Show Notes
An in depth discussion around why Diablo 4, is well.....bad.
NO PAV THIS WEEK SO NO FRUTHER DESCRIPTION!
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:19] Speaker A: G'day and freaking welcome to Oceanic Gaming Radio. It's a pleasure to be here yet again, bringing you yet even more gaming news, reviews and hot takes. And boy, were there some hot takes last week, wasn't there, Grizzly? Holy moly. We got some pretty angry people in our Instagram just in saying that we.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Have Facebook, Instagram, yeah, TikTok, Twitter.
Anything else I'm missing? What else we got, Patreon? Patreon.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: There's snippets of our episodes going live to all those media sources. So if you want to see these hot takes, then go check out our website.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: I think all those links should be on OGR Show. Or if you are just on those apps and you're looking for us, either look up OGR or Oceanic Gaming Radio.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: One guy was like, that fucking bearded guy.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, some fucking idiot with a beard.
You know you're winning when some guy calls you a fucking idiot with a beard.
But yeah, go and check out those shorts if you want to get a bit of a laugh. Anyways, look, this is episode 74. It is the 9th of the 10th, 2023. My name is Captain Perth and alongside me, as always, grizzly gaming. And no Pavlova face this week?
[00:01:38] Speaker B: No, he's gone.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: He's in PAX. And it looks like he's having a banger of a time.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Right? He's had a big one.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm imagining he's probably pretty hungover because I've seen a lot of we're in, like a shared discord for ground zero. And I've seen a lot of questions about where the people are on the beers and stuff. And pretty much every night he's been there.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: What time he replied to our Facebook last night? This morning?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Cap, it was like 430.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Don't forget he's on Melbourne time.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: So maybe he was waking up early then.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Potentially, yeah.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Well, what time was it?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: It was like 04:30 a.m..
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Still pretty early.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: That would have been like six issues time.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: He doesn't have kids.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: What's he doing get up that early?
[00:02:22] Speaker B: What an idiot. Don't know. That's stupid, mate.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: No one should do that. It's not my choice. Anyway, maybe he's flying back. Might have been a flight thing, but yeah. Anyways, so it's just me and freaking Grizz this week. And you're in for a freaking treat now, Grizz. I want to know how your weekend was, mate.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: What happened?
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Weekend. I didn't even think about talking about this because I've completely forgotten what happened. But I had some leave, which was really nice. So I kind of still feel like I'm on holidays. I even took today off. Today my first official day starting the new job starts tomorrow, so shit. Yeah, gearing up for that.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Pretty dang excited.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: But over the weekend, what did I do, Cap?
I went to your son's birthday, mate.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Which was bloody delightful. At a birthday party.
[00:03:08] Speaker C: First birthday party. And you know what? I think you've done that right, Cap.
Sneaking the beers at a birthday party at a brewery while you can, but I will talk about the beverage that I had there, cap.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: So I looked up on the board.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: And I looked at all the ones that were the highest percentage, just because I was curious to know what a high percentage pretty much all of them taste like. Yeah, a lot of them are bloody nuts. And yeah, this one that I had, Cap, was a I think it was like an 18 percenter. It was a holy shit.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Wasn't a barley wine, was it?
[00:03:39] Speaker C: It was a barley wine. Yeah, it was a barley wine and he pulled out the glass that he wanted to pour it in. It was like a shot glass.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: And I was like, oh, I reckon.
[00:03:48] Speaker C: I might get a size up from that. Then you got the size up and I was like, oh, I reckon I might get a size up from that. So I've gone the size up, double size up, one drink and I was.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Feeling pretty were you fucked? Yeah.
Was it expensive for a big one?
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I can't what it was, dude. It was like fucking $28 or something for a big one.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: So, just for context, we went to a pub down the road from me and it's got about 40, I think, different beers on tap at any given time. And they rotate them very regularly, like virtually weekly. And they're not known for having too many kind of easy going, like 3.5 Midis or anything on the board. It's generally like pretty hard going IPAs and stouts and they pretty often have barley wines and shit. But it's such a good pub. I love it. They do a fucking awesome dude.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: The Dutch Trading co in Victoria Park.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: Perth, they bought out little mini smashburgers.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Cap that were just great.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: Yeah, well done on the cap.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: I didn't get a chance to have one because I was too busy fucking around talking to everyone.
[00:04:57] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the thing when people come to your party, you got to bloody at least say hello to everyone.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: It's tough.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: I know it's hard. Well, what else did you up to, mate?
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Apart from that? Anything.
[00:05:08] Speaker C: Me and Pandy stayed up real late on Saturday night, Friday night, I can't remember one of the nights and played a bunch of dota. We are on like a 15 game ranked win streak right now. We are preparing ourselves for Ti because we're probably going to be there, I reckon. We are absolutely running shit. We've been dominating the off lane cap. So I've been playing a position five four and Pandy plays the position three.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: And it's just been a lot of fun.
[00:05:36] Speaker C: Been really enjoying that. So more of a support role for you and actually I think that is my role cap. I actually quite like it.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: What's your go to hero at the moment?
[00:05:48] Speaker C: I've been absolutely slamming silencer recently for a number of reasons. So I mean, there's going to be nerds out there that don't understand Dota, but essentially this hero that I play allows you to silence every enemy on the map regardless of where they are for 5 seconds. And so I find that playing that as a support, it gives you the ability to impact a fight no matter.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Where you are on the map.
[00:06:13] Speaker C: But also he has this thing where if someone dies in your vicinity you gain two permanent intelligence and they lose two permanent intelligence. So the scaling is actually really good by the end of the game, usually you're hitting like a truck and then early you're able to kind of make the most of those engagements by silencing the enemy team. So yeah, I've been pumping that and he's been pumping a lot of Axe and a lot of sand kings.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: So just strong lanes, mate.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: Strong lanes.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Good shit, mate.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: And what about Sunday?
[00:06:43] Speaker B: We're fairly crazy Sunday.
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Went to the in laws for dinner in the afternoon, which was great. I went and had a couple of beers.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: I got some belated birthday presents, I.
[00:06:55] Speaker C: Got a bottle of Jack Daniels and.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: I've also got a cap.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: It's like a stubby holder but you.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Put your beer in it's like a.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Metal thing and then is it a Yeti? It's a yeah.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I knew it.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: They're great, man.
They're really good and they keep your beer freaking cold, man. Because it virtually locks it in to the point where the only possible way for it to lose heat is through the top of it.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Obviously. That's how that works.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: It's like a really good what do you call that? Like an insulator.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: Do you have one of those? Because they're like really popular. All the Yeti products are very popular.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: They're a bit of a thing. I think everyone like a bit of a meme about like, oh, got me bloody Yeti. Like fucking pretty cool bloke over here. But they are legitimately really good. But I think it's the kind of thing where you buy a Yeti cooler and then all of a sudden you've got a Yeti eski and you've got a Yeti truckers hat and you've got.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: A Yeti pair of thongs and board.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Shorts because you become a big Yeti fan. So I don't know.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: It's good though.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Good quality. Yeah, well nice mate.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: Now the other thing that I forgot, cap is I did do a drum stream on Friday night prepping for this slate of shows we've got coming up. Our first show for Renegades of Rock is not this weekend, but the following weekend I believe. So prepping for that, but yeah, I think I'm pretty much ready to go, mate. I feel some of the songs I'm not used to playing difficult drum songs live. So one of the ones I was dealing with that was particularly hard was Ever Long by Foo Fighters, mate, is an absolute Dave Grohl's.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Just an animal behind the kit, dude.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Big time.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: It's been cool.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Been an animal ever since he started playing music.
Madman.
Big Time, what's kind of the song that you're most looking forward to smashing out, dude?
[00:08:53] Speaker C: I love drumming. Toxicity by system of the down. I think it is one of my favorite drum tracks. It sounds a lot more difficult than what that is to drum but it's.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Just such a satisfying song to it.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: Look forward to banging that one out for sure. Now, Kat, what about you, mate? What's been happening? How's your weekend?
[00:09:14] Speaker B: What happened?
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Yeah, well, really good, like you said. We had Ted's first birthday party on Saturday and I had a bunch of beers and just kind know, social butterflied and all that kind of stuff. That was great fun. And then Sunday, I didn't do an awful lot, honestly, I kind of just chilled out majorly. We had a lot of cleaning up and stuff. We wanted to do just bits of pieces like that.
So I was fairly quiet over that Sunday. I ended up taking Ted to the park in the afternoon and then gave Mir a couple hours to herself.
And then I took Ted to the pub because Saturday clearly wasn't enough, so me and him, he had a rice cracker and I had an IPA. It was great.
[00:10:03] Speaker C: So was that a boys trip to the pub, Cap? Was it made?
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Yeah, we went to the park and I was like, okay, we've been here for about an hour and probably should get moving because some was getting a little bit dark. Wasn't too bad though, but just thought we start making our way home and kind of got halfway there and I was like, I feel like we should maybe hang out for a bit longer. Just kind of give Mum a little bit longer to chill. And I thought, well, fuck it, I'll just go and have a beer quickly at the pub. And so I had a little schooner and then headed home. It was great.
[00:10:35] Speaker C: How pissed were you after Ted's? Did you have a good couple of beers after Ted's birthday, mate, look, I.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Didn'T get too stumped because Ted's been sleeping like shit so it's not really worth the pain of a hangover and not an awful lot of sleep during the night, so I had a fair few, but I wasn't beyond redemption or anything.
I think it was just the perfect amount to get through the night effectively, which was good. We didn't end up eating an awful lot of food at the thing again because we're just talking to everyone. So we ended up going home and order a bunch of macas, which is pretty hilarious.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: But yeah, it was good.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Great night and yeah, pretty good weekend. So hopefully I think this weekend we're much quieter, which I'm quite looking forward to because well, last week was just a lot of getting prepared for ted's birthday. And, yeah, it was just a lot.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Of shit going on, but yeah. Anyway, beautiful.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Absolutely love it. That was me, mate. So, look, let's just freaking jump, you.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Know, usual house rules.
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[00:13:21] Speaker C: Wait till the Diablo Four fanboys come after us after this episode today, mate.
There'll be riots in the streets, I'm sure.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Make sure you lock your fucking doors, Grizz.
