IS PALWORLD ABOUT TO BE SUED??? - EP 85

[00:00:18] Speaker A: G'day and welcome to Oceanic Gaming radio. [00:00:23] Speaker B: How you doing? Thanks for joining us. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Good to see you. It is the 29 January 2024. Sorry, almost said three. It is episode 85 and my name is Captain Perth. Thanks for joining us. Great to be here alongside me as always. Grizzly gaming 86. How are you doing, my friend? [00:00:46] Speaker B: Hi, Captain Perth. [00:00:48] Speaker C: I am fucking good, Cap. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Real good. Real good. [00:00:51] Speaker C: It's been an absolute tumultuous four days. [00:00:55] Speaker B: But. [00:00:58] Speaker C: Big breath in, mate, and back to work tomorrow. But it's been great. Lots of social things and bits and pieces. [00:01:04] Speaker A: You had an extra long weekend, right? [00:01:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I took an extra day at the end, so I actually had four days off, which was great because here in Aussieland we had Australia day on the Friday, which is a public holiday for us. [00:01:17] Speaker B: So it was pretty nice. [00:01:20] Speaker C: And I took the Monday as well. [00:01:21] Speaker B: And made a nice big long one of. [00:01:24] Speaker A: It was great. [00:01:25] Speaker B: Why not, mate? [00:01:26] Speaker A: Why not when it's there? So give me the rundown. What happened? [00:01:30] Speaker C: Okay, now, Cap, did you ever play. [00:01:32] Speaker B: At or go to convenience in Northbridge? [00:01:35] Speaker A: I never played in convenience. It wasn't around when I was gigging and I've never been since. Because you haven't. [00:01:43] Speaker C: Do you know about the venue, though? [00:01:47] Speaker A: Yes, I do. It's kind of supposed to be kind of like a convenience store, but then you open up the fridge doors to a thing and then there's a gig out the back, basically, which is pretty. [00:01:57] Speaker C: You used to open a drink fridge or something you'd go through anyway, that has shut. Conveniences shut down, mate. And new owners took over last weekend and we somehow scored like their second night open in one of the bands that I'm in to play. [00:02:11] Speaker B: And it was really fun. Sick. [00:02:14] Speaker C: It was great. They've kind of like stripped it all out and opened it up. [00:02:18] Speaker B: So your sound kind of airs out into the main strip of Northbridge, which was great. [00:02:25] Speaker C: And so they're trying to bring in a lot of people. But it's interesting, Cap, because we played in there as the Renegades because they're. [00:02:31] Speaker B: Trying to push this grunge rock kind of scene, which is very similar to. [00:02:36] Speaker C: Kind of what amps gets in there. But it's an earlier venue, so it's only open till 12:00 so we had a gig there Thursday night before the. [00:02:44] Speaker B: Long weekend, day off on Friday. And it was really fun, mate. [00:02:48] Speaker C: Great show, dude. [00:02:49] Speaker A: Sweet. So what was the set list, mate? Walk me through it. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Oh, man. [00:02:53] Speaker C: Well, this is the thing, dude, because we only knew 75 minutes of music at that stage. So we played, like, ten songs that we'd never played together before. Just kind of had to fucking wing it. One of those was we played a. [00:03:06] Speaker B: Bunch of system of the down, which was fun, sweet. [00:03:09] Speaker C: One of the system songs we hadn't played was aerials and went pretty well. [00:03:13] Speaker B: I'd say it went much better than. [00:03:16] Speaker C: Expected, but that was good, man. [00:03:18] Speaker A: You guys are all pretty good musicians. [00:03:20] Speaker C: I imagine you guys, Mikey and Alex, the other two guys in the band. [00:03:24] Speaker B: Are, like a plus neck level players. [00:03:31] Speaker C: No, it turned out to be fine. And then Saturday, Cap, I streamed and I streamed pal World, which. No, that was Friday. [00:03:40] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:03:41] Speaker C: So I'm looking forward to talking about that today on the podcast and doing a big deep dive into power world. [00:03:49] Speaker B: All in all, yeah, I've got my. [00:03:51] Speaker C: First impressions ready to go, but, yeah, it's pretty cool. And then, Cap, I went to Mike river on Saturday to visit our great friend blindsided Moose. I didn't actually go to visit him, but I did see him down there. [00:04:04] Speaker A: How wonderful. [00:04:05] Speaker B: I'm jealous. [00:04:07] Speaker C: He's a fucking legend. I'll tell you what, man. Definitely a few beers consumed. I wasn't calorie counting, that's for sure. It was a good night. But no, what happened had the offspring. [00:04:20] Speaker B: Tribute band in Marg's, I think they. [00:04:24] Speaker C: Ended up selling just under 400 tickets, and the venue capacity was 500, so. [00:04:29] Speaker B: It was pretty good. [00:04:30] Speaker C: Fantastic evening. [00:04:31] Speaker B: Lots of people in there. [00:04:33] Speaker C: So I drove back on Saturday, and then today, Cap, I found myself out to rotnest with the fam. [00:04:38] Speaker B: Little family day at Rotnest was really nice. Beautiful weather. [00:04:42] Speaker C: Got a bit sunburnt on the old shoulders, mate. [00:04:45] Speaker B: But here we are, mate. [00:04:47] Speaker C: Now it's Monday, and I'm getting ready for work. [00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:52] Speaker A: Have you got much to prepare for tomorrow, mate? Or you just. [00:04:56] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a few things that I'm. [00:04:59] Speaker B: Going to have hits bright and early tomorrow morning, but. [00:05:03] Speaker C: Sure, it'll be fine, mate. [00:05:04] Speaker B: We'll work it out. Yeah. [00:05:06] Speaker A: Love it. Now, did you get a couple of quokka photos, mate? [00:05:09] Speaker C: I did, actually. Put one in the dadbod chat, mate. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Actually, there was a quokka that had. So if you don't know what a quoka is, you're not from Australia. Put it in Google right now. Arguably one of the most cutest ever. It's not a word. [00:05:25] Speaker C: The cutest fairy animal you'll ever see. They're kind of like a. What would you say, cap? [00:05:29] Speaker B: It's kind of like a large rat kangaroo. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Kind of sits upright and has a little pouch and I guess by definition, it's an amosupial, right. Because it's got a. But what do you call it? Their habitats are all in wa, I think. I don't think they're elsewhere. [00:05:56] Speaker C: Yeah, they're endemic, aren't they, to wa? I'm pretty sure. And rottenness has one of the largest populations. They're protected and everything else, but it's so cool. They're so used to human like behavior that they'll just come right up to you and allow you to take selfies with them and stuff. And it's just pretty cool. [00:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:15] Speaker A: They'Re kind of cool because on Rotnest island, they're basically the only animal that lives there, right. So they're free from predation. And so they just rock around, do what they like, and they're pretty fun. [00:06:28] Speaker C: Cap, have you spent much time at Rotnest? [00:06:32] Speaker A: I've been there a few times, but not recently, actually, just because I don't. [00:06:38] Speaker C: Know when Ted gets saying this to Pete that we should do, because day trips are totally viable. You just get up. We didn't even get the late. We got like the 09:00 a.m.. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Ferry. [00:06:48] Speaker C: You're out there by 930. [00:06:50] Speaker B: And then you can go straight to. [00:06:52] Speaker C: The pub if you want. There's some great beaches right out the front of the bar there. Or we got on a bus and. [00:06:57] Speaker B: Went around to a bay called, I think it was little parakeet or something like that. [00:07:02] Speaker C: And it was, man, the snorkeling is just beautiful because it doesn't matter which way the wind direction is going, there's always a protected bay somewhere. So we kind of went on the. [00:07:12] Speaker B: Least side of the island and set up a little area and did some. [00:07:18] Speaker C: Snorkeling and then came back to the mate. [00:07:20] Speaker A: That would have been nice. [00:07:21] Speaker C: Had a couple of cocktails and then. Yeah, back on the ferry at. [00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah, good stuff, mate. [00:07:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll get there eventually. I think maybe once Ted's a bit older and maybe not needing a nap, that would be the way to go. [00:07:35] Speaker C: Pretty disruptive in the day because you're out and about. [00:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, he'd probably be okay, but it's just not worth me having to deal with a cranky toddler. You know what mean, so. But we'll get. Yeah, rottness is gorgeous. What's the alcohol price like over there, grizzo? Is it still. [00:07:55] Speaker C: The prices in general were surprisingly good, I thought. For example, I bought my two girls a little quoker each, and I was like, fuck, here we go. These are going to be like, $45 because that's what they do in those tourist stores. But they were $12, which is totally. [00:08:12] Speaker B: Reasonable for a good quality plushie. [00:08:14] Speaker C: And the drinks and meals, I mean, we bought a full. [00:08:17] Speaker B: We had a couple of beers and. [00:08:19] Speaker C: Like, a bunch of table food to share and it was like just over $100. I didn't think it was too bad, man. To be honest. [00:08:26] Speaker B: I thought it was pretty comparable to Perth, all things considered. Yeah. [00:08:32] Speaker A: All in all. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:33] Speaker A: Okay, realistically, like a couple of beers and a bunch of share food, that can easily set you back $100 in Perth anyway, right? So it's not that bad. I mean, rotnest always has had that stigma of being a bit more expensive than the mainland because you travel over there. But I guess realistically, if they want to attract people to come over there and also attract more than just tourists, then they're going to have to be reasonably competitive. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Right? [00:09:00] Speaker C: It is very touristy, though, I will say that, like, on the buses, just full of international tourists doing their thing and just having absolutely no fucking idea about anything. But, yeah, it was cool, man. It was great. Nice little day trip. Something to do at the end of school holidays. Our kids go back to school tomorrow. [00:09:17] Speaker B: Caps. [00:09:17] Speaker C: We're actually prepping for that as well. I believe the wife is washing their hair right now. We've got their school uniforms prepped and everything. [00:09:23] Speaker A: Ready? [00:09:24] Speaker B: Bloody hell. Ready, mate. Love it. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Engaging runt in chat. Standard Perth pints, probably between ten and $12, I'd say, for a standard lager. If you're going to buy something crafty, you're probably looking at 13 or 14, but, yeah. Nice one, Grizzo. [00:09:41] Speaker B: Well, what about you? [00:09:43] Speaker C: I heard you went to the zoo, mate. [00:09:45] Speaker A: Did you see Ted? [00:09:47] Speaker C: See the tiger? Is he noticing the tiger now? Is he, like. [00:09:50] Speaker A: He didn't see the tiger because we didn't go past it and the lions were doing fuck all. [00:09:55] Speaker C: Bit too hot for the lions, was it? Maybe. Were they just resting? [00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah, they're just kind of lounging around and I think sometimes they hide behind. They've got a reasonably large enclosure and they can kind of hide out of sight. [00:10:07] Speaker B: So sometimes they kind of do that. [00:10:11] Speaker A: You don't see them all the time. And we've seen them a couple of. Couple of times getting pretty hectic. So we've had our lion kind of luck, I guess, because a lot of the time the animals just do bugger all. But we kind of went towards the end of the day and I feel like if you're there at the end of the day, say four p mish. All the animals are starting to get a little bit restless because I think they're getting close to feed time, and so they tend to start coming out of their burrows and stuff. Like, I saw the echidna come out for the first time ever. Normally, they're just sleeping in their burrow during the day and just other animals just kind of cruising around. But it was a really good. [00:10:52] Speaker B: Well, we caught up with a mate. [00:10:53] Speaker A: Who'S just moved over here from Sydney, so it was good catching up with them since they've moved over here. [00:10:59] Speaker C: Legend he left his garage open. [00:11:07] Speaker A: His wife was saying, oh, yeah, Grizz's wife has gone and sorted out that garage door because we left it open. We've never had a garage door before, so it's just hard to remember to close it because we're used to Sydney apartment living. But, yeah, it was quite funny. But this was the first trip where I felt like Ted was starting to get it, you know? What, to figure it out. [00:11:32] Speaker C: Figuring out the zoo, you think, cap? [00:11:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I think just being able to identify things, like, for example, the giraffes and stuff like that, he could see. Just identify that that's something different to the background, and that's an actual animal that is there. [00:11:51] Speaker C: Is that. You've been taking Ted there because you guys bought that pass, right? You've been taking him there for a long time. [00:11:59] Speaker B: And I know. [00:12:00] Speaker C: I've seen the books in your house where you've got all the different zoo animals in there. It's like, what's that? Some fucking tail book? Or there's all these different animal books. So I reckon he's. Reckon he's putting two and two together. That is he kind of. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And I think some of the tv stuff that's on, they do zoo, like the wiggles and stuff do zoo stuff. And Miss Rachel and the other shit that he watches. But, yeah, I think definitely starting to connect the dots a little bit more. And he saw the elephant yesterday, and I think it was definitely the first time he's actually noticed the elephant, because it was in this little amphitheater thing, and the elephant was doing a painting, and then it was going and getting big tires and stacking the tires up, and Ted was just like. I sat right at the front of the amphitheater and had him just standing on my leg whilst I was sitting down. And he was just like, a stun mullet, mate. It was hilarious. He was just like, holy shit. Look at that fucking thing. So it was pretty cool. First time I think he's know you see kids get gobs backed and stuff, but first time I think he was. [00:13:08] Speaker B: Just like, whoa, that is the biggest. [00:13:11] Speaker A: Fucking dog I've ever seen in my life. [00:13:13] Speaker C: What's the age difference with Charlie and Ted? Charlie's quite a bit younger. [00:13:18] Speaker A: Three or four months. [00:13:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:20] Speaker B: Okay. [00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's enough to. Especially in the first kind of couple of years, your months between is fairly significant. Learning milestones and stuff. Charlie's just starting to walk and stuff like that, which is really exciting and did some incredibly good walking on the Sunday. So yeah, that was really fun. But also picnic at the zoo. Great day to do it as well. It was really good weather, so we took down a bunch of hummus and Ted fucking put his hand in it and fucked around with it. [00:14:01] Speaker B: Did he? [00:14:02] Speaker A: Cause general ruckus. So yeah, just having a great time at the expense of everyone else's time. But yeah, no, it was a good day. But yeah, anyways, that was me, mate. And just playing a bit of video gaming, specifically the one we're going to be talking about. [00:14:17] Speaker C: First up on the question, are you still rocking it? Are you cap? [00:14:20] Speaker A: You're still smashing it. Still giving it a crackaroo. Yeah, it's not bad. [00:14:28] Speaker B: I don't want to ruin the poll. [00:14:29] Speaker C: Results cap, but it sounds like a few of the OGR community are also enjoyers of this particular video. [00:14:36] Speaker B: Yes. [00:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a few floating around so we're going to oust them publicly on this podcast. So prepare for that. You can get the Pitchforks ready, but yeah, anyways, let's dive straight into it. Firstly, thank you everyone listening live via Twitch TV, oceanicgamingradio. Bloody appreciate you guys immensely. If you would like to join those legends, we record this podcast every Monday from 07:00 p.m. Australian western standard Time. I mean you can join such legends. [00:15:05] Speaker B: As Maguire, caging, runt, twelve orcs. [00:15:09] Speaker A: Who else we got in here? Straight jacket Jim Slatos. [00:15:13] Speaker C: Why is there so many legends tonight? Mate? [00:15:15] Speaker B: There is literally hundreds of them in there. [00:15:18] Speaker A: You have nights where the moons alight and that's that kind of vibe. [00:15:21] Speaker C: I think Platos, even Pav is in the chat. [00:15:25] Speaker A: Even Pav's back. Yeah, you can't keep him out of here so if you want to join them, you can just go and follow that link. Twitch TV, oceanicgaming Radio now if you prefer to listen to this in your. [00:15:35] Speaker B: Own time and hey, please do so. [00:15:38] Speaker A: We would love you to. You can just go and search up oceanic gaming radio on your favorite podcasting platform. Or just go to OGR show and follow the prompts. You'll see the episodes there and the links to every and all platform you could possibly ever want. Now, a special big thanks to our wonderful Patreon providers, the financiers of this fine establishment that we run. They are the legends that drop a few cash olers and enable us to drop some sick TikToks, which actually, we need to get that cranking again. [00:16:14] Speaker C: We do, mate. We do. You know, it can't be too far. [00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I reckon this is the reckon. [00:16:21] Speaker B: Surely. [00:16:21] Speaker C: Power world is popping off on socials. [00:16:23] Speaker B: Let's rule. [00:16:24] Speaker C: Hard take cap needs to say how. [00:16:26] Speaker B: Fucking shit power world is. [00:16:27] Speaker C: And then we'll put that as a TikTok. [00:16:29] Speaker B: Done. [00:16:30] Speaker A: Yeah, something really tenacious that'll really get some people riled up. But yeah. Those wonderful legends of the Patreon crew are the following. Sukai, moosey, caging runt, Sergeant Paul Legy, DJ libs, Brendan, damn fantastic. Strops and salatos. [00:16:48] Speaker B: Legendary. [00:16:49] Speaker A: Thanks, guys. Appreciate you immensely. If you want to join them, you can go to and, yeah, follow the prompts. Chuck your digits on the front, your. [00:16:59] Speaker B: Three on the back, and yeah, sign your life away. [00:17:03] Speaker A: All right, let's dive straight in, my friend. Grizzly gaming 86 beginning top of the loist. Top of the list. Loist, listy list. [00:17:14] Speaker B: Power world. [00:17:16] Speaker A: It's literally taking the world by storm. It is one of the most popular games ever on Steam, second only to PUBG in terms of highest concurrent player base on Steam. I can't remember what the last one I read was, but it was something like. I have to look it up now, pal. World, concurrent Steam, it was something absolutely ridiculous, like over 2 million players. I think it's like 2.5 or something like that. Anyways, I think PUBG is a little bit higher. I think that's at 3.5 mil. [00:17:56] Speaker B: But it's one of the few games. [00:17:59] Speaker A: Well, one of the only two games to have usurped counterstrike. Two go as the highest concurrent viewership. [00:18:09] Speaker C: The other one, cap, out of curiosity, do we know the other one? [00:18:12] Speaker B: Pubg. PUBG. Okay. [00:18:13] Speaker C: And you know what, dude? I almost feel like PUBG is a bit of a white elephant in the. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Fact that that was the first battle. [00:18:19] Speaker C: Royale and it took that genre by storm. Whereas I think I feel know. And obviously we're going to talk about it tonight, but I feel like Powerworld's taken a lot of what's already been successful and created a game. [00:18:30] Speaker B: So I don't know. [00:18:31] Speaker C: I think that's quite a large achievement there. [00:18:34] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, it's kind of knocking a few achievements out the road. Like it's now sold 8 million copies, which is definitely nothing to scoff at. [00:18:45] Speaker C: 8 million copies. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Jesus. [00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I will say that from last count, I believe Elden ring was at about 14 million. But no one's counting. Or are they? But still incredibly, incredibly impressive numbers for a game that realistically, when it dropped, people were kind of, I guess, not really ready for it. I don't think the marketing adequately kind of presented such a decent experience. I guess I think the marketing in general just kind of was relatively poor. And I think it kind of went for the meme angle of this is Pokemon with guns. And I think potentially that put a few people off. But also it just didn't kind of resonate in the right way despite it being an absolutely cracker game. [00:19:37] Speaker B: And obviously, so far it's in early access, cap. But the critics tend to agree with it being very well received so far. [00:19:47] Speaker C: So we've got a couple of reviews. IGN gave it an eight out of ten. And so far on Steam from the reviews we've seen, which is cap 126,000. [00:19:55] Speaker B: Of them, it is copying a very. [00:19:59] Speaker C: Positive and an overall nine out of. [00:20:01] Speaker B: Ten based on the Steam reviews. I don't know. [00:20:06] Speaker A: That's pretty impressive for something. I think that's in early access. Realistically, getting an overwhelmingly positive is pretty difficult, especially when you've got 120,000 players, unique steam users who can say all kinds of silly and wonderful things. [00:20:29] Speaker C: I've pulled some of those, mate, because I always do. Just for a little laughy, I thought I might share them with you if you're like, okay, most accurate, Amazon warehouse. [00:20:38] Speaker B: Simulator, obviously hitting it, the slave labor and everything else. [00:20:43] Speaker A: There's definitely a fair bit of that going on, for sure. [00:20:45] Speaker C: My depresso got depressed. We cured it with medicine. My alpaca developed an eating disorder, so we ate him. Ten out of ten video game. [00:20:55] Speaker A: That's great. [00:20:56] Speaker C: I punched the first person I saw and he drew a musket and plugged me. Best opening 30 seconds of a game I can remember. [00:21:05] Speaker A: Great. Yeah, I think that's the cool thing is in general, for Powerworld, there's so many systems across the game that enable you to have pretty unique experiences in general. And the slight little bit of jank also helps go towards those unique think. [00:21:26] Speaker C: I agree. [00:21:27] Speaker B: I agree. [00:21:28] Speaker C: And also, one thing I want to. [00:21:30] Speaker B: Say, cap, because it's not Nintendo and. [00:21:33] Speaker C: They also have a license to kind. [00:21:35] Speaker B: Of do whatever the fuck they want. [00:21:38] Speaker C: Like killing and eating the pals or beating the shit out of the little pupla. Fucking little pal. And some of it's a bit brutal that you just. [00:21:50] Speaker A: There's an item in the game called, like. It's like a butcher's knife. And the whole idea is that you capture pals and then take them back and then you butcher them so you can get more of the shit that they were dropping. It's such a different take on that entire look. We kind of spoke about it last week. This isn't directly a Pokemon clone, though it does heavily utilize a lot of Pokemon like systems and game design techniques. And realistically, the actual literal design of the Pokemon and the player characters, I think are very similar to that of Pokemon's recent approach to those characters. But I can't even fucking remember where I was going with this. But regardless, yeah, I kind of wanted. [00:22:37] Speaker C: To touch on that, on my experience so far, cat, because I know that. [00:22:40] Speaker B: There'S a lot of talk, and I'm. [00:22:42] Speaker C: Not sure whether you've got it as an individual line item here in the run sheet. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. But the comparison to other video games, you see it a lot through articles and people posting on Twitter and TikTok and YouTube and taking side by sides of pals. West Pokemon. I guess from my experience of playing. [00:23:01] Speaker B: The game, I almost feel like it's. [00:23:06] Speaker C: Taken a lot from other video games, like, definitely. And the first one that I noticed. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Was breath of the wild cap, the. [00:23:12] Speaker C: Use of the stamina system to climb and use your little hang glider and everything else. But I also want to point out. [00:23:20] Speaker B: That it's not the first time video. [00:23:22] Speaker C: Games have done this. I mean, you look at the souls like genre, right? Like, we had dark souls, demon souls, dark souls three, and then all of. [00:23:28] Speaker B: A sudden we've got all these, for. [00:23:31] Speaker C: Lack of a better word, clones, which. [00:23:32] Speaker B: We'Re trying to leverage off that genre. [00:23:35] Speaker C: To make these games that felt like a Souls game. And I honestly don't see an issue with Powerworld and what they've done. I actually think it's fantastic. They've taken all these little bits from these successful things from other games, and. [00:23:47] Speaker B: They'Ve put them in and they've done it fantastically. [00:23:50] Speaker C: The survival mechanics that you see from arc, I really enjoyed that, being able to set up your crafting tables, and you start off, obviously, with your bow as your range weapon, and I haven't even got any guns yet, cap. I've only put maybe 4 hours in. [00:24:03] Speaker B: But I just like the way, I. [00:24:06] Speaker C: Guess my comment on the progression system is I always felt like through the. [00:24:10] Speaker B: Quest rewards and the quest log that I was always working towards something and. [00:24:15] Speaker C: Whatever they were asking me to do was totally achievable in a short amount of time. So I was getting dopamine from doing this stuff. Then I could see that I was unlocking more stats and other things to build and the progressions through the game. [00:24:27] Speaker B: Felt really rewarding for me as I. [00:24:30] Speaker C: Was working my way through. Not only that, the exploration thing was really rewarding too. I know we talked about it when we played Elden ringcap around. Each place you go in the world rewarded you with a bit of story or an item or something. Well, I kind of found myself like climbing up this big mountain thinking, no, there's going to be nothing up here. This is just like a waste of time. [00:24:50] Speaker B: And I jankily stood on this little. [00:24:52] Speaker C: Edge of a cliff to get my stamina back to climb up the top. But then there was like an uncommon egg up the top there and I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. So maybe, I don't know, I just kind of felt like it was done pretty well in terms of the exploration, but also giving you those little rewards to keep unlocking stuff through the quest log. [00:25:10] Speaker B: Carrots. [00:25:11] Speaker C: Yeah, a few carrots there. I thought someone very clever has put this game together as a whole, piecing it together and yeah, so far I can see why people are loving it. [00:25:22] Speaker A: I think you're totally right, mate. I think just in general, the progression, just the progression tree works really well and it's very self indicative of where to go next. And you don't kind of get along your, you don't start building things and going, well, what the fuck do I need to do now? There's always a way that's pointing you in a certain direction, but sometimes not even kind of, I guess explicitly all the time, which is kind of a nice feeling because you kind of go, oh, I really need more food. Well, maybe what will I do? I can make wheat, so maybe I need to make something with wheat or something. So I think things are kind of the way that it all kind of unravels itself in the progression system is quite natural and obviously also supported by the fact that you have these little kind of base quests that you're trying to do. Build this, build this, build this. And then as you build those things, you realize, oh, okay, that's how I do these bits and pieces. I think the progression system in general is really strong and like you said, but I think on top of that, there's a shitload to do in terms of progression. There is question every level. [00:26:36] Speaker C: I've seen a couple of late game clips of people flying around and with these massive bases that are kind of built up. What does the end game in the. [00:26:46] Speaker B: Late game look like? [00:26:47] Speaker C: Cap, is there actual things to do once you've made it there, or what is it? [00:26:51] Speaker A: I'm not entirely sure. In all honesty. I think your main game is probably filling out your pal decks and doing the. There's kind of, I guess, like trainer fights. You go and fight the fucking trainer of this area and they're little towers you find around the area. So those are your main objectives. But, I mean, we'll probably get to it a little bit later. But they've got some sort of roadmap things that they want to do to address the late game. So I'm not sure there is a huge amount of late game, but realistically, mate, there's so much mid game, it's ridiculous. I'm like 20 OD hours in. [00:27:33] Speaker C: I think 20 hours. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Just made my first game, my first gun. [00:27:37] Speaker B: Is that right? Okay. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:40] Speaker C: Taken a while. I'm using the firebow right now and. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Figuring out that, I don't know. Obviously it's like Pokemon. [00:27:48] Speaker C: I also made this think, cap. If someone said Pokemon in my chat, they copped a timeout because it's not Pokemon, it's pals. But anyway, obviously you've got Pokemon pals that are weak to different types of elements. [00:28:01] Speaker B: Right. So I found it not being particularly. [00:28:04] Speaker C: Useful because the one I was trying to kill was the type that I'd made. And it's like, yeah. [00:28:12] Speaker A: I have also found that just in general, your weapons on your player character tend to be way less effective than just having a pal out doing a lot of the damage. Yeah. Right. So a lot of the time, I think it kind of promotes you to utilize a good team of pals that maybe you've got a nice spread. So you do have something. And, I mean, you could have up to, I think, five or six pals at a time, and you can generally get a reasonable spread of elements to kind of tackle different pals out in the world. But, yeah, it's pretty interesting overall. But one thing I wanted to bring up, Grizz, was just the fact that we're still for the game pass version, a few kind of patches behind which I'm kind of in two minds about this because I actually was thinking back to Dark Tide, and when Dark Tide released, it was actually a couple of patches behind the full release as well. [00:29:12] Speaker B: Now, I'm in two minds about this. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Because people say, oh, yeah, it's because Microsoft's patented patching system with the game pass for the game. You can't get the patch out quick enough because it has to go through a full process of this. But I am still completely fucking convinced that internally, the reason that they're doing this is to ensure that people buy the game on Steam. They make a shitload of money off sales. Plus it's also they get a shitload of money off Xbox game pass from it. Just be on Game pass. And then eventually one of the main things that they'll do is implement cross play and all the rest of it between those two systems, because why would. [00:29:58] Speaker B: They put it out immediately, right? [00:30:01] Speaker A: It would just promote you to go and play the game on Game pass and not buy the game on Steam and then not make the extra cash. Right? [00:30:07] Speaker C: Now question, cap. How do the devs monetize Game pass? [00:30:14] Speaker B: Is it per download or is it. [00:30:17] Speaker A: No, I think they generally get paid a lump sum for the most part. [00:30:21] Speaker C: See, this is, man, it's super interesting, right? Because you think, I'm with you. They've got to be waiting, people making sales through steam, and then once those slow down, they'll be like, okay, let's start patching it to. [00:30:37] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:30:39] Speaker A: We've kind of had a chat about game pass in the past, but one major issue with some devs was trying to figure out what the best release schedule would be for releasing on certain platforms. Right. I think it was one of the Abe's Odyssey more recent games. They kind of came out and said, we put this out on Xbox Game Pass, and we think we shot ourselves in the foot in terms of sales because everyone just played it on there and then just forgot about it. But obviously, every kind of depending on where you are, whether an indie developer or AAA developer, and trying to figure out where it best sort of coincides is difficult. But I think ultimately these guys and I think dark type probably did it as well, for the most part on purpose. Because, again, why put our eggs all in one basket? Let's get two baskets and put eggs in both. But I think realistically, it's funny because I haven't seen an awful lot of chatter about this on Reddit and stuff. And it's kind of like, I think people just assume that the best intentions that are there, but realistically, let's be honest, mate, your game's just sold 8 million copies. You're going to try and maintain and support that for as long as possible. [00:32:02] Speaker C: Why would you give it away for free on Game pass? Especially if you've already received the bag from Xbox paying for your game to be on Game pass, just be like, oh yeah, the patches aren't working and we can't do that right now. [00:32:15] Speaker B: Haven't got enough resources. [00:32:17] Speaker A: I will say that the multiplayer does kind of semi work between Xbox to Xbox, but it's limited slots and all this other funkiness. And I mean, obviously most people are just going to play on Steam anyway because it's a better kind of platform experience. [00:32:35] Speaker C: Hey, one question. [00:32:36] Speaker A: Dedicated servers as well. [00:32:38] Speaker C: One question I had for you, Cap, I noticed that there was a high difficulty that you can play in the game. There's like a hard mode. Do you know what that affects? Have you given that a crack yet. [00:32:48] Speaker B: Or looked into that? [00:32:49] Speaker A: I'm not too sure, to be honest. I played on whatever the kind of standard mode is, I guess, but I'd. [00:32:56] Speaker B: Hazard a guess at most of it. [00:32:58] Speaker A: Just being kind of a numbers thing. [00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:00] Speaker A: I think from what Pav was telling me last week before we went live, he was saying that he put it on easy, and I think a lot of it was like, also the amount of resources you need to create certain things and time required to do certain activities. Because every time you do it, go to craft something, it takes time. Depending on the item, it can take a long time. For example, it took me like five minutes to create a gun, which doesn't sound like long, but I mean, that's definitely one of the longest things I had to create. And I'm only probably halfway through the progression system. Right. So theoretically that's probably only going to get longer and longer, but yeah, I'm not entirely sure what it's changing. I imagine most of it's probably just damaged numbers and all that kind of stuff, and I guess probably the amount of materials you need to perform certain actions and stuff. So I don't think there's any major draw to want to go for hard because I don't know about you and what your experience is, but I've found most of the battles that I've been having recently with, say, pals above level 13. And, I mean, I'm almost level 30. Those pals are actually pretty fucking strong. And it's like, okay, it doesn't feel like it's scaling super well. [00:34:24] Speaker C: I feel like the way the game. [00:34:26] Speaker B: Is designed in terms of not. [00:34:29] Speaker C: Yeah, like you're about to say cap. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Probably the scaling thing. [00:34:33] Speaker C: It doesn't scale you to the pal levels, so you're going to find sometimes stuff that's above your level and they'll fucking kick your ass. I remember in the starting year, I came upon this big dude, it was. [00:34:43] Speaker B: Like 15 levels higher than me or something. [00:34:46] Speaker C: I was like, yeah, we're going to fucking give this guy the clamps. And he like smacked you? Absolutely smacked me. So I think that the difficulty comes from that. I wonder whether the hard mechanics leverages. [00:34:58] Speaker B: More off, like the hunger and stuff. [00:35:01] Speaker C: Speeding up and access to stuff on things like that. The survivability and the time that you've got. Man, there's so many. Look, I just want to quickly say this, cat. There's so many small little things that have made that game enjoyable from a survival game. Things like the fruit and stuff you. [00:35:21] Speaker B: Find having a timer in it, encouraging. [00:35:24] Speaker C: You to go and pick more. And I felt like the base building. [00:35:28] Speaker B: Was, although it was fucking annoying because. [00:35:30] Speaker C: I couldn't put a slanted roof on my house and that pissed me off. But there was truly quite a lot of options that you could unlock to. [00:35:37] Speaker B: Make something look quite different. [00:35:39] Speaker C: And I just look back and I. [00:35:41] Speaker B: Think to games that did really well. [00:35:43] Speaker C: Valheim being one of them, I think. [00:35:45] Speaker B: That was part of that game's success. [00:35:48] Speaker C: That kind of came out of nowhere, too. But all those kind of mechanics, those survival mechanics seem to be just kind. [00:35:53] Speaker B: Of ingrained in this game. And it's offering so much from something that's come out of nowhere. It's unreal. Oh, yeah, absolutely. [00:36:04] Speaker A: But yeah, I mean, Grizz, let's chat about the fact that some modder released a Pokemon reskin for power world and basically reskinned every single pal in the game to have a literal one for one Pokemon, equivalent to the point where they even basically reskinned the player character to resemble Ash catch him. So obviously that lasted all of about 5 seconds before Nintendo inevitably came over and said, excuse me, guys, don't think so. Thank you very much. And basically the bloke who created, I think his name was, I can't remember. [00:36:46] Speaker B: Off the top of my head anyways, yeah. Basically said, look, I've been silenced. [00:36:53] Speaker A: I have to remove this immediately. And so they did a cease and. [00:36:57] Speaker C: Desist from Nintendo, did he, Cap? Is that what happened? [00:37:00] Speaker A: Got a cease and desist from Nintendo. And I can only imagine what that was worded. I mean, the place that it was being circulated on is Nexus mods, which is a pretty well known modding community. It hosts mods for all kinds of games. More traditionally you may be aware of next mods for things like Skyrim mods and stuff like that. So anyways, these guys were hosting that particular mod and I mean you can just kind of chuck your own mods on there. And I don't think there's an awful lot of authorization process. It's kind know, just a moral system and if you do something a bit funky then they're, you know, remove it. But anyways, Nexus put out a statement and just know power world's doing real good. But this is before the Nintendo thing came out as well, by the way. And they just said, look, we're going to probably not allow this on here because Nintendo basically have a pretty good track record for fucking people up legally. So in an effort of self preservation we're going to remove this from our offerings. You're going to have to go elsewhere to find that. Apologies, but please support the rest of the power world modding community. And then, yeah, obviously shortly after the modder found a cease and desist and that was that, it was suddenly not available. All the videos were taken offline, all that kind of shit. [00:38:34] Speaker C: Digging into the comments a little bit here, Cap. So someone's kind of said here to address many of the. What about the isms that may arise from an update like this. Like what about this character in this game? And there's heaps of examples. [00:38:48] Speaker B: He's kind of gone to say this. [00:38:50] Speaker C: Is quite a unique situation being incredibly high profile and involving two very similar ips. This is why we addressed it specifically. We have a well established content takedown. Ip owners want to challenge a piece of content. It's on the site. So it's interesting that, know, obviously Nintendo is not something to fuck with in. [00:39:09] Speaker B: This respect when it comes. [00:39:11] Speaker A: I mean, they never have. Right? Like, we also know, know. Speaking of Kaizo, thanks Jazz for the raid. But Kaizo's kind of been fraught with similar kind of issues in the past and Nintendo has always been a little bit cagey about the emulation and I guess modding scene. Realistically, I think if they could get away with it, they would ensure that it would never exist. And I mean, obviously as soon as someone's come along and literally modded one of their intellectual properties into the game that's being touted as Pokemon with guns. Yeah, it's not surprising that they came and shut it down almost instantaneously. So, yeah, pretty crazy. But the guy that created that was called toasted and basically just said Nintendo has come for me. Please leave me in your thoughts and prayers. I don't know how far beyond it would have gone. The just, hey, take it down, please. But I mean, Nintendo have known to be pretty aggressive. [00:40:08] Speaker C: Have Nintendo taken ips to court before cap legal battles before over this stuff? [00:40:13] Speaker A: Not too sure off the top of my head, but almost certainly I'd say when you sometimes go through your Facebook feed and you see those ads for games and they've literally just ripped Pokemon and put it on their advertising and stuff, I'm positive that those people get absolutely shat on when it comes to that. Someone will report it. Pokemon fans tend to be insanely loyal because obviously they love the Pokemon franchise, and I think we're going to talk. [00:40:43] Speaker B: About it shortly, but I think they're. [00:40:45] Speaker A: Very good at alerting Nintendo to these instances of infringement without Nintendo having to do an awful lot. And I guess maybe that will segue straight into know Nintendo has put out a statement, a very generic statement, may I say, and I'll just quickly read this bad boy. Okay, so it says inquiries regarding other companies'games, so it does not say power world once in this statement. By the way, we have received many inquiries regarding another company's game released in January 2024. It doesn't even give you the release date it was in this month. [00:41:21] Speaker C: We're not too sure. [00:41:23] Speaker A: We have not granted any permission for the use of Pokemon intellectual properties or assets in that game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to Pokemon. We will continue to cherish and nurture every and each Pokemon in its world and work together to bring through Pokemon in the future. Pokemon company. I think basically the reason they put this statement out was because Nintendo were just getting an insane amount of reports about IP infringement, because there's just a lot of fanboys that are wanting power world to probably not do too well because it's usurping their favorite little IP. [00:42:06] Speaker B: I've got a question for you. Question for you. [00:42:09] Speaker C: Right, so there's a lot of speculation. [00:42:11] Speaker B: Around the use of AI to generate. [00:42:15] Speaker C: Some of the models for the pals. We know that AI recycles images from anywhere, can be anything, and basically reuses those to create a new product. [00:42:25] Speaker B: It's highly likely that some of the images that we've seen as pals have been generated through AI from Pokemon. [00:42:35] Speaker C: And you see examples all over the. [00:42:36] Speaker B: Internet of like this Pokemon. [00:42:38] Speaker C: And this pal's got the same ears. This guy's got exactly the same eyes. Is there a breach of intellectual property. [00:42:45] Speaker B: Or is it different because they've used. [00:42:48] Speaker C: AI to generate it? And where do the rights sit? Do you think Nintendo have got a case? Potentially working on a case? [00:42:55] Speaker B: Think I. [00:42:55] Speaker A: This is the issue. Pocket. I can't remember what they're called. Pocket world or whatever. The developer of Powerworld, they have noted that, look, this release has not been fraught with any legal issues or anything. Nothing's happened, essentially. So alluding to the fact that Nintendo's not sent them anything, nothing's happened. So my instant guess would be that Nintendo would have some insanely good. Would be these guys would be the big dogs, right? If they had a way to get these guys, I'm sure that they would do it. And so it seems like either a, they're biting their time or b, there's just literally nothing they can do about it. It seems like a massive loophole. If you're able to feed AI a shitload of assets and just have it spit something out and then you go ahead and use that. [00:43:57] Speaker B: Look, have they used AI? [00:43:59] Speaker A: Probably. I'm going to be honest, there's a history on the CEO of Powerworld's Twitter feed saying, hey, did you know you can get around ip infringement law by just putting things into AI generators and using whatever it spits? You know, it's probable that they utilized it. And I mean, even like you said, if you look at some of the. [00:44:21] Speaker B: Examples, yeah, it looks pretty fucking close. But the thing is, Nintendo can't do anything about it. They're cooked. [00:44:27] Speaker A: So at least now for what we, as far as we're mean and again, if Nintendo was going to be able to do something, they would have done it well. [00:44:35] Speaker B: I'll tell you what, cap, even if. [00:44:37] Speaker C: It is mean, hats off to the devs of power world because the game. [00:44:42] Speaker B: Is legitimately well made. [00:44:45] Speaker C: The survival mechanics in that game are fantastic. [00:44:48] Speaker B: Integrate that with some capturing of some interesting pals and some great progression through. [00:44:55] Speaker C: Levels and enough dopamine to keep you going. [00:44:57] Speaker B: And they've got a fantastic game that has sold 8 million copies. [00:45:02] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [00:45:04] Speaker C: The AI hasn't sold those copies and maybe some ideas from other ips. But when you look at games these days, Cap, they've all taken ideas from other games. I touched on it, but the amount of souls likes that have been trying to get out, leveraging off and I'm sure we're probably going to see Baldos Gate, three clones or something trying to create something from that nature as well. [00:45:23] Speaker B: Now that's been. [00:45:24] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as soon as a game has any iota of success beyond the kind of general amount of success other clones come along. I mean, you've seen them plenty of times on rotato. [00:45:38] Speaker C: Rotato. [00:45:41] Speaker A: As soon as the vampire survivors game came out, the amount of clones that came out straight after was ridiculous. But actually, one thing that it just popped into my head and I forgot. I wanted to talk to you about it and see whether you'd encountered it in the world yet. But in Elden ring, where they've got those stone prisons where it's just like a circular stone area and it's got the little eyeball things on the corners, and then you go and walk in the middle and teleport into there with like a boss. It's got the same thing in power world. Literally come across those. [00:46:17] Speaker C: But it is one for one. [00:46:20] Speaker A: And I was like, this is directly out of Elder ring. But I mean, how do you, I don't know, patent that or whatever? You don't. You can't. It's just a thing. There's so many things that it borrows. I'm going to say borrows from. [00:46:35] Speaker C: You got any other ones? I'd like to hear you list off a couple cap. What else does it borrow? What other things has it taken from video games? You can definitely feel the breath of the wild with the stamina mechanic. [00:46:45] Speaker B: Climbing and flying. [00:46:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I think generally, just the way your character kind of moves and builds is super fortnight and just kind of the over shoulder angle is very fortnight. And I think that plays into potentially a lot of the target market. So people that are sort of playing those kind of games, obviously, arc is a massive one. I think just the entire kind of base building mechanic paired with the way that you're building these systems that will produce more resources and items for you over time. I think that's a huge one. I mean, breath of the wild, it's. [00:47:29] Speaker B: Obscene how close some of the things. [00:47:34] Speaker A: In that game are to. [00:47:36] Speaker