HAS PLAYSTATION LOST IT'S HEAD?! - Ep 73

[00:00:19] Speaker A: Freaking g'day. And welcome to Oceanic Gaming. Bloody Radio. This is the the podcast where we talk about video games and you sit there and listen. It's excellent. Anyways, welcome on in. It is the second of the 10th, 2023, and it is at 07:00 p.m., Australian West Standard Time, Monday night here we're coming to you live from Twitch Tvoceanicgamingradio. My name is Captain Perth and alongside. [00:00:48] Speaker B: Me, as always, Pavel overface and Grizzly Gaming. [00:00:51] Speaker A: How we go, fellas? [00:00:53] Speaker C: How are we doing? [00:00:53] Speaker D: Ahoy hoy, my good friends. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Very well, mate. [00:00:58] Speaker D: It's been a month since I've been on this show. [00:01:00] Speaker B: Four weeks. [00:01:01] Speaker A: I know, dude. And then we had the little hiatus last week. So for those listening, do apologize. It was a bit last minute, but yeah, just eventually, like that, an hour. [00:01:11] Speaker C: Before the episode, we go live. Grizz pops up, says, hey boys, it's. [00:01:17] Speaker B: My birthday. [00:01:20] Speaker C: I might be running late. Snuck that one under the radar for us. [00:01:23] Speaker D: I was out drinking many a beer on that day. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Look, as a birthday present to you, we gave you a hiatus week. [00:01:35] Speaker D: It was much appreciated, I will say, boys. But Sukai and Adrian did an absolutely stellar job in the last couple of episodes. Oh, yeah, top quality stand ins. [00:01:46] Speaker B: Like next level. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Huge episodes. Really fun. [00:01:50] Speaker B: Massive. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Nice to get some different spins on things as well as yeah, but you're right, they knocked it out of the park. [00:01:59] Speaker B: So it was fucking excellent. [00:02:01] Speaker A: But now we got the big dog back, he's here to freaking talk a bit of shit with me and it's going to be fucking great. So Pav, how was your weekend? And tell us about what you got coming up, mate, it's pretty exciting. [00:02:11] Speaker C: Well, I had a pretty chill weekend. This one at least. I haven't seen you guys in a couple of weeks. Weekend that's just passed. We had PGF, which is Perth Games Fest. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I wanted to go lots of local devs. [00:02:26] Speaker C: I had a wonderful time. Did a bunch of interviews with a friend of mine, Emmy Chan, who runs. [00:02:33] Speaker D: The Stream Perth community with me. [00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I was watching some reels or whatever and yeah, you guys look like. [00:02:40] Speaker B: You have a blast. [00:02:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it was so much fun. I can't wait to do it again. So it's kind of like a cheeky test run because we have PAX this weekend coming up. I'm flying out tomorrow night and we're going to be heading over there, emmy and I. Once again, we're going to be strolling around the indie dev section. [00:03:02] Speaker A: What do they call it? [00:03:03] Speaker C: PAX Rising. We love PAX rising. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Very cool. [00:03:08] Speaker C: So, yeah, we're going to head on there and go chat to a bunch of indie devs on the Friday morning. Hopefully we can smash that out throughout Friday and they're able to chuck them up on the socials. Same day, I hope. [00:03:22] Speaker B: I'm hoping. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Very radical, dude. That's going to be wicked. Very excited to see you. Up on the big screen yet again, mate. Getting stuck in there. Well, I got a big phone. [00:03:34] Speaker C: There you go. [00:03:38] Speaker D: How many packs has you been to, Pav? [00:03:40] Speaker C: This will be my third packs. So this is my third packs. First time I've applied to the creator program, I got accepted to the creator program, which is pretty cool. I think that gives us an extra hour at the beginning of the Friday to check out everything with a bit less of a crowd, which will be pretty sick. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Cool, man. I like it. Yeah. [00:04:02] Speaker A: That is rad, dude. [00:04:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I can't wait. It's a pretty surreal feeling. [00:04:08] Speaker A: Oh, dude, absolutely. But you've worked pretty hard for it. You've been grinding freaking MC gigs, and it's well deserved. [00:04:16] Speaker C: This year has been kind of nuts. [00:04:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. We've listened to you tell us how big your week has been for the last fucking 40 weeks. [00:04:27] Speaker D: Had a big one, boys. [00:04:31] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad to hear that, mate, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you pump out. How can people watch the stuff you're producing, Pav? [00:04:39] Speaker C: Well, I'm a little lazy. Everything's been going up on Instagram, which is at Pavlova face, which is P-A-V-L-A-F-A-C-E-I can't remember. I'm on practice everything. We're going up on there on my stories throughout the weekend, throughout the weeks. And I plan on chucking some stuff up on YouTube. But, yeah, as I said, I'm a bit slow on the editing. We got to get amongst it eventually, dude. [00:05:08] Speaker D: Time is just nonexistent as you become an adult. Pav. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:12] Speaker C: Oh, my God. I don't know how I managed to fit everything I have this year somehow. But yeah, one more thing. I don't know, because I'm not going to be here next episode. Guys, I can't remember if I told you that because I fly back to PAX on Tuesday, but following week I fly out to Sydney for IEM. I can't remember if I kind of gave you guys a sneak preview for that one, but I'll be heading over for the CS Go tourney in Sydney and you might see me on stage somewhere in the week if anyone's around there. So don't be shy. Come say hi. If any Sydney listeners are around Pav. [00:05:55] Speaker D: Are they running CS Go, mate? Or is everyone switching over to CS Two? Mate, I really should know the answer. [00:06:03] Speaker C: To that question is my response to that I have no idea. I assume it's going to be CS Go. [00:06:13] Speaker B: Most likely. [00:06:14] Speaker C: But yeah, I'll probably find out when I get there. [00:06:20] Speaker B: Well, yeah, let us know. [00:06:22] Speaker A: I would have thought it would be CS Two, surely. [00:06:25] Speaker B: Reckon, yeah. [00:06:26] Speaker D: I feel like CSGO is gone now, isn't it? [00:06:28] Speaker A: Has it already dropped? [00:06:30] Speaker D: CS Two has dropped, mate. [00:06:34] Speaker C: CS Two just took over. CSGO is no more, isn't it? They've just dropped, actually. [00:06:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're kind of right. I don't even know if you can. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Play CS Go anymore. [00:06:49] Speaker C: Folks in Chat saying it just got renamed and they updated. [00:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Which, you know, big brain shit. [00:06:55] Speaker D: Which is going to be interesting, right? For this. It's going to be interesting to see a pro tournament because the tick rate and stuff. So it's all different. Right, kappa, you played it a bit. [00:07:02] Speaker B: It feels a bit different to play. [00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, in all honesty, at my level of mean, it just feels like fucking CS. But I'm sure that any pro will be like, yeah, mate, I couldn't feel this, feel that. And I'm sure they do, but I don't know. [00:07:20] Speaker D: I couldn't smoke doesn't bounce flame as a kid. [00:07:23] Speaker B: Indeed, in that corner of that. [00:07:28] Speaker A: The people that are playing this game over and over every day, competitively. Yeah. They're almost certainly going to feel it because, I mean, I can't remember exactly what tick rate or whatever it was, but it's like more than two times better in terms of what you're getting data wise. Really? [00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah. I always felt like we get quite. [00:07:55] Speaker D: Disadvantaged here in WA because most of the servers are overeat, so we'll be rocking like 70, 80, sometimes up near 100 ping. And you got those blokes that are, like, right next to the server that are on, like five ping. And there'd be a big difference. [00:08:08] Speaker A: Well, yeah, even people playing on the east coast of Australia versus us in the west, there would be like 30 to 40 ping difference. And it was significant. That was enough. [00:08:23] Speaker B: Wow. [00:08:24] Speaker A: Maybe not so much for me. I think it was probably just an excuse. But still, I like to think that it was enough. [00:08:29] Speaker B: But yeah. [00:08:29] Speaker A: So anyways, Pav, that'll be fucking exciting, mate. So we won't see you for two weeks on the show. [00:08:35] Speaker D: Two or three party, don't know what. [00:08:36] Speaker C: When I'm flying back out. [00:08:38] Speaker D: Do whatever the fuck we want on here, pav, you better look out, mate, so much. [00:08:44] Speaker C: I'm going to have to find someone to keep you guys in check. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Good luck aging. I'm trusting you, mate. I think he's going to be making things worse. All right, well, Grizz, what about you, mate? What's been happening? [00:08:58] Speaker B: What's new? [00:08:59] Speaker D: A lot has been happening since speaking to you guys last, but I won't bore you with all the details, mate, but got a new job, Cap, which is pretty cool. Well, I got a promotion, so I'm. [00:09:08] Speaker B: Still within the same company, but we're. [00:09:11] Speaker D: Slowly working my way up the corporate ladder, which is pretty exciting. But also CEO. F my bloody free time. [00:09:19] Speaker B: Even more now. It is what it is. [00:09:25] Speaker D: I have joined a new band, Cap, called the Renegades of Rock. [00:09:29] Speaker B: It is one of Mikey's side projects that, yeah, budy, the drummer, had to pull out. [00:09:34] Speaker D: But it's pretty exciting, mate, because it's. [00:09:35] Speaker B: Playing all of the playing, like, system. [00:09:38] Speaker D: Of the down and Metallica and all. [00:09:41] Speaker B: Those really great Foo Fighters, all those great rock metal songs from us growing up, which is great. [00:09:49] Speaker D: They also have a couple of tribute bands, mate. They've got an offspring and an Audio Slave tribute band. [00:09:54] Speaker B: Rad got a couple of festivals kind. [00:09:57] Speaker D: Of booked up towards the end of. [00:09:59] Speaker B: Next year and other bits and pieces, little shows. [00:10:02] Speaker D: So I've been doing a lot. [00:10:04] Speaker A: Do you play with a guy called Cam? [00:10:06] Speaker D: Is he in that band or no, no. There is a Rage Against Machine tribute. [00:10:13] Speaker B: As well in Perth. Yeah. White do you know a guy that's. [00:10:17] Speaker D: In an Audio Slave tribute? [00:10:19] Speaker A: I do. Well, I think audio slave. [00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:22] Speaker A: So that's what I was like. Wait a second, you might know my mate, but yeah, we're having a fucking DMM on a podcast. [00:10:30] Speaker D: The tribute scene is pretty small. They all fucking that was what I. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Mean, especially in Perth. Everyone just kind of seems to know everyone. And everyone knows your fucking brother as. [00:10:39] Speaker D: Yeah, well, he's quite well known in the Perth music scene now. [00:10:43] Speaker A: Oh, big time, mate. He's the man. He's the man with fucking bass. [00:10:47] Speaker D: Hoard himself around many different bands. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:50] Speaker A: I do like how both you and Pav seem to have this problem where you go, Man, I've got no fucking time in my life. Let's fucking add more fucking shit to it. Whereas I do the opposite. [00:11:01] Speaker D: I actually pulled out of a band. [00:11:03] Speaker B: To join this one. [00:11:05] Speaker A: Okay, so it's the old switcheroo, is it? [00:11:07] Speaker D: It is a bit of a switcheroo, yeah. And the shows aren't super regular on this, but I'm really looking forward to them. They're going to be a lot of fun. I believe our first show is towards the end of this month and it's. [00:11:18] Speaker B: In Bumbry supporting a Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute band at one of the. [00:11:24] Speaker D: Big pubs down there. [00:11:26] Speaker B: Sweet. [00:11:27] Speaker D: Really looking forward to that. It's a ticketed event, so if anyone is in Bumbry that listens to the. [00:11:32] Speaker B: Show Renegades a rock towards the end. [00:11:34] Speaker D: Of this month, you can find us on Facebook. [00:11:37] Speaker B: But, yeah, come see us. Be great. You're fucking great. Hell yeah, man. [00:11:41] Speaker A: Awesome. [00:11:42] Speaker B: Love it. [00:11:43] Speaker D: What about you, Cap? Apart from that, Matt, I have been gaming quite a lot, but I'll save that for how's your gaming going. I've picked up games and been given them a Red hot crack as well. [00:11:51] Speaker B: As slowly playing some other ones that have been on the back burner for a while. But what about you, mate? [00:11:56] Speaker D: How's life? You keep getting sick? [00:11:58] Speaker A: Capo dude, I literally keep getting sick and it's fucked. I feel like I complain about this every single time we have a podcast episode, but legitimately, it's just like I'm just being fucking I'm battening down the hatches against the storm. That is ted. Bringing home fucking viruses every week. It's fucking insane, man. I'm so over had I feel like I've not had a cold for ages. Like months. I've always got some degree of just latent viral illness. [00:12:36] Speaker D: I remember kids in daycare. I remember the same thing. [00:12:39] Speaker B: Dude. Dude. [00:12:41] Speaker A: Fucking wild, mate. [00:12:43] Speaker D: And you'll have the next baby, he'll. [00:12:45] Speaker A: Be in daycare all over again. Dude, this is crazy. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Hey. [00:12:49] Speaker A: And so on top of that, then in between the swaths of cold and flu, it's gastro. And so I think it was not last weekend, but the weekend before, ted had a spew in bed and he was pretty much fine after that. And we thought, oh, fuck, here we go. And then the next day, I woke up in the middle of the night. I was just like, OOH. And then four days later, pretty much bedridden for four days. It was absolutely fucked. By far the worst gas drive ever had in my life. So glad that one's over. But, yeah. [00:13:26] Speaker D: Lucky we did have a week off the podcast so you could rest up and relax. [00:13:30] Speaker A: It kind of paid off for me, in all honesty, because I was like a mess, to be honest. It kind of worked out really well for me. But, yeah, other than that, just been trying to squeeze in some gaming. I did manage to get a little bit of time on the weekend to catch up with some mates and just chill. Mia took Ted to her mum and dad's place and I had the night to myself. So I slept from the hours of 10:00 P.m. To 07:00 A.m., which I can't tell you the last time we. [00:14:01] Speaker B: Did that, that was a very long time ago. [00:14:05] Speaker A: Yeah, huge for me, that was fucking wonderful. So looking forward to the days that those become a bit more regular, but for now, not the case. That's okay. But, yeah, so I got that and we went and had a bunch of beers at a pub down the road from me and I drank a heap of IPAs and then came home and played a heap of CS Two, which was pretty fun. [00:14:25] Speaker D: Yeah, let's save that for how's your game? I'm going to be interested to hear that your take on CS Two, mate. [00:14:30] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, other than that, mate, been pretty good. Ted turns one year old tomorrow. [00:14:37] Speaker B: One year. Does he? [00:14:38] Speaker D: Tomorrow? Oh, yeah, I'm coming to a party, mate. I'm looking forward to that. [00:14:42] Speaker A: One freaking year, baby. So a big celebration of myself and. [00:14:50] Speaker D: Like, just yesterday when you told me. [00:14:52] Speaker B: Grizz, think I'm going to have a. [00:14:53] Speaker D: Baby and I think I'm going to. [00:14:55] Speaker B: Stop streaming, that was at Adam's wedding many moons ago. [00:14:59] Speaker D: It feels like just yesterday. [00:15:01] Speaker A: And here I am. I didn't stop streaming. Technically, I'm a man of my word. Yeah, so there you go. He'll be one on Tuesday and bit of a freaking hullabaloo on the weekend for him. So it's going to be good fun. We decided we're like, what should we do? We're like, oh, do we do a picnic or something? [00:15:19] Speaker B: I was like, no, fuck that. [00:15:20] Speaker A: Let's go to a pub. Let's celebrate, you and me getting him through one year. It's his birthday, he's not going to remember it. So why don't we just do something we want to do? [00:15:31] Speaker D: They don't form memories that they remember. [00:15:34] Speaker B: Till they're, like, five or six, isn't it? Something like that, yeah. [00:15:38] Speaker A: I still don't think I've built memory, so it could be as late as 32. You never know. Yeah, so I've been busy. Been busy doing dad shit and everything else. But it's been good fun and happy days. But anyways, let's freaking jump into it. Grizzo, as always, let's have a bit of a chat about our usual house rules, yeah? Look, if you want to watch this show live, you can do so by going to Twitch TV Oceanicgamingradio on Monday nights, 07:00 p.m., Australian Western Standard Time. You can join such legends such as Caging Runt, Dano Two Nine Nine, Sick Jose, bunch of freaking you could be one of these blokes. [00:16:22] Speaker B: Jump in. [00:16:22] Speaker A: Say G'day. Otherwise, we are available on every podcasting platform known to man, so you can get us anywhere and have us you shall. So, yeah, very cool. [00:16:37] Speaker B: Now, Do, I just want to say. [00:16:38] Speaker A: A big thank you to all of our listeners. If you are listening to this live or in the future, do us a big favor. Drop us a review or tell someone about us. We'd really appreciate it. And, yeah, be fucking great. [00:16:54] Speaker B: Now, another big thank you to our wonderful patreons. [00:16:58] Speaker A: These are the legends that just keep freaking spending cash on us. It's wonderful. We're very humbled and we really appreciate it. They are the following legends Sukai Moosey Caging Runt sergeant Paul Lee G-D-J libs brendan Dan. Fantastic. [00:17:13] Speaker B: And straps on you guys. You bloody rippers. [00:17:17] Speaker A: Pretty impressive sticking around for that long. [00:17:20] Speaker B: Really appreciate it. All right. There you go. Yeah. [00:17:24] Speaker A: Big old freaking quest log today, Grizzly. We got six quests on the log, so a bit to get through, so we'll dive straight in. Now, for those who might have remembered from a couple of weeks ago, we had a bit of a chat about Unity and what Unity was doing, much to the dismay of devs pretty much globally. So they announced some pricing changes to their video game engine, of which many video game developers utilize to develop their. [00:17:58] Speaker B: Video games, which caused quite a stir. [00:18:00] Speaker A: Because the changes were interpreted as fairly greedy and they introduced a very controversial runtime fee. We go pretty deep into it on a different episode, so just go back an episode and you'll be able to hear all about it. But they've recently turned the dial back a little bit, Grizz, on the changes. So just to kind of quickly touch on these, unity announced that they were working on some changes based on the feedback that they had received, and they said that the outcry has been pretty poor understatement. But anyways, Mark Whitton, who is the leader of Unity create basically said I'm sorry and wanted to apologize by announcing some changes to the pricing structure which they had announced of, which were the following. So their Unity Personal plan, they've got three tiers personal pro enterprise with various price points. Unity Personal will remain free and will not incur a runtime fee ever for any games built on this, which is that's the base level, Unity, they will be increasing the cap for revenue share from one hundred thousand dollars to two hundred thousand dollars. And they'll also remove the requirement to use a made with Unity splash screen, which is good. And then they've also mentioned that no game with less than 1 million in trailing, twelve month revenue will be subject to the runtime fee. And then they also went on to say that creators on pro and enterprise versions of Unity, they're also making some changes on those fronts as well. They don't go too deep on this particular post, but they do also sort of mention that these runtime fee policies will apply to the next version of Unity, not old versions which it would have before. [00:20:06] Speaker D: So I think that is the big one. [00:20:07] Speaker B: Right, Kat? [00:20:08] Speaker D: So does that now mean that those games that have already developed on Unity that are released, that are making dollars then don't owe them a heap of money? [00:20:16] Speaker B: Correct. [00:20:17] Speaker D: Due to copying fees. [00:20:18] Speaker B: Right? [00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So it also means that any projects in development right now that would be releasing in the next, say, six months or so, that thought, fuck, here we go, now I've got to fucking deal with this shit. They won't be having to deal with that because presumably they'll be on an older version of Unity, which won't be subject to the runtime fee, which is great. Look, it's still an increase in money required, I guess, and revenue. [00:20:47] Speaker B: It's interesting. Cap, I loved hearing you and Adrian. [00:20:51] Speaker D: Break this down and speak about this in that previous episode and wanting to chime in my little two cent on those previous discussions. [00:20:59] Speaker B: But in 2019, Cap, Unity came out and said they promised that it would. [00:21:06] Speaker D: Charge developers a flat fee per seat. [00:21:09] Speaker B: No royalty on all of your revenue using Unity software. [00:21:14] Speaker D: So to then come and change the goalposts and apply these fees is going. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Completely against what was promised back then. [00:21:27] Speaker A: Which I think that's where a lot of developers finding this particularly tough to swallow is a that and b. Clearly, they have not really thought too hard about this, and they don't have their community's interest at heart, which is kind of problematic when your community are the people footing your bill. A lot of the time some people aren't going to be able to move away from the Unity anytime soon. But as we've seen recently, there's been a lot of people that are moving away or have been protesting against these changes. [00:22:07] Speaker D: Hard cap to want to develop your game on this. Now, if you're using Unity 2024, why would you when there's other things on. [00:22:16] Speaker B: The market that you're not copying this. [00:22:18] Speaker D: Price to use there? [00:22:19] Speaker A: Yeah, well, this is the thing, okay? They've wound some of it back, not all the way. I mean, they still seem to want to preserve this runtime fee, which is still pretty controversial, mind you, but ultimately, can you trust this company? That's the question you got to be asking yourself. And I think a lot of developers are starting to think, no, we cannot. And so why would we continue to build on Unity? And I think the answer for a lot of them are we should be going open source, go and check out a game engine such as Godot or I think there's one called FNA or something like that. Or we do Unreal, which seems to be I mean, Unreal have been fairly transparent with their pricing increases and stuff, and they've kind of been fairly good at advertising mean they've just been flat increases to pricing rather than adding new hidden fees through fucking runtime fees and stuff like that. So it's kind of lesser of two evils. I mean, you're still having to pay an exorbitant amount in revenue share, but at least you know exactly what you're going to be paying for down the road, right? [00:23:28] Speaker D: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it was pretty scary for a lot of those devscap when they thought they're going to be paying after the fact, after they're using Unity. That would have really sucked. And the thing is, though, that was their intention, though. [00:23:39] Speaker B: That's the thing too. [00:23:40] Speaker D: Cat, why would you like you say it comes down to a trust thing. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Why would you use Unity when you've. [00:23:46] Speaker D: Got a fear that maybe down the track, should your game be read as successful, that you're not going to be. [00:23:50] Speaker B: Out of pocket by using something they might it's not great. Now. [00:23:57] Speaker D: Sorry I interrupted you there, Cap. You were talking about some reddit posts. [00:24:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:01] Speaker A: So there was a post just I think there was 500 developers that signed a protest against these runtime fees, which doesn't seem like a huge amount, but 500 different developers of reasonable size, all protesting against your shitty fees. It's a significant amount. But you're right, grizz for me. I've been learning Unity kind of casually over the last, say, year, and I deleted it because I was like, well, I'm not going to use this. I don't have plans to develop a game and release anytime soon. But if I decided I had an idea that I wanted to develop something, why would I use this engine? It just doesn't like for me, it's a no brainer. I'm in a position where I can make a change out and learn something new because I'm still kind of learning anyway. But ultimately that's the kind of decisions I think a lot of people are making. [00:25:01] Speaker D: What's interesting about the 500 there, Cap. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Is they've turned off the ads, the. [00:25:08] Speaker D: Monetization ads that Unity were making money on. [00:25:13] Speaker B: But what I found even more interesting. [00:25:15] Speaker D: Is if you look at most of. [00:25:16] Speaker B: The studios on that list, most of them are mobile game studios. [00:25:23] Speaker D: So the top ones that they've listed. [00:25:25] Speaker B: There include Tap Nation, Magic Tavern, Line. [00:25:28] Speaker D: Studios and a couple of others. [00:25:30] Speaker B: But they're all huge studios for mobile. [00:25:34] Speaker D: Games that are making bulk money. And I guess you and Adrian were. [00:25:39] Speaker B: Touching on it in the last episode. [00:25:40] Speaker D: But that's who is really impacted by these. [00:25:43] Speaker A: That was their target market. It was just unfortunate, I suppose, that in the same swath of changes that a lot of indie studios were kind of being swept up in these same changes, which clearly was evident based on who was protesting. But yeah, and I mean, obviously it's these mobile games that are utilizing those advertising plugins through Unity, so they're the ones that were able to apply that pressure, whereas a lot of indie games don't use those. They're just a fucking video game. Like a good old fashioned, buy the game, play it video game. My favorite. That's what I'm after. But outside of that grizz, we did see, for example, stuff like the Terraria Logic, the creators of Terraria, they announced that they were, well a particularly displeased with what Unity was doing. They did mention that they don't utilize Unity, but they just thought that the fact that this was possible just fucking sucked them. And so they donated $100,000 to the Godot Game Engine and FNA Game Engine, and then also announced that they were going to be paying $1,000 towards each project per month to keep the lights on, to try and push, which is just amazing. [00:27:05] Speaker D: Wrote a very scathing little announcement on. [00:27:08] Speaker B: Their Twitter, basically pointing the finger at. [00:27:11] Speaker D: Unity and giving them a hard time, which even that has a lot of impact. You have a look at that Tweet cap and it has the impressions on it are absolutely massive. And just talking about that as a whole, if you have a look at the Unity share price, it's dropped by. [00:27:25] Speaker B: 20% in the last two weeks. [00:27:28] Speaker A: And all your Legends, all your board members in Unity, just before the announcement of these price changes, sold a shitload of shares, which how is that? That should be illegal. [00:27:40] Speaker B: You shouldn't be allowed. [00:27:43] Speaker D: They'Re probably a bit worried, mate. [00:27:45] Speaker A: I don't know, is that not the definition of insider trading? I just feel like how's that possible? Classic. Anyways, so there you go. A lot of big things come out of Unity. You got any kind of final things you want to say about it? [00:28:01] Speaker D: I wanted to comment on there was one particular reddit post that you put in the run sheet. [00:28:06] Speaker B: There was a comment in there that. [00:28:08] Speaker D: I thought was pretty funny because essentially this is how the second announcement came out. [00:28:14] Speaker B: It's kind of like, we are sorry. [00:28:15] Speaker D: For your level of confusion. [00:28:17] Speaker B: Clearly you weren't confused enough because you've. [00:28:20] Speaker D: Noticed what we are doing. We'll try to be more cryptic with the next version. Hopefully by then you will have forgotten about it anyway. The first announcement was very cryptic and it's quite confusing to figure out exactly what they've done. [00:28:34] Speaker B: But obviously we got pretty smart game devs are pretty clever. Cap and called them out on the bullshit. [00:28:40] Speaker D: But yeah, this is just crazy, man. And it comes down to corporate greed, is what I see here. [00:28:45] Speaker B: Cap absolutely. And it's not the first time we've. [00:28:49] Speaker D: Seen it in gaming industry. We see it quite a lot, everything else, so it's very disappointing. [00:28:55] Speaker B: But it is also really important that. [00:28:57] Speaker D: People call it as it is and we talk about it in forums like. [00:29:01] Speaker B: This and we say how terrible it. [00:29:03] Speaker D: Is and everything else. [00:29:04] Speaker B: And there are other avenues to go. [00:29:07] Speaker D: Develop your games in. [00:29:08] Speaker B: I think that imagine if we just. [00:29:10] Speaker D: Let this go through, mate, and we're. [00:29:11] Speaker B: Seeing favorite studios paying many dollars to use this. I don't know. [00:29:18] Speaker A: Well, honestly, you think about if people did just kind of bend over for this one and cop it on the chin, ultimately what's stopping Unreal from going, okay, well, they seem to be pretty okay with it, so maybe we'll do the exact same fucking thing. It's important to protest changes like this so further bullshit does not occur. [00:29:40] Speaker D: It almost feels like Microtransactions creeping into PC gaming from the mobile thing. [00:29:46] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:29:47] Speaker B: And that scares me as it is. [00:29:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the thing is the reason we are seeing Microtransactions coming to games like Diablo Four and everything else is not just because they're being used on mobile game experiences, but because people are purchasing them. So why wouldn't they put them there on Dulays? Yeah, ultimately I don't blame them. For me, if I'm going to make more money in my job doing something, yeah, I'm probably going to fucking make more money doing that thing. Ultimately, depending there might be an ethical question there that I might go, okay, maybe I don't want to do this, but a lot of the time corporations don't seem to need to make that justification because it's all about making the cash and that burden spread across multiple people in different roles. So it doesn't fucking matter. I don't know. I think we are just going to slowly see these kinds of practices, seep into our treasured PC game experiences. So what you need to do as a consumer is reward the developers that. [00:30:56] Speaker B: Aren'T doing this shit. [00:30:58] Speaker A: Go and buy indie games. [00:30:59] Speaker D: And we've seen a few of those. [00:31:01] Speaker B: Great happen this year. [00:31:02] Speaker D: Cap that have been great out of the box. [00:31:05] Speaker B: And one we can talk about that. [00:31:07] Speaker D: Has come out last week, lies of P, but Elden Ring, other ones like. [00:31:10] Speaker B: That, that don't have that stuff in them that have been very well received. [00:31:14] Speaker D: Belt is gate three. [00:31:15] Speaker B: Fuck. Heaps of them. [00:31:16] Speaker D: In fact, probably the better games this year that have been announced have all been microtransaction free. [00:31:21] Speaker A: And not AA studios. [00:31:23] Speaker D: Yeah, not AAA studios as well. [00:31:26] Speaker A: What a surprise. I think we're at this weird saturation point, whereas studios at the behold, beholden to their shareholders and whatever else, and they're trying to maximize profits whilst reducing the amount of work required to create these games. And so we're at this weird point in time where we're having a quality issue paired with an output issue. Because video games industries, and we've talked about this before, they don't start making money until they start selling the video game. So if it takes them three years to create the game, then that's how long it takes before they start making money. Right? So these AA titles that bite off a lot more than bite off a lot to chew, sometimes more than they can chew, and I feel that gap has become bigger and bigger between what they're able to adequately achieve and output like a reasonable product. You know what, it's just I'm finding. [00:32:32] Speaker B: That just from what I experience, is. [00:32:35] Speaker A: I'm gravitating less and less towards AAA. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Games and AAA studios because I'd say. [00:32:41] Speaker A: There'S just no heart in some of the products that they're creating. [00:32:44] Speaker D: What was the last AAA studio game that you actually, you know what? Probably God of War for me, I'd say. [00:32:51] Speaker A: Yeah, God of War or Elden Ring for me. [00:32:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. [00:32:56] Speaker A: But do you know what? I suppose when I think of AAAS, I'm thinking of your Ubisofts and your Blizzards and your EA's and your activisions. I feel like these studios, sorry, publishers and umbrella devs beneath them, just are. [00:33:16] Speaker B: Not able to produce what I'm seeking. Someone was talking about Starfield the other day, cap saying, I can't remember, I. [00:33:26] Speaker D: Might have read it on Reddit somewhere. [00:33:28] Speaker B: But how hollow that experience is. [00:33:30] Speaker D: The game's just not fun. [00:33:31] Speaker B: But it comes down to imagine having. [00:33:34] Speaker D: That many different devs and trying to. [00:33:36] Speaker B: Pull together that much of a large. [00:33:38] Speaker D: Team to make something that is meaningful. When you've got everyone's ideas and other bits and pieces and they've got a cookie cutter mold from games in the. [00:33:46] Speaker B: Past, it's much easier just to get. [00:33:48] Speaker D: Them all to apply that cookie cutter. [00:33:51] Speaker B: And it feels like that to me. [00:33:54] Speaker D: And I reckon that would be challenging. I reckon if you've got a smaller dev team, it's easier to bleed that passion into your game that you're creating, surely. Yeah, for sure. [00:34:02] Speaker A: I mean, also the projects are. [00:34:07] Speaker B: A. [00:34:07] Speaker A: Better size and more manageable, less feature rich generally as well. But I think ultimately what's been happening. [00:34:17] Speaker B: Is we're just kind of seeing this. [00:34:21] Speaker A: Shift in games development where I kind of feel like the approach to good narrative design and informed game design. And when I say informed game design, I mean designing your game around A being fun, but also making very good use of your story and narrative elements and blending the two together. I feel like that's becoming harder and harder to find in AA studios because they put so much emphasis into developing the system or the game, but they forget to make it fun. They forget to create a nice, fun, interesting experience. And I mean, Starfield's a fucking classic one for that. And I know a lot of people are having fun with that game, and congratulations. [00:35:05] Speaker B: But that game is so fucking boring. [00:35:10] Speaker A: The actual story behind that game is so fucking sterile, it's horrific. I was not a huge fan of Fallout Four because I thought it was pretty bland. But Fallout Four story shits all over Starfields, and I've not found a single side quest or a single main quest where I've actually been interested in what the fuck is going on. I've not touched that game for a week and a half now because can't bring myself to go in there and play it. [00:35:39] Speaker D: Can't do it. I've installed it and I loaded into. [00:35:42] Speaker B: It, and I gave it a little bit, but just haven't given it anymore. And I'll give it another tickle. I don't know. [00:35:50] Speaker A: This is the other thing is Bethesda keeps getting away with it over and over again with the way that they approach game design is just regurgitating the same old fucking shit. They're like a motherbird that's feeding its chicks. That same old fucking regurgitated worm that it's been stewing in its