Stop Killing Games, Nuance, and Jobs! | Gaming News | Games For Breakfast

[Applause] [Music] Good morning, Matt. Oh, good morning, Will. Good morning to all of you. Welcome to Games for Breakfast, the only internet talk show we talk about this week's gaming and tech news, but that also has been on for two whole weeks. It's the only one. I'm sure. No, I I'm I'm pretty sure I checked the entire internet, and this is the only show that wasn't on for two weeks. So, apologies slash you're welcome. Uh, but welcome back. It's the only show that hasn't been on long enough that I almost forgot what the opening was. And I've been doing the opening every week for like years now. It's funny. We were on uh our summer break over at uh EC Studios and uh it is interesting how quickly we forget every process that we do. Our brains just dump it. And I try to basically replace that information with either uh material stats and combos because I'm starting up Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth again or the best ways to kill those new fancy purple

night lords that everyone's talking about over in Night Rain. Everything else gone. I got nothing. That's fair. Which is which is good that we have a great show today to catch up on all of the news that I have been ignoring. That you know that seems very reasonable. Well, I also have done my best to like not, but also I didn't really have a choice. I kind of had to with the games and the news and the everything because uh it was in our Discord and I still hang out in our Discord. So, there you go. Yeah. Uh let's jump right into it, Matt. Let's All right. Wow. Fancy, right? This is the f the spiciest, right? Yeah. Okay. So, Matt and I were on summer break. We did summer break things. We will now tell you about our summer break in an attempt to twofold. One, tell you what we've been up to and two, uh, remind you that you too should do some of these things if you are able to in order to take care of yourself because summer breaks are cool and good

for your brain. Uh, I slept so much. That's good. I What? We go away. You think you know a guy? It's so hot out. I made cold brew a guy weekend. I'm ready for the show. From the French press to iced coffee. It is cold. Whoa. That is strong as hell. It is cold brew. I'll have you know it's been seeping for 48 hours. My eyes my eyelids just shot so far into the back of my skull that I have a headache now. Um yeah. Listen. And uh No, it's it's good. Just a little little Tumblr. It's nice. Okay. Um, betrayal. Okay, everyone. How many people in chat right now use a French press when they watch this show? Huh? I've been doing this for so long. How many honest Brads and Janets only? You know, these are real great

questions. Uh, why don't you tell people what you were getting up to while you're doing that? Oh, uh, well, first and foremost, uh, I was on so many podcasts, Will, it was kind of ridiculous. uh one uh that our friend of the show Patrick Williams uh got uh me involved in was with a uh a film podcast called Screen Drafts. Now, I don't follow sports, but what Screen Drafts does is basically um takes like uh uh genres of films and then two people come on their show uh that the hosts uh Clay and Ryan and they basically are the commission and then the drafters have to draft movies into seven spots. I believe it go like you basically go back and forth or like I think person one gets like seven six four and two or something like that and I forget how it goes but like it's all regulated like a sports team would be and I me and Patrick were on the episode for action comedies. Um right. Okay. So which pick of yours was Jim Kada? Uh none none of them were because

because at the end of the day it's just that's not the case. I don't want to ruin what my top pick was. Um, I I will say that uh it was controversial and to the point where I I feel like I did a lot of great arguments. I I feel like I I changed some hearts and minds. Uh and the comments have been incredibly nice. I was expecting to get flamed. Like truly truly truly flamed. Uh but it didn't happen. Didn't happen. So I was on that one. I was also on uh Overly Sarcastic's bonus podcast where we me and uh Jay talked about uh nostalgia games which was very very fun. I think that was just an extra one that they did. I that I will mention uh I brought up my nostalgia game that I've been playing lately is the uh point-and-click adventure Full Throttle. I don't know if you will, did you ever play Full Throttle? I did not. Did anyone in chat play Full Throttle with the kick-ass soundtrack by the Gone Jackals called Bone to Pick?

No, no one. Anyone? We have a couple. There we go. RC has me. Yeah. All right. Anyway, so I did that. Uh, and oh, then on the top side of things, uh, we were talking about this before. Uh, uh, Jamie and I did a podcast on Jurassic World Rebirth. I know Rob, extra history writer extraordinaire, loved it. I did not like it. Um, I but I I am more angry at this one than disappointed in the rest of the Jurassic World franchises because I feel like the other three films like you kind of knew what you were getting into and you're just sort of like whatever. Yeah, what this one I guar my my top-of-the-line review of Jurassic World Rebirth is as follows. It would have cost them zero money to take what they had on screen and make it into something truly like timeless and legendary and they just chose not to. It is truly a dialogue and scripting problem and the fact they basically

matched two drafts together and tried to get a movie out for a summer 2025 release. Um, it is nightmarish how much you don't care about a single character in that movie. Even though they there's there's like there's time and like breath left in the edit for like if the dialogue would have supported. It's not the actor's faults either. Like they're trying to do as best they can with nothing. I I I am so angry that it would have taken no money to make that movie better and they just didn't. Um so that's that. Uh oh, and uh I believe uh friend of the show uh Belvin uh who I met through uh uh Jasmine's uh crew was just on the podcast for F1 and that'll be coming out in two weeks. F1, shocker. I'm not into I'm not into that racing or that sport at all. Uh that movie slaps. Okay. Um, what else did I do? What else happened on break? Oh, I went to a kick-ass comedy show called Batsu with Jesse Jinder, who was in town, who was

in New York, and that was super fun. Um, got lunch with a bunch of friends. Had an actual date night. Jamie and I actually spent time and made made a moment. It was actually quite lovely. And then I played a ton of Night Rain in Final Fas Rebirth. And I did get booked on a super secret project that I will be telling you about uh when I can, probably in two weeks. Okay, nice. Nice. Yeah. I uh I also got to spend time with with friends. Um I got to, you know, well, like I went mall crawling like old school style. Uh so that was fun. I got to go out with Sushi with my little brother and his girlfriend, which was nice. Um sleep. Played a lot of Magic. Played a lot of Magic. I went and played Magic in person. I played Magic online. Like I played It was really nice. Uh which we'll be talking about because it's incredibly relevant to one of our stories. Um, and I've also spent a bunch of time brainstorming chat because um, it's fine. I could totally stop thinking

about all of the things that I could do for hashtag content at any point. I just don't want to. So, I have lots of brainstorming. So, right after this over on Twitch, we're going to be talking about a bunch of brainstorming stuff. So, please look forward to that. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Um, coming up this week, also, I am I'm giving all of you plenty of warning. On Wednesday, over on the Twitch channel, I will be playing a little game that lots of people are very normal about, very normal about called Outer Wilds. Now, oh yeah, everyone's super normal about that game. In fact, the most normal I've ever seen a community be about a game. So, incredibly normal about this. So, if you're unfamiliar, this is not Outer Worlds, which just got a sequel announced that was all uh you know, it's the super corporate outer thing. No, this is Space Mystery. This is Outer Wilds, the Space Mystery. So, please join us Wednesday for the beginning of that. And I'll also be playing some on

Friday. We will have a streaming channel in or we'll have a streaming thread in the Discord that will be quarantined away from me so that you all can scream about all the things that I'm obviously missing. uh to your heart's content and not bother me with it while I'm trying to play this game. Uh so please look forward to that. Design Club's back on Thursday. Rogue Review tomorrow. We're going to be playing a game called um Wordatro. And if you look at that title and you think, "Wow, did they just make Batro scramble?" You'd be scrabble, excuse me. You'd be I like scramble. The scramble's also good. Um, it's like an omelette that fell apart while you were making it. Call it when you mess up the omelette, you're like, I just made a scramble. Um, it's actually really good and it would be really good even without the references to Bellatro. Uh, for a bunch of reasons we'll talk about tomorrow. Uh, and then Matt, we might be doing stuff Thursday. Maybe there is a chance. Uh, I'll figure it out.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Uh, all right. Great. Excellent. Awesome. That is all of that. Let's go into our news stories. Okay, so while we were gone, um, nothing happened, right? Xbox did a thing. Uh, this comes to us from so many sources, Kotaku, IGN, and a few others. The BBC. Yeah. Uh, Xbox has done a massive layoff campaign including multiple game cancellations totaling around 9,100 people. Um, yeah, this is a large story. Um, I've tried to keep up with it or catch up with it, I should say. I was not keeping up with it actively as it was going as I was burying my head blissfully in the sand. Um, the the top the top line for me is uh corpose speak still corpo speak. Um the

whole thing feels very clinical and weird and like this is the 19,000th time this has happened because it is. Um it does really suck that there are not only jobs lost of course, but then also like people's projects and dream things that they were working on just shuttered. Many games have also been sort of canned on the on on the route of this. The Perfect Dark remake, the unannounced Zenamax online MMO. They were they gave Zenamax the job of making a new first-person shooter MMO to compete with Destiny and to take over for Anthem. More on Anthem later. Um, and that's been canned. Uh, Romero Games all had to do like, okay, so and I want to be clear. I want to clarify something because chat's on this. Yes, it was a Microsoftwide 9100 jobs lost. A lot of those were in Xbox. And then I don't believe including the 9100 are the trickle down layoffs. So for instance, Romero Games had to lay

off a bunch of people because their project got cancelled. And I don't believe that those are contained in the original figure when we're talking about layoffs because like those are just Microsoft employees, not follow on layoffs to projects being cancelled at other studios that worked with Microsoft. I believe. Yeah. No, I believe that's accurate because you have product managers and things that are going on there and then once that product manager is gone and they close that division or whatever, then they're not going to be funding most likely unless a sweetheart deal or something's been carved out, yada yada yada. Um, yeah. Um, and in my opinion, in my completely uneducated opinion, this is obviously a well, it it has to do with a lot of different factors. Uh, it has to do with still culling the postcoavid um hiring bloat that companies just decided to do because they thought the infinite money faucet would go forever or they did they knew it wouldn't and just didn't care. Um, it also has to do with the merger uh into Activision Blizzard King. large scale layoffs tend to happen a lot of times uh because when you merge a lot

of jobs become redundant even though if you're running everything that you merged into at capa at like current functioning capacity that shouldn't happen but we're always trying to uh people are always trying to minimize costs of things and you know I understand that that is important in certain ways but in others um it's just I I believe I believe right before this Microsoft And Xbox in particular was t was touting like how good everything is going. Um can't be going that good. I mean or or they I guess they didn't they didn't specify who it was going good for. Well BBC has an idea on that. um which is that they BBC and I'm inclined to believe them on this is that it's going real good for Microsoft AI division.