But yeah. So, look, just want to say a big thanks to our wonderful existing patrons. They are the following legends Sukai, Moosey, Caging, Run, sergeant Paul Lee, GD, Jlibs, Brendan, Dan. Fantastic and strups.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Appreciate your legends. I'm about to sneeze.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: There we go. All right.
Big old quest log.
We've got about well, look, we got a bunch of stuff on here. We're going to see how much we can get through.
Probably the biggest thing we wanted to chat about tonight is Diablo Four and.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Grizz, something that I predicted, if you remember. What? What did you predict?
[00:14:16] Speaker A: That it would come to Steam next after overwatch.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Look, I don't know whether I need.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: To ask you this question now or after we've broken this down a little.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Bit, but I can't help but think.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: It coming to Steam is Blizzard's way of saying, fuck, we need this in front of more people. How do we do that? We release it to steam.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: 100% is dude.
In my opinion, this is a perfect insight into what is actually happening in Blizzard. And I don't think Diablo Four is doing very fucking well.
And I mean, we'll dive straight into it, but I think the writing is.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Definitely very much on the wall.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: I think they're probably player numbers have.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Kind of shit the bed dramatically and.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: I think they probably were hoping that they wouldn't have to do this so quickly.
But guess what? I think now they're trying to claw in. The gamers that refuse to download the Battlenet app.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: Steam is where they send their graveyard games. Cap like Overwatch Two is over on Steam now as well, I believe.
We don't have wow, obviously, because that continues to tick along nicely.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Well, exactly. They can still keep that cohort of people on that platform.
Four is going to be coming to Steam on October 17.
It's live now, so you can wish list it if you so wish.
The current places we'll have it will be Battlenet, obviously, Xbox series or just the Xbox kind of ecosystem, PlayStation Five and Four. And then we'll have it on Steam as well. So slowly expanding the places from where you can play that game. But I think the interesting thing grizz for me, and just one thing to note that it will be cross play enabled with Steam beyond everyone.
But the interesting thing for me is you're going to have to well, it's not really interesting. I think it was fairly fucking obvious, but you have to pay for it.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Again if you want it on Steam. Wow.
[00:16:23] Speaker C: So I wonder we talked about this back when Overwatch Two was announced to pull across and we kind of discussed how it is quite annoying to have multiple game launches. And obviously Steam is, I would say, nearly everybody's preferred launch. Everyone hates fucking epic games. Get rid of that.
Always a pain to keep the Battle net launch updated for if you've got those games. The only time I ever have it updated is when I'm playing Diablo Three or when I've got wow. But I do think Cap, that potentially.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Having Diablo Four on Steam will allow.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: More people to buy that game from the storefront. I think that there probably will be people that might pick that up because I actually think Steam does a reasonable job, Cap, at recommending games to you based on your Steam library and what you like to play. I've actually a couple of rogue lights that I've played from that recommended list. But who knows, maybe now Diablo Four will pop up in someone's recommended list and they'll buy it.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: I don't think you're wrong. And there's a lot of true blooded Steam only freaking gamers. They will not touch another launcher with a ten foot pole, and that especially includes the Blizzard launcher. So I think having it on that ecosystem is going to be fairly lucrative, probably in the end for Blizzard. We might even find there's a fair few people that maybe again have friends in that bucket and refused to play during the Battlenet release initially. And then now all of a sudden, they've probably got those people starting to play and they've got friends who are probably willing to buy it again on Steam and have the crossplay element going because you'll be able to obviously import.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Your I assume import your Steam, import.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Your battle net character through Steam.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I would hope so.
But it looks like this is all.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Going to be kind of roughly coinciding with well, it is 100% coinciding with the well, Diablo Four's next season. We've had the first season, which was season of the Malignant, I believe. And the next season coming out is Season of Blood, which is a vampire themed one.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Grizzly yeah, same date, mate.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: So the law behind this one is Invasion of Vampires.
It kind of goes that there is a vampire big bad boss that's been laid dormant for quite a while, Lord Zur, and for whatever reason has risen up using citizens and stuff to expand his vampire empire.
So during the events of season two, you will actually yourself be infected with vampirism and you'll get access to a suite of vampire powers obviously fulfilled through the cravings of Blood and other tools as well. So, look, the law kind of is very separate to Diablo law that we've seen. Lord Zur is not a boss we've seen in any previous Diabola law that I know of.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Cat but I don't know, it seems.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: To be reasonably well written. Like if you go and watch the trailers for this, they've done a pretty good job at presenting this storyline and how it fits in.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: It's going to be interesting to see how well it performs because I'm not too sure. I just haven't seen anything that really.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Pulls me in or makes me want.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: To really give it a crack. And I think the big thing for me, Grizz, is Diablo Fuller's biggest calling card was an immensely satisfying campaign. And beyond that, I didn't really have any kind of incentive to go back and do anything beyond that and do endgame.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Look, Cap, this isn't pulling me in either.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: And I thought maybe we could just talk through the season a little bit and what it's offering. And then I was hoping to have a good discussion with you around the rise and fall of Diablo Four. Obviously it's not faring too well in terms of numbers and concurrent players, but.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: I wanted to talk a little bit.
[00:20:39] Speaker C: About some stats and then theory crafting the reasons why it has dropped off so much in media and people playing it to date and kind of breaking that down. But in terms of the DLC, cap so like I was mentioning, seasonal powers. So you get these basically the way that this season works is you will be inflicted with vampirism and you get access to a bunch of powers that you need to kind of harvest these blood harvests through world events and other bits and pieces similar to the way that the previous world events work. So they'll be kind of marketed in certain areas, timing based. And you'd go there and you'll fulfill bounties and things in there to get your blood harvest as you go, you'll be able to find items, legendary items.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: That I believe for you to unlock.
[00:21:26] Speaker C: The kind of power of that item, you'll need to fill it with these blood packs using the currency that's dropping in the game. So they've kind of like built in this semi skill tree that sits within some of the items based on blood. Seems kind of interesting. Cap adds like another whole little bit to the game. They've also implemented this thing where they've got these summonable bosses as well, which are only available in the World Tier Three and World Tier Four difficulties.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Okay, so you got a bit of pumping to do if you're not there yet.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Got a bit of pumping to do.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: To get up there. And the final boss apparently has higher.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Chance than any other way in the.
[00:22:04] Speaker C: Game to drop those extremely rare items, which are the ones that are like the sub 1% chance.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: I wonder what the new percentage is on those. They were called like ultra rares or something, weren't they? We've spoken about them before where literally like, one drop did like two months or something. Ridiculous.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: People believed they legitimately didn't exist. And the only reason why that they did exist was some random bloke had put a picture of one on Twitter somewhere.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Look, I got it.
[00:22:32] Speaker C: Yeah, it's less than chance to win lotto to find some of these items.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: So crazy, man. So crazy. But I mean, it'll be interesting to see what the actual drop rate on that is now. I'd imagine they'll probably still keep them fairly rare, like maybe a few more floating around out in the wild because I guess there's probably a semi marketing thing with that, right? Grizz. Because someone goes on Twitter, they post, oh, I've got this really rare item.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Check it out.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: And then it gets a bunch of shares. People go, oh, look this Diablo. Maybe I want to go and give that a crack. So if they can get a few more of those drops happening, a bit more hype built up, maybe that's their kind of angle there to try and.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: Because otherwise there's definitely two takes to it. Hey, some people hated the fact that they were such low drop rate and nearly impossible to get, and saying things like, you could play the game for a lifetime and never get one of these items. But I actually kind of feel like that I quite like the chances of having a really slim chance to find something that probably no one else in Australia is going to have.
I actually don't mind that. You just play the game, pretend they're not there, and if you find it one exactly.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: That's what I was going to say.
You can't approach the game with the intention that, oh, I need that for my build.
[00:23:51] Speaker C: Exactly. That's exactly right.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: It's like saying I'm not going to try in life because I'm just going to buy a lot of tickets every day, and I'm going to hope for the best. And otherwise I get some fucked. You're not going to do that.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: What was the chance of to get like, that? Wow sword, the Wind Fury or whatever it is. That crazy one.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: It was fucking minuscule even like the invincibles reigns that drops from Blitz King. I mean, that's like sub 1%. And you also think about how you.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: Do that once a week or something.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Can't you do it once a week per character?
It's almost impossible to get for a lot of it.
Blizzard are no chumps when it comes to super low drop rate shit.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: And I don't know.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: I'm with you, Grizz.
I don't really care that they're there. But the thought of getting them is kind of rad because you'd go, okay, well, I guess I need to incorporate this into my build somehow. But yeah, I mean, overall cool. A few more dropping.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:24:56] Speaker C: So look, I actually reckon this season looks okay. And I think the way they presented.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: It was pretty good.
[00:25:00] Speaker C: And at the end, they're obviously really trying to pull people back into this Cap because they obviously know it's not in a very good place, but kind of saying that this is the largest content update that we've had for Diablo Four, yet we put the most time out of two into this content update. So it's going to be coming with a new seasonal journey as well, which is basically like a quest board, essentially, where you've got to go through and there are rewards based on what you complete for that seasonal journey. And of course, Cap. There is also the seasonal Battle Pass that will be coming out. There is a free Battle Pass should you be jumping back into season two. There's also a paid battle pass. All the cosmetics are based around vampire themed.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: So think of like, you know what?
[00:25:46] Speaker C: I actually think it looks a lot like the Venthia theme from wow. The last wow expansion, shadowlands expansion.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: So quite dark, gothic kind of looking.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Definitely hitting that for sure.
[00:26:00] Speaker C: Yeah, they look pretty cool. So if you're into that, if you're into Double Four cosmetics, then you might be interested in this.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: But look, I can look, it looks pretty cool.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: I think the thing for me, Grizz.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Is like, I just feel like I'm.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Kind of playing the same fucking game still. There's not enough variation there outside of the core game loop.
And I think maybe five or so seasons down the track when they've added a shitload to the game, I can come in and be like, oh, there's heaps of all this new shit I can do now that I didn't know about. I think that's maybe when I'll probably come back to Diablo, if at all.
