Nintendo Preps, Riot's Fighter Roster Revealed, and AC Shadow's Beautiful Dunk | Games For Breakfast

YouTube stream that we'd be live on YouTube. That's I think if if I'm reading the text specs correctly, I think that's how this works. Yeah. Uh we also have to celebrate something uh right away. Um apparently this worked. Pavar, thank you so much for joining uh the extra fans membership over on YouTube. That's our very first member live on on the stream. So that's very cool. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh no no Jimmy not canceled at all. We are we are experimenting. We are doing science. Um, and that is science I would say. Okay. Wait, hold on a sec. We We're doing an experiment to see what the impact on people's user experience of not having a countdown is. That's right. And we have like results that we are looking at. So, I'm pretty sure this is by all reasonable definitions science. You know what? I'm happily proven wrong. My I rescend my air quotes. They'd have to go like start down here and then go, right? Yeah.

Okay. Cool. Great. Awesome. Is that how you'd rescend? Yeah, let's go with it. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Right. Awesome. Uh, welcome to the pre-show, everybody. Um, again, part of the experiment we're doing right now. This pre-show brought to you by No Countdown First. That's right. With no countdown first, you can just enjoy the pre-show when we go live and not skip five minutes or have us cut out those five minutes and make all of our analytics wonkadoo. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it turns out that lots of very strange things happen on the back end when you cut the first five minutes of a video. They don't care if you cut the last five minutes. They really care if you cut the first five minutes. And we also thought that we would get So on on uh YouTube uh friends, so you know on Twitch I can cut the I can cut up the VOD immediately when I hit end stream. I can immediately do a cut up thing. That's not the case on YouTube. I have we have to wait 24 to 48 hours for it to process because of all of the video that

YouTube is processing um and the way that they process it. So, we can't do it right away. So, I have to end up doing time codes multiple times and it's it's no good. So, we're just not gonna we're just not going to do that. Not gonna do it. Yeah, absolutely. Um hope everyone is having a lovely start to their week. Yeah. Um, we are just moving things around, getting things lighting the lights. Worst dads in history. Yes, that's correct. That is that is indeed US Fireb Blaze. Hello. How are you? Um, it is really funny. I have I have had people yell that to me on the street just once. Uh, but it was very funny. Okay, that's more times like look look. You have the hat and you are much more recognizable due to much more exposure to our fan base. I've never been recognized outside of people I knew I was going to meet up with at a con. So,

you know, um you tried yelling louder. Yeah. Uh if correct, by the way, it is not as if YouTube was made uh with live videos in mind. Uh that that is that's correct. Yeah. Um, and and and we're uh I actually scheduled I'm trying to schedule anyway um a meeting with sort of the like the live the live part of YouTube's team to sort of like learn the ins and outs and like figure out what what idiosyncrasies there are where because otherwise it's Will and I throwing stuff at the wall and figuring out what sticks what slides off very quickly and what uh takes 24 to 48 hours to re-encode. So we'll figure out what that is uh eventually. Yeah. Um absolutely. Uh, I also do want to uh thank um Janet uh YouTube comments for uh letting me know about the schedule and get to go live and that that actually is a thing that like people use. See on Twitch we technically have a

schedule but people don't generally show up ahead of time because of the schedule. It's more like a general, oh this is happening on this day. If I'm around I'll show up. But but on YouTube, it seems like if I put a thing that says there's going to be a stream here, people show up ahead of time. Uh which is great. So now I know and we're going to be doing that going forward. See, we're we're learning all kinds of things so quickly. I feel like every one of these uh will uh you seemed like every little one there's like one additional thing we're doing better with it. Yeah. I mean, listen, we got without telling them anything, there's a reason that I'm trying to get all the tech locked down as quickly as possible, so that if we did something new that broke a lot of the tech, I would at least know what it was supposed to look like when we started. That's right. And we will of course not be doing anything new that will break the tech in roughly a month and or give or change a few days time. Yeah, that

definitely not in 19 days. We don't know the official date. We don't want to say uh Great. So, I was saying the truth. It's definitely not in 19 days. I sure. Yeah. Also, on the Twitch side of things, thank you for um the eternal bane of our existence, the hype train. Now I cannot drink my coffee back in a French press, baby. Also, Pabara, thank you so much for the $5 super chat on YouTube telling us that we can't lecture you because you're not extending the hype train. That is true. That is true. Janet is actually immune from criticism from the hype train from about the hype train. You're not immune from criticism in general. Of course, but like you're not you're not hyping. So, there's no hype. Yeah, there's no hyping apparently over on YouTube. Uh, and we've we've said multiple times as your two internet dads talk I guess we'd be the grandparents to the kids we're talking

about right now. Talk to your kids about hype before someone else does. That's right. Um, oh, they did it. Yeah, they they moved it. Well, you know what I want to get, Will? This would be good for the YouTube side of things. We could put this on the long list down the line. I would love it if that hype train thing that we designed a while ago could show up here so that when we like, oh, they just knocked out level one, we're at level two, we could show it off so that that way we don't seem like we're crazy to half of the audience. I think I can do it without adding too many bells and whistles, but you know, uh yeah. Uh Coffee Clones, uh us Janets are the responsible siblings. No, that's fair. That's fair. Uh and Coffee Clone does have a point. My my only worry is that us Jans are missing a precious few seconds of the pre-show. Uh it is literally long enough for me to hit the button, look over, see that I'm live on Twitch, and then look over and press the button and say go go gadget YouTube. Um we are we are reducing that uh to as little as possible, but I do need to

make sure that each of them independently is live. Um so that's sort of a technical uh unavoidable thing. YouTube learned hyping. That's correct. And that would have been the only way that could have been better generic is if you ended it with dads. That's right. YouTube learned hype from watching you dads. Yeah. Oh man. Zariah says, and I I think this is true. Uh YouTube live does shockingly well for how janky the back end seems. Do you find the chat on Twitch to be a bit better than on YouTube? I think that's very true. I think the advantage on YouTube is the VOD is going to be better, right? That's just sort of like the that's one of the big things. If you're not watching live and you have a choice to watch between to watch on YouTube afterwards or Twitch afterwards, you're almost certainly going to have a better experience on YouTube, particularly because I can put chapter markers in all of our um story titles. If you go back to last week's episode, I've got chapters for every single topic that we talk about, including when the actual show starts. Um, so that's a huge

advantage and it's cleaner and it's less annoying to get to and like there's a bunch of advantages for that because YouTube is a video platform, right? And Twitch is a uh Twitch is not by their own admission. By the way, uh we did discover this last week when we were um when I was I went to So they have a they have a here's a quick pre-show news story for you. So, so they have a monthly show called Patch Notes where Dan Clancy, the CEO of Twitch, talks about things that are upcoming. So, there's a bunch of stuff and a lot of it's very boring and a lot of it doesn't apply to us, like enforcement actions. If you've gotten banned on Twitch for doing something, how is that going to affect your revenue stream? I'll give you a hint. We've never been banned on Twitch and it's highly unlikely that we ever will be because our PG-13ness keeps us well within the bounds of the terms of service. Um, we've joked about doing a hot tub stream

where Matt and I both wear old timey like the blue and white striped elbow and kneelength uh uh bathing suits and like straw hats as like a joke, right? That's like the furthest that joke's ever going to go, right? So anyway, at the end of it, at the end of it, in Twitch chat, Twitch, the Twitch account said in Twitch chat, "If you missed this stream, look for it tomorrow on YouTube." You played yourself, my brother in code. What are you doing? It's so insane. Why? I'm not I'm not saying don't put it up on YouTube, but you could just say like we're archiving the VOD right here on Twitch. You know, the service that you came to learn about. Yeah. Um, also I need to look up uh a quick thing. Oh, is is the is the magic news coming in hot and heavy?

Yeah, the magic Oh, wow. Wow. They've decided that Wow. They have decided that standard can die in a fire. No just in no bands in standard despite the fact that uh up the beantock and monstrous rage desperately need to be banned in standard. Uh no changes. Underworld breach banned modern uh sewing microspawn and troll of ka doom banned in legacy. That makes sense. Uh troll was one of the strongest starts. It was dark rit uh cycle troll exume and then you had like a 65 on turn one uh and then a bunch of changes in popper. Real quick also sparkling uh makes a good point. The main reason I watch live stream on YouTube is solely for the live replay going back a few seconds without leaving the stream. Yeah, that's huge. You don't have to like break the whole thing. It can just sort of happen which is really nice. Yeah. Um and popper by the way is a real format again. Basky buds scale loath rebirth and deadly dispute banned prophetic prism and a high tide

unbanned. That's very interesting. Anyway, well, the hype train has completed. So, we distracted them by throwing them news and funny stories. That's right. We made sure that we we nipped it in the in the hype bud. Will, would you like to thank all of the all of the peoples? Grass Vortex, thank you so much for 78 months, audio bookmark for 40 months, Alex for 54 months with Prime. Zerod for 100 bitties. Proshaft for 100 bitties. Not Cromwell for 60 months. Uh Copper Chef Kerry and Luna for bitties. Darkwell for 13 months with Prime. Luna for bitties. Ranger for 29 months. Roby for 47 months. And that's a hype train. Thank you so much for all of that support. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Well, I guess cuz I'm undercaffeinated. Will, I feel like we should start the show proper so that we could talk about all these news stories and more importantly so I can inject this glorious beverage directly into my body. That seems reasonable. All right. Uh, if you're new on YouTube, we're going to go to black for ever so briefly a moment. Panic not. We will

return with with an intro and the the show proper as it is recorded for Nebula. Here is an interesting thing. If we do this and we hit the show open and it glitches because we didn't load it preload it into the RAM, voted it before you joined. Oh, you did it. You're so good. So, it's not going to happen. It shouldn't happen. So, 100% chance it doesn't happen now. It's going to happen. All right. Great. Be right back. [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 our intro graphic never glitches once. See, now Rocky is going to think that it did glitch once because you wouldn't say that unless it glitched once. But Rocky, it really didn't glitch. And that's the

funny part. And I'm saying it never has and never will, right? In a tone that drips with sarcasm. I I resent that. I feel like you only resent that because you haven't had your coffee yet. You're absolutely correct. I need to just This is too much. I'm just gonna like You're not going to see me push it. But see, this is it. It's going to go below the desk. I'm going to do it safe so I don't like actually spray myself. I'm not used to this French press yet, Will. But I have it now and I'm a big fan. Okay, good. I'm glad. I thought you were Matt and not a large device designed to propel air around. What is a mat if not a large device designed to propel air around? That's fair. It's a large device device designed to propel air around in a humorous fashion. Well, well, yeah. Or loud one. A loud one enough. I'm going to go with humorous. I'm going to say that your humor is more important than your volume. Oh, well, that's very sweet. Will Well, how was your weekend? Uh, it was really good. It was really It was really, really good. Um, very, very