gut for the last 50 years. Starfield is skyrim. It's the same fucking storyline. You start off on like this kind of, okay, you're not in prison, but basically you're a corporate prisoner. And you got to have this moment of where, oh, I must be the chosen one because I've seen this fucking thing. Okay, cool. Now all of a sudden, we're being pulled into this secret order. Okay, cool. No worries. And now all of a sudden, I'm getting these special space powers, the fucking Force radar powers in Skyrim. It's the same fucking game in space. And it's not even a good space game. [00:36:41] Speaker D: This is because of corporate pressure, mate. You've got a bunch of shareholders. They probably sat around a table, said, Fuck, yeah, I've got these great Fallout games. We've got this cookie cutter mold for this one. [00:36:52] Speaker B: Let's just use this in space. [00:36:55] Speaker D: And bang, there we go. We've got this great game. Well, we'll update a bit of the engine and everything else, but we've got a basic idea for a game. Let's just use that. [00:37:03] Speaker B: It's worked in the past, and there you go. Yeah. [00:37:08] Speaker A: I could honestly just keep complaining about Starfield forever, so we better move on. [00:37:13] Speaker D: Anyway, I want to ask you one thing. [00:37:15] Speaker B: Cat Unity. [00:37:16] Speaker D: Can they claw their way back to. [00:37:18] Speaker B: Be a fantastic game dev platform for. [00:37:23] Speaker D: People, or do you think they've done the dash with this? [00:37:26] Speaker A: I think what they've done will be enough to maintain a reasonable market share I think the engine itself is. I mean, I would have preferred to have used that engine over other engines because I like it, but I don't like what they've done, so I'm not going to reward them. But I do think people will continue to use Unity. [00:37:50] Speaker B: You got to remember, it's the same. [00:37:53] Speaker A: As what if tomorrow JavaScript started fucking charging fifty cents to run a fucking script, right? You'd have many, many devs who have spent tens of years plus writing code. [00:38:10] Speaker B: In this program getting their chops up. [00:38:13] Speaker A: So if they're going to be giving a little worm to get back in and just continue making within their environment of choice, they're probably going to take it. Not everyone's going to give in. I'm sure there's been a lot of trust lost, but I'm sure a lot of people will still continue to make with Unity because of that. The amount of time that goes in for you to learn these systems and learn how to use them well, it's a lot of time to invest and to then all of a sudden have to learn something else makes it a difficult sell. So I think Unity's fucked it pretty bad. I think they will lose a reasonable number of people utilizing their environment, but they will still continue to be the second or first biggest in the world in terms of game engine usage. [00:39:02] Speaker B: Cool. [00:39:04] Speaker A: All right. Anyway, we haven't really had a good chance to chat about Mario Wonder and I kind of wanted to chuck it on this one because I wanted to see your thoughts on, I guess, just what they're producing, but it looks like a lot of fucking fun. Griz. [00:39:21] Speaker B: They did a Direct recently, about two. [00:39:24] Speaker A: Weeks ago, so we're a bit late on this one. But I did want to kind of just go through it and just explore. [00:39:29] Speaker B: It because I think Super Mario Wonder is going to be fucking excellent. Dude, it looks freaking awesome. [00:39:37] Speaker D: I actually really enjoyed the last 2D Mario side scroll. I actually had Moosey and Magsy come. [00:39:44] Speaker B: Over and we played through it, same. [00:39:46] Speaker D: Screen couch co op. [00:39:48] Speaker B: And it was one of the most. [00:39:49] Speaker D: Enjoyable co op experiences that I've had as a couch co op game. So we'll get there, but yeah, so this is coming out October 20. [00:39:57] Speaker B: So what, we're like, we're nearly there, mate. A couple of weeks and we'll have. [00:40:03] Speaker D: This game to play. But yeah, look, part of the Nintendo Direct they did go through and there's quite a lot of details in the. [00:40:08] Speaker B: Direct that they have given us about Mario Wonder. So maybe we just work through each. [00:40:14] Speaker D: Little subsection under there and have a chat about it. [00:40:18] Speaker B: But yeah, absolutely. [00:40:19] Speaker D: They gave us little story teaser here, Cap. [00:40:21] Speaker B: So basically the story goes that Bowser. [00:40:25] Speaker D: Comes along and touches the Wonder flower. [00:40:27] Speaker B: This blue little flower, and transforms himself and a castle into this big corrupted. [00:40:34] Speaker D: Castle that then flies across the land. [00:40:37] Speaker B: And creates absolute chaos in the I. [00:40:42] Speaker D: Think it's called the flower kingdom, I believe. [00:40:45] Speaker B: Flower kingdom. Flower kingdom. [00:40:47] Speaker D: And that gives us our world. [00:40:48] Speaker B: So there is seven total areas that you see. [00:40:53] Speaker D: There's seven worlds apparently cat that you can explore. I believe each of those has little subsections. [00:41:00] Speaker B: But we see the classic tropes cat, which are like there's an ice level, there's desert, there's underwater levels, there's caves. [00:41:08] Speaker D: You see sky areas, swamps, forests, lava, all that kind of stuff. [00:41:12] Speaker A: They got a couple of interesting ones though, like what looks like it might be like a poison mushroom forest, which I kind of like that take on the whole forest biome. [00:41:21] Speaker D: They had that in Mario maker too. [00:41:23] Speaker B: You could create a level in that little poisonous forest thing. [00:41:29] Speaker D: Is it purple, cap? [00:41:30] Speaker B: The aesthetic purple. Yeah. [00:41:34] Speaker D: But I found something really interesting, cap, because the way they've done it, they've got certain areas that are actual open world spaces in terms of the map itself. [00:41:42] Speaker B: So what that means is you're not. [00:41:44] Speaker D: Pigeonholed into having to beat a level to progress. You can kind of play the levels in any order that you wish. So if there's one particularly hard level. [00:41:52] Speaker B: You could go and play something else. [00:41:55] Speaker D: Before you take that on. So it kind of allows for a bit more open progression paths in some of these worlds. [00:42:00] Speaker B: I think that's the first time I've. [00:42:02] Speaker D: Seen that happen in a Mario game. [00:42:03] Speaker A: And it looks pretty rad. Like the way that you do have sections where you do need to kind of linearly go through level by level, but then you have these little swaths of area that you can go and just go, oh, that one looks cool. Do that one first. [00:42:14] Speaker B: And I'll do this 1 second kind of thing. Check that out. Yeah. [00:42:18] Speaker D: And then characters cap. So we see Luigi, peach, daisy, toad, and Toadette. But what's interesting, cap, is they all play the same. [00:42:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm a big fan of that actually. [00:42:30] Speaker B: You reckon that's good? [00:42:31] Speaker D: I reckon that's pretty good because in the past we've seen where you would have like a flutter on peach or Luigi could jump higher, but it doesn't control as well on platforms. [00:42:41] Speaker B: And Mario is just Mario. [00:42:43] Speaker D: But I think that's kind of cool because it made co op a little bit weird when you would have the. [00:42:47] Speaker B: Characters having different skill sets and um, yeah, I think that's pretty cool. [00:42:53] Speaker D: But also, Kat, you can play as Yoshi and what's this other dude's name? [00:43:03] Speaker B: Yoshi and nabbit. [00:43:04] Speaker D: And it's kind of like it's easy mode. So that's what you would get your kids to play. [00:43:11] Speaker A: You can still die if you fall in a hole. [00:43:13] Speaker D: You can die before in a hole, but you cannot die to enemy mobs or from taking damage in lava and stuff. [00:43:19] Speaker B: Essentially, you're invincible. [00:43:22] Speaker D: Now, what I found is really cool. [00:43:25] Speaker B: Cap, is you can play co op. [00:43:28] Speaker D: With someone playing a yoshi. And you playing a standard character, which means I could technically play through this with my two young girls and have a great time. And I don't have to worry about mean, they can fall on the holes, but dying to the mobs and monsters and stuff. [00:43:42] Speaker B: So I think that as an accessibility. [00:43:44] Speaker D: Feature is pretty cool. I like it. [00:43:47] Speaker A: It's definitely one thing that got me excited because me and me are trying to find more and more things that we can kind of do in our downtime that isn't just watching Netflix and just like lying there comatose and stuff like this. I'm like, this is kind of perfect because Mia doesn't do an awful lot of gaming at um. But I think a game like this is really fun. And mean. Mario Wonder looks great. So being able to share that with Mia in a way where she doesn't feel left behind is going to be really fun, I think. [00:44:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's cool. [00:44:20] Speaker D: Absolutely, mate. When Ted gets old enough, wow. Actually, this game will probably long gone by then, mate. And there'll be another two Marios out by then. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Mario one to two, three. Who knows? [00:44:30] Speaker B: That's it. Yep. [00:44:31] Speaker D: Who knows, mate? But in terms of enemies cap so we see some of the absolute classics, returning enemies like The Goombas, Coopers and Booze and other things. [00:44:39] Speaker B: But we do see quite a lot. [00:44:42] Speaker D: Of new enemies that we haven't seen before in the Mario franchise. [00:44:45] Speaker B: So there's like some mummies and stuff. [00:44:48] Speaker D: That you can unwind. [00:44:50] Speaker B: And yeah, there's a lot of weird looking birds. Weird looking birds. [00:44:54] Speaker D: A lot of enemy variations. [00:44:55] Speaker B: So I think that should be pretty cool. Now, power ups. Cap so we see a few different power ups here. [00:45:04] Speaker D: We have like an elephant power up. [00:45:07] Speaker B: Where you gan a trunk. You can suck in water and store water quite large. [00:45:13] Speaker D: You can run across two tile gaps rather than one tile gaps, which is pretty cool. [00:45:18] Speaker B: That's wild. [00:45:19] Speaker D: That's wild. Absolutely. And then you can get this one. That's a bubble form. Did you ever play bubble bobble? Cap back in the day on Seager? [00:45:26] Speaker B: No, I don't think I did. [00:45:28] Speaker D: Essentially, you, like, blow bubbles at people. [00:45:30] Speaker B: And you trap the monsters in the bubble. And then when you pop the bubble, they die. [00:45:34] Speaker D: It's essentially bubble, bubble. [00:45:35] Speaker B: But in Mario, what is also cool is the bubbles. [00:45:40] Speaker D: You can use them to traverse. [00:45:42] Speaker B: So if you blow a bubble and. [00:45:44] Speaker D: You capture an enemy in a bubble. [00:45:45] Speaker B: You can jump off the bubble to kind of traverse yourself higher in the. [00:45:49] Speaker D: Environment, which is pretty cool. [00:45:51] Speaker B: I like that. [00:45:54] Speaker A: Look pretty cool. [00:45:55] Speaker B: They do. [00:45:56] Speaker D: They look very unique. I like that they've changed it up. They continue to change them up through. [00:46:00] Speaker B: The Mario generations, which is pretty cool. [00:46:04] Speaker D: But you can get a drill form as well. Cap we get a little drill on. [00:46:06] Speaker B: Your head you can bury underground and. [00:46:09] Speaker D: Do other little bits and pieces and apparently there's like secrets you can find using those. And then the classic Firepower, which is just the old shoot the bullets. [00:46:18] Speaker B: But Cap, you can pick up this. [00:46:19] Speaker D: Thing called a Wonder Seed, right? Which is the seed that Bowser took at the start of the game. And crazy shit happens, man. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Depending on the level, it'll basically put. [00:46:29] Speaker D: You into what I think is like a bonus level. [00:46:33] Speaker B: So it can do things like change. [00:46:35] Speaker D: The perspective to a top down. You might be floating through the air. [00:46:39] Speaker B: It might completely teleport you to a whole new level. [00:46:43] Speaker D: And you basically got to kind of explore this area or do whatever it. [00:46:47] Speaker B: Is you're doing to get hold of. [00:46:50] Speaker D: A Wonder Seed, which is a currency in the game that you can use to buy stuff, essentially. It's pretty cool, man, and looks like there's quite a lot of depth in this game. [00:47:04] Speaker A: Cap absolutely, I mean, just that Wonderseed stuff, dude. I think that's obviously the big sort of draw card and a massive feature of this game is giving you each level basically has an alternate path that is like all this weird acid trip version of the level, which kind of throws some weird wonderful way for you to experience a level which is fucking rad. Is it the Wonder Seeds you use to buy the badges? [00:47:31] Speaker D: Grizz yeah, it is. So you can buy badges or you can either acquire them from difficult levels in the game, but the badges are I've never seen this before in a Mario game. And I think this is actually what gets me a little bit excited about this because the badges will change the way that you can play the level. So an example is that you can. [00:47:53] Speaker B: Get a parachute badge, which makes you slow fall, get a Wall Climb Badge that lets you climb walls, dolphin Kick. [00:48:00] Speaker D: Badge that lets you swim faster. And there's a plethora of these different. [00:48:03] Speaker B: Badges, but there is a Jet Run. [00:48:06] Speaker D: Badge, cap that basically increases your P speed Run, which I know right now that's going to be the Speed Run. [00:48:13] Speaker A: Speed Run. Fuck it. [00:48:14] Speaker D: That's going to be the speed run. Could you imagine people just like jetting through the level? Yeah, like you say. So you need Wonder Seeds to buy these, I believe, from the vendor. Or there's these challenge levels that you. [00:48:25] Speaker B: Need to complete to unlock them. [00:48:27] Speaker D: So I think this is going to be pretty cool. It's going to change the way that you might want to play the game a little bit. [00:48:32] Speaker B: If you've got a level that the. [00:48:35] Speaker D: Platforming is pretty difficult, then maybe you. [00:48:38] Speaker B: Would use the double jump one or. [00:48:42] Speaker D: There'S a jumping one, the Wall Climb badge or something that might help you out. [00:48:45] Speaker B: So yeah, interesting. Pretty cool. [00:48:48] Speaker A: I think overall I'm quite excited for this. Probably more so than I've been excited for a Mario game in a while. The super Mario Brothers games that have come out in the 2D versions more recently. I guess they've been much more I mean they're just classic Mario games, right? Whereas I feel like this is still got the classic Mario kind of vibe. [00:49:11] Speaker B: And I guess underlying template, but it's just sort of taking it in an. [00:49:17] Speaker A: Interesting direction that feels kind of like wondrous this weird wonderful way to interpret levels and change them up and I'm really excited. [00:49:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been really good Cap. [00:49:34] Speaker D: I think it's been really good and I think that Nintendo in my opinion. [00:49:38] Speaker B: Has always done a pretty poor effort. [00:49:41] Speaker D: In incorporating online any form of online. [00:49:45] Speaker B: Play, even down to not just the. [00:49:49] Speaker D: Design but the way the servers work. [00:49:52] Speaker B: I just look back at Mario maker. [00:49:55] Speaker D: Two with their online PvP thing was. [00:49:57] Speaker B: Pretty hard to play in terms of. [00:50:02] Speaker D: Connection, stability, et cetera. What they've done here is they've implemented this few pretty interesting little online mechanics here. So they got these things called shadows that you can choose to have in your game. If you're playing online. It allows you to share items. So you'll be playing through a level. [00:50:17] Speaker B: And you'll see shadows that are kind. [00:50:19] Speaker D: Of working the way through the level as you are. And those are supposed to be live players playing through that level somewhere. You can kind of interact with them, you can share items with those. You can plant down these little kind of like checkpoints that can save them from damage and act as checkpoints as well. And the more players that you help. [00:50:41] Speaker B: Through doing this, you'll actually get like. [00:50:43] Speaker D: A heart score above your head and. [00:50:46] Speaker B: Be displayed on your character as you. [00:50:48] Speaker D: Kind of do these different things. Through doing that, they also allow you to have chats with your friends in these kind of hangout areas and other bits and pieces. So I really think they have had a bit of a think about how they can make the game a little bit more interesting through online, which is cool. [00:51:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely like their approach. It's having an effect on other people's game without you directly affecting it really. It's only in really a positive way, right? Which is great because there's certainly griefing ways that they could have gone with it. So I think it makes a lot of sense go down this route. But yeah, I think you're right Grizz. It definitely seems like they're paying a bit more attention just to the multiplayer aspect of this. Dude, honestly, I'm ready for this. [00:51:37] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm ready for this too. I reckon I'm going to give this a go. And mainly I think it's going to be a great excuse for me to sit down with my three girls. [00:51:44] Speaker B: And I think the accessibility options is. [00:51:46] Speaker D: Going to allow us to play at a level that's suitable for all ages of my kids. [00:51:51] Speaker B: And I think that aspect alone is worth me picking it up to do. [00:51:56] Speaker D: That because there's not really many games that you can actually do that one comes to mind probably Stardew Valley is pretty good, but there's no real gameplay in that, whereas this is a platformer. So being able to be on the. [00:52:08] Speaker B: Same level is going to be pretty cool. Yeah, keen as, mate. [00:52:13] Speaker A: Keen as. I think it comes out the 20th or something. Grizz not too far. Yeah, we're pretty much there. So yeah, get your freaking switch charged up. [00:52:23] Speaker D: All right. [00:52:23] Speaker A: Grizz now, just a couple of quick ones that we can touch on before we jump into some cyberpunk. How's your gaming going? Shit. Just wanted to kind of talk about this one because I think it's pretty important. So SAG AFTRA is a sort of Actors Guild union kind of thing. They recently voted to approve a strike for voice actors against video game companies. [00:52:47] Speaker B: Which is quite large. [00:52:50] Speaker A: And so we'll probably see the effect. [00:52:53] Speaker B: Of that, I don't know. [00:52:54] Speaker A: Soonish, I guess. Well, we probably won't feel it immediately, but we might find, for example, some projects might be slightly delayed and wherever else. [00:53:03] Speaker B: But basically, yeah, we're kind of seeing. [00:53:07] Speaker A: This, I don't know, SAGAFTRA they work towards, I guess, ensuring that their members get paid properly and all that kind of shit. Basically, the big one for this was they wanted to seek wages that matched inflation over time. Absolutely. Totally understand that. I want the same thing for me. And then on top of that, they also wanted to find ways to embed protection against the exploitative usage of AI voice acting. Because we've seen and heard of. [00:53:49] Speaker B: People. [00:53:49] Speaker A: Utilizing AI to recreate voices of well known game characters and stuff, whether it be nefariously or not. Regardless, they want to sort of bargain for ways to get better wages and protection against that kind of stuff. But I don't know, I kind of. [00:54:10] Speaker B: Feel like the unfortunate thing for voice. [00:54:13] Speaker A: Actors is a lot of the time we have a few major, very well known voice actors and the rest of them, unfortunately, don't have the identity to really follow it up. Kind of like we do with visual movie actors because it's visual. You see them, you know who they are, they get a reputation. I think they're going to find it really difficult to bargain with these companies, in my opinion, because there's probably just someone else who will do it instead. [00:54:43] Speaker D: Absolutely. [00:54:45] Speaker B: And we've talked about this before, Cap. [00:54:48] Speaker D: But clearly it was something they were very passionate about because if you look at the results of the vote, it was a 98.3% yes vote around this video game strike. [00:55:03] Speaker B: So they must be feeling the pinch here. [00:55:06] Speaker D: Big time. Capo so, yeah, we're interesting to see how we are impacted by it. [00:55:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:55:12] Speaker A: I do hope it goes well for them because I think they deserve it. I think about some of my favorite video game experiences in the last couple of years and a lot of that has been because of incredible voice acting work, man. [00:55:26] Speaker D: I keep commenting about it as I'm playing through this Cap, but Baldor's gate three. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Voice acting is I know. [00:55:33] Speaker D: Just like it is so freaking good, man. [00:55:37] Speaker B: Voice acting so important. [00:55:39] Speaker D: Oh, it is incredibly important. [00:55:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:41] Speaker D: Unless you're Mario, which, you know what. [00:55:43] Speaker B: That'S probably still important. [00:55:45] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it might be now. I mean, those flowers literally talk human language. [00:55:50] Speaker B: Actually. [00:55:50] Speaker D: That's true. [00:55:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:51] Speaker D: I guess we get a bit more current gen with our Nintendo consoles, mate. Out of the dark. [00:56:01] Speaker A: Exactly. So, yes, there you go. That's SAG after working towards some better working conditions. Now, the other thing that's quite interesting, Grizz, is Jim Ryan, the head of PlayStation, is stepping down. I think he's just ready to throw in the tower. I don't think there's any real big reason. I mean, he's been in that role for about 30 years now, so I think I'm ready for retirement. [00:56:24] Speaker D: He said he was struggling to strike the right balance between his home in the UK and his job in the. [00:56:30] Speaker B: US and wanted a bit more time. [00:56:34] Speaker D: Closer to home, which is fair enough. You've been in the company for 30 years, cap has been CEO of the company since 2019. [00:56:40] Speaker B: A good chunk of time. [00:56:43] Speaker A: I'd imagine that'd be a bucket load of money by now, mate. [00:56:46] Speaker B: I'm sure. Yeah, a couple of bucks. [00:56:49] Speaker D: But I was interested to ask you. [00:56:50] Speaker B: Capo, will us as gamers, see any. [00:56:55] Speaker D: Impact of Ryan's departure? [00:56:57] Speaker B: Or do you think it'll just be a corporate. [00:57:01] Speaker D: Just kind of runs on wheels already? [00:57:04] Speaker A: Well, it might be interesting to see who they hire. They've basically got some Japanese bloke who's jumping in as interim CEO. But I'm interested to see who they put in that role next because you can compare to, I guess, against Microsoft and who they've had recently in those roles. I mean, more recently we've had who I mean, let's be honest, he's kind of like a bit of a, you know, fairly casual kind of guy. And I think that pays off really well for Microsoft. It's going to be interesting to see if they go for a similar kind of approach. They want more of a PR marketing kind, like poster boy person, or do they go for someone who is literally just fucking classic CEO business person, fucking like Jim Ryan was? Jim Ryan had a reasonable presence in E Three in different videos and stuff to show off sort of products and stuff. But I would say almost nowhere near has nowhere near the presence that Phil Spencer's had. So, yeah, going to be interesting to see what happens. Very interesting. But yeah. So there you go. Hats off to Jim Ryan. I think PlayStation has done some good things and done some fucking bad things. [00:58:26] Speaker B: But there you go, he's out. So, yeah, now done. Grizz, kick him out. Yes. [00:58:33] Speaker A: That's the freaking quest log there is one more story, but I figure we may as well talk about it. How's your gaming? [00:58:38] Speaker D: Go about it? [00:58:40] Speaker B: Let's do it. You've been playing it fucking downloaded Cyberpunk. [00:58:47] Speaker A: And the new patch and I bought the fucking DLC because I thought it. [00:58:50] Speaker B: Looked fucking did you vote on the