Oblivion’s Big Day, Switching 2 Better Preorders, and Healers On Strike! | Games For Breakfast

And now imagine for a moment that we are live on a different platform simultaneously, right? A and uh Theodore says that they're early. There's something wrong with the Matrix, but it seems like they arrived precisely when they meant to. That's correct. Janet, do not adjust your screens for this pre-show. There are three of us. That's right. Hi, Aaron. Um yeah. Uh if you all think that this episode will be normal, I regret to inform you that when Aaron comes to visit, the checklist begins with remove all hinges. You will not need them and then goes from there. So, uh I think Erin, you've you've I think you might have been our first guest. It was early. It was early. Yeah, it was very early. Yeah. Um Yeah. Yeah. It's

chaos energy. It is. It is. Uh it's great. It's it's just it's not you in your professional capacity. It's great to hang out with you and like learn about like what's going on in in you know, let's see now, movies and science and Star Trek and uh movie production and your towering pile of hats grows ever larger. Um which we'll go over. We'll we'll do a proper intro for you, Erin, when the show starts. This, of course, is not the show, right? This is just a tribute. Um uh but but getting to hang out with Aaron as a person, delightfully unhinged. It's great. We we Oh, it's so good. Um oh yeah, the the the blanker of black hole video. God. Oh god, I don't want to look at the publish date for that cuz that's so long ago. It was a bit It was so long ago, but honestly, I think that might be the greatest piece of cinema I've ever been a part of.

Uh those were so fun. Yeah, exactly. Um, the baseline is zero hinges. Aaron moves us to negative hinges. You are correct, Nova. That that is correct. Um, yeah. Oh, good. We have a hype train on Twitch. All the hype train does, Aaron, is keeps the show from starting and me from having my coffee. That's the That's its only. And it helps support the channel. Yes, M. It was It was totally last month. Definitely not under put an announce pinned an announcement on Twitch that it was four years ago. First off, how dare you. Second off, well done. Um, yeah. This gray beard could talk. I don't think I had any gray in my beard. Now I've got like good good or had had four years ago and now I've got like the big gray big gray streaks. Yeah. Time

comes for us all in a weird flat circle. The Jeremy Barmy of our lives. It's true. And actually Annie right now is is using time to deny me my caffeine, which is fine cuz it's helpful. Man, it's been a long weekend. Uh, okay. So, so we we have uh I don't know if you remember this, um, but so we named we named our chats, right? So, Twitch chat is Brad because they fell in love with a shirt that says, "Kiss me, I'm Brad." And we decided that therefore their name must be Brad. Weirdly, I promise you, Twitch chat is not named for the Rocky Horror character Brad. However, Janet, which is YouTube, is named for Rocky Horror. Um, because we gave them a choice of what their name was going to be, and they picked Janet. Like, we were like, "All right, here's here's, you know, you get to pick your name. Put it in the comments." Top up voted thing is what we call YouTube chat. And they were like, "We're Janet." Like, "Okay, great. Thanks.

Awesome." Um, and of course, uh, Nebula, who, uh, is is Rocky because there are no comments over there and they they are silent, uh, until they message us on Blue Sky and then they're not right. Exactly. That's really good. They they get they get one more uh they they get a they get a song and dance number once a year. It's very important, right? Um, yeah. Uh, What else is going on? What's what's what's else is pre-show content for the next three minutes? The next three minutes of of uncaffeinated uh there's this the dancing crab. Great. Love it. Love it. Which does, by the way, per artist's uh per my request to our artist sync up with Crab Rave. It is in fact just an artist's rendering of the Crab Rave Crab in time. So, perfect. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. Um, there will be times where that is very important, I'm sure.

Perfect. Uh, I have a black cat, too. Yeah. Did you know that? Oh, that's right. They don't know. Yeah. Toothless is our little black cat. And you may get a glimpse of her as she jumps up behind me to be my lumbar support. And I wish that I could show you cuz I didn't. All I feel is that she jumps up and then just sits behind me for like hours. But I've she like adjusts. And one time I had a friend, well fellow friend Jesse Gender was over here and we were like in meat space together and Jesse looked over at me and busted out laughing cuz apparently Toothless just sits like a human behind me. like she adjusts and then sticks her legs and her hands out and like so now I've noticed the paws are all in the same direction and I really wish I could show you when she does it but it's like too far down but you may see a little tail come

up and adjust. Yeah, perfect. Annie wants to know, did YouTube get its emotes? Yes, you did. You now have the maximum number of emotes that is permissible uh for the current number of members. If you'd like more emotes, there need to be more members. That's just how that works according to YouTube. Um I believe in five more members we get another one I believe. Who knows? Uh I I would check. By the way, did you see that they are doing a Oh god, we didn't even get to talk about this when I saw it. They're doing a shot forshot liveaction remake of How to Train Your Dragon. Yes. Oh yeah. Yes. And I'm okay with a live action bit, but why are you doing a shot for shot? Like, yeah, because that's if I wanted to watch it, I would watch the movie, right? Like a shot for shot has never done well because it fundamentally misses the point. Yeah. of a of an adaption or or or remake. Uh

Yeah. Well, right. and like miss misses the point that like all shots should be dictated by the medium and intent. And when you just copy those without those things, it's like all of those games that were like we're going to make combat really hard and then give you flasks because we want to be like Dark Souls completely missing why and how Dark Souls combat is hard. Like Dark Souls combat is perfectly fair. There are games that aren't perfectly fair that give you flash like we're like Dark Souls and we're like no you're not. Stop. do better. Thank you. Okay, the hype train has completed. We have slain it once again. All right, I got I got to thank some people. Then we'll go to black, then we'll do the then we'll do the thing. Uh and uh yes, Red, this is exactly what I'm thinking of the shot. No, I already did that one. I listen, I was busy paying attention to all of the technology on all of the screens all around me. I missed it. I'm sorry. Enhance. That's You have to do it with three

fingers. Enhance. Enhance. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Tom Cruz. All right. Great. Uh, we got a thing. Enhance. No. Unenhance. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna back down. Back down. Back down. Back down. I'm going to unenhance. I'm going to unenhance, but I'm going to enhance for every person that that that you name. Pre-show will pre-show not crimewell. Thank you so much for the 61 months. Hippie for the gift sub to Dr. Eric Whismaster for the 89 months of tier three. Kurion for bitties. Raymond for gifting a sub to RC Fox over fire for gifting a sub to cryo. Dolphin Supreme for 100 bits. Copper Chef for 100 bits. Rabian for 100 bits. Sasquatch for 100 bits. Hippie for 100 bits. Luna for 100 bits. Roller for 100 bits. And that's the end of the hype train. That was getting close. That was Pay no attention to the streamer behind the camera. Yeah. All right. Also, can we just establish that Jeff Goldblum is the

best Wizard of Oz? He's pretty good. He's just like I'm so glad that they're embracing making him evil. Like, correct energy. Correct energy, right? Like both there and in um Chaos, which I'm so annoyed there's not going to be the season two. Like, we don't need it, but it would have been good. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Well, should we start this show? The show that we have not started yet. Let us remind you once more time. Yeah, that's right. This is this is not the show. This is just preparation. This is to prepare you so that when this is like an inoculation, right? Right. If we were to do the real show right away, your mind would be blown and we don't want to be responsible for that. So, not not after last time, right? Yeah, it took forever to clean up the mess. Um, so, uh, I still hear I still hear the

screaming. Well, it's true. Just And the smell never really goes away, but no, it's going to be a great happy show. You're all safe. There definitely won't be any transporter accidents. No. Right. All right. We're uh for those of you who may be new, uh we're going to explain this real quick. We're going to go to black, then we're going to come back. Then we're going to start the proper show with intros and everything else to record it for our friends over at Nebula. So, when this goes to black, do not panic. We'll be right back. Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Everyone, you may now have a small recreational non-necessary panic as a treat. A treat. [Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. Ah, good morning Aaron. Good morning, Will. And good

morning to all of you. Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet show. We talk about this week's gaming and tech news, but that also we have enlarged the table. Pray we don't enlarge it further. We are joined uh by our wonderful friend Dr. Aaron McDonald. How are you? That's right. We did it. We We did it. Not only with the power of friendship, but with the power of three gaming chairs and a breakfast nook. Yes, it is delightful. I am thrilled to be back. Thank you for making space for me to wedge myself in between you all. Yeah. Um, uh, Erin, for those who, uh, are not familiar with the insane amount of amazing things that you do, um, how, how would you, in 2,000 words or less describe, uh, your your personal professional life? Uh, so I started out as an astrophysicist. Uh, I got my PhD in uh, gravitational waves and general relativity. Then I moved into television and I now work as the science adviser

for the Star Trek franchise which I've been doing for I'm almost at six years now which is crazy. And uh I've been working on all of the shows since season 3 of Discovery. Uh they turned me into a character on Star Trek. So Lieutenant Commander Dr. Aaron McDonald of Starfleet Academy is uh here with you. And um on top of that, I have moved into writing, particularly screenwriting. Um and I also produce short films. And some people might recognize my name from uh producing Jesse Gender's uh film with Nebula called Identities. I was the lead producer on that. So yeah, fun times. Yeah. Hell yeah. If you have not checked out Identities by this point, uh Nebula fam, please go do so. And if not, there sure are codes out there that you can find to to nebula.tv. TV/extra credits or nebula.tv/jessegender depending on what you're going there for um to uh go check that out and all the good stuff over there. And of course, if you're watching

this on Nebula, you can go watch Identities when you're done with this or you can pause right now, go watch Identities, and then come back. Good point. Yeah, pause. Just pause. Just put a pin in it and then come back. If you're watching live, you can't pause. We don't want you to leave, but you can't pause it. I mean, you can pause it, but then it won't be live anymore. I Yeah, Erin, you're a scientist. How would time work in that particular No. Is that a It mean No, just don't don't mess with time. You're going to get a headache. It's not fun. Yeah. The endless spiral of doom will come for you eventually. I I I feel I feel like the number one thing that people get uh twisted when when when we talk about like time travel is that um the personal frame of reference remains constant and every and like everyone seems to be like no it'll just no no no

no no you get to keep your frame of reference and everything else changes but you experience time the same way always and that is the part that people do not like when you when you when when you get to it. Um, nope, not so much. Breaks brains, cry in the shower. It's a little too early for that. So, um, Aaron has been on uh before in the past, numerous times. We we've hung out with Aaron a lot. We love hanging out with Aaron. Uh, it's, uh, one of our Bridge Crew VR. Yeah. Uh, we've we've done Escape Rooms. Yeah, we did Escape Rooms. We've we've done all kinds of stuff. What's the other game that you turned us on to? Uh Aaron, the the one with the hexes. Oh, uh For the King. For the King. For the King. Yep. That was fun. Yep. That was good. Uh many times. Many good times. Yeah, absolutely. Other than those games this year, Aaron, just so we can get some some uh video game vibes from you here, what has been sort of the favorite game you've played so

far this year? Uh so I am also so I mostly play single player RPGs, but I also love um management games. And my favorite management sort of world is the Twooint uh Twooint Museum, Twooint Campus, and Twooint Hospital. And Twooint Museum was just released in March, so I've been putting a lot of hours into that. You basically run museums. You build them. The mechanics are a little bit different because you have to fly out and like send your crew on expeditions to go get like stuff and bring it back so you can display it in your museum. So you're not just like paying cash for that. Like you have to spend money and occasionally your explorers don't make it back and then I'm riddled with guilt when I've sent them on a dangerous expedition and they're like they're not coming home. Like oh no. Um, but I just got two stars on my

