Pokemon GO Raises the Price Cap, Console Kill Switches & C.S. Mott Makes Children's Lives Better!

Good morning, YouTube. Hopefully, is this okay, cool. This is indeed working over on YouTube. I apologize, YouTube, if you're seeing this later because you went back because you got here late to start the VOD over. I'm sorry it wasn't posted ahead of time, YouTube. Or you're welcome. Or you're seeing it twice. Like YouTube YouTube not not being uh cooperative uh this morning, unfortunately. Um so that was, you know, fun and interesting. Uh, I still have not seen a live source come up on the thing. I'm I'm working on it. Uh, oh dear. Well, well, welcome one and all to what we're colloquially calling whatever this is. Um, JJ is with us from from CSM. We're going to be doing a full intro uh, of course, when the show starts proper. How you doing, JJ? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing? We're all right. We're all right. Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm so excited. breakfast. This is awesome. Yeah. Listen, we're gonna we're gonna

get into it. We're gonna have some We're gonna dish deliciously. Um I don't know if I like that. Black Phillip like all of a sudden. Yeah, now I like it. See, I did. I wasn't sure if I liked it. And then talking about the goat from the film The Vitch. Um have you seen The Vitch, JJ? Are you into horror movies at all? It's It look the the previews looked really scary. Yeah. Uh, it's great. Also, it takes place in what is essentially I either forget what year it takes place, but what is essentially in the backyard of the state of New Hampshire where I grew up. Uh, and I'm always like, "Yeah, this reminds me of the woods." Uh, Matt, yes, I am required by uh, international law to tell you that you may have to relaunch Social Stream. I don't. Ha. Great. I relaunched Social Stream and that solved I think the problems. It seems to work. I'll wait and see if one pops through. If anyone is watching, uh, actually a

few of you are. I can I can I can see you. Uh, comment on YouTube, please, so I can know that the comments are working. Or I can just do that. Will did it before any of you because I don't have stream delay. Amazing. Um, chat chats plural. This is going to be a banger. I'm I'm calling it now. hubristically. Maybe I'm gonna I'll call it early. Uh this is going to be a banger. Um even if uh Twitch chat is conspiring to make it so that Matt doesn't get his coffee. Um why what's happening? Uh there Well, there's a hype train. Uh there's been a hype train for a bit. I've just distracted you from that fact. So JJ, we we have this thing where we're not starting the show until Twitch chat finishes hyping. Um because we're always disappointed in them for hyping irresponsibly on the internet. It is irresponsible. And YouTube, you can you could sound off. I Well, I don't know.

Maybe. What's your nicest wizard swear for the hype train and we'll put it on the screen. Um also, uh I'm going to preempt some news that won't make it into the actual show, uh but that I'm very excited about. So, um and we'll talk about this on the show proper because Nebula needs to know too, but there won't be a show next week. We are on vacation. Uh we are taking a break to largely I think sleep in front of an air conditioning unit for a week. I think that's the I think that's all of our plans. Uh given the forecast for the East Coast for the next week. I think my plan is I'm going to turn my shiny new AC unit on and I'm just going to sleep in front of it for a week like a bear in torper. It's going to be great. The thing that I'm upset about, and we may talk about this the week we come back because I'm so excited about it, um, is that we're going to miss talking about why Magic's banned and restricted announcement is going to be such a big deal. Um, it didn't make the cut for this because it involves a lot of me talking, a lot of technicalities. Uh,

and I didn't want to watch two people's eyes glaze over. I'll watch one person's eyes glaze over. When Matt glazes over, that's fine. He's used to it. It's in his contract. But I don't want to do that to JJ. So, um that's fair. But also, oh, go for it. Will suffice suffice it to say, uh the most recent Magic tournament sucked. Uh and uh the BNR is hopefully going to fix that. Hopefully. I Magic players, rise up. We have hope. Kyle Kyle Matthews did a good wizard swear. I would have cast repel maidens, but I could see another wizard beat me, too. Wow. Wow. Got him. I love it. I love it. Also, uh Will, I do agree with Roller here. I don't know if you want to do it live in the pre-show. I feel like I don't know if I smell bad. Everyone seems to be moved away from me. Okay, it's possible. No, no, it's fine. No, no, I showered for this, JJ. I assure you I I'm No, it's fine. I only I only did all this set up ahead of time. No, it's fine. I

can I'll I'll change everything because Twitch chat wants me to. No, it's fine. No, it's it's cool. I'll just I'll just take all the work I did and throw it out the window. Well, it looks No, it's fine. No, it's fine. It's fine. He did spend a lot of time trying to get all my stuff to look good, too. Yeah, he took a lot of time. Take that, Twitch chat. Um uh let's see. It's a steamy 33° C out. Yeah, it's supposed to feel like a hundred here uh today with like all of Maryland has a statewide heat warning which is weird. You guys, we're supposed to get up to 104 and we have to after this I'm spending eight hours on the top of a um a parking structure for the Ford Fireworks Festival. We're doing like a tableabling event there to Oh, wow. celebrate all the stuff we're going to talk about. But it's it's going to be it's going to be uh nice and hot and humid. Yeah. I I recom I highly

recommend getting like one of those excellent t-shirts and fashioning it into like the thing that you put under the hat to protect like the back of your neck and everything. It's good. Yeah. Uh it's only 29C there. Yeah, cuz that's better. I mean, it is better, but not significantly better. Uh Will, is the hype train dead? I believe the hype train is perishing. Yes. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I have to consult I have to consult the thing. Supposed to feel like 105 in Vermont according to Zav. That's um that is too many degrees. Uh no, the the hype train will perish uh soon. Hype train, I will shoot my camera. Then you're going to Matt, if you shoot your camera, you're going to screw up all of the work that I just did live because you said that we were in the wrong place. How much longer is the hype trade going? Like a minute. It's fine.

Also, I like that Dan is just out here trying to convince everyone the hype train's over by reposting a hype emote. I know he already has because it's a goose hit in the gritty and that's among the best hype train emotes that has ever been created. It's just a gritty goose. And that that is Look at this. Look at this thing. Look at this thing. Look at it. It's insane. Hold it. Ridiculous. Side note, YouTube, we are working on a thing to let you know when the train is rolling in for the hype train. Uh, and so you'll you too will be able to shake your fist at it from your back porch. Um, although we're also working on a thing that may mean that you don't see the hype train at all. There could be a lot of different things. There's a lot of things. One of the things I'm working out over break is some cool graphic stuff. Uh so yeah, it's 35 in Canada. What? You know how you know how I know we're getting old. We've talked about the

weather for like the last five minutes. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. But hold on a sec. Hold on a sec. Hold on a sec. There's a difference between like, oh, it's pleasant and oh god, it's the sign of the oncoming apocalypse. Everybody stock up on deodorant and coat your legs in it. Like there's a difference between those heat wave. There's a difference between those two things. Matt, I'll shoot the sun. It won't work. That won't help either. Well, if if we are being broadcast into space, there's no reason why a single Nerf dart couldn't change the course of human history. You know, it's it's the butterfly effect. Yeah, JJ gets it. Yeah, of course. That's why I have a whole arsenal of Nerf guns in my shed. It's most of what my shed is, isn't it? It's your Nerf shed. Mhm. Yeah. Oh, I should call it that. Yeah, Chad, we're fine. Science, does it exist? No. Would Oh, Miss Witch out here asking

the real question. Would shooting a Nerf dart at the sun make it hotter or cooler? It would make it cooler the status ele. Oh, see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say it would make the the actually it would make them both cooler because how cool would a Nerf gun uh Nerf dart be if it made it to the sun, right? A second Nerf dart fired with the large hydro collider might do something. That's true. That something might be end the universe as we know it. Listen, Will, you asked for science and I feel like it's getting done. Also, Smaz with the real facts. We need a butterfly gun. All right, the hype train now having been completed. Everyone is here. Everyone has gotten their mandatory breakfast uh items of food, which are whatever items of food and or beverage you're consuming while you watch the show. We are now going to begin the show. We're going to go to black. We're going to do a thing. We're going to introduce JJ properly to all of you. And then we're going to do a show that will last some hour and 45 minutesish. Please hang on to your butts. Pull your extremities inside the show. We don't want any hands getting

caught on stray posts as we go down this information highway. Yeah, we can't. Well, I can. Well, you can cuz I have I have a bigger camera angled. All right, great. No time to explain. Everyone get the show. All right, great. Um, chat, don't panic unless you want to and you can have a little panic as a treat. Okay. All right, great. We'll be right back. [Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. Ah, good morning JJ. Good morning, Will. And good morning to all of you. Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only g show on the internet where we talk about this week's gaming and tech news. But that also we have a special guest. Everybody, please welcome to the breakfast table, the nook. What do we call this? The kitchenet. I think we've

called it our virtual kitchenet enough times that that's stuck, but also that has like no RZ to it. No, not at all. Anyway, to our wristless table, JJ from CSA Children's Hospital. What up, buddy? Oh, thank you. I love your Rizless tablenook slashkitchet area. Yeah. Uh, thank you guys so much for having me. I watch you guys all the time. I'm so glad to be here. Uh we have been uh um circling each other's professions for quite some time. I feel like sharks. Um but happy ones that help people hopefully. Um no, not different sharks. Oh yeah. Baby sharks. Not baby sharks. Not the the sharks versus the jets. Not even Vin Diesel's seminal work, Street Sharks. Um we we we've been uh we've done some episodes with you guys. We've worked with you on a couple initiatives. Um, we've been on Have we done panels? I feel like we've done panels because

we've gone to each other virtual virtual panel for PAX during co. Yeah, that's right. That's right. There we go. God, I see that whole that whole time has just like erased itself from my memory. Like I had some good like all that remains is the emotions, right? But like the actual events gone like completely. I don't know if anyone else is experiencing this, by the way. That's normal. It's okay. Yeah. I don't want to derail too much, but but Aqua Vin Diesel was not in Street Sharks. His first acting gig was in a uh almost like an infomercial, and I think it was actually for corporations, not for like uh television, where it's him, young Vin Diesel, like playing with and showing off Street Sharks action figures. You can find it on the internet. It's I saw it on real live TV. I was old enough to like that was prime me time. Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks. Yeah. Well, there you go. The rat guys. the space rat guys. So, if anyone's interested in that, you go find that on the on the wayback machine. But we're not here to talk about Vin Diesel's career. Not yet.

Anyway, uh JJ, for for those not familiar with all of the myriad of wonderful work you do, uh what what what is you do now for fun and or help? H that's a good one. Uh I do a lot of different things but primarily uh I am what's called a patient technology specialist and uh I am one of the first of its kind although we are growing quite a bit all over the world but um we have a program here at I work at CSM Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor Michigan and our goal is to integrate video games and other type of recreational digital technology into the therapeutic practice. So, we work with nurses, doctors, uh childlife specialists, um physical therapists, occupational therapists, basically anyone at the hospital who they're trying to get kids to do something um and feel healthy and do all those things they need to do to get out of the hospital or make the hospital feel better. Um we kind of advise them and work with them um using video games or

virtual reality or Legos, robotics, coding, all that fun stuff. Um, we help advise. We go in with the kids and and play games with them. Um, and find lots of different ways to just make the hospital a more pleasant experience using the technology that they know and love. Nice. That's pretty awesome. Uh, and it's a dream job. Yeah, absolutely. And so, uh, you're not just here because we managed to make the schedule work. You're here because you all have have gotten something really cool done. Uh, it's actually I'm I'm a little jealous as a as a former sick kid. Uh, I'm a little jealous that this didn't exist when I was sick and in the hospital all the time when I was young. Uh, so JJ, could could you tell us a bit about this this thing that y'all have done? Yeah. So, if you could kind of imagine a Chuck-e-Cheese minus the rat and looking really nice and clean. Um, so big awesome playground. Um, something that

looks something that looks a bit like like this, right? Where we have like this. This is a this is a good shot of it. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's a it's uh we just opened this place we we call the Michigan Game Day Experience. Um, it's actually refurbished play space. Uh, it was just a play. Well, I shouldn't say just. It was an amazing playground that used to look like the inside of the Michigan Stadium. It's a pretty, if anybody watches football, it's a pretty famous space. Yeah. So, um, it was really nice, but it was very blue and it was getting old. It was built about 10, 12 years ago now. Um, and during co, it didn't get a lot of use. And so, um, I we actually invaded the space, our patient technology team. And, um, in order for kids to do some co-op gaming together, we kind of had them at two different ends of this big large space, and we were having them play games. Um, we played um some Pokemon and and had kids like uh broadcast on our CCTV and have