[00:26:42] Speaker C: Look, I'm in two kind of minds about it now. And I will get into my take on it when I dig into this, the rise and fall of Diablo Four, which I've been by the way, I've been pushing Cap to have a session on this for a while. But I honestly think, mate, that I don't know whether Diablo Four is ever going to be in a position where we want it to be. I think they're trying to tread this fine line between pleasing the stakeholders and making enough money and providing content for its player base. And that fine line is just slowly.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Tilting towards making dollars.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: And unfortunately, that gives us a not very enjoyable player experience. And there's a lot of little reasons why that is. And I just don't see myself coming back in for season two. I mean, who knows, Cap, as they develop the late game, maybe we'll check it out, but I don't think it's going to be my forever game like I hoped it would be.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Which it's a shame, man, because you know what? For all this shit, I kind of give it you really have to take your hat off to Destiny Two because they have their ups and downs, but.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Ultimately they keep churning out a pretty.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Replayable game as a service game that you can just get back in and shoot the shit and do some stuff in.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: It's amazing.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Whereas it seems like Blizzard can't even fucking get it right these days. They haven't. Crazy.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: So the thing is, Cap, Destiny has this core gameplay loop that is enjoyable. It's got the mixture of fun it's monetized well, you don't feel like the.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: Money that you've should you pour money.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: Into that game is wasted because the content is enjoyable, the raids are enjoyable. Everything else, diablo Four just hasn't got that yet. They haven't got the core gameplay mechanic down. It doesn't reward you to play anything past the story. So why would you go spend money on the season?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: And this is what I said it before. I do really feel like Diablo needs a raid or some kind of pinnacle content like that. Like a full on raid where you can go in with a bunch of different players and do that kind of I mean, I guess they're trying to maybe set themselves apart from something like World of Warcraft and have that separation between the two experiences, but at the same time, man.
Okay, they're not the same game, but there's similarities there. And I don't think there's a big issue with that. But I guess maybe they're just trying to draw the line in the sand. But just before we do dive in.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Super quick into.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Your bits and pieces. Grizz one thing I noticed, man, is.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: They have kind of repurposed the fact.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: That Dibler Immortal had a vampire season as well.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Is that right?
[00:29:21] Speaker C: Dracon they're just pulling stuff from that?
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Well, I don't know, man. I'm kind of wondering whether maybe they went, let's do a vampire season and we can kind of accelerate the development on. It because we can kind of maybe use some of the same shit maybe we didn't use in the mobile version, or maybe some of the ideas that didn't quite make the cut because it was too difficult to put out on.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: The mobile or whatever.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: I don't know.
Of course, vampires are a fairly common theme.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: But ultimately I kind of feel like.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Hey, why didn't you do a different.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Theme than the fucking mobile experience?
[00:30:03] Speaker A: It seems a bit dude.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: I wonder what the content is going to be going forward, how they're going to keep pulling stuff out. Devil O Three is interesting their seasons because they don't really tie any lore or story into it. They just give you different mechanics that happen. But Four, they're really going hard on providing you an extra piece of story in the four universe. And then they tie the season into.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: That, which I think it could either.
[00:30:28] Speaker C: Be fantastic later down the track to.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Get people invested, or it could just.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: Be shit because they run out of.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Ideas to make garbage. Yeah, I think the other issue is with Diablo Four is they've really locked themselves in really hard with the aesthetic that they're going for that really dark and gritty thing. Whereas with Diablo Three, they had a bit more fun with the kind of look and feel of the game you.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: Could find, like the unicorns when you go into special rifts and all the different type of goblins. Like the treasure goblins.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: I feel like there isn't that much wiggle room in Diablo Four. So it's probably going to make it more difficult for them to maybe take the seasons in a more whimsical way. But maybe they just go fuck it at some point and just have a bit of fun with it. But I don't know.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: We'll see.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Regardless, Grizz, tell me your thoughts where Diablo Four is. Why are we here?
[00:31:20] Speaker C: I wanted to talk about the rise and fall of Diablo Four, and I want to start from the top. Look, this is not a biased opinion. I'm trying to bring facts into this.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: I've done a bit of research and.
[00:31:34] Speaker C: Other people that are in the industry as well that have their opinions on this. And I've taken theirs and I've used the bits that I think are relevant, bits that aren't. So we'll start with statistics.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Cap.
[00:31:43] Speaker C: We'll start right at the top. So the release of Diablo Four, it was the fastest selling Blizzard title ever.
It sold more units than any other Blizzard title in its initial stages of release and an estimated over 10 million copies sold worldwide. So a huge release for them.
Estimated revenue wise, around about $1 billion in revenue in its first quarter, which is that is in sales, quite literally one of the biggest releases to date. And it was heavily anticipated, obviously, coming off the back of those original Diablo releases.
Now, what happened from their cap was I don't know exactly what happened, but I definitely felt this. I felt like everyone was playing this game, you and I included.
I had multiple WhatsApp groups with people messaging me saying Best Play Four. I had like multiple discord groups set up with people playing four had a guild. Everyone was jumping in, enjoying it.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: It was absolutely popping.
[00:32:52] Speaker C: Twitch exposure was massive for this game. Everyone on my friends list for Battlenet was playing this game.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: And then quite quickly, that hype just.
[00:33:03] Speaker C: Disappeared in a very short period of time. And I would nearly say Cap, it.
[00:33:06] Speaker B: Fizzled.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: Quicker than I've seen a game fizzle probably ever, which is insane.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: One thing I just want to really quickly insert into here, grizz and traditionally Diablo gamers are probably going to be older generation gamers. Maybe we're seeing the effect of time on this group of video gamers where maybe because they're older, maybe have more responsibilities, can't put as much time into video games. Maybe they kind of the game structure of Diablo Four just in general, didn't really sit well with people having to try and actually have a life outside of video gaming and the amount of time required for Diablo. And maybe we just sort of kind of natural fizzle off because it was just kind of the cohort of people. Kind of like people use the term, what is it? Boomer shooter for like Quake and stuff like that. And Diablo is kind of in the same vein, man, it's a boomer fucking action RPG.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it brought a lot of people.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: In through nostalgia, for sure. And you know what? I actually think they did a reasonable job at catering for the casual because it took them long to get through the story and it kept people engaged because that's where the grind came after. Once you've reached the story, it's really hard. But I'll keep talking about metrics here.
Right now. As of a couple of hours before the podcast, I just wanted to check to see where Diablo Four was on the directory. And in no way, shape or form is directory position on Twitch a great indication of a game's success. But it does tell you whether it's popular media or not, usually if something is being consumed in a higher number on YouTube and Twitch, it's a pretty good representation that people enjoy watching that media.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: How big is the community?
[00:34:56] Speaker C: How big is the community? Exactly. So Cap Two resurrected was copying 730 OD views, 3584 had 400. So it was the least out of.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: The debit franchise games on there.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: That is crazy.
[00:35:13] Speaker C: And to put this even more into perspective, its direct competitor, Path of Exile, is copying five and a half thousand views.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: When I looked it up this afternoon, wow.
[00:35:26] Speaker C: It's just not being viewed on Twitch. And I'm not sure why exactly. I'm going to jump into why I think that is in a second.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: But if you look at the player base. Cap.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: So in the first June 6 release, the first month of release, we had 6.7 million players, 6.7 million players playing the game. Estimated.
It's now estimated that we have 40,000 players at a minimum peak in a day. So that's a 99% decline in player since initial release. People to start playing that game right now exponential backwards. Yes, exponentially backwards.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:12] Speaker C: These stats don't really lie. They're telling this picture, right? The game released huge success. People were playing it. Now they're just not playing it. They're not watching it. So bit of a breakdown on why you think this is off top of your head, cap, why did you stop playing the game?
[00:36:27] Speaker B: What was it that kind of made.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: You lack of incentive to continue to play beyond the story?
And I feel like the general gameplay.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Leak just wasn't compelling.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: I wasn't compelled to stay in there. I felt like I was wasting my time.
[00:36:47] Speaker C: I felt the exact same way. So I think a lot of people felt this way, same way we felt about it.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: But once you've completed the story, anything.
[00:36:58] Speaker C: After that into the late game is just unrewarding and you're grinding away for literally like sometimes a 1% chance to find a 1% increase in your power spike. So that's what a lot of the content creators for Diablo are saying, is it's just not rewarding to play in the end game because even the items that you find are capped at a certain amount of power they can give you. So it's not like you're going to find that Holy Grail item unless you find one of the one in a million and you've yeah, the Ultra Rig, the Ultra rare, rare things, it's just not great.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: So there's that.
[00:37:32] Speaker C: But also cap the time. So the time to level from one to 60, no, one to 80 is the same to level from 80 to 100.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: And if you're going to expect that every fucking season, it's time to do that.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: Who has time to do that?
[00:37:50] Speaker B: No.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: Well, I don't. Again, coming back to the whole Burma thing and having responsibilities, grizz, like, no one has time to put that much time into a game. That's not particularly fun.
[00:38:00] Speaker C: So it's not only the gameplay loop.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Cap here as well.
[00:38:03] Speaker C: Blizzard actually burnt a lot of people's hopes for the game with the release of season one. So I don't know if you remember this happening, but season one was quite hyped up. People thought, yes, this is going to be the chance for Blizzard to fix the game, give us an end game and reward everyone. What they actually ended up doing is nerfing every single class and their damage and their clear speed, and they made everyone's class on a level playing field.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Which, when you think about that, that.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: Sounds like a great idea. But it just took so much power away from a lot of people's. Builds and survivability leading into that, and it just made the game play not particularly nice.
And on top of this, Cap, this is actually interesting because I've whinged about this before, but time wasting is a major issue in Diablo Four. Like everything you do in that game feels like to me like the devs have purposely done that to waste your time. And I actually found a YouTube video, and it's called 100 Ways blizzard Are Wasting Your Time in Four. And it lists them all. But some of the key ones that I think really broke the camel's back is with the release of season one, Cap, they increased the teleport time out of a dungeon from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. Absolutely no reason to do that apart.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: From wanting that to be increased in time.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Normally you'd reduce that kind of thing.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:26] Speaker C: Why have a channel time of your TV, the bonus XP from killing higher level monsters than your level was reduced. So a lot of people were trying to get geared up and then push content that was harder. The reward would be for pushing harder content to get more XP. So in that patch, they also reduced that bonus XP that you could get from grinding high level mobs.
Personal favorite of mine, Cap. It takes you 30 seconds to travel between the vendors in most of the towns. So you want to go to the blacksmith. You go to the blacksmith and you do your thing. Then you want to go to the stash and then you want to go to the jeweler and then you got.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: To drop off stuff back in your stash.
[00:40:09] Speaker C: All of a sudden, once you've done.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: That round trip, it's a five minute time in town and all these little.