space museum this weekend, so that was exciting. Okay. So, then I took a break and I finally started playing blueprints, which is a new fun game that people should check out. Yeah. And by new fun game, you mean a great way to liquefy your brain. So much liquefying like, and so addictive. And I'm not usually a rog like gamer, but I can be sucked into them. And because I kind of hit a wall with Bellatro, I was like, I need a new hyperfixation rogike game. Yeah. And Blueprint is definitely that. Yeah. Um, yeah, absolutely. So, uh Oh, we we're on a breakfast show. We have to ask what's We are on a breakfast show. Breakfast food. Oh, yeah. Favorite breakfast food. Oh, favorite, if I'm being indulgent, uh, chicken and waffles. That's my

go-to. I love sweet and savory. Spicy and sweet, all good. That's my go-to. That's my go-to big one. Uh, the one I I mostly have is oatmeal cuz my Scottish roots refuse to die. There you go. So, yes, oats will sustain me. I have I have before we actually get into the stories, I have one silly Star Trek question for you. Um uh and it has to do with Okay, so my partner Jamie got this bath mat in in our bathroom and I used to have like a big floofy one, right? That like had uh you know, whatever. But you know, as time goes on, bath mats get when it's gross and whatever. The one I have is like a now it's a stone one that like absorbs water or whatever. Uh the uh she gave me the name of it. D what do you Oh god, she's coming in here. Oh god, she's coming in. Okay. It's It's called datamite. It's a datomite bath mat. It's antimicrobial. It absorbs water. I assumed Matt would [ __ ] love Oh,

excuse me. Would really like this thing and he hates it. Yeah. Okay. So, so that's the truth. All that's the truth. The swearing included. By the way, that's the best Jamie breakin I think we've ever had. She heard me talking. She's just standing there now. Um, okay. My question is because in on Star Trek with all of this going on, on Star Trek they use Sonic showers, correct? Yes. Do they use bath mats on Star Trek? No, because you're not you're not wet. I that's the best that's the best explanation I can come up with because like so actually weirdly the best visual we've given on Star Trek for how Sonic showers work was in uh lower decks cuz there's one point where uh one of the

guys walks in and they're trying to be like all you know I'm better than you, I'm stronger than you and they start cranking up the frequencies of the sonic showers. And so it's the idea that pulses of sound uh are basically expelling outer layers from your body um is the general idea and that's the limit of science I'm going to get into how sonic well that's great. So here's the deal. I think actually uh Johansson just kind of nailed it right here. You send a Roomba over the floor after a sonic shower. That's sort of the equivalent of what a bath mat would do. Considering there's no liquid to soak up or whatever, if it's shaking the dirt off you, the dirt does have to go somewhere and therefore some sort of Roomba would happen to to go about it. Yeah. But the purpose But the purpose of a bath mat is not to pick up all the grime that has fallen off of you during a shower. It's to absorb the residual clean hopefully uh water that

is still clinging to your skin as you get out of the shower. I may be using a bath mat incorrectly. So here's a fun So here's this is if you want to talk about your bath mat really quick because I'm fascinated by this. So it absorbs water. So it does like the weird thing where it kind of like you feel a little Can you go grab the bath mat suctioning to it? Hold on. Yeah, cuz it's a giant piece of rock. So So is it though? Because geologists have a thing about licking rocks to figure out if they're a rock. I'm not licking it. My feet have been on it too much. No, no, no. I'm aware. But um so geologists lick rocks to figure out if it's a fossil or not. Because if it's a fossil, it'll stick to your tongue because it absorbs the water, which is exactly what that bath mat is doing, which makes me think it's actually fossil. And sure enough, I looked it up and it's primarily composed of microalgae fossils. Oh god, we're

getting a sight. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, water's on it, right? Yep. And then it absorbs and then it I don't want to block Aaron. I'm trying to lower it. Uh, put it over here. And then it goes away, I guess. Does it? Is it going away? Is it going away faster than a comfy thing on your feet? So So it's it's taking the water off of you. It's like suctioning the water because it is fossils of microalgae. It's fossils of microalgae. Yeah. Dietimmacous earth is fossilized stuff, right? Yeah. So it's actually a fossil. And then want one. Do you want one? She can hook you up. Apparently, this is a gaming show and I know I did this and I'm not sorry. But I feel like this is a good barometer for where the weird is going to begin. Yeah. Are you Jamie just came and said performance tax and took some of my coffee. Yeah. As she should. Okay. Don't

So the water isn't disappearing. It will evaporate. It's just taking the water off of you more efficiently. Right. and then it will evaporate so it doesn't get trapped and get grimy ideally. Okay. Okay. My last question. Do we prefer a stone bathmat or do we want something comfy on Wait, hold on a sec. I know better than to answer that question. I'm I'm I'm just going to not I'm just gonna Are both of you just pleading the fifth on this one? Because Jamie's still lurking in the Yeah, she is. All right. Well, that's smart. I'll pay for that later. Let's start talking about some video games, shall we? Uh yeah. So, so, so first up on our on our agenda is a thing that I'm going to have to explain. Yeah. Will, when you put this story up, Erin, did you did you read this? Do you know what? This is in I don't get it. I I read the article and it was a lot of words. Okay, great. Excellent. Okay. So, yeah, there is a game that many of us are familiar with called Magic the

Gathering, which exists in three different places primarily. Physical cards, which you play with your friends at conventions or tabletop uh in, you know, in your in your house or wherever um game store, play competitively, been played for a million years. That's how the game was originally played. Then uh sometime around seventh edition. So a while ago we got Magic the Gathering online which is the same game but with digital cards that you own and can trade around and you play the same game. And then uh more recently we got Magic Arena which is um the same game except the rules for acquiring cards are a little different but all of them are fundamentally playing the same game of Magic. Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Also recently um to good and ill effect, Wizards of the Coast has reached out to other IP

holders and said, "Hey, we want to make a magic set of your thing." Right? So, we've had magic sets for Lord of the Rings. We've had magic sets for Warhammer 40k. There are Doctor Who Commander decks. There are there was a Walking Dead Secret Layer. We have cards for the kids from Stranger Things and so on and so forth. Next month, we're getting um the Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering set. And yes, I will be spending entirely too much money on it because they just made my hyperfixation blurbos kiss. And I know that I'm being sucked into that. And you know what? I'm okay with that. Have you seen the world outside? I'm going to deal with them making my hyperfixation floor cast. Isn't that also the fastest selling magic set, but it's not out yet? That is correct. It is the bestselling magic set that's ever existed and it's not even out yet. According to Star City Games, not even according to Wizards. Uh, so all of that having been said, through all of these things, it has been one game. one game that is more or less

identical with a couple of technical limitations on arena and online and physical cards until this fall. We are getting a set for Spider-Man. We're getting an Amazing Spider-Man set with the whole Spider-Man and all of his like all of the different versions of Spider-Man and all the villains and all the everything. in physical cards only. For the first time, Wizards is saying that we won't get Spider-Man cards on Arena or Magic Online because they couldn't get the rights to digital cards from Marvel because that probably already as is with Snap. That is the current surmiser. Oh, so now what they're doing instead is they're doing a set called Through the Omen Paths, which

is uh an in universe version of all of the cards that would normally be Spider-Man except now they're magic universe versions of that, but the rules text is identical. And okay, so couple of problems. Number one, there have already been cases, and this is sort of difficult to explain. Sometimes you need to name a card for an effect, right? There have already been cases in high level competitive magic where people have named the wrong card because they got confused. Now, if you practice on digital or practice in physical, you're going to know the names of the card that does that thing differently. So, that's a problem. But, like, okay, in high-end tournaments and stuff, I feel like there might be a thing where it's like, if that's the case, they could be like, are you sure?

Yeah, there there's probably going to be some allowance for that. Um, we're not entirely sure. The other problem is that there are lots of Magic players who don't like the idea that there's going to be an entire Spider-Man set because for a very long time, Magic had original Magic IP and we got really cool worlds out of it. And they're not big fans of universes beyond which is the whole Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, 40K, Final Fantasy blah blah blah sets. and they are upset that the digital games are getting this Magic Universe lore compliant card set that will never be released in physical because Wizards wants to sell the physical Spider-Man cards. So that's a whole It goes both ways. It goes both ways. So this is just bad all around. And this isn't the only case. They have said that this will be the case for all Marvel sets going forward at a minimum. though there are later this year Final

Fantasy and um Avatar the Last Airbender. Both of those sets will be will have digital physical parody. It's just the Marvel sets for now that are getting these treatments. So this is sort of the worst possible solution in my opinion. Um I don't I mean it might still be the best possible solution if they're making this set. Yeah, but you don't mess with nerds and collections. Like if if people are collecting stuff in the digital realm and there's something that exists in the physical realm that they can't have in the digital realm, that's really irritating. In my moral heart of hearts, I agree. I'm going to put on my cold corpo hat here for a second. No, late stage capitalism has entered the chat. Hold on. Hold on. Let's Let's do this, right? I just got to see here. There we go. This is this is Teu Matt. [Music]

Um, if Okay, everyone is right is rightfully complaining on both sides of this. Here's the problem. They're still going to sell so many of both versions of this thing that they will not like the anger will be there and all it will do is fuel stories like us talking about it so more people know about it who will probably buy one of them. I I I it's bad and I don't like it. So, but if they're going but if they're going to do this and they and I guarantee you that there's someone somewhere in the copyright or the the or the whoever is deciding what can be used where that thought when this deal went through first that it would be fine and then they found out it absolutely wasn't going to be fine after some element of it was signed and then they're trying to figure out a way around it because the probably the Marble Snap deal is pretty

exclusive. Um, so yeah, I bet you they kind of I bet you different departments locked themselves into this nightmare that they're trying to figure their way out of. Yeah. So I I want to um so new guy correctly says the only way to make them stop is to not buy the cards. That's not entirely true because here's here's the thing, right? And this is the important thing. enough existing players have to not buy the cards to counteract the net profit from the set from all of the new people who will come in because they like Spider-Man and want to check out Magic the Gathering and uh from the increased cost of Univers's Beyonce because Universe Beyonce also cost more because they have to pay the licensing fees so they cost more even though they're also standard legal, All right. By the way, this isn't like a fancy tournament set or a commander only set. These sets will be um legal in every tier of competitive play. Uh which is Okay. I was going to ask that. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Um so, uh yeah, it's um it's going to be very interesting. I'm I'm I'm certainly not looking forward to all of it. I'm just gonna sit in my giant dragon's horde of Final Fantasy themed Magic the Gathering cards and merch and apparel uh and be happy with that and [Music] then try and figure this out when it happens. I actually don't Oh, I don't know because I I'm not I'm not in it enough anymore. Um h how much of the community engages in both like like collections wise, both arena and physical magic? I imagine it's actually kind of a small amount. I imagine everyone dabbles, but like it feels like you pick one and you you you go in that late cuz just from a cost perspective, well, it's much easier to get into um like a new deck in arena before you get into it in paper. So, for instance, there's a new card

um called Corey Steel Cutter, which is a new card that came out in the most recent set and it's bonkers powerful. Uh, I'm doing some I'm doing some research right now. In arena, it costs four rare wild cards to make four Corey Steel Cutters, right? Like that there's a one to one, right? Um, and the cheapest version of Corey Steel Cutter is $16 in paper. So, that's more than $60 just for those cards. And you can pay less real money to get them on arena, right? So, there's a lot of advantages and disadvantages, right? In Arena, you're playing in slightly different formats. You're playing with digital rules and you're not getting the in-person experience, but it is easier to do deck testing. So, so Will, what's your go-to like Magic the Gathering? Is it in person or is it online or is it arena? My my local game store stopped doing Magic during the pandemic and never picked back up. So, I don't have a place to play. So what? So how would you feel then if they

