Sony Removes Region Restrictions, Dune Awakens, and Breaking D&D News | Games For Breakfast

Now, and now Janet's here, too. Hi, Janet. Hello. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning to to all of you. Uh, hello. Hi. Greetings. Salutations. Um, Matt said something about more coffee and then left and said I I should I should do this. So, hello everyone. Hi. How was your weekend? I hope I hope all of you have had a lovely weekend. Um, did I miss it? Did we go back to the future? Yes, we're back in the future. We're back in the future now. It is 2025. Oh, good. Okay. Oh. Oh, so you guys don't even know. You don't even know. That's great. That's great. Um Yeah. Okay, cool. I don't want to ruin it. I don't want to uh you know. Yeah. I Okay, minor minor spoiler minor spoiler for the future, right? Um I hope you don't like this stuff. I had to come back here for it. It's Wow. Okay, that's great. Not it's not going

great. I thought it was going to be minor spoiler for the future. Tomorrow comes. Tomorrow does come. Uh, hi everyone. And that hits different depend on whether or not you've played Expedition 33. Anyways, um, good morning. Cop comp with the real questions [Laughter] because then I just have to go through 2025 again, you know? Yep. Uh, how's everybody doing? I'm doing pretty well. I'm doing pretty well. Uh, and I hope all of you at home are doing well, too. Uh, we we'll probably talk about it a bit during the pre-show while while folks trickle in. Um, and we're going to try and keep the pre-show nice and short today because we have a busy day ahead of us. It's a busy day. It's a busy day. So, a brief overview of today's nonsense. First, we have this for like two hours. Then, I am going to be playing some FF6 over on the channel. I have gotten all of the optional characters who are not dead. There's some jokes about that. Uh I have

feelings about the acquisition method for some optional characters who are now dead. Um so uh that's a thing. And then um we're going to do that for a couple of hours and then later on tonight 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p.m. Pacific. Please join us here and that's on YouTube and Twitch for a very special event. We're going to be talking more about that, but do mark your calendars 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p.m. Pacific. We're going to be doing stuff tonight. Um there's also no design club this week. That's the other big thing for Janet. There's no design club. Jeff is traveling. Uh, so we'll have some extra stuff here on Twitch instead. Um, also I have no idea what I'm doing on Friday. No clue. I have I have thoughts and feelings, but like I've got like four different options. I'll probably let the Discord vote again. Reminder, if you're a member over on YouTube, a subscriber over on Twitch, or a Patreon uh patron, you can join the Discord and vote on all those things when I'm like, "Hey, what the heck do I

play today?" If you're like, "Well, I want you to play, I don't know, some kind of I was going to say Hello Kitty Island Adventure." Yeah. Hello Kitty Island Adventure Romance of the Three Kingdoms Edition. Then like sure, I could I that's a thing you could put on the list. Um but yeah, we've got we got lots of Yeah, we are not in fact got getting Hatsune Miku on EC. I've told you this repeatedly. I told you all day Friday. The interview tonight is not is not with Hatsune Miku. But Will, I am from the future, right? Uhuh. Uhhuh. I do know definitively whether or not it's with Hat Miku, right? Like I got That's true. They wanted to know if it's with Hatsune Miku's persona, Ratsune Squeiku, but you know that there YouTube chat asking the real question or her fake alter identity um

Mitsu Mitsunaku or like you know there's a there's a bunch of there's a bunch of stuff. Um well either way that's not happening. Also good morning everyone. And we're seeing a lot of uh new folks in here. Hi. Hello. Welcome to uh us. A nice breakfast chat about this week's gaming and tech news uh which will be coming to you very shortly. This being the pre-show that we are wrapping up pretty dang soon. I I would say in about 40 seconds we're going to start the show. Wow. Yeah, that's when that's when ads over on Twitch end. Perfect. Perfect. No notes. Yes, that's correct. Or her poke soda. Hatsu Nikkun Mikunikun. Yes, that's correct. None of these are the person that we're interviewing. I promise. I mean, only I again from the future could be sure. I like I like or her habasher persona. Hats on Sunn. Listen, that one's pretty good. I'll

give you that one. That one's pretty good. Dashers don't play. Uh they they do. Um, Sony, my Sony causing problems. No, never. Ever. Impossible. They actually fixed a problem. They But they did it. They did it in in the most corporate way you possibly can. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about They fixed a problem that they themselves created and then expect us to congratulate them for fixing the problem that they No, that's the thing. I Well, we'll talk about it. They're not expecting that. They're not expecting that for a very specific reason. Oh, cuz if they expected that anyone would notice, they wouldn't have done it. No, we we'll get into it. We'll get it. We'll get it. Um, uh, yeah. Why? These are all getting like deeper and deeper cut. Y'all, some of these are hilarious and no one will get them because they're too deep cut. Uh, that and if if there's one thing I've learned about being on the internet is there's no cut too deep.

I'm going to go also the first cut not usually the deepest. That's also true. All right. Uh ads are done over on Twitch. Uh we would wait for the hype train to finish, but we we are on crunch time today. So, we're gonna move on along. Uh Matt, are you ready to begin the show? I believe I am. Excellent. Then, uh to black we will go chat and we will return momentarily with the beginning of the show. You've heard of it, I guess. [Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. No, good morning, Will. And good morning to all of you. Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show we talk about this week's gaming and tech news. But that also I I just feel like we should there's there's an elephant in the room, Will. Yeah, huge one. uh that is that um look I know spaceime

is weird and we're not going to get too into it as we know video games are not political and therefore we cannot be however however however um I just want to PSA and say that you know we're working on perceptually making sure that 25,000 people does look like 250,000 people. I'm we're the scientists are working hard and we're really going to get there. new advancements in crowd generation technology for for big video game levels. It turns out that um doing the Q-tip method they used in episode one is not always viable. Well, how was your weekend, buddy? It was excellent. I actually got to uh have a very gaming Father's Day. My my dad uh who helped me acquire my um my Switch 2 had one request and it was that I bring the Switch 2 home. So, I got to play Mario Kart with my family, and it is, if you're a gamer or someone who really likes the games, I encourage you to

examine gaming with fresh eyes by playing it with someone who does not play video games. Sure. It was fascinating, right? cuz like my dad and my mom are both intelligent people who have done a lot of things uh you know over over the years. They they were gamers before I was born. Um they played on like an old Apple and watching them play Mario Kart was fascinating. Uh like what were they were they were they having trouble? Were they enamored? Did they not like it? Like what was the what was the vibe? the the uh the time to like get on target and like begin to understand like you could watch them rise through the rankings as like we did different tracks and then like it took like one race for dad to realize he'd chosen the wrong cart and racer setup. He chose Toad with the little boom box cart. Very, very accelerating, no speed. He was like, "This is too slow." But I unlocked

Charge and Chuck cuz I got turned into Chuck on one of the races. And so the next time he played as Chuck and liked it a lot more and like I was asking him like how he was improving and he's like, "Oh, my strategy is very simple. I don't care what place I'm in. I just try real hard not to crash." And he got like third right behind me and my brother. Which is very interesting, right? that like a lot of the assumptions that we make about like drifting or the ways that we need to learn games or like things that are important are are often things that we've like given to ourselves rather than things that are really true. And like examining it through the lens of this person doesn't play video games. What do they do when you just hand them a controller and you say, "Here's Mario Kart is really cool. It's really cool." Nice. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. Uh I think the last video game I played with my dad was probably on the Wii and I think it was a fishing game. um like Sega SE whatever the whatever that mainline Sega fishing game BassPro maybe it's BassPro I do remember there was a store but there's like well

there's Bass Pro Shop right and there's Bass Pro fishing which is a video game I think which might you might be able to play in a Bass Pro shop. Oh I'm sure I'm sure it's very meta. Only way you could get more meta is if you dressed up as an iconic piece of animatronic wall art from the mid9s. Billy the Bass, right? If you if you played Bass Pro fishing in a Bass Pro shop just as Big Mouth Billy Bass, you would achieve peak internet. Yeah, I don't think I I think the internet would just go home at that point. I think they'd pack up their bags and things, their their internet bag and uh go back to something analog. Yeah, absolutely. They'd go back to laser disc. Old laser disc. Rest in peace forever in our hearts. Uh Matt, we've got a busy week upcoming and a busy day upcoming. It's a busy day. This is not uh this is not the only time you will be seeing Will and I's faces today. Correct. Uh,

pray you do not see it more than twice more. Um, yeah, it works out. Sure. Yeah. Right. Right. Will will tell tell Brad and Janet aka uh Twitch and YouTube what we have going on this evening. Uh, so this evening at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 p. p.m. Pacific, mark your calendars. The uh the Discord has the time stamp thing. Um, and it'll be going up as an event on both Twitch and YouTube sometime this afternoon so that I can get the timing right and get our thumbnail up. Matt and I are going to interview a person that many of you may recognize and a person whose work many of you may recognize, but whose face you may not. Uh, so Matt and I are going to have the privilege, nay, the pleasure of interviewing the one, the only, the incredible uh, James Port now and the legendary Mike Ponsmith of Cyberpunk fame about a new game that James has designed. We are super hype. Uh, it's