[00:40:15] Speaker C: Things combined, like the way they put the waypoints and the dungeons on the other side of the map. So every time you got to do a dungeon, you've got to run to that dungeon, you can't reset the dungeon all the way out there and you're going to do all this whole thing and back forwards. I know that this is a classic, and you look back on Word of Warcraft vanilla, and I know that you were literally walking across continents and stuff.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: But.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: It left me feeling like someone has very cleverly designed this. Game so that I'm not gaining XP, so that I'm not progressing my battle pass, so that I'm not working my way through too quickly through the game. And people are feeling the same way.
So anyway, after all this has happened, cap season one was released. A lot of changes, people not happy, review bombing happened.
So a lot. If you look at the stores for four right now, the PS Five review I believe is at 1.8 out of ten. The PC review is at something like 2.2 out of ten. The other platform is around three and a half out of ten. So a lot of people rarely not happy with this and coinciding with this cap. They also started pushing a lot of the monetization stuff. So we know for a fact that apparently there was a bit of a bug where you could buy the Battle Pass with one click. There was no I think it was called dark patterns.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Cap.
[00:41:40] Speaker C: There was no confirmation.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: Definitely a dark Pattern, and I don't think it's changed since. But it was like tucked away under a button.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: You would click a lot within your.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: UI and it would auto purchase the Battle Pass if you had a card linked to your account. So it's just fucking shit, man.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: Typical fucking blizzard shit. Yeah.
[00:42:03] Speaker C: And also just the way that the shop kind of almost felt like a double or mortal to me. Cap where it was always visible for you to buy stuff. I don't know if you've opened up your Battlenet recently, but you open up the Battle Net and it brings up the premium currency and the Battle Pass and stuff for as well. And I feel like it's just very corporate.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: And look, that's kind of my sweet.
[00:42:28] Speaker C: My last point that I wanted to say, the downfall of Four Cap is the release of Baldor's Gate Three could not have been at a better time. So we're feeling a combination of all these things from Diablo Four, it wasn't living up to expectation. We're waiting for seasons, and then out came Baldos Gate Three. That was just a completely passion project.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: For a lot of people.
[00:42:54] Speaker C: And it took probably a lot of people away from that game to have.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: A break and maybe haven't gone yeah, yeah, there's the any additional little bits.
[00:43:09] Speaker C: And pieces around Capo.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: I just think, dude, we're suffering overall from just like, AA big business game makers, exhaustion.
These companies are just they are making every effort to minimize the amount of effort that goes into these video games and maximize the amount of profit that comes out of them because that's just their fucking shtick, dude. And you look at Diablo and all the fucking pretext for that game coming from marketing, everything else was, this isn't a mobile game and we're making sure that we're minimizing the amount of fucking microtransactions it was all that leading up to it.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: If you want to buy a set.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Of armor in that game, it's $20.
[00:44:00] Speaker C: That's another good point. So you can do the whole seasonal Pass, right? Unlock all the currency in the seasonal pass, which they give you the premium currency, and still all the stuff that you've gotten from doing every mission in the seasonal pass isn't enough to buy the cheapest item in the item shop.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty cool.
[00:44:19] Speaker C: Blizzard, they want you to just add some extra bucks in there to buy.
[00:44:23] Speaker A: That because then you'll go, oh, I'm only ten fucking silver off buying that 20 gold thing. And guess what the cheapest way to buy gold is? It's probably a $15 fucking add on pack. So all of a sudden they've got another $15 out of you. It's all these stupid ways to buy shit and you see it in other games. But I feel like Diablo has done a real poor job at hiding it from you as a gamer because it's pretty fucking easy to see, I think ultimately, dude, I think Diablo as a game needs to be fast paced and you always want to be moving. But I feel like there's lots of points in that game where you feel like you're not moving because you're having to go and get rid of all the shit in your inventory and then I'm having to go out to fucking to this dungeon. But that's not what the game was and it never has been. It's about clearing mobs off a screen constantly and you don't get to do that as much as you should in Diablo Four. And it doesn't feel even as fun as it used to in previous games.
[00:45:25] Speaker C: I 100% agree. And this 100 ways to waste your time in Diablo Four. One of them was also cap about the little roadblocks that the enemies have set up. So you have to get off your horse in a lot of cases to break that roadblock and then get back on it and then to get on your horse. If you get off your horse, you've got to wait 5 seconds to get back on your horse and ride again.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: It's like, fuck, they've got me.
[00:45:52] Speaker C: They've just got us. But Cat, look, I will say this. It is easy to jump on the bandwagon of Blizzard hate it is.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:46:02] Speaker C: They've obviously got a bit of a history which we don't need to go into. You know, I myself and probably everyone else around the place loves a good excuse to give Blizzard a hard time. But I truly feel in the case of Diablo Four, they have meticulously designed this game.
They've got a very clever development team. They're trying to deliver these targets for shareholders. Blizzard is a big company and they're trying to find this balance between making a game that people are going to play, a game that is fun and between monetizing it in a way that's going to make them ongoing money. And I really feel like they have not done that. They haven't listened to their community. People aren't happy. People aren't playing the game. Yes, we bought it originally, but I don't think people are going to continue to play this until they I'm not.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: Going to buy Battle Pass. I'm not going to buy seasonal content. Why would I? I don't feel like I'm incentivized to play the game. It's not fun. It's not enjoyable. I enjoyed the campaign, but once that was all well and done. Do you know what Grizz, I really feel like and I keep coming back to this, you think about why Destiny Two does so well. You think about why wow does so well. Why do they have those people coming back over and over again? I really feel like it's because they have meaningful Pinnacle content that you can go and do like raids and shit like that. Whereas Diablo Four, it just feels like you're just going through this over and over again loop where the numbers just slightly go up every time.
It's not particularly enjoyable. I feel like you've actually had some hardcore rating that was tough. And you feel like you've got to work really hard with your friends to get through it. Of course that exists with the numbers going up and up and up. But I don't find it as fulfilling as a thoughtfully well crafted Pinnacle dungeon or raid. And I feel like that's what Diablo Four is missing. I mean, obviously it's missing a lot of fucking other shit. But I do really feel like that would help it. And I don't think we're going to see it.
[00:48:02] Speaker C: Well, look, Cap, the other thing that people were saying in a lot of.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: The rise and fall of Diablo Four.
[00:48:07] Speaker C: Was that Blizzard have taken zero risks with Diablo Four.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:48:13] Speaker C: There is nothing that they haven't taken out of.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: The cookie cutter mold that.
[00:48:19] Speaker C: Isn'T already done in another action RPG.
I don't think raids and stuff like.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: That will ever come to it, I hope.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: But yeah, it would be sad if it doesn't. But I mean, you're right. And I mean, this is just, again, the state of AAA development. Why take risks when you know things will sell anyway?
[00:48:39] Speaker C: Look how much money from this?
[00:48:42] Speaker A: Yeah, but dude, I mean, why do they keep making fucking remakes of old games? Because they know that they'll get the nostalgia by Diablo Four.
Yes, it is a new game, but it's the same IP. Of course people are going to buy it. People. Big fans of Diablo. Big Hype train. Fucking thank you for your money. Okay, let's try and keep people on board. And if we can't, who cares? We've already made a billion dollars. And I suppose that's where they are at now.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Yep.
There you go. It's probably a good time to do.
[00:49:10] Speaker C: The Twitter poll, mate, because it was relating to this kind of topic. What do you reckon? What do you reckon? Should we bang it in there?
[00:49:17] Speaker A: I reckon this is perfect timing, mate. Absolutely perfect timing. Do you want to go through the question?
[00:49:24] Speaker C: Absolutely. So it was with Diablo Four coming to steam alongside the release of season two, Seasons of Blood. How do you feel about Diablo Four?
[00:49:35] Speaker A: So we had the following potential answers to that question. You could have voted for keen to check out season two, diablo Four Sucks or Results please. Of those. Results, please. Got 37.5% of the vote and Diablo Four sucks. Got all the rest of it. Keen to check out season two.
[00:49:53] Speaker C: Didn't get a single vote, which is I don't know whether that says something about OGR listeners, mate, but I don't know, that spells a pretty clear picture to me, I feel. Well, absolutely.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: Look, I'm sure it's probably a fairly small sample size in the vast scheme of things, but, I mean, if you go and did the same in a Die Bleff Four community, I'm sure you.
[00:50:15] Speaker B: Probably get a little bit different.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: But ultimately, I don't think we're seeing an awful lot of people returning to for Season of Blood.
[00:50:21] Speaker C: So there you go. A couple of comments worth reading out there. Cap one again, thank you very much, Moosey, for engaging with the poll, mate. Appreciate that gaining the ability to role play as a Blizzard executive, in brackets, vampire, isn't a draw for me. I have yet to play Diblo Four and this update hasn't given me a reason to either at this point. I don't know what would change my mind. Side note, how much of an issue is the multiple launcher problem? Well, they are going to have cross.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: Play, aren't they, Capo?
[00:50:49] Speaker C: So I believe should be fine.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean, you will have.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: To purchase it again if you want it on Steam.
That's the one. And Dano two nine nine said I'd rather play D three.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: You know what, I probably would too.
Yeah.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: It's just a shame that D Three.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Looks like utter ass.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Like it is, old man, it has not aged well.
[00:51:08] Speaker C: No, it hasn't aged well. Yeah.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: When you load that character selector, have to be 15 ish 13 ish years now, wouldn't it?
[00:51:17] Speaker B: Yes, easy, surely.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it'd be about that, but, yeah, there you go.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: Now, Grizz, I want to skip a.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: Discussion point, chat about something that I think hinges really nicely into this.
[00:51:31] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: We have got more dev team layoffs.
[00:51:36] Speaker A: Like they're just freaking happening thick and fast.
I feel like every week we're kind of announcing that there's another place that's lost a bunch of devs.
So recently we had Team 17, the producers and publishers of Worms, lost a bunch of developers. I don't think there was an exact number, but it was marketed as significant. We also had Naughty Dog, lost a bunch of developers. Now.
[00:52:10] Speaker B: Naughty dog.
[00:52:10] Speaker C: What do they do, Cap?
[00:52:11] Speaker A: Is that they did Uncharted, they do Crash Bandicoot, they do all kinds.