C: The glider is, like, one for one, dude. The use of the glider is like. [00:47:40] Speaker A: Yeah, honestly, I think I said it last week on the show, but when you walk out for the first time in the game and you kind of walk up these stairs and then out into the outer world, and you're kind of looking down into the world from this high vantage point, and then you have the name of the area pop up and then, like a blinger. And it's literally exactly the same as breath of the. Like, I just got so nostalgic for breath of the wild in that moment, it was ridiculous. But I think those are the main ones for me, off the top of my head. Grizzo. But I thought the Elden ring thing was just hilarious, just with how know the one thing they took out of Elden Ring was just these prisons that literally look exactly. They're not exactly the same, obviously, because stylistically they're different, but in terms of what they are and what they do, you literally go to the center of this circle, press a button, and you get teleported into this area with a boss, and you're like, okay, this is literally Elden ring, would you say, cap? [00:48:42] Speaker C: And I know that I feel like. [00:48:43] Speaker B: Elden ring potentially leveraged a bit off. [00:48:46] Speaker C: Breath of the wild here, too, but the open world exploration a little bit reminded me a little bit of elden. [00:48:51] Speaker B: Ring, too, in some ways. [00:48:53] Speaker C: There was quite a lot of things. [00:48:55] Speaker B: Hidden around the place, and I don't. [00:48:57] Speaker C: Know, from what I've seen in my. [00:48:59] Speaker B: Continent, there didn't really feel like to. [00:49:01] Speaker C: Be spare space that were unused. And that's one complaint we had a lot with Pokemon Arceus was that there was a lot of open space and. [00:49:09] Speaker B: Just, like, areas that served no fucking purpose. [00:49:12] Speaker A: Fairly useless. [00:49:13] Speaker C: Yeah, fairly useless. But like I say, I was climbing the top of this mountain where I expected it just to be absolutely nothing up there, and then there's an egg or then there's a random chest somewhere on a random hill somewhere with some. [00:49:22] Speaker B: Stuff in it, and I just kind. [00:49:24] Speaker C: Of felt, like, pieced together that a little bit better than some open world games? [00:49:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it does a good job of rewarding your exploration and just inquisitiveness. Right. And interest in what's around you. [00:49:42] Speaker B: I think that reward doesn't become as. [00:49:48] Speaker A: Rewarding later on down the track. I think it becomes a little bit samey naturally. [00:49:54] Speaker C: Is that because it's resource based and you can just get them from your doing things? [00:49:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's a bit of that, but it's also, like, your major reason for wanting to continue to explore and whatnot is finding these little statues that enable you to improve your catch rate and stuff like that, and they're freaking everywhere. And your best way of getting around is flying. But flying is also, in terms of the energy market, I guess, literally your stamina bar. It's horrific. So unless you have a good flying pal, I guess, which I haven't got yet. So it can be a little bit jarring, but, yeah, I think it just kind of naturally drops off. I mean, going back, Deldon ring I think for me the reason I just loved the exploration so much is because everywhere you went there was unique items that you could not get elsewhere. [00:50:48] Speaker B: Yeah, you know what I mean? [00:50:49] Speaker A: And that in itself is highly unique. I don't know of many other games that had that amount of dungeons and little pockets in the open world that would provide you with consistent rewards for your exploration. Even just smattering little here and there. [00:51:09] Speaker C: Some of those, it would be like a random door in a hillside that you could literally walk past and not see. And then that door leads down into quite a large dungeon. And at the end of that dungeon is rewarding there. They did a particularly good job at. [00:51:24] Speaker B: Hiding stuff and items like in obscure. [00:51:27] Speaker C: Places and having it rewarding. [00:51:30] Speaker A: Yeah. But look, regardless, going back to power world, this isn't an elder Ring podcast today, but we've made it into one. Look, I think it does an incredible job and overall I think for what it is, an early access video game. [00:51:44] Speaker B: I mean, you could probably release it. [00:51:46] Speaker A: In this state and call it a fully fledged game, in my opinion. I mean, it has everything you need. There's very few bugs, I mean there's a few bits and pieces than just your kind of standard open world kind of indie, I guess, jankiness. [00:51:58] Speaker C: But will they ever release it out of early access? [00:52:01] Speaker B: Cap? [00:52:03] Speaker A: Well, I mean, hey, dota two is. [00:52:05] Speaker C: Technically still in beta. I'm pretty sure it's still in early release. But that serious? Yeah, that's an ongoing meme. Whenever there's a bug it's like, oh yes, still in beta. It's all good because I think technically. [00:52:18] Speaker A: They never, that is beta wild. I was completely unaware of that. But look, pocket pair, the developer of Powerworld, they have announced their kind of early access roadmap, which includes, firstly, they've got a bunch of bugs that they want to address. So one thing is the world date can kind of have rollbacks on the save state of your profile and stuff on power, which is obviously not ideal. And they've also got issues with persistent loading screens, not resolving with the online dedicated servers. They also want to address some issues with cheaters as well. I think one person was saying, now what do they say? So here's an excerpt of a cheater that someone encountered. They posted this on Twitter or something. So earlier today when I was online minding my business, setting up my ranch, some random level 50 somehow force joined my guild and then made themselves guildmasters so I couldn't kick them, then proceeded to start destroying my base, then dropped me a bunch of resources and guns, saying he's made up for it out of sheer paranoia. Whether I wasn't sure whether to continue on this server or find a new one. This is an official server too. [00:53:37] Speaker B: Oh my God. [00:53:38] Speaker C: Okay. [00:53:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:39] Speaker A: So people are able to manipulate the game in ways to obviously ruin other people's experiences. [00:53:45] Speaker C: It's such a weird game to bot, though, isn't it, cap? Because it's like really it's more of a. [00:53:50] Speaker A: And because it's so early days, early access, people obviously take advantage of that. But look outside of that, that's kind of the critical areas that they need to address first, and then they want to do things like update the AI of stuff. [00:54:09] Speaker C: Yeah. There was one thing that annoyed me. [00:54:12] Speaker B: I believe a couple of my pals. [00:54:14] Speaker C: Kept getting caught in the walls of my building, and then all of a sudden they weren't eating and I was like, why the fuck are all my guys starving? And they were like glitched into the wall of the hot tip. [00:54:24] Speaker A: For anyone who has that issue, you can go to your pal box and just move the pal that's caught out of your assigned pals back into the box and then just move it back into the slot it was in and it'll respawn in front of you and get unlodged. So that's an easy way to fix it. But yes, they want to address that because I've had pals that get stuck on top of trees and it's just ridiculous. So it's one thing they want to do. They also said key configuration improvements, so I assume that's something to do with the options and stuff. But in terms of big plans, they want to implement PvP soon. [00:55:02] Speaker C: Wow, that'll be sick, dude. Pals against pals. How cool will that be? [00:55:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And a pal arena to enable PvP. So I guess maybe enabling people to do it out in the world, but also having kind of specific PvP zones that they can go and do pal v pal stuff. And then they also want to implement raid bosses. So they kind of have bosses out in the world, but they want to do, I guess, big bad bosses. So like huge pals that you go and fight together, I guess. So they're classing that as the end game content. So that's, I guess their first step towards getting some more inheritance. [00:55:39] Speaker B: Does sound pretty fun content there. [00:55:42] Speaker C: I don't really understand what the late game mechanic is after you've got your pals right now, but assume. [00:55:50] Speaker B: Yeah, because. [00:55:50] Speaker C: There'S like a way to increase the power of your abilities or something through doing those raids or something like that. [00:55:56] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:55:57] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it might be certain pals can only be caught through those raid bosses and stuff like that. Moving along, what else they want to bring? They also want to bring steam, Xbox crossplay, hint, nudge, nudge. It's on the list, guys. I swear, we haven't already got it and we just needed to tick it on. [00:56:19] Speaker C: Cap, I know that there were some. [00:56:21] Speaker B: Concerns early that they were going to. [00:56:23] Speaker C: Take the money and run from the sales they've made from this game and really not service it any more than they need to because it's clearly made them a couple of bucks. [00:56:32] Speaker B: But by the sounds of this, it. [00:56:34] Speaker C: Looks like they're going to potentially keep servicing. This is an ongoing, serviceable ip. [00:56:41] Speaker A: Well, yeah, look, I mean, continuing on the roadmap, they also want to bring server transfers and migrations, improvements to the building system, new islands, new pals, new bosses, and new technologies. So, yeah, I mean, like, they've got plans. And I was reading this Reddit post the other day, and basically the guy posting it was basically just saying, the CEO of this company actually seems like a pretty good Guy. He kind of went through this person's Twitter Feed and was sort of talking about pocket pair as a developer. And the CEO was saying something about our development. We're always looking for new engineers and designers for Power World and Craft Topia, which is another game that they've been developing. So some of the things that they're offering at their company, the English is a little bit funky, so just bear with me. But one of the things is what you want to do and what you are good at is most important. So enabling people to do the things that they're good at in the company, which means that sounds pretty cool. One of the other things, the contents of the refrigerator are free, is practically like Google. So that was one of the bonuses for working at Rocket Pair. Unlimited discretion, which I don't really know what the fuck that means, but it sounds pretty funny. Breaks and working hours are super free. So I think he's just talking about hyper flexibility there. If you want to have a drink and play a game, you can do that. All you have to do is make, watch, and play video games. And then this kind of goes through some other. [00:58:19] Speaker C: When he says have a drink, is he talking about having a couple of. [00:58:22] Speaker A: Beers, you reckon, getting on the tins? Yeah. Which is. That sounds pretty good. I might have to put in a job. Another thing was always transcending job categories. Engineers often plan and decide specifications. So I guess giving you the flexibility to kind of work cross departmentally, which I think is great, and then just some other bits and pieces. But one thing I will note out is that the CEO is noting that they provide rent subsidies, travel expenses, and overtime pay, which, may I say, not many game companies do that. [00:58:55] Speaker C: Okay, so, Cap, they don't seem to. [00:58:57] Speaker B: Be wholly shady, although we have heard. [00:59:01] Speaker C: Them say other things that Pav has. [00:59:03] Speaker B: Kind of said is they're not afraid. [00:59:05] Speaker C: To use what's been popular in video gaming, and they're not trying to break the mold and bring out the next vampire survivors or something. They're just using what's popular to create a game that works right and maybe. [00:59:18] Speaker A: Massaging it with a bit of. Yeah. [00:59:21] Speaker C: Overall, do you have any information, Cap, about this other clone game that