah I am I am bouncing a little back and forth [Music] um I do have a report from uh YouTube um Pete in YouTube uh chat in Janet wow I'm not awake I am awake do it this is the pre-show shake it off all right great um says play grien Warfare and forever winter uh Pete we may I'll I'll I I'll look into it it's in my long list of things to add to the twitch live playay thing that actually brings up a really great topic that we should probably talk about YouTube you all are getting shows shows like this and design Club over on Twitch we have a little more room for what I will call

rampant degeneracy um uh AKA us playing random video games uh for instance immediately following this the YouTube broadcast will end because that'll be the end of the show portion and then over on Twitch we're going to play some Minecraft because we have a bunch of Minecraft announcements and I really want to play Minecraft mostly modded Minecraft but Minecraft um also if any of you have come in here are wondering what the heck this sort of is this is our breakfast talk show we talk about gaming uh news and some tech stuff too um but uh the previous live stream before this uh if you want all of the true answers uh please watch the erroneously titled test stream please ignore um because that's where you'll find all of the things um right now the hype train starts so now now we're being delayed by the hype train uh ah okay so this is new for YouTube as well and will I know you're working on getting um things working on the YouTube side of thing on the um the notifications um but there's a terrible

awful tradition over on Twitch where the hype train which we have a lot of thoughts about the hype train over on Twitch if you're not familiar it's when people donate and do a bunch of stuff and it like moves a little line along and it's like come on you got four minutes and 26 seconds to get to the next level it is a devilish machine of fomo WR large by Amazon Upon Our beloved streaming service and I put in the self the the self-inflicted pain of both uh we can't start the show until the hype train stops and I can't drink my coffee until the until we start the show I don't know why I there's a wait hold on you this is the first games for breakfast I know okay there's a story so this is a pourover kff um the new French Press which was laed and I was so excited for it turned out had a defect and I was getting grinds in my mouth and

I didn't want it so it is currently being exchanged for a new French press okay that's apologies apologies to everyone in both Brad and Janet who were very concerned about this yeah um yeah yeah uh and yes true perception um we're not going to take the test stream down so you will have time to watch it we we thought about taking it down but it also answers a lot of really important questions about the live stream here um and it went fine like if it was a buggy mess right then we take it down and then we wouldn't use it but like now um yeah uh you do not need in fact to respect the grinds um so yeah cat attack yes that's correct there will be that uh is there an EC Discord Community Minecraft server yes thank you Matt I keep forgetting that we have that Matt now we have the power Matt is a big devote of this um

the uh there is we're going to be updating it at some point the problem right now is that the community is about to go absolutely feral over several things in a row and what I don't want is to restart the community Minecraft server with a new mod pack and then leave like two people on it alone while everyone else goes absolutely feral over Final Fantasy 14 update 7.2 which drops in the morning and then title update for uh monster hunter Wilds which drops soon after that and then the cosmic exploration and um Expedition 33 and a bunch of other stuff so we're going to wait until the summer probably when it like everything just kind of hits a Tempo and then we'll probably look to the Minecraft server and get that going uh and uh that Minecraft server before anyone asks is for patrons subscribers and YouTube members uh so it's patreon

patrons twitch subscribers and YouTube members if you're in the Discord you get to join the Minecraft and we have all of the things on that on the test stream video we won't keep diving into it but all of that information is in there yeah there um I also want to address a thing which is uh an understandable Trend in YouTube uh chat in Janet that I have noticed this morning um which is lots of History questions oh yes good enthusiasm good enthusiasm wrong venue because Matt and I have precisely one Brain Cell between us and we are epe and we are passing that brain cell back and forth but that means that we get to focus on one Topic at a time so breakfast is very dedicated game time what we're talking about gam news text stuff that stuff those questions are important and good and are are things that could be addressed later in a different format but not here right uh if again uh I'll do the quick shout out

because we're still on the pre-show and there's 37 minutes of that sweet sweet hype trade still going I could smell the coffee from here um you know if you have suggestions for topics of extra history you can join the uh the patreon and uh at I forget which tier it is but it lets you vote on topics and then uh make suggestions and things like that so um that is a place for that as well yes um what else what else will we got we got 12 seconds of this hype track uh P was asks did you hear about Pokémon go being owned by the Saudi government yes we did we we have discussed that here on the show as a matter of fact and it unless the sale went through we talked about the possibility of it because it was in offer yeah and like that it's not quite there yet I mean in the state of whatever I'm sure it will go forward but it is not like officially done yet as far as I know unless there's news that is new to us at this point correct um so uh yes that is a thing uh it's just not yeah we we we've done

that one um okay cool great there's the hype Train's over and I'm gonna go through and thank some people and then we're gonna teach Janet how the show starts uh okay book thank you for the community gifts sub pixie makes things uh roller ramian Nova Bob Sasquatch copper Chef prox J and kir Kiran book dragon and pavara thank you so much for all of those Bitties SAR thank you so much for 5 years wow there mostly a bits train this morning which is understandable it's the end of the month and most everyone who's going to be subscribed for the month is subscribed um okay all right well that seems like everything yeah that does so um let's let's explain so there's the pre-show where which you get now this is all of the pre-show technically the countdown is the pre pre-show twitch has access to the pre pre pre-show which is the time

before the countdown begins but YouTube can't access that not because we don't want you to but because the the chat doesn't exist outside of until the countown begins so where twitch chat is ever present so we actually can't even control if the pre pre pre-show happens it just happens and sometimes it's already happening when will and I start prepping for this show that's correct we'll be like here doing stuff and there'll be messages in chat it's kind of oddly endearing and sort of terrifying at the same time bro do you even pre exactly um okay so uh after the pre pre-show we you get our faces and we come out here and we wake up and we thank everyone for the hype trade and we talk with chat and we answer questions then we're going to go to a black screen all right great anyway so um thank you Matt just like that just you know two seconds too late to be effective right yeah no it's fine a backup if I had an autobiography that

would be the back jacket like pull quote two seconds too late to be effective yeah that see seems right so uh we're going to go to a black screen and then we're going to start the recording for uh nebula and we'll do the show and we'll still be answering questions from chat and we'll still be pulling stuff up on stream we might not acknowledge all of the bits donations subscriptions super chats whatever we may not acknowledge those right away during it especially because we're trying to keep focused on the stories we're going to do that when we finish that we are not going away we're just ending the recording we'll have a little bit of a post show we'll talk with everybody then the YouTube stream will end then we'll switch the twitch chat o the twitch stream over to just me then we'll play some Minecraft that's the that's the plan for the day okay cool great does anyone have questions about how that works question yes could you repeat everything after okay here's how this is going to work so we're we're going to go to a black screen and then we're going to

record a show right and that show during that show we're not going to acknowledge like oh another question yes can you stop feel like that's a self-explanatory answer no all right you win this one will yeah all right great excellent um uh good good good good good because twitch chat is just IRC that is correct twitch chat is actually just IRC right right right um Matt why Matt why not why not yeah that yeah that's yeah yeah listen I like I I am I am a big fan that's the third track on my EP yeah uh Will's in a magfest jacket that's correct I am indeed in my magfest hoodie um dressed in my magfest best best there we go magfest well it's not West but you know uh okay cool cool cool cool Co cool cool cool um

is there anything else anything else I think we're good no no no no I think that's it all right uh chat do not panic there is going to be a black screen and then there will be a show all right okay cool great we're going to [Applause] [Music] black good morning Matt oh good morning will good morning to all of you welcome to games for breakfast the only internet talk show we talk about this week's gaming and Tech news but that also I really am worried while we do because this morning uh everybody I had a delicious Clementine and I had that Clementine so that we would I would protect myself against the ravages of scurvy you can see the remnants of it here if you need proof exib and then I got really scared for will because I wasn't sure if his Monster Energy Drink had anything that fought scurvy because