[00:52:18] Speaker C: They're Aussie, aren't they? They're Aussie. Naughty dog.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Don't think so. I think they're Americano, but they also.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: Do Last of US.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: So, yeah, they're cutting a bunch of developers as well, and I don't think this is the end of it. And there's a lot of shit floating around online and just a couple of things that I think are most certainly kind of, I don't know, just like adding to this whole thing. Why are we seeing all these companies dropping devs all the time? Obviously, there's some pretty significant economic pressures that are also affecting other media industries, like music and video.
We're seeing strikes happening in all of those industries. We're going to be adding one in the video game industry probably fairly shortly because we're seeing video game industries not providing enough compensation for their voice actors.
And yeah, we're probably going to continue to see this happen. There seems to be this weird melting pot point that we've reached between this switch between us moving to maybe some kind of subscription based model for purchasing video games and what us as consumers are willing to purchase. And less people are perhaps willing to purchase video games as regularly because there's less free cash floating around. So people are having to work harder for your hard earned mulala. And as a result of that, it's making it difficult to obviously capture enough compensation for video games you're producing. Got to obviously also remember that video game production is a pretty fucking tough gig.
When you go out there and seek to produce a video game, you're probably not going to make any money until you have done so. So if your game takes you three to four years to release, I hope that you've got a bit of cash in the pocket to be able to pay all your devs.
There's still a lot of money floating around in the kind of sector. I think this year it was like $187,000,000,000 or something ridiculous. So there's still a lot of cash floating around, but we've seen video games go from like 60 Australian dollars to over 110 Australian dollars in the last ten years. Right?
[00:54:49] Speaker B: That's a lot of money.
[00:54:51] Speaker C: Some of the PS five ones, mate.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
In terms of your ratio of how.
[00:54:58] Speaker B: That'S been going, it's mental.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: So, interestingly enough as well, we're not really seeing wages of we're seeing all these devs getting laid off, but we're not really seeing things like CEO salaries or anything drop to sort of alter the compensation curve within industries, which I think is just fucking typical, right? Like you got the people making all the big decisions, ensuring that they keep getting their big slice of pie. We see guys like Bobby Kotick sitting at the top of his fucking money pile just fucking laughing at all the poor lowly devs that are losing their jobs.
But yeah, I think this won't be the last.
[00:55:42] Speaker C: I want to do some theories here, Capo, but I think in the last.
[00:55:46] Speaker B: Three years, probably not only gaming, but.
[00:55:50] Speaker C: A number of industries, including tech and media as well, have been impacted. And I can't help but think COVID-19 around 2019 hit, right, we were all kind of in our houses, bits and pieces. I did some digging today and had a look at the peak Twitch viewership numbers. So between 2019 2021, there was anywhere between 3 million 4 million daily views across Twitch as of 2023. Today, it's like a million less people are watching Twitch really on a day to day. So we're looking at about 2.2 million.
And I wonder who knows, mate. I mean, we were all kind of inside and everything else but tech as well. Cap is suffering immensely. 2023, we see companies such as Cisco, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Amazon, all suffering layoffs in 2023 being impacted.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Well, I think tech industry and games industries come under the same kind of banner because they're in a similar kind of sector. But before COVID and during COVID we saw places like these scale because people were utilizing these services a lot during that time. And I think as economically things have become tougher, these companies have scaled quite large and now they're difficult to keep the lights on because now they've got a significant amount of employees and probably operational costs. I mean, we literally just saw Unity shit the bed.
Probably a lot of it was their operational costs and needing to try and claw some cash back to try and pay those off. And I think the other issues we've got is so much money is being poured into video game projects and the size of them is fucking huge. Like, okay, Diablo Four made a billion dollars, but I wonder, how much did.
[00:57:46] Speaker B: It cost to make Diablo Four?
[00:57:48] Speaker A: It was probably like in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Mark.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: Right. I would say you're thinking about that.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: Okay, yes, it's a lot of money to make off the top of that. But you think about how much it used to cost to make AA games back, say, ten years ago. It was never in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
[00:58:08] Speaker B: Mark.
[00:58:08] Speaker A: We've scaled insanely quickly. And so if your project suddenly fails, it is an insane loss, especially in AAA size.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:58:17] Speaker A: You're seeing a devastatingly financial loss when your project fails like that. Right. So that's why you're seeing these AAA studios suffer so much and we're seeing so many layoffs because people aren't winning as often as they used to.
[00:58:32] Speaker C: And just to add to that, as technology increases, it's only harder.
[00:58:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:58:36] Speaker C: The expectation around what we want to.
[00:58:38] Speaker B: See in a video game is exacerbated.
[00:58:42] Speaker C: Not to say that obviously indie games with not so much graphical capability have their place, but usually those AA studios are going after something that is nearly groundbreaking when you think of the time to make a game on the current engine and everything else.
[00:59:00] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:59:01] Speaker A: But I go as far as I grew is that the AAAS just aren't doing that anymore because it's financially too risky to go and do risky, interesting, groundbreaking games. The people that are doing that are the indies because they have the small teams that are able to go and make those risks and do it cheaply because their team sizes aren't hundreds and hundreds of developers.
[00:59:25] Speaker C: And they also take their time, cap because they're not under time pressure.
[00:59:28] Speaker A: They take their time because they can do it in their spare time.
It's an interesting one and we've kind of touched on it before, but I think. We are really starting to see the seams pop open in some of the sector. I don't think this is going to be the last time we see some pretty significant layoffs in the coming days.
[00:59:47] Speaker B: You keep your eyes peeled.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: There you go, Nat.
[00:59:50] Speaker B: Grizz just a quick update.
[00:59:53] Speaker A: We did speak about the SAG after talks, and we kind of just mentioned them there. The SAG is the Studio Actors Guild or something along those lines. Same for the word AFTRA, some shit like that. Anyways, they have voice actors as part of their union cohort, and we did discuss that they would be looking to probably strike soon. They had one last chance at a deal last week with chatting to some of the big players in the video game companies that are utilizing services from these Actors Guilds and no deal was struck. So we may very well be seeing.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: Some voice acting strikes imminent and that.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: Would of course, have effects on projects. So you might be seeing delays that you weren't expecting in some video games.
[01:00:45] Speaker B: Kind of what has been happening with.
[01:00:48] Speaker A: The Writers Guild of America strike we saw recently that recently just ended. I think that was something like it was fucking huge, like almost a year or something like that.
148 day strikes, I mean, that's the majority of a year, right? And that had massive consequences for the timeline of certain projects getting.
[01:01:12] Speaker B: That.
[01:01:13] Speaker A: We could very well see a similar thing happen with the SAGAFTRA. I don't know if it'll be as effective because I think when it comes to voice acting, there's a lot of talent that is outside of union bodies like SAGAFTRA, and we're less beholden to big names and they don't have as much pull in the voice acting sector. But I think it will have some effect.
[01:01:36] Speaker C: Did you watch the whole of the season two four trailer cap? Just out of curiosity, I did see.
[01:01:44] Speaker A: That there was someone from TV was doing Voicing for one of the new.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: Characters and I don't know who she they rarely like I don't know.
[01:01:55] Speaker C: Yeah, they drummed it up big time. They're like talking about who was voice acting, one of the new vampire hunters.
[01:02:02] Speaker B: And she does this, this, and this.
[01:02:04] Speaker C: And it's going to be great to take on this role. But I thought it was a little bit out of left field, but kind of potentially makes sense now that we've.
[01:02:12] Speaker B: Got a bit of this drama surrounding.
[01:02:15] Speaker C: Some of the voice actors in video games and this potential strike.
[01:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[01:02:21] Speaker A: I think, again, marketing trying to get the word out, but I don't know, I think we'll probably see less of that in the coming days. So it's going to be interesting to see how this if we do get a strike and see what effect that has on upcoming projects now. Grizz before we finish the Quest log today, I wanted to quickly talk about this one story that I thought was fucking awesome.
[01:02:42] Speaker B: So titan four two.
Titan.
[01:02:46] Speaker A: Four one. Both incredible games done by Respawn. They now kind of own and operate Apex Legends, which has been a huge success for them, and also did the Star Wars Jedi video games.
[01:03:00] Speaker C: What's, the original ones, mate?
[01:03:03] Speaker A: As in the more recent ones? That is Solsy kind of one, yeah.
[01:03:08] Speaker C: Cool.
[01:03:08] Speaker A: With redhead Jedi man. What's his name? Calestus. Esther.
So, anyways, people have been frothing for a Titanfall Three for ages because it's.
[01:03:23] Speaker B: Not particularly unique in any particular way.
[01:03:27] Speaker A: I think just their approach to traversal and how the game felt was just great. Like wall running and using zips to zip between things and then getting in your mech and getting back out of your mech and just felt really tight and like just a fucking good shooter. Really, really good shooter. Anyways, people have been frothing for a Titan Four Three and it's still got quite a close knit community that still very desperate to get their hands on a Titanfall Three, to the point where recently Titanfall Two got a series of updates which addressed different things like old server bugs and issues that just hadn't been addressed properly. But they also added a new kind of multiplayer playlist.
And again, the community for Type before Three, they are getting to half life three levels of speculation where it's like any opportunity for any kind of speculation is well and truly memed upon. So the name for the new playlist for Titanfall Two that they added as this one off kind of server bug fix was called The Other Side. Now the other side is a Red Hot Chili Peppers song and third single.
[01:04:46] Speaker B: In their Californication album.
[01:04:49] Speaker A: The hint there being the third song.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: In the album is this.
[01:04:55] Speaker C: Oh, no.
Are they just connecting numbers up? This is a conspiracy theory for Titanfall?
[01:05:01] Speaker B: Exactly.
[01:05:02] Speaker A: A hint at Titanfall Three.
[01:05:04] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:05:06] Speaker A: Anyways, I just thought it was so fucking hilarious because they are literally clutching at straws just trying to get this over the line. And I don't know, will it happen? Who fucking knows?
[01:05:15] Speaker B: But regardless, very fucking funny. So, yeah, great stuff.
[01:05:21] Speaker A: I really hope that we see a Titanfall Three because that game was brilliant.
[01:05:24] Speaker B: Kind of a lot of Kiwi voice.
[01:05:27] Speaker A: Actors in that game as well, which I thought was really rad. I'm pretty sure Bree spawn might have been Kiwi from memory, but I do remember Titanfall Two not being as.
[01:05:39] Speaker B: What.