happy. Uh, lots of nerd time. Uh, I'm all prepared for the f the Final Fantasy 14 Savage tier, which drops tomorrow. That's right. And the world first race starts tomorrow, and we hope it doesn't end tomorrow. Um, because the last one was fast. This one I based on the normal raids is going to be much longer. Um, so that's good. My hope is that they haven't cleared uh the second raid by the time I wake up, but we'll see. Um, so that's Wake up a little early. Yeah, I'm not waking up early. Woke up. That's crazy. I got woken up early this morning by people working directly outside my window on a thing that's been broken for years. So, not really feeling the waking up. My dreams. No, Matt. It was my will to live. Anyway, it's your will to It's Will's will, man. Uh, and I got to do a bunch of um competitive gaming this weekend. I um finished out the magic season cuz I'd forgotten to play in the magic season,

ranked ladder season at all. So, I I finished that out and I actually got to play some ranked um rivals. Uh and the game didn't crash and nobody abandoned, which are both have historically been rarities for me. That's good. Yeah, that's good. I uh I got to play a game this weekend. Uh I got to play split fiction a bunch. Ah, interesting. Uh Jamie and I played that. It is an absolute delight. Um I will say real quick uh mini baby tiny review of Split Fiction. It is a very polished couch co-op game that you can also play with your uh with your online friends if you'd like by the people who made It Takes Two. Um also I I love the fact you can own one version of one copy of the game on your platform and another person can just download it for free to play with you. But um the it's it's about two writers that get sucked into their own stories. And it's funny because I'm not normally a fan of stories about

writers. I I don't know what it is. They just always kind of bounce off me. But this is the right level of like clever character study mixed with like current day slight cringe and like real like like odd little tropes that like shouldn't work, but the perfect mixture of all of those things make them work very very well. It is an absolute delight. And if you have someone in your life that you like playing video games with on a couch next to them, uh I highly suggest split fiction. It is if you if you have someone that you don't like playing video games with and you want to get into fights with constantly, as always, I recommend Bread and Fred, which is the most adorable rage game you've ever played with a friend. Um it's about two penguins trying to climb a mountain and trying very hard not to murder your friends. There you go. Well, yeah. coffee is telling me uh not my beverage coffee the viewer is telling me that I mentioned this last week uh apologies slash you're welcome because uh it's that good yeah split split fiction has been uh split fiction also

and this didn't make the show notes uh got three Guinness World Records all at the same time for like co-op games now I will also say that their Guinness World Records that were designed almost seemingly with split fiction specifically in mind. Uh so, you know, jury's out on whether that was a a publicity stunt or not, but it it is kind of cool. Um yeah, another thing though, uh brings us to a very mini story uh that I got to do this weekend that I do I I don't normally like tooting horns. Uh but if you are not familiar with this yet, uh uh Rocky over on Nebula, I'm sure you are. Um, Abolish Everything is a phenomenal show over on Nebula that is basically PowerPoint presentation comedy that gets p basically someone has to go up and try to abolish something and pitch it to a live audience recorded at a comedy club at Caveat in NYC and uh then uh a panel

of the establishment of four other improv comics basically like come at that person hard to try to dismantle the argument. Uh this weekend on Friday at the 10 p.m. show, uh I got to record my set. Uh I've been mentioning this was coming for a while. Uh I have not done standup in New York City in I think roughly 13 years, over a decade. Uh and I practiced a lot and the recording happened and I think it went very very well. So uh this is my shameless plug for you two uh uh on Nebula. I don't know when my episode comes out. It's not out yet. Obviously, it was just recorded, but it'll be coming out in the next few weeks or a month or something like that. Uh, but there's three episodes of Abolish Up Everything Up right now. It is one of my absolute favorite things I've ever done, and I hope that you all check it out before mine comes out and when mine comes out because, uh, phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal show. Also, uh, Chandler Dean, the host, is an absolute delight. And uh Amy

Muller, the um uh the director uh from Wendover Fame uh is absolutely wonderful. Who's been on our uh our last birthday stream. Amy hung out for a bit. Yeah, birthday. Anyway, uh yeah, I will not be saying I will not be saying uh what I will be abolishing uh because I don't want to spoil it, but it will work out. It will it will play to the Extra Credits and Extra History audience um quite well. I will say that. So, please check that out. Obviously, use code extra credits if you're going to join up for Nebula, but um Oh, God. Will, it was like legit magical. Like it was I I very rarely am happy with the performance that I give and I think I lucked into my like broken clock twi right twice whatever moment and it was okay. All right. Well, it was really we have rules against self dep here. I'm pretty sure that you're right far more than than twice. Well, my my clock does

have 47 numbers so um sure. Yeah, seems reasonable. Seems fine to me. Uh, okay. Uh, Ramy, I am not abolishing heists. I would never take that away from you. I just because if I abolished heists, I wouldn't be able to chastise all of you for heisting. That's correct. And that's one of our favorite things to do is to yell at you for heisting. Also, Matt, uh, on the on the vibe of heists, um, we do have potentially, uh, for the next time that they become relevant, uh, chat may have accidentally in the Discord figured out what the teams are. You see, Team Order. So, if you've never been to one of our fundraising streams, there are two teams, Team Order and Team Chaos. And we we've discussed that there is nothing more orderly than a sphere. Okay. So we have the the spherical cow team. Yep. And then there is nothing

more chaotic than the notion of an entire island of crabs crab raving. So it's team crab. Yeah. I mean that makes that makes a lot of sense. Team cow and team crab. That's that's what it is now. Uh yeah. Okay. Great. Excellent. Oh, I like this. So, so you're saying this show is going to be the heist of comedy? Uh, it's bringing a lot of it. And I listen, I'm not going to say where it was uh procured from uh for legal reasons, you know, heisting notwithstanding. Yeah. Anyway, that was just a quick uh a quick self-promo thing I wanted to do at the beginning of this because it was an absolute delight and everyone who's making that show is uh awesome. So, yeah. All right. It fell off the truck. Tenant Dan, you're right. As truck experts, as truck as as graduates from uh trucku, home of the fighting trucks, go trucks. That's right. Um I think that is highly accurate. And that was that's a nice transition to bringing us into the world

of video games. Don't you think, Will, we're trucking right into it. Well, I was I was going to say that, you know, speaking of being uh a stop clock being right twice a day. All right, everybody. I'm going to need you to bust out your red string, your corkboard, your everything. I'm going to need everyone to suspend your uh rational thought for just merely a moment and go with me down this rabbit hole. I genuinely think this one might be something. Um, Silkong's metadata has been updated and that's not new because the internet collectively loses their entire mind every time Silkong's metadata gets updated. Sure. However, there are two the two pieces of metadata that were updated in this case actually lead towards some reasonable speculation. Um, in this case, the two things that happened were one, its description was updated to mention Game Pass. That's kind of weird because it was mentioned several years ago that it was going to be a day one on Game Pass

deal with Microsoft and then the Steam listing was never updated to reflect that which was weird at the time and now it finally has been seemingly for no particular reason. And then the other big one is the copyright date was updated to be 2025. That feels like more of a something than any other thing thus far. That is that is my my um my thought as well is that updating the copyright dates is the big deal, right? That that is that is in fact the the the focus of my oh they've actually updated things. So yeah, the most likely time and we're going to be talking about this a lot throughout the show. This is uh if you haven't guessed by the well, if you're in the VOD, you will probably have guessed by the thumbnail that's probably going to be a Switch 2 thumbnail that we're talking about the Switch 2 a lot this week. But what if it's not? But what if it's not? What if it What if it's one of our other stories? It's true. It could be. Um, now you've just made me look like a fool. No, not at all. What if What if you're right, Will? Then you'll be known as as

a prophet. That's true. That's right. Will profit of thumbnails. Profit of thumbnails. Put that on the business card. Right. Yeah. Um the most likely time that it gets more we find out more information is during the switch to uh live stream because that is likely not certainly when they will announce um day one games right that is like announcing the system is cool but that's not what sells systems right announcing the games that will be on at day one will be part of what sells the systems because Nintendo is the only company that's still running on exclusives. Um, now I'm not saying PlayStation kind of does, but they're they're they're uh well timed exclusives, I would say, because nine times out of 10 at this point, a year later, it at least comes to PC, right? And Switch has real exclusives like permanent. Yeah. Locked in. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I think that, uh, that might be something, but either way, we'll find out soon. And now I've reported on the

red string. I just love I listen Will you are our resident um even though I have played it to completion Hollow Night on stream I think you got one ending one of the ending not like the whole thing but you've done the whole shebang I believe right I I have I have Hollow Night patches all over my patchfest yes right um so you are the resident uh uh Hollow Knight connoisseur here and uh Silkong has been a thing you've been talking about since for I think we probably the first conversation we ever had was probably about Silk Song. So, uh I trust your um wild speculations is what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying anything. I'm telling people what's possible and I'm reporting on the red string. I'm not trying to overhype it. It's already been hyped to Alan back. Uh so, you know, we're just we're you know, hold on. Um all right.

Uh, next up, Matt was really spicy this morning when he did the uh, image chat. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Nah, nothing. What are you talking about? Nothing at all. Listen, it's just two good friends [Music] um, splitting off a piece of one of themselves and for $1.25 25 billion and then but like not getting any control like I this deal Ubisoft Ted just bought a a chunk of Ubisoft but they did it in a really weird way. Uh not in a weird way in a what's the word I'm looking for? Feeling like an overly complex way which heck when you're dealing with that much money maybe it does have to be complex and I'm just being a little hater. Um well, this story comes to us from gamesindustry uh.biz and basically uh what it does is

through this cash infusion, Ubisoft has split a um basically a subsidiary based upon Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow 6. Uh they're dealing with how what that will still be named. I don't think what they they know what that is, but like that's the part that I believe Tencent bought into, but it's still a minority share and it's still answers to the original family behind Ubisoft. I I'm So, Matt, what you're telling me is they put three cards on a table and one of them's a queen and if I can find it, then I might actually have some idea of where corporate ownership of these IPs has landed. But the trick is that the queen's not on the table by the time the cards finish moving. I have no idea. I I truly don't. This is Okay. Okay. Regardless of if this deal is great or not. I think I think a we