poll? Cap, did you vote on the poll? [00:58:54] Speaker A: I did indeed. So let's open up with the poll. We got the poll floating around somewhere here. I forgot to fucking yeah, we actually did a poll this week, guys. So Pat on my back and Grizz's back. Grizz posted it, but good job, everyone. We fucking got there. [00:59:11] Speaker B: Good job. Grizz asked, with Cyberpunk releasing a huge patch alongside a brand new DLC, Phantom. [00:59:20] Speaker A: Liberty, how will you interact with this video? [00:59:23] Speaker B: Jamalay, Grizz, would you like to go through the options? Yeah. So the options were returning to the game or just bought the game, or. [00:59:34] Speaker D: Cyberpunk is dead to me. Now, I did add an extra fourth one saying, results, please, because I reckon some of our polls would potentially be getting skewed by people wanting to see the results. [00:59:45] Speaker B: But in terms of results, Cap, look. [00:59:47] Speaker D: We had 10% of the people have just bought the game because they wanted to jump back into Phantom Liberty, send a light yield. [00:59:54] Speaker B: One of those people, Capo, yes, I voted for that. [00:59:59] Speaker D: We had 27.3% of the people saying, Cyberpunk is dead to me. [01:00:04] Speaker B: So obviously damage is done. [01:00:07] Speaker D: Not going to go back to Cyberpunk, but 31.8% of people saying that they were going to return to the game for the DLC. [01:00:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I've definitely seen all of those opinions voiced from friends that I know anywhere from similar to me personally, I think Cyberpunk's had a bit of a no man's, sky esque rise back into fame. And I think it's fairly well deserved. Better late than never. I guess. It still kind of sucks that they did what they did and released it in the state it was. But, I mean, at least they got there in the end. There's plenty of other video games that. [01:00:45] Speaker B: Just don't go and clean up the. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Mess that they've made. Hopefully going to give them props when it's deserved. [01:00:51] Speaker D: Yeah, hopefully a bit of a learning. [01:00:53] Speaker B: For the studio to fucking polish your games. [01:00:55] Speaker D: I just wanted to quickly read out Moosey's comment there. [01:00:59] Speaker B: He said, blindsided. [01:01:00] Speaker D: Moose has said, I've basically 100% at. [01:01:02] Speaker B: Cyberpunk, installed a few mods for general. [01:01:05] Speaker D: Quality of life improvements, most of which have been implemented with the latest patch. Very keen to crack into the story expansion. With the skill system overhaul, I'll probably have fun with the new build. [01:01:16] Speaker B: So there you go. [01:01:17] Speaker D: One of those returning to the game or currently playing the game. [01:01:21] Speaker B: Sounds like even. [01:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah, look, I probably put about maybe 15, 20 hours in since I downloaded it a bit over a week ago. And I'm really enjoying the changes. Probably the best part about. It is purely just the fact that they've introduced a much more thoughtful skill tree and perk system. The old sort of skill tree perk system were basically mostly just flat stat increases. Now we have kind of like a more RPG like skill tree system where you do get some stats out of your options of where you're placing your skill points, but you're also getting, okay, now I can do an Air dash with this skill, and now I can do a special fucking, I don't know, slide or whatever. It depends on what tree you're working through. Yeah, I've been really enjoying that. [01:02:23] Speaker B: I really like their new approach to the inventory. [01:02:28] Speaker A: I guess one thing that kind of put me off the game last time was the whole cyberware stuff. So the cyberware thing is it's basically your armor, but not really, but you basically find these cyberware things that they'll give you armor and health and stuff, but they also give you special abilities. Like, now I can zoom in time six, or Now I have access to these extra hacking functions or wherever else. So they kind of work as your armor, but kind of not. But anyways, the way that they've approached it this time around is they've redesigned the UI and it just feels a lot nicer. And yeah, I am just purely just enjoying it a lot more. [01:03:13] Speaker B: I think the Loot system feels a. [01:03:15] Speaker A: Lot better, which they kind of made a few changes to. They also made some crafting changes that feel a lot nicer, just the way the components work and how you use them to create things. I haven't had an awful lot to do with the vehicle combat and police system, but apparently those are much better now. I've been playing kind of a fairly reasonably good boy. [01:03:41] Speaker D: So these are all the Patch 2.0 changes, aren't they, Cap? These are all correct, yeah. [01:03:47] Speaker B: Cool. [01:03:49] Speaker D: Apparently the police system was something that people were going into cyberpunk expecting something similar to GTA police system where you do something wrong and you get a threat level and they come after you. But apparently the AI sitting behind the. [01:04:04] Speaker B: Police system was lacking. [01:04:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it was full garbo. They wouldn't chase after you properly or they get stuck. It was just really bad. But they've definitely seems like they've improved that. Not that I've been in a chase or anything yet, but yeah, plus it sounds like the paid expansion is really good, very good quality, and it kind of puts another level of kind of stuff on top of another layer of stuff on top of what's already existing. [01:04:32] Speaker D: Yeah, they give you this new district, Cap storylines, characters, quests, 100 plus new items, and another level cap up to 60. But the thing that I reckon is probably the most cool about this is the pricing of it. [01:04:45] Speaker B: Cap isn't extortionate. [01:04:47] Speaker D: You're paying $30 for the Phantom Liberty DLC, right? [01:04:51] Speaker B: Which to me is a reasonable price for a DLC, especially this size, I think. [01:04:58] Speaker A: I'm not too sure exactly the length of time that's required to play the story content, but you've also got to remember that there's a bunch of extra kind of, I guess, experience widening features that have come with Phantom Liberty that's available in that paid DLC. And yeah, I think you're right. I think this is a pretty reasonable price. And also got to remember is CD Projekt Red put Cyberpunk on special before it dropped, just to kind of blow even further. Look, I'm really enjoying it so far, and I'm also playing it via my Steam deck as well, via the remote Play function. And it's fucking excellent. Really enjoying that. [01:05:44] Speaker D: Does it run well on the Steam deck, Cap? Like a remote play. [01:05:47] Speaker A: Go all right, yeah, remote Play is awesome. Runs really well natively. So certain games I just play remote Play, and other games I play on the deck itself. But I wanted to play it in high speed LD graphics, and it looks great via the remote play versus playing it natively on the deck, which looks fine, but I think this is a. [01:06:06] Speaker B: Much better way to play it, unless. [01:06:08] Speaker A: You wanted to play it remotely away from home. But for me, perfect. [01:06:11] Speaker B: But look, ultimately, I think if you. [01:06:14] Speaker A: Were waiting for Cyberpunk to be good like I was for a while, I think now's the time. It's not getting any further major updates. [01:06:24] Speaker D: They've said that there's no other DLCs coming or anything else. This is pretty much it. [01:06:29] Speaker A: They've come out and said that the next step is to work on Cyberpunk Two now. [01:06:35] Speaker B: Okay, cool. [01:06:36] Speaker D: Well, this is as good as the. [01:06:38] Speaker B: Game will get, the release of Cyberpunk One. [01:06:40] Speaker D: I mean, I think so much damage. [01:06:42] Speaker B: Was done to this game in the. [01:06:45] Speaker D: Initial weeks, we had a PS Four release that was literally unplayable. Then we look at something like Battles. [01:06:52] Speaker B: Gate Three, where they're going, oh, we're not going to release this to Xbox. [01:06:56] Speaker D: Series, whatever that series was, until it's a shame. [01:07:01] Speaker A: Grizz is like, I look at when I started playing Cyberpunk again, and I started fresh from the beginning, and I was just thinking the whole time, like, man, this is such a better experience than Starfield on a narrative level. Everything is so much fucking better. Even, okay, the game came out broken. But if you think about, I guess, just ultimately what kind of experience you're getting out of Cyberpunk, it's so much better than Starfield in so many fucking ways. [01:07:34] Speaker D: I've seen that written crazy a lot, cap, isn't it? I mean, I wonder whether Starfield will grow legs as it do a Nomad Sky on us and become the game that people are loving. It so people probably get dirty at. [01:07:50] Speaker B: Us talking like this, but I wonder. [01:07:52] Speaker A: Whether we'll, hey, if you enjoy Starfield, that's fine. But ultimately you can't ignore the fact that he is just a fucking regurgitation. [01:07:59] Speaker B: Of the same old stuff, unfortunately. Yeah. [01:08:03] Speaker D: See, I wonder whether it will reach its peak similar to Cyberpunk has in. [01:08:11] Speaker B: This respect and be a decent game. [01:08:14] Speaker A: In time if Bethesda can pump it out. I doubt it. I think they'll start working on something else, but it definitely for me, it raises my eyebrow when it comes to me thinking whether Elder Scrolls Six is going to be a good experience. Because based on the quality of Starfield, I just don't know if Bethesda has it in them to make a reasonably good RPG. They can make an RPG, but can. [01:08:38] Speaker B: They make a fun RPG? [01:08:40] Speaker A: Who fucking knows? They couldn't with Sarfield, in my opinion. Anyway, very biased. But anyways. [01:08:48] Speaker D: People seem to be enjoying the game right now, too. So, nearly 250K concurrent players on Steam Cyberpunk 2077, which was the highest player. [01:09:01] Speaker B: Count has been since December 2020. So, yeah, the poll suggested that people. [01:09:07] Speaker D: Were looking forward to either jumping back into the game or purchasing the game to play Phantom Liberty, but the stats. [01:09:14] Speaker B: Behind Steam seem to be supporting that as well, which is interesting. [01:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I just think the game's in a really good place right now. And, again, it's a good time to buy and play. The game has been streamlined really well and I think people are noticing that. And people probably tried to wet their whistle on Starfield, perhaps, and went, oh, God, this isn't quite what I was after. And then, I don't know, probably then went, okay, where else can I go? Oh, Cyberpunk's just released a new DLC. [01:09:47] Speaker B: Cool, let's do that. And, yeah, I think it's worked pretty. [01:09:51] Speaker A: Bloody well in their favor. Old project rec. [01:09:53] Speaker D: So, absolutely, yeah. [01:09:55] Speaker B: There you go. Now, Greet, talk to me about your. [01:10:00] Speaker A: Lies of Pea experience. [01:10:02] Speaker B: I will, cap. We've forgotten to do any stingers tonight, mate. Yeah, I did the stingers, mate. [01:10:13] Speaker D: You're fucking all over it, mate. I must be ignoring you, dude. [01:10:15] Speaker B: Liza P has been very surprising to me. [01:10:22] Speaker D: I didn't expect it to be as polished as it was. [01:10:25] Speaker B: Neither did I. [01:10:27] Speaker D: No, I didn't. [01:10:28] Speaker B: It is like, well, I haven't got. [01:10:30] Speaker D: To the end game. I'm probably at the very start, I've. [01:10:33] Speaker B: Completed maybe like four or five bosses. [01:10:36] Speaker D: Maybe only one major boss. [01:10:38] Speaker B: But look, it runs beautifully. [01:10:41] Speaker D: I'm playing it on PlayStation five. The combat feels extremely fluid and snappy. [01:10:47] Speaker B: But I think the biggest credit to the game is I feel like they've taken all of the great things from the Souls Games, from different Souls games. [01:10:58] Speaker D: And they've mashed them into this video game to make a really enjoyable combat experience. [01:11:04] Speaker B: So they've taken the Parry mechanic from. [01:11:07] Speaker D: Sakiro, where you kind of have a. [01:11:09] Speaker B: Meter and you need a parry at the correct timing to get a good parry off. [01:11:17] Speaker D: They've taken Weapon Arts, I kind of. [01:11:20] Speaker B: Feel