[01:05:39] Speaker A: Do you call it, popular. And it came out around about the time of Battlefield One of the Battlefields, and just kind of got blown out of the water despite being a much better game than Battlefield.
[01:05:50] Speaker B: So, yeah.
[01:05:50] Speaker A: Anyways, if you get a chance to go and check out Titanfall Two, try and pick it up when it's on special because it is a cracker. The campaign in Titanfall Two.
[01:05:58] Speaker C: Chef's Kiss. I've never played a Titanfall game, capo. So there you go, mate.
[01:06:02] Speaker B: Go.
[01:06:03] Speaker A: Give it a crack, mate. But yeah, anyways, there you go. That was the freaking quest log. But Grizz, what I want to know next, mate, is how's your fucking game have been going, my good friend?
[01:06:13] Speaker B: Pretty good.
[01:06:15] Speaker C: I actually haven't been playing any new video games this week. Cap over last week. But I'll tell you what, I have.
[01:06:21] Speaker B: Been having an absolutely fantastic time gaming.
[01:06:25] Speaker C: I've now racked up officially Cap, over 100 hours in binding of Isaac. And I reckon I'm not even halfway through working my way through that game.
[01:06:35] Speaker B: So I've been playing a bit of.
[01:06:38] Speaker C: That in my spare time. But also, I did say at the start of the stream today, that been smashing heap of dota ₩2.15 ranked games out of 16. So we're climbing. I'm getting ready for Ti later in the year, pretty brother. And also, yeah, smashing away on Baltol's Gates Three with a couple of good friends. Actually, one of the guys in the chat, Belly is here, is my good friend Belly, and he is in we're playing Battles Gates Three together. So that's been pretty cool working our way through that.
It just continually surprises me, Cap. And I think the thing that surprises.
[01:07:15] Speaker B: Me the most is the voice acting is constantly good all the time and.
[01:07:23] Speaker C: There'S just so many different fails. It never fails, mate. There's so many cool, different little things that happen.
[01:07:28] Speaker B: Like, look, did you come across the chick covered in gold, Cap? Yeah. And fucks you up.
[01:07:37] Speaker C: I end up accidentally giving her all my gold. And then she was super powerful and fucked us up big time, dude.
[01:07:45] Speaker A: Because I'm hyper charismatic as a warlock. I just annihilated her with her own logic and she killed herself.
[01:07:54] Speaker B: What? Oh, man.
[01:07:56] Speaker A: I didn't have to do the fight at all.
[01:07:58] Speaker C: She asked me for gold and I was like, yeah, I'll give you a dollar.
[01:08:01] Speaker B: Gave her a dollar.
And then I asked her again and.
[01:08:05] Speaker C: She asked for more gold. And I gave her another couple of dollars. And then I asked her, how much gold do you need? And she was like, all of it. And all of a sudden combat started and we're getting fucked up. And she took all of my gold. All of it.
[01:08:16] Speaker A: I'm pretty sure the more gold you have in your inventory, the more damage she does.
[01:08:22] Speaker C: Yeah, dude, she had like 700 HP or something crazy at the start of that fight.
[01:08:27] Speaker B: It was nuts.
[01:08:28] Speaker A: Oh, Jesus.
[01:08:29] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a lot.
[01:08:30] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:08:30] Speaker C: So you've got to kill these little things around the room, spoilers, blocky, ears if you haven't played this section yet. And when you kill them, some of the gold loses its effect and she drops it and her HP slowly goes down and down. I tell you what, man, one thing. I was speaking to Adrian about this, but he reckons, and I reckon they pulled every trick in the book in.
[01:08:55] Speaker B: Terms of like a DM tropes.
[01:09:01] Speaker C: There's just so many good little things that happen in that I think is.
[01:09:05] Speaker A: Great because it makes you think about your own DND experiences and compare them to what you're experiencing within Bouldersgate Three, which is that's what you want from a game that's trying to pull so much out of a DND kind of rule set, right? You want to kind of get that nostalgia but also be introduced to a new cool story.
[01:09:29] Speaker C: Yeah, my gaming has been going good, cap look, that's pretty much it. I haven't touched Lies of P again yet, but I do no, neither have I into that.
[01:09:40] Speaker B: What about you, mate?
[01:09:41] Speaker C: How is your gaming going? You fitting some in pretty good.
[01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:44] Speaker A: So, look, I did spend a fair bit of time in Cyberpunk. I've pretty much progressed all the main mission to the point where if I continue any further, the game ends. And I did try out a singular ending just to see what it was like. And now I've set foot into the new DLC, which is pretty good.
The DLC starts off with you going into this new place in Cyberpunk, well, in Night City called Dogtown. And Dogtown's like this it's like this old broken down stadium that's been turned into its own district within Night City. But it's like completely lawless.
There's no police presence there because it's been kind of taken over by this Michelin group and they've kind of made it their own. And you basically get a tip off from this random person. They say, hey, need your help. Kind of come to dogtown. You go there and then you find out that the President's fucking plane is being forcefully pulled down into Dogtown and they need you to help out. And so that starts your mission for getting into Dogtown, which is under heavy kind of guard and normally people can't get in. So you, with the help of this net runner, get into Dogtown and the game kind of starts now. You get in there and you go through this shop section and there's all these weapons in there that are just hectic expensive and way better than the shit that you see.
It's a cool way to kind of give you access to all that kind of stuff. And then you kind of get into the meat of it. You kind of see the plane come down and then all of a sudden you're trying to help the President escape from this crash and you've got the Michelin hot in your tail.
[01:11:38] Speaker B: And so that's kind of where I got to.
[01:11:40] Speaker A: They also introduce a separate trait system where they give you extra abilities to make your kind of main weapons and avenues through the other trait system in the game, make them more powerful.
So I've been going with the kind of dexterous arm blades that kind of come out of your arms and you can do this massive leap and just execute people and it's looks so fucking cool.
[01:12:11] Speaker C: And you're playing this on your PC, Cap.
[01:12:14] Speaker B: You're not steaming remote playing yeah, and.
[01:12:17] Speaker A: Doing a bit of remote dicking. So it's been really good, man. I'm really quite enjoying the Cyberpunk.
I haven't really been doing a lot of awful lot of side content. Just wanted to get the DLC done.
[01:12:30] Speaker B: And just wanted to get through the.
[01:12:33] Speaker A: Majority of the main story. So going to kind of do the main kind of storylines. Won't be doing any of the side gigs and stuff. Just knocking out the main characters and kind of going from there.
[01:12:44] Speaker B: And I'm really enjoying it.
[01:12:45] Speaker A: Kind of making my way through it fairly quickly and just enjoying the ride.
But, yeah, exceptional game, actually.
[01:12:52] Speaker B: It's funny playing Cyberpunk and having played.
[01:12:58] Speaker A: Starfield so recently and having those two juxtaposed side by side.
It bothers me so much that Starfield got such a free pass on release when it's just so fucking boring, so pathetically fucking boring. And then you have Cyberpunk that just has it oozes a lot of really good narrative and approach to character, interpersonal relationships. And the world itself is a lot more just dynamic and just well put together.
And yeah, obviously Cyberpunk had a horrific launch, I totally get that. But when it comes to just being an experience, cyberpunk is just so much.
[01:13:43] Speaker B: More vibrant on every level compared to Starfield. And it just bothers me that people.
[01:13:50] Speaker A: Just gave it the old Bethesda Seal approval. No worries. I'm sure we can mod a decent game into this with our great community once the modding comes out.
[01:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:14:01] Speaker C: Don't anger those Bethesda fans again, Cap. They'll bloody come hunting.
[01:14:04] Speaker A: I know. They'll get me. They'll get me. But yes, I played a shitload of Cyberpunk now, I actually downloaded another game on a complete whim because I had a CONAP with my son Ted, and he was fast asleep. And I thought, fuck, I'm going to play something just new on my Steam deck because I just wanted to play something fairly easy going and chilled. And so I just went onto the Steam storefront.
[01:14:28] Speaker C: Use the recommended page, Cap, or how did you find I did use the.
[01:14:31] Speaker A: Recommended page and the recommended page is really good for Steam Deck because it gives, you know, here's the games that run well on Steam Deck and what's being played by the people. So you get a pretty good idea of what will run well and what's probably going pretty well. This one game came onto my radar called Cocoon. Now, I kind of saw screenshots and it kind of looked like a low poly, fairly low fi puzzle game.
[01:14:54] Speaker B: And I thought, yeah, I'll give that a crack.
[01:14:55] Speaker A: That looks pretty good. It was on special. I think it was about 20% off. The game revolves around you being this bug man in this weird kind of space kind of area, like on these planets, and you're running around doing these puzzles from a top down perspective. Again, sort of low poly vibes, but very soft and nice particle systems and stuff.
The effects look really great within the game. And you're running around to these different machines and stuff and you're kind of.
[01:15:34] Speaker B: Like trying to figure out how they.
[01:15:35] Speaker A: Work and doing these interesting puzzles with these machines you find. And the machines are kind of like insectified as well. Dang anyways, you're kind of progressing through and you're finding these orbs and you can go in and out of the orbs and then take things in and out of the orb and go to different areas and inside the orbs there's like different worlds you're going to. Sounds a bit fucking all over the shop, but you kind of got to stick with me. And then you're finding these other massive insects that are like bosses and then you're fighting these bosses in a much more puzzly way. You can't shoot, you can't do anything like that, but you can interact with these objects and use them to lay traps and bombs and stuff. And honestly it's been a fucking delightful enjoying it, chilled out game. I am loving it so much and I think it's overwhelmingly positive on Steam. I can absolutely see why. It's just incredibly thoughtful, clever puzzle mechanics and the way that you're weaving these different worlds within worlds and trying to think about, okay, I need to take this out of this world so I can get past this thing, but how.
[01:16:42] Speaker B: Do I do that with what I've got?
[01:16:45] Speaker A: And it really makes you think outside of three dimensions because you're trying to think, okay, this is what I've got access to and kind of go from there.
[01:16:53] Speaker B: But yeah, if you're looking for a.
[01:16:54] Speaker A: Puzzle game, cocoon is an absolute must play. I honestly think it's going to be up there for me with Game of the Year.
[01:17:01] Speaker B: Wow. Better than Belders Gate three. Cat shit.
[01:17:04] Speaker A: Dude, I'm serious. It's not a Boulders Gate Three, but in terms of being a unique, very neatly put together just product, it just does so fucking well on the puzzle front. And I love a good puzzle game.
[01:17:23] Speaker B: Where I don't feel like I have to Google.
[01:17:30] Speaker A: Solutions because the puzzles are just too obtuse.
[01:17:34] Speaker B: With this game, I feel like I just need to I don't have to.
[01:17:38] Speaker A: Brute force or anything.
It just clicks and it's a very satisfying click. It's not like a fuck. Okay, well, yeah, okay, no worries. That's how you do it. It's like that works with that and that's how that goes and oh, what if I try this and then I'll try that?
It's just very satisfying.
[01:17:56] Speaker B: Highly satisfying.
[01:17:57] Speaker A: Yeah, really crack a game. So if you're looking for a little fun, indie, puzzling kind of experience, go and try a Cocoon. It is 100% worth your money and the Devs 100% deserve your cash ola.
[01:18:09] Speaker B: So go and check it out. But yeah.
[01:18:13] Speaker A: So there you fucking go, Grizzler.
[01:18:16] Speaker B: Now, shall we start the fucking old.
[01:18:20] Speaker A: Rapid fire Grizzly gaming?
[01:18:22] Speaker C: Stuart mate.
[01:18:25] Speaker B: Francesco.
[01:18:27] Speaker A: It's in the freaking game, baby. Now, look, Pav's not here to do the old eye roll so we can shit on our favorite podcast sponsor all we want, but thank you so much.
Yeah, it's completely official and they have every idea that it's happening.
[01:18:47] Speaker B: Now, one thing quickly going to touch.
[01:18:50] Speaker A: On Grizz and I'm going to pull it out of the top of the brunch sheet.
[01:18:54] Speaker B: CS.
[01:18:54] Speaker A: Go, fans. CS two fans are not particularly happy as they've lost a shitload of features from counterstrike.
Go global offensive. Now, one thing I noticed, and it's.
[01:19:10] Speaker B: Partially why I looked into this, it doesn't have Gun Game. There's no gun.
[01:19:16] Speaker C: No gun game.
[01:19:17] Speaker B: What?
[01:19:19] Speaker C: Quintessential haven't played CS for a while. Let's go play gun game.
[01:19:23] Speaker A: Exactly. It's even the Quintessential, like, I can't be fucked playing competitive. I'm going to go and just play something fun. Go and play gun game. For those at home that don't know what we're talking about, gun game was a mode where you would start off with a really shit gun and you'd slowly work yourself up all the guns as you got kills. And then the final gun would be a knife. And you had to knife someone in the back to win the game. That's right. And it's a fun game mode, really fun. You sort of make your way through all the shotguns and you make your way through all the machine guns and the SMGs and stuff.
It's just a fucking fun way to play CS. But, yeah, it's just missing. And alongside that, you're missing a bunch of different competitive maps and wingman maps. You're missing arms race, you're missing Mac support. Mac support has been completely dropped. You're also missing 128 tick rate.
[01:20:19] Speaker C: Can you not play on Mac?
[01:20:21] Speaker B: Wow. There you go.
[01:20:22] Speaker A: You can't play on Mac anymore.
The Mac version is just gone, which is just wild.
[01:20:30] Speaker C: I wonder how many people were playing on Mac?
[01:20:32] Speaker B: Curious to know.
[01:20:34] Speaker A: Probably a reasonable amount.
[01:20:35] Speaker B: I mean, if you're a Mac gamer.
[01:20:38] Speaker A: You haven't got many options, so you.
[01:20:40] Speaker B: Probably might have been one of your options.
Excuse me.
[01:20:46] Speaker A: But then you're also missing a bunch of just not cheat codes, but like, god, what are you freaking, like, console commands, Grizz?
[01:20:58] Speaker B: Like things like crosshair stuff and net.
[01:21:03] Speaker A: Graphs and stuff to look at your pink.
[01:21:04] Speaker B: Because it used to be remember?
[01:21:06] Speaker C: I remember fucking with my crosshair back when I played CS.
[01:21:10] Speaker A: Yeah, you did it through the console. I mean, look, they do have a much better crosshair editor now, but still, people love doing it.
[01:21:21] Speaker C: Are they going to be bringing this stuff in eventually, cap like Gun Game and things? Are they going to be coming back?
[01:21:25] Speaker A: Look, I'd say probably they'll slowly bring it back.
But again, we've been talking about how big companies like to drop things early and get things out on the market ASAP because got to start making some cashola. So they obviously decided to pull the trigger on this because they wanted to make some go.
[01:21:46] Speaker B: Here you go.
So capo.
[01:21:50] Speaker C: Another news, mate. Marvel Avengers, the live service game, is no longer available. I believe it is no more. Three years after launch. Cap, is this an Embracer Group thing, this whole story?
[01:22:05] Speaker A: No, I can't remember exactly which. I think it's Crystal Dynamics.
Oh, no, you're right. It was.
[01:22:15] Speaker B: Owner embracer.
[01:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah, you are. So Crystal Dynamics is a subsidiary is a development studio owned by Embracer Group has been shedding a lot of developers from their different development studios recently.
And Crystal Dynamics has not been spared either. Now, Marvel Avengers, the live service game, did really poorly. I think it massively shat the bed.
[01:22:46] Speaker C: Was it terrible or what?
[01:22:48] Speaker A: Really bad. I can't remember exactly what the issues with it were, but it just was like a really bad game.
Now the Embracer Group are basically it's.
[01:22:59] Speaker B: Not available on shop fronts anymore.
[01:23:03] Speaker A: I think you can still play the game if you have it, but all of the single player multiplayer elements are technically still perfectly playable. But you cannot pick the game up anywhere.
[01:23:14] Speaker B: It's gone fun.
[01:23:17] Speaker C: So people that still have it can still pick up. I'm pretty sure.
I don't know. Maybe not. I think my brother's kids are right into Marvel. Wonder whether they is it a subscription cap or is it just a once off payment too?
[01:23:29] Speaker A: Sure how it worked. I think it was just a once off purchase, but there was a heap of DLC and stuff you could buy and season passes and all that bullshit.
[01:23:37] Speaker B: So, yeah, it was all available.
Now, Grizz Obsidian, which is the makers.
[01:23:44] Speaker A: Of Fallout and a bunch of other.
[01:23:46] Speaker B: Shit original makers of Fallout, they produced.
[01:23:50] Speaker A: A video game called Pillars of Eternity and they want to make the third iteration of that game, which I think.
[01:23:55] Speaker B: Is a fairly popular game. But now that they're owned by Microsoft yeah, absolutely.
[01:24:01] Speaker A: But now that they're owned by Microsoft, they have to wait for Microsoft to give them the call up.
Maybe we might see it with the success of Boulders Gate Three.
[01:24:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I actually don't think Pillars of Eternity reviewed very well.
I really enjoyed it, but I don't know, cop Nines and things. Yeah, maybe it's I think it's as.
[01:24:24] Speaker A: Far as what do you call it, a CRPG goes, which is what you categorize that as pretty well.
[01:24:33] Speaker C: I think soundtrack line was great in that game. I've got some of that soundtrack from that game in the DND playlist.
[01:24:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we'll probably find I mean, yeah. Music banger Banger fucking soundtrack. So you're right, they did a lot of really good things. Even just like the narratives was quite good. And I think it was just a fairly neatly put together RPG experience.
[01:24:56] Speaker B: But I don't think we're going to.
[01:24:58] Speaker A: See much until Microsoft gets an inkling as to how their next game goes. Which, I can't remember what they called that thing, but it's kind of like the whimsical looking skyrim game that Obsidian has coming out.
[01:25:12] Speaker B: I can't remember.
[01:25:13] Speaker A: What do you call it? Obsidian Games.
It is called is it a vowed? I think it's a vowed.
[01:25:19] Speaker C: I honestly do feel like these top down RPGs, though. Cap, that we see since the success.
[01:25:26] Speaker B: Of Battlesgate Three will be popular.
[01:25:30] Speaker C: I mean, we know that people, now that they've finished Battlesgate Three, are going back to Divinity original Sin Two. If you look on that subreddit right now, it is popping. A lot of people coming across saying, I have finished Battles Gate Three. I've heard this game is great from the same dev and jumping into that and enjoying it.
[01:25:48] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yeah, it could go two ways, Grids. It could be people going, yeah, wicked awesome games. But then how do people follow up Boulders Gate Three and make something of that high caliber?
Especially when we're seeing these AA studios not being able to cut the mustard as well as other studios. And Larian seem to be like the poster boys of just being able to get shit done properly. So, I don't know, it's going to be interesting to see we've got a Warhammer Rogue Trader CRPG coming out, which is in the 40K universe.
Will it be as good? I don't know. We'll find out. And we had Dev saying, hey, don't.
[01:26:28] Speaker B: Hold us to the same light as.
[01:26:31] Speaker A: Boulders Gate Three and whatnot. But the thing is, other CRPGs in the same field are probably going to.
[01:26:38] Speaker B: Be juxtaposed against Boulders Gate Three.
[01:26:41] Speaker A: It's that simple.
[01:26:42] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:26:42] Speaker C: Absolutely.
Cappa Final Fantasy XIV player becomes the first to earn all 2000 achievements, which I'm just looking at the reddit here, apparently there are achievements in there that would take a minimum of seven years of daily playing to complete and working.
[01:26:59] Speaker B: Towards the achievement completion.
[01:27:01] Speaker C: The game has been out for ten. So this person's a bit of a.
[01:27:05] Speaker B: Bit of a mad dog, mate.
[01:27:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, yeah, it was something.
[01:27:10] Speaker B: Like.
[01:27:14] Speaker A: Before you get confused, it's technically not seven years of daily gameplay, it's the quests that amount to what would take 7.5 years to generate.
[01:27:24] Speaker C: God.
[01:27:25] Speaker A: So it's not that you can't just smash them out in seven years, it's that the game had to have been out for 7.5 plus years for you to get enough regenerated content to finish the achievement.
[01:27:38] Speaker C: It's like going doing dailies in wow every day.
[01:27:42] Speaker A: Exactly.
And it's like saying, okay, to get this achievement, you have to have done 50, let's say 70 daily quests. Right. But the daily quests, are you're going.
[01:27:56] Speaker B: To get ten per year?
[01:27:58] Speaker A: That's basically the same thing. It's what we're looking at here. So that's the kind of shit it's just wild. Some of the other shit in there, man.