Ubisoft's uh stock price was tumbling and I know that Assassin's Creed Shadows has been getting we're going to talk about it I think next. um but uh has been getting really good reviews and that's been uh honestly a kind of shot in the arm because Star Wars Outlaws and what was the other one that did pretty poorly. The last two I think Ubisoft games really didn't do that great and so they were hurting and they needed help and Tencent come in and swept it up and that that's good. There was talks of them buying them but I don't think that was ever really going to happen. The thing that got Oh, sorry. I think a lot of people throw around well X is just going to buy Y like that's easy to do or desirable for the companies involved. Not like not like that it's ever desirable for us, right? Because we've talked about the more that corporations consolidate power, the less the consumer actually has a voice or is heard. Um like not even in that way, but like it's not really desirable for them, I don't think. So, uh yeah, I I don't

think buying them is ever on the table. Yeah. Uh well, I just on this and I urge you to go in the show notes and look at the gamesindustry.biz uh um article because the thing that got me about this story, it's not even like people buy minority stakes in companies all the time. Companies buy companies. This is old hat at this point, right? But the verbiage of the public statements. Sure. I'm always just like, how does this excite anybody? Even Even the corpos like I don't understand it. Sure. So, so let's see what was my favorite one. Today Ubisoft is opening a new chapter in its history said uh Yev I can never Gilong the CEO. Um, as we accelerate the company's transformation, this is a foundational step in changing Ubisoft's operating model that will enable us to be both agile and ambitious. We are

focused on building a strong ecosystem designed to be evergreen, growing high-erforming brands, and creating new IP powered by cutting edge and emerging technologies. Holy mother of buzzwords back. Hold on. So, but also like wasn't that your job before? Like, wasn't isn't that what a video game company does? Continuing on with the creation of this dedicated dedicated subsidiary that will spearhead development for three of our largest franchises and the onboarding of 10 cent as a minority investor. We are crystallizing the value of our assets, strengthening our balance sheets and creating the best conditions for these franchises long-term growth and success. With its dedicated and autonomous leadership team, it will focus on transforming these three brands into unique ecosystems. I also have eaten an entire thesaurus. But like I it's okay. They make video games. Huh? This is This show isn't called Ecosystems for Breakfast. No. And I I really get

upsetti spaghetti when it's treated like this. And I know it's all business and corpo nonsense speak, but like it's just so so so blatant. I will read one more section because the bud the buzzwords just keep coming. We are committed to building a sharper, more focused organization. One where talented teams will take our brands to the next level. Accelerate the growth of our emerging franchises and leading innovation in next generation technologies and services. All with the goal of delivering enriching memorable games. They mentioned games once here that exceed players expectations and creating superior value for our shareholders and other stakeholders. very key there. Uh it's like oh god it's I man I could have worn my ET the rich shirt today and I had it's just it's just a lot and I know it's for

the shareholders or the shareholders and stakeholders. Very good that we're splitting them up now. Uh, but this is a game that makes uh pixels of light dance around and let you pretend you're a um a Renaissance assassin. Uh, and it's just I don't know. I I get so disheartened when I read this stuff and I I get that there's a world like it's not meant for me or a lot of us. I feel like this is a more like but like I will I will turn this frown upside down and then unless Will you have anything else to add, we can move on to Assassin's Creed Shadows. Um I feel a little heartened that the word salad that I just read to you kind of makes me feel icky because if it didn't make me feel icky, I feel like I'd like kind of like myself less. Yeah. Yeah, this is the

this is the it's not ever supposed to get easier kind of thing, right? This is the thing that should never be easy. Yeah. It's it's when people are like, "Ah, yes, I enjoy the corpo dril. Feed me more of that corpo slop." And you're like, now, you know, giving credit where credit is due, what this probably did, what this what this uh minority stake buyin probably did was save a ton of people's jobs. Yeah. Um, and I'll be curious to watch the story as it goes forward because if we start seeing layoffs, that's insane at this point. You got 1.2 billion with a B. You got you got a really nice uh runway here. Let's see what you can do with your existing team and maybe even hiring more people. Maybe that's what it will do with with sort of a subsidiary sort of splitting off like that. So, here's at least some positive benefits for the job market uh for game devs. This spin-off company should be called

probably. Speaking of, so uh we actually had a comment last week that asked why we didn't talk about Shadows. It's because it was too there wasn't anything to say yet. Lots of people were playing it and it just come out and I kind of wanted to wait and see. I'm not playing Shadows. It's not my kind of game. There are plenty of people who are. I have nothing against Shadows. I just Assassin's Creed is not for me and that's okay. I haven't played since Black Flag. This is the first one that I will probably eventually pick up in a few months time when my backlog is clear. So, um, one of the interesting things that happens around Assassin's Creed is how well they walk the line between history and historical fiction. That's been sort of an interesting point for the whole franchise for a very long time, right? A reminder when um Notradam burned down, right, and they needed to rebuild it, one of the teams they

actually contacted was the Assassin's Creed team who had made the most accurate three-dimensional model of actual factual Notradam that they used to rebuild the cathedral. Right? There are parts of Assassin's Creed that have been very um uh that have been very historically focused that have taught things about history. That's really cool. But there's a line where like I hate to break it to you. I guess technically spoilers for um uh which one is it? Uh the the one in Greece. It's not Origins Odyssey. Odyssey. Thank you. Spoilers for Assassin's Creed Odyssey. You don't get to become immortal by possessing the staff of Kaduca. like the the staff of of Hermes. You don't that doesn't sorry that doesn't work. So like well I mean Assassin's Creed has always had a little bit of like magical wonkadoo in it along with a bunch of science fiction of Sturggo and the Animus. Is that what it's called? Um they are entirely obviously not real

unless we're thinking we're in the world of split fiction in which case who knows. Um, but the like I loved I've in the ones I've played and I've played um I played one, I played the Etsio trilogy, I played three, and I played Black Flag. Yep. Um, and what I really liked was the the references to history. Yeah. like the it I I I the game sets itself up to not be like a even though the their elements of the game for instance their geography and their architecture as the years have gone on they've become more and more like wanting to be exacting with that stuff and that's awesome. Um but also it's a game where you relive your memories by plugging into a your ancestral memories by plugging into a computer. So, like, you know, it's there's a balancing act there, right? So, one of the um one of the things that I was kind of interested

to see is this is weird, what Japanese gamers thought about the game set in a historically fictionalized version of Japan. Kind of interesting, right? Like there's a there's an awful lot of there were an awful lot of opinions about the historical accuracy of the game um from a bunch of people who were I'm going to be somewhat tactful here beyond incredibly but heard that a character who has major references in actual Japanese history was included in a game about Japanese history. Okay. Um, but the reviews from Japan are pretty good. Um, generally people seem to be enjoying it. It's selling really well. Um, the only other Assassin's Creed game that's out selling it that it has um that it hasn't outsold is Valhalla. And there's a reasonable argument to be made that Valhalla is not

a valid comparison because pandemic lockdown. Uh, Valhalla released during pandemic lockdown and people were consuming digital media at an accelerated rate. Um, so we do have to take that into account. Um, yeah, but uh, Shadows is doing pretty well and people seem to like it and think that it strikes a good balance between actual history and the fun historical fiction that we all love out of Assassin's Creed. And there's been a few interesting things. I believe there was a patch because it it um there were shrines that were u not on not like a quest or anything, but like destroyable. Yeah. in in the game. And uh I believe a few folks uh it might have even been the government, I don't I don't remember the story, spoke out in Japan being like, "Hey, that's not that's not great." And so they just patched it and made the shrines indestructible now, which is great. Like like it doesn't Yeah. The um there was a bunch of I'm gonna I'm gonna say um enthusiastic dialogue. Dialogue about it. um aka

people shouting at each other on the internet. Um and my thought on that whole thing is kind of that a lot of people are missing a big chunk of the point, right? That that someone said, "Hey, we've historically had problems with people not understanding appropriate decor uh decorum in shrines in Japan." Which is true. There have been cases recently even where shrines have been uh discouraging visitors who are not actively like worshippers at the shrine because of the impact that tourism has had on these places, right? Um and a lot of people were like but this is you know censorship or whatever. I was like, "No, they they asked the artist to change the art to help avoid an unintended real world impact, and the artist said, "Yes, seems legit." And they did it. Yeah. Like I don't Yeah, that seemed like a good move on my at

least in my mind, right? Like artists are allowed to change art when their art doesn't have the real world impact that they want it to have. And whether or not we like Ubisoft, which is an entirely separate question in that, in this case, they are the artists in question. And Assassin's Creed Shadows is a work of art that they made. So, you know, yeah, we love a whoops arvad. Correct. Um, so yeah, I don't know. I'm I am very It's funny. The the most Shadow stuff that comes across my timeline, specifically on Reddit, is people sharing their screen grabs on the PS5 Pro. Apparently, it's the first like game that like really does something special. And I've been looking at them. like I I haven't It's hard to like judge gameplay videos when you're knocking your res down of what you're looking at into a 1920 x 1080 thing on your phone. It's not quite clear, but in the in the photo mode and the images that they're doing on that thing, apparently it is nuts. And so I just sort of nom nom eat

it up cuz I do not have a pro, nor do I plan on getting one. Uh but it's just nice to see that like, oh, here's something that's taking advantage of that extra horsepower. Here's the other thing that I absolutely love about Shadows. If you see an animal, you can pet it. A+. Great. And then you can add it to your hideout. So, you can make it a mission in the game to just pet all the animals and bring them all to your hideout and give them all a safe place to be. That's it. That's That's cool. That's a thing you can do in Assassin's Creed Shadows with all the other ninja and samurai stuff. Great. Awesome. Excellent. You can pet all the animals and you can create an animal sanctuary. Perfect. Great. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Great. Awesome. Um, okay. And then on but here's a reason. Here's a reason why. Yeah. Transitioning to what we're doing next. Here's a reason why I'll probably be buying this game well before I play it. Uh because a bit ago, I don't even know

the background, nor is it important, but um wellknown uh video game playthrough plagiarist Elon Musk uh uh started going after Hassan for some reason because I think Hassan liked the game or or something, I don't even know. And then started calling him a shill advertising a game for money or whatever. and blah blah blah blah blah. It doesn't even Right. Yeah. Tell me you don't understand streaming without telling me you don't understand streaming. Insane. Um but then the official Assassin's Creed Twitter account came back with this. Is that what the guy playing your Path of Exile 2 account told you? and and this this response ratioed him so

hard to the point where the Assassin's Creed uh Twitter account has been and other elements of their advertising campaign have been using it in their advertising. Insane, right? And and and I did want I did want to call something out. So Phil has a very great um point. I'm almost surprised he didn't ban their account. Ah but there Phil, there is there exists a quandry for him. You see that little gold check mark? They paid for that little gold check mark. They paid Twitter money for the little gold check mark. And if he bans them because they said something he didn't want, then people might stop buying the little gold check mark, which is one of the ways that Twitter is barely making any money, but they're not really making any money. So, they need to make all the not any money they can make. Um, and so they're kind of immune from that, which is hilarious that a brand account just absolutely

just it's in and a good look. Again, Ubisoft as many problems. We've talked about them a lot on this show, but this this the community manager to Tyler's point just deserves a raise. Yeah. Like who whoever like I'm sure they didn't ask for approval. They just went for it, right? Well, it's one of these things like, okay, I'm not going to get too much into this isn't even politics truly other than everything is politics because it's the interaction with people. But like taking away everything that's going on everything is going on with Elon right now. You're the richest man in the world. Richest man in the world. Why? Why is this your time? Why is this? What are you doing? It makes no sense at all. How How deep I I don't understand. Hold on. So So So to that