like, from Skiro as well, where. [01:11:23] Speaker D: You use your hand to do different things. [01:11:27] Speaker B: I don't want to spoil too much. [01:11:28] Speaker D: For people if you are looking to. [01:11:29] Speaker B: Play this, so I'll just keep it at that. They've taken stuff from Bloodborne, not only. [01:11:34] Speaker D: The aesthetics of the town itself and the look of the game, but the combat speed is very bloodborneish. It encourages you to play aggressive, an. [01:11:46] Speaker B: Aggressive playstyle, and also the health recovery cap. [01:11:50] Speaker D: So if you're blocking someone and you. [01:11:52] Speaker B: Don'T successfully get a timed block off. [01:11:55] Speaker D: You'Ll take damage, but not all the. [01:11:57] Speaker B: Damage, but the damage that you take when you're blocking. [01:12:01] Speaker D: If you attack an enemy in a short window, you'll be able to gain that health back. [01:12:05] Speaker B: So Bloodborne did something kind of similar. [01:12:08] Speaker D: Where if you take the damage, you could attack an enemy to regain that health in a short period of time. So it basically was promoting you to play quite aggressive in your style. So they've kind of taken that, but put their own spin on it. I think it's very creative. And then, of course, they've taken the iframes in the dodging. So how do you feel about the combat cap? Because I really like the combination of the Souls Games to kind of put together this combat. [01:12:33] Speaker A: I honestly feel like it's like the perfect distillation for me because I really like Bloodborne and the speed, and I feel like maybe it's slightly slower than Bloodborne, but then I really liked Sakiro and the kind of dance you had with bosses and stuff, and I really like how they've married those two things. But then I also really like Dark Souls and the ability to block damage, but then they've kind of managed to make it feel a bit more Bloodborne esque at the same time. [01:13:02] Speaker B: So I just think the way that. [01:13:05] Speaker A: They'Ve approached the combat design is just very well done, I think. [01:13:08] Speaker B: Pretty clever, eh? [01:13:10] Speaker A: Look, it is very clever. I think if I was to give it some take some points away, there's a little bit of jank here and there nothing crazy. I just think sometimes certain ways your character moves around or the way that you interact with the world feels a little bit janky, but ultimately that's fine. [01:13:33] Speaker D: In the very first room cap, the hitboxes of some of the items that are just like tables and things are not as accurate as what some of the recent Souls Games are. And like you say, just some of the pathing when you're trying to move around those, the hitbox might be bigger than the actual object. A prime example is I'm trying to jump off the roof onto another roof. [01:13:56] Speaker B: And if it was Dark Souls Three. [01:13:59] Speaker D: Or Eldring or something like that, you'd be able to do that or secure you'd be able to jump onto that roof. But there's just hard walls there, and you just end up falling to your death and taking a bunch of damage or something. So those things are frustrating. [01:14:14] Speaker A: I think, for me, some of the approach to level design, I would say isn't as up to scratch as a from software experience, but ultimately I think the developers have done a fucking immensely good job. And it has that. [01:14:36] Speaker B: You know, I. [01:14:37] Speaker A: Think, you know, the voice acting is serviceable. The story is really good so far, really enjoying kind of the story. [01:14:45] Speaker D: It so works with the Pinocchio. The whole Pinocchio story kind of mashing that into know, the whole puppet uprising. It's just very well done. I feel like they've really captured that aesthetic in the storytelling. [01:15:04] Speaker A: I really I just really like how they've retrofitted the Pinocchio story against this kind of Victorian era bloodborne tale. And yeah, it just feels really good overall. Crack a game. Really enjoying it. I haven't had an awful lot of time with it in the last week or so because I've kind of been mainlining a bit of cyberpunk. Just because I haven't felt like getting my ass handed to me in Liza P. But I'm a fair way along the way. [01:15:32] Speaker D: I haven't felt a challenge in a game for a while. I've just been playing very relaxed, kind of cruising through video games. But, yeah, I streamed this on. When was that? On the weekend sometime just gone. And I got stuck on a boss for probably about 25 minutes kicking my ass. Probably died about 15 times to him, but I ended up beating him. [01:15:51] Speaker B: But it just brought back that feeling of when you do die over and. [01:15:56] Speaker D: Over again, figure it out slowly and beat it. That sense of accomplishment. Accomplishment, which is great. I guess my only real gripe with it Cap. And I don't know whether this gets better as he plays through the game. [01:16:07] Speaker B: But I feel like the bosses that. [01:16:10] Speaker D: I've fought so far and some of. [01:16:11] Speaker B: The enemies that I've fought heavily rely. [01:16:14] Speaker D: On you having consumables to beat them. Otherwise the damage is too much. Or there's some kind of mechanic that'll be too much for you. [01:16:22] Speaker B: And both times that I've had to. [01:16:25] Speaker D: Do this, I didn't have many of those consumables on me and it relied. [01:16:28] Speaker B: On me to actually go back and. [01:16:30] Speaker D: Buy some or farm some from somewhere. And I hope that that is not a recurring theme throughout the game because. [01:16:36] Speaker B: Quite honestly, I can't be fucked doing that. I'd rather be able to fight and beat the boss. [01:16:41] Speaker D: So I don't know how it's going. [01:16:42] Speaker B: To go later, but that was my. [01:16:44] Speaker D: Early indication so far. They kind of have different status effects and bits and pieces that you want. [01:16:49] Speaker B: To be using resistant things on to not get smashed by them. But I could just play better and not get hit. [01:16:56] Speaker D: But yeah, minor gripe. [01:17:00] Speaker A: I think you're going to probably run in. What area are you in at the moment? [01:17:06] Speaker D: I just beat the big cop Spider guy and I'm pretty much just past that area. [01:17:14] Speaker A: I think the next boss is going to give you a real fucking hard time. [01:17:17] Speaker D: Is that right? [01:17:24] Speaker B: Good job. [01:17:26] Speaker A: Big time. [01:17:30] Speaker D: Cap, you can see him up now. [01:17:32] Speaker B: The scrapped watchman. [01:17:37] Speaker D: I think I sunk about 30 deaths. [01:17:39] Speaker B: In total into this guy to get to this point. [01:17:42] Speaker A: Have you noticed you can actually read the dialogue that they say if you try really hard? [01:17:47] Speaker B: No, I did not know that, mate. [01:17:49] Speaker A: They look like they're saying these weird runes or something, but they're actually like, if you squint, you can kind of see it's actually really real. [01:17:57] Speaker D: I was not paying attention. [01:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of cool. [01:18:00] Speaker B: Kind of very cool. [01:18:04] Speaker A: I'm glad you're enjoying Liza P and I'm going to try and get back into it this week. But yeah, just trying to between that and I'm still making my way through boulders. Gate three, I'm in the final act. And it's not that I'm not enjoying it, it's more so just like Act One and two were just so well put together and then Act Three is just kind of like quite open and it's a very bit different change of pace for me and I'm probably not as enjoying it as much as I did act One and Two because they had quite you still got a goal in mind, but I feel like it's. [01:18:38] Speaker B: Quite distributed and I've also got other. [01:18:41] Speaker A: Things I want to play as well. So I've kind of put BG Three on the back burner a little bit, but I'll get back in. [01:18:46] Speaker D: So Cap, I've got 70 hours in. [01:18:49] Speaker B: Beltor's Gate Three, and me and my. [01:18:52] Speaker D: Co op party have only just got. [01:18:54] Speaker B: Out of Act One. [01:18:56] Speaker A: Christ. [01:18:59] Speaker D: We'Ve been really enjoying it, dude. So we went and did the mountain pass, pretty much the whole of it. And then we also went in and did the underdark. So we did both ways. Yeah, which was great. [01:19:09] Speaker A: I did, too. [01:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:10] Speaker A: I've done as much as I possibly could in my first play through. I'll play to have a multiplayer run at sometime, probably towards the end of the year with some mates. But, yeah, nice. [01:19:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good. [01:19:23] Speaker A: Really good game. So there you go. [01:19:25] Speaker B: Negriz. Yeah. [01:19:27] Speaker A: Can we dive into a bit of freaking rapify news? [01:19:31] Speaker D: Do it, mate. [01:19:34] Speaker B: Francesco. [01:19:36] Speaker A: It's in the freaking game, baby. Pav said that DJ Francesco had perished, but I'll tell you, right now, he is still supporting this podcast like you wouldn't believe. [01:19:46] Speaker B: You didn't talk about CS Two, mate. Oh, shit. Do you have a quick one about that? [01:19:52] Speaker D: Just tell me what it's like, mate. [01:19:53] Speaker B: I'm curious and I haven't played it well. [01:19:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just CS Go feels a bit snappier. I think it looks a lot better because they've touched up all of the interfaces and all the skins and stuff. [01:20:07] Speaker B: And they've made a few map changes and stuff. [01:20:13] Speaker A: But, yeah, it just feels like CSGO and all it has done is highlight how fucking old I am because I cannot compete anywhere near the fucking level that all these zoomers are playing. [01:20:24] Speaker D: I'm not even going to bother, mate. I am not even going to bother. I know, it's just going to be a bad time. I might enjoy it for 1 second. [01:20:31] Speaker B: And then that'll be it. But I want to watch you guys play it. Sure, yeah. [01:20:36] Speaker A: Look, it was fun getting in there. I had a few beers and was just doing P 90 rushes on fucking Site A, and everyone's getting shitty about it, but I thought that was great fun. Give it a crack if it's free. So, I mean, fucking why not? Give it a crack. So what you think? But at home but yeah, just more counterstrike, really. [01:20:56] Speaker B: So there you go. [01:20:58] Speaker A: All right, so, Grizz, first one off the rank, Nexus Mods, has banned a pronoun removal mod from its listings. Someone created just a kind of shit mod where it would remove the whole pronoun thing in Starfield. So Nexus Mods said, fuck yeah, take. [01:21:19] Speaker B: That shit elsewhere, which totally get it. Fair enough, mate. There you go. Okay, Cap, astarian's actor says, beltel's gates. [01:21:30] Speaker D: Replayers haven't found a hidden two hour section. [01:21:34] Speaker B: I'm one of the few people that knows about it. Yeah. [01:21:39] Speaker D: Is he making rumors, mate, or is this founded on I think what ended. [01:21:43] Speaker A: Up happening was, and I don't know if you got to this point in. [01:21:46] Speaker B: The game, but did you find the. [01:21:49] Speaker A: Thing with the mace in the temple? [01:21:52] Speaker B: Did you see that? Yes, we did. [01:21:53] Speaker D: We did find the mace. Yet when we left the temple, yes, one of our guys was wearing it and it's fucking broken, dude. [01:21:59] Speaker A: It's broken. It will revive you instantly if you die, and also it does a big fucking sunlight beam. That fucks shit up. It's actually bullshit. [01:22:09] Speaker D: It's so good, dude. So we did that before we did the mountain pass, and you get to the area where you need light around you to walk. Well, it's fucking light, dude, and everything's weak to the sunlight shit. Stuff's just getting wrecked. [01:22:23] Speaker B: Great. [01:22:25] Speaker A: Sorry. Now, what would happen is because if you take the mace without having the key to take the mace out, it turns this big solar ray gun onto the place and fires a massive ray gun at it, killing everyone inside the temple if you don't get out. [01:22:48] Speaker B: Serious. [01:22:49] Speaker A: And then if you leave asteroid in there to die to the solar ray gun because he's a vampire, and if you revive him afterwards, he has a big crack at you about leaving him in the fucking temple and the big solar ray gun killing him because sun versus vampire kind of thing. [01:23:08] Speaker D: No way, man. [01:23:09] Speaker B: That is