I am not a scurvy scientist and I don't know how scurvy free will will be for the remainder of this episode as a scentist right o probably you're probably okay does guine fight fight no this has vitamins several of them it says all seven vitamins it has three different four different kinds of B vitamins oo that that's for best vitamins importantly those are not vitamins made of B's that we should be clear about that just in case there's any confusion right we never we always be clear uh we have a great show uh set up today a lot of I will say that this show is a bit of a um uh a shorish board of of of high and low topics of things that are great and and and dark and wonderful and feral um I think I don't know that I would

describe any of our topics as well maybe the last one is a little feral the last one's a little f h maybe but I would actually say uh the third one might be pretty feral when it comes to the fan Community around it that's true so uh that's very fair so before we get started on those topics we do have one piece of business which we need to address which is Rocky you need to be read into to what's happening so Brad and jaded have already been read in that's uh twitch chat and YouTube chat in case you've forgotten Rocky you are our silent Partners over at nebula um and we're happy to report that the the entire extended extra credits Fram that's friends and family combined into one thing Ram that's Matt's fault he probably forgets that that's his fault but it's I haven't forgotten it's Matt's fault no I didn't invent the word Fram I just use it a lot yeah that's why it's your fault um so uh YouTube and twitch are both here they'll be pulled up down bottom of the screen we got featured

chat highlights working again um so you know you get you get things like baston's comment about sometimes it's nice groundwater and sometimes it's an alrich horror or uh demon works' comment about B vitamins but only when it's a job for Dr B's exactly so things like that will show up at the bottom of the screen and that's where it's coming from uh and you can see Twitter Youtube down in a little highlight and actually if any of you later on while watching this uh non live uh but particularly Rocky if we'd like to chat with will or I about any of these topics please do not be shy to check us out and say hello over on Blue Sky um that is where you can basically chat with us about this or anything else we are willing to chat about that's right um yeah that's pretty much it yeah that's that's that's the that's the deal so uh without any further Ado let's talk about our topics first up make sure I'm in the right spot first up first up my live uh was yester

Saturday Saturday Saturday that day I did show prep a day early so I was thinking it was yesterday but it wasn't yesterday it was Saturday understandable um so Minecraft live uh had a bunch of really cool interesting stuff and I thought we'd go around a little bit of it two of them were uh sort of things that weren't addressed in the main show but were addressed as part of the larger sort of Minecraft live event uh and then we'll talk a little bit about the features so first up the F the the first thing is they have confirmed that they have no intention of ever making Minecraft 2 um let's talk about that for a second yeah uh also uh I don't believe this was announced uh what I just do want to call it out is it tied to the Minecraft movie do we get a Jack Black Skin now I don't know if they did announce anything like that but I don't see that is there going to be one there are tie-ins to the Minecraft movie there will be there will be live events in Bedrock yeah oh okay cool um no Minecraft 2

what a wonderful and shouldn't be novel idea right like it's odd no it's not it's not odd I'm not like shocked by the news but I just uh I love that so many games I feel like have kind of like taken a hit I'll say lightly uh when they announced two well before it's supposed well before a two is needed if a two is ever needed at all OverWatch Smite Path of Exile I'll go Destiny Destiny all really Destiny was probably out of those the most justified the most successful Andor Justified or I don't know successful could mean a thousand different things I don't know if we're going to talk monetary um I just think that it's like Minecraft is happy which is I love that at least for now the overlords of Microsoft are allowing this to happen probably because it's still printing money head over fist it's just is just a product you buy the product and then you

have the game there's other things you can buy with it but like it's not and on that note they have also the second big piece is that they have confirmed that there will not be a free-to-play version of Minecraft um they said why would we do that Minecraft is the best deal in gaming and they're not wrong we've talked about this as like the thought experiment right you're on a desert island and you're allowed to bring one video game and you have an internet connection what do you bring and why and the answer should be Minecraft because Minecraft is not really at this point purely a game it's a mod loader um because in that version of Minecraft you can play an MMO like Hypixel you can play um a tedium simulator like Greg Tech yeah I said it Greg Tech's a tedium simulator fight me you can do PVP you can do parkour you can make things you can create Redstone you can create a redstone computer that run Minecraft inside of Minecraft like

you can get recursive layers going on in here like it is one of the best deals in gaming and remains so so I I I just it's fun I'm not super deep into Minecraft by it means the imagination I've toyed around with it uh a little bit will you and the community uh have been going hard in it for a very long time um I just like that one of the big giant IPS and the things that are like kind of Minecraft is a great game as both I feel like a transitional game for kids into adults but also that adults can still play and find like you you the tool set is all there so you can have the experiences growing up with it and then still as your tastes change the tastes of what you do and how you engage with the product change but it's still the same product yeah like it's well it's an evolving product right well no no you know what I mean like to the point where it's not Minecraft 2 yeah for sure you know I mean um I I don't

know I always am very thankful that Minecraft exists in the way that it does because it feels like it gets a lot of people in the video game door and then uh kind of teaches you what your proclivities Andor interests in that space can be not it's not like that's not the only game that can do that of course but it's it's a really great starting point and uh I don't know I'm I'm very thankful that the Minecraft Community especially sort of announcing the stuff on their Minecraft live um made two notes one it's never going to it's not never it's not going live service and two there won't be a Minecraft 2 those are what many what again opinions only my opinion what many corporate esque overlords would feel like are like absolute no Nos and but like but they're that's not to say that they're not good that's to say they might be a long-term profit uh play as opposed to a short-term profit play yeah um I don't know I just I was really impressed with that yeah last last note on live itself

is that it's going to twice yearly it used to be once a year now they're doing two times a year and they've also sort of renamed the structure of it there are now game drops which are what used to be called updates but now really aren't updates it that sort of language change is a little weird to me but that's fine and speaking of game drops the first game drop uh that got announced uh is one that we're one that's coming out in a couple of days which is um a sort of cosmetic uh overhaul with a couple new blocks and some new uh species of pig um and the other one that got announced involves this friend so this was the first thing in a long time when I watched it I was like wait what why am I so drawn to this journey of what you have to do to do it because basically there's before this which is the happy what's it called the happy happy Gast happy Gast before the happy Gast which you can see there's four players on it uh I believe in in survival mode there was no

methodology of flying am I wrong there so you could it was very end game so before you needed to beat the dragon go to the end find an End City get an elytra and then you needed to keep it you needed to both keep it repaired and also have um firework Rockets to propel yourself so you could but it was expensive and timec consuming to do like the upkeep in some respects right this seems like a fun little Quest where you rescue a sad Guist in the nether yep sad Guist in the nether uh G not Guist uh you pour water on it and then it just floats around happy until you feed it enough snowballs I think and then it becomes the happy uh gas and then and then you put the Hat on it the hat is actually a thing that you make it's a saddle it's a saddle yeah and you know what I actually really liked about it because most players I guess are on the ground you wouldn't know if there was if this was being ridden by some or not from far away but this big block thing

the goggles go up when no one is riding it so you can tell if it's just roaming around and they go down if you know people are on it so even people from far away will be able to see like if folks are on it which is kind of a neat little thing and you can fly around with three of your friends uh and it is as best we can tell infinite survival flight um now it does have kind of the penalty of having a big blocky gas underneath you which makes it not the best for all kinds of building it is infinite survival flight without mods or anything else so that's pretty cool that's that's that's a big deal um and it's a fun little Quest and a new kind of mob and all of those things are good uh I was going to say uh we were talking about the ubiquity of Minecraft and blue asked a very good question can it run Doom um I believe it actually can I I googled this very quickly um and someone has made it with redstone yes so Redstone is um Redstone is wire and there are things

called comparators and um repeaters and because of the way that Redstone functions you can make logic gates and if you can make logic gates with wires you can make something that's turn complete giving enough space so people have made computers inside of Minecraft out of redstone that run Doom There You Go internet man it's wild um so yeah uh so that's all the Minecraft stuff uh very excited and again uh if you're if you're watching one of the live streams I'll be playing some Minecraft after this uh chat's going to get to vote on which mod pack I dive into for a couple of hours uh today um let's Matt let's talk about have you have you been watching this show have you been watching this I have first of all there will be no Seance spoilers here we're actually not talking about sance so do not be scared uh I have finished season one and two we will not be talking about any of that um or anything having to do with macro data refinement uh what we will be talking

about however is Apple sort of play in the streaming space now this uh will when you found this story this is from IGN and it says Apple TV plus reportedly losing 1 billion a year despite streaming hits such as sence and Silo and then the little subtitle of this article is but the return is definitely worth the investment and what it's sort of talking about is uh honestly a thing that's going around a lot in the the streaming Wars begun this streaming Wars have um basically how most of them are losing money hand over fist it costs a lot of cheddar to get shows like Severance and Silo and actually to be perfectly honest I think I'm going to back up if I had based purely on content had do like desert island One streaming service I would probably pick apple and this comes from someone who ditch the computers for their main and run on a PC instead which is a weird uh like I'm not drinking the pure apple Kool-Aid but just from a Content perspective they

don't have as much but everything seems to be pretty dang good uh and if they're losing money I mean Netflix is sort of obviously touch and go some stuff is great some stuff is like you're like what that cost I think El electric state which I have not watched yet cost 300 300 million and some change I heard of electric State I watched chaos and they canceled season 2 which made me really upset well because the problem is especially when they're when companies are bleeding money hand over fist even if there's something successful with Netflix business model if if something is is super successful but it's very expensive to make it has to break a certain success threshold or else it's cheaper just to cancel it and make five other shows to maybe hope one actually gets up there should have picked nebula there you go yeah that's fair too but I'm I'm talking more about like the um in in in the uh separate space though though it might be some stuff coming down the B I don't know there's some things you you it was obviously nebula and something else yeah