released the Final Fantasy on physical only? Uh I would understand I think um I I like I kiss. Yeah. I But they were kissing. Will they were kissing and then corporations took them and said your love isn't you can't do it. Sure. But because I I mostly play arena and I also do have a physical collection though I don't use it. I would still get the good brain chemicals from just acquiring. Right. which is like not ideal, but still a thing that I'm down for, right? Um, and I think that it Yeah, it'll be interesting. So, um, ju just to to uh, can you stack duplicates of the Marvel versions in the universe functional copy? No. From a rules perspective, they will be the same card printed differently. So, the way that this works is sometimes car when cards have been printed in the past that have a um like a an IP version, right? So,

like there was a Godzilla crossover for when we did the dinosaur set, right? And there was Godzilla Tyrant King, right? And everyone was like, "That's not a real Magic card." Uh, and you're right, it's not because the magic card was named Zora Strength Incarnate, and it was just an alternate art treatment called Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Got it. So, okay, my last question on this story because I don't I don't know cuz they it feels like they got themselves into a corner here and there's no answer that will make everyone happy. I bet I think it feels like even in the in the little bits I poked around the article and the post uh that's on Magic's website and uh like replies to it, there's lots of complaints. I have not seen what a solution would be that is like a real one. You know what I mean? Like a plausible one. I think lots of people were hoping that they would rewind the

clock and not take any deals. Like I think the hope is that in the future digital rights are now a contingent part of printing a universes beyond set that like the set won't get printed unless they can guarantee parody. Right. Yeah. Right. Because the parody is the important part. I just don't know if in the current media landscape if something big enough came through. I like a Marvel. I I don't I don't know what's bigger than Marvel right for this right. Unless Unless, and I don't think it's going to happen. The only Dark Universe, the only other one that I can think of that might generate more money than just Marvel is if they got a Star Wars crossover. I was about to say it. I was about to say, which would also fall probably under the same opaces because um I'm willing to bet it's not actually Marvel directly. I'm willing to bet it's Disney lawyers.

I'm so willing to bet it's Disney lawyers, which means that they're gonna have this problem with with all of them. Um, yeah. Well, Star Wars has its own damn uh collectible card game. So, Right. Well, and and the other um the other, by the way, the other problem that that emerges from this, right? Um is what are they going to do? Because and this is sort of a conceptual design problem more than like a functional problem. Spider-Man is a spider human hero. That's his creature type, which is a mechanical part of the card. Sure. Which means that Magic now has to make a spider human hero who is not Spider-Man and who is legally distinct enough to not get sued by Marvel and Disney, but still conveys that idea for enough to be on a card and be like a recognizable part of Magic Blur for Through the Omen Paths. And that's just one, right? There's going to be like Green Goblin and Mysterio and you

know Croc Killer Croc and like all of these other ones. Killer Croc is Batman. How dare you? How dare you? What am I thinking? There is a Croc guy. Spider-Man has fought a giant crocodile dude in the sewers of killer croc. Whatever the lizard there. Sure. Dr. Kurt Connors. You'll forgive me for forgetting. Are you going to sit here? This is a fellow This is a fellow doctor. giant thing is called killer croc and which one's called the lizard. Notoriously wellnamed villain. Weren't we just talking about how nerds get really mad about stuff that doesn't matter? Isn't that what we were saying? Uhhuh. Yeah. This is me doing it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We saw it. We saw it in your eyes. The activation kicked off. Yeah. Right. All right. Well, hopefully uh people enjoy proxies. I don't know. I have no I have no solution here. This is cra I mean it's interesting that this happened now. Um and it is due to IP license. Yeah. This is the first time

that they've not had simultaneous digital and physical card releases. Not exactly, but to this scale, yes, the Warhammer 40k and Doctor Who Commander decks are experiencing the same thing. because that only affects two for two real formats in one format. That's an excuse for two adults to throw money at each other until someone gives up. Um uh there's less been less outcry, but this will affect these cards affect every competitive format. So the commander decks are only legal in commander, which is the most popular format, but mostly played in person and not in digital. Uh legacy and vintage. Legacy players are used to this cuz legacy is kind of weird like that. And vintage players will just cry themselves to sleep on their piles of money because vintage decks start with the power nine, which means that a vintage deck starts at a greater cost than a car. So, I really don't care what the vintage players think.

Um, that's fair. Yeah. So, the this is the first time it's affecting standard and everything else. Um, Got it. So, yeah. All right. Yeah. Interesting. Hope it works out for Yeah, it's it's super weird and I wanted to talk about it and I'm I'm sorry that I just I saw the glaze. It's okay. It's fine. Just I learned so much about Magic Ga the Gathering just now. Like don't don't apologize for that cuz I I think it's fascinating. And like honestly the IP stuff I know we'll move on but like the IP stuff was the first time ever the Lord of the Rings one for me was just like maybe I should give this magic thing a try. Yeah. and then I didn't because money. But like I get why they're doing it and I do think it is drawing in new players to your point of like the amount of people who will buy it because of Spider-Man will offset people protesting it. Anyway, oh there there is also a digital only set, but we don't talk about that because it was a mistake and continues to be a mistake and they should never have done it. So anyway, uh next

up, Oblivion. You can hear the music. That's right. We don't have the rights to it, but you could hear it in your head, right? Uh, yeah. So, that happened. Um, that was So, first, real quick, just before we get into what happened with the Oblivion remaster, Shadow Dropping, uh, just as a sort of recap with Will, but then Aaron, because I'm not sure your history with the series from both of you, like, did you play the original back in the day? Are you playing this new version? No end and no I did u I'm trying to remember the first one. What was before Oblivion? Morowind. Morrowind. I played Morrowind all the way through. I tried Oblivion. I don't think I finished it. I tried Skyrim. It was too open world for me and I panicked. I've started it a thousand times. But if I if I touch a Bethesda game, I break out in hides.

So, it I I I don't think they're bad or anything. I just am like I've never I've tried multiple Bethesda games multiple times and every time I've tried them, I just like my brain just experiences like static and I just stop. I get it. I shut down. It's the same like yeah, it's an actively like I must keep forcing myself to play this type thing. But the funny thing with me was that I heard about this release because like within the two hours of me just sitting at my laptop, I saw about five friends start playing it and I was like, "Oh, I guess that came out just on my Steam notifications." So yeah. Okay. So So I I back in the day played it quite a bit. I I almost beat it and never did. Honestly, the Oblivion sections of Oblivion were were famously punishing and and and rough and the uh I'm not a terrible fan of the way that the um the enemy level scaling works. We

actually done an EC episode on that forever ago. Uh what I did love about it though, and I'm so I'm lost in it again. Like I am in this is for me this is this is the right amount of nostalgia. I think Will you might have coined this last week, but it's basically like they released the game that you think you remember like Yeah, that was that was chat I think. and and me refining chat's idea. But yes, uh it it has been an absolute delight. And look, I I'm I'm playing it on PS5. Uh on playing on controller is a bit clunky in my opinion, but like I that's how I played it back on the Xbox 360. Like I I'm just used to it and the the code of paint makes it feel good. There's a that you can actually uh run in it now. You can dash. That's nice. Um I there are so many problems with this game. I don't care. And it kind of put it into an interesting category for me because like I've gotten to points even while my playthrough I'm like well this is frustrating. Will on stream last week when we like did the quest in a wrong way and then we had to like figure it

out or reload or whatever. It was like you know Bethesda games can get in their own way and trip on their own shoelaces. But overall uh I think this is phenomenal. I find its creation more fascinating than the actual game uh to be perfectly honest. And and I there's been a lot of talk and I am not uh of a technical mind of this to really know the exact way, but a lot of people are like either praising or or um yelling at cloud about um the exact level of jank is still in this game because it is basically the the brain of the game is is the old school engine and that it's sort of being uh there's a rapper of um of Unreal 5 and uh first of All it's interesting because everyone's sort of talking about that and I think it's because it's specifically a Bethesda game. Games do that kind of thing all the time. You take the core of a thing and then you put it in a different like it that just that's just how a lot of stuff functions right now. So that's not the terribly

interesting part of the story. It's it's the conversation that I'm actually interested in in in both in Brad and Janet and Rocky and both of you here when doing a a remaster here because this is not everyone's like this should be called a remake. I don't think it should be. This is a remaster. is a fresh coat of paint. They've adjusted some. Final Fantasy 7 was a remake. Final Fantasy 7 is a remake. Like there it's a different game than you played with the same story, but not really. Um, this is the exact game, but with quality of life improvements and a gloss of paint that is very, very, very, very pretty. So, like I'm just curious like when you're looking for and I'm talking about specifically a re like Oh, no. Actually, let's go here. Do you prefer a remake or a remaster or is it sort of different based on like whatever uh IP or genre that we're talking about? Well, I can speak to this from the Mass

Effect perspective because they did that recently. Um, and I think it was to some extent even less than what Oblivion just did because it just repackaged it mostly and made the graphics a little shinier. But I don't think it was even a full engine remaster. Like it was just you can access all three games in one place now. And the streamlining between them and the save files is just a little bit better. But they didn't change any mechanics. It's the same game. It's the same game. Um, and for me, that's fine, but I've already played them a thousand times. Like, and and I will play them again. I did like the fact that it made it an easier cell for me to keep harassing friends to play Mass Effect to go, you can get it all in one spot now and it's got all the DLC because like your your DLC management as

a Mass Effect fan and your save file management was legitimately a nightmare. Like anytime that you wanted to start a new game, you had to start with one. You had to make sure you didn't switch consoles. You had to get all the DLCs imported. You had to play them in the right order. And like that's what I think the legendary edition wrapped really well together and I think that's why it was necessary, but it didn't ultimately improve the game. But what you're talking about was like if they had made like a Final Fantasy 7 version of Mass Effect that was essentially the same story but a totally different game. That's a hard maybe. It would really have to scratch the same brain itch. Yeah. Which is a high bar. And I don't know. Yeah. if they can do it with something like Mass Effect 2. Mass not not Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect as well, meaning all three of the original games. Um, they're still of a time period where I I I would imagine that I mean, there's always a chance. I would imagine

that they wouldn't be interested in making something that's so different and so over the top that's a different sort of mechanical thing because when it was made it still had the fidelity of essentially like a great sci-fi film, you know, already like Final Fantasy 7 is um is is is uh very very blocky and stagnant and has a beautiful story and it's well written, etc., But like, and it did the best it could for the time, but it's not pulling on the exact same heartstrings as people anymore because people are used to other things. Um, yeah. Will, what about you? I uh like I only like remasters for games I haven't played. Yes. Like I I I I like I like uh remasters. So, like I loved that we got a uh Super Mario and the um Legend of the Seven Stars RPG remaster, right? Cuz I'd never gotten to play the original cuz copies are stupidly expensive and I

don't have a system that plays it, right? So, like I got to play a game I didn't get to play otherwise. And for that, I like remasters. But for games I've already played, I want a remake, right? because I I very much suffer from trying to step in the same river twice cooks my brain instantly, right? So like trying to go back and replay Breath of the Wild, right? I absolutely love Breath of the Wild. I like love everything about Breath of the Wild. We do not talk about Tears of the Kingdom. We love Breath of the Wild. Okay, great. Awesome. Excellent. I love Tears of the Kingdom. We know the interventions later. Um the uh no um that's okay. It just it completely missed me, right? Uh and so I've tried to go back and replay Breath of the Wild and I find that it's not like interesting or possible to really do it. So for me, the need for newness

means that I want a remake of something that like if I'm gonna replay something that I loved, I want it to be remade like in a new way. Well, yeah. And I think to there was another quote you popped up before I didn't catch their name, but about asking for like a Mass Effect one remake with because what what they did was like they got they got better at the mechanics from one to two to three. They got rid of the makeo. They got like your overheating versus like ammo packs. Like all of that made the game better. And so if they were like all the lessons we learned from one to two to three, let's go back to one and do all those mechanics and get rid of the freaking Mako with the weirdest center of gravity ever designed. Like yes. And that when I first heard that they were doing the Mass Effect, that's what I was hoping they were going to do. That's what I thought they were doing, but I guess they I didn't play the the rem the rem. But what you said though, like in terms of system, it was really hard to get friends to play Mass Effect