going to be a great time. I've put like cool scenes together. We're going to get to show you some of the artwork. We're going to talk about the world of Cyberpunk. We're going to talk about the design of the game. It's going to be about two hours, we think, tonight, 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 p p.m. Pacific. Be there. It's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. Uh I'm super pumped to talk with talk with both uh James and Mike. I have a ton of questions for Mike about like basically if you're not familiar, Mike Ponmith is the creator of Cyberpunk, uh the the role playing game. And it is uh going to be so fun to pick his brain. I've uh will I know you got it on a play test for Cyberpunk Legends, which is the game that James has designed. Um I've been play testing it, I think, for I I want to say almost a year at this point. Um and it is dope as hell. I don't want to really say much more about it uh before we before we talk to them this evening. But if you are around and you do love uh cyberpunk and innovative

card games and I to be very specific, not like a TCG. Yeah, this is not a This is something And now for something completely different, right? Um, no shade to TCGs. Just Right. You'll see. You'll see. Yeah. Uh, it it uh is it Cyberpunk adjacent? No, it is Cyberpunk fullon. It is not like it it is the game is called Cyberpunk Legends. It is full-on cyberpunk. Uh, and there's a reason that we're getting Mike Ponmith uh to talk to. It's not It's going to be great. uh is a new um creation in the world of Cyberpunk. Uh which I again really cool and kind of honored to like get to talk to these guys about this as like one of the first people to because I don't think they've given any interviews since the game's been announced. We kind of get to do the first one. So, we get to ask like we'll talk about we'll definitely uh ask questions about like where people like after after our talk tonight where people can learn more because I think they're going to try to do the convention circuit. I don't want to put any words in their mouths, but um yeah,

it's I I'm very excited. It's going to be very fun. Yep. Uh and then uh we're going to we're going to address the controversy in the room. No, no one is coming dressed as Hatsune Miku. We don't know that. Only I from the future can know that. That's totally it. Yeah, completely. Um wasn't it Hatsune Miku? No, we told you repeatedly it's not Hatsune Miku and you all didn't believe us and thought it was Hatsune Miku. And that's not our fault. That's not our Wouldn't it be crazy though if like at the end of the day after all this pump and or circumstance uh it was in fact Miku? I wonder if I can express ship to Hatsune Miku wigs to James and Mike and convince them to wear him for this. I don't think that's possible. Fine. I'll do it. I'll do it. I would look great in a Hatsune Miku wig. No, no argument. I'm just saying it would be difficult to get everyone else to do. So anyway, please come back 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard, uh, 5:00 p.m. Pacific for a discussion about Cyberpunk

Legends with literally a legend of Cyberpunk. Yeah, it's it's going to be awesome. Yeah. Now, Matt, you also have a a request, a piece of information, a thing to tell people about. Um, so I'm going to get you a soap box real quick and then I'm going to show So before you before you transition it, let me just I'm going to I want to reveal this. So, for those of you who are not familiar, I was on a Nebula original series called Abolish Everything, where where comedian abolitionists get up in front of a live studio audience in a New York City comedy club and uh try to abolish something from society that they don't want to deal with anymore. You could think about like um uh ROOC calls or billionaires or whatever, right? Like you could you could the things that you just don't want to deal with. Uh, and in their way is the political establishment, which is four other improv comics that are hellbent on maintaining the status quo that argue with you for five minutes and the audience decides what gets abolished forever. I was on this show. I know I've talked about it before. The season finale of season 1 aired this Sunday over on Nebula. If you haven't checked it out, please go see it. Uh, it is

eight phenomenal comics. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Um, however, sadly, in my episode, episode 6, I was unable to achieve victory. I was unable to achieve uh my lifelong dream of abolishing the lectturn. And if you'd like to see my argument about why lect turns should be abolished, please go check that out over on Nebula. However, the wonderful producers and director um uh Chandler and Amy are basically uh for season 2, which has been green lit over on Nebula, they are giving uh previous um abolisher uh attempies, I don't know how to actually put it, um a second shot. So, uh Will, if you could put up that graphic right now. I need all of your help. Uh basically you can go to there's a command line. You could type it in Twitch uh maybe in YouTube as well. Extra exclamation mark abolish over here

on Twitch and I will put the link over in chat on YouTube. Thank you. Or you can scan that QR code and they are basically polling people. You can rank four people. I think you actually have to pick four people. Uh and there's a bunch of other Nebula creators on there like Maggie Mayfish, Dan Tumi, foreign man in a foreign land. A couple other folks also Ben and Adam and Amy from Jet Lag are all there. Basically, there's a reasonable chance that if you saw them at Matt's birthday, they're probably going to abolish everything. That's also true. I want to come back and I want to uh uh just crush the competition. Uh there's no nice way of saying it. So, if you would like uh and if you could do me the favor of uh going to that link, scanning that QR code, etc., and putting uh my name down as someone you would like to see back. I would very much appreciate it because um I still got some fight left in me, chat. And uh I would like to go back to the abolish everything stage and um really give the establishment a piece of my mind.

Excellent. Um yeah, I don't know. I'm very much it the show is great. Uh and uh heck, even if you don't want me back, but you love the show, please check it out. The season finale is is so good. It's so freaking good. Excellent. Excellent. All right. And now on to the news. I don't know. I felt like I had some like good like news deskes Dan like uh like you know official news deskes transition there and I just I just lost it somewhere. It's okay. Uh first up, Claire Obscure. No spoilers. Zero spoilers will be contained. Is a great game that suff spoilers will spoilers that suffers a bit. It is a game that is not highly accessible to people who lack um fast twitch reflexes. Uh which is a bit of a shame because it's part of a g a genre that's ostensibly incredibly accessible to

people who are good at non twitchbased reflex games because that's what turn-based games are. because of the Perry system. Um it's a little uh it's a little hard for some folks. So um they the folks uh have heard those those complaints, those concerns and have been working on it. So the the upshot is that they have now made story mode more accessible. So you can play through the gorgeous, beautiful, immaculate, breathtaking story with its amazing, gorgeous, beautiful, breathtaking soundtrack. um a little e it's a little easier. The parry windows are bigger and it's less punishing. Um and if you are uh I believe the the technical term is a sicko like me. Yeah. You can make the game even harder because they were like yeah we wanted to take it both directions. So we made the game easier at the base level if you want that experience. You just want to play through the story but it also you can cap your own damage. You can

inflate boss HP and now uh I guess this is like the most m there is there is a super boss whose identity will remain unknown but if you know you know you can now refight said super boss um so uh it's a um it's a good thing I I really think it's a good thing and they've also talked about how they are not done this is this is a first step in this the amount obscure is already in my opinion probably a contender for game of the year and they're making it better and they're making it better and they don't need to. The game's done and complete and playable and like all that. It's a single player experience and they're like, "Yeah, but what if we made it better?" Yeah, I really I'm really enjoying again I have not played Clare Obscure um yet. However, I'm really enjoying this um how do I put it? this sort of like double a game is finished and complete

and you can go buy it and it's wonderful but they're not done kind of vibe that's been going on a lot. I think I think companies are really starting to when they can afford to really notice that like continually tweaking and making your game either more accessible for everybody or giving up people various options to sort of breathe more life into it uh really does keep your game in the news cycle more. Um, and I I feel like up till I don't know like I don't a year or two ago or maybe I mean this could have been brought back to sort of like the highprofile uh flop slise to glory stories of like um Cyberpunk 2077 or No Man's Sky um which is again that's much older um but like now so those was like oh we'll patch it we'll make it better we'll make it better but now we're seeing the the game's already great but we're going to make it better and we're going to make it better and I think doing that in small increment like having a little plan on how you want to deal with that with your game is really

really smart because then you get people talking about it again and again like for instance clear obscure is and will correct me when I am wrong just a a single player narrative experience right so like it's truly like when you finished it most people will probably be done with it but with a patch like this you're kind of hitting two groups of folks one maybe people that picked it up it did not vibe with them because the timing thing was too difficult for whatever reason. Now they can go back and experience the game that they bought. That's great. Or maybe they returned it on uh Steam uh and then now they'll go get it, right? Excuse me. Or you have the people that like like Will, I guess, who really want this like insane kind of challenge in the packaging of that narrative story. Uh the story the where we we're pulling this tale from right now is PC Gamer and um Harvey Randall over there did a phenomenal uh sort of like deep dive stat breakdown of the math that what you

can do with said super boss and how long it will take. check out the show notes and go read that article because it's kind of insane the level of minutiae that this patch does and the the level of pure uh difficulty heartbreak you could actually inflict on yourself if you are so inclined. It's just it's really great to see again um not a giant studio uh doing stuff with their games and continuing to update it even though as Will said it's it's feature complete. It it is it is a wonderful experience as is. I I think the highest praise I can give Claire obscure is I am not a person who replays games. My brain thrives on novelty and on uh looking for the next great story. And I really want to replay Clare Obscure. Yeah, I really do. Like the story is gorgeous. And uh Mobile Brother was like I'm playing Clare Obscure and this is where I'm at. And I'm like oh you're there. Oh, you're there. And he was like yeah don't tell me anything. I was like, I wouldn't dream of it, but