but um um all of this is to say that the Netflix's the Hulu the Apple TVs are um basically spending more than they're earning right but I think that's actually the play yeah like they're doing the thing they're hoping they're they're believing enough in their stuff to get to ubiquity um whether or not they get there I don't know but that I I when I was reading this article I was like it's being like well man it's losing so much money I'm like I'm pretty sure they planned on losing at least some of that money like that you don't start a streaming service especially now and and plan to like have it be profitable in the beginning that's not how this works so one of the um apt comparisons is to Epic right epic spends gobs of money on user AC position U act it's the cost of acquiring a new

user right um and uh though it is not a direct benefit you have to do some amount of it in order to get enough users into your ecosystem that eventually it could theoretically justify its own existence right which is sort of the weird part right you have to have money to get your service to a place where it could stably make money in the long run yeah right um and that's like and and you know Zarah correctly points out they should spend gobs of money on making a good launcher in store yeah except the problem is that it's not worth it to make a good game launcher in store until you have enough people using it that that will be a worthwhile investment you go back it's a chicken and egg and becomes a chicken and egg thing right where in either case you must have users using it right so another interesting thing too I was thinking about I was like oh why didn't I think of nebula in this in this example and it's because

I'm talking about to be perfectly honest super large companies that have in like deep pocket investors that's what I'm thinking about these other things nebula is all uh honestly funded by the subscribers and uh that is awesome and that's another reason why I love it um but the like this especially when you have as deep pockets as Apple does this I don't see as sort of like oh no uh even though I guess that's what headlines kind of have to be these days for people to pay attention maybe we wouldn't be talking about it if that wasn't the case um one thing I do wish it went into and I'd love to see if I could find uh later on because uh like again the shows over there and the two I've keep mentioning is Severance and Silo um have incredible reviews and so I'm wondering like and obviously it's got like Ted lasso and I know people liked shrinking that um Harrison Ford show as well so I'm wondering like apple I would love to see like their

plan because like I know that they added 2 million subscribers uh last month uh amid s's second season Run That season has ended and this is where the problem with this business model can come in are they going to actually you know stay for the other shows which that maybe they're won't even interested in trying good or not well it's it's sort of like Paramount right Paramount plus is do you want to watch Star Trek and also other shows yeah right H yeah yeah I mean that is literally why I have Paramount plus is Star Trek right um watch Deep Space 9 episode uh last night from season five where Odo uh finds a baby changeling it's the baby episode I don't know if anyone ever remembers Kira has her baby and uh Odo finds a baby changeling and uh learn life lessons I love that my one of my favorite things that they just had to like roll with on the Fly was that nana got pregnant and they had to figure out a way to get Nana Nana Visitor being

the the actress who plays Kira who is pregnant having the baby in this yeah and they were like uh shutle accident you're a surrogate now no one looked too closely at this plot line was great I loved it um anyway uh that's that's all on on Apple Plus and losing money and all that jazz it's just another thing like and again someone said uh and I'm sorry I didn't in chat because it was going by too fast someone's like corporations do have a interesting uh definition of losing money as well like this they're they're subsidizing this play to hopefully make more money with other elements of their company so like losing sure if it was in a bubble and not connected to anything else I imagine Apple overall is still making money yep uh ju just to clarify y'all don't have Star Trek on Netflix in the states no no not anymore nope it's all par plus exclusive yeah unless you're on vacation

somewhere and listen we would never say to do anything along those lines nor would we ever want you to use any type of technology that could let you watch anything else uh in different uh States and different countries out of if you want if you want to watch uh your your your Star Trek on Netflix you have to fly to the UK yourself just you to the UK and watch it there okay um next up speaking of competition in kind of weird Niche markets so Matt this was the feral conversation sure um do Matt did you know that there's a digimon Trading Card Game yes corre so Digimon and Pokemon have been butting heads with each other since they both came out even though not remotely in the same genre they're

not even close like the stories aren't even close the concepts aren't even close the games aren't even close but they've me they both have man in the name and that's it but isn't the gameplay I mean you're you're fighting with monsters you pull from a a nethery space kind of except IND Digimon it's because you're the chosen one and also got iseki and in Pokemon it's because you're an immortal 12 12-year-old and they can't come up with a better plot who is also the chosen one and becomes the best that there ever was my point is the game play regardless of the story the type of things you're doing are similar that's why they are in the same thing so um uh Digimon trading card game did kick into the space in the past couple of years and is uh forced to be reckoned with and now they are announcing Digimon alian Allison a l y s i o n alassian I don't know um yeah I was unclear how

to pronounce that but they they have announced that they are going to attempt take some segment of the Pokemon company's launch with their multi I think probably billion dollar at this point chunk of the market with the Pokemon uh TCG pocket phenomena that's been U sweeping the internet um and they they want in on it so it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out I don't think it's going to dent Pokémon seriously I think largely they're trying to capitalize on people who are jaded about Pokemon but who think Digimon is still cool um I don't know if they're trying to latch on to people that are jaded I think they're seeing that there is a market for their type of game play in a different space and want to see if they can take a piece of that pie I mean something like this takes a while obviously to develop and therefore they didn't see like the news months ago about Pokemon uh pocket doing a bad thing and be like we need to make a game uh but I think that they're seeing there's definitely uh people who want to

engage with a similar product in that space and therefore why not take their shot um and and and this well I'll Circle back to your first point I think this is something like this might be uh a strength for Digimon because their stories and the way that they present the stuff is so different um you might be able to do something with that if done uh in a clever way through a digital card game Etc um so I mean I don't think it's going to eat Pokemon's lunch by the [Laughter] uh you're right chai o latte for alysian that's right is alisan here that's right you mu yeah they God do you know what's really terrifying Matt about a bunch of both Janet and Brad have no idea what I'm referencing with what with which thing uler oh yes they do uh maybe maybe

not of course no I'm not saying we're not uh um the what I'm saying is even that bit of a meme uh from Ferris bu's day off uh has come back because that classroom scene is talking about tariffs it's talking about Reaganomics voodoo voodoo economics and it goes into uh a thing about uh how Reagan did stuff with tariffs and so that has come back into the the fold these days um well romic tariffs certainly aren't going to protect us but do you know what might Matt what the power so there's sort of an interesting blip in the news space on this and it feels like something that a lot of people are going to be all about um and I picked this image specifically because these are these are again hello

fellow youth um these are my Power Rangers okay right only one of which is in jail um only one that's pretty good for a cast for for a Power Rangers cast is pretty good um the uh news out of IGN is that the um showrunners for Percy Jackson and the Olympians that's Jonathan e Steinberg and Dan Shotz are in talks currently with Disney plus to write show and produce a liveaction Power Rangers series specifically for Disney plus and 20th Century TV now this is sort of a break right so for those who are unaware Power Rangers was originally produced in Japan half of it was anytime you can't see their faces and it's an action sequence that's just stuff taken from the Japanese show yeah superti right from Super Sentai and ped over right which is why the location don't match up and why everything's weird and like all

of that jazz and they've changed the amount of that that that's true over the years and whatever but them producing it here would be kind of interesting I think I love so okay so great yay new Power Rangers love it hopefully maybe it's good I'll check it out the thing I think I loved so much about Power Rangers especially growing up was even as a kid I do remember being like well these feel like two different things that are mashed together and then you learn like the process of which that they do it and you're like oh and then the producer brain and me got really excited like it was just another uh you know Notch where I was like oh this is how media is made and uh I actually it wasn't a Power Rangers thing but I actually I forget if I told the story before when I used to be uh an editor way back at MTV uh we got mtv2 actually we got access to a um a wrestling franchise that was going to do like a series of like 13 or 15 episodes with it's called L Lucha Libre Mass Warriors

it's a it's a wrestling uh Federation very very good very talented wrestlers but they would give us footage of the uh yes give me another Mystic nights of tier do h a second that one uh they would give us footage of the wrestling matches and some like shot behind the scenes footage and we got cart blanch to basically make whatever storyline we wanted with it and so we did all of this crazy stuff with like there was one guy I forget the character's name but he was supposed to be like crazy like in a an insane asylum and whatever so and they had this one interview with an interviewer off the off camera so we changed it to be it was a psych eval and I did vo as the psychiatrist or the psychologist uh speaking to him trying to get different things out of him to like make a rivalry stick more the whole point is doing stuff like power rers did and stuff like that is such a fun puzzle piece exercise