Woo. Is any AI division doing well? Like I Okay, I I understand and again I'm not an economist. My portfolio is laughable. Um, but we, this is the most 5-year-old brain thing I'll say hopefully all day, but like money's made up. Uh, the stock market is a thing based on that fiction that we all believe in order for society to work. Great, great, great. Has any AI company not not just counting the stock market like has it been profitable? Like people are making more like more numbers in the stock market which can be cashed out for money depending on how you're actually doing it. But like none of the power consumption and the the the the willingness of individuals to pay to use this stuff

doesn't match up. There's a reason why every service you use is pushing free AI nonsense on you. They think it's going to be like streaming. They think if they give you a real sweet deal in the beginning and you start using it and integrating into your day-to-day life that eventually they'll be able to start upping a price or jacking it up or making it a service you pay for because it's so ingrained in how you move about the world that you can't live without it. The problem is it doesn't seem like anyone wants it. Like this is not me rallying against AI in general or to use it as tools in various uh vocations and things like that. Sure. This is like, "Hey, you want me to summize this email for you?" Like, or like Gemini popping up. What is even Microsoft's AI called? I I don't I don't know. I've turned it off. Uh Oh, I think it's also co-pilot, like the thing JJ was talking about, right? There are two different co-pilots. One of them is the really

cool accessibility tool that lets two people use two controllers as one controller. And the other one is their god- aful AI thing that I've ripped out of all of my computers by uh forcing it to not run. Yeah. Yeah. Um uh so uh I I saw I saw something uh that was also recently uh yes, Bio Outbreak is completely correct. Disney also super doesn't want this. And we'll talk more about that when it develops into something that's worth talking about. Yeah. But Disney is in the process of suing a large amount of AI developers and companies because they're like, "Hey, so you made this thing and this thing remade our movie and we care about our copyrights." Yeah. Like a lot. Like Disney cares an inordinate amount. Disney cares what I would argue most of the time is too much. Sure. And now we're going to let them fight. Fight for my amusement. Goldie actually brings up my what I was trying to say but much more silently. The hardware

sales and video are profitable. The clients using OpenAI's API are temporarily making money by firing people. OpenAI is a big burning money pit uh that will literally never make a profit. Yeah. Like Yeah. No, that's correct. That that's absolutely correct. There is no model, right? Cuz like it feels like a a get-rich quick scheme. Like it feels like every but like this is my question and I know we're talking about the Microsoft layoffs and but this sort of pulled us into into this not is every company that is actively pushing the AI grift right now just gambling on the fact that they'll be the one to get out first. No, hold on. Pause. Rewind two years. replace replace the word AI in what Matt just said with NFTTS and then pause and rewind two years and replace everything replace NFTTS and the thing that Matt

just said with cryptocurrency and the answer for all of them is yes they're all the same thing they're all the difference though the difference though so so I think I think structurally and the way the grift will eventually make people rich and poor yes but but we did not see with either crypto or NFTs at least uh crypto may be creeping up now but like largecale companies redoing entirely their entire business model like Microsoft didn't just make everything NFTTS sure do you know what I mean like structurally you're absolutely correct the idea like the the buzzword trend but I think that's because even though people did try you can't really sell a subscription service for NFTTS uh and you smash my ape of the month love. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also Ryan brings up a good point. This is also being heralded as like the next big thing. Although truly NFTTS were also heralded that in the art

world which again is smaller but still I I regardless if these layoffs are more to cover their AI initiatives I think they and all of us are going to have a really bad time. I agree. especially if they're going to cut 4% of their global workforce to shovel money away from people making actual art into people making fake art. Because that's what they did, right? They cut a whole bunch of jobs and they destroyed a whole bunch of art studios to funnel money into a let's burn electricity to not make anything real venture, which feels like the most obvious capitalism thing, right? But at the same time hurts doubly, right? One, because we're being deprived of cool art, right? I know a lot of people were looking forward to Perfect Dark. Zenamax has done an absolutely phenomenal job with ESO um and has a bunch of really

interesting ideas about how MMOs should work and I would love to see them take another crack at a new MMO in 2025 that isn't that doesn't have the laundry list of problems that a lot of other MMOs that have started in 2025 do and we're not going to see that now right so I think it hurts doubly right one that we're being deprived of art two that people we care about their art are being deprived of their jobs and that just sucks. Yeah. I just I I look, there's a possibility we're wrong and this is all going in according to plan. That'll be helpful and blah blah blah blah. Sure. But like remember when you're young and you thought you you just assumed at least for the most part that even if your parents or adults in your general vicinity didn't have it figured out that like there was a structure of people that were responsible that had it figured out and like there like oh this

function like I've been taught that this is functions to function and that's why it's here and smarter people than myself or my parents will be making sure they'll have I I don't know if this is a curse of the aged But it is funny how we seem to just like no matter how smart human beings can be uh we cannot get out of our own way uh a lot of the time and I don't know like if these people in these divisions like actually think this is the next big thing that will make the companies billions of dollars and make life better. It just I I maybe I don't have the the the blind optimism or education or naive, it could be any of those combinations to to be able to see that. But it's just really sad when 9,100 humans plus

whatever the trickle down is no longer uh have employment at a place that I imagine they probably liked working, especially if it was in games. Cuz you don't you don't get into video games um because the job stability or lucrative paychecks. You get into video games because you love making video games. Yeah. And so any layoff in any company is devastating for the individuals and the communities it affects of course but like there's a difference between uh you know getting getting laid off from what I would consider uh like a job that you just got to pay the bills which has its own fears and things like that and something that was like your dream. You know what I mean? Both have both have issues and problems of course, but like they're different on an emotional level. Yeah, I agree. So, this just sticks. Yeah. Uh shall we Let's move on. Bye, Clippy. Thank you. Thank you for your gifts.

Yeah. Uh so, in more I swear we're going to get through the bummers. We're going to get through the bummer. Do we have any non- bummers? Hold on. I want to make sure we're promising that we have I have I have multiple non- bummers. I don't think our There's a good one. That's a fun one. Yeah, that one kind of a bummer. And then the ends is a good one. Okay. Yeah, we got a good We got a 50/50, right? Okay, cool. So, um, IGN is reporting on a, uh, survey that was done by the or sorry, I guess a report done by the Wall Street Journal which used data from the market research company Circa Anna, S I R C A, um, that analyzed the spending habits of young Americans and came to a conclusion, which is that Americans are spending 25% less on video games than they did this time last year, which is fascinating because video games is down more than other comparable

um sort of sectors of spending, right? Down accessories, technology, and furniture, 18, 14, 12% respectively. Um video game spending saw the biggest fall. And I think there are a bunch of reasons for that, right? I think um in order to spend a bunch of money, there must be things which exist that you are able to spend a bunch of money on, right? And we're not exactly in AAA summer right now. We're in single A double A indie summer, right? Yeah, that's not it, though. I I actually I think there's more games to buy than ever. I agree with that. I think it is more likely that more gamers are focusing on individual specific subsections of those games, right? While we may see the totality of the spectrum of games as being bigger than ever, for a lot of people, they're sticking to their lane, right? They're buying a sports game. They're buying a battle royale, a singular thing in their lane. And while

it's good that more games are coming out and there are more lanes to pick from, I think a lot of people pick a lane and stick to it. Yeah. Um, Spartan actually asked a good question. Does the data include Switch 2 in Mario World? Uh it the Switch 2 uh obviously sold like gang busters. Um I don't know if this I they they mentioned the Switch 2 and they said it was a outlier. Yeah, but I I double check. It is worth noting that the time period featured in the study does not include the June launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 which will boost the figure according to. So yes, I also think that it is and it's possible and we should acknowledge that it's certainly possible that uh part of that spending will be if it doesn't include June then it also includes the the period of time when people were not buying games to save for the Switch 2. Sure. But also the number even even beyond that is is fairly I mean this is

what we're going to be seeing across the board of industries in general. I mean people have less disposable income and that number seemingly uh will not go up soon. So um this makes sense. This is specifically also, I forget if Will you mentioned this before, this is in 18 to 29 year olds uh specifically. And what that says to me honestly is that the work like the job market and the ability for younger people to get a lucrative enough job to have uh more disposable income for I honestly more hobbies and things like that just isn't there. people are are also student loan forgiveness has either wrapped up or is wrapping up soon. Um and uh or deferment I should say it was not forgiven. Um and it seems as though a lot of expensive degrees and things like that are not landing people in the jobs that that in

previous years would have been there waiting for people who are fresh out of college. So, I think uh young people in that age bracket are saddled with a ton of debt and not a lot of great job prospects and um are getting screwed by generations before them. Um and it's uh it's no good and it will hurt the video game industry. It will hurt a lot of different industry, a lot of um well, no, a lot of industries. I think there's a lot of reasons why this is happening. I agree. Um, and I think people will go back to a lot of like let's not forget too and I know that it's been dropping since co because the in the first year two years of co like game stuff just skyrocketed because that's what people could do. It was something and people got more into games that they might not have played. So like rather than the person say buying Madden once a year because they like playing Madden and they want the new one, right? they might have tried three or four games that

they've been following since then and slowly trickling back now with economic crunches coming down and work getting busier and or like things that they have to do and general interest etc. So there's a lot of different reasons why this is happening. I'll be curious what the industry does to combat it. I don't think there'll be much other than I mean the Switch 2 is a huge thing and as IGN brings up Grand Theft Auto 6 will bust this wide open because that will bring back a swath of people that don't actively play games as well as all of them that do. Yeah. It's it's a cultural institution at this point. Say about that what you will. And it uh that's going to c it. What sucks is I think that's going to cause such a boom that everyone's going to very irresponsibly go into a fervor and like staff up a bunch and try to make a bunch of things and either rush them or it'll take too