one because it was like Xbox 360, right? like it was an old old game that you know, yes, you could backload it, but it wasn't it wasn't clean. So that's why I'm glad that they released it on new systems, but anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to jump. No, that's it. I mean, that's kind of conversation. Yeah, that's kind of the point. So, so with this, I mean, I I I think for a for a game like Oblivion, I think this is the perfect like this is the perfect way to reexperience it or experience it for the first time because it is for everything we've said, for every reason that I've said I've loved it, for every reason everyone has said that you've bounced off it. That is what the core of this game is. It has not changed. And I did the quest last night. It was the It's so dumb and boring and I love it. I don't know why I love it. It's You're in a castle in Charle or Coral and uh you have to like help the the the queen or whoever she is like got

a paint a painting stolen. She gives you a key to the castle. She's like go be an investigator and go invest tell me which of these six people is the person who stole my painting and you have to go interview them and find clues. It's the it's the least like the game's not made for it. It's so boring in the way that you have to do it, but I'm like, I'm gonna find out. I'm gonna find out who stole this painting. And like, I don't know. It locked me in because I I don't It brought me back to the place where like these games sort of like feel like anything can happen and like, oh, now I'm a detective. Great. Is the mechanic of me being a detective super janky? Absolutely. But I was just in a in a troll den earlier being a sneaky Bowman. Like, this is all very different stuff. Um, I don't know. I I appreciate that they did this. I I I worry that Bethesda may have learned uh the wrong lesson here. Uh and I know there's a Fallout 3 version of this sort of coming out soon, which could be good, but then other than that, unless I

mean maybe New Vegas, but like other than that, I don't know if there's anything else. And Morowind would be lovely, of course, but like they're going to they can't go back to this well too many times. I think I think this is special because it it hadn't been done yet. And I think there's a generational marketing thing that they're trying to do too where it's like we we old now and we have kids now and like there's an element of like I want to introduce you to this beautiful game that I played when I was your age and then they look at the graphics and they're like no I'm not playing that. And this is like a way to bring in younger players to games that they may have heard of but like are just inaccessible because of graphics. That may be the marketing. Yeah, I think so. Big part of the marketing. Yeah. Uh also Smashing Grab, you say Daggerfall. Listen, that would be lovely, but that's a remake. Like you can't do what they

did here with Oblivion and just put it into Unreal and call it a day. It Yeah. And it is also worth noting um that this does not interfere at all with Sky Oblivion, which I know was a concern. Um in fact, Bethesda sent the Sky Oblivion team copies of the remake of the remaster and said, "We know what you're doing. You have our blessing. Here's what we did. Good luck." Which more than anything else about this classy. So classy. I like that. Yeah. Like Yeah, I do like that. Moders for the win. Yeah. Um, last thing I did want to talk about here real quick and modders are already starting on this Oblivion thing. There's a couple articles. We'll have them in the show notes about uh sort of like they're already trying to to uh figure out how to mod this correctly. Yeah, I see. I saw that someone was modding it to be the OG graphics and I'm like, why the point?

Why modders? I think that's a real Jurassic Park. Uh, you know, just to see if we could, not not if we should sort of sort of thing. But hey, more power to him. Um, I want to talk a little bit about the concept of Shadow Drops. I know this was leaked. I understand um a week or two before, whatever it was when we were talking about it. I have increasingly loved when stuff just comes out of nowhere and appears. I think there's so much hype around so many things that like I've come to I I this is not like water in in MadMax Rear Road. When there is a lack of hype, I do not come to um to reg uh to what is it not regret its absence. Uh this is I forget it. Lament lament its absence. I love its absence. I love that this just got put

out into the world and it became like a big splash thing for a week and a half. Like it felt really really nice. Um I I so I don't know. I think and I've said this for a long time even in movies like could you imagine a world where Avengers Endgame had no trailer? Yeah. And they just they just released it when it was done. Like I know that can't happen for a lot of different reasons, but how special that would be. And I feel like the Oblivion remaster is getting a lot more love because of that. Like there wasn't like six months leading up and nine in-depth videos about how it was working and like what you'll get to do in the painted realm and like all it just it doesn't it just felt impressive because it was just thrown at us all at once almost. How are people feeling about the the shadow drop in general? I mean, I've been pro Shadow Drop for forever. Like, in indies do this more frequently where they're like, "All right, cool. Game's done. Here it is."

And you're like, "Oh, I had no idea this existed 10 minutes ago, but now it's my whole identity for like three weeks." Great. Yeah. Panic panic calling the work to take time off. Yeah. And I for me, I think um I wish I love it for video games. I think TV streamers are missing a beat with it. I think cuz the method of TV right now is that they release six maybe eight episodes of half a story and then we wait two to three years and then we get another part of a story and the all the hype kind of makes it feel like a little bit of a let down. Whereas like if something like House of the Dragon was just like, "Here you go. It's we we've done the next bit of the story, then I'd be super excited and I would sit down and watch it and then I wouldn't be as frustrated uh if I had to wait another few years."

I don't know. I don't know. I think it's possible with TV streaming and I think that would be a better word of mouth than a lot. I'm I'm break it real quick. Everyone's going to be able to to hear Aaron still. I'm just going to make her disappear and reappear real quick. Oh, wait. Hold on. Am I glitching? Sorry. [Music] There we go. Much better. All right. Yay. Testing. Yeah. All right. Every time that happens, if it happens again, I'm hitting that button. Um, no, that makes total sense in the streaming space. I would like to see that. Uh, I don't know. I just want to I I think what I'm missing is surprise. I just want I just there's so much neat thing like so much neat media all around. I just want to be surprised by stuff when it comes out. And this was a lovely one. I don't know. All right. Uh let's keep moving. We're gonna talk about wars, specifically the star variety. Uh so we got two pieces of news. One, the prophecy has been

fulfilled for this upcoming season in renowned multiversal game Fortnite. You will be able to play as Darth Jar Jarar the Wise called Jar Pinks. That's right. Uh they are doing a Sith version of Jar Jar in the upcoming Fortnite season. That's all you need to know. That doesn't mean you should play Fortnite. It just means that they're doing it and I'm happy that they're doing it over there where I can look at it and not play Fortnite. Thanks. The other one uh is this new announcement of a new IP or a new I guess property in the Star Wars universe. Aaron, you you really want to talk about this. Tell tell us about ZCOM. I I'm so excited. So, it's technically called Zero Company. Um but they are more Star Wars video games is always a good thing. Uh we're happy to have more Star Wars video games. Uh Jedi Fall in Order series has been fantastic and that's great. uh single player RPG, Star Wars, I'm here for it. But uh also love

turn-based uh games such as XCOM, which has been a delightful a delightful game. And if people haven't played the new ex I guess new big ass air quotes around those, but like um those have been great. And then so they are coming out with a turnbased tactical Star Wars game of just mercs and mercenaries. as much as I could get from the trailer. Um, but it's basically the mechanics of XCOM and they called it Zero Company, which is ZCOM. I see what you did there. And it's it looks pretty and it looks awesome and I cannot cannot wait to play it. Um, I'm sure I will throw my controller across the room when my 99% likelihood of hitting misses. Yeah, it's fine. It's the thing where you've got the blaster like pressed against someone and then miss and you're like, h how how

it's so horrible when that happens. But it happens. And that's what we sign up for when we play these turn-based tactical games. Um, some games are better at it than others. I think of the remasters, XCOM 1 was better than XCOM 2. Uh, XCOM 2 had a lot of those percentage issues. I think they tried to be too smart with the statistics and ended up screwing themselves over. But yes, yes, Midnight Suns 10 out of 10. Uh, although I still wish I they would let me romance people in Midnight Suns, but that's Do they not? I thought they did. There's the No, you can talk to everyone, but it's more of like you're just easedropping on stories and like you can build relation like you can build relationships in terms of like going out on missions and they they really overhyped the RPG

aspect of Midnight Suns. Okay. Yeah. And I think that's mostly because um they were going off of Marvel's Bible and because it's um because it's build your own protag. They don't want to deal with the ramifications of going off Bible far enough to make individual characters hot for protag. And that's kind that's kind of a weird um like a weird problem that they have. But we've got it bad. Got it bad. Got it bad. We're hot for protag. Whoa. No. I I don't know. After after the blue suede shoes thing, I don't know that anything's ever going to follow that. Like that's fair. Yeah. Um Oh. Oh dear. It has arrived already. Time has flown at the part of the show where we sell people fake things while they get sold real things. All right, Aaron. I don't know if you were here the last when we started doing this. Okay, so we need to

roll 3 minutes of uh of ads on Twitch to keep this pre-rolls, which are garbage, off. Um, so we're going to we're going to pitch things that the audience can't spend money on, but wish they could. Um, like So, Matt, would you would you do a demonstration of of of this our style of advertisement? Yes. Give me a second, chat. It's the bathmat, right? We're all on the same page. Who's going to get the bath mat? Right. Okay, great. All right, we good? Yeah. Yeah, please. Please go right ahead. Oh, wow. The music came in loud. Hi there, everyone. Matt from Extra Credits here. Don't confuse me with the item that I'm selling you that you can't buy. My bath mat. That's right. You can't buy it. I wish you could. But I'm going to move it over here so it's not hitter in the face. Uh, I wish it was fluffy,

right? But it's not. And therefore, you wouldn't even really want it. It look, it does its job well. It does everything it's supposed to do in a non-sonic shower. It makes all the Look, the water that was on it before is gone. It only took an hour. It's like magic. And my feet are cold. You can't buy it. I just wanted to take this time to let you know that you can't have it. And I hope your feet are warm and soft. There we go. I'm saying that's how we do it. That's how we sell the things we can't sell. Delightful. I will not lick the bath, Matt. Okay. I do a lot of stuff on this show. I I I I have I have I have mine. Matt, if you if you would. Here you go. Hi there, everyone. Will from Extra Credits here to pitch you a new tool of scientific inquiry vetted by an actual scientist. Lick it. That's right. If you find a rock and you're not sure what kind of rock it is, apparently you

should just lick it. That's right. You could find out if it's a fossil, like a rare and dead thing. That's apparently how actual scientists do the thing. So, it's really science if you just have a clipboard, you pick up a rock, you're like, I wonder what this rock is. And then you lick it. And that's that's just how you figure it out. So, that's apparently a thing that you aspiring scientists should have in your toolkit. Try just licking it. When a problem comes along, you must lick it. I don't know if that's entirely accurate. Uh Erin, would you like to sell something in rebuttal to what Will has just said? You don't have to. We are back for beds. By the way, I I have something that that people probably actually could buy, but it's the first thing I saw on my desk. So, roll the music, please. Okay. Hi, everyone. Dr. Aaron McDonald here, here to sell you the screaming goat. When people try to tell you to lick your bath mat, you respond in tears of

screams, uh, terrifying those around you. I don't know if this will work or not. That's what your response should be when people tell you to lick your bath mat. So, buy one of your screaming goats now so you can respond to those who have subscribed to the Lick It franchise. All right. I like it. It's very good. We could just fill the rest with goat screaming, but I will not do that to the rest of uh the audience. Yeah. Okay. Cool. And that was back from meds. Yeah. Excellent. Very productive. All right. Uh time for our next story, which I uh go some rocks in my backyard. Lick it. Do it. All right. As everyone knows, I am our resident support main. I play supports in every video game you can possibly play support in. Yes, including that one that you think you can't. Um, I do this because I enjoy the sort of play