when you have two things of media that don't necessarily go together you're like okay but what if and you get to move all the stuff around so that's something that I find is intrinsic in the joy for me for Power Rangers I don't know if I'm in the minority for that um but um I hope if they do something new they're obviously not going to do that they're going to make a show but I hope that they somehow at least wink to that like process and that feeling of it being very disperate cuz cuz I do think that that's a um a big part of the show's Legacy right now interestingly by the way to tie this into a future story Matt did you know that um the owner the ownership of Power Rangers has changed between the last attempted reboot and this one yep so in 2017 there was an attempted great PR reboot of Power Rangers which was I in

my opinion pretty de but like didn't land well and that's okay that makes sense not everything could be a winner but after that Sabin the original owners of the Power Rangers and Super Sentai franchise sold the Power Rangers rights to Hasbro for $522 million so Hasbro owns the rights to Power Rangers which is one of the reasons why this is possible um to do this as a purely like Disney Plus and 20th Century TV first project is because Hasbro owns the rights and has since 2018 so it's kind of an interesting um it's kind of an interesting happen stance uh that we'll you know we'll look forward to seeing how it uh how it goes well it translates into our next story today will uh quite nicely almost as if you planned it imagine setting up for the next story so um there was a little thing that was to touted as sort of the next thing in Dungeons and Dragons which was Project sigil and that was supposed to be a VT a

virtual tabletop um and I kind of felt like this was going to be in Peril uh for a while side note for if you're not familiar I am very deep into d and d and tabletop RPGs um I actually just finished last weekend which I don't know if my eyes look super blurry uh this uh Saturday and Sunday we did our finale of our four-year running curse of strad campaign uh we did a double feature weekend and it was big and emotional and fun fun and the vampire lord is dead um but the the way that uh Hasbro has been sort of like pushing forward this concept and I think trying to figure out how to uh maximize profitability with Dungeons and Dragons um it kind of wanted to move into the virtual tabletop space and we've we've played with virtual tabletops over on this channel too a lot of our actual plays use tail Spire which we absolutely love um it's a great way to visualize and play with friends that aren't around uh and I think the in in in

theory a uh Wizards of the Coast run D and D Beyond integrated uh toolkit to make Adventures to be able to use Virtual tabletops and incorporate all your stuff is a really really great thing but from the mo from like there was a moment in the marketing material and the hype around this before it even came out that got me really worried about what they were trying to do with it and that is why I picked this image um right here so if you look this is carlac and asarian uh as little minis in Project sigil and in one of the promotional pieces of material for sigil a lot of the designers kept talking about like kept bringing it back to balers Gate 3 like they like it felt very almost like the the talking points from Hasbro or who like had to be like oh this needs to people need to be like you can continue your balers Gate 3 Adventure like it actually says something similar to that in the trailer

piece and I was like well I mean you can but that's not that's not what this is for and it kept going back and it kept using images of minis from balers gate and I'm like okay anyway that's a long way of saying cut to now and um sadly uh Hasbro has cut sigil VT staff by 90% they sort of soft launched it it barely works outside of a Windows system with insane spec requirements for what it's doing and uh they're basically they said that they couldn't find I want to find the actual um the line here uh actually so the the the way that the news sort of broke I'm going to read this out because I think it's kind of important because I do think there are some important things about when projects fail in here that other companies could actually learn from even though I think this is a bad thing uh this is from uh Dan uh rosson uh senior

vice president of Dungeons and Dragons in Hasbro direct also the story comes to us from polygon says Dear team I want to share an important update regarding sigil after several months of Alpha Testing we've concluded that our aspirations for sigil as a large Standalone game with a distinct monetization path will not be released let's pause there large Standalone game that is not what a virtual tabletop is there was talks of trying to bring this to places where it made sense like mobile running this on an iPad would be incredibly helpful then there was talk of bringing it to consoles and you're like I mean sure but what yeah right every PE I'll keep reading because there's sort of a uh a full picture thing at the end of this as such we cannot maintain a large development effort uh and most of the sigil team will be separated from the company this week we are whoever proud of sigil team

has developed and want to make sure that fans and players on D and D Beyond can use it to that end we will transition sigil to a d and dbond feature we will maintain a small team to sustain sigil um and release products already in development with no at no additional cost to users to uh with those moving on a result of the decision we will provide robust support including sance packages 2024 bonus career placement services and intern and internal opportunities where possible all that stuff it's sad that we should have to be like oh yes good but like it is good they companies should do that um but basically what it's saying is they worked on this thing for a really long time but I imagine and this is just me sort of pontificating here that corporate and creative were not like they were talking past each other probably um and what Hasbro wanted was a video game like balers Gate 3 that they could sell peace meal right and what watsy wanted was a virtual tabletop to

enable play to help more people play a more traditional style of Dungeons and Dragons in a digital format that seems correct and because like the the line of Standalone game with a distinct monetization path will not be realized is like you just went hard at this you threw money at it and no one was steering this ship right cuz like how you don't release a game or any product without knowing how you're going to pay for it or how it's going to pay for itself or generate Revenue right that's the point of a product yeah right a the a product is the finished result of Labor and in order to generate continued compensation for that labor you have to generate money from the product yeah yeah uh tweak is exactly like the problem with scope was doomed from inception yeah but it's it's not doomed I don't think because of the concept I think it's doomed because the wants of both teams sort of dealing with the production of it are different

and it bought as a d and fan and as a tabletop RPG fan it really bothers me because there is a way to make this profitable will you not you won't make all of the money but you'll make a good chunk of money and make it profitable that's never seems to be enough for people here's how what they weren't doing was actually selling modules like they had little teeny Adventures you could do that you could like sort of put together and like make your own like thing and that's cool but like I go back to curs of strad if they sold a curse of strad pack that you could let five players play for a certain amount of money and I gave you all the monsters and Castle Raven Loft and like all the maps and all the things insane you could there's fans of almost every module and it's already pre-written with rules and scenarios and things you have to build them of course but like they they weren't leveraging any of

like in a monetization model they weren't even leveraging their proper assets that they had instead uh it was incredibly peac meal and just sort of odd uh with with tears linked to D and D Beyond even though it was a separate piece I don't know um I'm sad to hear that these folks got laid off um I glad to hear that they're getting some uh care given to them and compensation Etc and I'm more sad that like a place that could have truly been a centralized location for this type of um I guess I'll call it like hybrid play like being able to play tabletop RPGs with people not around your physical IRL tabletop uh more of those will always be helpful um and this could have been something great and it just feels like due to lack of honestly Management on on again complete speculation on the corporate side um this is just gone now like months or maybe even years of work down the drain uh yeah it's kind of sorry that was a big long diet tribe about M the tabletop

industry I just it it it bothers me so much yeah absolutely 100% yeah I think that's I think that's very true uh also so I like this meanwhile never winter nights a d andd PC game from 20 2002 did recently release a new module yep there you go they do that yeah uh okay I think we got time for one more quick story uh before we do our our ad break and we exp to Janet when we get there um okay let's talk about Silent Hill F now or Silent Hill Forte no I think it's Silent Hill F yeah um okay so we're not actually going to be talking about Silent Hill Terri man other than other than to acknowledge that before you look it up you should be aware that everything about this game is coded in like cont warnings this is the most mature Silent Hill game they've ever released to the

point where I am probably willing to lay money that in some jurisdictions if they continue on this path this game will receive an adults only or an AO rating in the US why is that weird I'm so glad you asked invisible interlocutor I could have asked you want me to ask it yeah go ahead will um why is that weird because games don't get AO ratings in the US historically right so remember the number of games that are coming out increases year-over-year more and more and more games now there are plenty of unrated games on Steam that's not what we're talking about because those games are generally small enough to never get a physical release they're digital only they're independent Studios they can do pretty much whatever they want so um in the past 10 years and I'm going to say 10 years like it loosely the last major AO games released in the United States were in