tell me when you get to the next part and uh we'll talk, right? And like it was Yeah, it was it was really good. Um so yeah, you won't even replay a FromSoft game. So our next story, uh I do though. Yeah, I I am not a huge From Software fan. I personally think that the best game they've put out for me is Night Rain and it's not close. Um, because it condenses a lot of things down and because it really leans on rogueish elements kind of. It's really a rog like not a rog light. Um, despite some of the light elements that can come in. So, um, anyway, I may or may not have made an entire Spotify playlist based on Night Rain over the weekend. Yeah, I think I named it uh Songs to Slay Night Lords to think it's good. It's good. All right. Uh next up, we have some news that will

surprise no one, but the degree that this is news is true is kind of shocking. The Switch 2 released uh a week from last th a week ago. Last Thursday. Yes. So, it's been out for uh I can do math like 10 days. In the first four of those days, according to Kotaku and to several other places that I've seen this statistic quoted, but we'll we'll say it's from Kotaku. Um they sold 3.5 million Switch Twos. That's 3.5 million units in 4 days. Now, that does include all of the pre-sales, but that's fine because every other console counts its pre-sales as day one sales. That makes it the fastest selling video game console in history. Not bad. Not bad. So, uh my I we Jeff and I talked about it on Thursday. You

can uh if you missed it, uh because it was only over on YouTube, Twitch was having a day on Thursday. We'll get to that in a bit. Um uh Jeff and I talked a bit about it. I'm not super hype on the Switch 2. It is a very good system that most people probably don't have a compelling reason to purchase yet, right? There will be compelling reasons to purchase it for a variety of people. I'm uh Matt, you know how Matt's like about Mario Kart? I will be insufferable if Kirby Airride comes out and they bring back City Trial. If they bring back City Trial and Kirby Airide, I will be insufferable, right, for like a week. It's gonna be great. Um, and so yeah, I but I think a lot of people were very hype about it. Um, I think the the early um the experience of going to launches, the experience of like midnight releases, the whole package of ideas that's presented as the Switch 2 um caught a lot of people's attention and they sold,

you know, a gajillion units and that's pretty cool. Yeah. Uh I I think the story event again comes to us uh from good old Kotaku and they broke it down for context. The original Switch took over a month to sell 2.5 or 2.75 million units. Um, look, it's a it's a good system, but Nintendo also is uh Nintendo. Um, there was a lot of calls to sort of uh make this launch smaller due to complaints about uh pricing structure or um the the various implementations of the good, bad, and ugly of the key card system or actually putting games on cartridges, etc. that didn't seem to move anything here, which uh is not particularly great for many of those uh for people that wanted changes to those to those um to those issues. Yeah. Um I do think that there are, how do I put it? Like it sold so many

units, like no question. But also, Will, to your point, Is it becoming the conversation in in the gaming space anymore? Like like like this the the conversation is look how many units the Switch 2 sold. Not oh man Mario Kart World is the greatest thing ever. And I love Mario Kart World. I think Mario Kart World is a phenomenal Mario Kart game. But like it's not breaking that part of it. It's not breaking containment if that makes sense. Yeah. I well I think it's because ubiquity in systems and market penetration in video game systems is equality right like the quantity is equality in this case right that like if we if it is known that this the console is that hot we're more likely to get good titles that you might be interested in right so like it is a unique quality right there are plenty of good games but there's only one bestselling video game system

ever does that make sense it feels like where it's at um Yeah. Yeah. So, I I mean I think that that's where I don't know. I think Mario Kart World is great. However, comma but give us Grand Prix online, you cowards. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Listen, I have a list of things I would like improvements on or changes and hopefully there's patches. Maybe they'll take a page out of the double A book and maybe try to do some some nice things to a another feature complete game, but that is that is missing some things that I would particularly like to see. Um, Polygon, man, my voice so sorry. Polygon did a really great article um maybe we could link it in the show notes as well. basically about um about how Mario Kart World is phenomenal uh but it will not win game of the year and it has a bunch of different reasons sort of why um it is a phenomenal Mario Kart game but the ceiling on a Mario

Kart game is relatively low. So this is where okay this is where it gets super interesting. Sure. We talk about and engage with the the the the art form and the product and the finances and the story of video games for a living and we are kind of deep into into that. I think one of the reasons why from a gaming perspect from like talking about the games perspective that the the Switch 2 could sell so many units and not really be a part of the conversation outside of look how good this console sold is because the majority of people buying and playing and engaging with the the Switch 2 for the different games or Mario Kart World etc are not people that talk about it online. They're the people that play the games. I think there are a lot of um younger people andor families. Like to your point in the in the I uh the pre-show or no, it wasn't even the pre-show, it was in the in the show

show. You were talking about playing Mario Kart with your family. Yeah. And like Mario Kart's one of those games that you can put down in front of almost anybody and even if they don't play video games, they'll have fun with it for a half hour, an hour, and probably walk away with a positive thought andor experience. But they're not going on Blue Sky and being like, "Man, uh Dry Bones is the best." like like you can't like it's just not where the conversation is. So I think there's an interesting sidestepper by the way sidstepper is the best crab. Pardon I I want to crab. Okay crab. Thank you. Anyway, go. I mean the future will will tell about crab. Um but my point is it's very interesting to see um this this almost feels like a ground news nonsense thing. Like it's like the not political bias in any means but like like franchisement bias franchisement bias. uh uh topic bias of where the news comes from versus something like like the Switch selling so many. And I feel like the Switch fills that family void uh a lot more than a PlayStation or an Xbox or a PC does. I agree. I think it's

Yeah, it's I think I would say it's not flashy, right? Like a lot of the things that they did like there isn't a killer app, there isn't a killer new feature. It doesn't do fundamentally terribly many things different than the Switch One did other than Game Chat, which is like not that great in my opinion. Well, have you done it? I'm not saying it's it's not revolutionary. I actually did do it. Uh uh I was um uh Dave uh uh of Nebula basically uh sent me a a text showing my like gamer profile was on the Switch. I was like, "Oh, this is a perfect opportunity." So, I just did the chat thing for the first time. I We didn't talk about this when we were talking about the Switch 2. Um, you hit the chat and you have to link it to a actual cell phone number. You're not calling through the cell phone, but you're you're I think it's either both parental andor like a spamming or a spoofing kind of thing. Like, you basically link a phone number to your

account, which could be good or bad. I I haven't really uh thought that deep into it quite yet, but it took me five seconds and then all of a sudden while he was having the Switch on his TV far away from him sitting, he was using a Pro Controller and me just on my thing, no cameras or anything like that. I was shocked how like just it was the chat was totally clear. It was very very strange. Like again, Nintendo doesn't innovate in that regard. I'm and oftentimes I'll perfectly say maybe only like 20 20% of the time when they do implement something new new new to them like a onboard chat feature it's going to be bad. This wasn't that bad. It was pretty solid. No, and I think that's that's very fair. I just don't see like a use case for that. Like I'm not saying that the feature is implemented poorly. I'm saying that I don't see a use case for the feature in my life. Oh, totally. No. No. Yeah. I But again, when whenever Nintendo says something like, "Oh, now we added chat." I'm like, "Okay." Right. Yeah. No, I'm sure they did a great job

with it, but like that's that's counter. Like the things I want to do with my Switch are play Mario Kart when I can't sleep and uh now I really want to replay Breath of the Wild from the beginning because it's going to look gorgeous at 60 fps. But I also think we're talking past each other. I'm saying when I heard they were doing this, I did not expect it to be good. Oh, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Because uh if I was a betting man, and I am, I would have said no, it would not be good. It was pretty good. So, yay. I don't know. Anyway, it's just interesting that for the most popular or the one of the most um successful console launches of all time that uh at least right now, it's not like the hype was the thing that was driving the news cycles. And now that it's out in the wild, I mean, I guess the hype served its purpose, right? Like, no one's no one's still really going deep or talking about. I think that might actually come from truly I is there really only one brand new game? Yes. Yeah. And uh Donkey

Kong comes out I thought Donkey Kong was coming out at launch. It's not. It's coming out next month and then after that we're getting Prime Air Ride. I think we know about Prime and Air Ride and I think we might know about one more but like they're also competing with other stuff deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Yeah. Have you considered using MC allow YouTube to see Twitch chat? We have played with things. We are we are working on that. Uh and by we I mean will in the background. So far my understanding is there is not a perfect solution as of yet. So So uh the the the real the real answer is we could put chat on stream. It would be distracting for everyone. It doesn't actually help that much. Um and anything that's relevant we generally pull up like that on stream to to let people know. But um for for a chat stream like this where Matt and I have like prepared notes if we're talking about stuff and we're picking on individual comments to respond to uh it's kind it's kind of nice to let each chat develop their own petri dish of memes rather than

cross-pollinating everything. But it it is a good idea. Um anyway, sorry to derail the that conversation, but I wanted I wanted I wanted King to get his answer. Yeah, that's a good one. Okay. Um so Matt, we we talked about it earlier. Video games Super apolitical. Right. Right. Of course. Definitely no politics. No politics in video games. I think I first realized that there would never ever be politics in video games when it's either when I beat Metal Gear Solid or or um H. Yeah. No, it's probably that. It was probably that. Okay. Yeah. Um so which brings us to our next story. Okay. So, let's talk about the game first, then we'll talk about what happened and then why it's doubly ironic. So, Reluded is a game uh that is by a collection of devs from Africa. There are devs from Lassotho, Zambia,

Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Okay. And South Africa, I believe. Uh and South Africa. That is correct. Was that mine again? I've turned it off. I've tried muting the I'm sorry, everybody. It was you. Uh, you know what? Here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna close Discord. I don't need this. I worked at it this morning. Goodbye, Discord. No one can reach me now. Okay. Uh, so, okay. Okay, so Relooted is a game about uh people from Africa repatriating African artifacts from museums around the world and bringing them home. This belongs in a museum in its country of origin. Belongs in a museum in its country of origin. Fascinating. Great concept. No notes. I love this concept. I will be playing Relooted when it comes out because I think this game is going to deserve spotlight and I love the concept so much. Okay, great. Awesome. So,

that group of people again from African nations wanted to come to Summer Games Fest here in the US to show off their really cool game, right? Great. Would love that, right? more more people from more places that are not traditionally associated with game development should come and show off their games because more games is good. Period. I think that's pretty straightforward, right? More games by more people that tell more stories is good. Great. Yes. But this game about folks from uh folks from Africa repatriating artifacts from Africa was shown at Summer Games Fest by their one South African dev who's white because nobody could get visas to come to the US to show off their game at

Summer Games Fest. or or it was uh dangerous and or difficult like some got denied some didn't go do like there's there's a lot of different reasons why but yes that is the correct so it parts I just want I wanted to bring this up because we we joke a lot about how games are totally apolitical um a reminder a reminder uh all joking aside all video games are art all art is inherently political therefore all video games are inherently political It is uh important that right now when it is difficult to get a visa, when it is difficult to travel to the United States safely, that we as Americans are looking at other places to get games, places that we might like interviews that we might not be able to get. Folks like the Rooted devs who can't talk about their game at Summer Games Fest because they can't make it here, right? I think it's really important that we're keeping our eye out for games like this

that aren't getting the coverage that they need because travel restrictions are difficult, right? Um, also I just wanted to highlight this because I think the concept 11 out of 10 11 out of 10 concept, right? It's literally the opening to Black Panther, right, with Killilmonger taking the um the the hammer back from the museum in the aftermath. That we were getting this from, they even say in this Killilmonger approved premise. Yeah. Right. Great. Right. Fantastic. Uh what a great premise. Uh and the gameplay just looks sick. Like it's it almost looks like if you haven't seen it, check out the trailer. Um it almost looks like what if Fallout Shelter, but it was a fast-paced heist mechanic where you ran through like the the almost like a a series of rooms or whatever in in the museums like trying to get past security systems and guards and things and it it just looks really cool. Yeah, this game is again called Relooted. R E L O O T E D. Um, also the art style, phenomenal. I love um this style of art. Hold on, something

beeped. Yeah. Uh, right now I believe it's going to be on Steam and Xbox, I believe. Uh, someone just asked in the chat. Yeah. Uh, okay, cool. Um, so that is the first, but yeah, check that out. Like again, it's it's super just to wrap it up, it's it's super disheartening and especially, you know, again, we're not going to go too much into it, but like uh with the no kings protest, I went to the New York one um on Saturday and like there's like, how do I put this? I am very heartened for the first time in a while after this Saturday um seeing uh a ton of voices come together for specific goals. Uh, and it's funny to tie that into uh game devs not being able to come into the United St. But like it is all connected. And I'm when I read the story, I was kind of heartbroken for these people because you put all this time and effort in and it's

supposed to be like a celebration of you because this was at Summer Games Fest Day of the Devs, right? That's where they were supposed to be. Yeah. And I just hope that like I don't know. I I'm again I being from the future I could see uh what what will be happening and uh I don't know I this is a sad story but also one that uh I witnessed a lot of people fighting back uh against the concepts behind why it happened this weekend and that made me feel really good. So, um, yeah, uh, hopefully we hear more about this game and hopefully we get more interviews with these folks and we get to have a faking cool premise that actually ties so well into a large thread in Western civilization's history. Not to tag into the other, you know, channel, but like it's it's that's that's the legacy. Um, and it's cool that people from these uh from these uh cultures and communities are being like, "No, no, no. Now we're

going to do a game about taking it all back." Right. Also, very interesting. Um, if you're if you're new here to to the channel, um Brad, our our Twitch chat is very big on the concept of a h can't say the word or they'll, you know, they'll do that thing where they go absolutely feral. Um, but this is a game about that concept done for good reasons in an interesting way. So, I have a feeling that we'll be playing a lot of this when it comes out. Yeah. Oh, great. Awesome. They heard me. Anyway, um, next up on things that are totally apolitical uh, and relate to video games heavily. I'm not feeling so good, Mr. Mr. Newell. It don't feel so good, Mr. Newell. Actually, it probably does. This is a good problem for him to have in a weird way. I agree. So, the Steam Deck, the uh the the the muchbeloved portable PC, um

definitely one of the better ways to play Steam games, uh is currently having problems with stocking. So, according uh to Windows Central, the Steam Deck OLED, the uh the better, more improved, updated version is uh out of stock right now. And the reason is very simple. The supply chain is all screwed up. So, getting parts and components and Steam Decks uh in is uh becoming more and more difficult. And this is sort of one of the things that we had talked about as a potential side effect of tariffs and disruptions to the supply chain is it will become harder to get the stuff you want right um and it's not that it will be more expensive it is that it will not be available and this is sort of a big symptom of that um the Valve wants to sell more Steam Decks. Steam Deck. I

don't think they're selling it at a loss and is a phenomenal device that encourages people to play at more Steam games and spend more money on Steam. Valve wants to sell all the Steam Decks, right? They really do. It's a phenomenal thing for them. This is probably the best piece of hardware Valve has ever put out. They've had a bunch of stinkers. Um well, they've had some that weren't great, some that were discontinued, and then the Steam Deck. Um, and it really stinks that this is going uh away in this fashion because they can't get the parts. Um, uh, someone just wrote, oh, uh, Doride did, uh, is it due to Microsoft and the Switch 2 noming up all the parts? Not not directly because obviously they're machined different, but the the facilities that do the machining are all affected by the tariffs and therefore they're probably not getting as many or like the the whole the whole thing is connected. Yep. Um the Switch 2 in partic like it's funny because I think I

think the Switch 2's release sort of got and the tariffs looming got people really like okay what am I doing? what is my portable game system? And I think many people also chose chose the the uh Steam Deck OLED. And I think that's why it is gone now. And granted, they're saying Valve's saying right now uh they're not planning on increasing the price. Uh you know, it's not so so far. You never know. Yep. Um but it's it's a good problem for them to have, but it's a bad problem for the industry to have, if that sort of makes sense. you want them to be able to manufacture as many of these as they can sell because that just makes more people have jobs. Um, but yeah, it it'll be interesting to see how this plays. I'm curious now, Will, how with the OLED gone, I'm wondering if the others will slowly follow suit before the OLED is back in stock. Um, or if people are willing to compromise on

which Steam Deck they get. Yeah. Well, so the the 256 gig LCD model is still in stock. The only the 512. Yeah. The only the only two that are out are the 512 and the 1 TB. Um and according to Valve himself, those are due to supply chain constraints. Um so we'll see. The LCD is significantly less good. I will say the um the battery is like it's not just the screen or the size. It's also the battery and the refresh rate. Yeah. Both of which are significantly better on the OLED for a nominal increase in price. I mean, it's not nominal. It's, you know, uh $150 more. Yeah. I wonder too what the what the overall plan for the Steam Deck is. Like I I I was The OLED is the only time they've really changed the hardware so far, right? Or was there another other than like increased capacity or they have they done it a few times? I believe that's it. They they one of the things that they have done

though is they um unlike with many consoles, Valve also just released the schematics. Yeah. And like the tearown guide and they were like, "Yeah, if you want to replace stuff or upgrade it, here's how you do it. Go have fun. You bought it. We might as well give you all the instructions on how to do it. Also, if you want to fix it, here's the stuff you need to fix it. You can send it to us or we can sell you parts and you can fix it yourself and it'll take less time because you only have to ship stuff one way." What's great about that? Um, I don't know that the handheld market I I I don't know. I really enjoy even I was sitting down playing Mario Kart World. Um, and Jamie looked over and was and was like, "Oh, it just looks like it's more fun when you're holding it." I was like, "Kind of." So, I with that sort of in mind, uh, I'm glad to see the proliferation, the popularity obviously of the Steam Deck, um, the Switch Switch 2, and now I hope that the the ROG ally for Xbox does well. like it seems like a good move to have this sort of be a thing especially in households

that have one TV like it it it's really helpful for people who want to engage in different activities um to multiple people at different times. So I don't know I think it's absolutely great and I hope that the supply chain issues for all of these portable devices uh is not long for the world. I know that, you know, whether or not it actually will be long for this world, of course, but I cannot say due to the um I I signed Well, I signed a temporal NDA. I was going to say, you mean the temporal prime directive? No, I see. I can't talk about it. See, that's the thing. Pretty sure if I say temporal prime directive one more time, Aaron's gonna like poke her head in and like Yeah, just through the window. It's going to be like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood just popping in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay, cool. Next up, again, all totally apolitical stuff that has to deal with video games. Hey, sack after strike. Um, so