long and then they won't be able to sustain the hype off of this one game in the industry and then we will continue the mistakes that no one has learned from many times in the past. Like it it I feel like it's going to lead to a frenzy of hires and and layoffs in a weird way. And again, that is not Grand Theft Auto 6's fault. That is the human race's fault. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Um Will, have you So, obviously, Will, we fall into that lucrative 18 to 29 year old demographic. Um I just eaked into 18. So, um and I know you're like 22, 23. Yeah, I'm Yeah, I'm the older one here. Yeah, that's it. Totally. Um I I think my I mean, we obviously do this uh weirdly for a living, so I don't think mine has changed everyone in in Brad and Janet, has your have your spending habit, have you noticed in the last since the beginning of 2025, let's

just not even go too crazy. Have you noticed that your your because you want to, because you have to, your spending has changed when it comes to video games specifically if you are in again Will and I's demographic of 18 to 29. Yeah, I um I don't think it's changed for me, but again, I get the big like there are a couple of things, right? One, I don't have a lot of um extravagant external spending. Uh and two, uh there The mentality around buying things to play on stream is very different than the mentality of buying things just to play them myself. Right. So like I wouldn't have gotten to Switch too if it was just for me. Mhm. Cuz I I think the last time I played Switch 2 was when I played it with my parents. I didn't play literally at all. Really? I It's not hooked up. It's in a case. I It It missed me pretty hard. Not because I think it's bad, but because I don't

care enough about Mario Kart. Um, uh, Jamie and I have been devouring it. Jamie actually has fallen in love with Mario Kart. So now it's really helpful to have Mario Kart's a great thing when you have someone in your household that's like, "Let's go." Like she'll at some point that door will open. And today while I'm working, she'd be like, "Yeah, but like what if knockout though?" Sure. And did I tell you Okay, can I can I split into a bit of a happy story? Sure. Uh, I forget if I mentioned this on the show, but um, we'll play Knockout. And I've only gotten first in Knockout like once online. An online Knock knockout, for those of you not familiar in Mario Kart World, um, it's a 24 person online game where every lap you lose four people. Like the last four people are knocked out and you can either go do another one or you can watch the race. We just watch the races and we pick our favorites and then we get excited after we watch the race and like the our favorite person uh driving the cow and this other one comes and then in our

next game we see that that person's in it and we get hyped like it's a celebrity all of a sudden like in our lobby. Like there's this weird metatitextual thing with having 24 people and a really good like follow camera system where like we treat it as a bit of like our entertainment along with what we're playing and it has brought more joy than I should be comfortable saying in a public space like it's really really really engaging and it's not doing anything new. games have done this forever, but like I think it's the world and the art design and the the way the camera angles work and like it's just fun to like scream at a TV at someone in another country playing a video game you just lost with your partner and like get super hyped when like someone comes from the end and b like takes the lead. It's great. Um, sorry that was a a tangent, but it made me smile so I It's a good one. Thought I'd share. Oh, it's a good one. It's a good one. Yeah. Uh, it seems like Sorry, just to go back. It seems like spending less on AAA mostly buying physical more. Um,

yep. Some people stable jobs haven't changed. Too old for the demo. Um, yeah, it seems like less purchases. It seems like I don't know 70 60 to 70% feels like it's less. Yeah. Um, I think I think notably I didn't see anyone say they were spending more. I think I saw one one person say they were spending. I missed that one. Right. But like I I I think the feeling, right? So, and this is another thing, right? The the feeling of do am I spending the same amount is generally not accurate. It's like unless you're actually bookkeeping, right? So, like if I did a little math, I could tell you exactly how much I spent year-to- date in any given time range, right? Because I have to do the math for taxes. Um Yeah. And that feeling is generally not accurate. If you feel like you've spent the same, you've probably spent either slightly more or significantly less. You just don't remember it.

Yeah. Accurately, right? Also, yeah, the backlog thing, too, as SCFL just sort of stated, like I will not um I really want to play Death Stranding 2. I'm not going to buy it until I beat Rebirth. Rebirth Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has been sitting on my PlayStation. I will not do it. like I I and I will buy it and play it eventually, but I think I'm I'm I'm falling into that as a money saving/money deferring thing if it's not directly for work. Um yeah, cuz I have a wedding to plan and I don't know if you know this, um weddings are expensive. I have so many feelings which I will save for another time. It is okay. It is okay. Matt, are you ready to talk about expensive things? Yes, I believe I've transitioned us into that. Thank you. All right, let's talk about magic. Side note, real quick. I made this

graphic. I uh Nem Fry, I believe, is the artist. I I found this online of the Revenant with the giant bonkhammer, and I fell in love with it. So, I wanted to give full credit uh that I put the Magic cards that were banned in the graphic. But I just love this little drawing uh that they did. I I just absolutely love it. Yeah. Okay. So um it has been no secret that magic standard So so okay let let's let's do a brief let's do a brief thing way back when Richard Garfield invented magic we're going way back. Yeah. Right. Okay. He invented um the game without the idea that there would be enough cards for people to play with the maximum copies of a card in a deck. In fact there was originally no four-up rule. And eventually rules got made that sort of began taking cards out of the pool that were too good, right? We had the original power nine and all that stuff. And so eventually magic divided into type one and type two. Type one was like everything. And type two is the

past two years. What we now call standard. This is the standard way that magic's worked forever is there's a rotating window of this is what the current format is. And that keeps it from getting super overpowered or super stale. And as cards rotate out of standard, they rotate into other formats. And so you can keep using your cards. Recently, Wizards went from a 2-year standard to a three-year standard for what I will summarize here as reasons. Some good, some questionable, but reasons. They had reasons for this. And then problems. Because it turns out that when you have 50% more cards in the pool, more people find more ways to break the format over your knee. And so standard has been in a really

unhealthy place for what could be argued a long while. It got way worse when the last set um Tarquir Dragontorm got printed and brought with it a card called Corey Steel Cutter, which I could literally do a design club and I might with Jeff on like how in the world did this get through QA. Sure. Uh because it has too many words that are all very powerful. And so lots of people were kind of doom and gloom about the state of standard, right? Which is the way that a lot of people start playing Magic, right? For Magic players, this is a thing that like care about. Not even if we don't play standard because if standard is unhealthy, it's harder for people to get in, right? Standard should be the cheapest format and the easiest to enter. It's not in a lot of cases, but it should be in theory. And a lot of people thought that Wizards wasn't going to do anything. And we were waiting and waiting and waiting for the June 30th ban announcement, which was

the the scheduled time. We knew this like way in advance that like June 30th was then they were going to ban stuff ahead of the rotation which takes place in uh the end of August, early September. This was going to do be it. And everyone was like, are they going to do anything? Are they going to change the format? Is it just going to be more the same? No changes, you know, we'll wait for rotation, whatever. No. Wizards wound up with the hammer and banned seven cards, which is way more cards than normally ever get banned in any format all at once. Seven cards is an incredibly high number of cards. Yeah. Is it normally what? Three. Well, it can be. So, when it's an emergency ban, it's like one, maybe two. Yeah. In a normal band cycle, it's like three, maybe. or like it'll be something that's less impactful. Like this got restricted in vintage. Vintage, by the way, not a real format. You can play with every card that's ever been printed. Some of

them you can only play with one of, which means it doesn't really play much like a format and plays like two grown people throwing money at each other trying to feel something again. Um. Whoa. A vintage deck costs more than a down payment on a house. I know, but that's such a There was something about your tone. Listen, A, correct. Bravo. Well done on the analogy. B, there was something about the tone, the delivery, and your facial expression just spiking into the camera that like it like I I like I went back for a second. I was like, whoa, did I just I just felt some fire. I I have I have strong feelings about Legacy and Vintage and why Wizards is killing them, but we'll leave that for another day. So, um, the they took swings at seven cards, which I will now name for people who care about Magic cards. Cory Steel Cutter, Hardfire Hero, Up the Beanstalk, Monstous Rage, Hopeless Nightmare, Abuo's Awakening, and This Town Ain't Big Enough, all got hit with the banhammer all at the same time. That

means that four decks, which by my rough back of the napkin math, occupied about 80% of the global standard metag game, got nerfed into being unplayable. There were the now in their current format some of them took parts of themselves and became other decks as as as it should, right? Several of them are just unplayable now. The the big boogeyman of the format in the last uh pro tour was is it prowess? Um which caused mono red aggro to completely change the way that it functioned in order to combat is it prowess? And when you have a tier one deck pre-sideboarding against the other tier one deck, the metag game is in a bad place. Um, is it prowess is now 50 and a half% generously. It's like barely over 50% win rate. It's boring. No one plays it even with VV. um and a bunch of other uh decks that were um seen as

oppressive or unfun have gotten taken out, which means that a lot of people are getting to play standard again in a fun way, which is really good. Um that's I saw that as Okay. Anyway, I'm gonna keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. I'm interested. I think Annie is too. I just I I'm play Magic like But also Will's like Will plays Magic. I Yeah, I've been playing a lot of Magic. Basically, what they did was they took a they took a format and a game that was unfun and very one-dimensional and have made it multi-dimensional and fun again by banning seven cards. And it's fascinating. the I I took uh I have um I'm I pay for a subscription to a service that gives me access to the complex metagame statistics for Magic Arena, which is one of the primary

places that people play Standard and the Metagame Snapshot beforehand and after is night and day different. It has been fascinating to see the change in the Magic community. Magic community was not happy. Magic community was very doom and gloom. And now people are like, "Oh man, I found this random pile of 60 cards that like might work. I guess I'll try it." Instead of, "Oh, this dies to the same three things that everything dies to. I guess I won't bother." Can we Can I ask a Can I Because you I I play Magic in the Micro, right? Like I If there's a set that I'm interested in, I grab it. I play it. Sure. Uh and I and I get in and I get out. I I I'm I'm a I'm a grazer, right? I feel like Will, it's it's you are the ecosystem. Like you understand you are I am just the let's say uh the the ring of fire, not the Johnny Cash one, the one from the Planeteers where where Will is