they've got that looks exactly like Hollow Knight look? [00:59:31] Speaker A: I've only seen screenshots of it, but it does look literally just like Hollow Knight. So your classic kind of side scrolling Castlevania and the art style is insanely similar to that of Hollow Knight. So it's an interesting one to try and go after in terms of popularity, because I think a lot of the reason the Hollow Knight did so well is because it wasn't actually following any major trends. And I think actually reproducing a good side scrolling Castlevania game is quite a feat in itself, especially these days. [01:00:09] Speaker C: Time and love poured into it, right? Like every. [01:00:12] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. That genre is a dime a dozen on all marketplaces. You want to go and find a side scrolling platform game that has kind of Castlevania elements, I promise you, you can find a shitload out of there and they are anywhere from one out of ten to Hollow nights. [01:00:31] Speaker C: I feel like from a gaming dev standpoint, Cap, they're almost the first or the easiest one to start with because you can literally pick that up and start making a reasonably easy side scroller platformer, anyone can. So maybe that's like the reason why we see those. [01:00:50] Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah, absolutely. [01:00:52] Speaker A: Now, Grizz, I just kind of wanted to probe and see what you thought about, I guess just the whole idea of the fact power world is actually doing insanely well, right? Do you think that this prompts Pokemon and Nintendo to pull their finger out of their ass finally and maybe start giving the people what they want and, I don't know, maybe coming to the table a little bit more and not just kind of shoveling things in our mouths and hoping that we'll enjoy it? Maybe kind of. I don't know, sampling and taking the ip in a place that isn't scarlet. [01:01:30] Speaker B: And Violet reasonable, but I mean they. [01:01:32] Speaker A: Ran like utter garbage and so it's probably more so a hardware. [01:01:41] Speaker C: Give you my honest opinion here, Cap? [01:01:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. [01:01:44] Speaker C: I don't think they fucking care. Yeah, I personally think Nintendo and Pokemon. [01:01:51] Speaker B: Can do whatever they want and they're. [01:01:53] Speaker C: Going to have a player base. Now I want to point out here that what we're seeing from Powerworld and what we see from a standard Pokemon release are really in my mind, two completely different things. So Pokemon seem to release quite a. [01:02:05] Speaker B: Lot of games over a period of time and they're not offering a single. [01:02:13] Speaker C: Almost like a live service game that they continue to update. They give you Pokemon Sword and Shield and they give you whatever else, remakes. [01:02:21] Speaker B: Of the old ones and they're going. [01:02:23] Speaker C: To sell a shitload of those and when they do the next one, they're going to sell a shitload of those. [01:02:26] Speaker B: And I feel like whilst this is clearly a gap in the market to. [01:02:32] Speaker C: Have an ongoing, I don't think financially. [01:02:34] Speaker B: It'D be a good decision for Pokemon. [01:02:37] Speaker C: To release a game like this because right now they're doing a good job. [01:02:42] Speaker B: At releasing almost every year. [01:02:44] Speaker C: Is it every year, Cap, that we see a Pokemon game? How often do we see a Pokemon game? Every year, nearly. Whether it's a remake or it's a new season or whatever else. If you've got a live service game that continuing to update and put stuff into, you're going to be taking away from monetizing those releases. What do you think mate? [01:03:04] Speaker B: What are your thoughts? [01:03:05] Speaker A: No, I think you're 100% right, in all honesty. And I think we're going to talk about another interesting kind of thing shortly that kind of also indicates this. But I just think realistically, Big AA developers just can't be as agile as indie developers anymore in terms of just pumping out a video game. Powerwood is a perfect example. Small indie developer with a small team manages to crush and pump out this pretty good product. Ultimately that melds multiple different genres and stuff. Big AA companies just aren't really capable of doing it realistically. When was the last time we had something like this come out from a big AAA? You just don't see it because they're not willing to take on a project like that because it gets bogged down in the design process and trying to pull all these different ideas together. Whereas again, I think these small indie companies are able to be a bit more agile about it. So I think you're Pokemon, maybe. I think they continue to iterate on what they've got already. I think they'll continue to give us maybe a new Arceus kind of legend, I think. I can't remember what they're calling it, Legend of Arceus or some more open. [01:04:18] Speaker C: World ones, but I feel like those are still engaged within a. They're not going to build upon those particular games. They're going to make another one of. [01:04:28] Speaker B: Those and release that. [01:04:29] Speaker C: Do you know what I mean? It's not like I feel like Powerword has potential to be a live service game. Like they're saying, bring out new islands and other bits and pieces where I. [01:04:37] Speaker B: Feel like Arceus and other games like that. It's like, here's this game and then. [01:04:43] Speaker C: They'Re going to have another one that's kind of like this set somewhere. [01:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're probably right. I mean, if they're going to do a Pokemon MMO, they probably would have done it by now, right? And they still haven't. So I guess we'll see what happens. Okay, hot take. Maybe. Definitely wildly never going to happen, but I mean, it would be hilarious if it did. [01:05:03] Speaker B: Okay, hear me out. Give it to me. In the next few months, Powerworld releases. [01:05:11] Speaker A: A Pokemon conversion DLC that is officially supported by Nintendo. Not going to happen ever. But it'd be fucking wild if it did. That would blow your damn mind. That would be one of the biggest news stories of all time. [01:05:26] Speaker C: You know what I reckon the hardest. [01:05:28] Speaker B: Thing would be for that to happen is Palworld at the moment has a. [01:05:34] Speaker C: Bunch of shit that Nintendo would not be happy with. Shooting their fucking Pokemon. Getting the butcher, literally going back Pikachu. [01:05:44] Speaker A: It's just not going to happen, is it? [01:05:46] Speaker C: That would need to change a lot. [01:05:50] Speaker B: Of that shit for it to happen. [01:05:52] Speaker C: I'd be curious to know, though, cap, if anything like that has happened in. [01:05:56] Speaker B: The past where even to think like. [01:05:59] Speaker C: Maybe a modder or a moderate, someone's made a mod for something and it's been way better than or added something to the game. And so they've just kind of like that game has bought that model or. I'd be curious to know if there's been anything similar to that that has happened. [01:06:12] Speaker A: I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I mean, there's been instances where the mod has become more popular. Like the first instance of something and then a subsequent mod. Know something else has become more popular than that. [01:06:26] Speaker B: But nothing I can think of of that. [01:06:29] Speaker A: I mean, man, you see this kind of shit happening with Fortnite and stuff. And like Jay says, you see that happening outside of video games. [01:06:39] Speaker C: Jim's fucking right. Well, kind of Jim Kind of. [01:06:42] Speaker B: Because no one bought Dota but they. [01:06:45] Speaker C: Used all the assets from Warcraft. It's not like Blizzard owns Dota now. [01:06:49] Speaker A: Even though Blizzard's never come and done like hey, let's do like an Arthur skin in Dota that just doesn't exist. Again, that's an example of Dota was really popular and then Steam copped the ability to create Dota two and that became even more popular kind of thing. [01:07:10] Speaker C: I remember when they had to change all the players names and models because. [01:07:13] Speaker B: They were too like Wraith King was. [01:07:16] Speaker C: Called Skeleton King and that was from Diablo and all. And they had to change his name and everything else. They had to adjust it. So there was no IP issues with Blizzard. [01:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah, darklight in chat saying there's cases where modders were hired by games companies forgot which games you're probably thinking of. There's a couple of ones. Fallout three had a couple of modders that were hired and I believe there were some Skyrim modders that were also hired as well. Yeah, pretty cool. [01:07:42] Speaker C: I do kind of wonder cap whether there is maybe a few. So hear me out here. I wonder whether pal world will need to change minute details in the game similar to what we've seen happen with Dota where they're changing hero names and other little bits and pieces. I wonder whether Nintendo will come after them so much that they will need. [01:08:01] Speaker B: To do that to avoid legal things. [01:08:04] Speaker C: I don't know. [01:08:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not too sure. Hey, it's going to be interesting to see if anything happens. I mean, there's definitely a couple of pals that you can literally see the ais been fed that particular thing. But yeah, time will tell, right? I mean, eventually they're going to be like, hey, we've changed this pal for some reason. Can't tell you why. And you probably have a pretty good idea what that was. So yeah, watch this space. But yeah, pal world taking the world by storm. I'm still thoroughly enjoying my playthrough, so. [01:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah, watch this space. [01:08:36] Speaker A: We'll be bringing you more news as. [01:08:38] Speaker B: It comes now, Grizz. [01:08:41] Speaker A: Speaking of news, there's more Nintendo Switch, two rumors that have been circulating, not anything new. We kind of know that there's probably. [01:08:50] Speaker B: Something out there in terms of dev. [01:08:53] Speaker A: Kits that were sort of leaked in. [01:08:55] Speaker B: The last few months and bits and. [01:08:58] Speaker A: Pieces and people are suggesting sort of certain dates, but it seems like Nintendo Switch to probably coming the end of this year, potentially based on some industry insider bits and pieces. I mean, you always got to take these kinds of things with a grain. [01:09:17] Speaker B: Of salt, but I'm going to say. [01:09:20] Speaker A: The rapidity at which we've been receiving these rumors would suggest that there's rumblings. And I think when there's a new console on the horizon, it's pretty hard to be tight lipped about this cool new developer kit that we got sent by Nintendo. That's probably the Nintendo Switch two. And people talk, right? So I think definitely, probably going to be happening. It's still up in the air, whether it's going to have an led or an lcd screen. So that's going to be interesting to see what we actually do end up with. But one of the things that the reports have been saying recently is that the size of the display is supposed to be eight inches, which, when you compare it to the switch light, which has a 5.5 inch screen. [01:10:06] Speaker C: The original switch model. [01:10:08] Speaker B: Bigger, isn't it? [01:10:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the original switch model is a 6.2, and the steam deck is a seven inch. [01:10:14] Speaker B: Right. [01:10:15] Speaker C: It's bigger than the steam deck screen. [01:10:16] Speaker B: Okay. Bigger than the steam deck screen. [01:10:19] Speaker A: So there's going to be a fair bit of real estate if it is an eight inch screen, which in all honesty, I think I've played probably 95% of my Switch handheld, so I'm quite excited for that. I don't know about you, what do you think your percentage is for sort. [01:10:36] Speaker B: Of docked and undocked? [01:10:37] Speaker C: Well, definitely docked, but that's mainly because I spent hours and hours streaming Mario maker two, so was always docked. But honestly, I mean, I use it now these days very rarely, but if I were to use it, would be traveling. But I'm playing a lot of steam. [01:10:58] Speaker B: Deck, so obviously the market is there for it. Right. [01:11:02] Speaker C: What I'm really curious about, Cap, is the. [01:11:05] Speaker B: I don't know, probably haven't got any. [01:11:07] Speaker C: News on this because