2015 one of them was a Steam Greenlight project called hatred and one of them was Eden astris plus plus Mosaic um which is a manga gamer game uh and so and everything else was edited prior to release like a Manhunt and an Outlast uh and I believe Agony well the last major what I would consider AAA AO game that was released in the United States was Manhunt 2 in 200 n um and it was the last game that was released with an AO rating for violence and Gore and not sexual content sure because you can get an AO for either okay so my question and I would love Janet and Brad to chime in on this as well is um do you think that the industry and The Gaming Community as a whole are ready for a ser serious take in an AO game now there are a couple of obstacles one many physical

many physical retailers will not carry AO games they won't carry them at all but also the market is now large enough where that might not matter correct there have been other AO games but they've been relatively small this is a silent hill game this is a AAA effort this is a large scale game with a big budget um yes and it's also worth and I think genius 18 is correct um it it this is past Peggy 18 that's correct this is this is an extreme case of of being incredibly um this is incredibly gory and violent like I'm not even going to go down the content list just trust me I kind of want no okay it's not the content list but hold on this is so the ESRB site gives it a mature 17 plus rating for blood and gore intense violence partial nudity none of that by itself as IGN says is surprising but then it like gives you details and it goes like pretty hard yeah like it it it

describes things very um clearly actually I won't read it you can read it if you want it'll be in the show notes you can check it out in the description but like it it gets like oddly specific about the violence which look if you need to check that's a great resource to have um yeah but I I I I think will your point um and it didn't sort of crystallized until he just sort of said the thing about um storefronts the reason why we haven't truly I think had more AO games is because of the fact that uh brick and mortar won't sell them or most brick and mortar won't sell them um now that brick and mortar is uh a large chunk of their sales have been taken up by digital I mean there is an entire possibility that you could make a brand new Silent Hill mainstream thing that maybe has a smaller physical

release but you could still release digitally on Steam Xbox play all kinds of ways that you could get around this right so you could have a digital only version that's AO and a physical release that's M um you could well so now here's here's the interesting thing so yep you could um how do I put this I think video games can be about anything and so long as you have the right warnings for people Etc can be almost you know anything in them um I also don't just want stuff to be thrown at like if any topic matter can be discussed but it has to be earned in in the medium in which it is being discussed does that make sense so like what I don't want is just the flood of like non like if this is the case and this is a direction that things are going like just a flood of like oh AO for ao's sake whereas I

believe in many Silent Hills they deal with a lot of some with more Nuance than others uh deal with a lot of different adult themes uh uh uh very well in a weird way of sort of putting it but like they earn the ability to use horrific things because they treat the entirety of the story and what's going on with a level of respect uh truly an adult level of respect yeah um and so like I'm I'm all about that I just it's interesting we'll see if it opens if this actually does open a door and move things a little bit in that direction again it's a silent hill game in 2025 or 26 whenever it comes out I don't think it's going to like kick the door open on this like this it's not large enough anymore um but I do think that if something is successful in this route it will like it will leave that door slightly cracked and we will uh we'll start seeing more of that we're going to need to come back to this after ads so uh yeah Janet what's happening right now is that twitch is in there scheduled ad break I

can schedule ad breaks on Twitch can't schedule them on YouTube unfortunately so uh while twitch gets real ads for things that they could spend their money on we're going to sell you things that you can't spend your money on uh in in the form of a sort of an improv uh game that Matt and I have developed over the past too many episodes so Matt would you please begin Us by by putting on that advertisement music and selling Janet and something they can't actually spend their money on I sure well okay yes absolutely hello Brad Janet and Rocky uh oh wait actually I'm going to restart because my brain short circuited I'm doing it again here we go go this is the best kind of advertisement hey Brad Janet and Rocky listen uh when you have a co-host on a show and you don't really want them to be hurt what do you do you they they're not they're not going to fix themselves they don't have anything to fix scurvy so what do you do

and what can you do you can help sell the idea for your co-host to have a clementine that's right all it is and you don't even have to give them the Clementine you don't even have to try to have him enjoy the Clementine it's just holding it up and knowing that he could have the Clementine to fight scurvy because this hypothetical co-host needs to know that Monster energy drinks won't save him from that and remain unimpressed I just want you to be safe will that's really what we're getting at yeah from scurvy Justin Justin Clementine I'm lit by the way in case anyone's worried I'm literally getting blood worked on Thursday we'll know if I have scurvy on thurs tell you what tell you what I'll I'll have the results I will let Chad know next week if I have scur or not oh not this week no next week because I won't get the results from my doctor I got you okay so next

Thursday when will and I stream on Twitch we'll find out ofy will would you please send us something sure hey twitch chat YouTube chat Rocky do you have a co-host who's incessantly worried about your perceived lack of vitamin intake during a show on the internet you can try reminding that co-host that you eat things when you're not streaming you can drink things and eat things that contain vitamins and minerals when you're not in front of a camera trying to entertain people and running three monitors of stats try eating a clementine off screen right or eating fruits and vegetables off scream instead of having to eat the mream as some kind of proof of life I have another ad I need to do yeah okay great we're out of AD breaks but you can feel free oh okay can I do one more yeah hey everyone do you need a product to sometimes explain to your

again very hypothetical co-host in whatever life that you have that the name games for breakfast isn't literal you can't eat the games and the bits and the stats and the things to get all of the nutrients that your body needs whether or not you're streaming or not streaming sometimes you or microphones don't e this is an ad for not eating microphones I think actually now if everyone in all of the chats could just say to Will don't eat the microphone that's what I really we need to make him stop doing it it's not okay it is not full of fiber and it will not help any digestive issues okay great awesome awesome awesome uh now that we're out of ads uh we can go back to I'm pretty sure I'm going to eat the microphone oh man um okay so now we're out of ads we can we can address something so there was a bunch of people in chat who were asking why yes that's it it's a microphone made of Clen and it functions somehow don't ask um keep going uh so a bunch of people in

in um Janet and Brad were both mentioning that they didn't believe that physical sales mattered a reminder and this is an important reminder for Janet yeah you are probably here because you are subscribed to a show or subscribed to a channel that does content about deep diving into game design you are almost by definition not the average consumer of games lot just like a lot cooler sure lots of people still buy their media from physical retailers in fact many uh the average gamer only buys one or two games per year on Console that's still the indust like average like if you took every like it's more than half of people buy uh one game a year and it's usually on Console we've looked at the St breakdown with Jeff and design Club so it is worth noting that physical retailers exposure to physical media do still very much matter to the industry even if it doesn't appear so to your eye those

things are still very true um so uh yeah th% yeah I I was giving myself until will was done talking to see if I could balance the Clementine it's impossible at this angle I could move it and cheat I'm not going to I'm not going to cheat I'm not going to be like that um most ask where do people go to find physical video games uh that's a really great question um the the two major answers Walmart and Target yep Best Buy um Walmart Target Best Buy sometimes GameStop but very rarely now because GameStop kind of sucks um but the other I think I think not enough to keep them sustainable but also a decent amount of people still do go buy a physical game at Gamestop yeah also Amazon is a physical retailer do they have stores with games in them no but you can purchase a physical game from Amazon but that's not the same right like you could buy an AO you could buy a physical AO game and

have it sent to you from Amazon but Walmart won't stock it that's true I also don't know what Amazon's AO policy is because there haven't there hasn't really been a test of that with a game Major Video Games specifically I mean you can buy adult leading things on Amazon I imag like it feels like you absolutely can yeah I get advertise them for very strange reasons uh it's it's very strange anyway anyway with all that said the trailer for Silent Hill F slaps and I'm very excited to see where it goes from here yeah I I am I'm also very I am very eager to see if they get hit with an AO in the us and whether or not they back down um because traditionally AOS have been AO has been the kiss of death for us game sales um and I would really like them to not back down because I would really like to see that change um uh H well to close it off with this one from Bell physical copies of games all the way also congrats to Zoe on her starring role in the latest eh

series thank you very much hopefully she'll make an appearance later and I listen we've talked about physical games here on the show a lot like we're talking about it from a from a a business perspective and what sells and where you can sell it um genius um the we are huge proponents of physical games here we want there to be a record and uh in my opinion in my opinion like a a playable one I don't always Vibe with like you know having a a graded game like in a case like I feel like games should be I feel like games should be like being able to play and whatever of course if you need to preserve it preserve it that's a different thing I just you know in the land of everything going to subscription Services uh I want there to be a place where I can still engage with content that I love and or purchased so uh physical the best possible way Matt you want to talk about physical content you purchased or or content rather that you

purchased and now can't engage with sure everybody put on your taking off caps yeah well you soon won't be able to soon won't be able to by the end of the month so yeah I'm super bumped about this one actually I didn't have time because of when it came out but like okay so Seekers of Sky Veil is a combination MOBA extraction looter game yeah um and it didn't survive a month uh a reminder that we talk a lot about a lot of games that survive and do well and survivorship bias is very real which is why occasionally I find it necessary to talk about games that we were excited for that are just kind of didn't make it um so secret of skyvale uh never got to the critical mass of players required for an extraction looter based on most um uh based on most reports and as a result never really got off the ground uh and so matchmaking never really worked so the game kind of shut down um

and they are pulling the plug less than a full month in and are refunding everyone all of their money and closing up shop this is this is sort of a a an interesting problem right because we do want there to be innovation in the industry right the idea of combining third person MOBA style combat with the overarching advancement and um goals of an extraction looter mhm very interesting idea very cool concept really wanted to see that survive unfortunately for them the other problem they ran into is that they came out the same month as Wilds yeah but I mean listen sometimes sometimes if you are on razor thin budgets like you have a window and like you can't afford to keep the lights on if you are not bringing in money uh and this is because this is these are ex um uh BioWare blizzard and Riot developers that formed this studio yep