there have been a lot of words said by a lot of people about the nature of the strike and the nature of the reasons behind suspending it, right? We're not going to mess around with that too much because that's all like hearsay and leaked Discord messages and all not not our purpose. What is important is that we are letting you all know that the video game strike that um Saga began has been suspended. That is that is the major piece of news is not is not the why or the how, merely that it has been uh suspended. Um, and this is from their own Blue Sky account and their um and their uh website. Um, all saga members are instructed to return to work on productions under the IMA, including work promoting or publicizing projects under the IMA. Um, they'll um they met on the 12th to consider benefits. And I'm going to double check to make sure that we're on the most current. Yeah,

that's what I was going to say because I I was looking for more news on this and it was hard to find. Um if anyone in either of the chats has actually found anything more about this that is updated beyond the 12th. The the the last thing that I've got is the 12th um was the meeting. There was a meeting and they recommended uh that the membership vote yes on the agreement, but we have not officially gotten a vote from the membership of Zaga on that agreement yet. the Games for Breakfast Curse might come true as well. And the second that we're done with this show is when that news actually hits. Uh so if you are uh invested in this and if you care about video games, uh you absolutely should be keep an eye out for that because this will obviously affect uh many different elements of the things we love to engage with and the people that make them. Oh yeah. Uh Chad's asking what is IMA? IMA is the interactive media agreement. Yeah. It's the contract essentially that they're voting on. Um, this has been a thing that's sort of been a background current for a while and this just feels

like a good little update that the strike is suspended and there is an agreement and they're voting on it. Of course, the agreement isn't final till it gets voted on. That's really important. We're not saying it's over. We're not saying all of it's done because the membership could reject this agreement. That's a thing that could happen, right? Um, and again, we don't want to engage in the well, it's probably or he said, she said, they said, or whatever, right? The news is strike is suspended. They voted and recommended to that the membership approve this uh agreement and we'll see if they do. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think we got But now I think we need to move away from politics, Will. I think we need to move towards a towards an IP that has no political lean or or or multiple ideologies good oldfashioned. You turn off your brain, Will. Just turn it off and engage with the video game that is our next

story. Oh, wait. Hold on. I got these in the wrong order. But this But it also works. It also works. These are all good. We could do this story now. I think we should do this story now because it's funny. Um and then I'm going to do the same intro for the next That's correct. Okay, so Runescape um has been pretty big on Pride for a while. Um I didn't actually know this till this article came out. Um this um Runescape is is pretty big on Pride. Old school runscape has a pride event and this year are scaling it back. And a lot of people are saying that this is politically motivated by the higherups at Runescape um to sort of scale this back because the political climate around Pride right now is not the most favorable from people in charge of things.

put it that way. It's a good way to put it. Um and so uh the the report from employees who wish remain anonymous because of course they do is that it is uh politically motivated that they're going to be pulling back this year which is really sad to see. Um, I am trying to put my thoughts into coherent words rather than just screaming. Uh, I really like when games do stuff for Pride. I feel like Pride is one of those times of year that while it is a celebration of all things queer, is also just a good time in video games, right? like it is. There are rainbows flying everywhere and we generally get some like hella gay cosmetics or you know uh emotes or whatever and it's it feels like it's a good opportunity to do

something big and colorful and it is being lost because people are scared to make pride noises in the current political climate in the US. which sucks. That just sucks. That's that's sort of my my my best synthetic take that doesn't devolve into me just screaming in and and and this is just something that's so interesting to me just from a functionality level like let's even stepping back from the emotional element and the and what is morally correct and in my opinion um we're seeing consistently whether it be pride uh for LGBTQ uh plus folks or um or or other marginalized groups etc. When when businesses, particularly large

businesses, are making sort of mistakenly cowtowing to nonsense. They are being financially hurt. Like you can see it. It's not helping. and and and I know that in the current, you know, there's multiple governmental oversightes and committees and things that can damage a uh a company a lot as well. So, there is always that like when you're getting to the level of say a Target or something like that. Um, but then again, uh, and again, I feel like it's weird. I think two weeks ago we said something nice about Walmart. Um, and there's another thing the the Walmart Aerys was did like a paid for a no kings advertisement and that got a bunch of people upsetti spaghetti and that just seems so strange to that to that I say let them fight. Um, but I guess my point is so Runescape and old school Runescape are big, right? They're

but they're and they're they're communities. What was that? They're the third largest MMO generally speaking. third most relevant behind WoW and Final Fantasy 14. If you add a third, it's always old school Runescape. But like I just I don't like so from a fear-based perspective of your business, there is a methodology. While I do not agree with it on a moral level, and I would not choose it to protect your business, you want to cowtow to whatever garbage is going on when you're like the size of a Target or something like you know, whatever. Sure. again, blah, but this is not a retail chain in middle America. This is an MMO, right? And if you if you look at the people that are playing video games and MMOs in general, I I would say like you're going to make way more people more angry by not doing this than like the government who is not looking at you at all or not like the government

doesn't understand software. Look at look at all of the look at the DMCA to point out that people just don't understand software or like digital spaces at all. Right. Yeah. Um and and the CEO of um was it Jagex? Jagex. Yep. Um uh John Bellamy said a couple different things uh when asked about it. Uh he apologized for the initial communication uh but did not relent, noting it's getting stranger, more troubling, less moral. Uh what did he say? Uh, game studios are being cancelled because content is perceived to be woke or representative. The pendulum is swinging back in a way we didn't expect. Um, it said they said quote uh Belly argued that the his role was to quote ensure the business is protected against those who would wish to harm us and that Pride content was quote now controversial in a way it didn't used to be and that controversy now brings more risk than it did previously. Risk that I'm personally responsible to protect against. Um,

like look man, like in a bubble where it's not about people at all, like sure, maybe whatever, but that's not what any of this ever is. And to think about it that way will bring about your downfall far quicker than uh doing what is right and moral. So I it it seems so backwards and and just a real just tonedeaf take on how any of these spaces work. This is not Target. This is not Chick-fil-A. This is an MMO. Like I I just And uh Tur's completely correct. The uh the players are unhappy. The players are very unhappy. um including such things as no gay no pay. That's the thing. You're you're actively angering the people that pay you. How is that not the most dangerous thing for the longevity of

your product? like rather than an outside boogeyman that might come one day that you're hiding from also god just the the sort of fervor of the uh go woke go broke which I don't think has actually ever happened it has not in fact uh people who have unwoked who sleep um uh have have lost out big time for instance Target's p pride collection sucks and I no one who has bought any of it, they're going to take a loss on Pride on the Pride collection this year because it sucks, right? Same idea. Anyway, just a just a another thing to talk about uh that's not the the most fun. But you know what, Will, if you're if you're finished with this story, I'd like to move us to a completely non-political story. Uh that has nothing to do with the IP of it having to do with any politics or or various uh you know, groups within the story having any

sort of political lean or bent or commentary on actual real world events at any uh time in the history of our planet. So Dune Awakening came out. We're going to talk about Dune Awakening after this commercial break. Oh no. Uh okay. A reminder that um uh we are doing fake ads which you over on YouTube can enjoy while uh the folks on Twitch watch some real ads to keep pre-rolls off so that folks can just roll in and hang out so you won't miss any of the show while we do some fake ads. Uh Matt, would you would you care to go first while we just keep this image of Dune Awakening so that chat can meme on how apolitical it is? Sure. Sure. for sure. Hi everyone, Matt from Extra Credits here. Do you ever have uh the problem like me when you're time traveling and you can't actually talk about anything from the past or future? Well, let me introduce you to the best possible excuse ever. It's called a temporal NDA.

Cuz the best part about a temporal NDA is if someone like Will asks you a question like, "Uh, what's going to happen tomorrow?" Uh, Will, I'm so sorry. I can't talk about it. I I signed a temporal NDA. Side note, this also works when you're not time traveling just for the future. If you have a gap in your actual resume for a year and a half, maybe the economy tanked and you didn't work for a while. Just say you were working on a project that required an NDA and they can't do anything about it. It's true. That is that is actually a really great Yeah. I wanted to sneak in a real thing. Yeah. the the the the I'm under I I've signed an NDA thing uh is a really great way to it's legitimate. Like it's legitimate. Like I'm I'm sorry now I'm I'm going into career advice, but if you are if you have a gap in your resume and someone you don't you don't like write it on the resume, but if someone's like, "Oh, what were you doing, you know, between 2017 and 2019?" You're like, you know, the pandemic, but like you could be like, "Oh, I was working on this thing. I'm sorry. I signed an NDA. It's not it's not quite up yet, so I

can't really uh whatever." And there's no like there's no follow. They're not going to call you out for being a liar because they can't. And that also shows that like you also honor if this thing if you did sign an NDA, you're honoring your previous company and that's also a good look. Just a thing. I don't know. Yep. Very good thing. Uh okay. Um yeah, I've got one. Ready? Yeah. Hey Chad, do you desire to peer beyond the veil of space and time? Do you want to see the future as if it were the now? Do you want to live temporary uh in contemporaneously with with all of the memories of all the people who came before you and also with what will happen in the future? Try spice. That's right. Totally apolitical substance that isn't a standin for any realworld roughly analogous sources of power or resources. That's right. Spice. It's that thing that opens your mind and makes you precient maybe. Unless it kills you. Who knows? Uh, it's totally

not an allegory or a representation of anything in the real world. No, no, no. It's just a fun It's a fun thing in sci-fi. There you go. Yeah. Despice it must flow. Also, Allan depends on the NDA. Yeah, true. Yes, that is also true. Oh god, don't you actually have to read all those. Some of them are wild. Some Some of the ones I've signed are wild and I can't talk about them because I've signed them, but let me tell you, they're wild. Okay, great. Um Uh, you mean you're not supposed to put it in your food? I mean, well, it depends on the on what kind of spice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Old spice. Yeah, old spice. Old spice. All right, ads are over. Let us begin uh once again talking about totally apolitical topic Dune Awakening. Um so the game itself came out in full release. Uh it had been

sort of in a rolling early access you can pay for some early time thing which uh while it does stink for players who don't pay for it to be behind the power curve a bit. It also does stagger people's entry into the game so you don't onboard your entire player base at once, which is generally one of the worst times to be a server administrator. Uh onboarding all of your players all at once is a nightmare. So getting people to self- select and stagger to come in is kind of a good idea. Um so um it came out and it's doing pretty well. Uh, it's doing um the previous number I have courtesy of IGN is 142,000 concurrent players, which is pretty good. Um, this is a game that I've I've put as my mustplay of the year if I had time for an MMO. Yeah, that's kind of the problem, right?