Captain Planet like like that of Magic the Gathering. Sure. Um in my opinion, and I can judge this off of Hearthstone because I still am kind of deep in Hearthstone. Sure. Um, for a for a let's pretend for a moment that it's not even pretending. Wizards or any collectible card gamers, all they're going to do is keep ramping up as many sets as they possibly can release uh in order to basically uh make as much money as they can. That's their job. Sure. Like rock and roll, right? That that's that's the thing. But do you think a healthy ecosystem is in those sets making sure that sometimes the cards swing to the point where like it's almost like a a pressure and release valve? Like do you think this is somewhat by design? like they they're doing a thing where like these decks became so prevalent in in the game play that at that level and then that format and then they knew they would release it which would then make

the community happy and go towards different things and then they'll eventually like go back to it. Like is that the plan? In a perfect world the bands wouldn't be necessary. The the sort of eb and flow would occur naturally within the card design, right? So there is this cycle of questions and answers, right? So the question is um is there a uh right what's the cool new thing? Well, the cool new happening thing in Final Fantasy is we got multiple new pieces of reanimator. Take thing out of graveyard. Doesn't matter how much it costs. Put big thing in play from graveyard, right? We'll probably get an answer to that, like a compact answer to that. But that cycle shouldn't be oppressive. It shouldn't be so much that like because what's bad for the companies and for profit is when people don't want to play their game because it's poorly balanced, right? So like while there is some desire to push sets in new ways, those

ways aren't necessarily more powerful. They're more interesting and different dimensions, right? Trying to change the way it's played. Like what is um uh what's the next set that's coming out? Edge of Eternities. We're getting spaceships, Matt. Okay. It's it's a sci-fi set. Will there will there be new mechanics in that set? Like that go Okay. Have they announced what they are? Yeah, spaceships have a new mechanic called station where you essentially have to um instead of using creatures once like a there's a there's a mechanic already called vehicles where a creature has to get in the vehicle and drive it and that has caused the way that that rules interaction work has caused some issues. So stationing a spaceship is more difficult than driving a car. Imagine. Right. So that whole mechanic is part of the next set. Um, and that also when when you told me it was called station, all I thought of was Bill and

Ted's bogus journey of station. Uh, those in the no. Yeah. Get Yes. Hold on. This is This is correct. It is in fact getting the robot shinji. Um, but so is it different than equipment like in like or artifacts? Yeah. So um we don't need to go into it. I I just I I Yeah, there will be new things, right? Um the I I I think that I I think that this is true, right? The that Magic bans stuff for the same reason anyone bans stuff to make people buy things. But I think there is a there is a vested interest in player trust and in um faith in the stability of of the format, right, of the game, right? Because one of the things that makes people not want to buy in is if the reputation that the game has is for printing janky, broken, overpowered stuff that just gets banned immediately. That's a big feel bad for everyone

involved. It feels bad for the designers. It feels bad for the players. It feels bad for people who are looking at the game from the outside thinking about getting it. So, um, my hope is that this is the last time we need to do this. But and and the very interesting take that they did here, right? They probably could have gotten away with three of these. Sure. But they went they went seven. Correct. Cory Steel Cutter, Up the Beantock, and Monstrous Rage were the big three that everyone was asking to be banned, but the other ones all are specific answers to the next potential problem. So those three were are all hideously designwise absolutely broken. the remaining four are preemptively banning against what will now become a problem. And to Barry's point, like it's just sell more packs, sure, but I think it's also in like I think there's different ways that collectible card game companies sell more packs. Some of them are more nefarious than others. I think this eb and flow is not one of the

nefarious ones. It's one way you sell more packs is to have a healthy and everchanging ecosystem in your card game. Otherwise, why would you buy more packs? Like, like that's just the game continuing, right? So, I also to to that point, right? Um I think an important note is that of these cards of these seven cards, only two of them are rare. The others are common or uncommon. Uh hopeless nightmares are common. this town. Monstous rage, uh, up the beantock, and hardfire are all uncommon. The only two rares are AOS and Corey. But commons, commons have a tendency, again, I'm leaning more on Hearthstone at this point. Um, commons have a tendency of being able to exacerbate the problems of legendaries, right? Like there's an interaction or something where you're like, "Oh, yeah." Well, they're ubiquity becomes part of their strength, right? Like every deck,

like they tend to be less narrow, right? rares, the more powerful things get. And this is true in a lot of things. You can see this in ARPGs, too. Uniques are narrow and powerful, but they're very narrow. If you want to do exactly the thing the unique is offering you, that's great. But most of the time, what you want is just a piece with nice stats, right? And a lot of these are just the piece with nice stats. Monster rage was a problem in general because it went in every red deck of the magic players only are interested in one thing and it's disgusting. Stats, right? Correct. Yeah. Um well, look, uh side note, I I did this went by and I wanted to make sure it didn't. I did not see this bio. It makes me very angry to hear about it and I will look at it later and see. Um I I think that I look I think this is good. I I love Magic. I wish I played it more. Um I like it when I hear h sort of things that make the Magic community

happy. Um, yeah. I don't know. I think uh this seems like a thing that made more people happy than mad and therefore because I don't fully understand it, I'm all for it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Uh I'm going to say that we've got time to do one more story and then we're going to do our uh traditional midtowow ad break and then we'll move on to our main stories. That sounds like a really good plan. All right, Matt. If I told you that an MMO shooter that relied on great gameplay or great gunplay, I guess that was much maligned and forgotten by its community was shutting down in the year 2025. What would you think? What would I think? If I gave you that description, would you think that Bungie had finally pulled the plug? It sounds like it's par for the course, right? Yeah. Okay. Instead, it's not Destiny's fine.

Anthem is finally going offline. And my question chat f chat from like two years ago. You thought you used them, but it's they're not right. Yeah. Right. Anthem still existed? And the answer is yes. Yes, it did. Um, sort of kind of in the embarrassed sense of yes, it sort of existed in that there were servers that no one was using. Um, right. Yeah. No, the general response to this has been way I love the question marks. I mean, this is this is kind of it, right? Like it's like here or here, right? Or or not giving it anything, right? Yeah. A lot of thoughts and prayers, right? Okay. All right. All right. Hold it. Let's back up for a second. Let's back up. The story of Anthem has been long long told. A lot of which I believe by Jason Shrier. Um I want to make sure we're not

dunking on on the people who were were hired to make it and do all this stuff. In fact, I I just think it's f it it seems so shocking that in this day and age of live service games getting shuttered like 3 weeks after they launch that Anthem was still going. And maybe that's a that's a structure of EA, right? Uh, also I I believe uh EA did say that no one was laid off due to this. Like no one's losing their job. Good. That that is, you know, that's that's EA reading the room. Like that's true. Understanding there are a lot of people that are clinically unable to read rooms and I'm glad EA is taking steps to not be among them. Yeah. Uh, look, I Anthem. I guess this is the thing. I feel like I should give my thoughts on Anthem because this is probably the last time we'll ever talk about Anthem. That's fair. Um, Anthem was a game that I really wanted to love. I never played it. But even when I saw like the stuff for it

just looked like, oh man, what if Iron Man but in Jurassic Park and I was like, yeah, okay. That that thing in the middle there definitely looks like a Hulkbuster suit. like it feels like you have these cool suits and whatever. Um, uh, I don't know. And and and then every story I heard whittleled away at my excitement for it. I never ended up playing it and now here we are. Um, it it it felt it felt like a a a neat idea that was hampered by gameplay mechanics hoisted onto it and uh never had enough content to make it interesting enough to survive its sort of like pseudo liveveness of it all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, this is an online only game, which means that Anthem will cease to exist January 12th, 2026. It will vanish into the ether. Um, which, you know, we we'll talk more about later. Mila uh brings up a great point. Anthem, you mean the Warframe gateway game? I mean kind I mean Anthem played much

differently from my understanding to to Warframe, but I could see it as a vehicle into that. Remember we did an episode forever ago about how Warframe was benefiting from Destiny's ad campaigns? Yeah. Yeah, cuz it did. You remember how Warframe is still winning over those games? I look again, I'll never I will never cheer for Destiny not doing well. I I don't know why I I love Destiny so much and it's a game I will not play because as we mentioned, you can't figure out how to start it again, right? Um in a timely manner. Um I just I I would love nothing more than for Destiny to thrive. Correct. Um that being said, I I think two things can be true. I think we're very glad that Warframe continues to thrive, right? as like someone who who's played who played entirely too much Warframe in the past uh and is slowly coming back. Next East, I went to their dev keynote thing uh in the main stage and like it

was funny. We we were talking about uh who was saying it earlier? Someone was talking about how they really liked just listening to people who know what they're talking about even if they don't know the vernacular. Yeah. Um uh but basically that's what I did cuz I'm so far gone in Warframe. But Reb and Taylor and the and the devs up there like not Taylor. Um Megan, what? Megan, thank you. Um basically talking about all the cool stuff they're excited for and like Spiderframe and like all this other stuff. Uh like it made me excited about it again. And I I wish I had the time to dive in, but you know. Yeah. Um all that to say, if you're still playing Anthem, I'm sorry that the servers are going away to be clear. Um, I think this is an this will forever be remembered as an interesting experiment by EA at minimum. Uh, there are definitely a bunch of things that people have brought up in chat about like the game being fundamentally broken and like all of those are true. It's just

fascinating to me that it was still running and no one cared, right? Like that's the really interesting part, right? For Oh, you know what I should do? You know what might get me back into Warframe in a really weird way? Playing Anthem before it goes away. No. Um, you silly Billy. Um, silly Willie. No, the the the Switch 2 apparently has like a updated port of it, I believe. Like that will run better. Not that it ran kind of fine on the Switch one. Um, and now you have cross progression so you don't like at one point. Oh, so you can bring your PC account over. Yeah, I should do that. I think my PC account is way better. Oh man, I'm going to have to I'm going to have to dig through that sea of of of digital nonsense. Yeah. Um uh with motion controls. That's crazy. What's What's the What's the motion controls for bullet jump? No, it's just Yeah. Right. Okay. Great. Awesome. That's you have to do for 15 minutes. Um