kids call in and name them and it was a way for us to socialize using video games. And I kind of used that. Our CO of the hospital saw that and I said, "Hey, you know, this is a really cool space, but we don't really use it to its fullest capacity." And um me and a few other people were advocating for the space to kind of get renovated. There were some donors who were interested in helping us. Um, and what we ended up doing was creating this amazing space that has this really big, fun, accessible playground. It's got a a swing that a wheelchair can go on and and move on. It's got a lot of um places for kids to move around. That big circle thing you see in the middle. It's kind of like the game Simon, if you guys remember that game where the lights come on and you have to hit them in a certain pattern, but it's like a full body activity. So, it's really all about mobilization and socialization. But then in the other corner, the other side, it used to just be some lockers and a picnic table. And um and what used to what looked like a press box in like at University of or at the Michigan Stadium, it looked like a like a press box there. And we had set up a couple Nintendo Switches there um before the

renovation, but we said, you know, we could do a lot more if you you guys helped us out a little bit. And um we ended up creating this whole streaming booth. So it's it's a it's got four high-end computers. Um, I got to look at my notes here because I'm not a PC guy, but it was uh Power GPU actually like built those computers for us. We actually were able to like fly out to them and see them. They've got all kinds of fancy lights on them that we can change all the colors and make it look amazing blue for for Michigan. Um, but the idea was that kids would come down there and play in that space and they could play online with their friends and family at home, but then they can also play together like almost like a land party. Um, and so we've got all the game we're we're well that's going to be part of our challenge. We have some games on there right now. Um, but the idea is that kids can socialize, engage with one another. Um, but then they also have our team there to help support them, making sure that the internet is a safe space for them, making sure that the games on

there are appropriate for the kids who are playing and helping them get through all of the like, you know, like how do I get through Steam or Xbox Live or that kind of stuff, navigating all that stuff. And we can also teach them like 3D printing, uh, web design, fun stuff like that over there. And then there's one other corner, um, if you step out of the press box, um, where it's set up, we call it the lounge, and it's really set up to be, it's got a 75 square inch TV. It's got a Nintendo Switch 2 that we just ran and got. Poor Connor and Dylan or Connor and Andrew stayed up late and stood in line at GameStop just like the good old days to get themselves those um, so we could get them for the kids. And so it's got a Nintendo Switch 2 in there, but we can also switch out some other games. Uh that TV is on uh from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and anyone can go in and play, but then we can also have like movie nights in there, tailgate parties. The whole space is really meant to be a place to encourage mobilization, socialization, and community engagement. And then we're also hoping to have like uh different groups come in and do different types of of activities with

the kids there. And look, Matt, they've even got uh they've even got wall art of your hat there in the in the corner. You're like part of the exhibit. Oh, the the buttons on the controller. Anyway, I got a lot of slack for those controllers up there because none of my staff knew what they were for and I've played every single one of those. How dare they? How dare they? Um Oh, Will, go for it. Uh so, um first off, this is amazing and Chad agrees that it's amazing. Um this is just a really cool thing. So, it's it's not just it's kind of interesting. Playing video games in a hospital feels a lot like tricking kids to eat their vegetables like in the way that you're doing it, which is like, "Hey, do you want to play this game?" It'll also get you to move instead of laying in the bed or just curling up in a ball doing a thing or like, "Do you want to come play video games with this person?" cuz like you

haven't interacted with anyone who hasn't been a nurse for like three weeks and we need to like not have you do that, right? So like it serves like a real like a real meaningful purpose, but also it's just video games, right? So like it's this it's this very interesting thing and like as a you know as as the resident streamy boy, I got to say I love the booth. The booth is just great. Like no notes no notes on the booth because you've got essentially what amounts to like a tiny esports setup which is really cool. That was the goal. Well, that was the vision. That's a Thank you. I'm glad. Yeah. Um I was going to say this also does something cool. Um it does a lot of cool things, but what I really like is a in a lot of these things we've talked about before is like, you know, using games in hospitals to help kids feel better as they get better and help with sort of things like that. Like a lot of it is like it seems like at least in in our discussions or with other discussions I've had with people, it's like getting the games to the kids in the rooms through gaming carts, through other things. and those are awesome and they have a wonderful place. This feels like

the other side of that coin. This feels like the you know if it if what they need is movement and social activity then this is a perfect space for that. And I feel like I haven't heard maybe I'm not in the circles um but like I I just haven't heard that discussion as much as as you know the other ones which again the whole field as you know and are innovating in is just growing. Uh it's sort of in its infancy doing this in hospitals. Um but have you have you noticed like I mean it's only been open what f five days, four day uh uh we opened Thursday. Okay. Oh well I guess technically Friday. Thursday was our grand opening but it was like select kids who could get their pictures taken and then we were showing it off to the staff. Friday was our first real day and within 4 hours we had 20 kids come through and play all of the games which is that that's that's that's pretty big for in a hospital getting people to get out of their beds and down. Yeah. Dan says that the Switch 2 is 4 days old and

has 20 hours of play time on it already. So like Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. So that's Andrew. Um that's left-handed. Yeah. That's Andrew. He's one of our patient tech specialists. He's been working with me. I mean, even before I could officially hire him, he was volunteering with us. So, he's been with us for almost 10 years now. Um, so this was a big dream come true for both of us, and he was a heavy lifter in making sure all those games and systems got set up. He helped me get my all my setup here, too. So, shout out to Andrew. We actually have one of your former We have one of the former kids from M in chat. I had no idea that Mine was was one of the kids that went to Mott in in Flint. That's that's really cool. That's really awesome. That's awesome. So So I mean I was a former kid at Mott, too. Like I played my very first video game here at this hospital. So to be able to like and was on the Atari 2600 guys pitfall. It was uh so to be able to to be here and

see these kids in a streaming booth is pretty amazing. That game is in my storage unit. Yeah. Okay. So, so in the midst of telling us about all these awesome things, you did mention a challenge. Uh you mentioned a way that our our our diverse, weird, distant community uh scattered all across the internet might be able to help with this. Um could you tell us a little bit more about the kind of help that you need? Yeah. So, one of the biggest humblers for me starting this job was realizing that like I thought I was a gamer and everybody at the hospital thought I was a gamer until I started going to PAX and hanging out with you guys and I realized like oh what I know of gaming is about this much even and actually even just hanging out with the kids and my staff. We're getting old. We're getting old. I try to hire them young but they stick around. and we built this sweet amazing space. And again, our goal is socialization, community, and mobilization. Just getting kids up and

coming together. Um, and our challenge is we we need your help. Uh, we need your community's help. Your community has been wonderful. They've helped us financially in the past. They've motivated us to do a lot of really cool things. This place wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for all the amazing fundraisers you guys have done. And um a lot of the hardware you see in there was purchased using that funding. But what we want from you guys now is something a little more fun and we're going to make you do a little homework. Um we need help figuring out what to put on all these computers um and all these consoles. We have pretty much anything under the sun that you can think of that we or we have the ability to get that. We want to make sure we're getting the right stuff and we want to we want to kind of break out of just our own mindset of like what a kid can play in the hospital. And so what we're asking the community to do and to join us on design club later and will you can give them the details on that. But like we want your ideas. We want to know one what games do you love to play and what games do you think our kids and when I

say kids I mean 4 to 26 technically but we've got adults, brothers, uncles, nephews, uh sisters, all that fun stuff. Um, so, so games that people would play, but games that might encourage movement, socialization, um, games that can be adaptable, uh, because that's our biggest thing is we've get, and when we think of adaptivity, we think of everything under the sun, whether it's a physical disability or, um, cognitive or um, eyesight, anything under the sun. Our our our motto is everyone plays. And so we want to know what are you playing? What do you think the kids here and the adults would love to play? Um, and what are some of your ideas on what we could do with this space? And I and I really I think my pitch is the whole space. It's not just like what game can we put on the system or what cool gadget do you think would be would make something more accessible, but also like we we do a lot of stuff with community partners. So I

have some students from the University of Michigan who are developing a virtual reality game where kids get to play with a puppy dog. Um, and they come in uh twice a month now, but with this space open, they're going to come in and let kids play the game and um give them direct feedback about the game and they get to watch the kids break their game, which is the most fun part. Uh, and they learn a lot from that. And so having some of the out ofthe-box ideas of like what can we do this space? We can also um just another a few other things and then I'll I'll be quiet. Uh but uh a couple other things that we could do with the space is we do have um uh broadcasting capabilities. Um so we can uh broadcast live within the hospital. So it's a CC closed circuit television so that only people in the hospital can see. That's cool. Yeah. So we can do a lot of fun shows and actually the studio I'm in now is our music therapy studio and we we can broadcast from here. We do like music themed stuff like music bingo and things like that. But if we could think of some fun shows that kids could do themselves that are video game

themed, um, we would love to incorporate that. We'd love your ideas because you guys are all so creative. Um, but then also fun stuff that maybe doesn't have to be broadcasted. Other kinds of cool things we can do in that space that are um, just, you know, video game, but also just like nerd us type of people, what what we like to do for fun. I got two I got two pitches for you. Okay. Right off the bat. one for the closed circuit thing because the closed circuit thing is such a cool opportunity. It instantly brought me back. We didn't have this cuz I'm that old, but uh I know some people uh beyond me uh in in high school and middle school even maybe had like a closed circuit like morning show like almost like of like the the day events or something like that. And if you could have the kids, especially on days where like there was some larger event in the space or something like that, like if there were kids that did like a rotating like that wanted to to read like the daily like happenings of the hospital or

the space like almost doing like your morning announcements kind of thing because that's a real fun way to get people involved and and and get people to get maybe like the the the creator bug or like on camera stuff like that starting in a space like that, especially to a group that is so tied with like everyone there is there for a re there for a reason. It might not be the same reason, but it's to get well, right? So like everyone's it feels like everyone's in a middle school to go to your classes, everyone's in, you know, that sort of thing. So when you have that paired down reasoning for be there, you can rotate people through and people that want to do a show like that, I think could be really good like community engagement and let people know stuff that's going on in the space or in the hospital. I think that'd be very fun. I love it. Yeah. So, so Twitch has a list that they are working on, but I'm going to tell Twitch chat that I love their list and I will give JJ your list later, but um the uh the big important thing is that um it's not just today that we're

going to have the M crew on. We're going to have JJ and maybe some other folks uh on Thursday, 2 p.m. Eastern for design club. Jeff and I are going to also put our heads together and come up with a list. We're going to talk about like more of the dive in on like how these things are used and what what makes a good game for this, right? Cuz like everyone's like, "You should put Minecraft on there." Duh. Right. Like And Jeff's also done a little bit of work uh through EAR. Was it that ER? Is there some other company? I don't know if he can tell you on Design Club. Yeah. He he's he's worked in in in groups like this uh for in the past. And so we're going to we're going to sit down. We're going to talk about it on Thursday. So, please join us for that and, you know, keep developing your ideas and I'll make sure that JJ gets as much of the list as I can find out at Twitch chat when we're done. And my my last pitch because I'm not going to be there on Thursday. I know. Yeah. Mac Matt gets special privilege because he can't be here Thursday. This is your preview. Yeah. Um, okay. It's a It's no less like, oh, what games go on the systems kind of thing, but what if you did something a little bit meta before that word was

bad? Like, what if you did what if you did like Oh, okay. You know how like Xbox and PlayStation and all that stuff have like achievements? Like what if activities in the room and these aren't hard like they should be stuff that everyone can have access like could literally be like play a game on the computer or do you know some something like that. What if there was like I hate to make more work for you but what if there was like ways that as kids could go through it they unlocked achievements or achievement points that allowed something else to happen. like it'd be like it just no one's competing but they're competing against themselves or against the house in a way like that that would be awesome and that kind of goes with our whole like vibe with um we're part of the child and family life department and we never deny kids things but what we like to do is kind of like slowly reveal things as they're they're getting better at things or they're doing something like you just said like it's an achievement you just unlocked this new achievement now now we can move on to this thing. Yeah. Um that's