style of playing support in all these different places. Rivals has had a big conversation recently about the nature of supporting uh or being a strategist is what they call it uh in in Rivals and it has sort of come to a head and has led to a support strike or a healer strike as they're sometimes called where people are refusing to queue as supports or healers because of toxicity in the community regarding um regarding the role. And it's sort of kind of an interesting it's sort of an interesting phenomena that keeps coming up over and over and over again. In every game that uses the trinity, right, the healer tank DPS, healers get flack. In everyone I've ever seen, um I suppose in WoW, tanks get can get slightly more because aggro management's much more important than it is in some other

places. and if you screw up as a tank, everyone dies. Um, but that's also true in a lot of places. Um, but healers tend to get a lot of a lot of flak. I have a theory just real quick coming from uh my my long ago past as an editor. Um uh there is a term that is used in a lot of different things and that is uh [ __ ] rolls downhill and when something goes wrong in pre-production or production or in parts of post-prouction uh all of the sudden the editor is there being the last line of defense. And if that even though they might have been given something that is completely uh you you can't do what the people in charge want you to do with it. uh they are given that task regardless and it can be rather thankless. I feel like if a tank is the first line of defense and DPS almost like their job is getting the the other team down fast enough so that the healer can still kind of do his job

or their job in the background. Then if that all fails, there's no one left alive to blame except the healer. It it's it's it's it I've never sort of put two and two together, but I feel like uh healers are uh the editors of first person team-based shooters. Yeah. Like um I can listen, I can cloak and dagger all day. I can heal people. I can, you know, get people in out of trouble. Um because cloak's right click is stupid. Um I can buff people's damage. I can use my alt. I can do all those things. But if you keep running in out of my line of sight and then complaining that I didn't heal your Iron Fist, Psylock, whatever, when you are on the other side of the entire map in their backline, that's that's between you and those who dwell above like I got I got nothing for you, right? Like so the there is sort of this

mentality I think that that it always comes down to support diff it always comes down to this other thing. And then the problem is that people's toxicity about it is kind of rampant, right? Yeah. I'm in their spawn. Why aren't I getting healed? Exactly. Exactly. I I do think like yes, I think the support harassment is prevalent across all of these sort of games. However, I also think this is a rivals induced issue is why it's so big. So, I tried playing Rivals. I don't play a lot of these games, but I'm a sucker for IP and multiple things being merged together. I gave it a try. It was a nightmare in terms of like the amount of stuff that they don't put in like the guide of how to play the game that you have to look up stuff online to learn how to play each character properly. means that like like you can kind of do the basics, but

people there's obviously stuff and combos that folks have like assembled together collectively. I don't know. I found the tutorial and the training and the accessibility for coming in to try to play a new character a nightmare. And I do think like as a support, I can't I never even tried playing supports. I was just straight DPS. Like I'll just try try this out. And I could do a couple things, but obviously not on the level even at the right scaled for ranking and everything like it was. And so I I can see like being a support there's stuff that you're trying to figure out that isn't obvious when you unless maybe if you play these games all the time, but yeah, it wasn't obvious for me. And there is also a unique rivals problem which is that the answer to why is there an Iron Fist murdering our backline is not DPS turning around and doing like and taking care of the Iron Fist. It's to run triple support which

is probably not a sustainable solution long term but but even what even what you just laid out right like I don't know that like like do you know what I mean? Like I think that's sort of to Erin's point like I I I did feel this with Rivals that I didn't feel with Overwatch back in the day is like I was able to pop in and pop out of Overwatch and within a game or two I'd be like, "Oh, if after not playing for a while I'm like, "Oh, the meta's here. Oh, we got this. Oh, okay." I I you can kind of like through pure gameplay in a few matches where rivals and listen maybe it's my bones being dust but like I have a real hard time figuring out what is supposed to be happening like even be I played like five games I felt like I didn't like in a row lately and I'm like I don't know what this meta is and no one is taking the time nor is it their job to but taking their time to explain it to me in these low-level unranked areas. You know what I mean? the the the triple support meta is only really at higher rank tiers. You can run uh 222.

I've also seen one three uh two one tank, three DPS, two support like it's it is more flexible than that. It's just there is this additional support theoretical slot that's happening a lot because Rivals is pretty big on dive. The interesting thing is that while both of you have incredibly valid points about not explaining things, um the um the rival team has actually listened and the next mid-season support patch is including uh or next mid-season rebalance patch is including support buffs. Um, which I think is going to end up being a problem cuz I'm I'm going to I'm going to give you all a spoiler right now. I don't actually think the supports need it. I don't Well, so this is the interesting thing. If you buff supports too much, your games get longer. I mean,

it dep if if they're not timed, right? Like do are every match timed? Uh, yes, but sort of loosely. your let me rephrase then then that your your your volleys or your exchanges or your battles within that time get longer and therefore there's less different pushpull moments. Yeah. Like that's just how the timing will work out, right? Um which might not be great either, but again I don't know. I don't I'm not deep enough into it. What would be the solution that is? Is it Would it just be will it just be people to stop being dicks? Amazing. Yes. Oh well. How do you patch that into a game? uh you know you you go on strike apparently. Um, but I think it is important that like when this like idea when when people get harassed for doing their the best they can at a role and then taking all of the blame. Like the number of times I've been blamed for like healer diff when no one else on my team will heal and I have a

Spider-Man like and I can taste the web because I just keep dying and dying and dying on respawn and no one's covering my my route from respawn to the thing and Spider-Man just keeps solo killing me. Like people need to have understanding and empathy for what is going on, right? Well, I wonder if this even speaks to Erin's point, weirdly, in in the rivals of it all, right? Like, and again, I I'm not deep enough into into team shooters at this point to really do it. And so, Brad Janet, start chiming in here. Let me know when when I am off course. But like it feels like because Rivals is such a a free-to-play game and b just um uh phenom of popularity, right? Um that that means that the player base is going to be much larger than say uh a $40 buy it even for the original Overwatch one. Okay. Right. Because you there's a

barrier to entry to play Overwatch one. Uh or one more. There's a few, you know, you get what I'm saying. So, like it feels like by its very nature, I think I talked about this actually, weirdly, this all ties together, Erin, with Bridge Crew with uh the reason why I felt comfortable, and it's a completely different game, of course it is. Um, but the reason why I always felt comfortable going into VR and playing Bridge Crew with strangers is because the buyin set myself up for more times than not being linked with people that are want the same experience I do. They they have a PC with a VR headset and they bought a Star Trek game. That's a big that's a lot of checks and balances to get to a point to get to a player base that I'm probably going to relate to. And again, I'm not saying that every game should be this. Absolutely not. I'm saying I think problems like what's happening in Marvel Rivals comes from the fact that the player base is so huge and there's no

true buyin other than hardware. So, you have a player base that is so large, it's harder to latch on to what a proper meta or comp or anything would be outside of external research. And therefore, you're going to get more toxicity as eventually one of the two teams feels like they're getting steamrololled because the healer messed up, right? There there's also another interesting problem, right, which is that Overwatch 2, while it has taken a couple of very significant knocks, is still running fine, right? is in no danger of shutting down, which does mean that there's a weird mix in rivals of people who moved from Overwatch 2, people who dabble in both and people who have never played Overwatch or any other hero shooter at all. There you go. And that's another big one, right? Because if my favorite, right, Jeff is probably the best example of this, right? if I'm playing Rivals

because I like the cute little shark kid who can nom up the entire enemy team and then yeet them off the map because dear god he needs a different ultimate. That's such a stupid thing, right? I'm playing a healer because I'm playing my favorite character. I'm not playing a healer because I want to play a healer. I'm playing a healer because my buyin for the game was that I had to play a cute little shark lad, right? And so I think that that is potentially also a part of the problem, right? is that like gearing the gearing people to these roles is done inefficiently as Aaron points out, right, with like the lack of really good in-game tutorial and does depend on you having synthesized a bunch of knowledge, right? Like I know a lot of this stuff, but that's because I was playing TF2 in college as a medic main. So y'all whippers snappers who are like, I played Mercy, whatever. Get off my lawn. Right. So many hats and

so many shades of mercy. Shame there, right? Yeah. No, so many hats, right? But like I've been playing hero shooters for a very long time, so I adopt to this support play style really well. So it's less of an obvious issue to me. There's also the issue that like um not all characters are equally hard like new guy points out with Spider-Man, right? Well, but that's the thing too, right? So Overwatch, you come in and you pick based on what character like probably the start like the look of that character, but you you're not emotionally involved with any of those characters if you're new to Overwatch. Here if I need to be the Punisher for whatever reason like I'm going to play the Punisher even if I suck at playing the Punisher, right? Like there's your character. Yeah. Like that's your guy. Yeah. Which we we're going to unpack separately from this, but that's I'm sure it's not my character. Although board again, Frank Castle Okay, great. Awesome. Is is legit uh pretty badass in that show. Yeah. Um regardless, that's I

think I completely agree. Yeah. Yep. Uh I think um and it'll it'll it continues to get weirder with new characters and new especially because we've had um we've had Invisible Woman and Emma Frost, right? when I know Emma's not a support, but she's a tank and healing her is weird, right? Like, can she be healed in diamond form? Yes. Oh, interesting. But the way that she goes in is not or inaccurate. Um, actually, I don't know. But I do remember there was a time in the comic when Emma Frost got her arm broken off when she was a diamond and she couldn't turn back right away because if she did, she'd bleed out. Yeah. Right. Um, so there Yeah. I mean, there's a bunch of the like the evolving state of the meta also makes it harder and harder as they add more characters that cause people to jump in to jump incoherently. Yes. Right. Like it the complexity ceiling is rising with

each character and they're talking about adding more characters quickly. Well, I have an idea. I have an idea for a stream. Okay. What if we did because you have a you have a very good amount of knowledge based around this game and compositions and what's going on, etc. And I know some of the mods do too. Yeah. What if we did something where me and Aaron, you're welcome to pop in here if you'd like to as well, and and you know, a couple of our internet friends pop in and you basically give us what is essentially a Marvel Rivals boot camp. Okay? Do you know what I mean? Because like we're all coming into it with different stuff. I'm coming into it with a whole bunch of Overwatch nonsense baked in. Like people who haven't played a lot of the like I don't know. I feel like that could actually be something that is helpful for people wanting to get the most out of this game. I think that would be Yeah. Okay. So, we've already had three mods uh volunteer immediately. Great. Great. Okay. Great. Uh yeah. Yeah, we can definitely we can definitely Of course, we'll only be playing the Punisher. No, it's not true. Oh my god. Um yeah, Marvel Hall of the

novice. Exactly. So, you know, maybe we'll we'll we'll figure it out, but it is it is kind of interesting to talk about. Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna keep us moving because we do need we do need to keep moving because uh yeah. All right. Um I should have put another not me story here because neither of you this um but okay. So uh this is Claire Obscure. There will be no Clare Obscure spoilers here. Thank you. Nor should there be in the comments. I will see them and I will erase them from existence, which is fitting. Um, so, uh, Claire Obscure is a French RPG, uh, taking a lot from the tradition of JRPGs, and it is a bonafide hit. It is a game that a lot of streamers have been, [Music] um, steadfastly refusing to shut the hell up about for like the past three months. Um, I have been one of them, by the way. I've built I built a huge chunk

of the stream schedule around getting everything done and getting thing filling the space until Clare Obscure came out because I was like, "This game's going to slap. This game's going to slap. This game's going to slap." And I was right because this game slaps. Um yes, this team is actually a bunch of French developers that left Ubisoft, I believe. Um so, uh it is getting critical acclaim. It is getting all of the reviews. It's uh on it's doing very well on um here on Twitch. Uh I am playing it on Twitch. You can come over. I'll be playing Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm taking Tuesday to play Blueprints and Thursday for Design Club. Um but I'm playing a lot of it here. I think it's great. It has a really refreshing take on turn-based that keeps the game um fastmoving and interactive. I love the art style. I love the theming. I love everything. It is dark as hell. It comes with a long list of content warnings which they are not hesitant to deliver on very quickly. Um,

and the best part and my favorite part is that it's already passed a million copies sold. Yeah. Awesome. It's probably going to be people's game of the year. It's I was I was looking at this. I hadn't seen much of it until honestly yesterday I watched a gameplay trailer and what I really loved about the turnbas of it which is the thing that kind of turns me off to a lot of uh turn-based stuff these days is it seems like all of the abilities or the most of them when they drop down when it's time like actually tell you what exactly it does like in detail in the in the cool art style that feels like Persona kind of made uh the norm. Yeah. Uh and it has Jennifer English in it. So yeah. Uh and and the uh the the main protag that you play for most of the game, Charlie Cox. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Yep. Awesome. Uh so I I remember seeing this on a list of games that were like games to look out for in 2025 and then it completely dropped off my I think I just didn't clock what the name was and so I didn't even Yeah. until sort of yesterday. I

was like, "Oh, this is that game." Like and the JRPG element looks great. It's like a JRPG with QTE like uh yeah, kind of if you think um Okay, I'm going to I'm going to which I don't hate to be honest. I'm I'm going to do I'm going to do it like X but Y. And I know that people know that I'm not the biggest fan of those, but Okay, hear me out. Hear me out. How dare you break your own rule. Is it like is it like Killer Croc, but the Lizard? Yeah, that's it. Exactly. No. Um, it's if Thousand-Year Door had a uh had a even darker because Thousand Your Dor is actually pretty dark. um had a uh darker sort of off uh offshoot um descendant game that was given to the most French people who had ever frenched in French to raise and then given just like a whole heaping helping of all of the trauma that was

too maturated to fit into any Final Fantasy game. Uh then you would have this game. Um, there's a deep undercurrent of the action command system from the Mario RPGs, um, that I think is really key to keeping it moving in a in an interesting way. Um, and in the same way that, um, Mario RPG does, all of your characters have different mechanics. Like, it's not right. It's not like Final Fantasy 1 where you're just like mash attack, right? It's each character is unique, has unique mechanics, has unique skills, has a unique like thing. Allah later Final Fantasy, which I think what's funny, I I have a it Final Fantasy 7 remake kind of does that. Like everyone does have different things, but they control the same. Like it's more of a role based thing, but the mechanic is similar. There's sometimes where it breaks away from that, but like uh and I find that I tend to until I really stop myself keep playing them all the same

where it feels like something like this you'd be like no no no the game is going to be like you have to do this now you have to do this now you have to do this and it plays to the roles that the characters are doing. Yeah. So it it's very important cuz like so and there's a mage character um uh a bruiser character and a fencer um and the fencer whether you like it or not will be in a stance and if you're in the wrong stance you are just going to get wrecked right because your stances aren't going to flow. The mage needs elemental infusions to do to have her spells do the things you need them to do. And if you're not using them then it's she's not really effective. Right. And the bruiser's got charge up for a big move. And if you're using him incorrectly, then his big move is not going to do as much and he's not as effective and you're going to lose because the game is difficult, which I also like. Cool. Yeah, it gets it gets a 10 out of 10 for me. It will probably be in a year with South of Midnight Blueprints and this to say that I will have a singular game of the year is

laughable, but this is definitely a game that I will be recommending and refusing to shut the hell up about for a significant period of time. All right. Awesome. All right. Uh, this just in. I've kicked my meetings a half hour, so we're fine. Breaking news. Breaking news. Matt upsets his co-workers, but they were very nice about it. Um, all right. Great. Yeah. Uh, okay, cool. Um, next up, it's time to talk about a very weird week for Discord. Oh, do I Who started? I mean, I can start our moment of silence. Yeah. Moment of silence for Discord. Um, I've been talking a lot. I was I just wanted to, you know, I I'll keep going. Um, so two two things have happened uh this year. This year, this week. Isn't that the vibe though? It's been a week. For real. Um, okay. So f first the

first is that Nintendo is actively trying to get Discord to roll over and give up personally identifying information for the people or for the person or persons who perpetrated the giant Pokemon leak from last year. Right. Um this is kind of a weird this is a weird spot to be in for Discord, right? It's not really like there's there are two sides to this, right? One, we don't want Discord to give up people to companies because they say so, but at the same time, Discord kind of has to comply with subpoenas. So, there's there's this like multifaceted thing where like I mean, there's no way they won't if they get subpoenaed, they'll do it. Correct. But we don't want them to do it until they get subpoenaed. Right. Right. That's that's the line, right? Um, so that'll that will be interesting to see uh because Pokemon Company is still large upset

spaghette over that leak, which is understandable because it was the biggest Pokemon leak ever and leaked a whole bunch of details about things that hadn't been released yet. Um, and Nintendo and the Pokemon Company are both very big on controlling their messaging. Very, very big on controlling their messaging. And so when that gets tweaked, they're not happy. And the second one is that uh Discord wants to grow up and be a publicly traded company. They want it so bad they can taste it. So they got a new CEO. Aaron's face is correct. And they got that new CEO from everyone's favorite place that's shedding executives like it's going out of style. Activision. Yeah. Also to be clear I believe uh let's see what is the name of uh this person uh uh Saknini I believe I I I might be

butchering that and I apologize but basically before this yeah Humam Sini uh before this they were uh chief strategy and talent officer in 2009 at Activision Blizz following the acquisition of King they became the company's uh CFO and then president uh a position he held until 2022 when he became vice chairman of the Activision uh Blizzard board. Then he left in 2023, not long after Microsoft finished its takeover of the company. This all comes to us from PC Gamer, by the way. It's in the show notes if you'd like to read more. Um the the the text I'm going to read it. It's like, okay, I want to make it very clear. Nothing he's saying here is strange or weird. It's just it doesn't feel like it's what the majority of people that I interact on Discord want Discord to be. Um they say, "I'm incredibly excited to join Discord

at such a pivotal moment. Discord stands as a massive foundational part of the gaming ecosystems that millions of players, developers, and publishers rely on every day." I'm going to pause here. They're setting up the ransom note. Uh, continuing on, uh, when Jason and Discord co-founder, uh, CTO Stan, uh, Vish Vishnki, I'm sorry again, I'm butchering that, have built is what they built is truly remarkable. A platform with an undeniable product market fit where hundreds of millions of people connect around their passion for gaming and shared interests. I won't continue. But you get where like they're like, man, this this this this beautiful pristine piece of earth sure will make a great granite quarry. Like it's very it's really bad. Um and and again, this is this person's job and and they come from a long line of managing the money of a publicly traded

corporation. I don't see this um going well for Discord um or or us on Discord, the users of Discord. Um I think it's going to go great for their seuite, which look in a legal sense is fine. On a on a personal and moral sense, it gets real depressy. Um, yeah. And and I've already seen the the big question is so where to now? Yeah. And the answer is hold, right? You got to hold. This is sort of the lesson that we've learned from leaving the bad place, aka Twitter. Um, yeah, which is you need to hold until everyone knows where we're going. Oh god. I was holding. Do you see? That was not a technical glitch at all. I was just holding. Now I'm real funny because Aaron cleared up as you do great. Weird. Erin, did you

take my bandwidth? We're tag teaming bandwidth right now. Yeah. Um I Okay, so like I appreciate that Discord has Nitro, some paid service. You want more shiny things? Great. I love that it's optional. If Discord wasn't going to become public and they reached out and said, "Hey guys, Discord's really popular. This is costing us a lot. We're going to charge you a one-time software fee of like up to $10 is probably what I would pay for Discord and that's it. I would probably buy it." That's like my my economic limit for Discord. If if they introduce another freaking subscription service, I'm going to lose my mind. I'm going to lose my mind. I

cannot anymore. So, as someone who has Nitro because I moderate our server and I'm on Discord, um if I'm awake, uh like I think that's fair, right? I think I think it's fair that there like the the amount that you use it, right, really dictates whether or not like you get value out of it. Um, and I I I agree. I think that a onetime fee would for most of the user base would probably be better, but I I don't know. I get I get the wanting to leave, right? I get the I get the wanting to go and like be done with this and uh move on to other projects, I guess, for me. Like I understand the the All right, cool. We want to get our money that we've earned after like making this thing. We're done now. Yeah. Right. I wonder it's funny because this happens a

lot. We talk about stories like this a decent amount over the years of doing this show and like has there been I know there has I'm just blanking because my mind is a bag of cats. Has there been a buyout of a company like a a service or something that didn't go full public but like sold it in a in and this is the the most wrong way of saying this but like in an ethical way. And by that I mean it maintains the the initial drive and reason why the thing was popular and became a staple of whatever it was while also making the people who made it to sell it like get a decent bag for themselves and be able to dip. Like has that happened? I think you probably have to go back at least 15 years because that's not our economic model anymore. I'm sure it has but it's but not recently. Yeah, by any means. And I

think yeah, the golden parachute aspect of it like that I because I saw someone in the chat mention like the transparency with the money. Yes, that's great. That's a good thing for a publicly traded company, but they don't care about that. There the idea of publicly trading it is to make a whole bunch of cash and then sell it off and leave. Yeah. There's no top. Yeah. There's the the reason why that happens is I mean you get you get funded in so you can build out more but all that's doing you're no longer beholden to your users you are beholden to the shareholders and while the users tie into that a little bit there's ways to make it what the shareholders are going to do is try to pivot their user base to the most profitable user base that is and that probably isn't going to be a lot of people that they use Discord for right now and therefore it'll kind of go all over the place. Sorry. Now, when stuff gets publicly traded, we stop being customers. We start being consumers. Yeah. And that's it. And that's Yeah. I can guarantee you the

patch notes are going to not be as frequent there. Yeah. It's It sucks. Um Yeah. I hate it. I hate it here. I want to get off the Earth. This is It sucks. All my toys are being taken away. I know. I know. You know what's interesting? Medusa says if one of these things back in the day, YouTube maybe. um when it sold to Google possibly. I mean, the reason we have the creator ecosystem we have right now is because it was sold to uh to Google. I think I've told this story before. I was in the lobby of 1515 Broadway when I was working for MTV when I heard that Viacom passed on the buy for YouTube. And I think back to that day and where I am right now in my life as like a very strange like moment of like, huh? Yeah. Because could you imagine? Could you imagine if Viacom bought YouTube? I don't know, man. Uh like

zoink scoo. Um it does not feel like it would be good. Yeah. Uh they're my corpo daddy, so I'm pleading the fifth. No, no, no. That that's totally fine. Listen, but they're not though. Paramount is Paramount bought Viacom. Like that's fine. Um, and I have plenty of people CBS. Yeah. Yeah. I have plenty of people that I know that work there at fairly uh decent high up stuff. I'm not saying that there's a I'm saying in my time back when Viacom God, what year was this? In the in the early to mid 2000s. I was going to say I think ' 05 or something. Yeah. Uh, it was a very different landscape and there seemed to be a few misses across the bow and then that happened. I was like that seems wrong but I'm thankful that it went that way. Yeah. The other one that uh a couple of people have brought up uh is this one that ARFL brings up which is Mojang. Mojang's probably the the closest um to a Yeah. But but I will also say that