we don't know anything about it yet. But I'd love to know what they're aiming for from a performance standpoint. I'd love to know how many frames they're going to be targeting. I would assume they'll be going from 30 to 60. [01:11:20] Speaker B: I think 60 is probably a good. [01:11:24] Speaker C: Thing to aim for. [01:11:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, across the board, you'd hope so. But I vaguely remember seeing a rumor that the performance was going to be akin to that of a PS four, so still a generation behind. [01:11:37] Speaker C: But I mean, PS four is 30 frames, isn't it? [01:11:40] Speaker B: Cat is PS four? Yeah. [01:11:41] Speaker A: Well, I mean it all depends. Yeah, it is. But it all comes down to whether the game runs at 30 FPS. You might have a PS five game that runs at 60 FPS, no worries, because it's been well engineered and they've done a good q and a, but ultimately if you release a Pokemon scarlet it might run like shit. But then if you release, say, tears of the kingdom and you've mean that game's a fucking technical marvel. The fact that it runs on the Nintendo Switch and runs as well as it mean that comes down purely to an incredibly well versed engineering team who know how to squeeze the most out of that particular platform. [01:12:30] Speaker C: I'll tell you what, jumping back to a previous story, but I just want to quickly say this one thing we didn't comment on. I actually thought Palworld was quite well optimized. My pc is not the latest and greatest, that's for sure. [01:12:43] Speaker B: But I was running macs and it. [01:12:45] Speaker C: Looked fantastic and I came across pretty much no issues whatsoever. It played really well. [01:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I've had no issues with Powerworld either in terms of, I guess just pure performance. And I ran it on the Steam deck the other day and it ran really well. It ran really well. What I did end up doing in the end was I'd heard that there was issues with cross save and saves being have been. When I do play on the Steam. [01:13:16] Speaker B: Deck in bed at night, I just. [01:13:19] Speaker A: Do a steam link from my pc and just let my pc do all the work so that it's just to be a bit safer with the whole save. [01:13:30] Speaker C: I just wanted to comment on one thing, cap, before we move on. Just in the Reddit thread here, a guy has asked for a couple of things and I tend to agree here. [01:13:38] Speaker B: He's gone. [01:13:40] Speaker C: I really want OLEd, but I also really want backwards compatibility for Switch games. I think that'd be really important to make sure that carry that on. [01:13:51] Speaker A: We've kind of spoken about that before. [01:13:53] Speaker B: I think it would be insane for. [01:13:56] Speaker A: Them to call it, well, I mean, again, we don't know what they're releasing yet, but if it is kind of geared as the next the Nintendo Switch to say, right. I think it would be insane for them not to have some degree of backwards compatibility, but Nintendo has an incredible track record of just being motherfuckers when it comes to ensuring that you have to repay for everything all over again. And because we're Nintendo fans, we go, oh you Nintendo. You guys are crazy. You just keep doing this, but if anyone else did this there would be an uproar. But yeah, anyways, I wouldn't hold my breath but I would think that in today's market I would hope that they. [01:14:41] Speaker B: Would know better because I think maybe. [01:14:44] Speaker A: People might complain a little bit, but we'll see. [01:14:47] Speaker B: All right, Grizzly. [01:14:50] Speaker A: Now it's been a pretty rough year in terms of layoffs already. Grizzly. Google's cut around 1000 employees. Discord's cut 17% of its staff. Wowzers cut a third of its staff unity a quarter. So games Industries and games adjacent industries not doing too well. I think just the tech industry in general is being hit pretty hard. But more recently, Grizz, Microsoft has laid off 1900 staff at AKB. Most of it, well not directly, just well, it's gaming division. So AKB and then also Xbox and Zenimax Media, which is the developers that do the elder scrolls online. A significant cut from across those areas. And to coincide with this, Mike Yibara, who was the president, I guess CEO, whatever, of Activision Blizzard King announced that. [01:15:54] Speaker B: They'Re going to be stepping away from AKB as well. [01:16:00] Speaker A: I don't know whether that was part of the cuts. It didn't really seem like it. I think it just kind of was like, well, I'm going to go too. I've made a shitload of money because that's what ceos do. And then. Yeah, so anyways, there's been obviously a pretty significant cut now as part of those cuts. Interestingly, we had a survival game that was supposed to be coming out from Blizzard. Now it seems like that game has. [01:16:26] Speaker B: Now been canceled, which is kind of. [01:16:29] Speaker A: Surprising because I believe it had been in development for approximately six years. [01:16:35] Speaker C: Did it have a name, Cap? Have we heard about it or even. [01:16:38] Speaker A: Have a name yet? We had some very loose concept art way back when and it didn't really give too much away. So regardless, it seems like we're not going to be getting that weird and wonderful survival game that Blizzard was going to be creating. But I mean, I don't know if we wanted it. Who knows? It could have been good. [01:17:01] Speaker B: It could have been shit. [01:17:02] Speaker C: That percentage of layoffs cap created to 1900 workers, Activision Blizzard and Xbox, that is a significant lot amount of people in Chunk. [01:17:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:17:16] Speaker A: So the old unannounced survival game is no longer alongside all those cuts. But alongside that, Grizz, we also had Riot announce that they're going to be cutting. I can't remember exactly how much it was. [01:17:29] Speaker B: I think it was 11% of their. [01:17:32] Speaker A: Workforce, which was about 530 roles. So they noted that these cuts were going to impact teams outside of their core development, which I guess is kind of a way to skirt around the fact that, hey, don't hurt our share price too much because I swear the core games are going to be still supported properly. [01:17:53] Speaker C: So what are their core games? Cap, League of Legends, Valorant. [01:17:56] Speaker B: Valorant. [01:17:57] Speaker C: Is that pretty much what we're looking at there? [01:18:00] Speaker A: Your main kind of games, as a service, like multiplayer competitive stuff. In recent years, Riot's been putting out a lot of small kind of indie like games. I guess they've been working in the side scrolling, beat them up sort of category, and they even had like a side scrolling weird one with one of their main characters, zigs and other bits and pieces. So maybe there's going to be less money going into those kind of, I guess, side stories and side games, but yeah, definitely obviously slimming down significantly across the board. So yeah, this year, last year, pretty rough. [01:18:42] Speaker B: I'm just reading Cap Rite have announced. [01:18:46] Speaker C: This through a blog on news page. [01:18:49] Speaker B: On their website, but they've rarely trying to spell out the deal that they've. [01:18:54] Speaker C: Given these people once they've been let go. Severance pay, cash bonus, health bonuses. [01:19:00] Speaker B: And I find this one interesting. Cap. [01:19:02] Speaker C: A laptop is an essential part of finding new work. So after returning their work computers, writers will have the option to request a laptop from it if they do not have one at home. They can also keep their current peripherals like headsets, mouse and keyboards. [01:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's actually pretty impressive. Mean, I think it was Bungie recently let a lot of staff go and they basically did it in a way that a lot of the staff that they were releasing were not. Their contract wasn't applicable for them, receiving a certain amount of severance pay and health insurance or something along those lines. And so they've kind of been a bit sneaky and cheeky about it and that kind of came to fruition. And I think realistically, this sucks big time, right? And ultimately a company can only support as many staff as money allows, right? So if they need to get rid of staff, that's just what's going to happen. But one thing you can say is it's pretty rare that I say well done, right? Because ultimately they're owned by. Aren't they owned by two cent or some shit? [01:20:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. [01:20:17] Speaker A: It's pretty Garbo, hey, this is actually pretty reasonable of them. So you got to kind of give credit where credit is due, I guess, and then also take it away when they're bastards. But yeah, in this particular case they've done the righty by their employees or ex employees. [01:20:34] Speaker B: Seems okay. [01:20:35] Speaker C: Wow, what a year for tech and gaming. [01:20:37] Speaker A: I mean, actually, last couple of years been brutal. Brutal. But we're only one month in, man. And all these market. This market is being shredded. This is the other interesting thing. Grizz is probably happening at the indie level as well. But we're seeing a lot in these AAA studios where I just think ultimately they're struggling to maintain the velocity of projects and getting them out quick enough and actually getting a good return on them because people just maybe aren't putting as much time towards them because palworlds are coming out and they're way sicker than whatever the fuck blizzard's putting out. [01:21:17] Speaker C: Like, you know what I mean? I'm sure it's affecting indies too. I mean, how long have we been waiting on team Cherry to bring out hollow night? And they announced timing issues with silk song around Covid and bits and pieces too. [01:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a lot of what that is as well is they made a shitload of money off the first one. And I don't think they're too fussed about. I think they're quite happy just to kind of totter along because they're millionaires now. But yeah, now Grizz moving along to another one that kind know, I guess kind of hearkens towards this idea. [01:21:53] Speaker B: You know, we kind of touched on it today already, but I guess that. [01:21:58] Speaker A: Parody between games being either kind of an indie title or AAA title. And Square Enix recently has announced that it's going to be slimming down its gaming lineup to ensure, as it says, higher quality. Now what? It's kind of come out and said, know, I'm just going to word it one for one here. So as our customers'needs and the types of devices available have diversified, we've tried to produce hits by developing a wide variety of titles rather than focusing only on certain ones. I believe that this has resulted in the splintering of our resource pool. Meanwhile, there have been clear winners and losers among the major titles released recently in the gaming market, and it has become possible for even indie titles to make their presence felt. The market is increasingly polarized between blockbuster and indie titles, but I feel that we have developed many titles here at Square Enix that feel somewhere in the middle, and I want to make that distinction clearer going forward. Look, I think they've recently put out your octopus. They've put out that ogre tactics, which I think was a remake and just some other bits and pieces. So I guess what this is kind of insinuating is those middle of the line rpgs that are kind of just. [01:23:17] Speaker B: They're not quite an indie. [01:23:18] Speaker A: They're not quite a. They're not your final fantasies, basically. [01:23:23] Speaker B: You're probably not going to get them again here. [01:23:25] Speaker A: We're going to be either doing little small containerized things that are kind of indie level, or they're going to be full fledged experiences and going to be pumping everything behind them. Which I think is interesting ultimately, because if you think about a stock portfolio, Grizz, you diversify as much as possible. [01:23:44] Speaker B: To reduce your risk. [01:23:46] Speaker A: When you're pulling all of your resources into big, singular things, your risk is very high if you don't pull it off. [01:23:52] Speaker B: Right? So, could be scary. [01:23:55] Speaker C: Could be scary, Cap. [01:23:56] Speaker B: But I also feel like this is. [01:23:57] Speaker C: An ongoing thing that we have discussed on the podcast as well. Cap, around. How do you define an indie game? We saw things in the game