awesome. I love that idea. Yeah, those are those are my two ideas. Morning announcements and and children's hospital achievements. I don't know if it's you should name it that. I think it should be named something different. Uh but why why is the only thing in my head now Troy and I bet in the morning. Okay. Um so, uh that is that's really cool. I I know that. Congratulations on opening the space. That's really awesome. Thank you so much. Uh, and it's really cool for our community because you're right, we've been working together for a long time and a lot of the folks here, uh, I before I told them that you were coming on, the the the press release about this new space had already made it into the Discord and people were celebrating before I told them you were going to be on. People are following the the journey of CS Children's Hospital. They're following your work and they're excited. And not just because I tell them to be excited, which you know I can make them

excited, right? Chat, get hype and it's easy, right? Don't actually hype. We already did that. It was in the pre-show. Also, real quick, I think Lurker named the achievement system Oh, Matt's achievement team Matt. Okay. Anyway, before we stroke Matt's ego anymore, um, uh, get heists. No, no heist. Stop it. Behave. Um, yeah. So, join us Thursday, 2 p.m. Eastern, 11:00 a.m. uh Pacific. We're going to be sitting down and talking. Uh, and that'll be that'll be on Thursday. And we'll have more opportunities to talk about games and their roles in in uh healing and in hospitals and like what what the goals are and about all the games that we're going to suggest. So, uh, with that having been said, JJ, you've seen the show, so you know, kind of we're going to be going through a bunch of topics that happened in this week's gaming news, right? Oh, I'm excited. All right. I can't wait. I I

always talk to you guys, but you never hear me. Okay. Time to type. I'm usually like washing dishes or doing something when I'm watching you guys. So, now you get to hear all my thoughts. Perfect. All right. I also this time around for this special edition. Oh, I've done ice coffee in I I just decided to put it in the French press. Don't worry about it. It's fine. I'm just trying I'm trying to get some. There we go. Oh, perfect. Yeah. No. Oh. Oh, perfect. All right. Uh, so first up, JJ. Um, do the kids there play Pokémon Go? I feel like that's Pokémon Go is like one of those games that like was for a while deeply embedded in like kids in hospitals, right? that they were like putting extra Pokéstops and gyms in retail hospitals. We were kind of a big deal cuz when it came out we were kind of the only hospital that was allowing anyone to do that and people were using it a lot and uh they therea today might have done a little piece about us. Um

and but yeah, they use it and they still use it today which is kind of the really cool thing because I don't push it at all like we used. I didn't really have to ever push it, but we kind of opened the doors and made way for it. Um, but it's still you you see doctors, nurses, and kids just kind of it's just a part of life here now. Cool. Excellent. Excellent. We got a lot of great spots. All right. Good. Good. So, um, they they've got they've got this new update and I want I want your thoughts. I want Brad's thoughts. So, uh, a little bit of background in the world of Pokemon. There have been stats since time immemorial. There are two kinds of stats. There are Eevees and IVs. I'm gonna oversimplify this. Some Pokemon nerd is going to get really upset in the comments. That is okay. I won't. No one ever gets upset about any minutia about a video game on the internet. Will, you gota Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, um, in Pokemon Go, Ivy's are the big inherent values are

the big uh thing. You get them when the Pokemon is caught or hatched or whatever. And you can't can't really change them. They're just what they are. And that's part of the the fun is getting the best one, right? You're aiming for a perfect um a perfect whatever. And the best, of course, is a perfect shiny legendary. And everyone's like, "Oh my god, I got the perfect shiny legendary." Right. And it's great. Okay. Wait, what are they like? Oh my god, I got a perfect shiny legendary. I need that for my soundboard. Right. Okay, great. Awesome. Um, so they they decided that the process of, and by they I mean the folks over at Pokémon Go, um, decided that they were going to make it less of a chance that you would get a Pokemon with perfect stats. And they they've introduced this new item, the golden bottle cap, which you can see prominently displayed here by everyone's

favorite good guys, Team Rocket. Um, so the the golden bottle cap is an item which allows you through a series of quests to raise a Pokemon stats to be perfect, which sounds great until you find out that the only way to get a golden bottle cap is at the end of a paid battle pass. And now we start getting into feel bad territory, right? Cuz like is that so the the the the I should I should be clear. The head of uh the head of Pokemon Go is on the record saying this isn't pay to win. It's not pay to win. Uh because I I I don't actually know that I follow any of his arguments on what this is. I mean, we can read them.

Where was it? It's We got this from IGN. Uh, we have to be really careful about the design of bottle caps. Uh, Shrianka is their name told IGN. This is from IGN. Um, that's something that if we weren't thoughtful with the integration, it could really destroy the economy of the game. An item like a bottle cap is only going to be available very, very rarely. And because of that, we don't feel that players will be able to just spend their weight to having the best of the best of everything. And even once you've obtained a bottle cap, it's actually going to be quite a lot of effort for people to hyper train their Pokemon to get their stats up. Will, what is hypertraining? That's a really great question, Matt. That's actually after my time. I left Pokémon Go when they decided they were going to sell all of the map data to Saudi Arabia. Um, so I'm not hip with it, as the kids might say. Um, but there is I do know that there is a I believe that is the name of the the process. So, there will be um

things that you need to do with the Pokemon in order to raise their stats. You don't click the the shiny um you don't click the golden bottle cap and then immediately have perfect stats. You click the golden bottle cap and then do a bunch of work and then you have good stats. Um and so that process is I believe what they're calling hyper training. you need to like use it in battle, use it in uh you know wandering around and spinning Pokéstops and doing all the other stuff that you do in Pokémon Go, which is like three things. Catching things, battling gyms and PvP and spinning Pokétops, and that's like it because it's So the only way you can get these is with the battle pass right now, right? Yeah. Okay. So, you can't in theory, as it is listed out right now, just buy a bunch of golden bottle caps and crazy jack up all your Pokemon. You get one every How long is a Pokemon Go season? Uh, a bit arbitrary.

It's it's it's it's arbitrary now. Um, the passes last different lengths. They've never really been consistent with it. Yeah. So, season pass is it saying three months is? That sounds is right. Yeah. Um, so they can't actually this is actually Let's see if uh S Edwards has said this. You have to grow. Yeah. So, here we go. Is this pay to win or is this an additional entry cost for competitive play by another name? I don't do competitive Pokemon only because you have to grind for hundreds of hours to have competitive stats. Yeah. So, Jeff and I have talked about this before. This was actually a huge deal back at the last World Championship because a whole bunch of people got DQed for instead of naturally getting the Pokemon that had perfect stats. They um edited them in. They edited. Now, I should be clear, they edited in completely legal Pokemon, right, that were within the range of things they could have caught, but they didn't spend hundreds of hours catching and training those Pokemon to have exactly those stats, right? So

there's there's a it's sort of counterfeit Pokemon but not super powerful Pokemon if that makes sense, right? The issue is a little more fine than like oh my god these Pokemon are roided out to high heaven and low hell and you know all that. Um so I guess yes this this does feel like that because there is PvP head-to-head battling like your stats will matter. Your stats will matter quite a lot actually. Um, and uh, having dabbled for a time in Pokémon Go's PvP, I will tell you that it does actually matter quite a lot uh, when the meta is pretty solidified. So, I do think this is like another paid to entry thing. The problem is that this is a game for kids among other among other groups, right? But it's a game that is in marketed towards children, right? Yeah. It is a game that is marketed towards children with like a competitive floor that

requires you paying money to get an item to make things better. Right. I think the double-edged bad sword. I think it's a game that's both marketed to kids and to adults. And in different ways, uh, a battle pass system in that is a a rough one. Um, you could break it down a bunch of different ways. I don't want to I feel like JJ you what what h how are you feeling about this this change to our our good friend Pokemon Go. You know I I I struggle with all the battle pass stuff and it because I love the fact that these games are free to get into but then you know that's their that's their method and it keeps getting more complicated. I can tell you just like playing here at the hospital we we love it. We've done some stuff with Niantic. Um but it is a struggle because the kids will get excited. they'll throw out their 20 Pokeballs and then it's done and then they either got to sit there or they got to pay money for it. And I wish there was like a a better way to go about doing that to keep that engagement up. Um,

but yeah, it's it's it's especially the kids who are competitive, like you if they've if you got to pay a certain amount of money to win that that just kind of takes all the fun out of the game. But I don't know. I guess is it is it like buying Pokemon cards then? Like you just keep spending money until you get that card that's better than all the others. Well, yeah. And in a way, you're also pay like you're not paying money, but if you want to get this high stuff uh as one of these things, you're paying with time. Oh, yeah. Um and in this case, it's both. You need to pay with money and time. Well, yes. And I mean far less time. You're paying It's it's it's the it's the Ubisoft method, right? It's like, hey, pay this money to play our game less like it in in a way like or or get maybe it's not quite that because the goal of this I think is to get them to play more. Um but because this has a I would say for instance like I never understood like XP boosters in in single player experiences because I'm like don't you want me to

play it? This is a multiplayer thing where either competitive or when you're out in the world you can continue to use your better stats. Um, look, I this is not going to cause rampant pay to win. That does not mean that it is not pay to win. Yeah. Because what's going to happen I think over time especially and and again this is a problem that they have slowed I think uh with their implementation of these bottle caps. If you get and I'm I'm making this up maybe the seasons are different lengths than three months. If you get if pay to win players or pay to pay pay to play players I should say get one golden bottle cap every 3 months and they're and they're also the ones that are hyper competitive and and are playing out hundreds of hours etc. Those people will eventually become the powerhouses for as long as they're paying and playing right more so than just the person that is playing 100 hours and not doing the battle pass. So

you are, no matter what they say, rewarding people who are paying money to play the game. Now you, it also has kind of probably been like that forever. JJ, to your point, you only, if I remember correctly, you only get so many free Pokeballs a day, right? So if you want to be any sort of competitive or or level up quickly or anything like that, the game is designed to make you spend money already. Um, this is just sort of I think what Okay, I think I've nailed it. I think what the golden bottle cap thing is for me is it's it's peeling the mask off of the payment method faster than we're used to. Yes, I agree. Every time we peek behind that label of freeto play and you kind of see it, but like other things sort of make it feel more fair. And even if this is statistically and monetarily fair, it's you're we're peeling back that mask a little more than we're used to. And it doesn't look great. It's not

a good look. Can you find a bottle cap? I missed this. Can you find a bottle cap without paying? No. No. So, and do you when you find it, do you pay or you have to pay and then hope the end of the battle pass from what I'm understanding. This is the end of the battle pass. Okay. So, um, people So, it it does make me wonder though because you had pointed this out before, like who is Pokemon for Pokemon Go? Is it for adults or is it for kids? Because it's bright little characters, but they're the ones that like people 10, 15, 20 years ago grew up with. How many kids are getting that bottle cap? Like, that sounds like the, you know, they don't have time. They have to go to school. So, it's like it's those hardcore, you know, the whales. It's those hardcore folks who are maybe that's who that that market is for. Um, but you know, you get those kids who that might not be a very healthy thing for them to who get really obsessed with it. I I think that's one of my issues with Pokemon Go. I was about to say Magic, but I think

it's less that because Magic what Pokemon's age range it would seem, is incredibly young to later adult. like it feels like it's kind of all over the place where Magic I feel like is what like 13 plus 14 plus roughly. Yeah. And again that the just because the the window is smaller doesn't make it better. But like it I would say the way you advertise and monetize your game for a for a IP that is meant for people four to 40 to play. I'm just making like it obviously can go higher than that is a real hard and difficult ask. And when you do things like this, it muddies that care. It feels like anyway, it's not it's not the end of it. It's not breaking the game or anything like that right now, but we do know how companies work, right? if if they see that even the promise of something that could give someone an infant decimal edge over the

course of 3 months is crazy profitable if their battle passes start selling double triple the numbers they were doing before. You don't think that they're not going to come up with the next version of this? That's just how this functions. Th this is already the next version of that. I regret to inform you. So um uh so two things. Um one, we've talked about this before. Um it was the we've talked about um raid passes. So you get one free raid pass a day and a raid gives you access to a co-op event where a bunch of you try and take down a Pokemon and it might be a legendary Pokemon and then you get a chance to catch it at the end, right? And that legendary might be shiny, might have good stats, might have terrible stats, whatever. It's still a legendary. You can catch it at the end of the raid if you work with people. You can get additional shots at that by buying premium raid passes. And this is also the same rationale and almost verbatim method that they used when they rolled out Master Balls several years ago. Uh