Mojang is in a unique position because Microsoft is aware that the way to extract maximum money from Mojang is to shut up and leave them alone. They are cooking. Continue to let them cook. 300 million copies plus of Minecraft. It was 300 million copies last year. 300 million units sold. When you have that, you shut up and leave it alone. Yeah. But I guess that is my example then, right? Because like they've said there's not going to be a Minecraft 2. Common Parlament of this space would be like, "Oh, of course you need to make Minecraft 2. It's so popular." Um, the movie obviously just came out. We will did an excellent episode of the podcast. uh go listen to that. The only podcast about movies wherever fine podcasts are sold. Uh and by sold I mean given away for free because podcasts make no money. But um the like I don't know that that does it feels like a juggernaut like Microsoft buying

Mojang and being like oh man they cracked something put it down. I mean, it feels like the Minecraft movie with Jack Black and Jason Mamoa would not have happened if it was not a Microsoft property. Like, so it's elevated it in other um in in other elements to be able to do things. But it does feel like that might be the most it's not ethics, it's not morals, I don't know. Like original heart of whatever the product was intact after getting a bag and bailing like so maybe that is it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good answer. Yeah, that's a great answer. Anyway, we'll see. We'll see how this goes. I don't know. But that's the key though. That's the key though is like cuz that that wasn't necessarily buyout. This is going to become like a public company. this CEO and yeah, the key is to not touch it, but like you said, the you're fundamentally changing the structure of your company once you become public. And so that's it's going

to change it. That's the nature of it. Yep. Okay. Which leads us to another thing which we've all come to expect to be terrible in 2025, just pre-orders. Now, should it be terrible though? Okay, hang tight. Hang tight. I got I got to establish our bounding box. I got to give us a bounding box first. Okay, and then I'll let you. Okay, great. Awesome. Will needing a bounding box. What? I'm literally in a box right now. I can't get out of anything. They're breaking the fourth wall. Break the fourth wall. Okay, so um we're going to talk about this because of the Switch 2 pre-orders, but we're not talking about the Switch 2, right? Or its price or any of that. We're talking for instance, tariffs. No, we're not talking about tariffs. We're done talking about tariffs this year. We're talking about So, we're talking about what we're talking about here is the very relevant systems in place that allow American consumers to pre-order limited

merchandise as exemplified by the Switch 2 pre-orders, right? But what we're not talking about is why that's a big problem because of the Switch 2 or um we're not talking about the, you know, scarcity uh scares because of the tariffs or any of that. We're just talking about the infrastructure and the methodology around pre-orders. Okay. Just so everyone's on the same page. Even though there's a picture of the Switch 2, we're not talking about the Switch 2 specifically. It's just an example. Cool. Great. Excellent. Awesome. Matt, go ahead. So, uh right after Will says we're not going to talk specifically about the Switch 2, the one thing I will talk about is Nintendo. The one way that they've been doing it is is a bit on one hand draconian, but in the other way, we'll see how it works. Um, you can order it directly obviously through them, but you need to have at least at some point in your history a 12 month history of being signed up for the Nintendo uh online service, whatever that's called. There's a couple other prerequisites, and that is to basically make, and I think it's one per account through your Nintendo account. That's to hopefully ensure that scammers

can't um not scammers um although yes um scalpers thank you the other sword um can't just buy in bulk a bunch of things and I think that's great if you can supply the amount of supply that is going to be demanded right now it's a lottery and those go out uh starting May 8th I believe to see if you've been accepted though Nintendo has also said that some of those might not go out until at like well after the systems release. So that's not great. So what the the when it's something like a video game console that has a history doing something like that I think is correct. I wish the supply was greater but that's a different thing. But that's it feels like Nintendo as the distributor here is the only one doing something to really combat any sort of foul play regardless of of uh supply. But everywhere else, like the other places this is sold, Walmart, Target,

Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, um Costco, eventually Sam's Club. I'm trying to think. GameStop. Was it? I don't think GameStop. Um sorry, the the name becomes ash in my mouth. Um it just feels so broken. Like I This is the other part. I I'm going to poo poo on a lot of these online uh retailers, but we also have to remember that this isn't their only game in town. Like, they're selling an infinite amount of things. And do I wish they were ready for stuff like this? Absolutely. Does it make sense in the corporate hellscape that we live in that they're not ready for this? Absolutely. Um, so it seems like there's no clear like they want to sell the thing obviously they want the traffic, they want the business, but they don't want to make anything in

place to make that sort of easy andor safer for actual consumers to buy it because I I truly believe they don't care. They're they don't care. Yeah, they don't care. That's the problem. We are not customers. We are consumers. They don't care about us. If someone buys, if a thousand bots buy the game, buy out their supply, they don't care. They made the money. They made the money. They They are not They think And that's what I like about what Nintendo did was it's like it actually feels like they cared about me as a consumer of Nintendo products. Like they're like, "We see you. We value you." And you're right, lots of other things. But in principle, how they're approaching it, I think is absolutely right. And the like that's what irritates me. Obviously, the bots, the automation, and I'm glad you gave us this box, Will, because like I think it's a box that a lot of these articles aren't talking about. There's too many other factors for them to be

like, but this and also this and also this. And it's like, no, our system is broken with these high-end, expensive, high demand products that bots and resellers have just taken over. That's the only seller. We cannot compete. It used to be resellers would have 8,000 tabs open and a few people on their phone and they'd be refreshing and they'd be manually buying things. But that doesn't exist anymore. It's one piece of code that they hit enter, they buy everything within 30, not even 30 seconds, 30 milliseconds, and we're all left to just eat dirt. And I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. So, I I I actually I'm going to I'm going to take uh I'm going to take a step back and say that I think that part of the reason that the pre-order system in the US sucks is Black Friday. Well, that was the start. Yes. Right. What in the world do you mean by this? Black Friday is probably the most American example of American

consumerism, right? There are stories going back to when I was a kid of parents dying in Walmarts over tickle me Elmo because they had to get a limited product and there was no system, right? There was no There was no Now, the sequel to Tickle [ __ ] by the way, there were pre-orders and they pre-ordered at the same time that the Wii did. And I know this cuz my dad got pre-orders for Elmo and the Wii at the same time. And then there was a second Elmo. Oh, yeah. Was it called Tickle Me Elmo 2? I don't remember. But the reckoning as Jamie just yelled from the other room. That's right. Yeah. No. Um, so yeah, there were like it it sort of exemplifies the way that we do um pre-orders and shopping and everything else, which is a very um adversarial, right? It's non-orderly. It's very adversarial compared to Japan, right? Where standing in line is the

norm and people politely stand in line and wait their turn and have fandom also runs deeper in Japan. I don't know if you all have noticed that, but like fandom for the thing that you're a fan of runs much deeper um into people's lives as a sort of bedrock of their like identity. Um and so that that also contributes to this. But I do think that the adversarial way that we do shopping as a whole, as exemplified by Black Friday, carries over to pre-orders and is one of the reasons why it's this sort of wild west style like who can bot fastest to get their thing, right? Yeah. There's no respect for like the social order at all. Like it's just you see one person break the rules and people don't yell at that person. They go, "Oh, it's a free-for-all, so I can do that, too." Like that is how our culture works and it's getting worse. And it's Yeah. We

don't go, "That person should be shunned. We should not be doing that. That is a bad thing to do." Um and they shut it down quickly. They go, "Oh, it's open season. One person did it. Now I can do it." That gives them social license to do it. which is how our society is structured. And the anonymity of an online retailer as well, like there's no no one the chances of someone hunting down and getting mad at or or getting recompense against someone running a bunch of bots to get these and be scalpers is probably much rarer than someone cheating to get to the front of a line or doing something else in a physical space. Even though Erin, a thousand% true what you just said about those things. Now we're just adding the anonymity of the internet to it and it makes it much much easier. Um what Okay, we've outlined the problem and how this has happened recently and is still going to be happening until the Switch 2 gets released. Um and and the

and the why. How do we think using our best guesses or or whatever knowledge we have of this space? What is something that could be done? Like for me, for instance, I I've been thinking about this for a minute and uh I'll give out this idea for free uh because I actually think I don't I'm trying to think about how this would make money, which is why it's a free idea. But like could there you know how like there are um sort of like bridging apps like to different things? like could there be something where um a supplier uh basically I'll just use Nintendo in this example would set a series of criteria to a third-party thing that then hey everyone you buy like Walmart, Best Buy, whatever you are buying all of your stock through this third party thing and if you want to sell this and

no this isn't going to work. I was trying to think because like after a certain amount of difficulty, big boxers would be like, "No, we're not doing it." Like I'm trying to think if there's a way to make that work. I would I would say the biggest analogy I've seen at least in American culture is probably the fan convention scene. Sure. So like I feel like Comic-Con, San Diego Comic- Con, Wonder Con, they have their It's still a Hunger Games. It's still an unfair practice, but at least it's not bots most of the time. You have to have a verified account. You have to stay in an online queue. And that's the problem is that Walmart, Best Buy, none of these have the infrastructure for online Q systems like hotels and like tickets. I mean, at least like Comic-Con ticket sales. I think they're the only one I know that deals with the high demand. Everyone else, it's always hotel reservations. But they've figured that out. But it's on a scale of maybe 200,000 people

trying to get a spot, maybe half a million at the most. Nowhere near on the scale of everyone trying to buy the Switch. So, I think there's um there's definitely a place for big big scale pre-orders of like something like that queuing app, but something that either roundrobins or takes the the the queue load off of all the websites because that's the other problem, right? There's a huge infrastructure problem. GameStop, uh Best Buy, and Target, I know for a fact, all had their websites crash the moment pre-orders went live. We've got 503 errors. Some of them went like down to 404s. Like all of everything like that the infrastructure just isn't there, right? Because most of the time it's not worth it and it's only effective, right? That like it's only necessary in those times. So instead of gearing them up, let's make a central company, right, that does the queueing like the con

quueing except it distributes pre-orders at a fixed price. to be fulfilled by companies. So you don't buy directly from any of the other places. You buy from this third party company and they say, "Here's this block that goes to that is guaranteed to sell from Best Buy. Here are the people that want to pick it up in store. Here are the ones that you need to deliver. Here's all the ones that are going to GameStop. Here's all the ones that are going to Target." Right? and you choose your retailer and everything else through one centralized platform that a company who is producing the product chooses to go through. I think that would that would do it. But there needs to be an incentive for it. And that's the thing. The only incentive there is the the the the price the retailer gets of the markup like the suggested retail price that goes to the actual uh store because the the the value prop and I imagine there's actually not a huge amount for

these consoles that are going to these stores the the what they get out of this deal is news stories and foot traffic or foot traffic internet traffic right like that's what they get. So, if it's a third party doing it all in their just fulfillment, still might not be worth it for them cuz they're not getting the they're not getting the cache of being part of the news story or being part of the uh of a place you can get this thing. So, maybe they'll buy other stuff there. Here's here's what we should do. I have a fix. Okay, we're going to take it all offline. You've got to go into the brickandmortar store. You have to sign on a piece of paper that says, "I'll be here at midnight." And then you get your ticket. Do we remember big book releases back in the day? You went into the store the day before it was released at midnight. You got a ticket. You gave your money and then you got in that line and you waited. And again, nerds, I think, are a little bit better than the general public Black Friday chaos. Not always, but stores can sometimes be

prepared and handle it a little bit better. I know I'm being facitious about it, but it's like I think it's less facitious and more wishful toward the a time long gone. Like I remember uh skipping school uh for when the Dreamcast came out. I had a reservation, but I went to the mall during the day. I was very sick and um I I went there and I got in the line and I did the thing and rock and roll. Um it those sort of felt magical or midnight releases etc. the PS2 or like I'm just trying to think of consoles in particular. I know you were talking about books. Um it's all Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've stood in line for video games, too, but like there's also truly an accessibility thing to be discussed there as well, but not everything works all the time. I just I I wish there were I wish the story was like, oh man, this was really difficult for like this one thing because of a technical glitch. Not like this didn't work anywhere because none of the way