It it also uh is the other problem is of course that it's got heavy PvP and like um extraction looter elements and that's you have to pay attention at a lot of point like you can lose a lot of things and uh it hit a new all-time high this weekend of 189,333 players and there are currently 122,000 in-game on a Monday. So it's doing really well. Um good. It is it is a fascinating Dune has sort of come back into resurgence and again we meme on it a lot. An awful lot of people haven't read Dune with an eye to media literacy and the things that Dune is really talking about. So it's kind of fascinating to me to see the set dressing of it taken without some of the more like deeply political commentary that is inherent to the novels. Well, so what's interesting, I think, at least from my and I haven't

watched the TV show. Did that come out yet? The HBO series. I believe it did, but it's on HBO. So, the films Dude Awakening, the the HBO series. Um, it seems like they aren't shying away from those things. It seems like they, you know, they still exist in the spaces, which is nice. And it'd be hard to divorce Dune from any of those things. It is interesting to Will's point to see people come in to it just like um and not that other sci-fi projects aren't political by any means, but like uh it's it's interesting to see people sort of come in from the opposite direction of reading the books. Um I don't know. I I love that Dune is getting more of a spotlight because it's been one of my favorite novels for forever. And uh I don't know. I I'm very glad to see Dune Awakening doing well. Um, I hope to one day have time to play it. Yeah. Um, it it might it might go on my list of what chat wants me to play

next. Uh, yeah. After I finish up Final Fantasy 6, hopefully this Wednesday, we're we're spending today prepping to fight Kefka. And Wednesday, we're going to take on what I believe to be the final dungeon and what I believe to be the final fight with CFKA. So, that'll be fun. Um, I have a lot of grinding to do. A lot of grinding. Yeah. Uh, also a little side note to the story that I found also on IGN uh that you you you can't ride sandworms in Dune Awakening in in principle in in design asterisk. Of course people have figured out how to ride sandworms in Dune Awakening. Um, like what do you take us for? A bunch of off-worlders? Of course we're going to learn how to ride. Yeah. A Redditor by the name of Sergeant Dolphin figured out how to like walk without rhythm. uh or walk with rhythm I should say to attract the worm and manage to uh basically use their Menntat not Menntat abilities use I forget which ability they had to sort of float one of their

pieces of tech and land on the worm and ride it. You sometimes do clip through the worm. There's a really fun Reddit post where they intercut the action of the player doing it with um with the film when they all see Paul ride the worm for the first. It's very, very, very funny. So, of course, people are going to be doing this even though you can't. And what is an MMO if not uh just a tool for, you know, gamebreaking shenanigans? That's basically what I'm here to see. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Uh, great. Well, moving on from Shy Halude, uh, let's talk about Sony chat. Oh yeah, we can dive again. Uh, and by we, I mean all the people who were in the who were in many but not all of the regions that were restricted originally from purchasing PlayStation or from

purchasing Sony games on Steam. Um, the four games in question are uh God of War Ragnarok, Last of Us Part Two Remastered, Spider-Man 2, and Hell Divers 2. And those have all been had their regional restrictions uh removed. Um which and they didn't announce it anywhere by the way. So this is what we were alluding to before. So Sony sort of I and and some people are saying oh this is also Stellar Blade came out and it is the highest selling uh PlayStation game on uh on PC. I'll let you and your Nexus Mods account figure out why that is. But the um the the people are like, "Oh, like they're seeing that like if you don't have this thing, it sells well." I think this was put into play a little bit like before that. Or maybe they were maybe they wanted that game, which they knew would do well, to sort of outshadow them sort of

slowly walking back the need for a PlayStation account. I was thinking about this the other day, like what they should have done was give you like in-game cosmetics and things if you did link to a PlayStation account and let everyone else do it if you couldn't or didn't want to. Yeah, they they they did that for Horizon, Forbidden West. They they did they tried that in a couple of places and they were woefully inconsistent about it, right? Which was kind of weird and silly in my opinion. um they felt like they were taking wild swings with like different parts of the catalog and then were like, "Well, it didn't work over here, so we'll try something different over here." And I'm like, "You have confounding variables, Brendos. You need to control your variables when you're doing testing on that scale." And you're not because those are not the same game, friendos. Okay. All right. Yeah. I also I think that the

not making a big deal out of it, not doing an announcement is both smart and not smart. Um, you could essentially make a big deal be like, "We listened," but then there's a sort of negative side to that too because then people will uh probably push for other things that they might be able to not do or not do for other various, you know, whatever. whereas if they just sort of quietly do it tail between their legs, they don't get a nice little media push, but also they don't have to save face in any way. Um, I don't know. This is just good news. Uh, it's I'm glad that places that could not play these games before are now allowed to. Um, and if if Sony is serious about making sure that their games do come to other platforms, and to be clear, I actually really like Sony's business model. have it be exclusive for your console for like a year or so and then

go make a bunch of money off it again on PC. Like I I think that is totally fine. There's enough games There's enough games coming out where I feel like if if you are so deeply committed to something that is a PlayStation exclusive for a year, you probably already own a PlayStation. You know what I mean? Yeah. And if you're not, you'll play the myriad of countless other phenomenal titles that you can play on PC until the games get released on PC, right? Like, I don't know. I think it's a a really good a really good system right now. Yeah, I think the I think that's very true, right? Like delaying PC release is never really a risk because on console you're not competing with WoW. or Final Fantasy 14 or League, right? You're not competing with uh a whole bunch of other lifestyle games you

are competing with on PC, right? And so like the competition is harder on PC and there are more games in general that come out on PC because it's mindboggling. Yeah. Like the there the number of demos that came out last week during Nexfest. absolutely mind-bogglingly wild, right? And some of them were incredibly good and some of them were incredibly bad and we talked about a lot of them last week. It was great. But the um the opportunity cost of releasing later on on PC feels much lower, right? Because like people will wait and they've got other things to play and they're not going to be super impatient and if they really want it, they'll buy a PS5. There's just I It's funny 20 years ago or whatever. I'm ancient. Um when when there wasn't as many amazing games being

released at the same time, I feel like I was would be much more salty about X Y and Z. Like even going back to Dune, right? Dude's a PC game or being released on PC, so it's not the same sort of can of worms, but like you see uh but I I don't know. Like it's one of those things where it's like I will play this when I get to it. I don't I want to play it now, but I have so many other games to play and a limited amount of time. Sure. The urgency for a lot of things has gone down, right? like you really have to be hitting like at the top of your weight class to like really demand play on release right at this point. Like it's expedition 33. But also I will remind people that like streamers knew like we knew we knew when they pitched us the game like years ago that Expedition 33 was going to be huge,

right? Or like last year at at a minimum, right? like we knew and and there like Soong and there are a couple of others, but the amount of like mustplay on release demand is much lower with the size of um the the pool of games growing. Well, yeah. And actually, let's let's sort of use that to transition to our sort of second part of the of the Sony story, which is basically uh you Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideki uh Nishino, I believe. I might be uh butchering that name. Apologies. uh just did a um call with investors um or it might have been board members, I don't quite remember, but uh you can read the article on screen rant. Um but basically um it was talking about sort of like the future and commitments of things for Sony Entertainment and and the video game division, etc. And so some interesting sort of tidbits in there and you you can only read so much into this because it is very corporate speak. It's it's not meant for us. it's meant for people involved in the business of of Sony and selling PlayStations. And

basically um they were talking about how um the PS5 while it did well did sort of suffer from uh essentially trying to move a lot of the first party uh you know juggernauts that Sony has to make single player super crazy good narrative experiences to more live service games like conquered and like a couple other things and how that obviously didn't work out. Um and so he's noting a couple different things in this call. This is a little bit more of um this is talking about like cloud streaming versus running things on consoles. He says um basically quote while cloud streaming uh is progressing well from a technical standpoint uh the majority of players continue to want to experience gaming through local execution without dependency on network conditions. I would agree with that. I think that is overall very true. That might not even be based on want. That might be based on actual physical availability. Not everyone has the ability to stream games to wherever they are. a reminder that Matt and I are both on fiber because we