Some of the other crazy things he had to have done was three of the crazy, hard, difficult dungeons had to be done solo. Apparently.
That in itself is like there's only.
[01:28:21] Speaker B: A few people who have done it.
[01:28:23] Speaker A: There's also 64 different relic weapons that are in the game.
A player completing every single one of those is basically unheard of.
Win 5000 PvP matches.
I'm just looking at some of these. Just insane. Absolutely insane.
[01:28:42] Speaker C: Nuts.
[01:28:43] Speaker B: Yeah, absolute mad dog.
I think this is like a pure Pinnacle gaming achievement. I don't think people realize the extent.
[01:28:56] Speaker A: To full gamer you need to be and dedication to get that. It's actually kind of wild. So, congratulations, this legend.
[01:29:04] Speaker B: Now Grizz Red Dead Redemption has received an update 1.3, which adds 60 FPS.
[01:29:12] Speaker A: For the PS Five.
[01:29:14] Speaker B: Now that is Red Dead redemption one, not two nuts.
[01:29:21] Speaker C: Cap why don't they do that for bloodborne, mate? Bastards.
[01:29:26] Speaker A: Because they're cowards.
[01:29:27] Speaker C: They're cowards. They are fucking cowards is why Kazi is jumping out of his skin right now. Red Dead redemption.
[01:29:33] Speaker A: What Redemption?
[01:29:35] Speaker C: He's probably the only Red Dead Redemption one player. Actually, I think he plays number two. But that's pretty cool though. So I'd imagine number two is already 60 frames, isn't it?
[01:29:44] Speaker A: I don't know.
Good question. I'd actually go as far to say probably not. It's probably like 30 to 45 or.
[01:29:50] Speaker C: Something on next year.
[01:29:53] Speaker B: Good question. Very cool.
[01:29:56] Speaker C: Capo 68% of Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty sales were on PC. So we're all elite gamers now, none.
[01:30:05] Speaker B: Of this console garbage.
[01:30:08] Speaker A: Yeah, get rid of the consoles, just go straight to PC, I reckon.
Unnecessary, unneeded, but yeah, there you go. 68%. That's big fucking numbers, mate.
Now, Grizz Redfall does not have enough concurrent players on Steam to fill a full team.
[01:30:27] Speaker C: Does that mean that people can't go.
[01:30:29] Speaker B: Play the game or what?
[01:30:30] Speaker A: Well, you can still play solo, but if you wanted to have a team and find one publicly, I think you need four players to fill a team. And they don't even have four concurrent.
[01:30:40] Speaker C: Players, so cap there's an example right there of a game. I wonder how much money they spent to develop that game.
[01:30:46] Speaker A: Oh, man.
Honestly, I'm kind of sad that they failed so hard on that game because.
[01:30:54] Speaker B: Arcane Studios do some great games, but.
[01:30:58] Speaker A: They just couldn't get Redfall to work. And I really want to see them do Prey, too, because Prey is a phenomenal game, but, yeah, I think it's a bit worrying.
[01:31:08] Speaker B: So we'll see what happens. Okay.
[01:31:10] Speaker C: Cap the gift that keeps on giving on this one. Matt, we've been talking about this for probably the laugh of this podcast, I reckon.
[01:31:16] Speaker A: Oh, man. Ridiculous.
[01:31:17] Speaker C: The FTC is challenging Microsoft's $69 billion buy out of Activision. Again, the agency will continue to attempt to block the deal despite being repeatedly rebuffed. So I don't know in what grounds they're blocking.
[01:31:31] Speaker B: I haven't read the article a lot yet, but, yeah.
[01:31:34] Speaker A: It doesn't matter. I don't think it's going to go through. I think they've already fired their load and I think it didn't hit the target. So I think they're just clutching its straws and probably backed by some sour pusses that want them to perform, but it's not going to happen. So if they couldn't do it the first time, I can't see him doing.
[01:31:56] Speaker B: It this time now.
[01:31:58] Speaker A: Grizz Dona Two's International prize pool is.
[01:32:01] Speaker B: At a historical low.
[01:32:04] Speaker A: So the prize pool is traditionally partially subsidized by the Battle Pass that comes out every year. And a certain percentage of Battle Pass sales goes towards the prize pool of the DOTAS Two International, which is their huge competitive tournament.
At one stage, I think it was like over $40 million or something. Ridiculous.
[01:32:31] Speaker C: Yeah, it was. And it's always been the biggest prize pool for any esport. Dota Two has always carried that for.
[01:32:38] Speaker B: This one particular event. Yeah.
[01:32:41] Speaker A: So now I think the price pools.
[01:32:43] Speaker B: At something like, what is it?
[01:32:46] Speaker C: 2.4 million?
[01:32:47] Speaker A: 2 million, which is I mean, look.
[01:32:50] Speaker B: That'S fuck all in comparison.
[01:32:52] Speaker C: I just want to add some context here. They've changed the recipe of the compendium.
[01:32:57] Speaker B: That you buy the Battle Pass. Yeah.
[01:32:59] Speaker C: So I have bought the Battle Pass. I've sunk $50 into it. Now, the way that the Battle Pass has worked in the past is you would get a bunch of hats, cosmetics, dot or two items and stuff, and couriers wards, and depending on there'd be.
[01:33:12] Speaker B: Cool little, like, cavern crawl that you.
[01:33:15] Speaker C: Could do and you could unlock things.
The Battle Pass compendium for the International.
[01:33:20] Speaker B: This year is they don't give you anything, you don't get anything.
[01:33:24] Speaker C: It's all based around just the competition. There's a fantasy league, there is like a bunch of points, but essentially the compendium isn't giving you anything back. You're not getting any cosmetics or no rewards. So people just haven't bought it. Cap people have not bought the Battle Pass this time around, so the crowdfunding isn't there. Bit disappointing, mate, I must admit. I'll probably refund mine because I don't know, man, I'm not that interested in fantasy, really. It's not giving me anything back.
[01:33:52] Speaker A: No, it's a bit of a shame because I think a lot of players used it as a good tool to come back into the game and get excited about the game.
Know, Valve did say that they're going to be working more on bigger updates and less on just not as meaningful kind of updates and content, which maybe did kind of mean the Battle Pass. But it's a shame because I think having a shitload of money on the table for a competitive game is fucking exciting. Yeah, I saw Team Spirit win a couple of years back. That was fucking really cool.
[01:34:27] Speaker C: Dota is my most played game and I have bought the compendium every year, whether or not I'm even playing Dota at the time, just because I like to get the hats and other bits and pieces. And I also actually like supporting the sport. I actually like the fact that the money that I'm putting into that compendium goes into the prize pool for the pro teams and I actually quite like that part of it. But, yeah, I just don't feel like they have hit the nail on the head with such a big change in what it's offering the players to crowdfund the price pool this year. I think you need the hats, mate.
[01:34:59] Speaker B: All right?
[01:34:59] Speaker C: That's what we fucking buy it for.
[01:35:00] Speaker B: The hats are cool.
[01:35:02] Speaker A: Look, it's surprising in a day and age where you see so many companies trying to pump battle passes and you see a company kind of go backwards on their offerings and a battle pass that traditionally sells exceptionally well, do so exceptionally poorly. Yeah.
[01:35:21] Speaker C: Wonder who made the decision to not do that.
[01:35:23] Speaker B: I wonder.
[01:35:24] Speaker A: Don't know. You'd love to be a fly on the wall listening to their marketing and internal kind of communications about their decision making processes, but yeah, who fucking knows, man?
[01:35:38] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:35:39] Speaker C: Now, Cap announcement of the discontinuation of online services for the Nintendo three DS and Wi software in early April 2024.
[01:35:50] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:35:50] Speaker C: It's done, mate.
[01:35:52] Speaker A: Yes. So you won't be able to purchase things off the store. I don't to I think you can still download stuff if you own it, but you can't continue to buy things, et cetera.
[01:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah. There you go.
[01:36:11] Speaker A: Now, grizz final story on the old fucking rapid fire. Navidea's had its office raided by the French competition authority, which is pretty fucking wild, honestly.
It looks like Nvidia are kind of trying to kind of sweep this on the carpet with we have no idea why they possibly want this do this, but it looks like it's probably something to do with a highly anti competitive kind of chipset that I don't understand it fully, but they essentially managed to completely monopolize the market in AI related chip sets and fuck everyone over. Essentially. So I think it has something probably to do with that. And we'll probably find out more in where that lands.
[01:37:09] Speaker B: Right?
[01:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah, any competition of this scale is pretty fucked. And, yeah, I think it's going to be interesting to see what comes out of this one. So there you go.
Speaking of there, if I could go.
[01:37:27] Speaker B: That'S the episode, we did it.
[01:37:31] Speaker C: What was the time like without Pav breathing down our backs?
[01:37:34] Speaker A: Cap 1 hour 37, baby.
[01:37:36] Speaker C: Pretty good on the money.
[01:37:38] Speaker B: We did it. Not bad.
[01:37:40] Speaker A: So, yeah, well done, mate. Well done. We got there, but yeah. Anyways, look, really appreciate you being here again. If you would like to watch this normally live, you can do so by going to Twitch TV Oceanicgamingradio.
[01:37:54] Speaker B: Follow us.
[01:37:55] Speaker A: There we go. Live every Monday from 07:00 p.m. Australian West Standard Time. You can listen to us on any of your favorite podcasting platforms.
[01:38:02] Speaker B: Just look up OGR or Oceanic Gaming Radio.
[01:38:05] Speaker A: Or if you want it to make it really easy for you, go to OGR show. That is our website. It's got our links to everything, including our discord, our Twitter, where you can vote, our Twitter polls patreon. If you want to join us and.
[01:38:18] Speaker B: Pay us some cash, be great.
[01:38:22] Speaker C: But we do have a TikTok as well.
[01:38:24] Speaker A: We got a TikTok as well, which we will get that up there as soon TM see the hot takes.
Exactly. So get excited for that. But, yeah, keep an eye out for all our socials. We're going to be dropping kind of little bite size content pieces here and there. But yeah, other than that, just want to say thank you. If you could do us a big favor and tell someone about us or drop a review, we'd really appreciate it and we'll see you guys next week on the Oceanic Gaming Radio. Peace out, legends.
[01:38:58] Speaker B: Bye for now.