that we have a high demand order for something functions the way it should. Um, uh, oh, this is actually, but it's but it's also it's not it's not because they don't have the infrastructure because it's a lot of people. They don't have the infrastructure because it's a lot of bots. It's a lot of automated coding systems that are crashing their systems so people can flood the market like that. Those are I think two different things. If this was all human beings trying to access a website, that's a different conversation. Then how do we fix the fact that they're getting pings? They're getting 20 million billion pings at 1200 0. Like that's what's breaking the whole system. I wonder then like what's the incentive for these companies to fix it? There isn't any. Yeah, they don't care. They're still selling all their

products. This is I'm sorry. I'm being very defeist about No, listen. There doesn't have to be an answer. I just I I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to design my way around this thing and it could just be I mean Well, this is actually interesting. So, Matthew S just says this. At what point would it Nintendo not just take over the direct sales? I bet you Nintendo would love to do that if they had the infrastructure like an Apple, right? But they don't and they're they're they're much too small to do it. Uh I was actually shocked that they were doing their own uh distribution. The the Nintendo store and their own distribution is a relatively new thing within years, I believe. I don't think you like I'm trying to think perhaps with the Switch might have been been you can all correct me when I'm wrong there but like you didn't used to be able to go to Nintendo and buy buy things directly from them. Yeah. Um like the Wii U had a store. Yeah. Okay. They had digital stores first but well after the other consoles

did. Yeah. So yeah, like they're definitely late to the game on that front. Well, like PlayStation still as well as a thing. It's funny. I don't if I ever need anything PlayStation, I don't I don't buy it from retailers. I buy it from PlayStation. Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Either way, uh that's Hey, if you think of something, you know what you can do? You can leave a comment uh on this video or if you're watching this on Nebula and you're like, "Where's the comment thing? It doesn't doesn't there's no button there." We have a solution for that as well. You can message us over on Blue Sky uh where you basically can let us know what you think the solution for this is because we just talked about it for 20 minutes and we can't think of it. Uh okay, I am going to keep us moving because we're already over time and we're going to go even more overtime probably. Uh we'll be fine. Yeah, we'll be fine. So, uh I'm I've got I've got one sweet dessert story and then uh we have we have a tradition to uphold. Um so the first Oh, no. The first is uh Oh, I love this. I

love this story so much. All right, so everyone knows that NFTTS are a scam, right? Cool. Great. Always have been, always will be. They've been a scam for gajillion years uh since they were incepted. They're a way to perform an old art scam where you sell art yourself to make it look more valuable and then you sell it to some sucker for a overinflated amount of money and then the market crashes and it's worthless. Well, the market crashed and they're all worthless. However, however, it gets better. So, recently, one of the iconic collections, which was originally sponsored by Nike, lost access to all of the images on the NFTts. So, as a reminder, that the NFT doesn't actually include the image. It's just a pointer file at a thing, and you claim ownership because you own the NFT. Well, because they were migrating off of uh Cloudflare, Cloudflare blocked the

images as being hosted as high-res media from the NFTts. So, the entire NFT collection went blank because the thing that we told them would happen eventually happened and all of the crypto bros got all shocked. Pikachu faced that the thing that everyone told them was the fundamental problem with NFTTS turned out to be the fundamental problem with NFTTS. And I I'm living for it. The amount of um copium that is being circulated through crypto blogs uh is hilarious. I mostly found traffic for this on social media because there's nothing to talk about unless you go to crypto sites and then they're like, "Well, we're migrating to like a decentralized hosting platform so you can't lose your images again." And then we're like, "Yeah, you can totally can." Like, it's it's just funny. And that that's just really funny to me. So, reminder, NFTs are scams. Uh, always have been scams, always will be scams. There is no ethical way to do anything with NFTTS. Don't do them. They're

stupid and bad. Great. That was delightful dessert. Thank you. I did that. All right. And now, well, Erin, we do have to to fulfill the pact being the fir being, I think, the the person who was guested on this show the most actually at this point. Um uh we made the game last time which was blank or a black hole which you can go if you search blank or a black hole um um on the extra credit site you can see the animated version of that. It's very very lovely. Please go check that out. Uh this time we didn't want to do that. We didn't want to we didn't want to we want this to be a casual like sort of nonsense game. So we developed a game uh called Trek or Quest. Oh, no. And and and here's what it basically is. We're going to give you the name of something and you're going to tell us if it's an episode name of Star Trek or a quest in an MMO. Now, you don't need to tell us what season or what show of Star Trek or

what MMO. We'll tell you, but that's how this game will be played. And we'll see just we'll see where you land on all of this. Right. And and for clarity, I I will I will rein it in from all MMOs ever to Final Fantasy 14, WoW, Elder Scrolls Online, and Star Trek Online. It's one of those all of you. Okay. But I have said about four times in this, not to mention previously, I don't play MMOs. No, that's okay. That's okay. That's okay. You We're relying on your Star Trek. I know you knew that. I know you knew that. That's That's why we're doing this. Yeah. Great. It's really to just test my knowledge of Star Trek episodes. Yeah. Uh, and and I may have I may have spent too long on this, so you know, it's fine. I love it. So, let me give you some examples. Just this is like the starter pack. This is not a question. This is just sort of what it would be. So, for instance, the inner light obviously is a nextgen episode uh season 5, episode 25, I believe. And then, uh, in the name of the light is a World of Warcraft quest, right? So,

there there's there's similarities. They're all over the place. You'll get the gist. I'll keep I'll keep score. I'll keep score. Wait, hold on. I need something to write on. Okay, here we go. Will, if you would please. All right. Uh, first up is First Flight. That is a Star Trek episode from Enterprise. Indeed, it is. Excellent. Correct. Enterprise season 2, episode 24, Matt. All right. Next one is Far From Home. That could be either. I'm gonna guess MMO, but I but I'm like 7030 on it. So that's your final answer. Yeah, MMO. MMO. I'm sorry. That is an episode of Enterprise. Uh, season 2, episode 24. Far from Home is Discovery season 3, episode two. One up.

Um. Oh, I sorry. Yeah, I read the wrong thing. Yeah. All right. A show I worked on. Great. Thanks. Oh, it's fine. All right, next up. A matter of tradition. That's an MMO. Indeed, it is. Correct. But a matter of honor, a matter of perspective, and a matter of time are all TNG episodes. So, that's a real good dodge you just did. That one's uh that one's from Final Fantasy 14 from AR. Okay, great. Uh, next up, A Sign of Hope. Unless it's a disco. Unless it's a disco episode. I think it's an MMO. MMO for Sight of Hope is correct. That is a classic WOW episode. Aaron is 321 right now. All right. Okay. A welcome guest. That's a Star Trek episode. I think. Oh, hang on. It's either Oh, no. I'm going to go

MMO. I'm gonna go MMO. Correct. It is an MMO. That That one's from the Shadowbrers expansion of Final Fantasy 14. Okay. Is an unwelcome guest. A Star Trek episode. I believe it is. I I believe Erin, I said I spent too long on this. I literally have the list of every Trek episode ever just up on my computer. Um I love Okay. Uh the next one is The Enemy Within. Oh, that's a Star Trek episode. Please. It's both actually. I will give you a half point for that. It is both. It's both a Star Trek uh uh episode and uh sc uh quest in The Elder Scrolls Online. All right. I mean, it's a good quest title. I don't blame them for that. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. This one uh is is one of my favorites. Oh, no. You I just did one. Sorry. You just did one. Uh this one is A Fistful of Gorn. That is a That is a Star Trek episode.

Incorrect. It's a quest in Star Trek Online. Starre online. Oh, it's okay. It's okay. You're still Well, that was that was why STTO was in there is cuz I knew I could get you with one. You're still well above par. So good. That's so good. Okay. I can't be mad about that. That was brilliant. Here we go. Here we go. Well, cuz they had a fistful of datas. Correct. is a TNG episode and the and the episode that has the Gorn in it isn't actually doesn't reference the Gorn in the title. No, I thought there was a Lower Dex episode titled A Fistful of Gorn that was combining the two. It would make total sense. It would. Yeah, it sounds like a Lower Dex episode. All right. All right. Uh, Heart of the Matter. I'm going to go with MMO. That is correct. That is an Elder Scrolls Online quest. You're doing great here. All right. I mean, I'm basically saying MMO in lie of not a Star Trek

episode. That's the That's the game. Yeah. All right. Triage. I don't think that's a Star Trek episode. It is indeed a a WoW classic quest. Perfect. Nice. And now finally the last question. All good things as we must end. I mean it's obviously a Star Trek episode, but I'm wondering if you've got another double in there with me. Yes. Is a Star Trek episode is TNG. It's the finale. Yeah. And you're going you're are you're going with double or not double? That's what I need to know for No, I'm going with just Star Trek. Yeah, just Star Trek. Uh it is also a Final Fantasy 14 quest. Of course it is. Of course. Okay, so the two halves canceling each other out. You are six and two.

Well done. Amazing. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. Oh gosh. You know, it's nice to know that like my my hyperfixations does pay off sometimes. Yeah, it was it was just funny. We were thinking about what we could do and I was like, you know, it's really funny how many MMO quests sound just like Star Trek episodes and vice versa. It's a That is a good This was great. Yeah. Uh that was fun. And that, dear friends, is our show for today. Erin, thank you so much for coming back to the to the Breakfast Gaming table and uh gracing us with your presence. Where can folks find all of the amazing things that you do? Uh I can be found on all of the things. I can be found on the socials, Dr. Aaron Mack, D R I N M A C. on Instagram and Blue Sky um promoting the next thing I'm doing is a short film um called Long Away that is written and directed by

Tilly Bridges and Susan Bridges if any of you are familiar with them. Uh that should be released in Juneish, but we're doing a festival run for that. But just stay tuned for fun social announcements with it because it's a trans sci-fi film and that feels really good to work on right now these days. Um, and uh, otherwise I'm on the YouTubes, Dr. Aaron Explains the Universe. You can find some old classic stuff there. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. I apologize for the technical glitches and stuff, but I appreciate your patience. And I suppose Matt and I can share bandwidth sometimes. That's right. What are friends if not uh, people you can share bandwidth with? Yep. Absolutely. Uh, like I said before, uh, the rest of this week is going to be a bunch of Clare Obscure. Tomorrow is more Blueprints because a I really like blueprints and b I'm don't want to play four days of Clare Obscure in one week. That sounds like a really great conversation to have with my therapist. Um, and then uh later this week we're also having Design Club. There is no

time with me and Matt this Thursday. He is detained by matters of the universe which require his undivided attention. So it's just design club on Thursday and CL I'll be shopping for a new bath. bad. That's right. Yeah. Um and yeah, so a reminder, uh Janet and Brad, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Rocky, it's time for us to do for you the same sign off we always do every time. Uh Matt, would you please lead us in this communal sign off? That's right, Erin. Uh it hasn't changed, I think, since you were on last time. We do the same outro that we do every time on every show as a community building exercise. I'm sure you remember what it is, right? Like everyone, we all have it. We all know it. So, if you'd all please join me. Yeah. [Laughter] Get over here. Let's see. Okay. All right, everybody. Have a wonderful rest of your Monday. It's not a fossil. [Music]

Not a fossil. I knew it. I I absolutely knew it. Not a fossil. All right. Cool. Cool. Cool. Uh Erin, thank you so much for being here and for for doing this nonsense with us. It was, as always, the highlight of my day. Uh thank you so much. Thank you. This was fun. Yeah. Yeah. Always great. Brad, Janet, great seeing you all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do the thing. Do the thing. Do the thing. Um, we're gonna sign off from Janet. So, Janet will be back on Thursday for Design Club. You can come on over to Twitch if you want to watch