nuts. [01:23:10] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:23:11] Speaker A: So pretty fucking cool. Really fucking cool. So I think it turned out to be that was the thing that he was talking about, which, I mean, it's not exactly a two hour section, but. [01:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it's still very fucking rad. So, yeah, there you go. [01:23:25] Speaker A: Now, Grizz speaking about Elder Scroll Six, it's definitely not coming to PS Five, just FYI. And I think we kind of already guessed that because Microsoft's not in the habit of giving PlayStation owners any free handouts when it comes to its own titles. [01:23:41] Speaker B: Why? [01:23:42] Speaker D: Oh, okay. [01:23:44] Speaker A: Well, Microsoft owns Bethesda. [01:23:47] Speaker D: Yeah, right. [01:23:48] Speaker A: Starfield didn't come out on PlayStation, so they just do the same thing again with Elder Scrolls. So if you want to play the Elder Scrolls, you're going to need a PC or an Xbox. And you probably shouldn't expect that game to release until at least after 2026. And I'm guessing that that's the year that Bethesda is hoping that no one releases an RPG and they don't have to compare themselves against anyone and can get away with murder when it comes. [01:24:17] Speaker B: To producing shit games. [01:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah, they've obviously done some forecasting. [01:24:26] Speaker B: There you go. Now. [01:24:27] Speaker D: Cap, callisto protocol, mate. Dead Space co created depart startup after newest game flops. So, yeah, we had Callisto Protocol come out not long ago, didn't do particularly well. [01:24:41] Speaker B: And we're seeing one of the devs. [01:24:44] Speaker D: From Dead Space, grizz, what do you. [01:24:48] Speaker A: Call the developers of Clisto Protocol? What do you call their office? [01:24:53] Speaker B: Dead Space got them big fired. [01:25:03] Speaker A: That's pretty fucking rough, actually. Sorry, guys. All right, now, Grizz Boulders Gate Three has released a very sizable patch. It's quite large. I think they did yet another kind of almost reached the fucking character limit. [01:25:21] Speaker B: On the patch notes for Steam. [01:25:25] Speaker A: But they have released Mac support, which is pretty cool for Mac owners. There's now a magic mirror where you can basically change your character's appearance you couldn't before. Kind of like barbershop style. You can change everything. Face, hair, the whole lot. So if you want to do that, there's a shitload of changes to combat. [01:25:51] Speaker D: Also some yeah, a bunch of balancing bits and pieces and things. [01:25:55] Speaker A: Balancing. There's also some performance improvements to the city, which is Act Three, which is good. I imagine there's a lot of stuff on the screen in Act Three, so I can imagine some lower NPCs probably struggled a little bit. There also just a bunch of sort of fixes to scripting and flow within quests and some gameplay issues and UI elements, et cetera. So a lot of fixes and changes. So, yeah, good on Frickin Larian, just pumping out the fucking smashes like there's no tomorrow. [01:26:25] Speaker B: So good, dude. [01:26:26] Speaker D: So good. [01:26:27] Speaker B: They've done well. [01:26:29] Speaker A: They don't have to, right? [01:26:30] Speaker B: Like they could just stop and have. [01:26:33] Speaker A: Created one of the best RPGs ever. [01:26:35] Speaker B: But they're just going they're going for it. [01:26:38] Speaker D: Good to see all over it. [01:26:41] Speaker B: Cap. [01:26:42] Speaker D: Months after declaring Tomb Raider is unaffected. [01:26:45] Speaker B: By layoffs, tomb Raider dev hit with. [01:26:47] Speaker D: A wave of layoffs embracer group's bloodbath continues as Tomb Raider dev Crystal Dynamics reports. [01:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's sad. We've seen other embracer group developers suffer from layoffs recently. And, yeah, it turns out that Tomb. [01:27:09] Speaker B: Raider is also going to be suffering. Now interestingly. [01:27:14] Speaker A: This is also around the time that we've recently had a Tomb Raider Netflix series announced anime based. [01:27:22] Speaker B: Wow. [01:27:23] Speaker A: So, yeah, just a little side note for you guys. But yeah, there you go. [01:27:26] Speaker B: Now. Grizz GTA five is ten years old. That is crazy. [01:27:33] Speaker D: Game still sucks. [01:27:35] Speaker A: Game sucks. [01:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:37] Speaker D: But it is getting quite old. People fucking love that game, man. [01:27:40] Speaker B: Don't they? [01:27:41] Speaker A: Do love that game. I enjoyed doing the Roleplay stuff for all five minutes and then Cap Dundee or something. [01:27:49] Speaker D: Weren't you the copper? [01:27:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:51] Speaker A: Cap dundee. And I was a fucking menace. [01:27:57] Speaker D: That would have been cool. I only could have made big on that capper. [01:27:59] Speaker B: That was good. [01:28:01] Speaker A: I could have been that. [01:28:03] Speaker B: I could have been bigger than fucking sliced bread, mate. [01:28:06] Speaker A: But sometimes you got to give in to your morals. [01:28:12] Speaker B: So I left. Anyways, Cap, star Citizens long running development has inched forward yet again. [01:28:19] Speaker D: This time to the Alpha 3.20 stage, I believe over $600 million later. Cap, in developing this game. [01:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah, dude, a couple of bucks, mate. [01:28:31] Speaker A: Crazy. I don't know if you know an awful lot about Star Citizen Grizz, but I mean, they basically got kick started once upon a time and it was like, we're going to bring this fucking game out. It's going to be the best space game ever. They're still developing it fucking 20 years later. Not 20 years, but you get my meaning. And they spent $600 million on it, which is out of control and there's no signs of stopping. And it's not really a game yet. It's just all these little kind of mini experiences that have kind of been stapled together. So, I don't know, it kind of feels like they're just stealing your money. [01:29:13] Speaker B: Slowly taking your money. [01:29:16] Speaker A: There you go. Now Grizz CFCs is getting PvE service so you can play the game solo this year. [01:29:22] Speaker B: Wow. Which is kind of cool. That is cool. I like that. [01:29:27] Speaker A: It's kind of nice to be able to just enjoy the high seas with your friends and not kind of get fucking owned by high skill cap players, which is what happened to me last time I played. [01:29:37] Speaker D: I reckon the older the game gets, the more that that's just going to like yeah, exactly. [01:29:43] Speaker A: So I think this is a no brainer, but yeah, interesting. [01:29:48] Speaker B: Now, Cap, interestingly enough, the article for this story is on Fandom, but Minecraft to move away from its Wiki on Fandom. So they are after several discussions, we're. [01:30:02] Speaker D: Excited to announce that Minecraft Wiki has moved from Fandom to oh, which is this new site. Okay, there you go. All the information about the game can now be found in the new location. [01:30:14] Speaker A: Which is kind of cool. I mean, Fandom has been doing hosting Wikis forever today. And I'm sure that a lot of people that listen to this podcast have probably been exposed to a Fandom Wiki site before, but they're always just bloated with fucking ads and just garbage. And so good on them for getting the fuck off there because Fandom sucks. [01:30:35] Speaker B: So, yeah, well done. All right, now, Grizz, someone recently, I. [01:30:42] Speaker A: Think it was in an interview, know, someone asked for a comment from Capcom saying, know, would you be interested if Microsoft offered to purchase you? [01:30:52] Speaker B: To which Capcom politely said, no, we're. [01:30:56] Speaker A: Not interested, FYI, so don't bother. [01:31:00] Speaker B: Thank you. Just let you know. There you go. Capcom too smart, apparently. [01:31:07] Speaker D: Cap epic Games, the maker of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, is laying off a. [01:31:10] Speaker B: Whopping 16% of employees, which is around 900 people. I wonder what areas they're getting let. [01:31:20] Speaker D: Go from or whether it's just like. [01:31:21] Speaker B: A company wide selling. [01:31:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it's probably across a lot of their different departments. But Epic is more than just development. They've got customer service and obviously they've got support as well. So there's different areas that they'd be working in. [01:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:44] Speaker A: Even Sukai in Chat is saying there's big hits to the four guys. Developer oh, really? [01:31:49] Speaker B: Wow. Everyone's getting slammed. [01:31:52] Speaker A: Everyone's getting slam jammed. So, yeah, pretty rough. Hopefully people can find new places to go. [01:31:58] Speaker B: All right. [01:31:59] Speaker A: Grizz now we spoke about this earlier, so I'm going to bundle the next two. CS go is now publicly available. Grizz and it has earned over $40 million from case openings in the first. [01:32:10] Speaker B: Few hours, which is out of control. [01:32:14] Speaker D: I don't know how I feel about that. [01:32:15] Speaker B: Cap how do you feel about that? [01:32:19] Speaker D: We're trying to scale back the whole fucking loot boxes thing. [01:32:22] Speaker A: And here's, yeah, I thought gamers were trying to put up a fight against Microtransactions, but this is really suggesting otherwise. [01:32:30] Speaker D: And you know what, man? Look, there's a bit of controversy and I haven't spoken about it with you. [01:32:34] Speaker B: Blokes yet, but both Xqc and Dr. Disrespect pulled insane chance pools. And there was discussions all over Reddit. [01:32:46] Speaker D: Saying that they reckon that those pools were rigged. They were given a higher chance to find higher quality items to try to promote their communities to go buy loot boxes. There's a bunch of conspiracy theories. [01:32:58] Speaker A: I mean, it wouldn't surprise me. And we'd never fucking know because God knows how much they paid them if that was the case. But, yeah, there's nothing stopping them from doing it because they create the game. They can set the fucking stats. But you'd hope not. You'd hope not. [01:33:16] Speaker D: You'd hope that how to make a couple of bucks. [01:33:19] Speaker B: Fucking virtual cosmetics. [01:33:20] Speaker D: Cap mind blowing, mate. [01:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Unbelievable. [01:33:27] Speaker B: Cap star Wars Jedi Survivor, a sequel. [01:33:31] Speaker D: Third in the series, is already in. [01:33:33] Speaker B: Development, which is cool. [01:33:35] Speaker D: I haven't played the last one yet. I should get around to doing that. [01:33:37] Speaker A: I never finished it, but it was good. It was nothing groundbreaking, just kind of I mean, it's one of those games where it's not really worth doing an awful lot of exploration because some of the extra bosses seem fun. But you'd go and open a. Chest in the middle of the desert and you unlock a new beard option and it's just like, what the just fucking random. Yeah, I found a beard in the desert. Just felt bit off. But the game was good and I think I'd enjoy another one. I probably need to do a recap. [01:34:12] Speaker B: But we'll get there. But, yeah, anyways, Cap do a recap. [01:34:17] Speaker A: Cap will do a recap. But speaking of recaps, if you want to listen to this episode again, you have to go and do so via podcast. This is the end of the podcast and you will need to listen to it as a podcast. Excuse me. So, yeah, thank you for listening. We really appreciate it. If you want to listen to us live next week, you can do so by going to Twitch TV Oceanicgamingradio from 07:00 P.m. Australian Western Standard Time. Otherwise, you can listen to us on every single podcasting platform available. Just look up Oceanic Gamingradio. Outside of that, join us on Twitter, well x.com Ogrshow, and you can vote in our weekly polls. And then if you want to join our discord, just go to OGR show and follow the links there. All the links that I just mentioned. [01:35:05] Speaker B: Are all sitting there as well, and. [01:35:08] Speaker A: You can come and chat to us in Discord. Other than that, I think that's about everything I've really got to say. Been a banger. Good to have you back, Grizz. We missed you. Yeah, we're going to miss you, Pav. Next week and the week after. And potentially the week after that. [01:35:21] Speaker B: But he'll be back. All right now, love you guys all. [01:35:25] Speaker A: Heaps and take it easy.