point, because it's so crazy that he's injecting himself into this space, again, a space he pretends to be in a lot. I'm not saying he doesn't like video games. Apparently he does, right? Yep. But he injects himself in a way that is false in these spaces. And so then to get but but every time that seems to happen more and more and I like this, you're getting called out by it because the online gaming space has a lot of um history and interesting issues that it deals with in in in that history. But one thing that specifically I feel like video gamers, for better or worse, are are consistent at is a brutal clapback. So why insert yourself knowing that you are are kind of pretending a little bit and get into one of these situations? I just don't I it's I don't

understand the methodology. Yeah. Yep. I feel like [Music] um in my mind the thing that Elon is chasing now is things that money can't directly buy him. He's chasing cred and respect. And so when someone disrespects him and questions his cred all at the same time, it really stings his ego, right? Because if it could be bought with money, he'd buy it, but he can't buy this. Yeah. No, that's a very good point. And the interesting, it's so funny because you're looking at all the things that he can buy, uh, political power, all you know, all this other stuff, but the gamers are keeping one tiny granted an extremely inconsequential element in check, but it's obviously bothering. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely, 100%. Anyway, I don't want to keep going on it. It just I I will be buying a copy of Assassin's Creed Shadows much earlier than I think I was going to. Kudos to you, heroic community manager. Um, brava, Matt, what? What do you got? Do you remember? Do you remember? Do you remember? Yes. That the old Real Men of Genius commercials. Oh, the real men of Gen. Yeah. real man of genius. I want to write one for the Assassin's Creed community management. Here's to you, Assassin's Creed community manager. To you, Assassin's Creed community manager. Oh. Anyway, um this bit brought to you by We're Too Old for This. Oh, yeah. All right. Next up, uh, in a very rare

move, Blizzard is rolling back some at their discretion, hardcore deaths. This is kind of a change in policy from Blizzard, and I think it's largely due to Only Fangs, but I don't follow enough WoW to know for sure. Um, so uh, Blizzard's been having a problem recently uh with DOS attacks. Um, this is not well, okay, they're calling it a DOS attack. It might be a DOS attack. 14 has also been having network problems that could be described as DOS attacks. So, this could be a general MMO problem right now. MMOs are prime targets for DOS attacks because they prove that someone can take down a large piece of infrastructure and gamers complain a lot when it happens. So, you have proof that it happened. Um, but with the interest in WoW hardcore right now, it has also led to a lot of high-profile deaths. Um, where

people have lost their characters because lag happened at the wrong time. I'm sure if you've ever played an MMO, you can absolutely imagine the moment where, you know, two seconds of lag, a second of lag means that you go from, oh, everything is fine to, oh, I'm extremely dead, right? and it's not your fault. You can't do anything about it because you you just you lose control of your character and then you die. So, um it is kind of interesting to note that they are walking back this very um they had a very strict policy. We will not roll back hardcore character deaths ever. And then recently they've kind of put an asterisk on that. And it's yeah, unless we think it was kind of unfair and it was probably the result of a dos and then Yeah. But weirdly, they've also not done it for things like mages teleporting or like blinking and clipping through terrain and falling forever and dying in the kill plane below the map. That won't get your character re uh

revived, but this will. So, I'm not an expert on these things. I don't play hardcore MMOs because I don't have time for that. It does feel a little weird and inconsistent that this is what they're deciding to do. I thought we'll at some point because I bet you due to chicainery. Sure. We should play WoW Hardcore for like an afternoon. Like there's no way we don't die. Sure. Do you know what I mean? And we could even we could even get maybe a bit of the community together on like one of the servers, one of the days and be like, "All right, everybody. Here we go." uh and just see what happens. And the stream goes until we die. I unfortunately feel like that might take longer than we want it to. Not if I have anything to say about Okay, that's fair. You've played WoW

before and I'm savage rating in 14 and looking into getting into ultimates. Um so it's not like we lack raid experience or MMO experience. So, you know, kind of interesting. Anyway, I just I I have not been remotely interested in playing something uh WoW related uh well, I play Hearstone, but I mean like an MMO uh before before classic hardcore. There's just something about that that lets that dragon I've been chasing since WoW and I had time to play an MMO. Uh I don't know. It just seems like something that could be pretty silly and fun. Thunder remains upset about this, by the way. This was an entire expansion ago and I walked into a move and didn't get hit. Like I I I should I walked bodily into a thing because I got a little confused with my left and right. That happens sometimes. And there's a move called there's a there's a move that's cinderwing and it's either left or right. And I was very sure that left was

right and right was left. And I walked right into it and nothing happened. and Thunder has never let me forget it once. Well, um that's what happens. Anyway, uh rolling this back, I do think that this is a good move for Hardcore. The what it the problem that it does for Blizzard is now they're going to be inundated with uh a lot of messages for people wanting their hardcore characters revived. Yes. Uh some probably for legit reasons and others for not. like they've opened the floodgate now. And I hope that they have something in place to kind of deal with that because again, God, spending days, weeks on a thing and then having a no like a clipping through a floor or something to kill you y is uh kind of insane to the point where I don't know if I would actually play this game without a visual record

going like like recording gameplay. Otherwise, if something were to happen, you'd have no re recourse whatsoever. Not to say that even a video will help you, but like I don't know, it's a it's a it's a dangerous world these hardcore players live in. Yeah. Um, yeah. Anyway, this is not the first time hardcore games have experienced this. There's all kinds of Yeah, right. DS is correct. All skill-based games have this problem on unstable networks to some degree and all networks are unstable to some degree. It I think it it depends on the am the risk being absorbed like how much um per unit downtime is being risked, right? So like great we lost this game of Counterstrike. Now, it could be a pretty high stakes game of Counter-Strike, but it's also only one round of Counterstrike, and they're they go to like best of 13,

right? Yeah. Um, and so, okay, cool. Does suck. No question. But that's recoverable. And you've Right. Like, you can just go again. This is hundreds, potentially thousands of hours in a character being erased, right? So, I think the the key issue is how much risk are people willing to absorb, right? And like it feels like um woow hardcore characters and hardcore like Path of Exile and Diablo characters are sort of the exemplar, right, of the top end of the risk perspective for that. I've never done a hardcore character in a Diablo game and I've never had any interest. And I if we could go off on a slight little tangent here for a second and sort of talk about the the psychology maybe as to why for for why I make why I would be excited to play a WoW character hardcore but not a Diablo character hardcore. And I think

weirdly, and I'm not talking about doing this strictly, it comes down to a certain level of RP. I don't think I put like personality or or build a character per se out of the archetypes of Diablo characters. I do builds, right? like I build out a character to do X or Y, but I'm never like, oh, this is their like internally there's no story like for that specific character outside of being the Nephilim or like whatever, right? Uh whereas a WoW character, there's so much lore and story in the game or any MMO I should say where as long as the death was fair, let's say the game is functioning as intended and uh during a raid or something my hard my hardcore character fell. That would at least be the completion of a story, right?

And I think I think that's why I don't know how does everyone else sort of in Brad and Janet sort of feel about this kind of thing. Do do people actually engage in a lot of hardcore characters or is this something that maybe uh people are less interested in? Yeah. I um for me the time loss feels obnoxious to the extent that like I've thought about doing like a Minecraft hardcore series um on the channel and the number of safety precautions that I get to make in Minecraft, right? So like I'll give you I'll give you this one for free. No series that you see published on YouTube that claims that a series is a hardcore hundred days doesn't have backups. Every single one of those has a world backup. There are safet there are tech safety precautions that can be put in place because you control everything, right? and the lack of that safety net and the the riskreward of losing so much of my time because of something beyond

my control um doesn't doesn't appeal to me. Like it really it really actually just seems like a waste of time to begin with. Well, so that's kind of this is kind of my thing and I think uh and we can move on after this just I don't want to stay on here too long, but like I find it fascinating because like I agree with you completely in Diablo or in a in a less storydriven game. Sure. Um because that is my character and my build is a direct representation of my time. Yeah. whereas and you can play WoW this way too, but I think there's an or an an MMO, but there's also like just an interesting thing from the RPG like the actual role playinging perspective of these characters like I don't know there there's because you're interacting with friends and then like what happens when an ally goes down like there's there's something and again it's not like you're

writing a story like that deep along with it but there are sort of emotional ties to it. And while I think I would be disappointed if I had played three months with a character and then it died, I think because of the the nature of what World of Warcraft meant to me and sort of where it sits in my sort of public in my in my mental zeitgeist now, um I could also once I got beyond the frustration of the moment be like, well, that's as long again as long as it was a fair ending and not a DOS attack or clipping through the floor or any of that stuff, uh then it would be kind of a beautiful gameplay experience and I I don't think I would consider it a waste of time. Yeah, but I I I'm I'm still trying to figure out the line where that is. I love I love I love Red's take on this. When I'm driving, I don't buckle up because of my driving. I buckle up because of all the other drivers. Same with our MMO. Yeah. There you go. There you go. It um It's particularly noteworthy. It is particularly noteworthy that this would never work in 14 for one simple inescapable reason.

Healers have a button. That button is called rescue. It pulls anyone in your party to your location by the shortest path possible. Even if that path would get them killed. Doesn't work in doesn't work in 14. Every healer has access to that button. There's too much possibility for griefing. There's already problems with griefing in 14 because of it. Um, I've seen people eat 10day bans for accidentally rescuing a tank with a tank buster into a party. Like not like genuinely not on purpose. Uh, and yeah. Yeah. Uh, question for Matt. Are you alliance or horde? I was mainly Alliance. Um, I have many I had many I guess they're all still there characters. Uh, but I was mainly Alliance. Yeah. Anyway, we can move on. I just I I found this story fascinating because I wanted to dive into the the psychological elements of a

hardcore character in various games. I think it's fascinating and kind of in a world of and again I truly from a time perspective and from a million perspectives I want games to have safety rails and backups so that you don't feel bad playing them. They're supposed to be fun. But it is nice that there is a mode that can give you this experience of danger. Uh I don't know. It's neat. I dug it. Absolutely. Uh okay. So we've got less than a minute until ads roll in. So we'll we'll stay here and won't start our next topic just yet. A reminder if you're new over on the tubes of you, uh Twitch gets ads at the top of uh every hour to keep the stream pre-roll free. So when people come in and join and hang out, they don't get slapped with a minute of pre-roll ads, which in my opinion is the worst thing that could happen to someone coming in. Um, so instead, we Matt and I will do uh ads for things you can't buy while some part of Twitch chat receives ads for

things that you could buy. Um, so we're gonna we're going to sell you stuff um while they get sold stuff and then we'll return to our regular scheduled content after that. specifically, you'll never be able to get the stuff we're selling you. Nor is there any exchange of uh monetary compensation for goods and or services. It is completely false and an exercise in our own futility. That's Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I like ads because you can't be what you can't buy. True. Yeah. Yeah. True. Um Oh, uh yes, by the way, uh Micah is correct. Um the mic recognizes screenshot. Yes. This is Moments Before Disaster Strikes with Leroy Jenkins. It's a classic. It's it's it's you can't go wrong with it. Our the patron saint of bad ideas. Mhm. Um Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Restroy. Yeah, you should go first. Okay. Hey everyone, Matt from Extra Credits here. Say, are you ever going into a dungeon where you're not quite sure what could happen? Where you have a really good plan, but then one of your buddies just bolts on in and aggros every welp that you can possibly see? Well, don't worry, because after all of the dust has settled and everyone is dead, hardcore or not, at least you have chicken. That is right. chicken is available for you whenever you'd like because this patron saint, as Will has said, of bad ideas, has gifted the phrase to us all that allows us to get chicken or at least think about getting chicken and maintain our own health while being enraged that we all died. Chicken. Chicken. Behold. All right, Will. Wait for it. Wait for it. You good? as

good as ever. Hi everyone, Will from Extra Credits here. Uh, selling you on the idea of backing up your hardcore world. I know it seems like you're like, "What?" But it's hardcore. Why would I need to just back up your hardcore world? Just do it. Just if you're playing hardcore Minecraft, you should be backing up snapshots. You You have a backup. Every time you play, snapshot the world. Just back it up. Just do it because you don't know what's going to happen. And I know that you don't like if it's your fault just like die and like be okay with that. But like back up your world, right? Everyone does it. No one is actually being like just yolo in their hardcore 100 days. Just back up back up the world. Actually, everyone's giving me some really good ideas. I'm going to try I'm going to try another one. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Hey friends, Matt Credits here. Have you ever lost a hardcore account or world in any of your games? Well, introducing to you Madden Will's hardcore mode insurance. That's right. We will come

over and take Polaroid pictures as fast as we can of your computer screen so that you can send hard physical evidence if something were to go ary with your hardcore character or world to whatever societal company runs that actual endeavor. Because if you don't have hard evidence, listen, you don't know what can happen. And in a world and dare I say a business model that is intrinsically linked to fear, you can't not afford to buy pay us to pay those photos. So do that please. Right. That was word vomit. I started feeling like I was going to become a Ubisoft announcement uh message with all of the words I was just spewing there. Yeah. No, that seems that seems fair. Shar, thanks so much for that 46 months of prime. Also, NXupper, thank you so much for those 71 months. Thank you deeply for that support. Yeah. Um, yeah, chat. No, for real, every literally everyone that you've ever seen display a hardcore that's made their hardcore world into content has a backup because if they've done content

planning, they've got a backup. As someone who does content planning around things, backups. And it's not I'm not talking about like save scumming for if they die in a weird way, like some people do that. I'm talking about if your world crashes while you're flying and you die, right? Like I was playing on a Cobblemon server and I was flying around and there was a misconfiguration in the world and most people could fly most of the time just fine on flying Pokemon and I was flying in the Nether and then the game decided you're not allowed to fly anymore for no particular reason. We've never figured out why and I just got dropped into lava. Now mercifully I didn't die because I had a totem but hey listen happens. Has your hardcore game ever caused you to glitch and fall into lava and die? Then you're going to need a pretty good lawyer. Uh, and you don't just need any team. You need the Eagle team. So, I don't I don't think I don't think Devin uh represents hardcore hardcore game losses. I'll talk to him.

Maybe it's a new It's a new business. We're branching out, right? Hey, Deon, we got this pitch for you. Pitch him at the It'll make you It'll make you $7.50. We're What? We're entrepreneurs here. This is what Tree Fetty has inflated into, by the way. 750. $7.50. Yeah. All right. Great. All right. Uh, let's move on to our next story now that everyone is back from ads. Game Informer's back. Great. Good. Excellent. Wonderful. Um, they they've returned. Um, they they're gameformer.com's back up. They have a letter from the editor, uh, Matt Miller about, um, how grateful they are for everyone's support while they were away. Um, and uh I'm just like it just worth mentioning. Um, so I think it is awesome. Sorry, I got I got distracted by uh Ian's uh message or Nebula creator cross promotions a thing. Uh sometimes uh actually before we were um on Nebula uh we did a cross episode uh with Devon

about voting stuff. Uh this was years ago and we've done stuff with Tears and a couple other things. Um, yeah, we the the Nebula group is awesome and uh yeah, we whenever we get to do fun things with the crossotion stuff, it's very fun. Uh, sorry. Um, Game Informer. Will, did you read Game Informer? Occasionally. I feel like Game Informer was not as seinal for me personally as EGM. Sure. However, in my young life, I always saw Game Informer in like stores and it was always it always seemed shinier. It always seemed bigger. It always seemed kind of like more premium in a weird way. And I always like I didn't always have because I couldn't like afford to get it all the time. But uh I did all I whenever I could I really did enjoy Game Informer. And when they shut down what uh 6 months

ago, 7 months ago, that sounds right. Yeah. Uh and also Philipov hits the nail on the head too. Get in there. Do the thing. Uh the demo discs were always really really fun. Um the it was sad because uh look, we are getting into a a world where everything is a digital subscription service, right? And there is something to say about getting uh a thing actually in your hands to read. Uh this isn't the same thing. Oh, it's behind my green screen. Damn it. Never mind. I had an example, but I'll I'll save it for another time. Um I don't know. I I love that their website is back up. I also loved their game their uh games of the year show. Uh, I had friends actually who um threw parties based on that and made a actual game show for all of us to play along with the Game Informer awards. Uh, and to the point when when they stopped

doing it, they took up my friends took up the mantle. My friend Patrick took up the mantle and made a game and video clips and other things for us to play at these things at his house. And so I don't know, I have a I have a huge soft spot for them and I'm glad that they are back. Apparently it's 100% of the team is back. Um, which is a huge feat. And they're their digital site is up now. Uh, we'll link that in the uh show notes. Uh, with the um physical magazine returning soon. Yep. And listen, look, print media is is dying if not sort of cl trying with one hand sort of out of the grave. But um I think as we continue down whatever chaotic nightmare that we currently live in uh and or I'll say digital nightmare um I think people will be sort of gravitating back to um some

physical element that we can engage with because it's I don't know it just feels different and somehow magazines used to feel super disposable and now I see a magazine and I'm like artifact like you know you know what I mean? So uh I don't know I think I'm very happy to see that game informer's back and I wish them all the best. Yeah. Uh at the same time however GameStop is making a number of other questionable decisions. Uh which I would well GameStop and Game Informer are not linked but correct GameStop had some role in the Game Informer shutdown. Um, yes. But now, uh, if I correct Let me find the I I I I was trying to elegantly segue between the two. I just want to make sure that we we weren't intrinsically linking. No. Yeah. Yeah. Game Informer spun up on their own and is doing their own thing. GameStop was originally part of the shutdown. Um, uh, they continue to make bad decisions. GameStop's closing most of their a large and significant number of stores, their words, in fiscal year 2025 and are

deciding that the new way that they're going to invest money to keep their company afloat is in Bitcoin. Story speaks for itself. Let's talk about 2XO. Well, hold on. Before we do, TR happy birthday. Let's let's let's get the Bitcoin away and let's just say happy birthday to you. Abs. Um all right. Uh, now we can move on. So, Matt, you've been kind of excited about the idea of Riot making 2X KO for a while because you're a resident fighting game guy. I am. Although, I'm a bad fighting game guy. I don't have time to get good. I I was We did a Floyd hunt uh last Thursday. You can check out the VODs. Is that a VOD over on Twitch? It is. It will be a VOD for the next 60 days. Yeah. Yeah. I It's fine. um where we you have to do in Mortal Kombat 1, you have to do a bunch of between 37 different secret things. You have to do 10 of them that boot up and change every time you start the game to fight a ninja that is pink named Floyd who uh wiped the floor

with me once we got there. Um took Matt's face and wiped the inside of the screen. I did however beat him one round, but that was not enough. Um and I love fighting games. If I had time and wanted to get competitive and was uh a thousand years younger, fighting games would be the game that I I got into. I used to run my local arcades with Mortal Kombat 2. Um I I I love I love the fighting game community and I wish I had more time to be involved with it. I also know a bunch of people that love League and their characters seem very very fun and I just can't really get into uh MOBAs are a hard thing for me to to sort of dive into. And so with this in mind uh with with Riot's fighting game which has been in development for a couple years now, I've been extremely excited and uh the the news just dropped. I have to make

sure I can get to the right. Uh, yeah. So, uh, 2x KO, which is what they're calling their fighting game right now, is going to launch with 10 playable characters. Now, that seems in in today's day and age like a bit of a small roster. Um, and if it was a different business model than what they were going for, I would say that's a little odd. But this has also been truly a very small team from what I understand inside of Riot working on this along with some pillars of the fighting game community to really try to make it something that is both accessible and deep. Um they're going a lot of the uh Street Fighter 6 route with the simplified controls so you're not doing quarter circle back nonsense for everything or whatnot. Um, and I the the question that this sort of arose uh around an IGN article who which we'll link in the show notes was is this enough of a character roster to to launch a game with. I think it is based on their

monetary model which is I believe it's going to be a live service game. I don't know if it's going to be free to play. Um so like everyone would start with these 10 and then you could unlock more. Yeah. Like I don't know if they're going to just like trickle like because I imagine they're gonna try to match whatever League is where like maybe they'll even have when their roster gets deep they'll rotate like free characters for the week and then you buy because you buy characters in League. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Either with currency you've earned from playing or with real dollars. Yeah. Okay. It's going to be free to play 13 says. So um yeah. Uh, and so I looked because I knew we were going to get this exact comparison because I knew I knew that this was going to come up. OG Smash had 12. Right now, there's a big difference. Right. Yes. OG Smash had 12 forever. OG Smash still only has 12 forever. Right.