like so they not they're super talented but I bet you they don't have the the infinite Pockets that you kind of need maybe for if if something like this that you release doesn't take off instantly yep uh and it stinks because uh again I have not had a chance to to play it but I think weirdly enough that's kind of telling like will and I and a lot of you here are deep into this space actually can I just get a poll between Rocky uh and Brad like how many people actually knew this game was out yeah uh mods can you can you run me up some polls uh actually I don't know if the mods know how to do it on YouTube yet so figure it out it's an experiment you have perion to do science yeah uh like I just I because it's one of those things that whether it like it's get I guess has mixed reviews on Steam right like so it's not like blowing up the world with whatever it's doing but who knows if if it had six

more months to live if it could be tweaked enough with enough user data uh to make it incredibly fun and be something that's a staple but you never know when you don't have the actual time to see if it's going to evolve um and so I don't know in a world that is sort of quickly becoming a bunch of like just a less and less companies cuz they keep buying them I really am sad when I see more of a of a a group of developers come together form a studio make something that has promise and then just can't afford to keep it running um yeah okay I I have I have a poll running in YouTube chat uh so cool yeah it's the first time I did that how many people knew Seekers of Sky Veil existed yeah and look and that's not a it's not entirely secrets of Sky veil's problem or that studio they probably don't have a ton of Bud like marketing budget correct um so it's it's

just interesting I'd be curious to know yeah I think it's uh I I think it is just an interesting um it's an interesting phenomena right that like there are these games that like had we if we had time if we had time and energy to play them we would have but now we can't right and sort of well you technically still can as of now you can download it for free but I don't know what the matchmaking I don't know any of that stuff and I know that's going to stop yes it's going to stop at the end of the month so it's game is on its way out they're giving people a chance to play it for the last time before it vanishes and dovetailing a little bit back into our previous uh conversation about physical games and things like that it's interesting because some games just you're not like you secrets of Sky Veil will truly be lost because the physical version of the game isn't the part of the game that makes it work yeah and so that's kind of doubly sad and the reason I thought of this I saw genius

3's comment from before about I work in a computer Museum so I'm passionate about the topic of game preservation uh like yeah we are too it's just I I would like to do a bit of more of a deep dive of like how is it possible not right now but how is it possible to preserve in any way a game like this that needs a larger use contingent and like I could think of a few off the top but like none that are terribly cheap unless you sort of build unless you build in the fail I'll say like game closing mode in your initial budgetary pitches where like you make it sort of peer-to-peer um but a lot of companies don't want to do that because it costs a bunch of money and that's like saying like well this will be in case it stops making money right yeah you don't ever want to plan for that no uh okay anyway so uh chats are voting we'll we'll report on those when they're done uh next up uh

GDC was this past week and a reminder that on design Club Thursday 2: PM Eastern 11: a.m. Pacific Jeff and I are going to be sitting down to talk about the idea of uh conventions and are they still worth it for the games industry uh both uh on Twitch and on Youtube it'll be our first co-stream design Club pleasee tune in for that uh but one of the GDC talks that I thought was really fascinating and I wanted to bring up as an idea um is the sort of proof I think that consumers generally are bad at knowing their own habits and what they really want so um there was a talk um by a uh former designer from greed theft auto6 in Red Dead online this comes with from PC Gamer you can read it the show notes as well yeah uh that um talks about how despite players desire for open world at least in theory and the trend of open World Games most

people don't actually explore all that much um there's sort of this this feeling of like I want to be open world to explore do all and then they don't um which I found really fascinating uh because I probably could have guessed that if you'd asked like hey do you think most people actually explore all of the stuff on the map and I do because I have uh barely managed ADHD and have an intense need to find new shiny things uh to satisfy the little dragon that lives in my brain and causes me to cord like new shiny experiences um but that's me and I think a lot of people don't do that right I um I have very mixed feelings about this talk and again I'm reading an article with quotes from this talk so my own bias is being put into the tone and tenor of of what this uh person is saying um so I want to say that kind of up top I wish I had seen the panel I I actually I wonder if Jeff went uh I'd like to

know and just get like a more of a solid thing anyway um I on one hand I completely see where they're coming from um then they have data probably to back that up but I also wonder two possible things one the open world craze like like I forget at what point 200 I don't know five eight something like when when I don't know Moro wind dropped or maybe that's even earlier I have no idea uh like and everyone's like that's the that's the hotness that worked we everything needs to be open world now and then people made a bunch of open world games and that has not sort of stopped or slowed down the the the I think this is Assassin's Creed Unity uh that I have on here which is a map full of so many icons that you kind of want to die um but the the everyone sort of started making them

and and people don't go explore them and I think there's other reasons why people don't go explore them and it could be player uh Cho uh preferences it could also be time a lot of us have less and less time to game these days as it is so you don't have time to check everything out so you want to beine it from point to point to point but I think there's something else uh that they don't really talk about at least this article doesn't me mention that they talked about in the panel again if you were there please let us know um that a lot of these games are open world because they think that it or it's seemingly open world because they think that open world is the popular thing to make not because they have an open world story to tell or want to do a bunch of environmental storytelling in an open world um I look at games like two different but similar flavor of open world game that I think like actually really works depending on what your doing the first is Grand Theft Auto 5 or or GTA online and I will say that like

the reason why the open world is worth it there is because even in the the drgs of San Andreas if you're in like uh in the um Alamo uh old like decrepit houses and stuff and you go into a backyard like you can kind of look at the way that things are actually like laid out or like trash cans or things kicked over there's a bottle or something like there's different ways Fallout does this really well too with like or the Fallout 3 and four specifically in New Vegas like environmental storytelling in the open world you can go look at something and infer that all of these tiny little things build a tiny little story and the conglomeration of those tiny little stories makes your travel through the open world make the world feel lived in and that doesn't necessarily mean it's like a th000 points on a map you need to go check out because the world is so big it's a promise that the game is telling you that this world you are in while

only maybe 40% of it is like truly like designed for you to experience a moment that your character has in it that the entire world has a promise of the world is big and makes you feel like you might not be the main character other things are going on Elden ring is another great example of this I feel like exploration in Elden ring for me personally was super rewarding on two fronts I was pushed to explore because I knew that valuable things would be hidden in places out of sight like it trains you to believe that but I was never upset when I get a pile of gold excrement after jumping off nine Cliffs to try to get to a shiny across a thing because the ratio of what you find in the open World versus what is not like useful not useful or nothing is so perfectly balanced for me and the world feels lived in as well so that's a long way of saying I think one of the faults of why

many people might not engage with open World Games in that way or just sort of beine it is a lot of open World Games sometimes are just open to have collect a hundred feathers do this thing do whatever and the world that is happening in itself isn't designed in a way to invoke any sense of exploration because you're not rewarding people other than finding the McGuffin doing this challenge that there's 50 of you know like that sort of thing I think it needs one extra layer if you're going to like you have to want to be able to tell a story with your open world through Visual storytelling and and and environmental storytelling or else no amount of open World quest line plot things Etc will actually nail it the last the last example I'll give uh will did you play cyber Punk um I think night city is one of the coolest uh most sort of detailed worlds

in that regard however the game especially on release amidst its Myriad of other problems really did push you hard to beine through that main story like everything from not only the way it told you about the main storyline quests uh meet hak at Embers or whatever but the uh the way that it positioned you to go it like made it seem like not only these are the things that are the most important but the characters and the the way it would work through it would be like you have you you got to go now even though you don't right it's false urgency yeah um and I think night city is one of those places that I didn't start really exploring until Phantom Liberty came out and now sometimes I'll just go drive around and again sorry I'm going to back up a little bit because I've been rambling I also know some people just don't like that yeah but but that's also probably people that don't

wouldn't like a open world game anyway I think the other thing that's really important to keep in mind is that the open world itself the map and the world is a character in the story right like the Gestalt entity that is night city that is Hyrule that is the Assassin's Creed location dour the whatever they are a character and so that character can be a character that resonates with the player or not and you can influence that with design but there are also just people for whom that character will be some a character that doesn't land right like you all right think of your favorite video game that has a story now think of the character in that story that just you don't like like for whatever reason you don't like their dialogue you don't like the way their voice acting was directed you don't like something about them you ju it just doesn't land with you right my problem was my game was

returnal I broke it but I get what you're saying right yeah like that that concept right I think the majority of people will have an idea right so like yeah that that is also a factor in this right the other really interesting thing is that um this is sort of a good reminder of something that Jeff and I have talked about before which is um it does not behoove developers to spend gratuitous amounts of time making all those shiny findables in games that aren't really about collecting all the shiny findables because every dollar that the company spends developing part of the open world that nobody goes to see is wasted development time that could have been made that could have been spent making the core game experience better or sign posting better so that people would go find a slightly less shiny part of the Overworld and that is kind of my point like the reason why many people might not be engaging in open world uh