conveniently at the same time that they rolled out the leg the legendary birds from Scarlet and no from Sword and Shield. The ones that wander around and in the in the overworld and you get like a shot to catch them. They were like, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if they didn't run away? You could get a Master Ball. What's that?" Oh, it's going to be five bucks. It's going to be five bucks. Right. So, like they've already begun rolling out in that direction. And I agree with Matt that this isn't like the most egregious step, right? But it is definitely like taking the X-Acto knife and like beginning to peel the veneer off of the the the like the fairness aspect, right? Yeah. Um it's Yeah, it I'll be curious to see how they move forward. Uh my my uh I I will never say that I am psychic. What I am uh I what I will say is precedent very rarely fails. That's correct. Yeah. Um so we'll we'll see. Uh

even though it feels like feels like we've we've seen this before. Correct. It it it does indeed. Uh real quick between this story and the next story, I want to call out Trent here's comment about the Cyberpunk 2.3 thing. We are Cyberpunk fans here. Actually, if you go back on the YouTube channel, there's a whole thing with James and Mike Ponmith about their card game that is coming out uh that we interviewed them on. We'll talk about uh the patch thing. I think it it works with another story we are doing uh in about two stories. So, we'll touch on that then. I just didn't want that to get lost. Okay, cool. Um next up, uh we have news and it's sort of a changing of the guard moment. So, Nexus Mods has been one of the great bastions of you can store all your mods for Skyrim here. Uh, if you are looking for mods, there's a lot. There are a lot of mods for Skyrim. Uh, we've we you know, um, now she What are you What are you doing? I I I'm reversed. I'm trying not to block JJ, but now I know. I lean this way. Okay. Um the uh

the um the thousands of mods for uh Skyrim, the hundreds of mods for Stardew Valley and Terraria and pretty much everything that's not Minecraft. Weirdly, Minecraft has its own mod ecosystem, and I believe Nexus Mods does have some of it, but it's not the majority of it. Um have lived on Nexus Mods for a long time. We've talked about them in the past. they've been pretty um involved in some choices about what people do and don't get to circulate as mods. For instance, when a bunch of people made a mod that took all of the pride flags out of one of the Spider-Man games, Nexus was like, "Get the crap out of here. We don't do that here. Shut up." Um, so and part of that was uh due to the influence of their uh founder and I guess CEO um uh Robin Dark One Scott uh who after 24 years

of running Nexus Mods is stepping away um to focus on his mental health which you know great awesome uh good you know admirable and should be done and thank thank you Robin for saying that that was why, right? Like that is an important thing to model for more people particularly in our industry. Um because burnout is so real. It's so real. Um so I guess like this is sort of like a turning point moment, right? Because we can see the way that Nexus is going to go, right? It's just Nexus is going to be a place to keep your eyes on. It might be business as usual. uh the the new um the new leadership of Nexus Mods might keep on trucking the same way they have or they might pivot, but this has been one of those this is sort of like not to the same extent, but this is like Gabin stepping down as the leadership of Valve except for mods. Um this has been one person whose will has influenced a

huge part of the modding scene and the modding community and what is and isn't relevant. and Robin stepping away might signal a change in the way that Nexus Mods does business and does um moderation and deals with bad faith mods. So, we will Yeah, we will see. Well, and the entire way that it functions and how it how it how it makes money, how it stays afloat, like all of those things could change. Um JJ, do you mod much many games on your side of things or I don't with our new computers? I'm like mods are something that I'm incredibly fascinated with but also terrified of. That's why I was kind of interested in this conversation and like you said this this this group that kind of helps them out. My son's trying to get me to mod everything under the sun that's Minecraft or anything else. And I'm afraid to put anything on my computer uh to be honest. And so that's I I'm really fascinated like JJ happened. Yeah. sometime when we're offline, you should hit me up cuz I have run the modded Minecraft server for our

community in the past. Uh, and I will totally walk you through all of the ins and outs of that and we can do tech support stuff. It'll it'll be great. Oh, that'd be amazing. And there's something Nexus Mods too, just on that note, like if if you don't have a will, um, Nexus mods, what I really liked about it, because I don't know what I'm doing, and I've I mostly modded things for charity streams, but like I can go through the mods and and like it's it's basically like a search engine for mods, and you can see how many people have downloaded it, what it's like ranking is, all the comments on it, etc. So, like for instance, if you're scared to put something on your computer, it's you you'll know it's probably safe if 1.5 million people have downloaded it. It's overwhelmingly positive as opposed to here's one that was uploaded two days ago and no one's done it yet. You know what I mean? Like it there's it's it's Oh, what? Hold on. Hold on. Try now. Oh, now Will's Okay. Try what?

You You went away, but now you're I I went away and then Interesting. What happened? I uh you muted for me. Both of you did. Oh. And nothing nothing changed in our audio program at all. You two just muted and then came back. Anyway, keep going. Nexus Mods is good because you can look at how many people downloaded it and see if it's good for you or not based on numbers. That's my short version of that. Um, yeah, we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Um, does the article, we got this from IG as well. I read this last night. I'm trying to remember. Does it say who's taking over yet or is that still in process? Believe that that might still be in process. Yeah, I mean that's going to be kind of it. I know that um Robin was saying like they they I believe the last quote there was um I want to find where they said it but basically it was like the they want the feeling to not change you know like

what's changing now they say is simply the formality of it making sure that the right people are in place to guide Nexus Mods into the next era. So it sounds like they're doing their their due diligence is to make sure that like that's going to be the case and that's great. Yeah. Do you want them to be able to survive monetarily, but also uh let's not have them start implementing mod downloading battle passes where if you download a mod a day, you grind your way if you pay 1999 to get a golden mod coin that lets you uh add triple the Macho Man Randy Savages into your Skyrim game. Why are you giving them ideas, man? Oh, no. Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh, now I just want to remind everyone that there is a mod where you can make all of the dragons in Skyrim into Thomas the Tank Engine and another mod where you can make them sound like Macho Man Randy Savage. So you can just have Thomas the Tank Engine fly out of the sky screaming, "Oh yeah." Uh, and that's that's really what modding is all about. That's how we got Zoe into for the Fallout mod for the uh

Fallout stream that we did for Best Friend Nexus Mods and Vortex. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I'm trying to gauge time. Trying to I'm trying to gauge. I think we should It is a flat circle. It Yo, it is. It is. It is in fact flat round shape. Um, it also keeps on slipping slipping slipping into the future. Oh, I thought they were a changing. Uh, but we do got to go back in it. You know, it is on our side though. Okay. What I'm trying to judge is if we should do ads now or the next story now. And I think we're going to have enough to say about the next story that we should do our fake ads now so that real ads don't get JJ. Do you want to do a fake ad? All right. So, a fake ad. Okay. So, so the way that this works is we're about to run uh 3 minutes of fake ads for things you can't actually spend money on for all of our subscribers and friends over on YouTube while the folks on Twitch get some real ads for things you can spend money on. And we do that in order to keep pre-rolls off so that folks joining the stream can just hop right in and not get slapped with several minutes of ads that we don't control. So, we're going to do a fun

improv bit now, uh, for about 3 minutes while you all get some some real ads, uh, over on Twitch. So, we'll see you all in about 3 minutes. Uh, fake ads may begin now. Will, do you want to start? Yes. Okay. Ready? Yes. Hi there, friends. Will from Extra Credits here to sell you the concept of bottled time. That's right. Everyone knows that the problem with battle passes isn't actually that they're taking money from you. That's fine. It's that they're taking time from you. And time is infinitely more precious than money. So consider investing in the notion of putting time in a bottle. That's right. Bottle some of the time from when you hate everything. Like when it's about to be 110 on the East Coast for an entire week straight. You don't need that time. Just go to sleep. put all that time in a bottle and then spend it later on a battle pass to get something like a golden bottle cap or a shiny master ball or whatever else it is that's at the end of the battle pass

that you want. That was good. That was good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll go next. Or JJ, do you have one or do you want me to go? It's up to you. Oh, I got I I think I got one. All right. Ready? You have a minute on the clock. Here we go. Three, two, one. Oh, hey folks. Uh, do you like taking notes? Do you like taking notes on your phone? No, of course you don't. No one likes to take notes on their phone. How about a sticky toe note? Those are great, right? No, they stick too much. How about a wrinkled old piece of paper that matches Will's hair? Now, that's what you want to write on. This little note already has notes on it, so you don't even have to take a note. And it almost sticks to my shirt. Oh, it'll hang there for probably about 30 seconds. So, for a limited time only until this falls off, you can call in and purchase this sort of wheel colored hair sticky note. What? I'd like a hundred. Great. There's only one, Matt. There's only one. It's that one. That's why it's so precious. That's why it's so

precious. Uh Will, I'm going to send you a link and this is what you uh if you could put it in both chats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can uh Here we go. I can do that. Uh it's this link. Oh dear. Uh, that link. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Hey friends, Matt from Extra Credits here. This is something you don't have to buy. Uh, it is a playlist I made on Spotify. It's called Songs to Slay Night Lords to. That's right. I've been playing far too much Night Rain, and I needed a bunch of music to be playing in the background while I did it. But here is the kicker. I decided not just to make a playlist of songs that sound great while you're playing Night Rain, but I decided to make 38 tracks. 38 38 3 maybe it's 30 38 tracks where it goes back and forth between the topic of the song. So it starts with Night Train by Guns and Roses. Then here comes the rain again by Annie Lennox. Uh then it goes into Night Fever from the BGs. Then it goes Have you ever seen the Rain Creed Clear Water Revival?

Basically it's night then rain night then rain night then rain for 38 tracks. Never never let it be said that our our boy Matt doesn't commit to the bit 150%. Also, I did try to make it. You really made it. Yeah, it's there links in both there. Yeah, it's it's in it's in chat. Um we'll send it to you when we're done. Um I finished it last night and I was very proud of it. Okay. How long How long did it take? How long? Too long. I started it on the train as a joke and then it didn't become a joke anymore. Right. Okay. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. All right. Uh, and that was almost perfectly three minutes of fake ads. Uh, and everyone should be back now from real ads. So, enjoy that. Uh, all right. Next up, let's talk about a good thing. Bungie has declared that Marathon will be delayed indefinitely. Good. Good. Not indefinitely, but they're saying till 2026, I think. Yeah. Till 2026. They don't have a firm launch date in 2026, I believe. It's just sometime in 2026. So, um, good. Okay.

Here's why. So, there were there were a couple of problems with Marathon to begin with. Um, number one, they took a lot of art assets from people they were not paying to put art assets in the game and they owned that and they were like that, you know, that's our bad. Um, I don't know if they would have owned it if people hadn't caught it and called them out on it, which a little worrisome, but they did own up to it when they were confronted about the fact that there were definitely art assets in the game that they definitely didn't pay for. So, that's on them. The other one is that everyone looked at all of the information that they were given. They were like, "Bruh, this ain't it." And Bungie went, "You know what? Fair. We'll take another shot at it. We'll see you in 2026." And I will fully admit that this is a thing that Bungie can do because they have bungee money, right? So yes, this is the interesting thing about this story. It feels like and this

is just this is vibe based only. This is no there is no factuality in what I'm about to say. It feels like this is the last time they'll have bungee money if Marathon does not hit. I'm not saying they're going to go under. I'm not saying any of that stuff. I'm saying this feels like the last time they could be like, "Nope, redo." Like it it there's been too many things like this. And I again, Destiny 2 is my absolute favorite game that I cannot figure out how to get back into and play. Um I I just feel like there's been a lot of stuff like that. Like, and I I want Marathon to do well. I like I like Bungie as a company. their trajectory of like where they've been bought and sold and freed and like whatever like is so fascinating. Um, and you don't get to see that often. So, I want them to survive. I'm glad they delayed this game. Uh, I hope they take the community feedback. It's funny in Again, this

story comes from IGN. You can look it in the show notes. All of their quotes. Uh, I got to find it. This is very when when a community gets loud like Whether they're correct or not, they always call the engagement and thanks to your passion. Yeah. Yep. And I love it because they it it's Thank you again for your patience and much more importantly your passion. Your continued feedback will help us make Marathon an incredible gaming. Like passion is the passive aggressive way of saying you shouted at us a lot. You hurt our feelings. We're going to go think about this for a minute. Um, and I wait, what else are they going to say? I just I always find that I I'm I'm very passionate about when uh corporations put out statements that have the word your passion in it. Um, I think it's very funny. Yeah. Uh,

of note on that same RJN article, there is a poll uh that has received 4,143 votes on are you excited for marathon? The results are 21.3% yes. So 78.7% no. I It's kind of weird, right? Marathon is a old IP of Bungie. It's an IP that predates Halo. Mhm. Right. And so I understand wanting to bring it back, but also feels like you missed feels like you missed a lot. Like not a little bit. This isn't like you took you took a shot and missed. This is like you took a shot and we're facing the wrong way like 180 degrees from where you were. And I I haven't I have not played the alpha. I did not or whatever it was that the play test. I It's funny. I researched into it like I think a month and a half ago or something when we talked about it for a longer period of time on this show. And here's what I'll say and I I think this

is a little damning. I don't remember it. Like I I what I remember now is the AI the the stolen art assets which is a small portion but still important. But like I don't even remember what the gameplay loop is. And if we did like a deep dive on it and I that information is already out of my brain and look maybe it's because I'm making night rain playlists but I I think it that doesn't speak well to like the longevity of what your core loop is, right? Uh, and again, this comes from a place I want I want Marathon to do well. I like Bungie. And again, and this comes up every time. This is the right call, right? If Okay, let's assume that they want Marathon to come out and they're not willing to cancel it after negative reviews and bad feedback, right? And they're not willing to just throw the whole towel in, which they're probably not because they've put there's a lot of sunk cost there, right? and they've made commitments to people like Sony that

they're going to come out with this marathon game. If they want the game to ever be good, this is their only remaining course of action, right? After the degree of negative feedback that they got, they needed to delay it, right? And so they're taking the right call instead of doing the thing which would have absolutely sunk it even more certainly than this, which is releasing it anyway and being like, "Hey, we'll fix it in post-launch patches." No, you are not. No, cuz like again it's really important that people not look at buggy messes of bad player review um early like versions and be like, "Oh, we'll fix it in post. No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk did it. Why can't we? It's cuz you're not No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk." Like the the survivorship bias, I think, uh is not kicking in here, which I think is really good that they're saying we're going to delay it until it's more ready. The last thing I'll say too is I think uh for uh

like extraction looters, multiplayer shooter kind of things, I think the window for you because it's a saturated market. I think the window for you to fix it is way smaller. Like Cyberpunk is a single player RPG. They should have released it in a better state, but it now took years and now it is a one of my the best games I've ever played. Uh No Man's Sky was a small team. Again, it it had multiplayer elements and of course it is a multiplayer thing, but it it's not terribly PvP. You you you can, but it's not like that's not the focus and therefore it had time to cook. Stuff like this, if you aren't hooking people to jump in and play these matches all day, every day for the first month of this game's thing, like you're not going to break the noise. Like, it's just not there. Um, and I think they realize that. JJ, what what about you? Did you What was that? I was excited for the idea of the Marathon IP coming back. Yeah. I because I loved like old school Halo Bungee Halo like and I and and I

played Marathon like way way back. I don't even really remember it, but I was like, "Oh, cool." And the art style was interesting. I It was the extraction shooter thing that I I'm not a big fan of. Like Destiny I always followed, but I never played because I just didn't have time in my life to commit to Destiny. Um, so I was just interested in the lore and and curious like could I jump into this game, but I I can't do an extraction shooter. And I wonder I know that was part of part of the complaint was that that extraction shooter is a very niche community. And I'm curious if if they would change that at all, like change the actual loop of the game to make it something that's a little broader. Yeah. Yeah. because there are there are currently two main extraction games, Tarov and Dark and Darker. And it didn't make the the show this week cuz we we we don't have time to talk about it in the depth that we might need to to like get all

the relevant details. Dark and Darker is having a bad time. It's a very bad time. Like got pulled off the Epic Store and everyone got issued refunds. Bad time. Like they're having a capital B, capital T bad. So, the genre is pretty dense and also fraught with a lot of problems. So, I agree that I think maybe extraction looter shooter wasn't the right game here, wasn't the right idea here, especially because as Chad is saying, this bears very little resemblance to the actual idea of Marathon. It it sort of feels like they took Marathon's skin and draped it over Tarov and went, "Good, job's done." Y and that's not really I think what a lot of people are looking for, right? Um so I think that there's uh there there is definitely room to improve and I do hope that when it comes when we hear about it again in 2026. Okay, let me be also be clear. I don't want to hear anything about it. Bungie, shut up. Stop saying words. Come back to

come back to us in 2026. Don't do teasers. Don't and then and then please please Bungie, I know you're watching this show religiously. Please check all your art before you release any more press for this game. Please check all of the art. Please make sure you've paid all of the artists. In fact, you know what you should do? You should just throw extra money at sci-fi artists on the off chance that someone might have accidentally scooped some of their art. just take money and throw it at random artists just in case. Okay, please, please double check all of this stuff. I really don't want this to be the story of Marathon, which is that after a year of delays, it came back and immediately they found more stolen art. Please don't do that. That would be the worst thing. Uh, and also, side note, uh, this was where I was going to talk about the Cyberpunk thing uh, Trevor brought up. Breaking news, uh, there was supposed to be a Cyberpunk update. 2.3 was supposed to drop on the 26th, I think. Uh they're

moving it. They need more time. Uh so they're going to aim for a scope similar to the update of 2.2. So they also are pushing back their specific patch and thing to make it better. Uh good, good. Great. Thank you. Delay more games. Also, it's not like 2025 isn't already jam-packed to the gills. Oh, 2027. Yeah. Right. Um, like, uh, it's not like we're short on things to play this year, right? Uh, the DK game comes out next month for the Switch 2 and all of the Switch One games are new again, which we'll talk about in a second. And and and and that that Pauline lore we're getting on Donkey Kong now. Yeah, that deep deep Pauline lore. Um, yeah. By the way, speaking of uh Switch 2. Yes, Matt. Oh, I was just gonna say, uh, oopsie asked why they didn't get, uh, called in the feed when we started. It's because it was a thing with YouTube. It was messing up. It didn't belong to the time. It's blame blame the tubes of you.

I have not, but they're glad they didn't miss it. Glad you're here. Um, okay. So, speaking of the Switch 2, speaking of the Switch 2 and also ruining things. So, there was a lot of discussion when the Switch 2 and the ULA for the update that the Switch One got to enable Switch 2 compatibility dropped. And a lot of people were also looking at sort of the terms of service for the Switch 2 in broad terms. And a lot of people were lipping out over um the ability for Nintendo to remotely brick your console, which spoilers, every internet connected console ever has had that clause. That's not new. That's a thing. However, will point out Nintendo is one of in in a rare case is exercising it. They are actively bricking some Switch

twos. uh from and it they might just be hardware banned from online play, but they're they're not as functional as they were above before when you you you lose access to your account and therefore you if you bought games on that account, you can't do it. I think you can still like plug a cart in and play. But also, I'm not sure how a non- Nintendo accounted Switch 2 even works. Correct. The first thing you have to do is log in. Yeah. So, um Okay. So, and in this case, it's it's actually a very interesting sort of um sort of occurrence, which is there's a kind of cartridge uh I'm looking it up, called a MIG switch, MIG switch. Um, and it is a uh cartridge of a kind that's not dissimilar for some of us old folks to a game shark in that it is a device which allows you to interface with the Switch and load up additional programs. Um, and

it was a thing that was used pretty heavily on the Switch One and the Nintendo said that the uh Switch 2 was going to have stronger measures against it except it also emulates Switch One games. It does some amount of emulation for Switch One games. So, ROM makers just released a firmware update for the big switch that let you uh turn it into a uh bypass for the emulation of a Switch One game. And Nintendo said, "Hey, don't do that." And the Mig Switch people were like, "Hey, we're going to do that." And Nintendo was like, "Okay." And now people are reporting that if you plug a MIG Switch cartridge into your Switch 2, it can and will just get obliterated. Um, it is just getting banned uh pretty extremely even for plugging it at once, even for not loading any other data. If you plug the device into the Switch 2 and it calls home in some

fashion that people aren't aware of yet, it will brick the console. Thoughts, gentlemen? Now, uh, do we know I the brick term is obviously the one that gets thrown around. Is this something that Nintendo can turn on and off? It doesn't actually affect the hardware per se. This is a software bricking of the system, right? like it it it doesn't like destroy the BIOS. It like it basically doesn't let it phone home. It is permanently and to the best of everyone's knowledge irreversibly hardware banned from connecting to Nintendo Switch services and therefore is well so so but this is my question from a from a that's what do we have confirmation on that like is like Nintendo obviously hasn't reversed any yet but do they have the ability to Oh that's a great question if it can't phone home can it be reversed?

See, this is my my thought is it's not actually and again I don't know the technicality of this. It's not actually bricking the system especially because if it is if the thing is you cannot access your Nintendo online account. I bet you there is still a way for Nintendo through the serial number or through something else or the ban list or something to get you off that list. It feels like if you're going to implement this and use it, it's not doing something that is irreparable to the actual system itself. This isn't Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not changing anything about the system. The system is trying to call home and the systems hardware ID is on a list that Nintendo says, "No, you've been bad. No services for you." Yes. Because even even to Oopsie's point, like here uh people are going to accidentally buy fake cards and lose everything. Like it's funny. being a kid growing up uh and getting

video games for Christmas and getting the knockoff version of whatever it is like you could totally see this happening in various different ways. But um I don't know. I will your point about the like it's it's awful that this is happening. There's no question. It also is and this is going to be my one swear word for the day. the inshitification of every piece of entertainment that we have. Everything we do and engage with for the most part is a service like this that can be shut off and have access our access to it cut off at any given time. Even stuff that we buy uh I mean case in point uh actually I don't know this will you might know this more. A Steam Deck I go out and buy a Steam Deck all of the sudden my Steam I do something and I get my Steam account logged off and I can't go online with Steam anymore. That limits what that can do. Granted, you can hack it and make you can make it into a Windows machine, that sort of thing. I guess it's your value prop of what you are buying the hardware for and the ecosystem you are buying into. So, I'm going to point out something that

has been bugging me about the way the story has been reported. Um, which is this is not new. This is like Xbox 360 era old as an issue, right, for like um banning consoles from online services for um for violating terms of service in some way, right? Uh I'm I'm curious because I'm looking it up. You cannot run a Switch 2 apparently without a Nintendo account. I'm wondering in these bricked system I I don't even want to call it bricked anymore because I don't think that's technically what it is. in these ones that are account locked, can you clear the entire Switch and make a new Nintendo account? Granted, you would lose access to anything you bought on the previous Nintendo account, but as far as like making the hardware work, that's my question. Unknown on whether there's a way to reset it. uh people are already working on pulling apart the Switch 2's operating system and there may be a workaround to reset it to

something or to spoof the hardware ID such that it gets access again. Um, but unknown on that. No. And I know like I'm sure modders and everybody will come up with a way to do something, right? But I'm talking about like is there a consumerf facing solution that is still a punishment for what happened whether you should have been punished or not that lets you still use your $450 piece of hardware even if that means you lose access to an account you once had. Do you know what I mean? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I like your account's forever gone, but you can still use the Switch with your little brother's account. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's my question. I'm gonna dig into that a little bit more. Not again, it doesn't make it much better, but it it changes the argument people have because again, Will, to your point, this has been forever. And I think Nintendo's not doing a lot of great stuff right now. Uh that's putting it sort of lightly. But at the same time, I think because of that, when things like this happen, it becomes like a lightning rod for them.

But this has been going, this is not new. Um, so yeah. Yeah. Uh, we'll see. Yeah. And and and it is also worth noting that there is um part of the part of the confusion in the way that a lot of people are talking about this is um completely rendering the device permanently unusable is also an option that is in Nintendo's ULA and is also similarly in the ULA for pretty much every console ever. Just so we're all on the same page, just because they this isn't bricking fully doesn't mean that it's not on the table. They they there is some way that they can render the console unbootable. Is is the law then now we just own the silicon and plastic but not the functionality of the device. Is that kind of what it is? That expensive decoration. So that that's an interesting question and that touches on one of my favorite issues on the internet which is a little topic called the right to repair. Right. So um the answer is according to the ULA you don't

but the ULA is not the law. Sure. So, there is some amount of back and forth that's gone on, particularly in the US, and I don't know about the EU, so I'm not going to talk about that. Imagine not talking about a thing I don't know about on the internet. Um, in the US, it's gone back the primary uh people who have been upholding the uh corporate rights to deny people the ability to repair physical devices that they own because of software or proprietary tools or whatever are twofold. They are Apple Computers and John Deere. John John Deere is the other big opponent of right to repair because they make an absolute fortune from farmers in the United States needing to pay John Deere to repair their farm equipment because John Deere is one of the leading manufacturers of farming equipment and they have a big anti-right to repair thing to hold. So Nintendo would probably weigh in on that side. However,

there has been movement that suggests that despite what is in the ULA, consumers do have some extended rights beyond what it seems like they have in the ULA in the United States. Now, here's the really weird thing. I don't know that that actually applies to this specific case because what's happening is you are being banned from participating in online services as a result of violating terms of service and then that means that the functionality of the device isn't like the equivalent would be using your iPhone to um crank call people or to spam call people to turn your iPhone into a robocall machine. Um, that would violate the terms of service and result in your iPhone being banned from being used as an iPhone. You still own the physical device. It could do something else with it, but it won't function as an iPhone because of the thing that you did. Case in point, I could break my uh

terms of service on an iPhone and I can't basically use Apple or any of its stuff. However, if I'm if I am on it, if it's old enough and I didn't need to log in, I could still use it as my Fallout controller for Fallout 4 from my pit boy if I had that installed. Like it, you know, it's not doing any it's using Bluetooth and going to my PC. It's not contacting anything outside of my network. Um, yeah. So, like I guess that was that was my main question, right? is like I I'm curious what the letter of the law is about buying a piece of tech if that's even anywhere truly because the theoretically I could take my switch to if if I had the I mean this is a this is a a long shot. If someone had the technical knowhow and access to all of the parts and infrastructure they would need, they could for not profit uh connect to like change the way the

Switch 2 worked uh connect to it their own network and do whatever they wanted so long as they could all kind of do it by themselves and not talk with Nintendo about it, right? Like it and that that doesn't work for full piracy because you have to connect to the internet, you have to share. I'm talking like technically if I owned a piece of technology and I kept it on my own thing that talked to no one and I did all of the things myself. I believe and maybe it's wrong. It feels like that would still be legal. It right. So So there's there's three there's three levels here, right? There's Sorry, we're going deep, J. No, I've Well, I've got a switch two question that with this, but I want to hear what has to say. Uh um so so there's three levels to this, right? One is does that violate the ULA? Two, does that violate some kind of consumer protection law? And then third, and it's the big overarching shadow of an idiotic

law written by people who did not understand the subject matter, does it mess with the DMCA? Because anytime we start talking about intellectual property and the way that it's being altered by the consumer, the DMCA pops its head up and goes, "Is there someone you forgot to ask?" No, I know. But what I'm saying this is the weird thing and again this is a this is a hyper it's an impossible task I'm positing but I'm pausing it on like I'm I'm trying to find where the line is. If it's just the hardware that I am using and I have coded my own software correct then it should be legal. If it's not, no one has to talk to me or play with me. It would be under the first two points probably. Well, it would be against the ULA, but they wouldn't be able to tell if it never called home. It would probably be legal under consumer protection laws because you're not interfering with anything else revealing trade secrets. The problem is that there's a clause of the DMCA about breaking encryption on devices, and that's where you could run a foul. Again, I don't know how they discover

it, but there is a clause of the DMCA that does apply to exactly the thing that you're talking about, which says you actually can't do that thing. Now, people violate that clause of the DMCA literally all the time, and it's fine, but technically speaking, it is against that provision of the DMCA because there is some amount of encryption on the file um on the software that runs on the Switch, too. And again, we're getting super technical in the It's so fun to think about, though, JJ. Yeah. What was your question? Well, so one thing I'm wondering about is what about like if you have controller drift and you want to fix your own controller cuz that was a huge issue with the switch ones. We went through so many controllers with with controller drift and I I didn't do it personally. We would just get new ones, but I know other folks with my in my role at other hospitals who didn't have the same resources like they would crack it open and fix it themselves. And now if we are having the same issues with these, is is that going toffect it as well? I would imagine that it would be okay largely

because that's a purely physical fix that doesn't interact with the software at all. The the Joy-Con drift in um in the way that Switch uh JoyCons are assembled is a physical problem far more than it is any kind of software problem. It's not like there's a there's a rounding error that occurs in the controller, right? Uh, as far as placement goes, it's a physical problem with the joystick, which is why a Hall effect joystick would fix it. The Hall effects not possible because they're using magnets to connect it to the console and blah blah blah. So, I think, again, not a lawyer, not an expert. I think fixing joysticks, JoyCons will still be okay. However, comma, but we'll have to wait and see. It's fascinating. Uh, I I don't know. We can I know we got to keep moving on. We got a lot of stuff to go through still. However, uh this is just I don't know. It's Yeah, this is this is this is the big question, right? This has been a question for a while. Um and Nec um Hall effect isn't perfect either, but it's um it is better,

significantly better. Um it there's no perfect way to avoid physical wear and tear on things, but this is close. Also, nice corn serpent. Uh, all right. Next up, um, we're going to keep talking about the Switch 2 real quick. This is great, y'all. There's a new number one game of 2025, and it's Breath of the Wild. This is why my daughter wanted me to get a Switch, too. She She didn't care about any of the games that are coming out. She just wanted to play Breath of the Wild again for the 15th time. So, well, all right. So, I'm going to defend your daughter here real quick. It looks sweet. It looks real good. But it plays real nice. So tears is the one I got. You guys talking about it a couple weeks ago and I I was like, "Oh, maybe I have to." I have not booted it up for more than 5 minutes because I know I will just get sucked in. Like I need like a chunk of time. Yeah. Okay. So, but the frame rate's gorgeous. It looks great. All right. Great. Excellent. We have We

have achieved our goal, which is that R2 is confused. Great. I'm so glad you're confused. Let us explain. So on Metacritic, games are tracked by release year and uh and and um so there's a list of all the games that released in 2025 by rating and technically speaking the upgraded version of Breath of the Wild released in 2025. So the that means that the Metacritic scores for Breath of the Wild the concept aka the original and the re-release have been bumped up into the 2025 releases for Metacritic. This is sort of like okay this is not to say anything bad about this re-release or this port. The port is great. The fact that they're giving it away to people who buy their premium expansion pass thing is also a really smart move. These are all really good ideas from Nintendo. Uh they should have given it away for free to everyone, but this is like a decent half measure, especially because

they gave away a year of the premium service to anyone who bought a Switch 2. Um the question is how long are we going to put up with this? Like we keep like the release year. So now is it like Breath of the Wild 2017 and Breath of the Wild 2025? Like how are we what are we is it the Switch one version, the Switch 2 version? This is kind of an interesting problem. In a year that's already stacked with games, we're having old games come out again on the Switch 2 because there's not enough launch titles for people to pay attention to on the Switch 2. So, we're saying that the old launch titles are the new launch titles. And what's that about? I don't think I think I think we could take it this seriously or we couldn't, right? Like, this is an outlier that is silly and fun. This is great. Yes, this is great. Breath of the Wild Taylor's version. Correct. No notes. Proceed. I don't know if I don't know if I have anything better to say about this than that. Yeah. Also, hey Matt. Yeah. I regret to

inform you. Your Discord ping through again. God, I'm I'm just going to take I'm going to silently take down the the the one off of the number of It's closed on the core system level. I cannot access Discord right now. number of number of shows since Matt's Discord ping interrupted us reset to zero. I am sorry everybody. Hey, let me talk to you real quick. I'm so sorry everybody. I have to do this. Hey. Hey, come here. I'm so sorry that the Discord pings. I don't want it to happen. I've changed my sound settings. Not Come here. Just come a little closer. I've changed my sound settings so many times and I don't want it to happen. I don't want you to look over and be confused. Does this confuse you? giant headmat with two people with regularsized heads. I'll back up. I'll back up. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Message for you. Yeah. Um I I think but but to go on this, by the way, I I do think that uh Joseph has a great point. Um

which is charging for for updates to newer games at least makes some sense, but Breath of the Wild should have absolutely been the Costco hot dog. Yes. Yep. 100%. So should have that tour thing. Well, okay. Actually, I've learned a little more about the tour thing. I've learned a little more about the tour thing. I've learned nothing more. And I disagree. Great. Awesome. Um, the tour thing is not actually a tutorial on how to use it. It is not. Well, a lot of us were comparing it to Astro's Playroom. That's not correct. Um, it is closer to a documentary series on the technical inner workings of the Switch 2. It is not uh designed for the average consumer. It's not designed to teach you how the Switch 2 works. It's designed to be essentially like a tearown tour by Nintendo of the technology that's in the Switch 2. So, it's not quite analogous. I agree that it could have been a cool fluff piece to include in everything, but it's less consumers and much more like these are the magnets that we used and this is how we overcame this problem

and like all of that kind of thing. I have a problem. Yes. I mean, I have many problems, but I have specifically with this one. Uh, it's called Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. Agreed. Agreed. Your marketing Nintendo is flawed. If that's the case, fully stipulated, fully granted. And so if you're marketing it as a welcome tour, something that should be given to some if if you want people to be welcomed, you don't charge when you show up at uh uh at least right now like a national park or something or or or a or a museum. oftent times the tours uh especially if it's a welcome tour will not cost you extra money. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, sorry I'm mad about good old days where a console came with a game and two controllers, right? Oh my god, two controllers. Controllers. I know. Technically, the Switch 2 does come with two controllers. Yeah. Yeah. If you have tiny hands. I've used them. It's not It's not the worst.

The new ones I I tried it just to see. Like it's not bad. Yeah. I used it when I was uh playing Mario Kart with my parents. Yep. Um okay. So uh anyway, this is just kind of an interesting aberration when we're looking at top games of the year or when we're talking about stuff. We're probably going to exclude a lot of these re-releases, but we're going to have to do it manually because on Metacritic and other sites, they're showing up as new releases. So just be aware, right? Don't be like looking at it and be like, "Wow, there's nothing good that came out this year." No. a bunch of spots are just getting knocked off by really highly polished re-releases of already existing first party Nintendo games, and that's just a thing we're going to have to deal with. Yeah. Um, okay. I've also gotten green light uh before I killed the Discord ping, by the way. I was doing it for everyone here. Uh, I asked if I could have more time before the meeting, and I could have more time before the meeting, so we're all set. All right. Okay. Um, let's talk about uh a a topic that is near and dear to all of our hearts. um which I I think that this is actually one of the most important pieces of uh updates to gaming in 2025 and I think

it's going to fly under the radar heavily and I'm really glad that JJ is here to talk about this. Let's talk about Steam and accessibility. [Music] So Steam is doing two things and they're both great but they're very different. One of them is that Steam is now letting people search for games by accessibility feature. Right. Oh, so right. So, right there we go. JJ Brain cell activated. You had his interest, but now you have his attention. Correct. And then the second part of it, and I think this is also very interesting, is that Steam is adding accessibility features to Steam itself. Currently, they are in the beta and limited to big picture mode. Um, but they are doing things like adding screen reader compatibility to Steam in big

picture mode already. Like that's that's what's happening. So, let's talk about this cuz I think this is huge. I think this is a really big deal that is not going to get a lot of press because quite frankly, it's not flashy, but it is so incredibly important under the hood. Yeah. So JJ, can you can you tell us a little bit? So you earlier you were talking about the the motto at MOP being that everybody plays, right? Can you tell us a little bit about like the links that you have to go to to make some games work for kids? Yeah, I mean sometimes it's it's something as simple as um duct taping a controller to someone's hand so that they don't have to like hold it. Um, uh, other times, you know, it's it's us telling the person what is on the screen because they can't see it or at least see the colors that they're looking for. Um, sometimes, actually, usually the biggest hurdle for most of our patients