live in reasonably large metropolitan centers, one larger than the other by definition. But like there are plenty of places in the US where you can't get that connection speed or you can't get a reliable connection, right? Or like there's a reason that stuff like exit lag exists, right? And they were saying uh uh Nishino says references the m uh the majority of method majority of people prefer the traditional console model. So basically in other words uh they are believing or their CEO believes that people want to buy a console and play the game if you're going to be playing games on console. Like that's kind of what Well, wait Matt, back up. Back up. Back up. What? I know. They want to purchase a thing and software for the thing and then use it and that's it. Now people are extrapolating a little too much from this call. I I don't fully agree with everything in the

screen rant article, but basically they were saying that like cuz he quote says without dependency on network connections could also lean towards meaning like less like more single player experiences on rather than multiplayer. Of course, PlayStation Network is still a thing. are not going to stop doing that. Um, but it's the live service side for Sony has been a problem. pulled it's pulled a lot of developers away from making those exper because we really on on PlayStation 5 we got I'm trying to think of like it was um God of War Ragnarok Ragnarok Forbidden West Spider-Man Spider-Man and the console's what six years old five 2020 like November 2020 cuz we talked about this last week. The the Series X and the PS5 came out the same week in 2020 in November, but Sony's now canceled a lot of live service games

from from Bluepoint games. They canceled the God of War one. Uh Naughty Dog was doing a Last of Us Online that is canceled. Like in my opinion, while it sucks that uh you know, when you're a dev on these things, it's got to be heartbreaking to be working on these things for a year and then just be like, "Nope." Um, from a player perspective, I'm like, "Yeah, I want these teams that are excellent at doing as long as they're happy doing what they're doing, making these narrative experiences, these single player experiences. That's kind of where I that's kind of what I want my PlayStation 4, uh, my PlayStation, well, I guess they're talking about PlayStation 6. What I'd want a PlayStation console for, not the number. You get where I'm going." Uh anyway, this is a really sort of um it's nice to even though it is corpo speak, it's nice to hear a CEO sort of talking in ways that I particularly want to engage with my games. Um and uh they also said basically the the at the end of the day they were saying how like the PS is very much on their mind and and from what he's talking about it will be

a console like other cons like it it will still follow this throughine because they believe that is what people want. So that was really heartening to hear, I thought. Yeah, I agree. Uh I think that that's Philip Pop. It's nice to see a CEO pretending to be human. Yes. Yeah. Correct. Correct. Uh, okay. Let's talk about last week because something happened last week and I think we don't talk about it enough. How much it deeply impacts our media consumption and gaming habits, which is Cloudflare had a bad day Thursday, which means everyone had a bad day Thursday. Um, so for those unaware, Cloudfire is I will simplify this. One of the major parts of the internet that keeps it working the way that it should. Yeah, go more deep into the tech, but that's not important. They had an outage on Thursday which proceeded to have Twitch have a weird outage and a large

number of other sites all just have like incredibly bad days and games were down and stuff was down and everything was weird bad and just bad. And it it got me thinking that we don't like there's it's sort of an interesting test case, right? because we were just talking about physical media and acquiring physical media and playing games on physical media. And I thought this was a really interesting moment because it felt like even in what was a pseudo worstcase scenario, it was fine. But maybe that's just my viewpoint on it. Like chat, sound off if like how bad was it for you last Thursday when Cloudfire went down? Did you notice were were you like trying to play a game or do something and it just absolutely ground to a halt? Like what

how was your experience with it? Right. This will be both interesting and you know highly anecdotal. Um mine personally uh I noticed a lot of um a lot of uh emails weren't going through on Google's side of things. I noticed um a general slowdown of the internet. I noticed Twitch was obviously having a bad time. Um, let's see. What do we got from people here? Most people didn't notice be on Twitch. Yeah. Boom, boom, boom. Yeah. Works online. Didn't even notice. So, it's interesting because the the the infrastructure of how we run our digital lives is incredibly fragile. It feels like um and we kind of just keep it going on a hope and a prayer. It also feels kind of resilient, right, that like

some stuff still works, right? I like this. I was at work. I couldn't look at Reddit on my phone. Yeah. Yeah. It's reasonable, right? like it feels like it it is a big it is fragile, but it's also resilient in the same way that like you can get it feels like a lot like Pokemon Red and Blue. Pokemon Red and Blue you can make do some weird funky stuff, but getting it to crash completely is kind of hard. It feels a little bit like that. Like yes, it's fragile and things go wrong, but they go wrong in like weird ways that like almost function or maybe don't function and then we give up and then they come back and it's fine. I don't know. It felt like it if it didn't feel that bad to me and maybe I'm just coming at it from like an IT perspective where like nothing was on fire. Great. Like Yeah. But like at the same time, uh the things that like was was getting me and it's one of the reasons why I don't like really move into the um uh the u sort of like smart home. Oh god.

Yeah. I know. like when when the ability to turn on your lights or lock your doors or or those things are affected by a network outage. Uh that's when it it starts feeling real. I don't do that. I do know a lot of people that do and I do I talked to one friend who like couldn't get their lights working like because this is this is sort of a prime example of the technology enthusiast versus IT professional thing. technology enthusiast. I will connect everything in my home to smartome IT professional. No, absolutely not under any circumstances. Thank you. That's the difference, right? Yeah. So, but again, like let's let's think about it this way like uh because that's the part of the story that really got me was the sort of smart home element of it. And these things are marketed as a thing to make your life easier. in in many ways they can, but

like I think because to your point, Will, outages that we some people experienced on Thursday are so rare, you don't often think about them even being connected to these things that run your day-to-day life. Yeah. Um it it'll be really weird if something like truly network bad happens. Uh anything from you know a superdetailed damaging hack to a solar flare like like solar flare is a good one. If it goes if it hits hard then your entire life not beyond your entertainment and your news is tied to the ability to talk to an external network. And I think that that's that's one of my takehomes from this too is that lots of people are very worried about like well what if I can't play games during a network outage right? Yeah. What if you um what if you have a uh you know um what if all of

this stuff goes away? And then I I point at people with smart homes or with digitally connected insulin pumps or any number of other things and you go, "Yeah, then I have bigger problems." Right? Like gaming is now so deeply integrated that like it's and entertainment, right? Twitch um is now so deeply integrated that I feel like it's all like it's a we go together or not at all at this point. Maybe that's just me. I don't know. Yeah. Um Dart, you're right. Most smart home devices let you manually control your devices. It also depends on which one. I've seen some I mean they they do how deep that is in the system and whether or not the people and again this is I'm not trying to excuse anyone who doesn't understand the thing they installed in their home. Uh but the way these these services and these products are served up is it's easy. It's one button. It's so simple. You can do whatever control everything from your phone. And most people I think or not

even most people that don't do this to their detriment can get locked into that like are sold a product that if they're not interested in learning about the thing and again that's on them but it's also it's the messaging behind the product as well. Does that make sense? Like, yeah. Hey, Matt, you're you want to do you want to do a breaking news story? Oh, yeah. What do we got? You want to do a live react? Um, I'm gonna I'm gonna find this, but the comment from chat is that Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins just joined Darington Press. Um, I'm gonna I'm gonna get confirmation. Uh, no. So, um, for those unaware, Jeremy live reaction. I smile a lot. Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins are two of the most um they're the ones that that made D&D 5e D and D 5e correct and so um they are uh Perkins recently announced his

retirement from Wizards U and I believe Jeremy did too. And the fact that both of them are have now joined Critical Role and Darington Press to write Daggerheart is Yeah. 26 minutes ago on Twitter. Hold up. Darington Press. Our adventuring party grows. Yeah. Wow. Chris Per and Jeremy Crawford have joined us at Darington Press. These two powerhouses will be dreaming up new game concepts and expanding our existing games. Give Chris and Jeremy a warm welcome. So that is, by the way, that is um with love and respect to the D&D team at Wizards, uh someone in charge is asking for brown pants right now. That that's a lot of star power. Like people who are deeply invested in Dn D know Perkins and Crawford and Dagger Hart is already backed by I don't know how Dagger Hart is Darington Press's uh new the Critical Role folks.

their uh role playing system. They've done two so far, I believe. Uh Candela Obscura and and um Dagger because they started working on their own systems when the OGL thing started happening for um DND because they're a company now that wants to control their own IP and not worry about creating things in the D&D world and needing to worry about the lensure or the intellectual property of like parts of that, right? Because like in Critical Role, if they reference Palor, god of the sun from Dn D, then they have a problem because they can't there's a yes and no based on the the the different there there was there was a thought that when the OGL thing happened that it would be difficult. So yeah. Um also will do you care to explain your Deadpool joke? No. Okay, cool. Just checking. Um this is okay. This is this sets up something very interesting.