Yeah. Right. Through through a level. That's right. Uh remember kids, get yourself a foot pedal so you don't develop an RSI bullet jumping. Uh, and rebind your melee attacks to your free scroll wheel. Trust me. Also, reticulate your splines. Uh, and they're not amateurs. They're not amateurs. They've already reticulated all of the splines. Of course, it's it's it's noon 18. Do you know where your reticulated splines are? Of course you do. That's right. Um, all right. All right. All right. Uh oh, there's not a dedicated daft. Oh, no. Oh, but the Switch version does run better. Everything. I mean, if it's a Switch version, it's going to run better on the Switch 2 because Switch 2 is better hardware. I know. I was really hoping there was a dedicated one. It is now time for us to do some advertisements while Twitch receives uh ads for things that they can buy. We're going to give you ads for things that you can't buy for a little bit, and then we'll be back with our next story, which is a pretty

big one that I think a lot of you are going to be very interested in in doing. So, Matt, take it away. Well, I'm going to send you a link. Um, if you could put it in both of the chats. Yeah, absolutely. I could 100%. So, this is actually I'm doing something that's real even though you can't buy it. Okay. Uh, here we go. Hi, friends. Matt from Extra Credits here. Are you interested in me going into cinema podcasting places and just flipping the script andor the table the script was on? Then I really do want you to check out the phenomenal podcast that I was on called Screen Drafts where we drafted like sports teams the top seven action comedies. Uh basically uh myself and Patrick Williams uh of YouTube fame and Nebula fame and night of the coconut fame went back and back back and forth headto-head trying to figure out what the best action comedy was of all time. I got to get to the number one spot and what I picked will uh break your brain but you'll also be like yeah. So, please

check that out. I'm super super proud of it. It came out so well. Uh, I know I'm contining without the music, getting a little heartfelt here. It was the most fun I'd had on an audio podcast in so long. And I've been podcasting for 10 plus years. Like, it was just a really great discussion. If you like movies and people nerding out about odd things about them, uh, please check that out. Um, yeah. Number one will shock you. Okay. All right. Will, you ready? Yes. Hi there everyone. W from Extra Credits here. Here to remind you of something you have and are probably neglecting. That's right. I'm here to tell you once again about sleep cycles. That's right. It's not merely a way that you can go from point A to point B using a device with two wheels and two pedals while you sleep. No, it is in fact the rhythm which causes you to rest. Please don't neglect yours. I'm so tired. I'm so tired, y'all. I had to force reset mine after sleeping way too much and way too

late during break. I'm I'm very tired. Please, please take care of your sleep cycle. Please respect it, love it, care for it, nurture it, you know, water it, do whatever, but like don't don't ignore it. Thanks. Water your sleep cycle. Water your sleep cycle. You heard it here first, folks. Um, nice. [Laughter] You're not getting dogpiled. You're not getting dogpiled. Though to be fair, uh Duckington does raise a great uh point that we we haven't done this in forever. Um we should probably explain that while we are aware while we are aware that this is not breakfast time for everybody. Um it is in fact breakfast time somewhere and also a state of mind. We encourage That's right. Whatever you're hearing your breakfast, whatever you're eating right now is breakfast. Yeah, if you're not eating anything right now, then you haven't had breakfast, and you probably should.

That's right. Even if it's just a snack. I, for instance, am having uh Ultra Sunrise Monster for breakfast. What does a sunrise taste like, Will? Orange. Not now. I want I was hoping you'd say freedom, but uh No. Uh I don't know what that tastes like. I'm an American. Um uh hell yeah. Corn nut and peach juice. Woo. Right. Yeah. No. Um. Uh. No. This tastes like I want to be clear. Not the fruit, the color. It tastes like the color orange. Not the the flavor orange. It's 5:00 somewhere. Yeah, that's right. I'm worried that this is going to splash. The ice is going to splash when I when I pour it in. Yeah. I like uh Mystic Manzo having my doctor power because seeing a doctor regularly is good for your health. Too splashy. Too splashy. If only there were some kind of device that was used to separate different parts of a liquid, like parts that were

solid out from parts that were liquid. You've been in a nice little cold tumbler. All All I'm hearing is that you should invent a cold resilient like a like a vacuum thermos French press. That's all I'm hearing. I'm hearing excuses, Matt. I feel like that's a billion dollar idea. I cannot tell you. A uh Hey, oopsie. Thank you very much. Uh I love this mug as well. It does have a game face on it, which you can barely see. Go check it out in the extra extra credits. If you'd like your own. Uh but uh this coffee is easily the the the the most like awake I've felt in days. Like cold brew is legit and probably very bad for me right now, but uh I'm happy. Yeah. All right, chat. Let's talk about Let's talk about talking. I do love real. Sorry, Rory. First thing I hear is

calling me out for not eating breakfast. Sorry. Eat breakfast. You should. It's good. Um, okay. We're going to talk about a topic now. And I want to be very clear that we're both we're gonna take this slow because God, we've heard so many hot takes over the past two weeks. Matt, I'm G. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's that's correct. It is. Um, so let's talk about Stop Killing Games. Let's do some Let's do some groundwork first. We're going to lay out some stuff. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about where they're at. Stop killing games is a consumer movement largely but not entirely focused in the EU and the UK that is uh seeking to end the practice of de of publishers specifically according to them but in general the practice of discontinuing service for games that have an online component at the end of their life. For instance, games like The

Crew. We've covered the lawsuit against The Crew before. There's a single player portion to The Crew and a multiplayer portion. It is obviously understandable the company would no longer maintain the multiplayer servers at some point, but the single player portion could be done locally and they instead chose to take the entire thing offline, rendering all copies of the crew useless. Stop Killing Games aims to make that practice illegal uh through a consumer movement. Um uh and this has gotten a lot of traction and discussion over the past two months I would say has really been it. It's been talked about slightly more than that in the past. Um and then it sort of went dormant and then there was a whole bunch of and we're not going into this. I want to be so crystal that we're not going into it. I will merely say that it reached prevalence again due to some internet drama. That's all that's relevant to this conversation. There was internet drama

and then it came back up. The reason that we're talking about it today is that it crossed sort of the million signature mark which is necessary for petition in the EU to begin being considered which is cool, right? That is a cool thing that a million people even with the with the with the um the possible brigading of bots signing it, right? Like they've they're working on that. That's that's why it's a sort of so they've increased their goal from 1 million to 1.4 4 million to give themselves a buffer room to still meet the target even if some signatures are found to be invalid because that would actually be a great way to sink this movement would be to flood their petition with fake signatures that people knew were going to get caught and then um on examination the petition would fail because of fake signatures and blah blah blah without any like tinfoil hating right I don't know that that happened but like they are trying to leave themselves a buffer room or signatures to fail to meet scrutiny. Yeah, because again this is something

that is going to uh the oh god I'm going to butcher this. People in the EU please let me know more. But basically the petition is not just like a change.org thing. This is an actual thing that can change governance if enough people sign it that it has to go in front of the people that can make laws. That is correct. So it needs to be like you know Yeah. This is Yeah. This is an actual legal procedure that they are attempting to begin to cause consumer protection laws in the EU to render some portion of current industry practices illegal. That is their goal. And it's been really interesting to watch this, right? I I would say that as an observer watching a lot of the dialogue and I'm going to be I want to again I want to be so crystal clear about this. the good faith dialogue about the means and methods of this initiative specifically, right? Because that is a

very different cry than a lot of the other internet drama that's cropped up that's been about mudslinging or, you know, hot takes or whatever. And we don't want to do any of that cuz we're I don't know if you noticed but like Matt and I refrain generally speaking from ultra spicy hot takes because we prefer nuance. You can get you can get hot takes elsewhere. Yeah. If you're if you're looking for the spice that's great. Um the reason why this is a long form show is so we can actually discuss things that are going on. Um, yeah. And it's been interesting catching up on all this cuz I same I well I've I've kind of gleaned the drama and I think I understand what people were saying or who was upset about X Y and Z. But at the same time, unless I've missed something, both parties in said drama around this initiative have both been kind of like, stop harassing the other person, please.

Yeah. Right. Is that is that does that feel correct? Yeah. So that's good. Um, yeah. And and the biggest Oh, sorry, maybe I'm jumping ahead. What What's the next step in this, Will? So, the next step is that they're going to vet all the signatures and then it's going to potentially become some kind of EU law, or or an element of it will like it I they this like what stop Killing Games is proposing doesn't just become law with enough signatures. It goes in front of people and then a law is developed. Some portion of it will be workshopped, I guess we could say, in by a body into something that resembles consumer protection law with consultation from people in the games industry. And I think that that part's also really important, right, is that that there does need to be understanding. They need subject matter experts who are not necessarily the people who are super for

this, right? They need balance subject matter experts to talk about this with lawmakers. I know, by the way, not to get too atomic on this. If you're an American, this is how things work in the EU. Ain't it nice? Um, so they need subject matter experts to come and talk about this and to develop and workshop it into a law that will accomplish this consumer protection goal without essentially hamstringing the entire industry because I I think that there are so let's take a let's take a simple provision right a simple idea that we've talked about in the past one of the things that stop killing games is um sort of that is floated in this sphere whether or not it's directly their idea that has floated in this sphere is when an MMO goes offline, the server code should be released so people can do what happened with City of Heroes, right? So something like Asheron's Call isn't lost forever or a lot of the other dead MMOs that have

sort of from that time have folded over the ages and are now lost to history, right? It is art that is lost that sing the the server code should be released. That is so much more complicated than I think anyone including Matt and I like really has room to talk about. Right. That is a complicated process. There's a complicated um that like both a the process of building a game so that the server code can be released and safely releasing the server code without divulging a lot of the um weaknesses and vulnerabilities in it that would make a future game by the same studio less say for players as an example, right? Um and so this is this is a thing that's going to need a lot of consultation and and time. So, the there was a video that came out uh who who's the gentleman who started again because I've been staying away from the drama. Um

