Larian Loses the AI High Ground, Farewell to Anthem, and Minecraft Goes Mini! | Games For Breakfast

GOOD MORNING, MATT. AH,
GOOD MORNING, WILL.
GOOD MORNING TO ALL OF YOU.
WELCOME TO GAMES FOR BREAKFAST, THE ONLY INTERNET TALK SHOW. WE TALK ABOUT THIS WEEK'S gaming and tech news, but that also is the first episode. That's the second episode of 2026. So, welcome to that. It's the first second episode. Will,
what are we hobbit naming episodes now?
IT'S MY 111TH EPISODE.
I got bad news for you, buddy.
Oh, is it more?
We've passed 111 episode years ago. We're like almost 300, I think.
Like, if not more, but we don't also number our episodes because
like we could, but also no. And if you're on YouTube and you're like, "What?" We've been doing the show for years and years and years on Twitch. Um, same time slot, same vibe, same pretty

much everything since we used to wear pajamas to do this.
We did.
Yeah. Um, and then we gave my tailbone a break because turns out sitting on a corgi tail for two hours every week is bad. Um, yeah.
Oh, thankful. Grateful greens. We are thankful for you being here. I will click it to make sure that that's not the Neo. I'll get you in a second. Here we go. That's what I was saying. Hello. Also, gez, Neo.
Yeah. Uh, thank you so much, uh, over on Twitch, Neo Whiz Master, for the 20 gifted subs. Thank you. Thank you.
Hot diggity.
Uh, yes. And, uh, we don't know half as many of you as as well as we'd like. And we don't like half of you half as well as you deserve. That's probably true.
And that that percentage will change every first episode of the year. So, next week,
I thought it would change every first second episode of the year. Well, you'd think so, but there's only one of those and so it can't change from here until the first third episode of the year. Do you see what I'm where where it's going?

Math. Will math. But we're not here to talk about the way that numbers work. I don't think um I think we're here to say hi to all of you and ask uh Janet, we already talked to Brad in the pre-show. How was your how was your weekends? Did you play anything good? What was what was going on in the lives of YouTube chat aka Janet? And I can while you're telling me I can I can push down my coffee. This will be nice.
And and while they're telling us I can I can tell them some more things that I didn't uh tell Twitch chat. So I was doing the new Final Fantasy 14 raids. So that was cool and fun and great. Um and I also got to go out and play Magic yesterday uh which was a lot of fun because I'm really looking forward to the Lur Win pre-release uh this weekend. I'm going I'm so excited. I'm going twice. Once to my local game store, once to my little brother at the local game store. So, I've got one on Saturday and one on Sunday. And I'm going to be tired. So, it'll be good.
Nice. I uh I I had a lovely weekend. Not

only was it uh Jaime's official uh uh birthday party that we had on Saturday night, which was very nice, but also um uh Jay and Jess of Second Wind Fame were up in the city for that and um for the Labyrinth 40th anniversary screening. So, we went and saw it in a theater. And sometime when Jay is on stream, I will have him tell you a tale of something that happened at that screening that might have been the most lovely thing that I've ever witnessed, but I don't want to blow up his spot entirely.
Okay.
Uh we I we'll keep that in the ether.
Um and we'll go from there.
We did dance a lot of magic dances. Yeah, that's I mean obviously uh Josh says you thought we were talking about Good Place Janet the whole time. That's deliberately ambiguous. Um YouTube chat got to name themselves Janet. Uh that's a thing we we'd already

named Twitch chat Brad thanks to a joke in a longforgotten Okay,
this is old lore. The old text.
Yeah, the the old text. Um, Brad got named because of a fake t-shirt in Jackbox that says, "Kiss me, I'm Brad."
Yes.
And chat really liked the idea of a shirt that says, "Kiss me, I'm Brad." So, we decided that obviously that must be because they are collectively named Brad. And it has it originally had nothing to do with Rocky Horror. So then when we started doing YouTube stuff, we were like, "Hey, YouTube chat, what do you want to be called?" And YouTube chat pretty unanimously said Janet. Now they were like, "Do you mean Janet from Rocky Horror or Janet from Good Place or a different Janet?" And the answer was yes. So whichever Janet
Yeah. And I will say um and then when we post this on Nebula because Nebula doesn't have comments so you can reach

us at Blue Sky uh the we basically named them Rocky because Rocky doesn't talk unless you happen to go off off platform and go right and chat it with us right there. I have a feeling uh everyone watching right now just remember those things because I have a feeling that either if it's going to be in the YouTube comments or Twitch here or even on Blue Sky. I think today's discussion is going to get chatty, maybe a little bit catty and a lot of Will and Maddie. Uh I think that it's going to get weird. I do want to go back and look at some things that people were playing this weekend. I just saw Fireflower finish Spirit Farer. God, I want to do that so bad. Um, Far Far West in his second play test open. You've been playing that. Transl. That's awesome. Uh, getting close to finishing Prime 4. Uh,
and a Cube draft. Cube. Cube is very cool.
Cube is very cool.
Uh, very, very nice. Uh, I know some other folks did some stuff as well. I, uh, I'm still continuing my Final Fantasy Rebirth, uh, play, and I love

that game.
[laughter]
There's so much nonsense to do and I feel like it rewards every bit of nonsense. It's like something that just makes you a little bit stronger. So then like the regular game when you go back to it, even though I'm not terribly great at the combat, it doesn't matter because I've done I've I've collected all the cactars or something like whatever the nonsense is.
Yeah. Uh anyway,
speaking of little nonsense that gets you a little stronger, uh if you're looking um forward to stuff this week before we dive into this stuff immediately following this, we're trying a new experiment. I know nothing about fighting games, so we're going to fix that. So, I am starting to learn Street Fighter 6. Um Matt and I played a little bit last Thursday and I didn't do horrible.
No, you were good.
I didn't do horrible. So, I now have acquired an artifact of power. It's
Wow. I got a I got a thumb stick extender. Yeah, we're getting serious about this. Um, so that'll be up right after this over on Twitch. And then, uh,

I saw questions about it. Yes, design club will be returning this Thursday. Topic TBD as soon as Jeff and I settle on one tomorrow. We'll post it over on YouTube. So, you can look forward to that on Thursday. And of course,
Jeff's home.
Jeff is home. There is a full slate of stuff over on Twitch, uh, which you can come over and enjoy at any point. But those are the shows. I want to call out uh Andrew Shine here for designing board games over the break. Hell yeah. Keep doing that. Keep making things that uh people can hold in the hands. I like it. It's very cool.
Make make the things.
Uh
there's something there's something lovely about a uh a physical product made by a human being that uh you can actively engage with and know that thought and care went into it.
Uh and that has nothing to do with anything.
Yeah. Like it, no. It has everything to do with the bull making their financially sound decision to buy Warhammer. Rip your wallet. Someone who used to sell that stuff. Oh, wow. I've looked at the prices

recently. Rest in peace, your wallet. Have fun with it, though. It's a lot of It is a lot of fun. Warhammer and Magic are both great ways to trade a lot of money for a good amount of fun.
That's right.
But they're both a lot of money.
And oopsie, apology accepted. Uh, [laughter] I'm kidding. I know the digital stuff has lots of love and care, too. I was soft transitioning before there was a Warhammer thing going on, and then we're back to square one. So, we're
blow I blow up your transition. It's okay. We can hard fork. Uh, because it's time uh to talk about misunderstandings. It's time to talk about uh flip-flopping. It's time to talk about the thing that everyone's been talking about since probably last year, but definitely this week.
Yeah. [sighs and gasps]
All right, chat. We We got to talk about Laren. We got And and when we talk about Laren here in this context, we're also

kind of including in it this there's a little bit of Sandfall. There's a little bit of like the general conversation, but Larry's getting a lot of heat right now. So, we'll focus on them because there's the most to talk about with them, but we're kind of talking about the issue. So, there's like two things, right? One of them is AI and the gaming industry. And the other one, which I think is more interesting, is how we talk about AI in the gaming [laughter] industry.
Now, uh just just throw this out there real quick. Obviously, this in case you can't tell, is a photoshopped image of of Sven holding up an AI generated uh uh Balderskate cast, which is nightmarish if you look too close. Um, but this is sort of um it it is a a a farcical nightmare look at um when you don't listen to Ian Malcolm.