But this is Riot, so it's a live service game, so it's not going to end with 10, right? I also think that 10 is probably a good start for 10 different among those 10 representing a variety of different styles of character. Right. So, so far we know the following characters will be available on launch as part of those 10. Ari, Ekko, Yasuo, Darius, Illaoi, Braum, and Jinx. And those all lend themselves to very different styles of character, right? Um, Darius, to be very clear, when a lot of fighting games started, this was the size of the roster. Mortal Kombat had seven. Street Fighter 2 had 10. Like, and I understand that we're it's a growing like it's an arms race in in a certain sense, but like I don't know. I I And then Smash what had 12. Yeah. Right. So, I feel like it's 10 is a fine number here. And to Will's point, all of these characters look and fe look look like they're going to feel

incredibly different even among the chunkier characters, right? Brahm, Illaoi, and Darius are all kind of big chunky tank types. Um, and they're all very different thematically, right? Braum has a big old shield and ice stuff. Illaoi has tentacles and Darius has a big old ax and does bleed things, right? So like we're in a very like even among characters that have a similar frame, their theoretical move set is very distinct. So, I think that that's good because like the thing you don't want is for matchups to get stale. That's the thing that kills a game real fast, right? Is and one of the reasons why I'm so bummed that like Magic didn't ban anything in standard today, right? It's because things are getting really stale really fast. Um, and so I think this is enough to prevent stailness. Uh, okay. Next up, a brief note. A brief note. Monster of the Wilds is getting title update one this coming Friday, April the 4th. Please look forward to it. Uh they're getting new monsters. There's a bubble dragon. Not

really a dragon, but it's a bubble dragon. There's a bunch of other stuff. We're getting reruns of the final boss of the main story. We're getting uh all the things, but the most important thing that we're getting, Matt and Chad, is that I'm cleaning Zoe's face. Keep talking. In the new zone, you can have cats cook you food again. Cook me food. Cook me food, Zozo. Yeah, that's right. You okay? Yeah. She doesn't have her collar on. I know. It's the weekend. She's just getting up. There we go. Sorry, I just had to get a big thing of gunk out of her eyes. She good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kitty cooks food once more. That's correct. Zoe cooked the food and then Zoe cooked the food and then I agree with Byus. She said no. So, uh, that is good. Um, it's going to be adding a bunch of stuff. No word on if it's going to offer stability or compatibility fixes to it. I imagine it would, but that's not a thing they want to announce because then that makes people think about it, right? The best thing you can do is just patch it in and then it'll get fixed. Um, that's my

thought. But title update one does hit Friday. Uh, might play Friday, might not. Might play it next week. We'll see. Um, but I am gonna take a look at it at some point. Okay. Yeah. Which means also uh I sorry real quick. Same. We talked about it last week. Same. Yeah. Um yeah, we actually have uh we're going to talk about the follow-ups. So, and we we didn't address this at the top of the show. When it comes to follow-ups from last week, we're going to generally do those towards the end in the comments. Um when we uh talk about your comments from um Blue Sky and YouTube, we're going to do rehashes or new updating stuff from last week. in that section of the show. Um, which is a good reminder that I forgot to do at the top of the show. Okay, next up, let's go. So, uh, Nintendo had a very busy week last week. Yeah. Um, and we wanted to dive into it a little bit. So, the first up is that they were like, "Hey, hey

guys, guys, listen. I know that everyone's been looking forward to the April 2nd direct on Switch 2 for like forever, but what if out of nowhere we just did a direct on the 27th of of uh of March? And everyone went, "What? Yeah, we're going to do a whole direct on the 27th of March and then you're going to do a whole another one on April 2nd." and we're just to make sure there's no news about the Switch 2 at all in the 20 direct and everyone went okay I think this is one of to be perfectly honest I think this is one of Nintendo's strongest directs in a while like I think they came out swinging for the Switch one which is the which is the exact way you want it to sort of like begin the end of its life cycle um I think so first and foremost I don't know was there anything will specifically and and Brad and Janet, please chime in that you were excited about from this announcement from a game perspective or did anything really touch your particular fancy Metroid Prime 4. Um,

always obviously, right? That's that's a big one. Um, I do at some point want to go back and replay Prime 1. Um, yeah, I we started to on stream when they shadow launched it. Um, and then um they also have a Dragon Quest one and two HD remake. That is the one that I am the most excited about. Going back to magazines, I believe it was EGM. No, it was Nintendo Power. What am I saying? It was Nintendo Power back in the day when I think that the Dragon Dragon Quest um one on the OG NES. Uh I think they made too many of them and they weren't selling well. So, you got a copy of if you subscribed with a certain thing uh uh uh with the original Dragon Quest 1 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. And that was the first time that young little me was like, I'm cheating the system. Like, my parents obviously bought the the subscription for me, but it's like what I wanted for Christmas because you got this game. And I was like, there's no way. There's no way

this is real. And that's when I fell in love with uh turn-based RPGs, to be perfectly honest. So to see uh honestly the Dragon Quest one and I never played two uh the love and the sort of like 2.5D kind of pixel art style that this is being treated with feels so correct to me and I am beyond hyped to get this game or these two games remastered because the Erdri Saga I believe that's who the the the Hollowed Knight is. Um, I have like the memory of it, but I I have tried to go back and play the original NES as an adult, and obviously the magic is not quite the same. Sure. In uh, you know, in the 2020s. Absolutely. Uh, and this is something. Got it. I'm so pumped for it. Yeah. Um, also, I mean, there's a bunch of good stuff, and I know a lot of this is, uh, cross system, and I'm sorry I keep scratching my nose. It's the cat hair now. Yeah. Zoe came in and decided that Matt's nose was the place for all of her

extra hair. Yeah. Uh yeah, Loto in Japan. Ramy, very good. Correct. It's Erdrich in uh US. Loto in Japan. Um Shadow Labyrinth, the Pac-Man sort of spin-off seems super interesting. The gritty Pac-Man reboot. So good. Patapon 1 and two seems cool. Obviously Metroid Prime 4. I was looking forward to uh Witchbrook and that was cool to see. Uh The Eternal Life of Goldman uh seems like an interesting game. There's just a lot of like fun Oh, then Oh. Oh yeah, then Pokemon Legends ZA, you know, no big deal. Well, I I think the ZA thing was kind of a and also ran sort of announcement for a lot of us because the Pokemon Day announcements covered ZA more extensively. Sure. But it was nice to see it sort of included here. Y um yeah, Patapon, uh Monument Valley 1, two, and three. Oh. Uh, uh, Marvel Comics Invasion, another beat him up in the same style from the team that did, uh, Shredders Revenge. Now they're doing a

Marvel game. Dope. Yeah. Tomagodachi and Tomagotchi Life uh, both got uh, news. So that's good for like the cozy live service Nintendo crowd. Overall, huge huge announcements for game for gamewise. So, I think as the as the Switch one is suns setting, I I don't think I could have asked for a better, hey, this system is going to be going away soon. Not like going away going away, but like it's not going to be the main focus. Yep. And then they announced And then two things, both of which are very interesting for their own reasons. First up, they announced this thing, the virtual game card, right? So, I will admit this is not without its drawbacks, but it does seem very interesting to me that they are specifically spending time and effort on the notion of lending digital games

around and moving games between and this is the really important part that I think we're not fully I think a lot of people have sort of whooshed on between two consoles on the same account. It feels like this is a Switch 2 prep move because um well so so a little bit of clarity there. It's not on the same account. It's in a group that's known as your Switch family that can be up to 10. There are two different shares. One of them is the way that you manage cards between up to two consoles that are logged into the same Nintendo and that's a big deal. And then the second one is the family thing which is a group of people and that's got more restrictions on it. But one of them is just how you manage which games on which console at the same time and like you can just play them at the same time. It doesn't matter if they're both on the same like as long

as you which both seem like a good honestly a really nice move like [Music] um that would be super helpful cuz like I have weirdly even right now I have the OG switch and the OLED switch so and before you can't do that at all and now with whatever update that would be able to be done which would be great. Yep. I think the virtual game cards I'm wondering where where that came from. I'm wondering from a from a is a excellently proconsumer move, but and this isn't like trying to conspiracy theory or anything like that, but like it's not necess I'm trying to think of the way that it makes Nintendo more money. And again, this is not a bad Nintendo wanting to make money. This is a why is this happening? Like do they is this sort of a prep thing that will

help eventually once the system is in place and iterated on and whatever get the idea of just downloading your game as opposed to owning a physical thing. We're already kind of beyond it too with like cartridges too because a lot of times you have to still update and install stuff or the cartridge doesn't have the whole game or something like that on it. So I'm curious what will you thought about that and also what Brad and Janet were thinking about that. Uh I like it. I don't think it I don't like it doesn't apply to me virtually at all except I guess I could join a family group with my roommate and lend her games but we also just buy physical cartridges and swap them back and forth. Oh, but a lot of people don't. Like, for instance, like uh uh I was at dinner last night and uh Night in the Woods came up and while I do now have a physical copy of it, I didn't when I played it and people were wanting to try it to see if they'd

like to buy it and I couldn't lend it to them. And now with the system without the physical card, I could. And I think the way it works is it goes off your system for 2 weeks. Um, and then it'll come back to you no matter what. Like you can return it if you want. Like the person who has it can return it sooner. But that's just I don't know. That seems really really nice. Yeah. Um, but I'm curious what we like if there's other than the goodwill thing uh that uh Spar sort of said before. Yeah, I I agree. I think um I I I think the lending thing is mostly aimed at families. I think there there is definitely a a use case, right? But yeah, to me it really feels like it's aimed at families um with like, you know, two kids, right? So like parents have a Switch, maybe two switches, kids have switches, lend them all out, do the thing, right? And if you have that Yeah. Like if you can build out an ecosystem

where everyone in the family has their own Switch and you can swap games throughout them, you're going to sell more hardware. Like that also could be the play. Yes, absolutely. And then you'll buy more digital games because they'll people will buy a game and then lend it multiple times, right? Rather than not buy it in the first place, right? Sorry, drop. Good job. I dropped my my coin. It's gone now. It's gone forever. Um yeah, I don't know. I I really liked this. I'm glad to see it being done. Um yeah. And then this the second thing that got announced was even weirder than this because it's a phone app. So Nintendo announced a phone app. It's a specific Nintendo centered news platform you log into with your Switch account, your Switch online account, and that's how you get your Nintendo

news every day. Every day. It's not really every day, but like every day. Um, and the first announcement that they made was that there's good like it was it was a digital app exclusive. First announcement was that there is a liveaction Zelda coming in 2027. Huh. So, hey, I mean, look, if Nintendo wants to control their narrative, correct? All this is going to do is every news outlet that we normally talk to or talk about is it like it's almost like this is the the pulpit, right? Like this is the thing where if Nintendo has an announcement, this is where they're going to this is where they're going to do it. Yeah. How serious. Yeah. How serious is the tell part? They did not announce that. It's just that's been the And again, I don't even think it would work now. I think when he was younger, he looked you could make him look like Link. Uh, that was just a little little

little funsies I was having. Um, well, excuse me, princess. I mean, I could see Tom Holland saying that. Yeah. Um, um, I think this is a very interesting idea. Uh, I think also while it might not be while many consumers might not find it to be the most important, I will tell you that all the game journalists immediately downloaded it because now we get the full press release from Nintendo in a centralized place and we don't need to go anywhere else for it. And that's a big deal, right? Especially especially especially and I cannot stress this enough because this way we're going to be they are going to be even more encouraged to have their own language parody because for a Japanese company when Nintendo proper not Nintendo of America Nintendo proper makes a press release they'll have the translated version immediately at the same time on the app which has not

always historically been the case for Japanese companies and sometimes we have to wait for translations and sometimes there are big problems because people mistransate things. So that part I think is also a a hidden benefit that people may not consider but is really big for game journalism. Yeah. I don't know. I I think it's someone in chat did say this is a very uh you know oh left tenant uh well well sparkle like I I misclicked here but that is also very true. They just don't want to deal with it. Yeah. Live action. It keeps sliding up. everyone's talking so much. This is a very Japanese marketed idea. I think I think that's very true. Um but also I think it's to Will to your point even the translation of the articles is super helpful and now it won't have that delay. So cool. Yep. Absolutely agree. All right. And then uh looking ahead, let's look ahead. So this is three days from now, two days from now. Wednesday. Wednesday from now. Wednesday, my dudes.

Um, so, okay, so we've talked a lot about the Switch 2 since it was but a glimmer in the eye of an engineer, and this is the last time we get to make predictions. That's true. So, we thought we would wrap this up. And of course, we're going to be following up with the Switch 2 news next week. That'll be I can't imagine a world where that's not the main story, but correct, who knows? May maybe maybe someone gets bodied on Twitter again. I have no idea. Um, if everything works out, we might have a small scheduling conflict. Uh, Jeff and I are currently planning to look through the announcement on stream for design club on Thursday, and that's already posted as a stream in YouTube. So, you can go and get notifications when that goes live as well. Um, but the uh that is the the current plan. So, this is our last chance to offer predictions, which means it's also our last chance to bring this out, which I just love. One of my favorite Photoshops I've ever done.

Okay. Um, yeah. Will, Brad, Janet, Rocky, you can mess with us some blue sky. What do we all think? What do we all There's already been some predictions uh uh in in the chat here. Uh let's see. Here we go. manifesting literally anything with Star Fox and Fire Emblem 4 and Fire Emblem 4 uh would be lovely. Yeah. I I also think that there's a bunch of um there's sort of two general categories of of uh predictions. I went through like 12 P words. I'm real tired, y'all. Um, first is the system itself and second off is the games that are going to launch with the system, right? So, I think a Star Fox remake would be great. I think a Fire Emblem remake would be great. I think we're going to see a lot of firstparty franchises get sequels or

remakes for it, right? Mario Kart 9. Um, a new Yeah, Mario Kart's definitely going to be in it. There's no question. a new 3D Mario. The last really, really well-reed game that Nintendo did was Odyssey. So, something in that style, but probably not the same gimmick. Um, I don't think we get a Zelda game. No, no, no, no, no. Unless, Nope. Unless it's the upgraded port, not of tears, but of breath, because that's one of the things that's one of It might be both, to be perfectly honest. Uh because that the that was another thing that sort of leaked in the direct um news cycle which was what was it called? It's called um Nintendo. Uh they were they were giving a specific name for the type of games that this SW basically in the in the virtual game card descriptions. It was trying to say, "Hey, you can only use

this in two consoles that you own in this particular way." But they said, "Uh I have to find the exact thing. Nintendo watchers are pointing out the fleet of mentions of these Switch 2 edition games will only work on Switch 2 or or something along those lines. And that's a new verbiage meaning I bet you there's going to be either a free or a paid thing like they did like for instance with um like Death Stranding for the PS4. Runs great on the PS5 as I was reading the RS Technical article in the show notes. They use it as an example, but you can pay $10 more to get the PS5 version if you already owned the PS4 version. So there's like probably an option somewhere around that. That's one of my predictions that there will be on day one a series of highprofile games that maybe the Switch, the original one might struggle with on occasion that then just makes it prettier like basically and run better. Well, and I think they also have an opportunity to do the thing that they did with uh the Game Boy, right? So I I know I know that's old for many of you.

So let me let you know. So, the original Game Boy, the big gray brick had the cartridges were not perfectly square. They had a little notch. And that little notch was because the OG Game Boy had a switch that um held it in. It had like a retaining clip. So, when you turned it on, it automatically retained the game so you could pull it out while it was on. It was sort of a safety. When they moved to the Game Boy Color, they removed that notch, which meant that a Game Boy Color could play all original Game Boy games, but an original Game Boy couldn't try and play Game Boy Color games because it didn't have the notch. So, it wouldn't actually turn on. And then later on, they used the same slot functionality for the Advance. So, you could put Game Boy and Game Boy Color games in the Advance to play them that way. There is some amount of thought that there will be a similar functionality here that Switch 2 edition games are only available on Switch 2, but that we might get full backwards compatibility for Switch One, which

seems likely. Yeah, I would say probable even um that that that's the direction they're going to go and what I'm hopeful for. DS 3DS did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm curious like if there's going to be something that at the very least can like up frame rate in games that kind of choke a little bit too, right? Like who knows just because it it will be a more powerful machine. Um, I'm hopeful that there's a like I think that's what they're going to f especially like that's another reason why I don't think there's going to be a new Zelda game because they can just do a increase draw distance, frame rate, whatever they want to do with Breath and Tears and and call it a day like yeah, you know. Um, so that's that's uh that's a big part of it. I also am predicting I'm I'm also predicting day one um because of some of the things that we've learned in

the um because of some of the things that we learned in that sharing demo about the virtual cartridges. I am predicting that you're going to have um immediate day one uh setup where you boot it up, bring it in proximity to a Switch One, confirm your Nintendo account, and it's set up like your Switch One with all the games, save data, every I'm predicting a fast setup to help make it as seamless as possible to bring people to bring as many people from the pandemic era switch one Animal Crossing fandom group into the Switch 2. And that group of people, for many of them, the Switch one was their first console. God, I hope there's a better way to move your islands and all of your Animal Crossing stuff to a new console than there was before with its separate app. Yep. Ooh, social brings up a good question. Do we even

know this officially yet? They haven't said. Uh, my guess because what's the Here's the question. What does a current Switch run right now? I haven't looked at that in a second. A current edition Nintendo Switch is $300 US. The OLED is 340. Uh my guess is this will be 400. 400 is the current price for the special edition Ti the Kingdom OLED Switch. Yeah, I bet you the Switch 2 will be 400. And I bet you you'll see a drop in price of the OG Switch by 50 bucks per edition is kind of my guess. That's my thought. Um I am a little sad. I I although we don't know the full tech specs yet, do we not? Like uh I'm guessing that the Switch 2 will not be an OLED screen, which does make me a little bit sad. But I think we are sadly in a um a time in consoles where they I think might be

leaving things on the table to do a versioning system of whatever thing so they can sell more hardware. And look, that's fine. It's a little bit of a bummer. Um but it seems like that's the move. So I imagine something like an OLED screen or a larger thing or this that and the other thing will be held as a minor upgrade if you want it midcycle. Yep. There is also a return of a feature long thought lost to the ages. The new Joy-Con, the right one specifically, has a C button. No one knows what it does, but there's a button labeled C on the Joy-Con. Put your best guesses in chat. Um, I'm trying to think. Also, I'm guessing at least from the renderings that we've seen, the IR stuff is gone. Yes. I mean, that wasn't widely used anyway. I know. Which does stink because there are a lot of applications that I think it would work really well for. Yep. I agree. Um, obviously we uh we we showed a thing up on screen before. The controllers, the Joy-Cons being used as

mice is something that is widely anticipated uh based on the sliding around in that rendering. Um, again, I've been saying how cool that would be for like RTS's and a couple other fun things. I think it turns on cursor mode. Could be for cursor. Um, It's either see as there is an additional capture button chat. The the share button that exists on the current Switch, the little um uh circle button also still exists. This is not an updated version of that. See is to contact your local representatives. I think uh Nintendo really uh going to go hard on that. Yep. Um yeah. So I don't know. I I I I'm trying to think if there's anything well. Oh, and uh I will do this. I'll say this because I have less of a race in here than Will does. I think Silk Song will be a launch title on the Switch, too. Incredibly likely. I think based on the things that we talked about at the beginning of the show and if there's there's an

actual world where the timelines especially when they the rumor is that they rebuilt it after the whole um why am I blanking on the on the company the engine company Unity stuff that like to cover some of that cost or whatever Nintendo could have swept in like in in a way to like help with that or at the very least it is that is the way you kick open the door to the indie scene on the new console. That's just it. Um and so I think there's a high likelihood that Silkong will be uh will be on that. See us for Silk Song. Love it. Yeah. Um I think I think that those are those are good speed of predictions. I'm super excited for Wednesday. Um, I will be watching that direct with with much anticipation. Um, and like I said, we're planning on doing a deep dive into it uh on Thursday with Jeff if we can make the scheduling

work. And if not, you'll get all of our thoughts on this next Monday. Yeah. Which brings us to a sweet story which I thought I'm I'm quite interested in. Um, bring regarding an old favorite of ours, uh, which is now weirdly an old favorite despite the fact it still feels fresh and new. [Music] Elden Ring mod time, baby. Yeah, Elden Ring is getting an overhaul mod, like a It actually already has it. They just released their new version of Yeah, it's it's the it's the most recent version of the convergence, which is apparently if you've elened all of the rings so hard that there are no more rings to Eld. Um, you can get a whole new campaign world, bosses, everything out of Elder Ring the Convergence, which has a brand new version. I love this bit. I love this tradition. I love the Boulder. I don't even want to play Balders's Gate 3 or Skyrim, but I love that there are

modders who were just like, "Yeah, so I liked your game engine, but I didn't like anything else. So, I took your game apart and I put my own story with my own characters and my own everything, and I made my own models, and I did this thing, and here it is. It's a free mod for this game." I love that. This mod specifically uh basically has 27 different classes with their own starting positions. And yes, one is in Calid uh as PC Gamer is telling us. Uh that basically is like a re I don't I don't think there's like a lot of a ton of like new assets per se with the exception of some Bloodborne weapons I think they threw in there, like switch weapons. Um but it just seems like a really fun way to remix uh a game that people have played a lot of. I just think it's it's cool and I'm looking forward to checking out eventually again with all of the free time that we all have. Um just seems like a very fun uh thing. Also different uh the the most what was it? The part that impresses uh the PC gamer writer the most is that the boss fights now have all their own music along with main menu themes. Uh so you

can have like new orchestral things going on while that's happening. Um yeah, I don't know. I think it's very very fun. I love the modding community and I think anything to keep the Elder Ring going and again this might this might keep people sated before the night rain comes. Absolutely. All right, and that concludes our new stories. We do have a couple of questions from last week or comments that we wanted to that we called out we wanted to respond to. So So as as a as a reminder uh if you're watching this on YouTube, please uh leave us a comment and question and we will get to it the next week. Uh, however, if you are watching this on Nebula and or Twitch, you can talk to us on Twitch. Will's over there all the time. But if you're watching on Nebula, please blue sky us. We are right here. If you have any questions about the topics of the show or things you want us to cover or things you thought we missed or if you just want to say a nice thing and you like Will's hair and uh you didn't mind that Zoe got uh cat dander all up in my nostrils. Yeah, seems good. Seems good. Also, if you're on YouTube,

I am now obligated to remind you to smash that like button and don't do it. Subscribe sub subs subscribe if you have not. Here's no actually you know what before we get to questions here's something that if you are interested in and if you've gotten to this port port if you've gotten to this point in the show in this live stream I I wonder if you might be interested there are channelsp specific things about notifications on YouTube and we can see how many people have the ratio on all of our channels and every channel can see this of how many subscribers have two different switches checked and there's one that says, "Oh, I'd like to be notified when a new video or a new live stream goes live on a YouTube channel, but there's another one that mo a lot of people I think don't know that is actually on or off and it is the global switch." So on any not just our channels, but any of your channels that

you've been like, I'd like to be notified on a thing. there is a chance that deep in your settings there is a do not notify me at all and therefore you are not getting notifications for things that you have opted into. So I will just I will just say if you are interested in notifications from here or any other channel you subscribe to double check that because I I think we saw and this is apocryphal because this was a like a month ago and my brain is a bag of cats. we saw on credits, I think it was something along the lines of like out of the percentage of people that have us as uh please send us notifications, a whopping something like 47% or something didn't have the overall notifications on so it's not serving. So just double check that if you are interested if not keep it the same way as is. But that's just something that I felt like this would be a good time to bring that up. Excellent. Excellent. All right. So, uh, on the topic of Switch 2, or not Switch 2, Minecraft 2, which, uh,

Moying said they're not going to do, um, we had a very well thoughtout response, uh, from Skak Zalis, who says, "As someone who used to play Minecraft a lot and completely stopped during survival, I feel mixed about there not being a successor. On one hand, the free updates are an amazing deal, and Minecraft 2 could easily be ruined by aggressive monetization. over Minecraft, especially on Java, feels incredibly outdated in ways that likely aren't possible to fix in this game. The inventory system needs a major overhaul. The game lacks super mechanics that give buildings more purpose. There's too many chunk reliant mechanics and weird things going on with Redstone, not even deeper uh not even necessarily about QC. And just how clunky and basic the game feels in so many aspects. Again, the support the game has gotten in its lifespan is amazing and beyond anything um they could ever have asked for uh those 20 bucks 15 years ago, but it still feels very much like a 15-year-old game. I agree and I will say in my opinion that is the point or for for Moyang and Microsoft this is not about producing a

game that innovates it is about a game that expands right it does more mobs it does slightly more features it does more biomes but it doesn't break anything it doesn't break a mold it's not ever going to mods for mods like I've been looking at Craft to Exile 2. Do you like ARPGs? Do you like Minecraft? Do you want an entire multi-act campaign ARPG with weird interdimensional boss fights and eight classes and professions and everything in Minecraft? Someone made that. That's I think their point, right? is that they get people in with the vanilla stuff just gently sprinkled in. And particularly with Java, they stay for the mods. I think it's a mod loader more than a game at this point, at least in my opinion. Yeah. And I And that's not to um take any um any

uh thing out of uh Skazia Skazzius uh is uh comment um because like it all depends on what you want too, right? Yeah. like if you're looking for something new or whatever, that could be disappointing based on the fact that Minecraft 2 there's not going to be a Minecraft 2 at least right now and that they aren't going to go in that direction. We all can totally be uh excited andor disappointed by that depending on what we want out of it. All of your points are very valid, but I do I do agree with Will. I think I think weirdly I think Microsoft would probably agree with them as well and say, "Yep, that's the plan." Um but yeah, interesting points. Uh and and maybe and look, we don't actually know the overall I saw this. This is amazing. Medusa, very good job. Uh we don't know the overall ramifications of this tact, right? like it's holding on strong right now,

but we've seen in the past it just takes another thing to hit and hit hard to move things around, but like again, we won't know until we see it. Like, is this long game going to play out well? Right now, it seems like yes, but who knows? Yeah. Uh, okay. Uh, we've got some comments from people who have shown up here in chat today. So, congrats. You made you made the list. Sparkling Spite says, "Tossing my hat into the ring. Leave out the pre-roll, keep the pre-show and post show." What we are talking about is for is show structure. Correct. Um we did that today. Uh note taken. Uh and we're like we said before uh we're doing a little bit of science with that and trying to figure out what's good and what's bad. I think the pre-show, and I think Will might agree with me, uh the pre-show has the same function as a countdown. It gives people time to roll in and not be greeted by a countdown with just numbers ticking down and some fun music. It's like actually engaging with us if you'd like to. So, I'm

curious to see how that uh functions this week as well. Yeah, we're trying to do some uh some testing. And then um lot of finish project says, "I know we're attached to Watsi, but it is time to move on to other games like Blades of the Dark, Savage Worlds, Pathfinder 2, and other non-Dn TT RPGs in response to talking about the virtual tabletop." And I think I I want to be clear. We both love other TTRPGs. When we're talking about these things, it is because for better or worse, at least in my opinion, D&D is the elephant in the room. DND is um virtuous because of its ubiquity. DND is Kleenex. DND is D and D is Band-Aids. DN D is Nintendo. Like it is it is D and D is Coca-Cola. There are other versions of all of these things, but if you talk to someone outside of the space, yeah, they would know what D and D is before I said tabletop RPG, they would like it's just that's what it is. Um, there are so many other

wonderful tabletop RPGs that we could play uh and talk about. The the interesting thing there is, well, there's two it's twofold. one, the the community engagement and and and what you actually sort of get out of those conversations tends to be much smaller. U which is not to say we shouldn't talk about it. We absolutely should. In fact, um I would love to figure out, again, I've talked about Lancer a bunch. I want to figure out a way to do some sort of Lancer content maybe over on Twitch or something like that. I think it would be fun uh with Comcon, etc. It's just complicated. But the other thing that I will say and the reason why I like talking about D and D and Watsi is because even though I don't like the direction that D and D some of it has taken and even though I think Hasbro needs to have a stern talking to um I deeply love Dungeons and Dragons like I are there is Dn D 5e or any

edition the best tabletop role playing system in the world? Absolutely not. But I will say that it has a a the ubiquity of it allows you to be a jack of all trades and master of none. And I think that's that's that is that is its strength. And I from a player and and and DM and or GM perspective appreciate the ubiquity of it because not only will the most people in the space kind of understand it right off if I need people to click very quickly, but it also does honestly just bring more eyeballs. Ag. Um, which allows us to do all of these things. So, I think that what in a perfect world, I'll say this straight up, I would love to do more actual play stuff on the Twitch channel specifically, Dn D will probably

always have a part in that, but if there's a movement in that in that vein, that's going to be a, you know, high tide raises all ships kind of thing. And I don't just want to do or talk about Dungeons and Dragons. I would like to talk about other interesting things and other things. I would love to do dead systems. Will I would I would make dark packs with various uh malefent powers. Yes. Yeah. Start the start the bloodletting if we could run a rifts game. That is a game that the system is trash and old and very 80s. But I love the world and that's what I kind of cut my teeth on coming up. And uh I would absolutely lose my ish if I got to do something in that space. If there's ever a day when I don't have to produce. So for if you've never been to one of them, I'm never on screen during live plays because I'm running the cameras and the tech and the everything because I'm the one that

knows how to do those things because that's my job. Um, if there's ever a world where I can make that more or less automated, I want so badly to finish my hack of Dogs in the Vineyard, which is another dead oneoff system. uh and and run a game of that which is um the pitch is imagine Shakespeare but as a tabletop sort of weird with like combat escalation and stuff like and I I think I think we're we're very much on the field of like we want there to be more of those things and we're we're definitely down to make there be more of those things but in the meantime D&D is what's in the news cycle. there's news about Lancer in the news cycle, I'll gladly talk about it or, you know, Blades or Pathfinder or whatever, right? And we have talked about Pathfinder in the past. It's probably the second biggest dog in that room. I like lot sort of finishing up. It's not feeding the NGR. It's I think not feeding indie RPGs keeps them from growing. If you'd like to do them, it was oneshots, right? Like the it's it's that lovely sort of catch 22 about content creation where I never want to talk about or do a project

based on something that I don't like or love really like. And that's why I think I'm comfortable still doing D and D stuff because I do truly love it. Um, but also how in my opinion it is all about time management. How you get more people in the door for like let's even talk about our community or or what we're able to put out there. doing a bunch of D and D oneshots and then all of a sudden doing something else which we will eventually get to is going to be a much faster growth uh I guess proposal than uh just starting with a bunch of different uh disperate systems. Yep. Because again, at the end of the day, I truly believe this. Actual plays, despite the fact we like various systems, they're not about the systems. They're about watching people play characters and going through the story and whatnot. Or or let me rephrase, the ones that I engage with and I'm interested in. I know there are also very technical actual plays out there that people enjoy. I come for the story and the characters and the the

wacky antics, and you can do that with a lot of systems. So, anyway, yeah, that's sort of our our treatise. Thank you for writing in the question. Yeah. Uh and if you have comments, questions, concerns about the things that we talked about today, you can hit us up on Blue Sky or you can leave them in the comments and we'll talk about them next week after we get done talking about Switch 2. Unfortunately, we are out of time because Matt has a meeting that starts now. I'll I'll push it slightly, but we can wrap up the show. Yeah. Uh which means uh that I think all that all that remains to us for today is for Matt to lead us in a signoff. a signoff that we do every week that it's sort of a community building exercise, right? It's always the same sign off. We do it together. It's sort of a big and then we go out and face the weekend tech sort of moment. So, Matt, yeah, because we we want the community to be able to do the same sign off and feel like we're all saying goodbye to everyone in a similar fashion that we absolutely know and that never has any technical difficulties. In fact, will that's why for this sign off

every time we do put it into hardcore mode, right? Because we will never lose it. Nothing bad will ever happen. That's right. Definitely nothing bad will [Applause] [Music] I expected you to give me more leadup to that. I was not ready. Well, no, you could have I would have I was prepared to just keep rambling, but you hit it nice and quick. I know. I was like, "All right, cool." I I That is, by the way, that is one of Matt and Mai's greatest assets doing this show is that at this point we have exactly one brain cell and it is in super position in both of our noggin at the same time. That is very useful. So fun. So fun. Yeah. Um uh so um thanks everybody for Yeah. What are you doing now? Uh coming up next we're doing Robot Philosophy. Um we uh I

played Talis Principal 1 and everyone loved it. I have Talis Principal 2 all loaded up. We're going to play that today and probably on Wednesday. Um so we're gonna take down YouTube. Uh and then we'll You're taking down YouTube? Yes. All of YouTube. Wow. Um, so, uh, that's going to be happening over on the Twitch channel, YouTube, if you'd like to come join us, twitch.tv/extrarits. Otherwise, we will see you on Thursday for our, uh, recap of the Switch to announcement with me and Jeff. And that's going to be more of a weirdly, we're going to pick apart the announcement more than we're going to talk about the system. I think we'll talk a bit about the system, but most of the system talk is going to be here next Monday, I imagine. Cool. Uh, so everybody say bye to YouTube. Well, I'll say goodbye to I'll say goodbye to Janet, but Janet, thank you so much for hanging out and being with us. Uh, also, of course, Brad and uh, even though Rocky can't hear this, I thank them as well. Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh, this has been lovely again, and I can't wait for it to be lovely next week. Exactly. All right.

All right.