Oh god, I cannot remember his name. I could have told you his name before you asked and then I know. I'm so sorry. Anyway, he dropped a new video. We just We had a thing up on the screen about it. Um scrolling up. Scrolling up. Ross something. Yeah, Ross. Anyway, we dropped a new video about uh I guess video games Europe. Uh, which I'm still What? Okay. What is video games Europe? I'm on their website. They have a manifesto. They have who is on their like the board, which seems like a lot of people from with someone from Roblox, someone from Epic Games, some of Electronic Arts, Nintendo. Like it's all these high up things that are basically like it's like an industry trying to make video games sort of at least what they're saying like a fair and balanced place in the EU. Yeah. So, yeah. Sarah's saying it's the money lobby. Now, that's I know that that's what the video has said. I just want to make sure because I don't know. I'm not right. I'm not familiar enough with it because I don't live in Europe. Um, sure. This does seem like

down to the little animated uh kid playing a video game over the EU flag on their website and their and a thing called our manifesto, a a graphic with a bunch of 12 different points that they want to do that looks like it's been saved and compressed nine times because it is not sharp at all. Um, it seems like like just based on verbiage that it's the money lobby. Like even if I didn't know who was on the board, I would read this and be like, "Oh, it's video game companies." Video game companies are are trying to make it so they can regulate themselves. That's That seems like what it is. Does that feel That feels accurate to me. Correct. Um, Ross Scott is behind Stop Killing Games. Yeah. Um, so if they're paying attention, if a group

of all of these people are paying attention, what I gleaned from Ross' latest video is that that means that there's something kind of working. They made a statement basically about this that he breaks down. You can go watch his video about that. And again, this is only his side of it. That's totally fine. Like there's there's lots of different um ways that you can sort of look at this and not not every like I think the nuance that will and I have noticed that has been being lost across either the drama or just like people that are pro or against this is sort of the complexity of what what the best way of moving forward with this would be. So let's pretend for like because okay I'm going to back up. Even if video games Europe is the money lobby, right? And they're saying like, "We understand in their statement like, "We understand it can be disappointing for players when it doesn't happen, but the industry ensures that players are given fair notice on the perspective changes in compliance with local consumer and protection laws." Well, if a million of your constituents are saying that it's not, and they don't

feel like that's true, you saying that doesn't make it. So, I'm not saying that everything in Stop Killing Games is the way it needs to go cuz it could there's many different ways that I could see it hurting different things, etc. But that you cannot deny like making a statement like this and saying no, no, no, it's fine. That doesn't make any sense because a million people at least are saying it's not fine. So, you saying that doesn't really make it fine. Now, I don't know the right way to make it fine, but people seem to be upset about a couple different things. And the protections, the the the selfproclaimed protections by this um by this group to work with the EU. I what they're doing currently doesn't seem like it's enough or else this petition wouldn't exist. I agree with that. Um and and I'll I'll go one further. For me, I agree that there is that not only is there a demonstrated problem that people are I agree that the problem is

this end of life the way that end of life is often but not always handled for some but in my case not all games, right? And I think that like the the this sort of has a lot of the the branding problem of a lot of um of a lot of movements, which is the nuance does not carry through the branding. Right. Stop killing games. All games all the time. Stop it. Right. Okay. Great. Awesome. Can you say more? You have attention. You don't have uh like throughput into that. Yeah. Like Okay. So we we've determined no matter what video games Europe says that people are still upset about the way that this is being done in the EU. That is pretty flipping clear. Yep. So then will in our infinite in our infinite 18 to 29 demographic wisdom. That's right. What do we think would be the way to

move forward with like what what could be a solution? and Brad and Janet and Rocky, you can message me on Blue Sky, Rocky, if you're watching this on Nebula. Um, what do we think the like a possible solution could be? Because both sides seem to it seems like miss the point like not not miss the point, I think everyone is concerned with their top one to two issues and therefore not thinking about the majority of all of the issues, right? So I think uh I think for me the biggest the biggest thing is having single player games and I'm going to focus right now on on single player games. I think for me the first thing I would suggest is that all single player games that h exclusively have like call home for DRM or other purposes that those have a way that that can be patched out at end of life, right? to say that if

your game has no playerto-player interaction components, it needs to function without calling home. That's the easiest one and that's why I'm starting there. That is the easiest and narrowest case. And I think that one it's pretty easy to agree on, right? I think that there's there's a lot of we can we can get more complicated and therefore more difficult from that. But I think if we start with your copy of Bellatro doesn't need to call home. Now it doesn't because uh local funk is not he doesn't need to do anything right. Local funk made and blotro is fantastic and excellent right on its own. It doesn't need to call home and is a great example of kind of what they're aiming for right your copy of Bellatro on your mobile device will last forever because of course it will. Right. I own it on three different things. Right. Yeah. Three. Yeah. Three. Damn. Yeah. Right. I wish there was crossplay on it. Cross save. Cross progression.

Cross progression. Uh there is I believe I believe the save file for Botra is plain text. Yeah, but I can't get that in on a f. We don't have to get away. It's fine. Oh, I can totally make it work on your phone anyway. Nothing. Don't worry about it. I'll just keep I'll just keep clearing text three times like a psychopath, right? You know, I mean, that's fair, right? So, that that's one example. And then we start getting more complicated, right? What about games that have multiplayer and single player components? So, let's talk about like you know what came came to mind even though I didn't play it but it feels like one. Uh the the Avengers game a couple years ago. That is a game where you squad up um and make a number go up with Iron Man, right? What would be the solution in a game like that where like you like for instance that is not a continuous online world like an MMO. That to me feels like something that if it was planned well with the proper amount of funding etc. You could essentially at end of life of service make a thing where one player could host the game for three other

players and you you play the game right now. There are problems with that, right? problems like um changing and this is this is a consumer protection issue because when I purchased Avengers, I didn't purchase it with the intention of it being a peer-to-peer brokered game. I purchased it with the intention of it having a client server relationship. And that is that that and I'm using Avengers specifically as like a very narrow example, right? But like let's say for the moment that the that it is changed to do that, right? But that is also changing it in a way that I as a consumer who may have bought it under a previous model did not want. Right? So now we're starting to get into the thorny part, right? Where in order to do this, in order to do this thing where it is uh made continually accessible, there

needs to be some amount of future proofing, right? It can't just say at the end of it, great, we're going to make it peertopeer or whatever, right? Like like Matt's example of one player hosting for three other players. That's a peer-to-peer relationship. Um, right. They they need to have that in mind from the beginning, right? Um, yeah. Uh, sorry, I I'm I'm very interested in this topic and I know we only have 20 minutes left and I was just seeing if I could move my meeting so we could continue uh yammering about it. So, we'll see how that comes back. Um, yeah. So, so I think this and then obviously just to finish the thought before I get to my major portion of this. Obviously things like an MMO or stuff that is more integrated into a full-blown server side load where people are going into it. That's the hardest of these to maneuver in in the demands of what of what stop Killing Games wants. Yes, there are success stories of uh No More Heroes and things like that, but there are not No More Heroes uh City of Heroes.

Wow. Um, listen, you know, sometimes my 18-year-old mind just slips and no amount of cold brew will save it. Um, the is something that I feel like will play into what my proposed solution is. And that is truly it like like we have the rating system either Peggy or the ESRB in the US, you know, whatever it is, right? What if there was a rating system for what is essentially the type of game you are leasing? Now, the pro the reason why this won't actually happen is because no video game seller in their right mind wants to change the verbiage of you buying a video game to you leasing a video game, right? But the truth is they could get out from a lot of problems. And if the bigger games did it first, I guar if Call of

Duty basically was like, "Actually, you don't own this. You're leasing it. You're leasing it for the season and whatever." Like people would be like, "This is Here's $80." Like that's what would happen. Correct. So just be honest with it. Deal with the vitriol because you're getting vitriol somewhere else. But have a system in place that says at what level you are leasing this. And if that like for instance if a game if a single player game that calls home and it it's almost like a the rating system would be a little it almost be like a tier system in a way. What we needs to be is it can't seem like one of the end of the spectrum is actually negative. It just has to be what it does. So like a rating could be like single player calls home guaranteed to work once we stop supporting or like we we'll continue to work locally once we stop supporting it. Like and then have different levels all the way up to this game will only work for as long as our servers are up. we and then like it could be like we

promise to let you know 6 months in advance outside of a catastrophic and and here's the other thing in the ULA they're going to sign away all this stuff anyway but like it's it's let people know exactly what they were spending money on. I don't and Game Pass is actually kind of starting this. I don't think when I pay my Netflix bill every month that I own all the movies. It's a different way of thinking. Now granted, there's a value proposition which is slowly being initified and we can go into that another time, but like it's it's a methodology of thinking. And while I here's the other thing I do want to own my video games. Yeah, there should be a way to do that. There should be in this hypothetical ranking system a thing that also says whether you are owning or leasing. Agreed. Because this is the other thing and I'm sorry I'm going to read chat in a second but like

the majority sadly of people it would seem in the streaming economy actually don't care outside of the verbiage of owning their games. If you say would you rather own your game or lease a game everyone's going to say own. But the money doesn't follow that. people are myself included like I and I am more into this world than I feel like a lot a lot of the standard like across the players of video games I know there's people that are more into the world of it than I am but like case in point I wanted to reward CD Project Red for their ability to put all of Cyberpunk on a cartridge and own that cartridge now for as long as I own that cartridge and a Switch 2 that functions I can play that game. It does not need to call home. it does not need to do anything. Granted, there's updates and things that might like if they update the game, but that's that's a different story, right? Whereas, if I just downloaded the game from the Nintendo eShop, I only have access to that game for as long as the Nintendo eShop functions. Now, what is

safer? It all depends on your lifestyle and the trust you put in a company. Yeah. So, so I I I would love to see Okay. It's almost like the the US film rating system where you have a rating, but then underneath it, it could be like, and I'm not saying we use the same vernacular, but PG-13 for explicit language, uh, partial nudity, and gore, right? You could have a ranking in one of these categories that would say um uh calls home server guaranteed to work post life um you like owned versus leased or like some I'm not the verbiage person here but like you could have subsets so then people would start to know and then it feels like outside of a pure game preservation

uh standpoint, the consumers would be mostly sated. Does that make sense? I I think the goal for like a first order goal that is e much easier to satisfy than the structural request that they're making is a more transparent industry model for communicating to players what the expectation of that product is. Right? I have no illusions that my my cute little pope, right? I got I got it. It's going away. But this is this is my Popto Bowinger Googlin. I got I got them on a pin. There's an NFC in this pin by the way. Very happy about that. Um right is going to exist once Square servers for Fantasy 14 go down. And I have no illusions that that will be my entire life. Right. There will be a point in my life when the 14 servers go down and I will shut it down for the last time and that'll be the end of it. Right? But that's conveyed to me because it's an MMO, right? So I think that if there were more communication while people

would be unhappy about it if that communication were transparent that would solve some of the dissatisfaction though not and I'm not saying it will the fundamental underlying issue which is which is a separate structural problem right but a good start is I agree with Matt communicating more clearly like what's what's on offer right um The other Yeah. Like it it is I think that's the only way you get out of this like honesty through what you are selling. Yep. And and again going back to the amount of uh signatures that this this petition to get in front of the legislature. I I I'm sorry. I don't know the proper vernacular of the EU. There's a EU legislature. Yeah. Um, that says to me, no matter what Video Games Europe is saying, that people are still unhappy with the self-regulation.

So, if Video Games Europe was smart, they'd get out ahead of it and be like, "Oh, okay. Looks like we're not quite doing this right." And it's funny, I there's probably more corporate reasons why they don't want a system like this, but I think the majority of it, at least again, from my untrained 18-year-old mind, is that they're afraid to change the vernacular of what people are paying for. They they would rather obuscate that through buying language of the past because that's safe and known. But I think we've seen through purchasing through through how human beings seem to purchase things across the last five to 10 years, people make a stink and then they spend money anyway. Correct. So you could get ahead of that. Like I listen, I know they're all listening right now. Every one of them watches this show. Every one of the board members of Video Games Europe tunes in religiously. Also, hello. Please listen to that podcast I sent before. Um, but like I just

I think this is a lot of people being scared to change a business model when the data kind of already shows that it would have a rough patch and then people would just do it and more people would be happy at the end. Then the last piece of that puzzle is to figure out game preservation for things that are more online focused. there could be. Okay, let's I'm I'm now cuz again, not every game has the money to do all of these things in it. And I don't want to curtail the ability of developers or publishers to make things. Oh, I knew Jimmy, I knew you were here. Um, welcome. Uh, golf on Saturday, right? Um, and of course, I mean, walk about mini golf and VR. Come on, why don't go outside? Um, the the you could have something in in the and I keep calling it a rating system. I don't think that's the right thing, but I don't have the good term for it yet. You could have something in there that's like um an icon or something that means um while the game might not be playable at the end of its

lifetime, they will uh donate to reputable uh game preservation society's original servers or some like even like upon time that they are no longer viable to help the company or I I again my vernacular is terrible here but there's there's ways where it would not let will Will Will Will and I play the MMO that we wanted to play. We know that it still exists in a in a library or in a museum of its country of origin, right? Like there's that might be something that we have to be comfortable with. We can't always play everything that has ever been made before. That's not how right any thing has ever worked. And and I think that Demon Works has a really good point, right? The game companies also don't want to talk about the end of the game on its release. And I also think that that's true. That's that's great. I think we nor like if they were smart and long if if they were long-term focused, if that was the pitch for the game.

Yeah. Like cuz anything can happen. There's no question. But like if that was the pitch and that was sort of how long for people discuss this kind of stuff, yeah, there'd be some problems and some trepidations and people would fail and companies would have issues. But overall, if there was honesty upfront for a long enough period of time, if someone, let's say like Destiny, then came out with a road map after nine people and nine companies had failed and they we've kind of gotten through the stuff, there'd be a time when you'd start to be able to based on a company's history or people learning things start trusting what companies were saying again. Like you'd be able to glean information and be like, "Ah, okay, they're being honest." Um, yeah, right. Yeah. Not agile, Odin. It's not agile. Uh, but like there'd be a thing where like even if in their thing like this is our plan if supported, this is where we're going. Obviously, anything can go wrong, but we really believe in this and we think you're going to love it. So, we're hoping that this is what like just change it. Like, just be honest with the

people like God. Another example here of of human psychology with what we're purchasing is Kickstarter. like millions and millions and millions of dollars are dumped into Kickstarters. Um, also we got a calendar one coming up soon, so check out wait for that. But the the like that's literal faith in a product and this is faith in an individual has a good sales pitch. If millions of dollars is being put into that sort of thing through through what is perceived as honesty, even if it's not honest, there's a ton more information there based on what's going on with said group or Kickstarter, then people will respond and reward you with honesty. The problem is then they have to out of their listen, this is going to take a yacht or two, and I'm sorry that those might have to go. No, actually, it's not going to take a yacht. It's going to maybe over the course of a year limit the yachts usage for one weekend off. I'm sorry. You can't afford to pay the staff and a

social media person in charge of talking with your dev team and your uh your whole out outsourcing group to let people know what's going on with your game and actually put it in a contextual way that people can understand and want to get behind. But that's long term and that's not agile. Um, sorry I'm ranting. Uh it's just it's infuriating that this is that that this is getting sort of lost in the either the drama or a thing or a or the the the advocacy group air quotes coming to kill it. Um, right. And and I think my big problem, right, and I'm okay, I want to be clear. I love the I love the spirit. I love the intention. I have worries about their methodology, about what they're suggesting in the future. Right? So, let me give you a an example. Let's say that part of this requires that when a game is launched, its server information or even when it's closed that it's its server side information is divulged to

the public. Right? That means that game development can't be reused because if you release server architecture to the public, it is no longer in any way secure, right? probably it's it's highly likely unless they're using like very good um sort of communication methods, right? But like anytime you really serve server authoritative information to the public, I now have concerns about the security of the servers that they're using in the future, right? And so like that's a concern that I have as a consumer is like what is this going to mean for MMOs? What is this going to mean for other games like this from a security perspective, from a consumer perspective, right? because it's consumer unfriendly to force games to be more open and less secure in some ways, right? There are companies that I trust more with my information than I do the general public. Imagine that, right? And

so I think that there's um that that's a huge thing. I think that there is a um I think that there's a whole bunch of uh Here's a question. Oh, sorry to interrupt. was saying that they feel like that's the opposite of true. Only security only security certificates matter. I don't know enough about this. It depends on the game. That's that's the other big thing is that this is on a case by case basis, right? But there are definitely cases where people have gotten a hold of um binaries for servers and done things in MMOs that they shouldn't be able to as an example. Right. I spend like as as we've discussed, I spend too much of my time in MMOs, right? Yeah. There's also uh win is saying it would prove it to the public because there would be all kinds of source people that would like eventually again it's it's it's coming down to like could could the company survive that growing pain, right? And and maybe they like the the launch of a game is the point in time where it's most needed for

it to be um functioning well, right? And so I I just have concerns about how that's going to be addressed, right? I I just want to know, right? And it feels like there isn't a that's not even on the that's not even on the radar, right? Yeah. It's not I like this. I like the sentiment. I again I don't know enough about it. Security through obscurity is not considered good enough in any other software. I agree. But you also don't advertise like which you also don't advertise your server architecture. There's also, you know, it's interesting too, like I I I I find this funny saying this in the United States at this point, but like a government agency's security architecture, right? Like they probably put a lot of money and time into the security of that. Yeah, I think a company making an MMO, depending on the size of the MMO, put some into it, but probably

and again the the the specifics of this example, I'm just talking about a game versus a government, right? Like let me let me give a concrete example. Yeah, great. Let me give a very concrete example. Currently, right now in Final Fantasy 14, um there have been a series of patches to fix a problem with exposed player data to other players through a blacklist system. Someone reverse engineered the blacklist system on the client side and was giving people access to other players like full player ID information. That's that's the kind of thing that brings this up to me, right? is that that information should be server only right and my concern is that the the relationship between the client and the server there has some amount of uh information that I don't want other clients to get right as part of it and so that there have been a large number and again this is a uh a 14 specific problem right but I I can easily see how

it extrapolates it out that there are that there's a lot of player data that I don't want other players to get that could be right as a concrete example. This is a real thing that happened and it lasted about nine months where people were using a plugin to scoop other players data right and the degree of sensitivity of that data depends on how much you care about your existence in that world. Oh, a thousand%. Yeah. Uh and also Dogbert uh this says I take this as game developers not trusted to make security systems they should do. No, I I that's definitely not it. I'm saying uh and well a maybe that's not the expertise of people but like that is a publisher or a company either choosing to not spend the money in that place or not having the money to spend in that place. It is not it is not um malice. It is uh resource management. And like if the difference was they can make this game with a medium level of security or get a high level of security but not

have enough money to make the game. There's the difference. Again, this is all different based on the size of the company. If we're talking about Microsoft, it's very different than if we're talking about Team Cherry. like there there's there's there's all different sizes here which is why again I don't think a blanket like law like certain different there's a reason why I think a and I keep calling it a rating system but it's not what it is it's it's a series of what was it it's a grade like a grade again I don't want to make it seem like one grade is worse than the other but all I think is that'd be a very good idea is clarity and and not obuscating what the long-term plan of the game is. If that was there, it would make people a lot more the people that care, which sadly are in the minority, I think, of people that play games, that information would be there to state those people. And then then this wouldn't even be a

discussion point. Like, it would be, again, we've seen, I truly believe this, through the proliferation of streaming services and things we do not own that we pay for monthly or on a onetime service fee. Yeah, as much as it doesn't make sense, and if you look at it logically, you're like, well, this is kind of a ripoff. The majority of purchasers will not care. Agree. So, why not make the loud minority happy? Work on helping game preservation and be clear with your messaging rather than be scared that you're going to lose a customer base, which I think we've not we've society has proven you probably won't. Yeah. So, did we fix it? No. But I think that this issue is often um I I think my my the big thing about stop killing games that has come up over and over is that there are not a lot of nuance conversations about specific talking points and it's just turned into