awards, and it's like, well, actually, Dave the. [01:24:07] Speaker B: Diver is being backed by multi million dollar company. So is it really published by a multimillion dollar company? [01:24:13] Speaker C: Is it really an indie? And I guess you could say the same here with Square Enix. But Octopath Traveler has all the hallmarks of an indie being it just plays like an indie. And if you didn't know it was made by Square Enix, then maybe you would think it is an indie. But yeah, it's interesting. I feel like this is pretty positive from Square Enix. It sounds like they've done a bit of a let's have a look at. [01:24:36] Speaker B: Everything and refocus, know, deliver on what. [01:24:41] Speaker C: We'Re putting on the. [01:24:45] Speaker A: J. And Chet says, couldn't you reverse that argument? And diversification also means putting a majority holding in sure wins, even if low returns and small amounts in pockets of small caps. Long shots, I would argue, yeah, I mean, absolutely, potentially. But I don't think you can be sure of any shore wins in the gaming market these days. If you have a shit game, people just won't fucking play it. Look at what's happened recently in some of those. I can't remember what the day before or where it was supposed to be like. Some of these survival games that have come out and just literally crashed and burned. [01:25:23] Speaker B: 76 was pretty shit, pretty garbage. [01:25:26] Speaker A: I don't think many developers are getting a free pass these days. Look, I think Square Enix do make Ripper games. And even the more recent Final Fantasy 16, I think it had a lot of shortfalls but I think in terms of what it did, ultimately an incredible game. Hopefully maybe those few less middle tier games means a better Final Fantasy 17. [01:25:58] Speaker B: Which I'm pretty excited for. [01:25:59] Speaker C: This is a bit of a stab at indie developers here, Cap. Well, I kind of feel like this line here, you read it out. Meanwhile, there have been clear winners and losers among major titles released recently in the gaming market. It has become possible for even indie. [01:26:13] Speaker B: Titles to make their presence felt. [01:26:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know whether that is a stab or whether it's kind of just, I guess, a comment on how the market's changed in the last 20 years, say, because realistically you could be a small indie game maker and just kind of make games and you do fuck all with them because how do you publish those? But over time, the Internet has enabled us to publish those games to a huge market of a global audience. And I mean, realistically, again, look at power world. You can be insanely successful. [01:26:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like maybe that those weren't always possible for those indies to. [01:26:58] Speaker B: Sell so many copies prior to, I. [01:27:00] Speaker C: Don'T know, 510 years ago. [01:27:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting. [01:27:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. But I mean, ultimately I guess we'll see what happens with Square Enix. I think a lot of this probably comes from stockholder sentiment. I think personally, because we've had in the past, many news stories come out about Square Enix just being disappointed with the way that certain titles have performed. [01:27:29] Speaker B: In the market despite third party looking. [01:27:34] Speaker A: In and saying, well, that's a pretty reasonable amount of copies sold. What are you talking about? But I mean, obviously we have no idea exactly what it would take to recuperate their development costs and stuff like that at those mid tier sizes. So maybe it is shit, but yeah, so it'll be interesting to see what happens moving forward. So there you go. All right, now I think we kind of covered our how's the game? And going with powerword. Hey, have you had anything else? [01:28:00] Speaker C: Well, I think we should potentially do the poll now, Cap, maybe. [01:28:04] Speaker B: What do you reckon? [01:28:05] Speaker A: Good point. Let's do a cheeky little poll. [01:28:08] Speaker B: All right. [01:28:10] Speaker A: Most weeks, Grizz, we bring out a little poll, twitter.com ogr show. You can go and join us there and then drop votes. As we post this bad boy on the weekend, we ask the following, are you a power world enjoyer? If yes, what do you like about it? If no, what do you dislike about it? I'm just going to go ahead and give the results here. Grizz, 35.3% for no, I'm not a power world. Enjoyer and the rest 64.7 for yes. [01:28:42] Speaker B: So not catching everyone's attention, but significant. [01:28:47] Speaker A: Amount and I guess enough people to become one of the most successful games on Steam of all time. [01:28:53] Speaker C: But anyway, it's interesting reading to the comments cap. There's definitely a few people skeptical of the game. [01:28:59] Speaker B: I think like a lot of people. [01:29:01] Speaker C: Are, but maybe pick a couple of those out here. I'm going to read one from blindsided Moose. [01:29:07] Speaker B: I'm a no, but Powerwell does not appeal to me. [01:29:10] Speaker C: I haven't been interested in a collect monster game in a long time. I can only play survival games for short periods. Also, bolting guns on cute animals is funny for a minute. [01:29:19] Speaker B: I feel like it'll get old quick, which is potential for sure. Absolutely. [01:29:24] Speaker A: Slatos coming in hot with yet another bleeding heart for Starfield. I won't be playing the Legend of Poke world. Still loving Starfield. Good on you slatos. I'm glad someone is. [01:29:39] Speaker C: And we got one from straps here. [01:29:41] Speaker B: Which I feel like a lot of. [01:29:42] Speaker C: People are kind of feeling this as well, and we haven't specifically called this out, so a good discussion point. Hopefully it's a bit of kick up. [01:29:48] Speaker B: The bump for Nintendo. [01:29:50] Speaker C: Seriously, they could have made an awesome 3d open world Pokemon game ten years. [01:29:54] Speaker B: Ago and people would have gone gangbuster for it. [01:29:57] Speaker C: Instead they've been lazily developing the same stale game plus formula forever and it's been boring, but unfortunately straps? People fucking buy it in the millions every time every year. [01:30:08] Speaker B: But yeah, agreed they could. [01:30:10] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's like Erijay said earlier in our Twitch chat, just saying that long established ips and format consumers tend to be more loyal and willing to give things second shots. So yeah, I think that kind of runs in line with that now. Dano said, it's simple, fun and it has guns, encountered a couple of bugs, but having a very good time so far. And Tawny Kilby said, I don't like it, but I'm not going to be a hater like everyone else here. What's the point of playing a game if you're just going to watch it on mean? [01:30:44] Speaker B: I don't know, Tawny. [01:30:46] Speaker A: I think one thing about gaming these days is some people literally do just watch video games on YouTube and stuff, and that's their way of interacting with video games, which each their own I guess. But yeah, interesting one, interesting. Thanks for your replies guys. [01:31:01] Speaker B: We bloody appreciate it immensely. [01:31:04] Speaker A: All right, Grizz, shall we dive into the rapid fire? What do you reckon, mate? [01:31:07] Speaker C: Let's do it, mate. That time of the evening. [01:31:09] Speaker A: Rapid fire news brought to you by. It's in the freaking game, baby. Thank you very much to DJ Francesco for your ongoing support here at the oceanic gaming radio. I'm glad you didn't leave alongside Pav. I think that will probably be the final nail in the coffin here. All right, Grizz, so those CS cases, mate, the ones that you open with keys on counterstrike, too. Pretty lucrative, by the sounds of things. Last year, it looks like Valve made approximately $1 billion from CS cases alone, which is out of control. [01:31:51] Speaker B: That's a lot of money, mate. Is usually a lot of money. [01:31:54] Speaker C: I remember when ts two dropped and everyone was going nuts trying to get like, stuff for a may like different gold knives and whatever else that's in there. [01:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I sold all my skins just before, at least, and probably not a great idea, but one of the sweet cash. [01:32:10] Speaker B: Gamba. Gamba. Cap like a dragon infinite wealth is making the utterly bizarre decision to lock the new game plus behind a $15 upgrade. So what is this cap like a. [01:32:23] Speaker C: DLC you got to buy or something to play ng plus or what? [01:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think it came alongside maybe like some of the preorders and stuff. So I'm going to seize. [01:32:33] Speaker B: Bless you. [01:32:34] Speaker A: Excuse me. [01:32:35] Speaker C: I saw you do it. [01:32:36] Speaker B: Didn't hear it, though. Good music. [01:32:37] Speaker A: I'm muted. Just in time because I'm just so agile. [01:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:42] Speaker A: Anyways, I think the idea is you'd have to buy it through like a DLC or you'd get it as part of one of the preorder bonuses or if you paid for the X amount edition. So basically the ultimate edition, I think it is, came alongside some in game items and also included the new game plus, which traditionally is something that developers. [01:33:10] Speaker B: Would include at base cost value. Right. [01:33:17] Speaker C: Usually part of your standard game. We get to replay it again. [01:33:23] Speaker B: I don't know. Yeah. [01:33:24] Speaker A: So I guess developers squeezing a little bit more money out of their players. There you go. All right, Grizz. AgdQ, awesome. Games done quick. That runs once every year. Summer games done quick, runs once every year as well. But AGDQ for 2024 has raised $2.5 million for the cancer foundation. Good shit. [01:33:45] Speaker C: Wow. Some of our friends run in that. Some of our Kaizo friends do bits and pieces. I actually didn't get to watch any this time around, but I usually do. [01:33:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I've watched less and less as I've become older, just purely because my jobs just don't really enable me to be able to have it on in the background and, you know is what it is. [01:34:10] Speaker C: Cap, you a Genshin impact fan, surely? [01:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah, potentially the biggest one ever. [01:34:15] Speaker C: Okay, this is interesting. This shows the maturity of the Genshin impact community here, Cap. Genshin impact review bombed in China after an underwhelming lantern. Right. [01:34:26] Speaker B: Event reward reveal. People were not happy with the reward from this particular event and they review. [01:34:35] Speaker C: Bombed the fuck out of it, apparently, Cap. [01:34:37] Speaker B: So there you go. [01:34:38] Speaker A: Yeah, so it seems like basically, I mean, genshin impacts. Not known for being particularly kind on the wallet anyway, but apparently this is the one that set them over the edge. Basically the issue was the rewards for this event were pretty lackluster, but there was like a free character skin or something that you could get if you purchased a new PS five. So people were kind of getting shitty about all this and suggesting, I mean, there's this idea of whales in mobile gaming, which are people who just have an obscene amount of money and just spend a shitload of money on mobile gaming entertainment. And a lot of the time, developers in the mobile market develop games with the intention of trying to attract these whales to play their game. So they can just spend a shitload of money on their game because they. [01:35:32] Speaker C: Have just buy heaps of stuff. Exactly. [01:35:38] Speaker A: So, yeah, the same kind of thing. People are suggesting that this is catering to the whales and the common player can't have their little genshin gutcha moment. So anyway, there you go. All right, Grizz. The legend of Zelda Super Mario composer Koji Kondo is going to be inducted in the AIAS hall of Fame. I don't know what aias is, but there you go. Pretty cool. I mean, regardless, some of my favorite. [01:36:08] Speaker B: Video game music of all time comes. [01:36:12] Speaker A: From those two kind of those ips. So, yeah, I think this is well overdue. Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences hall of Fame. [01:36:23] Speaker B: There you go. [01:36:26] Speaker A: Give it the dice awards. So, yeah, good on your coaching. [01:36:29] Speaker B: You're bloody legend. [01:36:30] