Magic is the New Fortnite, Xbox Backs Down on Prices and Nightreign gets Duos! | Games For Breakfast

[Applause] [Music] 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 happens doubly fast than normal because it's going to slow down in the in the future times. The future is not set. There's the only fate is what we make for ourselves carved into a a wooden park bench. Uh picnic table. Picnic table.
Buddy,
do you smell toast?
It's delicious.
Toast is is part It's literally on the table. It's Am I looking at it? I'm looking at it right now. There's toast
on the table right there.
Okay, that that feels right there. Okayhuh.
Hi everybody. Good morning.
Hello. Greetings and salutations.
Welcome to Games for Breakfast. You

might be thinking to yourself, Matt, Will, Brad, Janet, Rocky, what are we all doing here so soon to the last one?
Yeah,
I know. I I woke up this morning. I apparated into this chair and Will's like, "You ready?" And I'm like, "Ah." And I realized that my life is one puzzle box I'm trying to escape from. Now, the the issue here is not that we had a lovely summer Friday episode, which we did. Um, but uh because next Monday we will not be having a breakfast and there's so much news to cover that we couldn't cover even in that summer Friday edition, we're just doing our regularly scheduled games for breakfast right now to make sure uh we cover all the stuff because then uh we're going to be gone for a week. So, we'll be back in two weeks from today.
Yep. Uh, and so we have we have several updates. Uh, the first of which is a reminder we're running a Kickstarter. That Kickstarter is for the 2026 uh, history happens every day calendar. It's got 24 days to go. And this weekend, we

crushed our $35,000 stretch goal.
Nice.
Which is wild. As of right now, it's at 37,235 uh, but that's not the important part. The important part is that we are shipping out at least 757 calendars. And if you would like to be one of the people to get this really cool calendar covered in brand new art done by Davido in the style of various famous world artists, but also if th those artists painted beans, um you can do that. Uh there'll be links to Kickstarter pretty much everywhere. Uh you can go you can go back in on Kickstarter, but that's real cool.
Yeah. Also, uh the reason that there will not be a breakfast next week is I uh will be it was a last minute thing. Uh, I will be actually out in Indianapolis at Gen Con. If you are going to Gen Con and you see me out there, please say hello. Um, I will be roaming around. Uh, I'll be working with James a little bit, maybe running some Cyberpunk Legends uh, play tests over there. I believe they are all these sessions are sold out, but you never know. You can swing by the booth and see

if you are in the area. Um, because the game is dope and I've been play testing it for like a year and a half, two years, and uh, I'm I'm ready to help show it to other people. It is phenomenal. If you haven't seen any of the information about that yet, there is a live stream we did, Will and I did with James and Mike Ponmith, the creator of Cyberpunk on the channel, which you can go check out to get more information about it. It is uh phenomenal. And I'm looking forward to getting back to uh Indie because I have not been in like six years. Uh and Gen Con, I've only been once and it kind of blew my mind and now I get to go back. So, it's very fun.
I I have never been to Gen Con and at this point I think I'm too afraid to ask
it. No, that's the vibe. Like Gen Con is It's a lot. Like Pax is a lot. Magfest is a lot.
Magfest is
Magfest is the right a level of a lot where PAX undulates between too much a lot and too little a lot. Gen Con is just a lot. Like I feel like I've never been to Dragon Con, but I feel like Gen

Con is the Dragon Con equivalent just with probably less cosplay. Like it's just gigantic. They fill the the is it the Lucas Oil Stadium like completely with tabletop things. I think True Dungeon is in there this year. Like there it's just it's and that's like a fifth of it. Like it's insane. Um I I went like I said six years ago and I don't think I even scratched the surface. So I'm looking forward to exploring it again.
The the closest I've been is when Odicon was in Baltimore and they filled the Baltimore Convention Center which is
flipping massive by the way. If if you've never been to the Baltimore Convention Center, it's wildly huge. It's bigger than it looks like from the outside,
of course, because it's tall. Um, and yeah, that was that was big. But I think
Mila is correct. Starf Fighter 2 is also premiering this year, uh, which I'm very very excited about. I'm always looking for a new, uh, we were just talking about sci-fi tabletop stuff with the Dwarfven forge Star Forge campaign on the pre-show. And yes, I am very much looking forward to that.
Yeah. Um, also last piece of news. Um,

there is officially and I I it's officially unofficial. I think it's this Friday, but Cat controls this. Uh, we've given it to Cat uh to decide when this launches. We are going to be starting monthly animated EC episodes yet again. So, if you're watching this and you're like, "This is fun." However, comma, but where's the show? It's coming back. Uh, it's going We're going to be taking a couple odd swings. This first one's a little more um
traditional
straightforward. Yeah.
Uh but it's about I think 15 minutes long. Eddie Webb is back and we're talking about the fragility of actually it fits in the Gen Con stuff. Board game, tabletop, RPG production in the time of essentially like it it tariffs are an issue of course, but the system that this is all predicated and built upon has been um let's say complex for a very long time. And the second that a one or two small pebbles or large boulders come to this production chain, uh that is where things start crumbling. So we break it

all down. Eddie has been in the tabletop and RPG industry for years. So he has a very like unique uh eye and look into this problem. And uh we talk about a lot. It's a fascinating uh episode uh art done by Nick Dit. And uh yeah, I'm very much looking forward to it when it drops. Maybe Friday.
Maybe Friday. Uh but if not very soon after
uh the bull asked this is a great question. Is Gen Con tabletop oriented? I haven't been. Yes, Gen Con is all things tabletop RPG dice slinging card game. Physical gaming is all
Gen Con. Um it is an absolute blast if you like those sort of things and probably a living nightmare if you don't like those things.
Correct. It is also consistently either just it is on the line of too many people and depending on your view of that line you may just think it's too many people. It is like

tons of people all in one place. Um the convention hall is huge. Everybody's there. Uh yeah
I I looked into getting uh Critical Role tickets but they are too rich for my blood. Um, I believe it was 71,000 attendees with 540 exhibiting companies in 2024.
Uh, so that's a lot.
Mhm. Yeah, there's quite a few.
Uh, speaking of physical games,
speaking of them,
let's talk about our first story, which is Magic. Now, I'm going to say a thing that I believe is true and lots of people will take negatively, and I'm going to tell y'all that it's going to be fine. Magic.
Interesting. That's a That's a lot of uh
Yeah. Okay. So, Magic is firmly set on the path to be the physical version of Fortnite.
Um, yes, but I have a real big asterisk.

Yeah, I I I think the the big asterisks are severalfold. Number one, crossovers between Magic and other IPs tend to be much deeper than Fortnite ones where like Fortnite is like, "Hey, we made Hatsu Miku hold a gun and kill people.
Hey, we made Superman hold a gun and kill people. Hey, we made Batman hold a gun and kill people."
Right. And you're just like that I, you know,
there's some tonal dissonance there, but sure.
Yeah. And so, while Magic is fundamentally a combat card game, uh there are characters that are less murdery, like Aunt May, who's in the new Spider-Man set. Um, and we bring this up for two reasons. Number one, uh, the Spider-Man and Avatar sets officially began getting revealed this weekend at San Diego Comic- Con.
Yeah, those previews look cool.
The previews look awesome. There are lots of um there are lots of really interesting Spider-Man ones. Weird weird

new take. By the way, there are going to be cards that are in my understanding, and I could be wrong, but this is the impression that I've gotten so far exclusive to action figure packaging. I did see there was one that um Yeah. Which one was it? Was it Was it the Iron Spider, but it was MJ?
I think that's right. Yeah, the the Stark Spider.
Yeah. Or whatever it was. I thought I saw that. There's an upgraded version of Spider-Man with Iron Man armor that I believe may be an action figure exclusive that there is some weirdness going on with the Spider-Man set and the nature of all of the crossover cards, especially because unlike most of the starter decks, the starter decks for Spider-Man will contain cards that won't be legal in standard, which is also weird. So, it's just
I I have a theory on that.
Yeah. Um, I think that

it it seems like, especially with that fact and uh some cards being packaged with action figures, it feels like this is a real onramp. This they want this to be a real on-ramp for younger and new players. Um, obviously Marvel's fan base is not just kids, but um, if you're doing things like this, it probably leans towards like getting, you know, middle schoolish probably people like that would buy action figures, get a cool card, oh, it looks neat. Oh, this is a game. And then going in with a thing that is easy to obtain, um, powerful enough to be fun. and then making those not the actual things that are legal when when the player gets old enough to care about such things like they've already have a foot in the door for magic and they might pay attention more. That kind of feels like the path.
I I will also say that um when we talk about magic and when I talk about magic, I am really bad at this and I'm trying to be better at it. I am so far away

from the a from the target audience of a lot of the get into magic.
Yeah. Like
because and there's lots of there's there's literally dozens of you dozen. No, there's tons. So many people are into like
Yeah.
Right. And and and as a result of that, it is very easy for me to forget that the number one place that people play Magic is at their kitchen table. And the number one format they play is kitchen table magic, which is, hey, we both made 60 card decks out of whatever cards we have lying around. What's a format anyway? And then they play. Um, and so this is kind of perfect for that because it um a lot of these cards are very much like the the the very unique like, oh man, I can't believe you, you know, you found your one copy of Spider-Man 2099 in your deck and you beat me with it and like it creates that story. So, I think that's going to be interesting.

Um, we've also begun seeing uh the Avatar stuff. The Avatar stuff also looks gorgeous. Oh, by the way, one of the things that they're doing with the Spider-Man stuff that I think is very good, is capital V, capital G, very good is they've they're doing comic book treatments for almost every card of note. Um, there are comic book treatments for different sagas, different villains, different heroes. So there's a version that has like what I would call more traditional magic art and then there's another version where like the whole thing is done in comic panels. Like there are sagas that are done in like three different distinct comic panels and it's really good and cool. So like there is like a depth to this crossover that I think is going to be really interesting.
Well, that's some of the cards that they've revealed too. And this is why this is this was the the big asterisk that I was uh taking and this goes for the Final Fantasy set. This goes for the Spider-Man set. it seems of the the cards that have been released so far. Uh and and most of the sets I would argue,

Will, you can correct me when I'm wrong. But something that I really appreciate that the designers at Magic do is when they do these admittedly like cash grabby things. There's no problem. Like, let me be very clear. I have no problem with that. If you're going to bring one IP into another IP, there's nothing wrong with that. I too remember back in the day having all the different action figures and batching them together and not caring what if one was a GI. Joe and one was a Ninja Turtle. I don't care. I think it's fun and I don't even have a problem with what Fortnite does in theory, but I don't Fortnite is normally outside of a couple mechanical things. I know like Thanos and Superman, you can spawn in as them or they come and do different things, but like the skin game in in Fortnite when it is a character, you're all still playing Fortnite. Every charact because Fortnite the the design of Fortnite as a game is they everyone is in the same like playing field, right? You're everyone is having the same thing. There's no stat difference, no whatever. And that's good for Fortnite, but that's weird when you have Superman running around with Sabrina Carpenter. Like, not not not because they can't exist in the

same universe, but because they're both carrying a gun and and that is totally dissonant uh to me. What Magic tends to do, and what I really appreciate, is they tend to, because their mechanics are so deep and almost infinite at this point, they tend to skin their cards to to make them feel like the abilities that are happening
uh are are uh in line with whatever IPDed character that they that card is portraying. Yep.
Or an action or or a thing in that world. They do a really good job of that. And then it doesn't feel weird that Spider-Man is uh uh gonna do something to your Jace because the way that Spider-Man does things and the way that Jace does things feel different even though they're baked into the same rules.
Correct. And here's a great example of this. Aunt May is getting a card. Aunt May is a 02. Aunt May is not going to kill anything or anybody unless you do something magical. Right.

Remember remember that statement. I can't wait till some like nonsense comes out and like it's the Aunt May deck is the thing, right? Like
it probably will be. She's a she's a oneost enabler for a a very degenerate deck. Um there's a life gain deck.
Mark my words.
And Antme uh when a creature comes in, she makes them food. She gains you one life. And if it's a spider, it gets a plus one plus one counter. So
that's delightful.
So with all the different Spider-Man's uh Yeah. Um, and they're really leaning into the Spider-Verse thing because like every distinct ver version of Spider-Man is a different card with a different name. So despite the fact that they're all Spider-Man, you can have them all on the field at the same time, which is cool. Anyway, um, so that's really neat. I like the core previews. Uh, they're bringing allies back, so that's nice. Um, but overall, I think that this is sort of like this preview thing has been really big. Small caveat, Wizards did kind of screw this up.

I saw cards for a set I can't purchase yet before I went to a pre-release for the set that came out that hasn't come out yet. The pre-release weekend for Edge of Eternities was last weekend. I went Friday night and I was already seeing previews for Spider-Man before I could spend money on Edge of Eternities. their scheduling was a little screwy here. So, they were previewing stuff and cutting the floor out from under their own set because now people are looking forward to Spider-Man instead of the set that's out right now that like people haven't even really gotten a chance to play with outside pre-releases. And that is not great. Not great. and is probably the most emblematic of like Magic's like we must make all the sets and you're like you can make a lot of sets and they're like no we must make all the sets. So that's a problem. However, they're not going to stop and the reason they're not going to stop is the financial report for Wizards came out.

So this is the I'm going to pull
this comes to us from a lot of different places investing.com.
I'm pulling up the Q. So, this is the Q2 2025 report. So, the financial uh the financials for Hasbro came out in an investor call and I swear I will make it make sense why I'm talking about this. So, Hasbro made 90 $981 million flat year-over-year in the in Q2. Okay. of that. I'm going to find it. I'm going to find it.
Got to find that number.
Uh yeah, the Wizards was about half of that.
Yes.
Wizards. Wizards of the Coast. So Hasbro and a little more than half. So for for

comparison, Hasbro the big toy company is now like you know the Rick and Morty robot like what is my purpose? You bring the butter and it gets so sad. That's Hasbro except you support Wizards of the Ghost. Like that is where we're at right now. And of that, cannot stress enough that this is a real number that they actually reported an investor call. $200 million of the $981 million that Hasbro made in Q2 2025 was made in one day from one product. It was the day that Final Fantasy dropped. Final Fantasy
in the pre-release day, not the not Yeah. The way you the day you could order them,
right? Yeah. Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering made $200 million in a day. And they also admitted that they left money on the table because they could

not meet demand. So, we are firmly in the never going back all aboard the Magic Fortnite train. Now, that being said, I do agree with Matt's assessment that the designers of Magic care an awful lot about a lot of these IPs, and they tend to only do these with things that they like, right? Like little stuff that's going to make a bunch of money, but they don't really have like a deep fondness for tends to get shoved into a secret layer. Um, like the full sets need like months of time, and people who really care about Spider-Man, Final Fantasy, Avatar, whatever. And by the way,
I'm really curious how the Avatar one will do.
Yeah. Um, so far it looks really interesting. They're bringing back a beloved mechanic.
I just I'm curious because I Avatar's never been my bag. I like the movies. I think they are technical marbles and you never bet against James Cameron, but from a like, okay, from a Spider-Man perspective or a Final Fantasy perspective, the lore is deep. Like the lore feels like you could like and and I don't mean like just deep as in

narratively. I mean deep as in like decades, right? Like whereas Avatar if it does have deep lore, I don't think the movies terribly dive into it. Uh and so maybe they can make it up. I don't know.
I'm going to spout some heresy, chat. Everybody put your heresy hats on. Are you ready? Are you ready? I'm gonna bet.
Wait, is this Wait, hold on. Which avatar are we talking about? Someone just brought this up. James Cameron's avatar.
No, we're we're talking Last Air Bender. Jesus, for whatever reason, erase the last five minutes of what I said then. Of course, Last Airbender works.
Yeah, I was going to say like I don't know where like there's as much
Avatar the James Cameron Avatar has been like invading everything like they were there was there was social media post being like the blue people.
I'd really like to thank f uh uh Fantastic 4. No, what was it? cuz they they did the Ash of Fire or whatever trailer for the third Avatar movie and

it was like there was some really cheeky comment. It was like it was really nice of the Avatar trailer to let Final F to let Fantastic 4 play after it.
So, no, no, sorry. Let me let me clarify. Angqatara,
thank you.
Thank you.
Saka's Saka's girlfriend who becomes the moon got previewed. Um,
thank you.
Uh, yeah. And and my following her the heresy I was going to spout is the following. There is as much relevant avatar for them to draw cards from as the section, listen to my words carefully,
the section of the work of JRR Tolken that they chose to draw references from. They chose a very narrow set of Tolken's work, just the Lord of the Rings. And I would say that there's about as much source material now for Avatar that's relevant as there was for Lord of the Rings when they did it.
If if they were going to make a James

Cameron Avatar set,
it'd be a secret layer.
But also, I would hope that the card for unoptanium would be of Black Lotus status. It would be have to be so hard to get. It's in the name. Um, I'm looking I'm looking I'm looking someone asked about the preview for Saka's girlfriend and I'm looking it up real quick. [Laughter]
I appre chat Brad and Janet I appreciate you uh coming on with me with this journey of misunderstanding and
no that that is my bad. I forget that James Cameron's Avatar exists because it doesn't exist to me because I've literally never seen it because I have no interest in it whatsoever. Like no one has given me a compelling reason besides like it's a visual spectacle and I looked at it and went
listen the story of the second one is way better. Um you actually start learning character.
Wait, hold on. Yeah, I was going to say in the second one, can I not replace all

of the proper nouns with proper nouns and turn it into a Disney movie like
and Jake Sully,
right? Yeah. Okay, great. Excellent. Excellent. Um yeah. Uh okay, cool. Um I don't have uh her preview card. I know QQara uh deals with um kept hoping Matt was wrong. Yeah,
and I was Your dream came true.
Yeah. Um the Yeah, I I think I think Avatar the Last Air Brand is going to be pretty big. It is also uh from what we've heard uh going to be the about the same size as the foundation set from uh last year. Um, that is to say, it's going to have a pretty big uh layout and you're probably going to be able to get bender decks for each of the colors
from Futurama.
Just now I'm just messing with you. I'm sorry.
Don't get my hopes up for a Bending Bender Rodriguez deck.
Have they done Futurama?
I don't think so.
If they have, I'm upset.

I want a Fry Shut up and take my money card. Like, I don't care what it is. I'll get it right. It'll be great. Um because it it's self anyway. Um I think it's going to be really good. Uh I'm really excited for it. But the earnings report shows that and this is kind of the interesting thing. We've talked a lot about this over uh you know the time that Magic's been doing this. The earnings report shows that for all of the people who are vocally against this and there are a lot of them, right? There are lots of people who are not fans of Universes Beyond. There are lots of people who say that it's making magic worse. There are lots of people who do not want it to be part of the game. Sorry, we're never going back. There is They made again again they made $200 million in one day and admitted in an investor call that they left money on the table.
The issue though, here's the other thing

too. The issue is not every set like this will be Final Fantasy or will be Marvel like like
but it could be
well it can be okay so uh I believe in one of these articles I read these yesterday so I'm sort of maybe you could find it willer you know what I'm talking about they had mentioned that the Lord of the Rings set which I thought would bust doors wide open for money like was fine like it didn't do like right
it took six months to cross $200 million.
Sure. That's what it was. That was a stat. Thank you.
Um
not everything will be Final Fantasy, right? Like that's such a that is I would argue a more perfect crossover than Spider-Man. I think Spider-Man's gonna be big and I think they're doing from what I've seen a good job. But Final Fantasy as a franchise and Magic the Gathering as a franchise go together

so well. Um I'm And I think Will, you've played with these cards, so maybe you can fill this in. Do you think that the Magic set was more geared towards like people who already played Magic
because Spider-Man seems like it might be for for people that really want to start playing?
It is a much more introductory fight. Uh Spider-Man is a much more introductory set. They they did say that when they were designing Final Fantasy, they elevated the mechanics that they would normally do it to because they knew that the audience they were looking at is an audience of RPG gamers.
They're not looking at an audience of comic book fans who may never have played a game like this before, but they're aiming at
an audience of RPG gamers who are used to reading all of the stuff to figure out what the abilities do. At least in theory. Um, at least in theory. Not everyone reads all the stuff. Sometimes people get confused about why their elemental abilities aren't working on things.
Will when does when does the new set the

the space set come out?
Uh it comes out on Arena tomorrow. It officially drops this Friday. Pre-releases started last week.
I wonder if Gen Con will have decks.
Uh they probably should. They're out. The the commander decks are out. There are two
because I love going to conventions, buying a commander deck, and just figuring it out. That's kind of where I live with Magic right now. Will, you you collect and you play and you know, I uh love playing the game, but I have so few chances to do so. And I just like finding the commander deck of whatever set comes out and be like, "Yep, that's the one for the next 3 months, four months, and that's what I play."
Yeah.
Um which is a nice I I enjoy that because it's a simple way for me to keep engaging with it.
Yeah. Um uh I'm not uh well, I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying that this is the path that the game is going down and we like we have no hope that it's going to divert from this. Right? I think there
it would have to fail four or five times on an epic scale for them to back away from it.
This is it, right? This is the path that

Magic is going down now. We are all ahead on the crossover train. If you don't want to participate in that, that's cool and fine and I totally respect not wanting to do that. But I think the people who are holding out hope that Wizards would like learn that they were wrong are out of luck. That's my point, right? It's not a question of right or wrong. It's a question of the inevitability of the direction of a thing that a lot of people love dearly
is going. Um
yeah,
but you can the thing that is in my opinion at least as of now until something bad happens. Uh but I I think magic is in an interesting spot where you can engage with it in most way like most everyone who likes a form of magic can still engage with magic. Now the pricing etc that's another issue alto together but the um it feels like you want to do around the kitchen table magic we got you. You want to do commander deck at conventions we got you. You want to go to pre-releases and uh Friday night magic we got you. You want to collect all the cards and read all the rules we got you. You want to tie in with new with other IPs, we got

you. like it seems like they're Yep.
they're doing the the net is wide. What I hope is they keep the net wide while they try to rake in all the money with these IP grabs. That's what that would be the nice thing to do.
Yeah. Um and and for for the record, they they've been doing a pretty
Final Fantasy was they did a good job. There is one stupidly busted card. Exactly. One is a precious son. VV is currently wrecking multiple formats. Fine. One card. That's about on rate. It's about on rate for any magic set, right? They managed to not pitch it so low that it's not uh relevant. There are plenty of cards in it that are relevant. Fire Magic sees seeing standard play a bunch of others. Um but they also managed to not make it so incredibly overtuned that everyone's like, "God, I'm sick of Final Fantasy." Right.
Yeah, they do. There is a there is an endgame capitalism kind of thing about all these crossovers. We're talking

about Magic or Fortnite or whatever. And we actually did uh an episode of EC a while back. I think it's called Skeletor Wants Your Money.
Yeah.
And it's it's Skeletor driving the battle bus in the thumbnail. Go check that out. It's a personal story I had where I almost bought a Call of Duty skin with Skeletor and I'm like, wait, I don't play Call of Duty.
Yeah. Um, but the what will happen eventually, and we're kind of already seeing this, like new IP is developing slower.
Yes,
things aren't catching on. I've I've even talked to actually maybe if there's some parents in the in the either Brad or Janet right now or on Rocky, you can message us on Blue Sky. Uh, I've had a couple parents tell me like they're it's interesting. They I was gonna say they're weirded They're not weirded out. They're finding it interesting that their kids don't glom on to like things the way that they or my generation, our generation used to glom on to because there was less to glom on to. Like if you were a nerdy kid and you saw Star

Wars and you loved Star Wars, like that was your whole thing like forever. And there was maybe one or two other things. That wasn't like the one trick pony. But now because there's 700 things it see like my friends kids watch something they're like that's neat and they just move on. There's no like there's no there's no like like diving deep into it because there's so much like a perfect example K-pop Demon Hunters which I think we talked about a couple weeks ago.
Um phen yeah uh a phenomenal uh movie from the the animators uh of Into the Spider-Verse on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, you should watch it right now. It's dope. um after the show. But the uh like it's actually kind of perfect also for kids and multiple people been like my kids really liked it and then they never talked about it again. Like like that is something that could have been a franchise or something a while ago, but because there's so many options now, it's harder for new things to find root. And sorry, I I know you're you're jumping in here, but the uh the the the

moral of that story is if we just keep recycling IP that has already existed since the 80s through the the Fortnite's, the magics, the other things, these shared universes, not only like magic works because it's a multiverse. Fortnite. Like I guess it is, but like you just get this sort of IP slurry and you don't get stories like you don't get meaningful stories or new IP or characters to tell those stories through. And it's it it will get to that if this is all we get, right?
Yeah. I think part of the part of it is that um a because there's more options, there's less uh desire to become deeply infranchised in a single thing
and b I'm trying to think of the the correct way to say this. There's a lot of deeply entrenched factionalization in large parts of our society. And it makes sense that sometimes people don't want to tie their

identity to external factors because well, they've seen what happens when you do that in other large parts of our society. And I think that that makes sense too that there is some amount of like
um drive to create individual identity particularly in the nerd space uh with all of its particular proclivities and leanings. Um and I think that that is becoming more of an emergent factor, right? I would I used to say that I would definitely be like a Star Wars kid, right? And then I like learned about Star Trek and now I've watched
god so much sci-fi, right? Yeah. And like I wouldn't say that any of it particularly identifies me in the way that it used to, but that's also Yeah.
Well, like it's funny. Um, who someone just said this? I think it was Richard up top. Controversial take. K-pop Demon Hunters the current era's version of Teenage Mut Ninja Turtles. I feel like if we had the same amount of IP and children's programming as when the original Ninja Turtles cartoon comic book came out, it would be, but it's not

going to be. It should be, but it's not going to be.
Yeah.
Um just because there's so much stuff. And also to David's point before about uh you mentioned he has a seven-year-old child. The kids that uh my friends were talking about were I think nine and 12 which I again I don't know where like because I know like for instance like children children like three or four year olds will glom on to anything. Apparently Frozen is the is the loop dour. Um, but uh I think like that when you when you're I guess a pre-teen or just turning into a teenager that like where you kind of start to identify your own personality with the stories and the and the worlds that are kind of around you. Uh it's got to be so strange now.
Yeah. Yep.
Anyway, sorry that took a tangent off of magic.
No, no, I think it's good. All right. Uh we've got a lot of like poperri stories. So uh everybody put on your taking off caps.

Oh, that's right. Yeah.
Uh we're going to we're going to talk about this real quick through a through a gaming lens. Um we lost Azie Osborne last week. Uh, and the the folks over at Double Fine had
one of the most interesting tributes I think I've seen to someone. So, pretty dope. For for those for those who are unfamiliar with this, this looks like Jack Black and Aussie Osborne hanging out
because it is because that's Jack Black's character and Aussie Osborne's character from Brutal Legend. And the folks at DoubleFind gave it away for 666 minutes in honor of Azie Osborne
for free. Yeah,
for free. And if you own it, and you probably do cuz it's been like $3 for like years now, I encourage you to replay it if you're if you're feeling in a metal mood. Just replay the game. You don't have to like get super into the

RTS stuff or anything, but god was it a good reminder of like an era of metal where they were just like, "Yeah, we're just going to get all these metal heads and we're going to put them all in voice recording boots and we're going to talk about metal and like then we'll make that into a video game somehow. Don't worry about it." Is one of the weirdest most and and like Aussiey's performance in it is topnotch. Genuine top-notch. It's really good. It was it was a touching like little reminder of like a thing that he' done in the gaming space that I thought was really excellent.
Larky gets it right too. Brutal Legend, the game I can never find good quality playthroughs of because of copyright claims. Yes,
that's correct. Yeah, you can't watch a Yeah, because all of the entire soundtrack is is actual metal music, which is great. Um so yeah, uh
that was a really it was a really nice tribute. Um
yeah, it was good
in in our little corner of the internet.
Yeah.
Yeah, man. Aussie freaking legend. And it's so it's so odd. I thought he was older than 76.

Nah, dude. He's just
uh
been riding rough his entire life.
Yeah.
Uh but he also went out like an absolute boss. He went out he he he passed two weeks after his farewell tour
and his portion of the proceeds from the farewell tour all went to Parkinson's research I believe.
Yeah.
He was like, "Cool. That's it. I'm done. Peace." And I'm You know what? If you got to go out, that's a pretty good way to go out. Uh so, um big big fan of that. Uh, and I know there have been a lot of touching tributes, but I thought this one was cool and gaming related, so I'm bringing up here.
Uh, damn.
All right, on to a more weird positive story. Pokemon presents happened. We missed this. Uh, it was last week before the show, but there was too much during last show to do that. So, you get it

here. Um,
gotta catch up.
Gota gotta catch them up all.
Gotta catch up all.
Okay. All right. Um, so, uh, they announced a bunch of stuff. We got a bunch more, uh, stuff on ZA. We got, um, details of the same studio that did Wallace Grommet making a claimation Pokemon show or Pokemon uh, movie, I guess.
I think it's a show. I think it's a show on Netflix. Am I wrong? Uh, so there's the con Pokemon concierge is on Netflix and I think the Pokemon tales the misadventures of Surf and Pichu I think is a movie.
Ah, okay.
Yeah, there's like two different ones. It might be a show. Um, but I'm not sure. I thought that one was a movie. Um, and then uh two things happened that I really wanted to talk about. Number one, they announced Pokemon Friends, which is

a brain teaser game. It's like a puzzly game. And and the truly bizarre thing is that it's free on mobile and $10 on Switch 2. Does it have microtransactions in it?
Yeah, on both versions. Right. That is the correct face. What are you doing?
Pikachu face. Yeah, that doesn't really make any sense.
Yeah. Um uh just I don't get that one at all. And the second one is that they announced Pokemon Champions. This is it. I'm I'm actually gonna I'm gonna stake money on this. This is the thing that changes competitive Pokemon forever. Pokemon Champions is the mobile and switch pure battle game that is allowing you to do everything that the emulators are doing like Pokemon

Showdown Showdown. Um, with training for exact stats and exact move sets and importing all of your Pokemon from all the different places from Pokemon Home and you can get new Pokemon from the from champions. This is it. This is the thing that Pokemon has needed to make um uh competitive Pokemon accessible and reasonable for people to play.
I am going to stake it. This is what's going to change competitive Pokemon into being a more accessible thing that doesn't require hundreds of hours to make a team.
I really do. I think this is going to be it. Um, I have some small concerns about there's a currency that's shown that you spend to get in-game to get new Pokemon and to train them to have specific stats in game. The I the source of that currency is not disclosed. I do have some
G I wonder where it could come from.
So, the Poke I I brought this up in the Discord. The Pokemon nerds in the Discord assure me that they think that

this is a um sort of an earned in-game currency. I I do have worries about it if I chair the microtransaction concern uh thing. They point out that there are other similar currencies that have been used in the past to do similar things in mainface Pokemon games. So it may be like a you play x games have dailies kind of thing to keep people engaged rather than being a microtransaction currency, but I am withholding all judgment until we actually know.
Yeah. And if it's not real money, that doesn't mean that you can't also get that currency through your own fat stacks of cheddar. Uh,
so I I in I'm going to I'm going to take the stance of I'm going to defend Pokemon Company here real quick.
Yeah, do it. I'm I'm I'm going at him.
All right, great. Excellent. Please do please interrogate this idea. in the Pokemon trading card game, not the mobile one, the Pokemon trading card game uh live, not pocket. You cannot spend money

in the app. There is no way to put your credit card information in and get more cards. The only thing you can do is purchase physical cards and then scan codes to get individual packs. Those codes are also sold like for pennies a piece online in secondary markets, but there is built into the app. There is no way to spend money. Now, there is also, I will freely admit, the Pokemon Pocket TCG, which makes millions of dollars a day on people tuning in every 12 hours to get a dopamine hit from opening a Pokemon pack. And that's a whole different ballgame. I don't know which one they're doing, but I am saying that there is a precedent for Pokemon having a competitive client with no monetization. built into
well no direct monetization. You've described workarounds to that monetization that are granted farther away than my idea of a currency matching a currency.
Correct. But I can also hand that client to a child and they the most that will

happen is they can ask for physical Pokemon cards. They can't be sold microtransactions in the app,
right? Which is great. Um, in an insane world, it's the only logical choice. How many How many or the only sane choice I was going to say, how many Terminator 2 quotes can I fit into this episode? We're going to find out.
All right. Uh, as we do that, let's talk about monetization real quick.
Oh, yeah. This one.
I like this one. This one's good. So, you remember how uh Xbox was like Outer Worlds 2 going to be 80 bucks and everyone nobody liked that? They said psych our bad. Um and they knocked it down to 70. And they're actually going so far as to refund uh
Oh, yeah. They have to. They'd have to with that,
right? They're they're they're refunding uh pre-orders, the $10 difference. Uh and in some cases, maybe all of it, and

then you have to reby. But like
Well, that's very nice. it's good of them to do so. Um, I was trying to think of I was trying to think of the why. Like obviously it's a backlashy thing, but we're like Nintendo's gotten a lot of backlash for its $80 games, right?
They're not changing.
They're also Nintendo.
Oh, I know. But like this I I don't get me wrong, I am happy about this. It just brings up so many interesting questions like
like okay so Xbox is like it actually kind of fits with what Xbox is doing. Xbox has a real like oh whatever man kind of like like vibe these days when it comes to its games. um you can we won't get into it uh terribly actually we will get into it a little bit in the in the upcoming stories but um with all the massive layoffs and everything and sort of what they're doing where they're putting their money and then and what how

they're treating the Xbox brand is sort of a like they'll they want to play everywhere and don't want to be specifically winning. So if this is in like one specific area, do you know what I mean? They want to be ubiquitous. They want to be Windows. So, like them doing this is a good way to signal that they want to play in a broad broad space where Nintendo and it's $80 like no, we're playing in our sandbox. Does that make kind of make sense?
Yeah. So, there there there are two things that might specifically explain this for um Outer Worlds 2 specifically. Um not that this DreamWorks does make a really good point. The message of the game is anti- capitalist. Yeah.
So, if you're going to have an anti- capitalist message in the game and then be like, "And the game's 80 bucks, you miss harder, right?"
This also, actually, now that now that you're saying that, this also could have been kind of the plan. There's a lot of

there's a lot of um
Is this their marketing push? In other words,
yeah. Is this a marketing push? Is the cost of giving $10 back on people's credit cards of pre- buying cheaper than a media blitz? Do you know what I mean? Like there there is a world where because of this game subject matter, this is how they get away with charging $69.99 and coming out on top.
Yeah.
Right. And again, I like I like I really really do enjoy Outer um Outer Worlds and I'm looking forward to playing Outer Worlds, too.
Yep. But, uh, it could be. I don't know. That's a bit more tin foil hat than I'm comfortable like latching into, but it would very well work.
Yep. Okay. I think we can cover this next story in the 3 minutes and 53 seconds we have before ads. Are you ready, Matt?
Love it.
All right. RIP bozos. Uh, all right. So, what happened? What happened was

What happened was
All right. Uh, for those unfamiliar, this VTuber displayed here is Iron Mouse. Iron Mouse is uh if you're if you're weirdly unfamiliar, Iron Mouse is one of the most famous YouTubers. She's definitely one of the biggest names in Twitch streaming. She uh had a subathon last year which crushed the alltime Twitch concurrent subscriber um count. Uh she passed Kai Sonat, which was amazing because Kai's record was stupid to begin with. Yeah. Uh and and she crushed it. Iron Mouse uh has built her platform on raising money for the immuno deficiency foundation. Um that has been a big part of her platform since she started because she suffers with an immuno deficiency disorder and uh they have helped her with that with the process of living with that basically I believe as long as she can remember. Um and that's been a big part of it. her talent agency, V Showjo, um was

supposed to help with some of the fundraising. And um it came to light recently that they had said that they had paid a large sum of money, half a million dollars to this charity and then didn't. that they also owed Iron Mouse, as a performer herself, a rather substantial sum of money as of yet undisclosed. So, she quit and put up a video about why she quit. And staying to true to her fundraising purpose to a tea, she put up a a Tiltify. No money that hap that is given to a Tiltify is touched. It goes directly to the charity. She put up a Tiltify and said, "Hey,
this charity ended up short. I know a lot of you already gave to the subathon. If you can give anything,

please let me know or you know, please do that." Uh, with a modest goal of $10,000 and they crushed a million in less than two days. It's about 600,000 in 24 hours. So, they paid everything that the charity was owed from V Showjo and then more. And then it got worse for V Showjo. You might be like, "How could it possibly get worse?" Well, their talent quit. And then they closed. Like all of their talent quit. A bunch of them found out that a whole bunch of money was owed to them as well because mouse said something in public. And they've announced that they're shutting down. So, in other words, maybe don't not give money to charity when your star performer, the person with one of the biggest platforms in Vtubing on the planet, asks you to maybe give money to the charity that has helped make her life a little bit better. Maybe you should do that.
Maybe you should not be terrible people and withhold money from charity.

the well uh Justin went on uh social media and and kind of like did this weird like congratulations to like Iron Mouse for raising the money and also admitting some wrongdoing. It's an odd message. You can see it over on Kotaku or if you're still over in the hellscape that is uh Twitter, but like um it's like the excuse was that money like that half mill that was supposed to go to charity uh that he uh he they he said actually uh additionally I acknowledge that some of the money spent by the company was raised in connection with talent activity which I learned was intended for a charitable initi initiative. At the time, we were working hard to uh raise additional investment capital to cover our costs. I firmly believed based on the information available to us that we'd be able to do so and cover the expenses. So, basically, their finances were not solid. They reached into a cookie jar of something that should have

gone directly to the charity to try to to make ends meet because ends weren't being met. They couldn't do it. Uh it was a gamble and Andy lost.
Yep.
Um
yeah, sucks. And uh the bottom line is that as of right now, Iron Mouse has raised $1.3 million for the immun uh for the immune deficiency foundation. Good job, mouse. Good job, Iron Mouse. All right. Uh that brings us exactly and neatly and nicely to our commercial break. We're going to do some commercial for things you can't buy while Twitch gets things uh commercials for things you can buy. Uh and then we'll continue on with our smorgus board of stories for today. Will, would you like to go first?
No.
No. Oh gosh. Okay.
Sorry. Let's see. I'm breaking I'm breaking all kinds of improv rules today. Totally fine. All right. Here we go. Hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits here. You may have taken an improv class in your time

and learned about the concept of yes. And that's when you're doing a show or a performance with a friend or colleague and you say something setting them up and what they're supposed to do is is yes and you and roll with whatever it is even if they're not quite ready cuz they'll get there. Now, I do want to bring up another thing that will just demonstrate and it's called no but. And what no butt does is basically make it where you don't have to do any of the thing the person asked and then that person has to come back and make a fake thing about the thing that they said to keep it going for themselves. They basically yes anded the no butt into a yes and. So try no butt today.
Okay, I'm ready.
All right, here we go.
Hey Chad, are you stumbling in an improv environment looking for something? Remember, no butt. When anytime you can't think of a joke or something relevant to say, make it into a butt joke. You just got to make it into a butt joke. It's another way that you can take those improv lessons that you've learned, right, and then make it into a butt joke. And if you're not sure what kind of butt joke to make, make it a

joke about someone who's kind of flat in the posterior. That is to say, a no butt, no butt joke. It's exactly the kind of thing that you can use in any improv situation to sort of, you know, break the tension. Do it. You should have all kinds of things like this in your back pocket where you have no butt. For an improv situation, try no butt today.
That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Uh, hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits here. Uh, are you worried that your no butt in your back pocket will not end up as a no butt? Well, then can we introduce Yes. Andying your no butt in your no butt back pocket? That's basically when you have a no butt in your back pocket where you may or may not have a butt, but also when you unfold that no butt, there is a yes ant inside which can continue the bit further if you needed to do so. Let me give you an example. Hey Will, do you want to do one of the commercials right now?
No butt.
Well, don't they? That's why I'll do my commercial about no butt and then Will does his commercial about having no butt in the no butt back pocket which

inadvertently turned it into a yes and and here we are. Try it today.
I think we just I think we've reinvented advertising.
I think that was the most deeply unhinged self-reerential meta joke we've done in months. And I loved it. I was here for it. Uh oh. I like Yeah. Yep. Nope. You're grabbing it. Yeah. Mhm. Yep. 100%. Where is this? [Laughter]
And what we've just illustrated to you is the stack.
Right. Yeah. Actually, what I was going to say is, fun fact, knowing about no butt is called no butt.
You know, yeah, correct.
Oh, do I have the sound? Hold on. Do I have it?
No.
Is it too long? Arabos.
Is it too long? It probably
It's going to be too long for a clip.
Yeah. All right. I will make it into a highlight and download it and post it in the channel because that was really good. Um,
that was fun.
Yeah. All right. Cool. Great. Excellent. All right. Anyway, moving on with our show. Um, we've got quite a few stories

left, so we're going to keep it going.
Hey, you remember Splitgate 2 because nobody else does.
Sadly, no.
Rare. Um, Splitgate 2 was the promising successor to a uh to Splitgate 1, a sort of free-to-play game that took a lot of vibes from Halo and Portal.
Yeah.
Um,
two great tastes, mash them together.
Right. Exactly. It was sort of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups of Halo and Portal. Um, and Splitgate 2 came out and people were reasonably happy with it. And then this happened and this is the director of Splitgate 2 going on the game awards. And during this opportunity to present himself in the capacity as the voice for his game and his collective uh group of developers who are working hard on this product, he chose to wear a hat that said make FPS great again.

Let's not even get into politics,
right? Yeah. Let's not
let's let's erase that for a moment.
The idea that this will end well for your your game.
Very small.
I don't Yeah. Talk about a gamble,
right? Yeah. This is like
or at at the very like so it's either a political statement that is a gamble or or a belief or whatever. Sure. Um or it it illustrates a level of cognitive dissonance that makes me not kind of trust in any project that is being developed.
Correct.
Like it could not be a full political thing. It could just be a dumb joke he that they thought was good,
right? Like but if so it's like if that's the level of of sort of judgment we're feeling, how can the project be okay? And apparently uh it's run into some some hiccups since then.

Yeah, it in in the reason I point at this is a lot of those hiccups are things that might have been more easily glossed over or smoothed out if people believed in the game more. Like if you have a diehard fanatic fan base for a niche title like Splitgate 2, it does become easier to sort of maintain momentum while you're fixing some of the problems that you have with monetization and bugs and other stuff.
Yeah.
But when there are no true believers because you did something stupid,
it becomes it becomes harder to maintain that momentum because the belief from the community isn't there anymore. And it's also someone's bringing up too that um it's it's not only a tonedeaf joke, but let's let's even
let's pretend there's a world where the joke hit,
right? Let's pretend there's a world where it actually worked and it was like, yeah, right. Like everyone's on board. Sure. Right.

Yeah. You got to be sure that your game is so good because if it's not,
again, in a world where that joke is taken very well and earnestly and everyone is on board, they will still take that joke and throw it back in your face if it is not the best thing since Halo, right? Like, so it's it's like a gamble on like a thousand different levels that I don't know. I didn't I didn't quite get.
Yep. So, uh, as as a result of their failing everything, um, they're going, and I don't know how this works, back to beta.
So, here's the thing. I Let me Can I back up real quick? I have not played Splitgate 2. Everything that I'd heard of about Splitgate and Splitgate 2 before this thing happened was relatively positive. It felt like a new, not quite polished yet, really fresh idea. The game itself could be wonderful and have tons of potential. I want to be very clear that like the the

the primary concerns are monetization practices.
Yeah. Yeah. And I I don't want a game to fail. I would love it if if even someone or a team or something that did some made a mistake, etc. could come back, apologize, learn from it, and move forward. That's the goal.
Um I it doesn't seem as though maybe, you know what, I'll even give it the charitable thing. Maybe uh this is the first step to that.
Yeah,
I don't know what going back to beta means. Um but uh I do believe they're actually going to be hit with layoffs now sadly and they're shutting down splitgate one.
Correct.
This comes to us from Kotaku. And again, I know they are different games, but like this has a real like, oh, you you bought this game number one. Well, you can't play it anymore. or come get number two,
right? Yeah.
Unless Splitgate one was free to play,

in which case that's kind of fine, even though it's sad.
Yeah, it was costing them free to play.
I don't remember. Um it was costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars uh per year according to them and server cost, which makes sense. That's the primary ongoing cost for most free-to-play games. So, on that account, I guess it kind of makes sense. But yeah. Yeah. Um, basically, uh, studio CEO took giant stupid gamble, and boy is he bad at gambling. I I I hope all those developers who get laid off find jobs quickly.
Yeah. And I hope that that a lesson is learned here and it's not doubled or tripled down with, but no, the kids are wrong. Like like people can grow, people can change. You take this as an example and learn from it. And if it's back to beta, maybe there's something that can be done uh with the way that the team is run or the way that the game is monetized or something because it could be awesome, right? Like I don't know. I I just I just when we are being critical

of people uh basically taking a a a emotional nose dive into a stage I want to make sure that there is room unless they are and I haven't reached looked into this guy too much so I don't know if there are like terribly adhorant things. I don't think there are I I do believe he hasn't apologized for it but maybe he has. Again I have no idea. Um I just want to make sure that like there's space for people to come back from messing up.
Yep.
Um
I I agree with that.
Yeah.
Uh okay. Next up, Matt, you want to talk about this thing?
Oh, you actually want to talk about this thing?
I actually want to talk about this thing. Okay. So, everybody, two videos dropped, I believe, last week or maybe it's a little bit before. I I I wanted to squeeze these in sometime in this catchup episode. So, the new the Mortal Kombat reboot, which I think was in 2023, 2022, the I don't even remember. The first one with with Cole Young as the main character that should have always been Johnny

Cage, I was not a fan of overall. It was fine. Uh, it doesn't even come close to the 95 version as far as video game adaptations are concerned. But the main gripe I had was was twofold. One, there was no Johnny Cage. Two, there was no fighting tournament in a Mortal Kombat game. And that really irked me. Mortal Kombat 2 dropped two trailers. One uh that is essentially a fake trailer for a Johnny Cage movie, which I'm sure is in the movie. Um uh from the makers of Citizen Cage from New Line Cinema. Uh it is a phenomenal like joke kind of thing that I really dug. And then the actual um trailer dropped, which you can go to the next uh picture right here for Mortal Kombat 2. Now, if you have not seen it, either of these things, I urge you to pause the show, go to the show notes if you're watching this, not the live version, and watch the two trailers. They're pretty short. Uh the second one is a red band trailer. So, if Gore is not your thing, don't don't watch that one. Um they are making this

one, I believe, uh rated R. Uh they I think this is what it comes down to. I want to be hyped for this. The trailer does a lot of things outside of Carl Urban because I think Carl Urban is the glue that's keeping this together for me uh to make me not psyched for this thing. The weird part is I think a ton of stuff it has going for it looks really good. I think a lot of the costumes are great and right out of the game. I think Kahan looks dope. I think they put Raiden in an actual like video game style costume, which if it's not going to be um Christopher Lambear, then I guess will this is the second best thing. Um I really liked the the folks who played Jackson Sonia last time around. Uh also Scorpion, etc. Like and they're fighting um Behan aka Noob Saibot. Uh because spoiler for Mortal Kombat 1, the reboot, uh Subzero doesn't

quite make it. Um, I don't know the problem I find with it and and CGI can always be touched up, but I think this comes out in September or October. Um, I just don't know. Like this this feels too, this is going to sound strange. It feels too hokey. And I know people like want it to be hokey. I know that Mortal Kombat can be hokey.
Yeah. But there's something that when you bring in like like we did Mortal Kombat movie nights for Mortal Kombat 10, 11, and one I believe where we played the story mode on this channel of the games and their be movie action slop and that's what slop and that's what I love. But there's something when I want I don't mind if the story is hokey or the characters are hokey, but if I want the world that the hookiness is in to feel real and lived in. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Weird example, Scott Pilgrim versus the world. Obviously not a realistic take on

how the world works. And it is incredibly hokey, but you feel like the characters living in that world of exaggerated video game tropes, etc., are living in that world.
Nothing a great example is when Scott punches somebody so hard they turn into change and his first thought is, "Sweet, I can take the bus home."
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Things like that. Also, yes. the the the use of the Wuang Clan track was dope in this a thousand%. Um I just I nowhere in here even with Johnny Cage is like I don't give a [ __ ] about any of this or like not knowing what's going on fish out of water. Uh felt like any of the characters kind of were in this and maybe that's hard for a trailer to do. I don't know. I just Is anybody here's what I want. If anyone in Brad or Janet right now live could tell me why they're excited for this movie, I would appreciate it. because I want to be.
What we've mostly been seeing from Brad and Janet while Matt's been explaining

this is um I want to be hyped as well, but I'm just not based on what's happening. Some people are all middling on uh Carl Urban as Johnny Cage. I I could see Carl Urban as Johnny Cage. Carl Urban does a great job of being that sort of character. I feel like it's most like his role in The Boys. I like this Johnny Cage in this movie. Uh, at least what from what I've seen because it's old Johnny Cage. It's Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat 11. Um, or the older version because you in that game it's a time travely one and there's a young one and an old one. And this is like old movie star washed up 80s9s action Johnny Cage. Johnny Cage, which is pretty fun. Like if you put the two trailers together, I think there's a scene where he's fighting Baraka, which everyone kind of Here's the thing. Baraka's mouth looks like prosthetics. That doesn't bother me. Like bad green screen blending around things to have them not look like they're just in a

sound studio bothers me. Does that make sense? Like
I'd rather hokey prosthetics than not believing they're standing in a temple.
Yeah.
You know what I mean? Um, but there's a scene where in the in the fake trailer, Johnny Cage is bit like they do all the things in the fake Johnny Cage movie trailer of like how they make old old action stars now like Arnold and a couple other people like still look like they can move with editing and some of it's very clever. One of them he has like a bow staff or a long pipe and he's spinning it and just taking out six guys around him. Johnny Cage in the trailer tries to do that with Baraka and Baraka just puts up his blades like this and it just shreds the pole and then Johnny Cage like looks down like he can't believe that his dumb action movie trope didn't work. That's the kind of That's the one moment where I'm like, "Oh, this feels
correct.
This feels correct." I want more of that. And I hope that the Johnny Cage character can do that. I don't know. Uh

I I want to be I want to be excited. I've yammered on too long. Um,
I I I I think chat's with you. The the general sentiment is everyone wants to be excited and it isn't.
Yeah. Will we finally get to see Ninja Mime? God, I hope so. Oh, what a what a lovely false movie that is. We can move on. Uh, thank you for coming to uh Matt's Mortal Kombat Corner. Um, I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much.
That's the MMK.
Yeah,
Matt's Mortal Kombat. Okay, great. Awesome. Uh, Elden Ring has hit a massive milestone. They have crossed five million copies of Night Rain sold and 10 million copies of Shadow of the Earth Tree. This is wild. Um, this is huge success for Elden Ring is a game that keeps winning. Uh, good job. Great great job. And in the midst of all of that, um, we've gotten news of, uh, that that has breached containment even, um, about Night Rain,

uh, which is that duos are coming to Night Rain and the reporting about Duos coming to Night Rain along with a bunch of other quality of life things like the ability to sort relics more accurately and a bunch of other stuff. Um,
the weirdest thing about it is that that news comes to us from Forbes. Forbes is reporting on Night Rain duos. That's the weird part.
It's pretty good.
Breached containment to that extent that an update for Night Rain made it to Forbes.
I feel like that means that when we're playing duos, Will, it's the same as if we were working on our investment portfolio.
Yeah.
Uh I'm very excited for this. Uh last night finally, Will, I did beat Dark Drift Knight with two randos. Uh the the key was everyone got to level 14 and everyone poured lightning on him. Like it was just it was just lightning. Real lightning all the way down.

Um
yeah.
Anyway.
Yeah. Uh just, you know, it's a good little thing. All right. I think that's all of our of our of our main like stories. We wanted to kind of do a roundup because it's been a hot second since we've done this roundup.
It's the AI slop roundup. I don't have a son or [Music]
great sound effect.
Yeah, there you go. There's been a whole bunch of problems, incidents, nonsense um with AI slop recently and we just wanted to like highlight some of them and highlight how ridiculous this is getting and how much we wish it would stop. Um cuz it it's getting worse and worse and companies are like just sort of shamelessly doing stuff with this. So, like as as a great example, as a as a great example, Blizzard, a company known for having no

money, no money to hire talented artist.
Poor Blizzard.
Poor Blizzard
can't afford to hire an artist,
right? to to highlight what will probably be a disgustingly profitable crossover between Diablo and Hearthstone decided to promote this using art that was AI generated like not in part like in most
I think this actually and I I I I followed this before I don't know if more things have kind of pulled into this story but like this is a thing I believe that there'll be Hearthstone things in Diablo, not Diablo things in Hearthstone. Like this isn't like a set from what I understand. This is like this isn't like the Starcraft mini set that they did, which was very, very good. Um, regardless, I don't know what team came up with this, what what house in Blizzard came up with this, but the image is of um a night elf playing Hearthstone across the table from a of a from a human looking guy. And uh you can

go if you go to the show notes, the PC gamer article does a really good job of like showing what people have kind of figured out why the thing looks AI generated. Everything from like playing cards are sort of backwards or mirrored to thumbs being wrong to like people's uh uh jewelry being embedded in their forehead. Um things like that. Just things that like would be elements that a ra like a human artist wouldn't ever think to draw a thing like. Um, I mean, we're just going to, this is just going to be prominent across the board. I think Blizzard is is is being the good little velociraptors that they are are testing the fences to see what they can get away with. And eventually people will get tired of calling it out, but right now, not yet.
Um, yeah. Slop, slop, slop.
Yeah. Uh uh this this weird industry is also booming to the extent that one of the hottest black market trade goods uh in the world right now I is AI chips um due

to export restrictions and some of the ways that Nvidia has been restricted from like moving chips around. People are smuggling chips and selling them on the black market uh particularly into China. But like that is there's a huge like we're now so far down this rabbit hole that there's illegal AI smuggling going on.
That's how you know what industry is good
for like lying robots. It's kind in my mind. It's kind of like if someone was smuggling Furbies. Like I guess you could if there was enough demand. But why though?
Well, there's enough demand because people made up enough demand.
Companies made up enough demand. Consumers haven't really made up enough demand yet. There's a there's a reason why literally every product that you use in your day-to-day is like, "Want to try our AI thing, though?" And you're like, "Not really. I just wanted to write an email. Do you want us to write that email for you? No thanks. Uh it's

because they're trying to latch us in into a level of of ease and comfort so that it can eventually become a charged service when we can't live without it.
Right. And uh the one of the people who believes that at least in public the most of everyone uh is no surprise. Uh the CEO of Nvidia um says that everyone at Nvidia is designing AI chips using AI. And this one I actually want to talk about for a hot second. Oh, and he also says that if you're not using AI in your job, you will be replaced by someone who is. Um which is wrong. So that's cool.
Well, it's morally wrong. I don't know if it's physically wrong
that you gonna replace me with a digital with a digital streamer.
No, but companies could.
Sure. That's the thing. Sure, but there

will always be demand. Like I don't think our audience wants to watch a virtual version of us.
No, but it's not that's not that's not the point. Look, I don't agree with him. I think he came off super crass and it was kind of a sounded like a pompous blowhard. But the the all every major company is pushing in this direction just like we were saying the magic thing like there's no going back there's no whatever like there is a possibility that the bubble bursts but everything is going to be for this AI stuff is going to be um they're going to keep doing it like there there we'll get to it in a secret but Microsoft isn't investing the amount of money that Microsoft is investing uh into AI technology to then have it like to them not throw it in your face every 5 seconds. Like that's what they want. There will always be a demand I think for uh humanled entertainment stories, etc. Of course. Um but what they're banking on, I think someone said it in chat earlier is when this gets good

enough where the average consumer won't look at it and be like that's ugly and freakish. The second it's not that, it's kind of off to the races.
Yeah. Um, and I I do think that there is and and this is another case, right, where the industry is willfully conflating two things to try and convince the public that something is true that it's not. What most average consumers probably think when the CEO of Nvidia says that everyone is using AI is that everyone at Nvidia is using chat GBT to write emails and do stuff. And that might be true, but that's probably not what he means.
No, he means they're using AI tools in the way that they code and they're speeding up the way that they they're using it
or that they're using machine learning expert systems also can be referred to as AI but are not LLMs or schllock. They are optimization tools. Yeah. to design

next generation. Like
when we are talking about AI slop roundup, we are talking about the consumer-based nonsense that is being spoonfed to us consistently. This is not talking about tools in specific fields that actually like do make a human's life and job easier.
Correct. And that's and that's the problem is that they are conflating they are using real actual expert systems and machine learning models which are good tools and consume infinitely less power than the stupid LLM schlock, right? To justify the existence of the slop, right? And so I just want to be clear that like and and it it irks me that underneath all of this, there is like a thing that we're losing out on because they made it terrible, right? Which is that there are tools for analysis. There are tools for optimization that are machine learning and they're getting bundled in with well chat GPT gro
right whatever is all slop and that I

just want to point out that they are refusing to use the differentiated language on purpose
to justify the existence of this crap
um to the extent that now there has been at least one case of a company that has had to develop new features for their program in this case it's a um it's a guitar app. Um because chat GPT hallucinated so frequently that they had a feature that they didn't have that they felt obligated to make it because their customers were leaving disappointed despite the fact that they'd never promised them a feature because chat GPT told them that the software had a feature that never existed. It's Once again, one of the biggest failings of all of this is people substituting chat GBT for Google.

Well, Google has
Google also has AI generated.
Yeah, but this is all not people's faults, right? Because Google has basically abandoned Google search.
Correct. Like you can't like if you this is awful, but if you type anything into Google without adding the word Reddit at the end, you get nothing. Like you get nothing but advertisements or AI slop that all read like a a cooking recipe uh from 2021. Yeah.
Like it's they all it's a nightmare. So, uh, maybe maybe it'll throw you to Wikipedia if you're lucky, but overall, Google has has truly knapped its own search results to try to make Gemini and other things function,
right? And
to make people use them,
right? And now we're getting into this weird thing because we we've talked about it before, right? That one of the big problems is that when these things scrape the internet and find lies that they create, it just deepens the hallucination.
Yeah.
Right. And now we're seeing a part where

because people expect those hallucinations to be real, it's costing actual developers time, money, effort, and energy to not have customers be upset with them because the lying machine lied to them.
Yeah.
Right. It's getting it this is this is ridiculous, right? And
it's like what about it's like what if our no butt bit but was on a recursive loop and went beyond three levels like 3,000 levels. How
awful would that be?
Right. The joke is funny because we know when to stop,
right?
Do we though? Uh
yeah. Um yeah, I think Goldie's got a great point. Google is so bad now that sometimes they use Bing on purpose.
Amazing. You know Google's bad if you're Bing and [ __ ] That's That's a That's a That's a real damning.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Um uh I love I love this. Take

two. I too can be paid uh to much more efficiently lie to people and imagine the things that aren't true using much less water for my relatively small biological form. I am the better option here. True. I will also lie to people if Microsoft wants to give me enough money.
Yeah,
it's great. Can we just mechanically acting? What is acting if it's not lying in the dark to people for money? You're
just correct.
Yeah.
Um and and it's gotten to the point where like it's interfering with stuff that should just be fun.
Yeah.
It should just be fun. Street Fighter um 6 had an art had an art contest. And the biggest story about it isn't that a whole bunch of people got together to make fan art for a thing that they really care about. It's that some of the front runners may have used AI instead of actually drawing it themselves. even though the contest had a specific no AI art will be accepted thing. So now instead of appreciating the art, people are going through entries with a fine tooth comb because there are some things

that just don't look quite right and they have to prove it. So now we can't even have like a fun art contest to like get actual artists the exposure that they're trying to get for their art and for their passion for a thing like Street Fighter because someone had to be like, "Nah, I'm just going to put a bunch of AR in the contest." Like that's partly AI being terrible and also partly people being terrible. Like the
And also partly people being fed terrible tools that are that are that like It's not a vacuum. Yes, a person can be terrible. Yes, people can be terrible. Yes, a corporation can be terrible. But like the the ways that people are being it all of this stuff is being inundated 247 at people. Eventually more and more people will use it.
Yeah.
Um
Yeah.
Yeah. Uh and of course all of this is uh
Oh, real real quick. We should Can we switch the last two just because I feel like the last one's the bigger one. So

we'll go right into the Yeah. So, uh, the the the AI stuff in art competitions obviously isn't the only place it's kind of making a user experience worse. Also, there's just apparently like right now a ton of AI slop in the PlayStation store itself. Um, this also comes to us from Kotaku. the the the level of like Nintendo's eShop was having a lot of problems with like sort of jank games now but like if you look at the PlayStation store next to things like you know Horizon or God of War like these prestige Death Stranding 2 you get some really odd nonsense here and there and if you search deep enough and you go further enough down the line like it feels like a a I don't know why they're letting this much slop on the store. I think if I had to guess, it's because they weren't ready for how fast the slop comes. Do you know what I mean? The slop is only getting faster to make.
And if they can automate the the publication and the and the way you get something on a on a PlayStation store,

which from what Jeff tells me is a huge pain in the butt, um they could just upload nonsense non-stop. And I don't think so. It doesn't feel like Sony was ready for it.
Yeah. Um, that's my guess anyway.
Yeah, that's that seems right. And it's and we're using PlayStation Store as a standin. I have every confidence that this is plaguing every app marketplace, right? But we're seeing it happen for real in PlayStation. I'm just
I haven't been on the Android app store since I had to install a NFC reader. And that one went pretty well. I downloaded uh Nebula on an Android device a couple days ago. That was my my last
Right. But like neither of us, we don't go shopping on mobile app store. How many Actually, this is an interesting correlary question. How many of you go shopping for apps on app stores rather than going to the app store to install an app you already know exists?
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Do you

browse?
Right. Like
show of hands, who browses app stores? I would say the closest we'd probably get here if I had to guess while these are coming in is people and I've done this. I've gone to the eShops of of consoles that I have and like just looked at what's up like
Yeah. Oh, here Matt, while we're getting the the rest of these answers, uh you can you can have this one for free.
What a doll. Yeah, it's like on everything. Actually, I shout out shout out to the developers of the Nebula app. It's in-house teams. Uh, all the engineers are like in-house of Nebula from what I understand for the most part. Uh, don't entirely quote me on that, but like I know the engineering team over there is like super solid and they're small but mighty and they have dedicated apps and the the the streaming service is a dedicated thing. Like it's not piggybacked off of another thing. It's it's like it's legit and real and good.

And every time I install Nebula onto an actual device, I'm always like, "God, this thing is actually working better." I'll tell you, I'll tell you straight up with no fear of of uh uh being wrong for any reason. The Nebula app across any device I have ever put it on runs circles around Paramount Plus. Paramount Plus is one of the worst optimized apps uh for for streaming I've ever experienced in my entire life. I don't know what is wrong with it. It doesn't matter what you install it on, it seems to just chug and crawl and want to die. It takes me like 9 hours to just get to a episode of Deep Space 9. Um, and it's funny like whenever I see something like that, there's a couple others that I feel like that don't run too optimally and then I look at the Nebula one, I was like, "God, these folks are doing they're doing so much with so little." So, uh, thank you to the Nebula subscribers for, uh, helping to support the ability to, uh, keep our apps cool.
Yeah. Um the uh so the general consensus from both Brad and Jana is that um

people may have browsed these stores at one point but for the most part no they're going looking for a specific thing to fill a specific need. A sudoku app that fits a particular technical need. They're not browsing casually unless it's for like once in a blue moon on vacation stranded in an airport looking for a mindless game to play on your phone. That makes sense, right? But like overall and then
this all just comes back to sort of
Oh wow. Interesting. Sorry I didn't know this. Um Paramount all but dissolved their app support last year. H was a part of the layoffs. Oh, I did hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just kind of like floating there now. That's fun.
Yeah. Um so sorry to hear that.
Yeah. Um let's talk about the the Microsoft layoffs real quick.
Oh yeah. 9,000 plus. I think it's actually closer to 12 or 13,
right? plus the knockown effects of like other studios that have been impacted like Romero Games and and etc etc. But
and we did talk about the gaming like issues with that of course on the

show before. Uh however, the thing that it keeps coming up even though Microsoft had its most profitable uh year in a long time. Uh they're spending $80 billion I believe on what is essentially like uh AI infrastructure basically. And you don't do that unless you believe that that's how everything's going to run for the next whatever uh however many tens of hundreds of years. Um [Laughter] the bull uh give Microsoft a break. They're still trying to find their niche. You know, one day I really hope that that small upstart Microsoft really really get a foothold in there. Um yeah, it's um it's crazy damning that after after what is a a benchmark year, they're laying a ton of people off and

just dumping money into this. Uh and the CEO put out a real word salad. Um God, what's this guy's name? I can never remember it. Um, uh, Nadella, I can't remember his first name. Uh, Satia Satya Nadella, uh, said, quote, "I want to speak on what's been weighing heavily on me and what I know many of you are thinking about, recent job eliminations." Um, wrote, he wrote that then it said, "It seems to be on the quote, seeming in congruence of the fact that, quote, by every objective measure, Microsoft is thriving. Our market performance, strategic positioning, and growth all point us to the right. And yet, at the same time, we've undergone layoffs. This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value. Progress isn't linear. It's dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always

demanding. But it also uh but it's also a new opportunity for us to shape, lead through, and have greater impact than ever before.
I think I got a nosebleleed just from listening to Matt read that. Like I am I like
our ad section of this show was clearer.
Yes. Yeah. No, it's correct. Yeah. It's If you missed it, go back. It's three minutes of us making no butt jokes.
Is co-pilot in the room with you right now? blink once if you need help. If you need me to go get Clippy. Um, and and what's what's awful about this is that everyone's like, "Yeah, no, totally." Like business-wise.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean? the people that are pulling the strings of this think like it's in a weird way it's a corporate um uh consolidated uh

hallucination that they're all sort of in themselves and they're kind of making it real.
Well, this one
Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. 100%. No, 100%. Um,
and like 80 bill like I don't know like again there are there's an infinite number of people that are smarter than me.
Sure.
But I I would like here's what I would like. We we just went through if if you're an What do you got? You may ask why did we do this terrible thing? The answer is clearly synergy dyn
right. No, that's it. That's it. I would love if if you've watched this episode to this point and you are a very pro AAI person. First of all, congratulations for taking the the constant kneecapping that Will and I just divvied out and I I I appreciate your your um your grit. Um, I would really love a good faith argument in the

comment section or you can message us if you're watching this on Nebula over on on Blue Sky. Um, of how like what positive way for the general population Yep, there we go. um that $80 billion invested into Microsoft's AI is going to have for like an average consumer's life. not what good things uh different models can do for sciences and technology uh that sort of thing but like a broader look at how this company that is based essentially on making software to run other software uh how that's going to make an individual's life overall better because I can't no one's been able to tell me that I can't think of it. And it's not to say that that answer isn't out there. And that's why I would love a good faith discussion uh argument uh uh

statement so I could read it and and maybe learn something because obviously that's a lot of money and you don't do it if there's no path to victory. I just
I don't see it. And maybe that's why I don't work for Microsoft. I don't know.
Yeah. Uh yeah, 100%. So it's getting worse and we would be remiss if we didn't address it. Um, at this point I also I've seen a couple of comments in the show about why we uh haven't addressed the problems of uh payment processor censorship uh in in Steam and it io. We covered both of those on Friday. You can go check out check out the last VOD if you want to see our take on that. Basically um
summer Friday edition.
Yeah, summer Friday edition. The short version is what? No, stop it. Get some help. Leave games alone. Bad payment processor. That's the short version.
Yeah. OWD says, "All I ever heard about is how it'll make us more productive as though we'll somehow be given more leisure time when our society measures

people based on the work." Precisely. All it's going to do is allow you to do more work faster. You're not going to work less, you're going to work more
in the same amount of time.
There's a conflation, right, that's happening of
um there's two visions of the future. One of them is Cyberpunk and one of them is Star Trek. We're going to use those as like endcaps, right? Cyberpunk is the ultimate capitalist sort of dystopian viewpoint and Star Trek is the ultimate communist or socialist utopian viewpoint, right? And lots of people are conflating the the leisure time and affordances granted by machines and AI in Star Trek with the corporate profit and power that is present in cyberpunk. And the problem is that people are thinking about the AI and these tools in the way that they have been taught to by Star Trek and then buying in thinking that we'll end up in that direction when really what we're doing is we're ending up in cyberpunk. And that's like a very

broad simplification. with the problem of people wanting to do less work while not understanding that as long as we're doing it for a profit motive, we'll always be doing the same amount of work is like you can look at the graphs, right? The productivity of the average American worker has been climbing significantly while the minimum wage has remained stagnant, right? And while pay in general has not kept pace with inflation or with that productivity curve. And so the same thing will remain true. We have no reason to believe that this invention of a new tool will change that in any way. Though we are pitched on the idea of a life of leisure. We're really just cutting jobs for people who work at McDonald's, right? Think about their AI like ordering screen thing that can
That's not AI, that's just automation. But yeah, like they had a new
Oh, do they?
Am I hallucinating an AI drive-thru agent?
Maybe. I have no idea if you could have.
I might I might I might. Dude, I've been

having such weird dreams. So, if I I might have made that up, Hulkcloff. And if I did, I'm sorry. That might have been a bad dream I had. Um
uh I was going to say um I used to think I think this would be sort of my final thought on this. I used to think that the solution to humanity's um inherent greed problem um would be when if and when we discovered a power source that was both infinite and essentially free. We you could argue that some we kind of already have if we want to invest in solar wind and like all those other things too but like you know it they still cost money but like do you know what I mean like uh you know fision or fusion I can never remember which one is the one that isn't stable. Uh fision is unstable. Fusion is stable.
Right. So if you could stabilize fision like or something like
oh you uh yeah you we want fusion. Fusion is the clean one. Fision is the one that leads to nuclear
wast not my wheelhouse. But my point is I always used to think that whenever we figured out the energy thing when energy is officially essentially infinite then

people's greed would would would lessen or stop. And I and I don't I don't really believe that to be true anymore because like AI is not that technological leap of course but there are ways that this technology could better humanity and has in a lot of different ways in in great ways but they're also drowning that out with like 10 times the amount of slop where it's I feel like it's hurting the average human being or it will eventually hurt the average human being. And so I I'm watching the proliferation of AI go through, even if it's just a buzzword, go through society and how corporations are reacting to it. And it's not to make our lives easier. It's to make our lives something that we cannot live without AI in. And we have forever. So, but like that's not to say that like two generations down the line that will be the case.

I'll give you I'll give you a great example. I give you such a great example. Did you know that when Matt and I were both born, the thing called a credit score didn't exist in the United States? And now we can't live without it. Now we have to worry about it all the time. Anytime we want to take out a line of credit for anything to to exist in society. Didn't always exist. Now it does. Now it's indispensable. AI is aiming to be the new credit score. And for what it's worth, credit score is about as useful as AI.
Yeah.
Right.
It's just it's it's systems being built that you then feel like have always been in place. Um and and for some of your lives, something like a credit score has been, but it wasn't always, you know, and again, that's not to say that like the idea of a credit score or something along those lines is intrinsically bad in a modern society, but it's not by far not perfect. and something that should grow and change and whatever and not lock everyone into a specific thing

consistently forever as the world changes. We're doing stuff in Extra History right now and President McKinley and his tariffs and how like essentially now a lot of the tariffs that we're dealing with are kind of like copying McKinley's homework, but it's a hundred years later. The world has changed and they weren't particularly great back then. So, look, uh, to round up this AI slop roundup, uh, it's not going away as per usual. And, uh, all we can do is keep, uh, shaking our fists at the cloud on a porch while we slowly turn into dust and not engage with stuff that use it whenever we can.
Yeah. All right, chat. Take a deep breath. Let it out. Oh, Yuri wants us to return to fun video game news. Let's do it now. Okay,
this is my one of my favorite stories of like this year.

So,
I didn't know this existed. Yeah. Okay. So, there's a there's a tournament series for esports in Japan that runs exclusively for contenders aged 60 to 90 in nursing homes. This is an east this is a whole esports circ like not like oh we're going to let people No, no. They have like shot they have like shout casters for this retiree Japanese nursing home esports league. Okay. And
this is the future that I want.
Right. And this is Yoshi Morab, who uh is the Tekken 8 champion of this esports circuit, who used Panda, notoriously not a great character simply because she likes pandas and won a I cannot stress this enough, national retirey esports

championship in Japan. And that is amazing. I love this. Like this is the these are the nursing homes I want to be in when we get old, Matt. Podcast studios and Tekken tournaments.
Yeah, go.
That's kind of the that's where I want to live. Let's live in that future. Is there a third one other than Cyberpunk and Star Trek? It's just what Will described.
Yeah, right. It's fine.
But this is so perfect because like Yeah, you when as you get older, your ability to do different things obviously changes and it would be it's really lovely that there's a full tournament for people to do that. uh at at similar I would imagine similar um uh play levels like skill levels and also uh depending on you know accessibility and that sort of thing like how how well their hands work or how well whatever they're using to input commands worked. Um I don't know I what a what an awesome thing to have that makes total sense
in communities like that.
Yeah. And and it's it's a fun way to like

not ignore people in retirement homes, right?
I believe there are VODs on Twitch.
Uh there are the or YouTube.
They're over on YouTube. Um we'll have them in the show notes. Uh the link to the say.com uh says.com uh tech article where you can watch the finals um against another retiree who is playing king. Uh, and
the top comment is they broke more throws in this video than I have in my entire life on the match,
right? Uh, and and I just I think it's so great that we're highlighting seniors having fun. I think there's kind of like this stigma, right? And in the US, we're a little grumbly about old people because they keep being in charge of things and not understanding how stuff works. And this is sort of the antithesis of this. This is just old people having fun and playing video games. And we're like, "Yeah, great. Awesome."
Like, "This is this is a circuit that I want to pay attention to simply because it seems like the done purely for joy,

right? And gaming purely for joy is like a great thing. It's great.
Millennial retirement homes are just going to be arcades. You're not
Peru. And that, dear friends, brings us to the end of this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining us for this sort of catchup roundup episode. But we've had a lot of like disperate stories and I know it was a little difficult to find like a throughine in this, but there's so much to talk about right now. Um, and if again, if you think it's weird that we didn't cover something, the chances are pretty good that we covered it last Friday uh on the Friday edition because we did two episodes pretty close together. And again, a reminder, there will not be an episode next week because Matt will be coming back from Gen Con. And if you're going to Gen Con, you can find Matt over at the Cyberpunk Legends booth. I'll be wearing the hat like this. Um, and I'll be I'll be screaming the word shum at the top of my lungs.
Yeah, it seems reasonable.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Please, if you are going to Gen Con, come say

hi. Love to love to chat for a little bit.
Yeah. Uh, and I think that all that remains is to a remind people that if you haven't, go check out the Kickstarter Kickstarter. Go do that. And two, for Matt to lead us in our in our communal sign off just like uh retirees in Japan. uh you know group together and have fighting game tournaments to foster community. We foster community here at Games for Breakfast with our communal sign off. So Matt, take it away.
We want everyone to be able to engage with this with us every time every week. And that's why we have kept this outro the same.
God for five years, six years at this point.
So many years it's been been verbatim. And you all know it. You all love it. I'm just going to say it right now. Thank you so much for watching Games for Breakfast. And until next time. Yes, but [Applause] [Music]