mechanics in these open World Games is because the games themselves aren't making them a priority and then maybe if that's the case those games shouldn't be open world yeah like that's not saying one is better than the other it's just to that exact point will there's only so much time in development you have so make sure you focus in on this thing anyway it's funny I I want to go I'll end this story with I want to go back to my biases on this I read this article and I was like what and I was a little bit like spicy about it but that's because again I wasn't there and um I do think it's more on like well why is this open world like if people aren't engaging with it maybe it shouldn't be that and and maybe that's what the point of this talk was maybe it was trying to be like not everything needs to be this show people show they don't use it all the time unless it's really designed for it so anyway I thought it was an interesting discussion um I remember

years ago I was always like more excited about an open world game than not until then became a bloat right so I think we're maybe we've cusped that bell curve and we're going we're going down yeah okay and then the other GDC talk that I really like hang on to your butts hold on to your butts was from Hell divers and and it was a I I want to go watch the talk in its entirety I didn't have time while I was prepping but I I I feel like it's a really great example of games are art all art is political okay we're GNA we're going to make a very very easy uh thing all game all video games are art all art is inherently political to an extent except for Metal Gear Rising Revengeance no Poli we just streamed over on Twitch there is zero politics in that game right yeah yeah yeah right no

politics there except so um the team at Arrowhead actually got asked to give a talk on indoctrinating people with propaganda because of Hell divers 2 which I thought was a fascinating recognition of how many people like we talked about when hell divers 2 came out we talked about one of the problems of media liter which is like some people don't like there were definitely people who just kind of whooshed on Hell divers and didn't get that it was supposed to be like satire and like to be U pointing out all of these problems and like all of the satirization of um the the model of Starship Troopers and and a whole bunch of other stuff when the game came out and it's really interesting to see like an after action like talk on how effective indoctrinating players into this fictional propaganda was um and it's a very interesting uh case study in

uh we did this thing for a piece of art and here's how it applies to the real like to to the world outside that piece of art it's all real world stuff right but like um I think uh I think it's really really interesting um yeah that that they're gonna um that that they were asked to do this uh they were in fact asked to do it by the way by the UN um well they were so they it garnered the organiz they they got a message from the UN asking if they wanted to talk in some form about it so that might be coming down the pipe soon that that is yeah that is also a thing um so yeah uh by the way they've confirmed that you are in fact the bad guys uh it's funny I I I do miss hell divers like I super right for democracy it's so fun it is it is really fun uh and it's it's yeah um yeah yeah hell divers 2 is a piece of dystopian fiction yes correct the fact

that some people don't get that is the terrifying part like because again again you're here in a Monday morning talk show about video games and Tech news probably not the average gamer not in a better or worst way but you are a statistical outlier from what we would call the average gamer which means there are definitely people who are on the other side of the bell curve when it comes to media literacy from you which means they didn't get it yeah it's all listen it's it's it's super interesting uh I am very happy that hell divers 2 exists and that it brings conversations like this sort of forward it's great I'm I'm super happy with it all right Matt are you ready to definitely not talk about more politics and video games there's none definitely this is now what are we just going to talk about middle Gear Rising Revengeance the PC port and uh fight with jet stream Sam is completely bugged and you actually can't beat it and we

slammed our faces into a wall for a while with it yep that's my political take hot political take Patch the PC Port of Metal Gear Rising Revengeance so that the final swing ryen gives to jet stream Sam Actually connects and we can finish the game yep absolutely um no uh congratulations are in order to the uh United video game Workers Union uh announced and officially debuted at GDC we now have a nationwide video game Workers Union in the US which good it's about flipping time in an industry that lost something uh I don't know the exact numbers but a terrifying amount of people in 2023 and 2024 in the tens of thousands um yeah this is very much needed yeah this is this is really good um this is uh you know I thought we we were going to have more to say about this this is just good this is well no there's actually a lot

to say about it so this is basically um the with this launch this is something that uh other video game uh people in various elements of the video game creation Community have had their own individual unions especially in in companies and small things and stuff like that this is something that is basically allowing anybody who works in the field of video game of video games to join this Union the the the requirement is you pay the dues and you're in the union um and that is something that we haven't seen at least in the US I understand that there might be something in in the UK or overseas I I don't remember specifically this in many ways parallels Guild structure which is sort of a um like if you're in this trade you can join this Guild and have collective bargaining representation um which we don't really

have in the US anymore we kind of did for a while but don't I mean there's some thingsam Union is probably the closest analog and the team is super powerful but Director's Guild editor like editors like there's a lot of other stuff like that like in in specific elements of a creative field uh there's a quote here on uh their own website which is cw- union.org uh which basically says the creation of this Union was not done in isolation it's a cumulative effort by thousands of video game workers who have been fighting for years to redefine what it means to stand together and reclaim power in one of the largest and highest grossing Industries on the globe that is Tom Smith uh the senior director of the organization uh so director of organizing excuse me he continues uh these workers or they continue these workers are taking a bold stand joining together to build a power uh for the workers behind the games we all know and love and there's one more quote uh I have to find it on here because it was so good this is from uh CWA president

Claude Cummings Jr who said as video game studios have Consolidated as we've seen many times uh the workers whose creativity dedication and skill bring the games to life have become more of an afterthought they are subject to endless cycles of layoffs and reh hirings as corporate Executives pursue short-term profits at the expense of a sustainable future and I think that statement calls out a lot of really important and complex issues in a quick and easily digestible way the reasons this is happening is a ton of sell-offs and short-term gains and that's not going to fly especially if people can actually join together and and use their collective bargaining to make this happen um the way that and they they launched this sort of they they they had their big like um this is a real a real thing at GDC they also kind of like canvased around GDC which I think is important

um and they basically there was something uh there was an interview I think Jason shrier did with them for Bloomberg uh which basically was asking um I'm trying to find exactly where it was here we go um yeah uh that basically they questioned the strength of a union that didn't yet have the power to bargain because it's a baby Union it's still sort of starting up with I think hundreds of people but it's get it's slowly and actually I think quick they they garnered I think a bunch of support and members from GDC um uh when questioned about that Smith uh the person from the from uh uvw basically said um they referenced the famous 1937 United Auto Workers sit down in Flint Michigan that despite being 2% of the workforce still won concessions from the owner of General Motors and it's sort of like there's a quote here that say we we got to become ungovernable in that way

we don't have the muscle to do it overnight but the only way we're going to do it uh is the only way we're going to get that muscle is by more folks Having the courage to do what they're doing in unionizing and like so I'm very very excited and proud of this group of people because they're they're doing the right thing on one front and also understanding their size and scope and where they're at in this journey and uh not doing things that some organizations sometimes do which just sort of like promise a bunch Pie in the Sky all this stuff and it never reaches it and it comes crashing down and and it won't work this feels like a sustainable movement that will slowly gain traction and will eventually become a force to be reckoned with and help a lot of people making video games in the Game Dev community and I for one am super excited for it I'm psych we'll keep covering it here as it sort of grows um and I just I'm so happy to see this thing get get off the ground yeah the reason we let Matt take this one is cuz I'm normally the one who's

um by hooker by crook dragging things even further left with like screaming Union talk most of the time so I'm glad that I'm glad that Matt got to Matt got to take this because well I don't I think I think it's interesting because the thing that um it all starts from the people that make the thing yes there are sadly corporate realities and nonsense that have to be met when making a product for sale but that in no way truly impedes if you are a a uh a a video game company that is making video games for profit uh that does not mean that you do not have to or cannot take care of the people making your product in a reasonable and and and honestly U ethical way and we're going further and further away it seems from companies believing that that is a bit of a responsibility and uh this is just a

great like I I've always sort of said this we we always do the like capitalism is the end boss and like that whole thing the end boss is lack of empathy like everything has to mix and balance together yes capitalism can work if you mix it with empathy and I understand that like by definition it can't cuz the thing is all the money and get the thing but then maybe it's not purely capitalist does that make sense yeah yeah love did to make a game and you are a gremlin of a goose honk for unions listen uh H H I would play Untitled Goose game at the drop of a hat I'm just very excited about this I think it is great and I think more people talking about how this kind of thing is good for the it's good for the industry right because you get a higher like okay so so what happens when uh you have workers who are happy and well compensated is you get a better product yeah that's it like people seem to miss that part like your profit margin might not be as big