Yeah. sort of like blanket attack or blanket like uh defense I guess about it which is I think the sad part right because I do think that there is a really big nuance conversation about it like the um yeah it's a question of an architectural problem in production or consumers pushing back against both and to Barry's to Barry's point just real quick uh great how many people care versus how many people don't know I think I think it's taking into account the differential there Because how do I put it? The way like a a grading system would let more people know and then the industry would find out if that number is actually enough to to move from trying to shoot for one grading system into another. Do you know what I mean? Like you'd have the data based on projects that work and don't work. Again, this is all long-term

strategy with which corporations seem to be real real at or they don't care because it's not making people the most money in the little the littlest amount of time. Yeah. Um even though long-term if you make a good MMO, it just prints money in the long anyway. And but you have to have the you have to have the runway. Like again, this is this is why we have a two plus hour show on this stuff because again, Will and I I want to make it very clear. Will and I don't have the answers. Like I'm sure there's a bunch of holes in what we are saying. Um and everyone here has a thank you everybody for having the discussion and being super like in good faith in good faith and kind and pleasant and lovely. Like a lot of times you talk about this sort of thing on the internet and people go like hard and and try to either use bad faith arguments or things like that. This has all been both educational for me and just a really lovely discussion about possibilities here that that could be done in this space. And I think that this and and I I I want to my my sort of closing thought

on the matter is I think that that is important and I think that while I agree with the goal while I agree with the goal of stop killing games, I want to have I I want this sort of consumer movement to have these conversations frontloaded as like a nonbuzzwwordy sort of deeper conversation about what we actually want the world we're asking to live in look like. Right. And like it's less of a problem in the EU than it is here in the States, but so many times in particularly when we start dealing with the law, consumers or um uh constituents ask for a thing and they don't ask for it in the right way and then we get the DMCA, right? We get problems. We we get a thing that causes more problems than it solves because we don't have these conversations ahead of time. And that's my concern, right? I I like what they're going for, but I do want to have more of those conversations. Right. I think we're seeing um in in in global

politics, I'm not going to go fully into that, but like we have a lot of movement movements with great buzzword appeal that opens a lot of eyes. Because we are trained on headlines and so much stuff is coming at us so fast. We need to hear the thing, know it, pick a side, that's it, and like and move on because there's a hundred other things coming at us. And like we human beings are really good at compartmentalizing and putting things in boxes and categorizing them. And that's what our brains want. If they we want the simplest answer so we could be like, "We like strawberries. I hate oranges." like that that that's kind of the the the place our brains would feel happy because then we can go back to all of our other base needs. Um the the the issue I think either with stop killing games or with a lot of movements in general that actually require nuances even when you have the great buzzword and even if you have a

really good thing you're shooting for and I don't have a solution for this and and I think honestly I think stop killing games is the the proliferation of it is is one of the more effective ones and and and doing a lot of really really good stuff as far as messaging is concerned But it's it's no one on on any side of this argument's fault. We as people have been trained to just pick the side and go. Um and that's across the I mean look, you need to look no further than uh the US political structure and system right now to see like I think again I'm not going to go too deep into it. I think a lot of people are in deep deep denial and living in a fantasy land and basically like oh well my sports team is winning so haha we'll see how that comes in hurricane season but the the the way that this all goes is we and I'm I'm as guilty of this as anybody like it takes

time to have discussions it takes time to do research and we all don't have it we're everyone's being pulled in a thousand different directions um with tons of responsibilities and By the time we get to things like in our hobbies that we truly care about or in some of in some of the cases the professions of things like video games, yeah, there's no shade for anyone just sort of seeing the headline. Wow, that's a good message. Yes, I'm for that or no, I'm against it. It's just to get it moving forward and to think in long terms. We have to find a way. I I don't know. I think the big challenge is trying to figure out how to bridge top level slogan and long-term goals in a way that keeps attention. And I think if someone finds the answer to that, then we could start moving forward in a lot of different places. I agree. I agree. Um Janet comments, get in them. Tell us give us and again I I do this every time. say more words.

We don't like hot takes. You can go anywhere on the internet and get a hot take, right? You can go to your your blue sky masteradon Twitter if you're still there, but probably don't. Oh god. I mean, that's where the hottest takes are, but the they're they're they're encased in ice. Uh yeah. Anyway, um you can go to other YouTube comments, say more. Get in a real discussion. Bring up like the nuance part, right? take time to say more instead of saying the first thing that comes to your mind. I promise like some of the conversations I've seen in our comment section are like genuinely some of the best I've seen on the internet. Yeah. Uh over the course of like saying more about something that people have lots of feelings on, right? Um, I also think it's important to have discussions about things in good faith and being ready like I hope Will and I are doing right now and sort of learning as we go um on things that you are not an expert on and being very clear that you are not an expert on that but you're interested in you find it important for

whatever reasons that you do and you want to dive into it and then when there's someone brings something up that can because when you do that initially it allows you for your mind to be changed uh and it doesn't feel like an attack on your person the second you pick a team and all of a sudden something the team does is bad, you have an initial thing where it's like, well, not my team. I'm not bad. Like, whereas if you just have ideas and you're talking about them and you're not picking the side, I don't know, it just it feels a lot better and you get to learn a lot more. Yeah. Anyway, okay, let's do some good news and then we'll do our ending because I think we are out of time. We are we're getting there. We went a little long. Thank you, Jeff and Cat for pushing my meeting back so we can keep having this discussion. I I think it's a good one. I think it's an important discussion worth having. All right, let's talk about something that's uh far less controversial and much just better and happier. Hey y'all, it's SGQ week. A reminder that Oh, wait. I have a button for that. There we go. I forgot.

It's amazing what a week all day will do. Um the uh the Summer Games on Quick is this weekend. It's a charity fundraiser event. They do all kinds of cool, weird, bizarre, ridiculous speedruns. You will have cool gaming related entertainment for the sake of charity for an entire week do the thing. Um, it's it is always one of the like best exhibitions of g one of the weirdest things in gaming. I cannot stress enough how weird completing art as quickly as possible is a thing in gaming for charity. like when when you strip all the layers and like the history off of it, it's just weird and I love it. I love it so very much. Um so uh do do yeah uh there there blueprints is on the schedule. There's a lockout bingo for Monster Hunter Wild. There's all kinds of stuff. Do check out SGDQ this week. Uh maybe give some money to charity if you're able. Otherwise, a reminder that when charity marathons like this are going on, if you don't have any money, your eyeballs count as a

donation because more people watching means more people watching in sort of a compounding fashion. So, uh yeah, that that is that is it for our stories for today. I thought we could end off on some dessert. Um heck yeah. Yeah, Matt, I think I think that's it. I think that might be it. That might be everything. I think that might be everything. So, Matt, would you please lead us together in uh in our in our traditional games for breakfast signoff? The same one we do uh every week. Um the same one that we do to cement the community together every time. Yeah. And I I'm hoping that um I can remember it because as Will said, the the ending to Games for Breakfast is the same every time we do it. We haven't done it in two weeks. Um, so thank you all so much for watching here on YouTube andor Twitch andor Nebula. Uh, we love y'all. Please message us. Oh, oh, real quick before I do the outro, give them the blue sky, will. If they've made it

this long and they want to say something later that they've thought of, perhaps they could message us here and then we could discuss it further down the line on the internets. Um, but but other than that, I think the only thing left to do is that traditional outro. So, here we go. This Games for Breakfast was recorded on 7725. It was live streamed at that point, meaning it gets an L rating, right? And what that means is while you watched it on YouTube and Twitch, you could comment live on it. Now, later on in this episode's life cycle, what you would actually get is a V rating for Vaugh. That's what you're kind of getting on Nebula. [Music] because you're leasing the show, right? That's what I'm saying. Um, real quick, uh, just just a quick note for Janet while while y'all are still here. Um, before we wrap up, uh,

you may have noticed that we didn't do the intro this week. We're doing the pre-show. The pre Yeah, the pre-show. Um, over on YouTube, we're trying an experiment to see how people like this format. Um, so if you've made it this far and you've watched the entire thing, let us know what you think about that too in the comments. Um, I'll be interested to see if we get a whole bunch of comments on that or none at all. Um, the statistics say that it's not the most liked part of the show. Here, here's what I'll say. Uh, I was we were talking to Twitch on the pre-show about this and if you're interested and you're still here, this is why. You can see on the YouTube analytics and and we know this from running two YouTube channels. um if you don't actually start the the conversation about what you are talking about like what the thumbnail and and title says in the first 10 to 15 seconds uh you lose like 80% of your people. So so and it's funny because it this one will be an interesting case because what we do is we have the intro where we we get big and loud and we talk about what the show is. So, that kind of

works. But then we we did go into a a bit of a and we scheduled this will a bit of a pre-show susan of like what we did on summer break, which people might not be caring about if they're new people and don't yet love our 18 to 29year-old faces. Um, so, so when we try this again, I think next week on YouTube, I want to like do the intro and go right into the first story, like the the gaming story, because I think it would actually uh cause more people to stick. Uh, and there's a chance that once more people do stick that we would bring it back or who knows? But if you're dying, if you're dying for the pre-show in the next couple episodes anyway, come over to Twitch to start and then switch back if you're if you're interested. Yep. It's generally just housekeeping stuff over here on Twitch. So, um that is going to do it for our show over on YouTube. We'll see you all Thursday for design club. Please join us for that. Jeff and I are deciding on a topic tomorrow, so please look forward to that and we'll see you all then. Everybody

say bye Janet.