is just navigating the menu. the getting through any menu on anything, especially a PC game, is is so hard for a lot of not for me, but or just for me, but also just for anybody who has any type of different type of ability, um whether it's physical or cognitive. Um so being able to make those tweaks and and I I am really curious to see like how easy is it to make that like do you have to deep dive into five different menus to do it? Um once you set it up, does it stay that way? um does it does it stay depending on what like if you're using a Steam Deck versus your PC versus you know like how how nuanced can it be? Um but having having those tools even thought of by developers is incredible because for the longest time it was just all right let's see what we can do with what we got. Yeah. It seems it seems like you know it's funny because you obviously at M go above and beyond to

like games that might not be fully have full the needed accessibility things. You find ways sort of around it to make it happen. This will hopefully be something that's good for you guys and for everybody else that can essentially let you know exactly how much extra work where you'll have to do like to to make the game sort of function or like if you're for instance when you're looking to fill uh your Steam libraries for those PCs and everything like you could also sort of already have like it'll do a lot of the filtering for like color blindness or uh a specialty controller or like things like that like you'll be able to sort hopefully through that. So when you have a kid come through that needs X, Y, and Z, you can be like X, Y, and Z. And then like the your Steam library will hopefully Yeah. uh adjust that accordingly. So they'll have a list that they know that they can access. And and there there is a lot of that stuff. We don't even we didn't even realize that we wanted it until some some smart developer put it in. Whether they

intended to do that for people um with different abilities or if they just thought, hey, this will make it easier to game with your kids. Like Mario Kart is a great example of like the auto drive or the auto excel. Um that was a game changer for us. It made it so much easier for families to play together, for people with different abilities to play together and it's like one simple thing and or even co-pilot on the Xbox. Like I I had that thing for a year before I realized it was there and and it made it so much easier to teach my kid who doesn't have any um disabilities how to play a third person or a first person game. Can you can you explain Co-Pilot just real quick for people who may not be familiar? Oh, yeah. Copilot it's if you guys don't know about it, you should check it out. Especially if you do have kids, um it is a g it allows you to use two controllers as one controller. So, um if I'm playing a game with my son and he's really struggling like with my when he first started playing Minecraft and I actually use this with patients all the time when they're trying to learn how to play a game. Um you know, controlling the

camera is really difficult for young ones. Um, so what you do is you let them play and what I can do is any it's basically having one controller in two. So as like his my A controls his A, my B controls his B, uh, my left joystick controls his left joystick. If I'm not touching it and he's moving it, it'll do whatever, but then the minute I start pushing a button, it takes over for that controller without inhibiting what he's doing. So, he's able to um what I do with a lot of kids, if they if they're missing an arm or if they're having a procedure done where their arm is being used, um they can still play a game and even if they're getting like an IV or something put into that that right arm, I'll just play the right side of the controller with another controller in my hand. And it's it's just changed the whole game of how we teach kids how to play games, but also how we um approach uh accessibility in gaming. Yeah. So, it is it is and um Grass also points out that you can do a similar thing with the

the split controllers, right? Because you can have the the the JoyCons. They don't actually have to be close together, right? There was one for your left hand and one for your right hand, but they don't have to be the same person's hands, right? You can just split them up uh and do it that way. And that that's totally um the same kind of concept, although not executed the same way. that like as an example, if um as Microsoft continues to bring more of their games to PC at and Game Pass at like the same time, if you could do a search on Steam for games that support co-pilot, that's a game changer right there. Well, that's we do that a lot. So, with a lot of our adaptive equipment, like the our patients usually want to use the P the who play PC games want to be able to like use the keyboard as much as possible. Um, I am atrocious playing any game with a mouse and keyboard. So, I've actually been experimenting myself with like how like using co-pilot to use the controller to control my movement and my shooting, but then using the mouse to like learn how to aim. Um, and I've been

trying to experiment with that with different uh stuff with patients who have different types of abilities so that they can still use the keyboard as much as possible while using another piece of equipment, but we just use co-pilot. So, it's one person using two controllers as one. And so, that that's super helpful in that that type of circumstance as well. And to have that on Steam, if it like could integrate or work just as well, that would be amazing. Yeah. So, some of the things that they're talking about for right now um are in in big picture mode. They're talking about a high contrast mode, the ability to reduce motion uh in Steam menus uh or like to to turn off autoplaying um trailers. They've got a UI scale option. They've got a built-in screen reader. Builtin screen reader. Wow. Builtin. Oh my god. It's one of the things that makes Minecraft so incredibly good for accessibility. I accidentally turn it on all the time when I'm playing modded Minecraft so I remember always that it's there. But like there's a built-in screen narrator for Minecraft like and

that's huge, right? And so having that kind of thing built into Steam, right? Because like if you we're kind of talking about it, right? if you don't have to help someone get into the game, right? That's another level of independence for them and more time that you can be spending uh do helping with other more complicated problems, right? But if like if you can set up a library of Steam games and say, "All right, you can, you know, here's the screen reader here. It's nice and big. You can read this. You can make a choice about the game you want to play." That feels like a big win for you getting to like put some control back in the kids' hands and also like to just make it easier for them to actually be driving. I mean, it's perfect timing. It makes me so excited because like I said, we've just got these four PCs and we love Steam. We use Steam, but it's really hard to use Steam in a hospital because of all of the different firewalls and things that are set up to make it so that you you can't use your big fancy PC for, you know, uh, HIPPO

reasons, which is like to protect people from giving away their their hospital information. All of our accounts, we don't let kids put their own accounts on these computers. It's all accounts that we take care of, but we do help kids set up their own computers. So, to be able to even let them know, hey, did you know this thing exists? we can help you get your computer the way you want it, your games the way you want them, that that would be huge. And then if we're doing stuff like with all the fun stuff everyone's going to think about for design club, um, if we're having like we used to do something called Mario Mondays where every Monday Connor would go around and just look at what door was open and invite people to come play Mario Kart. And I could see something doing something similar with games on Steam, which would be great because then we could start exposing our patients to like all the really cool indie games that are on Steam or some of the higherend games that like we wouldn't do on Nintendo Switch, but have the systems ready to go for them when they come down. Like, you know, if somebody is color blind, knowing this kid's coming down, we'll have it all ready for them so right when they start, they don't

have to we don't have to spend 30 minutes trying to set it up for them. Yeah, that's really cool. Also, uh I don't know if it made this, but I did see a push um that some disability advocates are doing, which is, you know, how there are the little icons for like what games this uh what controllers this game is compatible with? There is a push to have the Xbox um adaptable controller added to that list so that you just see the button squid, right? And if you've never seen an Xbox adaptable controller, it is one of the coolest pieces of technology. It is like, did you ever want to make your home console into a Chuck-e-Cheese style arcade game you play with your whole body? Yes. Cool. Great. Like, it's got giant joystick pads and it's got big like big friendly buttons that you can hit with like a foot or an elbow or whatever to play a video game. The thing is dope. The thing is just like I don't I don't need one and I want one. No, I love I love that

it looks like a giant NES controller, like old school NES controller. And my favorite thing when I was playing around with it was that was back when I was really big into Titanfall 2. And I made the the two bottom buttons my like like basically foot pedals for myself so I could jump and and slide. And it like it made traversal so much more fun because I was doing it with my own feet. And that wasn't to adapt to anything. That was just like, hey, how can I have fun with this game and and get faster and better at it. Yeah. Uh so it sounds like this is this is a thing that you as someone who uses accessibility options on the daily in your work are really jazzed about and that cuz I I like thought that this was pretty cool and now I'm even more convinced that this is really really cool. All right, we've got uh one more story and then we have a a special treat for JJ. So uh our one more story is Twitch chat. Did you know well

YouTube chat too, but Twitch chat for sure. We haven't tested with YouTube chat. We might have to do that at some point. Did you know that you're smarter than Google's AI? So this this was a bit of um this is a bit of a freebie dunk uh that I'm pretty happy with. So, um, Google, in an attempt to prove that their AI was cool, hooked their AI up to Pokemon and went, "Watch, look how fast our AI beats Pokemon knowing nothing." And then they released those numbers. And they were like, "We're very proud of it." And then people figured out that Twitch plays Pokemon beat Pokemon faster with people playing Twitch plays Pokemon who actively were trying to sabotage the run. Yeah, this comes from some PC Gamer. Um I think this is great. I'm I'm Matt. Thoughts, feelings? I mean, it's funny. I mean, look, it's it uh the first time it ran through it took over

800 hours to beat the Elite 4. Um, they shaved off a couple um, a 100 hours here and there, but I believe What is the What's the Twitch plays Pokemon time? I'm trying to remember. It's like days, but not many. Yeah, I think they're they shaved it down to 406.5 hours on Google AI. Um, Pokemon Blue takes 26 hours to beat according to how long to beat. I don't remember what uh chat will chat will yeah it's like a week but that yeah 16 daysish which is way less than 46 hours because a week is 170 so like still doing great Twitch chat um yeah I I think this is is that because they didn't pick up healings probably most likely probably um anyway very silly haha Listen, I get my jollies from dunking on things sometimes. It's fine. All right.

Now, we have we have uh a tradition to uphold, which is that nobody's allowed to come on our show without being forced to play a silly game. So yours JJ is called a difficult dilemma or it could be a difficulty dilemma because what we're going to do is basically Will and I pulled we scoured the internet um and we pulled essentially a bunch of different difficulty settings names from a bunch of different games. And your job as we name the difficulty setting, you're going to tell us if it's from a real game or a game or a thing that Will and I just made up. You basically have to tell us if if the difficulty setting is a real difficulty setting in in a video game. Mhm. Or if Will and I are just BSing you. I will. And don't worry, by the way, most of these are older games. These are not the new fangled games. These these are games. Some are some some some are, but like most of the

games like for for example, right? Uh the difficulty hurt me plenty is from the original Doom, right? Yeah. The medium setting on Doom was called Hard Me Plenty, right? So, uh Matt, would you like to take the first of these? Uh and Matt will be Matt will be keeping score for posterity only. Uh the points are in fact made up and do not matter. I'm going to Yeah, the points don't matter at all. I'm going to So you you're going to be able to score I think I didn't even I didn't even game out this to know what even matters. You're going to get two points. You have an opportunity for two points if a game is real, right? So for instance, if you if we were doing hurt me plenty for Doom, if you if we said, "Okay, hurt me plenty." And you're like, "That's a real game." That's one point. And then you name the game, that's a secondary point, you get two points. However, I'm going to I'm going to double it back now. I'm making up a bunch of stuff on the fly. If it is a fake game, if it's not real, and you name what you thought it was, you'll lose two points. Does that make sense? Okay. So, if I get it wrong, what

if I make up a fake game and it's awesome. It's still wrong. It's still fake game. Well, okay. What if I say it's a fake game and I say what fake game it's for? Oh, if you invent That's not how it works. That's not how it works. All right. Inventing stuff. Why did JJ invent stuff? All right. Okay. Uh, the first difficulty setting in a difficult dilemma. It's called Damn, I'm good. Is that a real video game difficulty setting or a fake video game difficulty setting? That's fake. That is fake. All right. Uh, sadly, JJ, that is incorrect. That is uh the very difficult setting on Duke Nukem from 1996. That does sound like a Duke Nukem. The other difficulties on that game are piece of cake, let's rock and come get some. Yeah. With Damn, I'm good. So, now you know. Now you know the vibe of what this could be. Okay. All right. All

right. Yep. Yep. Uh, all right. Will, you take you take this. Next up, the difficulty level in question is a walk in the park. Is it a real difficulty setting or did we make it up? That's real. And do you want to guess what game or do you want to just It's basically you're hedging your bets, right? Because if you're So if I if I guess and I'm wrong, then I lose the point. No, no, no. If If you guess a video game, so Okay, this is how it goes. Sorry, I didn't explain this terribly well cuz I made it up on the spot. If this is a real difficulty setting, you've already gotten the one point because you've said it's real. If you you can only get an extra point, you'll get two points if you guess the game. If it's not real and you and you guess a game, I'm not gonna deduct. Oh, no. You would. This is why we do. No, if if the game is real, you can't lose points. You can only gain them. Does that make sense? But if the game is fake, you could lose two points. Got it. Okay. Yep. Um, it is

real. But you don't have to guess a title. You could not hedge it if you're not. I feel like I know what it is. Is it real? Can you tell it? No. No. That's not how this works. But you have to decide if you're going to double. I'm just gonna say it's real. I'm just gonna say it's real. Just gonna say it's real. Okay. Yeah. Uh, that was smart because it is not real. A walk in the park is what llo and I my dog love to do. There's got to be a game that has that title that if you find it, I will give you the point back. If someone on in chat finds the thing, chat, you are on JJ's side here. I'm I'm going to say that that's the rule that I made up. If you can help JJ by finding a real game with a real difficulty called the walk in the park, he'll get the point back. Also, Damon, I'll take that loss of two points for the poor explanation first. Okay. Next up is a difficulty setting extra crispy. That is That's a real one. Okay. Would you care to guess again? If it is one, you won't lose for not getting it right. I want to say it's a Diablo game.

Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. No. No. Can I take it back? I want to say it's Cooking Mama. Interesting. Interesting. Great guess. Sadly, well, not sadly, it is a real game, so you get one point, but the game is from the 1997 uh uh boomer shooter Blood. All of their difficulty settings were based on ways you could cook meat. All right. So, they're still kicking pink on the inside, lightly broiled, well done, and then extra crispy. So, you're now adding a point. Are those all first person shooters? No, there's a lot of first-person shooters, but they're not all first person shooters. I also have an update from Twitch chat. Twitch chat has discovered a game called Green Hell, which has the difficulty a walk in the park. JJ, with that with that extra point, you are now dead even at zero points for you are now clean slate. Let's see if we can go. I love that we didn't we didn't double check the list of fake ones to

give Twitch chat something to do. Good job, Um, all right. Uh, next up, I can do this all day. Oh, that's that's a Captain America saying. Final answer. Yes, it's real. Well, it's it's Is it real or is it a fake difficulty setting based on Captain America? It's real. And I'm going to say it's in an Avengers game. Interesting. The Avengers. Interesting. Okay, so we made it up. Uh, it is Captain America's saying, but Twitch chat bail JJ can find Come on. That's got to be in there. If Twitchcat can find a game, I like I like I like Survivors. Uh, it's real to me. It's real to me. That's the most important part. It's true. All right. Next up, marshmallow fluff. Yes, that's

true. That's definitely one. Do you care to guess what game or do you just want to go with it's real? I'm gonna say Ghostbusters. You know, these are really good games that could actually happen. Figure it out. This was also a fake one. That is Will's favorite sandwich. Yeah, it's not a real one, but it definitely could be. Uh, and Twitch, so Twitch chat, you're currently working on I can do this all day. I can do this all day. Help me out, Twitch. or marshmallow fluff as difficulty settings in a video game. Thousands of games on stream with one of them's got to have marshmallow fluff in it. Maybe. All right. Uh, next up, Secret Agent. Yes. Okay. Would you care to guess the game? I want to say Golden Eye. Both are points. Two points. Secret Agent is uh the medium difficulty. The other difficulties are agent agent and the secret difficulty 007.

All right. Good. Good. Next up, bring them on with an exclamation point. That's That's real. Okay. Do you care to guess the game? Bring them on. Again, you can't lose a point if it's real. You can lose a point if it's fake. Oh, I'm going to go super retro, even though it's probably wrong. I want to say Smash TV. Interesting. Interesting. It is a correct uh game. It was Wolfenstein 3D. The Oh, I almost said that. A point. You only gain a point. The the OG game. The The other ones the other ones from Wolfenstein 3D are Can I play Daddy, don't hurt me, and I am Death Incarnate. The The range on Wolfenstein 3D pretty big actually from from uh was it BJ Honeyut with a pacifier to I am Death Incarnate, which is, you know, great. I was going to say most of what you're saying I was like that could have been Wolfenstein that oh my gosh that game was so scary that and Doom. Yeah. 1980s or no 90 something.

Sitting in the dark. All right next one. Next difficulty setting. Tanto. Tanto. T A N T O. Tanto. I want to say yes because I feel like you guys wouldn't make that up. That's a valid choice that you're playing against. Yeah, you're allowed to play the game against us. That's okay. Yeah, I'm the guy that gets good scores on multiple choice cuz I just, you know, you can see the matrix. Okay, so you think it's a real game. Do you care to guess what game it is? You can't lose a point if it is a real game, remember? So, it depends on how confident you are. Uh, Lone Ranger. All right. Well, it is a real game. We actually guessed that that was going to be the other direction you could go with this. Uh, but the game is a 1989 PC game called Sword of the

Samurai where all of the difficulty levels are different kinds of swords. There's the Wagasashi, uh, the Katana, the Nodachi. Okay. And Tanto is the easiest. It's by the length of the sword. That's right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Next up, the difficulty in question is plus ultra. Plus ultra. Yes, that's that's one. Okay. For would you like to guess the game? That's something I would have said for Doom, but I don't think that's it. Is it uh Oh, I don't know. It's some crazy first person shooter. Um You don't have to guess a game. You don't have to guess a game. Yeah, you could just say you could just say Okay, I'm going to leave it. I can't remember the name of the game I'm thinking of. It if it were a game, it would be for My Hero Academia, but it's not a real difficulty level. And Twitch chat's about to tell me that there's some obscure My Hero Academia fan. I was going to say there's got to be a fighter out there that My Hero Academia. Yeah.

Uh Dan is selling you out saying that you're not a not a weeb. Um, I'm a I'm a comic book nerd. Uh, but no, I'm not a wee. All right. Sorry, guys. I tried. Uh, the next one is uh Why God? Yes, that's got to be one. Okay. I want to say God of War. I It also sounds like it could be a Doom one, but that'd be very fun. I'm going to say God of War. Uh, it is a real game. However, it is not God of War. This we went real obscure. Uh and actually I'm going to shout out something after this real quick at the end of where we pulled a lot of these from. Uh this is a Newgrounds game uh by Ivory Drive in 2008. Uh it is like an old school flash game. Oh. So this was a this was like a hard a hard one. All right, we got three four more. Four more then we're done. Uh you can never go home again, but

apparently you can shop there. Is that a difficulty level or did we make it up? I'm gonna say you made it up just because I haven't said that yet. That is also true. Uh yes, we we did make it up and technically we we didn't make it up. That is a quote from the film Gross Point Blank. Ah, okay. Wonderful comedy. You guys are getting me because you're getting quotes that I know. I'm I'm a movie nerd and a comic book nerd. So that There we go. Yeah. All right. I will. Uh, all right. Uh, final three. Next up, hell or hell. The difficulty level in question is hell or hell. Is it real or do we make it up? I'm going to say that's real. That's Diablo. Okay, it is real. It is not Diablo. You still get a point. It's the penultimate secret difficulty on Devil May Cry 5. The difficulties on Devil May Cry 5 are Human, Devil Hunter, Son of Sparta, Dante Must Die, Heaven or Hell,

Hell or Hell, and Legendary Dark Knight. Because DMC 5 has too many difficulty settings for a video game. It has too many. JJ, I will say this. I'm going to give you half a point because it the Diablo and and uh the they're both very demon focused. I feel like I'm going to give you the half point for that one. You actually You guys cut me I was going to say Diablo May Cry. I was Of course. Of course. Yeah. The seminal classic Diablo May Cry. Yeah. Right. Okay. Uh that's what DMC stands for. Okay. Um Mezoforte. Mezoforte. Yes. I don't know what game. No. Do you know what game? It is a I have no clue. It is a uh rhythm game from 2012 on PC. The hard mode for a game called Symphony. You get another point. And I believe we're on the last one here. Uh the last difficulty level in

question is let me see if I can do this right. I'm walking here. Is that a difficulty setting or did we just make it up? Um I want it to be a difficulty setting for Max Pain 2. But are you saying that it is? I'm going to. Yeah, just for fun. Uh, well, it it is not. Uh, it is uh what I heard on the sidewalk the other day. That's what I figured. So, it should be though. Hey, can Chad, help me out. Is that a real one? Yeah. Yeah. After correction, that's like a Grant. That's auto ripoff. After after a grueling 14 of these uh going up and down with rules I made up on the fly, JJ, I'm gonna say I'm gonna say you win because you are in the positives. It fluctuated to negative positive negative positive. Um you have 1.5 points and that says to me that you have beaten a difficult dile. Where did

the half a point come from? I gave it to him for the Devil May Cry devil tie to Diablo may cry. Sorry, I was busy answering questions in Twitch chat about the rules of this game that you changed after we spent an entire meeting making it up on Friday. Don't worry about it. I like lurkers thing. If we make video games with these settings, can we retroactively boost JJ's score? Yes. Yes, you can. Okay. All right. Excellent. Next time I play, I'm bringing the Game Genie so I can adjust scores. Oh, Game Genie. That is exactly it. Well, that is all of the time that we have for breakfast today. Hey JJ, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you JJ. Side note, I do want to call out there uh we have a YouTube video uh by a YouTuber named Cammy Player which we pulled a lot of these from. Uh we'll put that link in the show notes as well. I want to make we we did that was like 70% of our our our research on here. It was just a very solid like we're going to go over all these obscure games and their difficulty setting names. So it's a check that out if you're interested. Um

so JJ, thank you so much for joining us for for pitching this challenge. Again, that challenge is to help you come up with games that uh would be suitable for kids from of all ages uh to play on Steam or on PC or on Switch that might help in this therapeutic environment, right? And we're going to be talking about that with you and uh maybe someone else from M on Thursday. Again, that's Thursday, 2 p.m. Eastern, 11:00 a.m. Pacific. be here for that with me and Jeff and uh the M crew and that will be uh an excellent time. Then I believe one other thing uh Miky uh in the chat asked if we had talked about the marathon thing. We did. It is backwards. If you're watching the VA of this uh by tomorrow they'll be broken down chapters, so you'll be able to just click and go to that little spot. Yep. Um JJ, where can folks find you and Mott and all of the good things that you do? So, you can just look us up at CSM Children's Hospital. Uh you'll find all

of our information um on the on the internet or at Facebook. Um uh you can also look up Stream Vermont. Uh we do fundraisers if anyone's a streamer and wants to help support us or just donate directly to our our program. Um we you can do all of that through our website uh at CSM Children's Hospital. Cool. And we'll put those in the show notes as well in the description, etc. All that jazz. Awesome. Um, I guess the only thing left to do is our patented sign off, which JJ, you should know because we do it. It's the same every time. Yeah. Um, as as a viewer of the show, right? Yeah. As a viewer of the show, JJ, are you familiar with the with the end of it or do you pop in and out? Like, how how I I pop in and out. I might need a quick reminder. Okay. Okay. Well, actually, I usually get pulled away before the end. So, here's here's the best part, JJ. Okay. It's the same every time and it's and what it is is it it's it's to build community and to make sure that everybody can leave the show

on the same page. I think through sheer osmosis of you being at our rless breakfast nook that you're going to be able to know exactly what that ending is. So I'm going to toss to you for one final sentence of a goodbye. And I guarantee you it is the same outro we do every single time. Are you ready, JJ? I'm ready. All right. I hope I don't screw it up. Here we go. JJ, take us home. Goodbye. Thank you. [Applause] [Music] Oh, I hope that got in before the cut. Oh my god, I hope that got in. I made it so much better. It's so fun. Uh JJ, just so you know, we are still live and everything. Now we're in the post show. Uh, okay. The the the the ending we do

every time, the the thing that is similar is that it is always different in a way and that I always cut it off in the middle random. Like Matt always does the bit and I always get to cut it off. So you're the first one. I think you're the first other person to do it. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's great. Well, cuz I was like I have seen the end. I don't know. But it is though. No, that's that that is the bit. Um, cool. That's awesome. Yeah, and I love this shot. How did he know it? Right. Uh, exactly. So, uh, that is going to do it for our stream this morning. We have to get JJ back to work and Matt back to meetings and all of that jazz. So, I will let our compatriots go. Uh, friends on YouTube, this is where we say goodbye. Please join us Thursday for uh, an excellent design club. Jeff and I will be there. And again, we're going to be talking about the um uh the uh things that we can suggest to JJ and the crew M for the uh new um computers

to put on them so that kids can play. So, be thinking of that and we'll work on that uh together on Thursday. So, please join us for that. Everybody say bye YouTube. I