on paper like all other things being equal but the quality of the product improves right because devs aren't Ultra crunch devs have time devs have vacation devs are well compensated right and then they are more likely to perform well in their creative jobs because every part of making a game is creative down to the programming right that some of the some of the programming things we've seen in games right I will remind you all of squirrel Cycles someone had to come up with that do you know what that is Matt no but I I imagine there's a I I think it's in Age of Empires it's in one of the Age of Empires games there's no timer function in the game so there's an invisible squirrel model hidden outside of the map and it's counting animation cycles of the squirrel to function as a timer like the things that people have come up with to solve problems are all creative and ingenious and ridiculous and wonderful and beautiful right and

they're more likely to be able to do that if you take care of them right also Untitled moose game I 100% would play we are willing it into existence yeah absolutely um so I yeah I just think that this is this is really good um we've we've actually talked a lot about unionization across the industry um for a long time um we actually have an interview that we did with aftera in um design Club at one point we've done a lot of this talk and it's really good to see like this bigger push happen yeah yeah yeah I don't know I think it's I think it's great congratulations to all y'all you did you did excellent work and uh let's keep it going salutes all right now that would be what we call our main course uh and now uh for for Janet uh we normally wrap up with a piece of dessert um which this week is a lovely story um brought To Us by uh 0 level um and there is a piece of

news that that warms our hearts which is after Flo won uh the Oscar for U best animated there if you have not seen Flo go see Flo I believe it's it might even be on Netflix at this point that seems right okay um there has been an uptick in a very important statistic which is the adoption rate of black cats and here we see our our own resident black cat correspondent Zoe commenting on the matter um uh as she did this morning it's it it is really good to see things like this especially because black cats historically have a low adoption rate um yes that is true uh lower than other colors of cats uh largely due to Superstition um and it is really good to see that get turned around uh for any period of time by a work of art um yeah yeah um I I don't know and also the name flow is also uh uh becoming more popular obviously I

mean it's it makes total sense um yeah it's really great to see again um I specifically uh out of the litter of three from Zoe when uh when again I was at MTV at the time and uh a friend of mine Chandler brought them in because she worked at the ASPCA and she was just bring them in because she was fostering them and I was like that one give me that cat I want that uh yeah it's uh it and and she uh and even the people at the ASPCA didn't like try to talk me out of it but they were like oh okay and then I dove into the this was years ago and I dove in and I looked at the statistics and how black cats are just due to the Superstition again go check out our uh history of cats video over on the extra history side of things um traditionally are although technically we don't start talking about uh the that level of superstition until ep2 but you get the primer um it's just it's sad that like old school superstitions

like that limit uh adoption rates of pets so having something again as beautiful as flow um built in blender I know I've said this a bunch of times just in case someone in Janet or or Brad or rocky doesn't know this this film that one best animated film this lvan film was made in blender it's phenomenal um the fact that this can actually cause real help for Animals is uh is really a joy so I'm very glad to see that I was hoping Zoe would be in here for that but she's probably sleeping somewhere else yeah she's not under the desk she came in and was super mouthy during our setup time and then last so I got the mic in her face and then uh just in case right she as as normal um she uh she has learned much from mcavity and when the crime's discovered she's not there um where my theater nerds at uh so yeah that that will conclude our uh our stories for this week um yeah I'm I'm

very excited to be back on YouTube there are a bunch of of comments coming in in Janet about uh us being back on YouTube yes we're back we're in a slightly different format we're live even um and we we hope that you all enjoy this uh we're going to be fine tuning some elements of it over on YouTube um yeah uh we we're going to be fine tuning if you have suggestions you can leave them either in chat or in the comments uh that reminds me uh Janet uh Janet this is a request for you and uh so there's three ways to sort of let us know stuff you want us to talk about or if you have questions about the show one is if you're already on the Discord go check us out over there you can drop us questions in any of the show chats Etc two uh Janet now that there are comments here uh on the VOD leave questions in the VOD and uh at this time in the show starting next week we will answer some of the questions that were in uh the VOD and uh Rocky over on nebula just message will and I at Blue Sky um there that'll be the fastest way to get us to uh

answer any question you have or continue your conversation about any of the topics that we have uh because we love chat with you guys we're super psyched to be back over here again the if you are wondering anything about the who what why where when and how that we are doing this in the test stream please ignore video that is previous to this one that gives a lot of the information in there overall and we would change the name of it except the entirety of that video is us making a joke about that too so we'll keep pointing toward that even maybe in a community post coming up to make sure people understand what's going on um yeah yeah absolutely uh cool well that means that we only have one thing left to do uh for this show which is that we need to teach Janet the new the new members of Janet the the the sign off that we do that's the same every time and it's not the same every time just just to be a gimmick right it's the same every time to build community and make sure that we all can engage in the

exact same activity as one another so at the end of a games for breakfast we all can March into our week and play whatever video games we want and deal with whatever other nonsense we have to with a sense of purpose and joy and camaraderie that you just know that everyone out there is doing the exact same thing as you end of the day so please if you would all and you all know this I mean most of you know this there are some knew will is definitely ready for this I so ready so if you'd all please join me in cracking open your Clementine because we want to fight scurvy and we want to will we're no that's not the [Applause] [Music] that's I understood the assignment I absolutely understood that assignment 100% understood all right great hey good good good good good good good yon are we so we're still this is the post show

yep cool yeah how's everybody doing everyone like it everyone good everyone chilling I think I think everyone is uh is good yeah this is this is now you're now in the post show this bit won't make it to to nebula um I thought that went pretty well this might this I wonder if the post show gets cut out on the YouTube side too I like the idea of just ending it I don't mind the pre-show stay but I think we cut out the countdown in the post show yeah we're we're off the live stream yeah we're discussing what to do with the vods right because we can truncate them uh pretty easily afterwards um also that thumbnail that you all see Janet that's not final we'll have a proper thumbnail we build the thumbnail after the show because we don't know what's going to like really the main topic is right so the way this works if you've never heard us talk about this is I build the show over the weekend Matt reads the show Monday morning and does all of our Graphics down there um and then we get together after the stream that follows this and after Matt's meetings are done for the

day lock down the thumbnail and we'll put uh the show notes in the description down there uh later today as well um so you all will be able to see all the links that we're talking about and the stories that we're reading in genius good luck of your rehearsal that sounds cool thank you for stopping by um yeah I think for this for this one particularly and we'll see how it goes I think what we end up doing will for this episode is on YouTube when the VOD is done we cut off the pre-roll and just for this we can talk about this I don't know if the pre-show makes sense to keep I kind of think it does it it does for the beginning it did for the so it did in the highlights which is also what we're trying to replace let's keep pre-show s see YouTube's different though I love we're just talking shop while still streaming on both this is this is by the way this is also a normal part of the post show we will just talk shop the the way that the problem is for

someone clicking on a VOD like if this is there's two possibilities for someone clicking on a VOD they really wanted to be at the live stream or they just want to watch a video right like and if they just want to watch the video getting to the video I could chapter it maybe actually how about the we can also sit on and talk about in the meeting like no we absolutely can I just uh I I know you want to prep suit too I think for this one we keep the pre-show but it might not stay for everyone in fact if we decide this week that the pre-show will be going away off of YouTube we'll tell them in the pre-show that we'll still be on the YouTube one next week and then we start cutting the pre-show out yeah and I think or o we could fail faster on this we could cut this pre-show keep the next

pre-show and see and it's not going to be a Perfect Analogy because the shows and the topics are different but see what like which one has better retention at the beginning yeah we're g to do some analytics crunching on the back end yeah uh Janet so yeah um do the chapters and see how many skip yeah we can also do well yeah that that like there there's a bunch of engagement stuff um would it be in twitch vods yes so the other reason uh and we didn't mention this right off is uh Janet the reason that we're also making this change now is that twitch um firmly shot themselves in the foot when it comes to videos um we used to be able to keep any anything I wanted as a highlight on YouTube we had about three and a half thousand hours of them or on on Twitch excuse me um and then twitch said no you're allowed to have 100 maximum ever so vods go to YouTube uh I actually need to create a link in the twitch to send

people to that for the vs um great yeah Andals for breakfast and lunch yeah um well this has been an absolute Delight I'm loving this Cod streaming thing hopefully all y'all are as well yeah absolutely um I'm looking forward to seeing design Club next week or not this week this week Thursday yeah this week on uh the design Club this week on Thursday will be for that thing so uh this is how it's going to go we're going to end stream over on YouTube we're going to say bye to all of you and then we're going to end stream over on Twitch and we're going to restart the stream right away with me in the uh in my other scene collection so I can play some Minecraft with everybody you're bran it yeah bran it I see you Brandon um so uh YouTube thanks so much for being here uh and we will uh see hey twitch thanks so much for being here yeah uh J but Will's gonna stay with you yeah right exactly uh so uh Janet we will see you all on Thursday for design Club please look forward to it Jeff and I are super excited to talk about cons uh all right

uh that's bye to Janet bye and turn that off