What is stronger? An IP or the people who created it moving to a smaller but beloved IP? I like so like D and D YouTube is going to be exploding for the rest of the day. There's going to be a hundred different things about all this stuff. But let's not let truly it will take a lot of a lot more missteps to sync D&D in Wizard of the Coast like completely. This is a an insane announcement. I I I think that there the group of Okay, so here here's my thought. There is a group of people who wants to play D and D the way Critical Role plays D and D, right? which is very role-play heavy, which makes sense because they're actors, right? That is not a thing that

is inherent in the rules of D and D, right? That extemporaneous um role playing that like governs a lot of the way that their story progresses is not there aren't rules that govern that, right? And Dagger Heart, to my understanding, is a way that they are attempting to like add structure and rules to that to like help games be more narratively focused rather than just like I down the door and I kill the stuff and I still loot, right? Um I think that there is a there is enough room in the ecosystem for two things, right? A crunchy war game, Dungeons and Dragons, right? And another new branch of the narrative tabletop role playing space that is Dagger Heart. But also, here's the interesting thing. We already have a, in my opinion, if you want crunch, if you want numbers, if you want stats and num nom nom, eat them up. I got to click I got to click Arvd Doll's thing, you got Pathfinder. That's your thing. If you And so people have used 5e

as sort of a catch-all for everything else. But if Daggerheart is taking the other side of that pendulum and the creative forces that allowed Dn D to become the thing that could be used it maybe not for the best but ubiquitously across a lot of different play styles. What what is left for Dn D outside of the IP that's been going for years? Like I I think it's the um it it is the so DN D so has the same thing as magic has the same thing as Warhammer has the same thing as McDonald's which is it's not the best but it is everywhere right and that ubiquity right takes a very long time it's Kleenex it's bandaid right it's Band-Aid it's Kleenex it takes a very long time to undo that ubiquity right and to make it not the most popular thing right Yeah. Um uh well, I don't know if you can do the Oh, I'm not going to. If you look, you could grab their picture if we were still talking about this for a bit. It's

on their tweet. Um it's they look so psyched. Okay, I want to describe this picture as Will grabs it. Um everyone's smiling really nice. Like I think Travis is freaking out. Um, everyone has big big smiles and Mercer Mercer's just kind of like smirking and I love it. I love it so much. Um, it's weird to be talking about this over um over a picture of Cartman. I mean, whatever it it it's breaking news, right? We're not going to We weren't prepped for this. We couldn't have been prepped for this because uh you know, it's um it's not Yeah. And Mr. Mr. Question marks, I I do agree with this. Like that's that's the thing. They're losing trust at a rate that like Okay, IPs can survive beyond beyond um beyond

their creators. Of course, however, how do I put this? like uh uh Coca-Cola, unless you are super into the corporate structure of Coca-Cola. But we, none of us probably know the CEO of Coca-Cola or the people in charge of Coca-Cola's particular branding campaign between the years of blank and blank because something as and I'll even use the word intimate as a role playinging game system, you come to learn if if you get deep enough in it and you're not just a c a casual player, which there's far more of, of course, you do get to know the people that are behind your games like this more. I would I would argue role playing systems like tabletop role playing systems more than even video games. I I don't know why I feel that way and maybe that's misguided but that's like my lizard brain gut reaction. Um, this like

with Pathfinder killing it for the for the tech the tech people that want it and with Daggerheart being something that is incredibly uh for the for the the juggernaut that is Critical Role and the way that people want that many people who were not traditionalists want to now play role playing games with Daggerheart unless Wizards of the Coast post for D and D 6 or whatever they want to call it. Get some really really um engaging and and exciting talent behind what they want to do. If it's just another CEO of Coca-Cola we do not know or care about. And unless somehow that system is the best system ever, I I see it just shipping away. It's also become it's the meme now, right? like kicking D and D for messing up is kind of it's been the internet's personality when it comes to that game for the last three

years and and no amount of in my opinion incredibly wonderful updated 5e source books is changing that overall conversation. You have positive reviews of the books, but that's not changing the conversation. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, I I thought I I I saw that and I was like, "Oh, that's that's that's got to be a right now. That's that's that's got to be a right now conversation." Like, right, we we know exactly as much as you do. Uh we didn't prep this ahead of time. So, thank you for indulging our breaking news segment, but this is something that like I had to get Matt's take on and feel like you all would appreciate those. All right. Yeah. Our last prep story for today is is a bit of an interesting one. So, we talk about uh game design, game balance here a lot, and we've also talked a lot about like um how important balance is to online games and how competitive games in particular need to be tightly balanced or to try new things in terms of balance. And this might be the first

time, I don't it's probably not actually the first time, but it's the first time I've heard of it that a company is adjusting a character's size as a way to balance their gameplay. So, you might be familiar with our boy Bastion. Our boy Bastion is a character in Overwatch who's a big tank. He's a He's a robot. He runs around. He can turn into a tank. He turns into a hat now. Yeah, he has a I look I if I played Overwatch, I would refuse to use anything except the Bastion pre-order skin from Overwatch one where he looks like a robot from Spirited Away or from Castle in the Sky, excuse me. Um, I would refuse to use anything except the the Lapia bot skin because that's the best skin for Bastion. You can fight me if you want and you're wrong. Um, right. So, uh, they have reduced his size by 10% in the next season as a way to balance his gameplay because he was getting shot too much.

And this is fascinating to me like that this is a way that that people are are balancing stuff because it feels like that we talk about all kinds of numerical tweaks, right? HP, bullet resistance, uh damage per bullet outgoing, healing factor, you know, healing debuff factor from DPS. We've talked about all kinds of things. Just make the character a little smaller. Sort of like I read this and I was like, that's a really cool idea. And apparently the team was playing with it a lot. They tried 15%. They thought it was too much. They tried five. It was too little. And they they landed on on 10. Um, my favorite thing from this PC Gamer article, though, is a Reddit user named TB pitched an even better way to handle it. And this is what they said. TB said, quote, "Instead of shrinking Bastion 10% at once, you should have shrunk him 1% every week and denied it anytime anyone asked." Yes. No notes. perfection would have been would have been the opportunity for

the funniest thing ever. I think that uh would be so so fun. Yeah. Um uh that's correct. So uh Grass points out that they've done they've uh done no not that this um Apex has done a similar thing in reverse. There used to be a debuff called small frame which caused smaller characters to take more damage when they got hit. And bigger characters tended to have um or didn't have that debuff and tended to have additional defensive buffs like um Jibralter had the bubble and the arm shield and all that. Um and uh but it's very interesting to just see. We made him smaller. We just we just made him smaller. There's so many fun ways you can adjust balance in in games as sort of complex as a hero shooter like like Overwatch. So yeah, I don't know. That's a fun story, Will. Thanks. I try I try and bring one of those every week for dessert. Nom nom nom. What a pastry. Friends, that that does bring us to the end of our stories for this week. I did want to remind everyone And the end of my coffee. And the end of your coffee.

Wow. Well timed, Matt. I did want to remind everyone as we as we uh before we throw it to Matt to do our our patented sign out that we always do together, um that tonight 8:00 p.m. Eastern, uh 5:00 p. p.m. Pacific, you should all be here wherever you are, whether it's on YouTube or or on Twitch, um for our interview with James Port now and Mike Ponmith about Cyberpunk Legends. I cannot stress enough how hype I am to do this uh interview with Matt, to talk to these guys about this game, to hang out with all of you. We've got a whole bunch of questions we want to ask. We've got some questions that uh some of their um some of their fans wanted to ask. Uh we've got a couple of hours on the clock. We're really excited about this. Please join us for this. Um it's a real it's going to be a real great time. Uh yeah, follow no interview with Hatsu Neiku. Okay. Um

Temporal NDA. Yeah. No, please come check that out. It's going to be super fun. Uh I'm very very excited. But we for now, at least the two of us shall let you all go. Will is sticking around on Twitch. Will, what are you playing again? I am working on Final Fantasy 6. I have uh some stuff I got to grind. So, we're going to be grinding and talking and it's gonna be great. Excellent. But until then, I would like to bid uh for me personally, farewell to both uh Janet and Brad, YouTube and Twitch. Uh and of course Rocky over on Nebula. Thank you for watching over there. If you have anything uh any thoughts on these stories, Rocky, I know we've been talking to Brad and Janet a bunch in chat. You can blue sky us uh over you can basically talk to us over there. Let us know your questions or thoughts you have on any of these stories. If you made it this far in the Nebula video, chances are you might want to say hi and let us know you're watching over there and maybe we can talk about these stories more next week. But until then, I'm going to leave you with the same outro that we do every

time. Again, it's to build community. It's to make us sure that we all know what is going on. And I think what I love about this outro is it not only is the same every time, but it also temporally loops with the beginning of the show. So without with without further ado, thank you for watching Games for Breakfast. We'll see you next time. [Applause] [Music] Will, we've got to go back to the future. I should have left that in the record, but the the move to the I should have left that in the record, but the move to the stinger auto pauses. No, no, no. It's fine. Fine. It was a good bit. Uh,

okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah, we're hanging out here for a while on Twitch. So, Janet, um, if you, uh, want to come over and hang out, please do so. Otherwise, we will see all of you tonight, 8:00m, uh, for the interview. A reminder, there is no design club this week. So, the next stream after tonight's stream over on YouTube will be next breakfast. Right. Right. Um, no, not yet. Not yet. Someone should do it. Okay. Um, this is the part where we say bye to Janet. So Janet, we will see you all when next tonight or next week or whenever we see you. And of course, if we don't see you live tonight, the VOD will stay up in the same way that breakfast does so that over on YouTube, y'all can watch at your leisure and leave comments uh there. So, uh, everybody say bye, Janet. Bye.