Uh, I think that's kind of where we're at with this. So, over the course of what when did this even start, Will?
Uh, oh god, it's long enough that I feel like in my brain it's just cataloged as ongoing. Uh, it happened right about the the time Oh, oopsie. Ian Malcolm is Dr. Adrian Malcolm played by uh played by um Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park where uh your your scientists are so worried about whether or not they could they never stopped to think they should.
Yeah.
Um
uh this really kicked off right around the time the [laughter] Game Awards happened. Um, and there was some discussion because the Divinity trailer came out and lots of people were kind of scrutinizing the Divinity trailer and scrutinizing Laren at that point. Mostly because the Divinity trailer was so gross. It was Don't look up the Divinity trailer. It's

unless you like a lot of gore and gross stuff. I mean, then go for it.
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very gross. Um, and so it kind of started there and then it sort of accelerated when Sandfall lost their uh um dice award for um outstanding indie and best new game uh because they disclosed that early on in development they had used some amount of AI generated placeholders as part of the translations keep going back and forth. My understanding is there were some AI generated placeholder things that they took out later and they've sort of since said that they have no interest in using AI because they don't like what it does to the workflow, but they were trying it out in that kind of weird nebulous era where lots of companies thought that that might actually be a thing that took off.
Um
Oh, and actually side note, uh that guy Jamie said something very interesting here. A lot of people feel they need to have loyalty to a company because they bought a game from them. No. Uh well, yes. Uh I agree. Yes. Um I think that brings up a really interesting

discussion and we've talked about it many times here even when we say that like oh company X is doing something good or whatever like companies are essentially groups of people that tend to shift and therefore uh even folks for instance that we like what they're doing right now like steam and valve that could easily switch on a dime because that's how people in companies work. So there is an interesting thing. I think human beings like sort of an object permanence kind of deal if we can even though it never truly exists and we'd like to compartmentalize things in good and bad and everything. So actually that's a very good point to discuss. Um Larry has gone back and forth a couple times on what this whole AI thing is for them publicly and I bet you they're going to continue to do so. Nothing we say here today is definitive. We are going to sort of go over the timeline of what it was so far and uh we will put our best sort of wishing caps on to hope that uh whatever decision they make with AI is one where it no longer exists uh at least for that company. However, um

that is a as we all know a very tough pill to swallow for corporations and we will discuss sort of the why and the and the the the messaging that companies do. Like we brought up, I forget who just said it, but we put their uh put their quote up about Microsoft saying to asking people to please stop calling it AI slop. Um [laughter]
at which point everyone went, "No, slop bonger. We will not stop calling your slop slop.
Please clap." [laughter] Um
just so it's just in the same font as the Jeb thing. It's just AI exclamation point.
Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. So let's uh let's dive in. So, at first uh uh what this was, I think right before right after the holidays,
there was an interview
with Jason Trier.
Yep.
And Larry discuss Sven I'm gonna critique Sven's

lack of preparation and lack of sticking to a script here.
And you said something very interesting. I want to say this is a good point even right as you get into this will. You said something super interesting about Laren and Sven in particular not being used to being on the back foot or doing something that the community doesn't like. Correct. They have been darlings for six probably plus more years. Yes.
Uh that could do no wrong and were the good guys in a um a sort of not a a cold war with Wizards of the Coast with an IP for a game that they made wonderfully, right? like so they're not used to all this smoke. Uh I just sort of you you brought that up earlier, Will, and I thought that was a really interesting point.
So the Shrier interview didn't really do a great job of tackling the fact that AR Larian's using AI

and they swear that they're not using it in the game, but they're using it for everything around the game. So, they've kind of like got this weird bifurcated setup where like they're using AI for like meetings and slide decks and emails and proofreading and idea generation, but they're not actually putting any of it in the game.
So, let's talk about
Can [snorts] you not like
Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about uh AI and slide decks and all this. LET'S TALK ABOUT WHAT A SLIDE DECK IS. LET'S TALK ABOUT WHAT A PITCH and a slide deck is. Uh for those of you that don't know, various projects in the industry have pitches or slide decks depending on what pro part of the process you're in. Whether or not you're trying to convince a company to make a thing or your or your team to be able to do something at your company or an implement an implementation or a presentation about where you are in a certain road map of what a project is. There's a lot of different reasons why you have to march in a in a to a boardroom or go online with a Zoom chat

or whatever and discuss uh your project andor the the the point in time in which you are in it. Now, uh, many people have taken the tact of being able to use all of these new AI tools to essentially make decks and pitch things a bit more uh, I'll use I'll even use the term polished than they would otherwise be because you don't in these specific situations often times these projects are not even started andor definitely not completed yet if you're giving a pitch deck or a progress deck on anything. So, you want to try to show and excite people um with whatever you are presenting to make sure that they keep your project on course or they continue funding or the company keeps allowing you to do it or whatever. Um the shortcut here plays into exactly what the people you usually have to give pitch decks to like and that is shiny stuff. Um, essentially

it it's sort of like being blinded by the shine and to make a compelling deck for a project that is not complete before AI often took tons of time and manh hours and and and things probably also jobs for people to do that. Uh, not even probably. So now it's becoming this sort of normalization because it is not a finished product. It is not something you are releasing to use AI as a shortcut here. And um I think when doing that you actually begin to poison the whole process. We have had people uh not naming any names but like groups who want to work with us etc. who have given us pitch decks um with AI elements in it and uh I'm fairly

hardline on this. I'm instantly like well there's obviously no vision here and no one wanted to put enough forethought into this so no because and again I'm not I'm not the norm here. Most people don't I I don't think care because it's it's everywhere. Um, and that's everyone's own prerogative. Um, but like to me that says, "Oh, well, you want this job or you want this partnership, but you you don't want to put in the same amount of work into your part of this process that we put into our part of our process." And that's just someone that I personally don't really want to work with. Um, so I think it and I even if it's like normalized, I'm sorry I'm going on a rant here, but even if that's normalized in pitch decks or project decks or anything, you are setting intent. You are setting up we are going to make this with the least amount of thought and the fastest that we possibly can. Now obviously tools in

tech have have existed to make the entirety of pro of all of these processes faster forever. See Photoshop you know like all of this stuff. Um but there is a difference when you are truly trying to make the bedrock of what you're trying to convince people you're going to make. when you are just using this sort of like slop of places that you don't even know where it came from to begin. Does that make sense? Does that
Yeah.
Would that ramble fine?
Yeah. No, [laughter] I I think it does. And my my objection is kind of similar.
Um though I also want to take a tangent after I make this point. So don't don't let me forget. I need to take a brief very necessary tangent after this. Uh my point is that it's always going to result in less creative work because the way that AI works is that it uses a statistical model to generate the next

most likely thing based on what already exists and has been fed to it. So you get a regression towards an average towards a mean instead of something that is genuinely new or exciting or creative. you're getting the expected result, not something new, right? And from like a purely like from a purely like I want things to be new and interesting and creative and to stretch the boundaries of this art form point of view, it's bad for that. And using it in places uh encourages the idea of regressing towards that statistical mean, the most likely thing, right? And I'm not a fan of that. Right? There's a place for formula in games, in movies, in scripts, in novels, in whatever. But
and however you're trying to get across a narrative to a human brain that's you're you're trying to have enjoy and or sell it to,
right?
There are there are tricks, [laughter]

right? But but [clears throat] those um those formulas are to be used by people and then bent repeatedly, right? every story is um there there are no stories, not even Star Wars, that are exact copies of the hero's journey, right? Star Wars attempts to tell a faithful version of the hero's journey, which is a kind of formula, but it bends it in some places, just like a lot of other um formulas get bent, right? And and let's also be very clear when we talk about AI in the industry, Matt and I are talking about it from like the pure creative side. That is not to say that there are not a host of other objections. That's not the main thrust of our argument here. But there are obviously other objections. Some people object to geni for a whole bunch of reasons which we've loosely and specifically talked about before. We've got um power and water consumption. We've got the ethics of generating um uh learning sets based on

copyrighted work without compensating copyright holders. There's all kinds of other stuff, right? Those are all objections that each person is going to find for themsel in dealing with AI. Those are not really the thrust of our conversation today. But I don't want people to think that we're ignoring them. We're just focusing on what the outcome of using AI, if you choose to to if you if you think all those things are okay and you choose to use it, what the outcome is. We're we're being a little outcome focused, but I do want to address that we understand that there are other problems that exist before the choice to use AI
and we're using the Larian back and forth a bit as sort of the framework of what elements we talk about this with because look, Larry, you know, the thumbnail for this episode uh is obviously a meme, but uh there's a lot of people that feel that way. I don't feel like as strongly I think as Anakin does on that thumbnail about it because again I go back to a company as a group

of people that can constantly change based on market forces etc. But um you know the and and look here's another I I will I will go a little bit uh to be fair and balanced here for a second. Larry made a bunch of really great choices and work especially with Balders's Gate 3 and they became a darling right but the community because of that and and people on the internet I have been guilty of this as well tend to put groups on pedestals and then or people and then inevitably something will happen and that pedestal will start to crumble
because that is just the narrative of being a a person who is known in a place Right. Like I mean see every uh Hollywood actor actress that's been in too many things and then all of a sudden everyone dislikes them for whatever reason.
Right.
Um
the past effect.
Yeah. Yeah. Or uh Anne Hathaway or you know whatever. But like, so so

it's funny because like while I think Larry enjoyed the fruits of being put on this pedestal, they didn't like ask for that level of fervor or faith. They just made a really good thing and then people latched on and now they're making what they consider their next best choice for their business. And now those people are very upsetty spaghetti. I think for good reason. But there is that sort of push and pull of this entire this entire and I use this in the most hard air quotes I possibly can relationship [laughter] uh of a parasocial variety. But that goes back to Will what you said before the show about like not being ready for a level of vitriol when when you are a darling forever and then all of a sudden something you do the people that love you don't like.
Yeah. I think that that's that's very real, right? like um

it there are there are two different how do I put this? There are two different kinds of community management and preparing to deal with a large number of people, right? And I can use two sort of examples here on Twitch that in streaming in general that sort of tell the story pretty clearly. One of them, you plan to be on the front page. You you have some amount of exposure. If you're not familiar, um you can apply to be on the front page of Twitch. There's a carousel that goes around. You get exposure to a lot of people um in sort of a very superficial way for a couple of hours that gets your name out there. That helps you get more recognition that brings people to your channel. Cool. Great. Exc. Awesome. Um you plan for that in a certain way in sort of a general good exposure because people seeing your stuff are probably going to be at least neutrally disposed to it if not positively. And the other one is getting brigaded, right? And you prepare, you don't really prepare for to be brigaded at a specific time. You

don't prepare to be like uh to have a bunch of people who feel negatively about you come in. You kind of prepare for that generally and have tools available to you. You have a script that you stick to. You have community management tools that you exercise. That is a sort of thing that you need to be prepared for. But if you've never been brigaded, if you've never had a whole bunch of people who are really upset with you come into your space, you probably don't have those tools and you don't have the moderation experience and you don't have the script to stick to to like tread the the the practiced line, right? And that's kind of how a lot of this is coming across to me with Len, right? Especially because Larry keeps lip flopping. Sven keep Sven like fired off like three different statements in like 72ish hours and it was not great because
so there was the freakout statement. We can move on to that a little bit. Uh I'm trying to find the exactly exactly what

he said but it will be our one fbomb we say for this show. Um do you know where that which article? Because we're looking we're we're reading through the sort of timeline of this based on the new one from PC Gamer. All this stuff will be in the show notes. Yeah. Uh, and then, uh, Video Games Chronicle, I believe.
Yeah, BGC has one. Um, where is it?
I'm just going to dig because the timeline is messy.
Uh, yes. And again,
yeah, here it is. I found it. So, following uh, you know, basically they started with a light touch, I believe. Uh they're saying that they were exploring ideas, fleshing out PowerPoint presentations, developing concept art, and writing these placeholder text, but no Jedi content would make it into the final game. And everyone at the company is more or less okay with the way we're using it. Is the quote. Um and then some people, I think, in the company have said that they're not, but they said more or less. So, you know, whatever. Um and then uh he came back and and said, "Holy [ __ ] guys, we're not pushing hard or replacing concept artists with AI. We have a team of 72 artists, of which 30

of 23 are concept artists, and we're hiring more. The art they create is original. I'm very proud of what they do. I was asked specifically about concept art and our use of Genai. I answered that we're using it to explore things. I didn't say we're using it to develop concept art. The artists do that and they're indeed worldclass artists. Now, um never a good look when you start off your statement swearing.
Yeah. It's not it's not great
because because the rest of that statement is fine. Um, but like from a from a psychological perspective when I read that and you start with that element and look, everyone has a breaking point and everyone I'm sure they're getting they were getting
and they're not again to Will's point, they're not used to that.
Correct. Um, that is a bit of a flaw that then takes a lot of the honestly the sugar of what you're trying to say with your medicine

out of it and makes it start tasting a bit more like vinegar at that point. Like it's just you you come off as hyperdefensive and then my lizard brain in the world of the internet is like, "Wait, so they're obviously lying." like like I I I even if it even if they're not that's what I'm sort of like
that you poured kerosene on the fire as opposed to water. Well, let's also I want to talk about something that's contained in the statement that is kind of an important thing that's come up over and over again and actually relates to the sandfall thing and relates to a whole bunch of other games that have gotten dinged for this. Placeholder elements are always, and I'm going to stress this, always going to make it into the shipped version of your game. It is at this point.
The more complex it is, the more likely that is
it is right. I there have been so many cases of people swearing that they were just using placeholder stuff or

whatever. If it's placeholder, I swear to God, you can use MS Paint Doodles and Lauram Ipsum. You do not need. And so it becomes very difficult for me to understand why professionals feel like they need high quality placeholders. If it's truly a placeholder, it can be a neon pink square that says texture not found and Lauram ipsum text and it doesn't need to be it doesn't need to look like anything. It's a placeholder. You know that it's going to get replaced with something later. And so that defense, the more I feel like Larry is also um sort of uh on the back foot because that defense has been used so many times recently. Oh, it's just a placeholder that got out. Oh, it's just a placeholder got out. No one believes that anymore. So when they're like, "Oh, it's just for placeholder stuff, right?" Like,
well, I mean, but let's even let's even take it at at true face value. Let's

let's let's say that that's entirely true. It still doesn't help it. like it doesn't like, oh, it's still placeholder stuff. Well, okay, but you've now you've now set yourself up for catch 22, right? You said we're not going to use no if no AI will ship in our physical final game. And to your point, Will, inevitably something's going to mess up and there's going to be even if it's like inconsequential stuff that only the most hardcore internet sleuth is going to see, it's going to be there. And then again, court of public opinion, you are liars. And it's like and then people are going to run with it and exacerbate a problem that might not have been that hard. Like it's it's all it's I don't need to tell any of you. Uh we live in a world where it feels like you can't trust most stuff on the internet. In fact, I'll even go out on a limb and say, "Look, I think Will and I do a pretty good job trying to be fair and balanced on the show as best as we possibly can, but do not take a single thing that we say for for for like uh I

was going to say for granted, but also that but I mean like uh that it's the final word on anything. We are the arbiters of nothing. We have opinions and we're talking to you all about it, right? Like you can go look at these things yourself and make objective decisions. That's why we really like this community,
right? And we appreciate when you all go out and do your own research and generate your own opinions and where we can have a oh god and these are all important qualifiers polite well-informed good faith discussion about these concepts right because they are like this is this is the Larian thing isn't we didn't
we avoided talking about this last week on the episode because it wasn't quite baked yet and I think it needs a lot of time because um I saw someone mention in chat that this was like you know just corporate drama. It's not. This is sort of emblematic of the probably the most complicated case of will the consumer base accept the use of AI in the

industry or not.
And we're going to get to so we've kind of gotten to phase two of this. I want to get to the most current thing from the PC Gamer article that again will be in the show notes uh once those are up and complete. the um the most recent one will do you want to take that and then we I have we have like larger sort of things to go with it but essentially the AMA I believe is where we're at at this point.
Yeah. So um they um they did a Q&A and AMA kind of thing. Um, and I think that that was sort of like their big attempt to like control this and to rein it back in. I I want to be upfront. I think this wasn't the best move. Reddit AMAs have this problem, right? And and we'll kind of address it where um you're never going to answer all the questions and every question you don't answer feels like you didn't answer it

on purpose. That is the problem with AMAs particularly for like contentious issues.
Oh, interesting. You're saying like even if the questions are going by so fast and you don't see one and there's one that would maybe put you in some hot water and you don't read it, then all of a sudden it's like what are they h Yeah. But that's Yeah.
Yeah. Right. So that that's a problem. So um the the response is um there's not going to be any gen AI art in Divinity according to Sven. I know there's been a lot of discussion about using AI tools as part of concept art exploration. We already said this doesn't mean the actual concept art is generated by by AI, but we understand it created confusion. So to ensure there is no room for doubt, we've decided to refrain from using Gen AI tools during concept art development.
Okay. We continuously try to improve the speed with which we could try things out. The more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. We think Gen AI can help with this and so we're trying things out across departments. You're so close, Fven. You just had to stop talking. You just had to stop typing. You could have stopped typing

there and people would have assumed that you were good, but you didn't. You kept talking. Stop talking.
So, there's some continuation and you can use this. I want to get the full context to see it continues on. We will not generate creative assets that end up in a game without being 100% sure that the the origins of the training data and the consent of those who created the data. If we use Genai model to create in-game assets, then it'll be trained on data we own. Better than a model trained on stolen. Oh, then the sorry that was that was the commentary thing. The writer says better model than trained on stolen artwork, but still makes nervous,
right? And this is this is one of the places where again this gets hella complicated because we talked about there are a bunch of reasons that people don't want to use Gen AI.
And I want to be excruciatingly clear every time we bring this up. Whatever your reason for not wanting to use Gen AI is, good, valid, totally reasonable, right? Different people have different objections. And I do want to say that

like just because we're addressing one part of it in this case, the ethics of uh generative models sucking in a whole bunch of data and using it to create that regression to a mean does not mean that it answers the problems of excessive power consumption or um you know overtimization or removing tools from uh or feeling like you're eventually going to end up replacing jobs with it or whatever, right? Those are all very valid concerns. This is just addressing one of them, right? So, I think that I still think he should have stopped talking. Like that's that's my big thing, right? Because like he he knew that everyone was not okay with this and then was like, "All right, you can have this bit, but we're still going to keep doing it, right?" And like I don't know that the feedback that Larry's gotten has been terribly ambiguous here, right? I don't know that anyone's been like,

"Well, I mean, maybe you could do it, Larry, you little scamp. You could do it and it'd be I don't think they've gotten a lot of that." So, like, I don't understand trying to take the middle ground position here and defend that like somehow this is going to turn out okay.
Yeah, I like I I do like what J.R. saying AI tools are also accessibly used in Hollywood studios including the use of critical drawings like cinders last year the training the trains left the station regulation uh to protect jobs is needed. Um I think like it's funny I think one of my big reasons why I push so hard against this is that lack of regulation. if there was something put in place that truly let's pretend for a moment that that this is viable in our current political system but that said like yeah companies you are free to use AI uh art uh at all but you cannot and this is so hard cuz how would you parse this right I don't have the solution for this but like you know you have to have

a certain amount of like employees in the jobs that it would normally be based on numbers of whatever before AI is that like I'm making stuff up that doesn't work. This is why it's hard to do. But if there was some mythical way to ensure that one, people's work wasn't being stolen, and two, jobs weren't being lost based on that stolen work, then I would I would be like all about it. The problem is I don't know how that exists. Um,
right. Yeah, it feels like it's a um it is not I don't Okay, so there are two problem. There are two kind of problems, right? One of them is a philosophical problem and one of them is an engineering problem. Right? And so I don't know that the most engineered safeguards for this kind of thing overcome the philosophical barrier of um it still being a regurgitation machine, right? Yeah. And so,
yeah,
I was gonna say like, and that kind of

brings me to the other point, which is tinfoil hat. I need to get one so I can actually put it on like one of these, but just tin foil. Like, it's the same hat. Yeah.
Um, but like, okay, obviously, we have seen a uh now we're getting into some some dangerous EP territory, but I'll try to keep it as nonpartisan as possible. We are getting into a very um uh uh large class discussion, not a discussion with the class, a a a discussion about class. Um the transferral of wealth through companies and the way that this works to the executive class over the last few years has been literally insane. And anyone who is paying attention at all sees that any use of these tools in the macro, not the micro, is not to help the artists or

the people doing the work.
It is to make the work cheaper so that they need less workers so they can make more money making something similar or or better hopefully to what they've already had,
right? That's kind of it. And you could even and I don't like I want to be very clear. I don't think Larry is actively trying to be like mwaha, we're going to lay off a bunch of people and use this stuff the more money. I don't think that's happening everywhere. But I think the general concept of moving forward in this direction, that's the inevitable conclusion because even if Sven is the most kind human being in the world, the next person who takes control of that company might not be. And if there's implementation of things like that that were at first just to help the people, someone else might come in and be like, "Wait, we're actually paying 30% more than we actually need to at this point." like like it it's setting up a precedent

of essentially uh crumbling any sort of trust between uh the owners of a company and the people that help make the product no matter what that product is. cuz cuz the savings is not being passed down to the worker, the artist or the consumer. You you might be saving some time, but do you think that this is real real rhetorical question here? It's not like an artist who is hired by a company gets to use AI tools. Let's say they were going to make a piece of art that was going to take them eight hours and using that piece of art, uh using AI tools, they only have to do it for a half hour. They don't get to go screw off for seven and a half hours at that point,
right?
And look, productivity is totally a thing, but there's also like the human element of it. So like the savings, the the true savings isn't being passed on to them. And also

there is a Oh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Okay. Now, let's swing back around to sort of the other the other end of the uh the cultural the the lost bit of culture that's getting lost in this slop. And that is um the way that companies keep trying to push AI and why I think there is a ground swell level of it not working as well as they think it will in advertising anymore. And that is because even though it is technically neat to be able to develop something quickly and see an idea or have a video of a polar bear drinking a Coca-Cola that you didn't have to pay people to actually like make or like do any of that stuff, there is a um there will be a loss I'll say for the for the for the whole of humanity about the actual joy and fulfillment of learning a craft.

We are sort of making it harder and harder to do that. Even hell, we can get outside of art AI stuff. There is automation happening with AI assistance or customer service or even in corporate jobs or or stuff like that or or places where you need to start somewhere in the job market to then move up in that job market and those jobs no longer exist. So where how do you climb in the job market? Like there's there's going to be a cultural drain of people starting out and finding a passion for something that like yeah, you're not going to be good at at first. It's and you you find joy in the process of messing up continually until you get good at it. Whereas here, the best if if it just becomes so ubiquitous, the best case is going to be trying to figure out how to troubleshoot all the garbage that it spits back at you. Like
I I I have, by the way, I have a perfect This is great. Says, "Here, I made a robot that assembles all your Lego sets

for you so you don't have to bother doing it."
Thank you. You just said it way better than I did.
No. And And that's it. Right. I I also I want to um let's let's examine just real quick while we're talking about the the corporate impact and the corporate cultural impact. One of the reasons that both um Laren and Sandfall mentioned that they experimented with generative AI is that there was a period in time and I'm going to be totally honest I think there are still people who believe that we are in this period of time
where the um adopting this new tool late will mean that you are unable to compete in the market, which I disagree with, but I can understand from someone who is in a fast-paced industry believing that they uh have a

necessity to pick up this thing to increase productivity in their minds to increase um you know uh out um increase throughput to increase whatever in order to be competitive in an environment that they feel that they are always on the uh razor's edge of losing. Right? Every game studio is generally speaking one dud away from bankruptcy. That's kind of how that we've Jeff and I have talked about this extensively over on Design Club. Look, the the way that the industry works is that you generally get one you have enough capital to make the next game. There are very few companies, Larry might be one of them, that have a big enough war chest to survive. We made an absolute stinker,
which makes this from them the worst part, I think, is because they're one of

the ones that actually doesn't to survive doesn't have to do this.
Correct. Yeah. And so I think it I understand why they have that fear. I do not share it and I disagree with their assessment of the situation, but I can understand why someone might believe if they've bought into the corporate hype that's going around that this is a necessary thing on the same level as beginning to use computers versus typewriters,
right? beginning to use um I'm thinking about newspapers as an example, right? Remember newspapers used to be set manually. They used to have people whose job it was to literally set the type in
the type set. The type setters
the type setters all lost their jobs when uh when the last papers finally went to digital type setting. Yep. Right. And um people mourned that loss of skill, those the loss of those jobs

and it was sort of inevitable that it did it. Now, do we think that there was definitely something lost, right? But people I don't think to my recollection and understanding protested against that to the same level that this is though they are different things. I'm not I'm not saying they're directly. Here's here's the interesting and nothing nothing sort of is right. But here's the sort of like I think the reason that you know you can tell at least at this gener you know level of of AI art generation or something like that. You can tell the slop from the not slop even even if you don't know off the top you just might not like an image. I got shipped a um uh I should grab it. Uh I got like a shipped like a a Blu-ray physical media catalog and at I'd never gotten one before. or it was like movies unlimited or something and I was like oh I wonder if I ordered something forever ago. It's a big thick like order every sort of physical media thing and I was like neat and then I noticed that the front cover was like it took me a

second. I was like this is neat like looks like old Hollywood or like whatever. But then I was like oh wait the text is all weird and why does the popcorn look like broccoli? Oh they just made an AI cover and and I literally in my head I was like well I'm I said here's what I'm going to do. I will use this to maybe like peruse for things but I'm not buying from them like and and is that fair totally to that company? I don't know. But that is where my brain went based on everything else that we're dealing with in the industry. And I think a lot of people are are getting to that point. So many in fact that we have companies like Microsoft telling people to please stop calling it slop because this is where I land sort of I think this is sort of like my endgame argument if you need to use it to to remain competitive or or or you have to keep up with the Joneses and if our company doesn't do it then that means that the

other company D we're talking in this like weird absolute. Here's where that's true. I think maybe, but I think there's a caveat here. If your end goal is make all of the money the fastest you can, yep, you're going to be behind. But at that point, what is your product other than making you money, right? You don't care about the product. It's it's it's the profit that you derive from the from the actual product itself. You don't care. And that inevitability of not caring about the product will no matter what tools you are using make it worse than someone who actually gives a crap about the product that they're making. And the act of making art as a human does it as opposed to something like AI even beyond the theft of it proves because of the time that you put into getting good at getting you know skilled enough to make

that thing that you do care about it. Even if it's for a project that you if you're working as an artist on a game that you don't love, your love of art is still present in the product that you're doing. Even if you don't like that final pro, like it's all there and you can feel it.
I got it. What do you got, Will?
I figured it out. AI is paper towns. Paper towns are towns on maps that don't exist that were originally put there by cgraphers as a way to copyright protect their map. They made a map. They spent a lot of time, effort, and energy making the map. And they put a town on it that doesn't exist, a tiny town in a place where there isn't a town at all. and they named it something a little odd but not so out of the ordinary that someone wouldn't copy it wholesale if they copied the map. It's not that it might not be that having the paper town on the map is itself inherently damaging but does show

that when we see it in the industry it is a hallmark of a lack of effort being put into the final product by humans. No one went out and checked the countryside when they made the map. They just took things that already existed and cobbled it together and called it a map and expected us to pay for it even though they didn't do the work. Right? That's kind of the problem here is that it's not even if um you don't have objections for a whole bunch of other very good reasons and I think there are again so many of those. They are a hallmark of people who really care about the work that they made didn't interact with this on every level at the depth that I would like them to.
Yeah, I think I think that's sort of my answer at the end of the day is why are you a company? Why are you making the

thing you are making? And because companies change, like we've said, that too can change. You can start because you are a passionate group of people that want to make the best possible widget. You absolutely can because you believe that the best widgets will make sure that people are happier in their everyday lives and that is what you value. That can also change as you grow bigger and your your interests start becoming more as running a company as opposed to selling a product. And at that point it goes into sort of fiduciary duty territory where the actual product is is uh shareholder profits as opposed to the the widget that you are actually making. But I think it's very important to call that out because the whole keeping up with the Joneses thing is only works if that is your end goal. Now, is there a scare of like, oh, well, there'll just be so much of that slop that um that your stuff will be drowned out that you won't be able to compete and all that jazz. And I think if the content

was good enough, maybe. And everyone keeps saying, "Oh, it's going to get there." But I still don't think like I I'm willing to bet that the only places we're truly going to see innovation in let's even go back to just like the game space is going to be AND AND WEIRDLY HOLD ON THIS HAS ALSO BEEN true forever. innovation comes from the small places that then the larger places sort of see and are like oh neat and then maybe that would be like the next thing right like and then sometimes companies can grow and move on and then I mean hell see Blizzard there's a journey right see Apple there's a journey like there's that's the tale as old as time so like I just don't buy the narrative of we don't do it then we'll we're not going

to be to keep up. You might not be able to keep up with making all of the money in the quickest way possible, but there are other win conditions for actually making something.
Let's God. Okay. As indie trash, right? Ver verifiable indie trash, right? I would be remiss if I did not say that I feel like they're wholesale missing so much of the point, right? And like maybe we're just in a world where the two sides of the gaming industry, the AAA's and the S tiers, right? Because GTA 6 is going to be an S tier, right? Even if um what was it? Bones, Skull and Bones. The other thing that someone was like, it's going TO BE A QUINTUPLE GAME, whatever that was.
Oh, that was Skull and Bones. That was the That was the the Black Fl Assassin's Creed Black Flag spin-off game that took the really good pirate elements of that game and made it its own game, but it

took like nine years,
right? Yeah. That thing. So, um, right. So, like maybe those have become differentiated from the indie tier, right? The the the single A double A um uh indie tier because God. All right. I don't uh comments come at me. I'm just ready. I don't particularly like Undertale.
Oh, no.
Don't particularly like Undertale. Twitch chat ruined it for me. That's a long story for another day. Um, I defy anyone in the industry to explain to me in any way how any part of Undertale could be improved by the use of AI. It is a oneperson emotionally driven evocative masterpiece of terribly coded game.
The game is a pile of bugs, right? And

that is not a problem because it does not matter because it is about the emotions that you are experiencing, right? God, can you explain to me how Celeste or Outer Wilds, right, would be improved at all by the use of generative AI? No. Can you explain to me how they would sell more copies because those games sell by word of mouth rather than by like you're missing the point. You've got they've gotten so tied up in the big picture all the money thing that they have forgotten the emotional resonance that drives some people to play the games, right? Like they've missed that part of the spectrum entirely. And it may just be that we're going to end up with two industries, the indie industry and the AAA industry. And they're not going to look anything alike. And maybe AI is the thing that draws the line in the sand between those two things. and no one will be allowed to cross that line by the consumer base. That's entirely possible, right? But like the

the we are in a place where I am so completely befuddled how they think any part of what they're like Larry in particular will improve the emotional resonance of Divinity over the emotional resonance of everything that we got delivered in Balders's Gate. I don't even like Balders Skate. I think it's a masterpiece.
I think I think they're not interested in that. I think they are. If you ask the people there that I think are um again, this is me making up people's opinions I do not know. So, take this for as much as that's worth. I think they would say it's not about increasing the emotional resonance. It's about being able to make more stuff that is emotionally resonant. To which I would say, um I don't think that's going to work out the way you think it's going to work out. Uh side note, Jake brought up an interesting point about like sort of uh and I it kind of picked something in my head. If they improve productivity, you would see layoffs at companies can do

the same work with less people. The interesting part here is with the infinite growth thing that we've seen before AI again the myth of infinite growth. The idea would always be if you uh if people want to make all the money that let's we have to start there. They're going to try to make efficiency the most efficient thing so they can do the least amount of people to make the most amount of product. But as soon as that cycle is done or whatever they do, if they still want all the money and companies want all the money, they would still hire more people to use the new system that needs less people to do overall so they could make more of the thing. Like it would still there would there would be obviously the natural uh cycle of uh job loss, job creation, etc. The problem with AI is there's no creation. There's no job creation. You are essentially just whittling down the workforce as opposed to like until eventually it's one very sad person who calls themsself a prompt engineer sitting in a broom

closet trying to make the next great America novel by asking AI feverishly to write the next chapter of Moby Dick and it can't.
And again and again I want to be very clear. This is if the win condition is to make all of the money. There are multiple win conditions.
Uh I think I think the narrative that that companies need to kind of god I'm this is not meant to be like capitalism bad but like the it's it's
you can win and not make all the money,
right?
Uh there is balance, there's sustainability, there's a whole bunch of stuff like that. Um, but I think a lot of the arguments come at uh at that sort of being the end- all beall win condition. And I think especially when dealing with stuff like art and video games, uh, which also is art, um, we should try to remember that. And we'll see. Look, it's sort of putting a bow on this because we've been talking about this for an hour. Um, putting a bow on on the laren of it all. I will be

very curious to see sort of where they move forward. Uh, I would imagine the smart move here would be to take Will's patented class of shut the hell up and just sort of like keep going, release something that people like and and sort of do what like if there's on Steam you need to sort of uh uh disclose that you use AI and X Y and Z, do that and then tell people where you did it and then let people decide if they're comfortable with that thing.
Yep. Right. But the back and forth of like what we might do, oh, we'll never do this. Oh, this is the only way we're going to do X, Y, and Z unless we decide to do A, B, and C. That's going to lead down a path of distrust and burn a lot of goodwill that they earned very very like with a lot of hard work uh over the last few years. I think it needs to I I think less is more here. Don't lie. But also

take the swing. Stop trying to mitigate what your swing is
and see where the chips land if you believe in it as hard as you do to use it.
That's kind of where I'm at.
Yep.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think it does. Uh to put to put to put a little bow on this, by the way, I did want to just address this real quick. We would be absolutely remiss if we didn't address um this part too. Uh it does turn out that um Sandfall did have AI generated assets in game um early on. They ripped them out. And then the reason that this came up uh as part of this whole thing that's sort of in tandem with Larion is that they got their um their indie game awards taken away. I said dice awards earlier because the dice awards are on my mind, but no, it was the indie game awards. Um and uh like so we're we've been addressing Larian because a their comments have been in English and the translation of some of Sandfall's comments has been not the best. Um and b

there's more of them. But this is not a uniquely Larryan phenomena. This is not a uniquely Larryan discussion. That's just a convenient lens to view the discussion through as a way to have this talk with all of you. And please do again. Good faith, say more comments uh down below. How are you feeling about this? Are you going is this like going to make you swear? Actually, hold on. I want to see emotes in chat. chat, if if you would uh is this going to stop you from buying Divinity, right? Not the gore, not the anything else, is are the comments that Sven's making now, or is all of this discussion about Generative AI going to be the thing that stops you from buying further Larry games, from not buying Balders's Gate 3 if you haven't bought it already? Right.
So, it's funny. I I I'll answer the question first. As of right now, this does not stop me because I don't know what they're doing. I need to know what they're doing. I will question it up until the day and I will see if we can figure out the stuff. But they they've

committed to the only things they've committed to are things I think they're going to mess up and probably statistically be lying about by accident. [laughter]
You know what I mean? Uh, so it'll it for me this is a wait and see because they've flip-flopped three times and now I don't know what to trust. So it's kind of a holding pattern.
And I actually really appreciate that chat seems kind of um divided and is generally of the wait and see opinion, right? Because there are a lot of people who have who have strongly said one way or the other, right? because this is the social media area and everything must be a strong yes or a strong no and nuance is dead on the internet. Right. But I really appreciate that chat seems to be mixed.
Yeah.
Right. And that's good, right? That that is good. And and the most common response I'm seeing is wait and see see more about it. Right.
Also crush get on Boulders Gate 3. It's real fun. [laughter] Um but the um I would at this point

before we move on to I think probably fake ads and then go into our other stories. WE DO HAVE OTHER STORIES. Um We blew through fake ads. We can just move on to other stuff.
Okay, cool. Um, uh, I was going to say, um, I really do appreciate the conversation here. It is, I mean, I don't need to tell any of you, it is incredibly difficult to have a nuance discussion about anything AI. And there have been people in the chat, and I hope I've been highlighting enough of them as they come up, of people that like aren't fully as, I think, fullthroated against AI as I think Will and I are, that have reasons for why they feel the way they feel. And there has been a like general good faith discussion. No one in the entire thing, even the comments that you guys are chatting back and forth across both platforms on Twitch and on YouTube, like we're seeing discussion play out in this in a polite fashion. And again, I would love to know more places where conversations like this can happen politely because they are rare. So, A,

let me know if you know of any. B, thank you. Thank you for letting us uh discuss this and uh not always agreeing on everything and and being able to have this discussion on the internet
in 2026. We're 12 days into 2026, y'all.
This is the first second show of the year.
Yeah.
So, thank you. Seriously, I I'm making a joke of it, but thank you. It means a lot. This is why we like doing this show. Um because we can't find places where the nuance can be discussed.
Yeah. Uh okay, let's talk about Are you ready for a good a good story?
Are you ready to just All right. Do you know what everyone loves on the internet, Matt?
Baby animals.
Now,
oh, we're going right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they do. They do.
They do love baby animals. Uh Minecraft has announced their next big update. We always talk about these because I like when I like the fact that Minecraft

remains a game that I paid $20 for like a decade ago and is still getting updates multiple times a year with new content. Great. Um, no notes. Uh, Minecraft is uh going to be giving baby animals across the entire vanilla game new appearances and sounds as part of the spring update. You're welcome, internet. Now there are now there are going to be cute new digital animals uh that you get to scream about as you wander around murdering everything in your Minecraft world.
So hold on cuz I'm not deep into Minecraft. There were always baby animals but they were just smaller versions of the animals before.
Yes. So so essentially a calf was like a quarteriz cow and just like the same skin. It was just tiny, right? Um uh chickens were some of the only No, chickens I think were even the same model. Like they were just small versions of the big thing. Um, and so moving to um moving to a No, they're actually different with different sounds and different like cool um overhauls is pretty cool. It is really nice to see

Minecraft um doing this sort of like, hey, we know this has been in the game forever, but we're updating it because it needs updating kind [clears throat] of thing. I like that a lot. Um yeah. Uh yeah, their heads were bigger. Yes, that's correct. Uh yeah, they they are they're smaller with bigger heads and that's it, but the skin is essentially the same. Uh kind of like regular babies. Anything with eyes too big for its head is cute.
That's just how it works. So uh yeah, that's coming up. Uh look forward to that in in the update uh in later this year.
Thanks Minecraft.
Thanks Minecraft for giving us a pallet cleanser. Are you ready for a kind of an interesting bummer?
I you know what? I'll take it. Press F to pay respects to Anthem.
Anthem is uh
is are the servers still up? The the rumor is it was either today or tomorrow that they're down.
Yeah. So,
I'm going to go to down detector. [laughter]

I believe it will be if you're if you're not watching this live, it'll probably be down by the time you see this. And I believe it is now down. Um
yeah. Oh, so I'm looking. Okay. Yeah. So, actually, down detector kind of [clears throat] did an interesting thing. Uh there were little pings and then there's a big spike as of uh as of 11:00 a.m.
Yep. Um so the um they they stopped selling it like a week ago. You couldn't download it. Like if you didn't already have it downloaded, you couldn't download it. And people were like trying furiously to finish up achievements and everything else, which I kind of get, right? Like
that is the way that a live service game that is going away, that's the best possible thing is a small contingent of people wanting to complete it in its entirety before it is ripped away from everyone getting to play it.
Yeah. Um Oh, yeah. That's a great question. What is Anthem? Anthem is Boware's live service. Um,

God, I'm trying so hard to
It was trying to be Destiny.
I was trying to not say Boware's live service Destiny clone, but it's Bow Wars live service Destiny clone.
Uh, it was also uh the subject of incred in incredible I think Jason Shrier again, I think, if correct me if I'm wrong about this, but he was reporting on the incredible crunch of of what went into Anthem and the shifting of that team and um uh sort of the the whole story of it. Again, um I don't want to poo poo on the game itself. From what I understand, the game is fine. People did really like the combat. It just was a bit the the story was threadbear, and apparently like the Iron Man flying and combat was really fun. Um and I to be perfectly honest, I I had thought this had already gone down. Um but no, that was uh as of I believe as of time of recording, I believe it is it is done. So, y
um did anyone here play a lot of anthem? I would love to chat with you very quickly about your experience in it

because I never did. Um, I always liked the look of it, but at at the time it came out, I did not need another lifestyle looter shooter in my life and then it just sort of went by the wayside, right? Like
and I think a lot of people played it at launch.
Yeah.
Yeah. Um, and that I think that was probably when most people played it. Uh, what I'm seeing is that the gameplay I like I like uh Dissonance's comment. Uh, gameplay fun story me. Endgame non-existent. Uh, fair valid real. True.
Well, actually here. Placeholder. Placeholder. Ah, placeholder. There you are. Anthem was a fun game. What did you like about it? I'd like to say positive things about Anthem.
Yeah.
I'd like to say like it's it's now going away and we've discussed on the show before like no matter where games or bad or whatever, the problem with a live service game is eventually you'll never get to play it again. And that sucks from a preservation standpoint. I know there are some groups trying to make the PC version have like servers still run and they're trying to backwards like figure out how the code works so they

could like make something. Um uh okay. So you're saying gunplay and abilities the hard mode missions as well. Yeah. I again I I heard um I uh I have heard from multiple people that the the difficulty spike in the hard missions was really fun. It was and it almost made it um I won't say like a puzzle, but you really had to figure out your kits and make sure you knew exactly what you were doing. And it turned from like a just a it it felt like it hit at the highest hardest levels from what I understand. It hit the same uh uh fun points as a high tough Destiny raid, right? Like that was kind of the thing.
And once again, Warframe stays winning.
Sure. Um,
I just like saying nice things about it now because it's kind of because it's on its way out. The style was amazing. Mix the tech and magic suits with something special.
Um, uh, and there's a lot of potential. Yeah, the free flying was super fun.

Spent too much time just flying around the open world. I'll tell you this, Diz, I spent when this was out and sort of like coming out and when I was like debating it, I watched way more YouTube videos about this because of how good it looked.
Yeah. Um,
yeah. I I think it's it will always be an example of like trying taking taking a swing at something that you think is going to there's more room in this in the genre than there was, right? Which I think is is an understandable swing to take, right? Thinking that there is room in this space for another space ninja wizard shooter game, right? because we already had two when Anthem came out, Destiny and Warframe. And those are not small games to try and go up against, right? And I think that even a game that had some good points and had some good stuff about it was struggling to find its niche there. And I think it

didn't compete on several core factors with those. And that's probably what ultimately led to its downfall in addition to the crunch. Um.
Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, um this is no, I hope it's clear by now, this is not to dunk on Anthem. Uh it is a sad day that any game uh that people liked is no longer available for them to play, especially one that they bought.
And again, you you kind of at this point I think I I want to be very clear even though I don't agree with a lot of the corporate practices that uh they did sort of in the in the structuring and release of this game. I think [snorts] from a fairness to to money you spent on it ratio, they kept it alive a fair amount of time before closing the door.
Yeah.
Um again, I thought this was closed years ago.
Yeah. Um, but it's still sad and uh it's hope maybe there'll be some some some fans who really want to try to open that

gate up on PC and see if they can make their own fan servers and we'll see if that's allowed. That's always gets complicated.
Yeah.
Um but yeah, no, uh sad to see it go.
Yep, absolutely. Uh next up, we get to dunk on Nintendo some more. [laughter]
Greg [sighs] Um, so Nintendo has officially received a complaint which alleges um, and one was filed December 17th, one was filed January 6th. Uh, they were filed against Nintendo and the contracting service firm Tech System uh, who was working on behalf of Nintendo. Um, that they uh, violated several uh, articles of the National Labor Relations Act. Um and uh were essentially union busting.
Yeah. Again, this is sort of the accusation of union busting. We'll see

how it goes. Is from Kotaku. Um they It's funny this article. I do want to talk about it because every one of these we should keep it like in the discussion and make sure that it's actually being discussed. This article I wasn't an entirely huge fan of because it brings up the new one that we know nothing about and then brings up the other one that was closed and they paid someone for they basically paid damages to a person.
Yep.
So like that's instantly conf conflating the two stories together. Uh but it also does keep it relevant like cuz without that additional thing there's no story here to make you click through it. So, this falls into the barely enough meat on this bone because of relevance that it's I'm fine with that. It's just right now this is something that is starting. Nintendo is not having a gang buster year in this department. Um or last year I guess or this year too. I don't know what is time. Um
soup.
Yeah. So, this is this is sort of an

ongoing thing. We will see h how these accusations and these filings uh move forward as as time progresses.
Yep. Absolutely. Uh, okay. Speaking of union busting,
I was really proud of Ubisoft on labor laws. I just thought that was I thought that
I thought it was I thought it was pretty good. I was I was a big fan of of this. So,
Ice Did you say this? Did you say this right before this came up? [laughter]
Yeah. SO [laughter] YEAH, Ubisoft Halifax uh voted 61 um of 71. So that's 61 votes for 10 votes either against or abstaining to unionize in December. And then Ubisoft, they swear. Totally coincidentally definitely unrelated. Super unrelated.

Uh, shut the studio down. Totally completely def pinky promise. Totally unrelated to the unionization. Um, instead um here's their statement. Over the past 24 months, Ubisoft is undertaking companywide actions to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and reduce cost. As part of this, Ubisoft has made the difficult decision to close its Halifax studio. 71 positions will be affected. We're committed to supporting all impacted team members during this transition with resources, including comprehensive severance package and additional career assistance. So let's give Ubisoft just for the briefest moment a shred of benefit of the doubt. Let us for the moment, let us for the moment suggest the notion that they were always intending to close the Halifax studio at the end of the year and that the unionization just happened at a time when they were

already about to close the studio. Even in that world, bro, find the money to keep him another year and go through one round of collective bargaining. Do something. Just don't do this optics thing, right? Like the optics hit here is huge. Like even if you were going to do it, you have to understand and recognize that the optics here are god awful. They're so bad.
But here's the thing.
So bad.
Here's the thing. Well, this is Ubisoft we're talking about. Do optics matter? Like people still buy Rainbow 6 and people still buy Assassin's Creed? So like I'm not saying this is right. I'm saying like I don't think Ubisoft cares about optics here. I I just it doesn't seem like they do.
Uh it's so funny because Ubisoft games were the easiest games for me just to never buy again. [laughter] And I was shocked how unsad I was. Is

that happy? I have no idea what that is. Neutral, right? Like apathetic. You could be apathetic and not have it be sad. Um, but obviously they don't they don't need my money. Um, I just I like look there's two there's two possibilities here. One, they were planning on closing this division anyway. It just so happened that they unionized and oh god that sucks and whatever. And two, they saw it and were like, nope. I look I think it does bring more heat than they actually need and therefore it this this feels never assume malice when incompetence will do. Uh, I feel like this is a oh no, two things happened crap. Like I think that's kind of it. I'm not saying that that it's not a uh uh benefit for them in a weird way. Uh I I just don't you'd have to be a special kind of evil andor stupid to just do that. And and who knows? I just I
I really this

I really love I really love this take. It's difficult to boycott something when you're already not playing
true Jeremy going.
True. Just true. That is the difficult part, right? Um but at a bare minimum, we can not let them uh do this and have it go unnoticed.
Yeah.
So, uh okay.
And I guess the union is like trying to work through it and see if there's anything that can be done. I believe they said they will pursue every legal resource to defend union members. Uh and it raises many questions of which we do not yet have answers. So, Yep. Okay.
Again, that comes to us from Kotaku.
Um, in today's episode of uh, Wait, they figured it out. Wait, these guys figured it out?
Dell figured it out. So, Dell's um,
Wait, hold on. Can we stop real quick? Who's old enough to know this guy?
I am. This is ridiculous, but I am.
Who's old enough to know this man?

They're [laughter] melting. They're melting.
Yeah.
All right.
So, KYLE, [laughter] [snorts]
SORRY, SORRY, SORRY.
NO, it's okay. This is great. I love this. This is a very old Dell commercial about going off to college and getting a Dell to be your college PC. And there was a whole thing called, "Dude, you're getting a Dell."
"Dude, you're getting a Dell." And it was THIS DUDE WHO TALKED LIKE THIS. LIKE, IT WAS IT was uh it was actually a really good ad campaign.
Yeah.
Um it was a cultural moment for like six months.
Yep. Um [laughter] I like this one. Host deliberately bombard their audience with lethal levels of existential damage. Daru, you're old. H
join us. So CES happened and there's a reason we're not talking about CES because I don't think anything important

happened at CES, but Kevin uh Terrilliger um sat down with PC uh PCG's Dave James and had the following quote which I just thought I wanted to highlight amidst all of the do they not get it or are they anyway we've learned what we've learned over the course of this year especially from a consumer spec perspective is that they're not buying based on AI. In fact, I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome. So, now we should be very clear that doesn't mean that Dell's not doing AI things.
Oh, no. They're totally still doing AI things.
It just means that now we get to know that they know that we don't like it and they're doing it anyway, right? Like it's not a case of misguided companies who are like, "Yeah, eventually if we can market this well, people will see the value in." No, they know we don't like it and they're doing it anyway.

And I like that the the excuse is like, "Oh, people just aren't understanding it." Well, isn't that your job to make them understand it? And perhaps if it's not understandable, then maybe it's something that we both and people don't like it. Maybe it's something that you probably shouldn't sell.
Yeah.
But I'll take it. I'll take this. Uh, it's so it's so silly. And I think this is going to be the year like because like I don't know, I listen to a lot of podcasts and there's always like every pod every commercial on a podcast has something like Adobe Acrobat has an AI assistant now and I'm just like, okay. Like you just hear about all this stuff. I'm like, I don't think this is a selling point like you think it's a selling point.
Yeah, I agree.
It's and I I think Dell is actually like kind of admitting that which is uh at least a tiny step in the right direction.
Yep. Yep. I agree. Uh and then in [laughter] in case you thought that everyone got the point, what what if what if they didn't?

What what I'm just going to show you this. So, also out of uh I believe this is also Yeah, this is CES in Las Vegas. [snorts] This is from Razer.
Of course, it is.
This is Razer's new I hate every part of the sentence.
Say the words. Gro powered AI digital gaming assistant um named called Project Ava and it takes the form of an AI controlled anime waifu named Kira.
There's a couple other skins but sure
that you put on your desk and does Gro things while you play the game.

In the show notes, you'll be able to see the article. You can go to Kotaku right now. There is a video of someone using it at the at like the booth. And I couldn't imagine I couldn't imagine the place I'd have to be in my life to use this. [laughter] It would be a dark dark day. Uh it it just it it just I
Right. And then of course we're not going to get too deeply into it because not because it's not important but because I am physically incapable of addressing the topic without going into an invective profanityladen hourong diet tribe about the causes and impact of it. But to couple any sort of um controllable AI model with the name

Grock right now is probably like the absolute kiss of death for a product. A reminder this is the tw if you're watching this later 12th of January. So all of the Gro stuff with horrible things that I encourage you not to look up if you're not ready to just deal with some of the worst humanity.
Yeah, there's a reason why we're not talking about the the Gro thing right now. Uh for as many reasons.
Um but uh not not exactly the stamp of uh partnership you really want on your product at this point. Also, there was a question about are these quotes from it? No, these are these are
But I will say these are the vibe I got from watching the video of it. I think I think she did say snag it epic pwnage. Uh I don't think she said the other ones. Also, also this feels like a like

[snorts] a fascinating beautiful case in don't recreate the Torment Nexus because do you know what this exactly feels like? This feels like um the Bladeunner sequel. That's 100% what this feels like. Like every fiber of my being is like
Yeah, but the Bladerunner sequel is good,
right? But the whole idea of having an AI assistant that compensates for the fact that you will never have a real human relationship and that you will be defined by your othering and your loneliness for the rest of your existence and will form parasocial attachments with something that is designed to make you feel loved even though it cannot love you is like way too on the nose. Right? So I'm just feeling like this is a torment nexus that someone saw that and went, "Oh yeah, we can have it call them Joe. Yeah, listen. I I uh I like this. It's 226. I'm gonna say epic podage anymore. It's so funny. Probably not. Uh I will

say this. I don't know if it actually says epic podage or whatever. It doesn't matter. Uh I will say if this is from the AI person of the man who named uh their daughter after the strongest Elden Ring spell, air quotes. Uh I would not put it past something along those lines. It seems like there might be some arrested development in the gamer space in that way. Uh, so again, I feel like the spirit of this product is represented correctly even though the quotes are not direct.
True.
Uh, [snorts] so yeah,
I I hate I hate it.
Yeah. So, sorry we didn't get to AI news last week. Um, but
did we cover it?
Did we Did we cover it well this week? I wanted to put it in kind of its own container. Um,
real quick, because we do have like another 15 minutes if we want. Is there a story? I'm just Let's try this. Will uh uh Brad Janet Twitch YouTube uh is there a story that we didn't cover that you'd like our t the hottest of take on

because we haven't researched it yet?
Yeah.
Let us know right now. We got we got 15 minutes of play time.
Oh yeah. Uh Discord's AI survey.
Discord's AI survey.
So Discord said
Oh, did I see Jacob Geller post something about that?
Yeah, it didn't last very long. Um [laughter] they posted a survey because Discord is about to go through an IPO. Um and they wanted to know what consumers view on including AI in Discord was and the general belief is that it did not go well. Um because the survey was up for less than an hour and now you can't get to it anymore. And that generally means that they don't think that the data is usable for the purpose they wanted the survey to be usable for. Uh cuz no no no zero people thought it would be a great idea to have Discord have AI bots in your chat rooms or your voice calls. So I I didn't I didn't bring that one up or

include it cuz like it like that's the whole story. Discord did a stupid and everyone went, "Hey Discord, you're doing a stupid and that was the end of it." Um yeah.
Okay. Okay.
Oh. Uh okay. That's a good one. I like this one. Matt, can I tell you? I I'll I'll I'll explain this to you and you'll we'll we'll see we'll see how Matt reacts. So, Magic is releasing again seven sets this year.
The Gathering
The Gathering is releasing seven sets this year, which is, let me be very clear upfront, a terrible, stupid idea. They are going to burn out a whole bunch of players this year. That's just how it is.
There's too much gathering there. Uh there's too much um
magic to gather around
gathering. Not enough gathering.
Not a lot not enough hunting.
Correct. Yeah, that's it. So um in in some feeble attempt to save it and start things out on the right year, they return us to an idyllic plane called

Lurwin. And Lurwin is a really weird plane because it is um daybound and nightbound. There is one side of the plane that is always dark and one side of the plane that's always light. It's always daytime. It's always night time. And to explain this, they decided that they would hire a group famous for well for explaining weird fantasy stuff very well. They hired Hansen Creature Creations to do a threeinut like puppeted musical number to reintroduce the magic community to the concept of floor and it's a banger. [laughter]
Is it out? I'll watch that later.
Yeah, it's it's out. I'll send it to you later.
That's very fun. Um, and it's really cool and I like it a lot and I feel like it's great and I feel like Lurin is the right path for Magic to be starting the year off on. Um, because immediately after that, we're getting Teenage Mutant

Ninja Turtles which have pizza lands.
So, in Magic, the lands are the places you draw the magic from, right?
I I know that, but what's the
I'm explaining for the audience.
Hey, no. Wait, what's pizza? Why is Why is there pizza on the lands? So, the lands instead of being things like a picture of an island or a picture of a swamp or a forest or a mountain or whatever, um they're pictures of drippy cheese slices of Teenage Mut Ninja Turtle style pizza with the mana symbol embedded in the pizza slice. That's the land.
Is it at least like Okay. Like the the black mana is like olives. No, it's just the black mana symbol just on the it it might have some olives on it.
I I like Listen, I like the idea. Look, if we're reskinning it, I like the idea of Mana being pizza cuz pizza is what fuels the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and therefore I'm okay with it from a from a meta narrative perspective, but I

would want the pizza to like have toppings that would make sense for the mana that they're trying to make. Right.
Yeah. One
[laughter]
You right.
That is That is true. Um
Oh god, if only I could go back and play that game again to crush Ben and Adam.
Okay, so like there's some of it, right? Like the the plains has banana on it and the mountain has pepperoni on it
and the islands have
uh anchovies on them.
Oh yeah.
And the forests have green So like there's some amount of it but it's it's Matt it's pizza
but I like So I don't have a PROBLEM I LOOK I have a lot of problem with a lot of different things that Magic does. I don't have a problem with that as the fuel for your deck. It's the literal fuel of the Ninja

Turtles.
Right. And I think I think I agree with you in concept. It just feels like the most far outlier example of how far Wizards has gone with the um Universes Beyond kind of thing. Like how far we've drifted. Like
this is not going to be a set legal thing, right? This is just like a Universes Beyond thing. Or are they making it a legal legal set?
No, it's it's it's standard legal. We'll be playing we'll be you will you will have a set where like Ang will get killed by Marangelo.
That that that
it's becoming it's becoming an unthemed world. I mean, it already kind of is. Um,
yeah,
which is fine. Uh, if you want it to be fine. Uh, I I I have less of a problem with the unthemed world of Magic and more of a problem, I think, with what you said with the amount of Magic cards coming out because inevitably due to marketing deals and release things and Windows and stuff like that, you're going to do what happened to the Spider-Man set where you like tease it. you tease another set

before the first set is out and then you're like killing a hype of the thing and you know
they crammed all of Lorwin um they crammed all of the pre-release information into last week essentially.
Yeah,
it was all super crammed. There wasn't time to ingest it. I still haven't seen all the new Lurwin cards.
Um and we're pretty much in for more of that. And I feel like this is
it is Yeah,
it is. It's not trying to be.
Yeah, it is.
They've done it.
Yeah, it it is card game Fortnite. Absolutely. Um, we probably got time for one more. Any other stories, chat, that I I missed in our prep or didn't get to that you think um want uh us our our hot takes on.
You know what would have been really fun?
What
is if every mana was pizza except for green mana and that was ooze.
Yeah. Oh, dark wolf. I haven't seen that. The

Steam Box price leaked.
What?
Uh, okay. So, it's a leak. And they also a reminder that a leak of a price doesn't mean anything.
Yeah.
Right. Like that's
Oh, oo is a token. Jade. Copy. Copy. Copy.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Is Shredder a Shredder has to be in the decks, right? Like there has to be
Oh, yeah. There's a Shredder. There's like a whole Shredder foot ninja kind of thing. I will if they make a commander deck for Shredder, that will probably be the one I buy. I'll be part of the problem.
Yeah, that's fair. Um,
so if you want a Magic the Gathering movie adaptation, just watch literally anything sick.
Yeah. Uh, there was a Oh, yeah. That's right. So, so some stuff got announced. Um, the Lego sets just got announced. There is a uh there's a $650 triple final evolution uh OG starter statue. Um so

they're doing like Lego Pokemon stuff. So that's cool.
That's if you have excess money
Oh yeah.
to spend. They're pretty cool looking. Um the other one that I saw was uh AGDQ which cracked Chad 2.2 million for uh their charity this time.
Oh, I love Sorry, I'm looking at the Legos. I love the badge case.
Yeah, it comes with the OG gym badges as a pre-order bonus. Interesting. Yeah. 2 2.2 million raised to AGDQ, which is always like a great
That's great.
It's it's it's great.
Um 2.4, excuse me. Thank you, uh Little Learn Annie. Appreciate that. Yeah, there there's there's the new um there's a new Lego smart bricks thing, which is essentially just a um an NFC tag in that they've crammed inside certain figurines that interact with a brick that makes sound effects. And the brick is like 20 to $25, which is like not the most expensive, but it's kind of

a gimmick. So like some people will be super into it and some people won't care at all.
Yeah.
Um
that's neat. Like I like stuff like that because like that's stuff that like some kid will make something crazy with, right? Like
Yeah,
that brick.
Yep. Absolutely.
Anyho,
I think that's uh that's going to do it. So chat, if you uh have thoughts on the rise of AI in gaming or other stuff that we talked about, please do leave them in the comments below. Shoot us some messages over on the blue ski. Do
also if if you're part of the Discord uh which I believe you can become if you are a subscriber here on Twitch, if you are a YouTube membership person, if you are a member of our Patreon, uh all at the same levels depending on all the different perks you can get for different types of things. Basically, it's the choose your own adventure of what you want from us uh based on those things. Um you can come talk to us on the Discord and suggest topics for next week and chit cchaty about all the stuff and uh generally have a very nice time.
Agreed. Agreed. and talk to us on blue sky cuz that's what's on screen right

now as well.
Yeah, you can do that too. Uh which means that all that remains to us for today is for Matt to do the same sign off we do every week.
That's right. Because we want to make sure, especially especially in this year where obviously everything's going great. Uh we want to make sure that uh we start off our week on the right foot and that we are all with each other in in in gaming spirit and breakfast harmony and we all do the exact same thing to feel like a community at the end of this show and make sure that that feeling is spread throughout the entirety of the the week and beyond. So if you'd all join me will you know you know what's happening right now.
Yeah, of course. Everyone, please take your traditional one cookie by Nick and Scott Dit. And now take a bite with me as you will. As we all have them, right? So, here we go. Yummy.

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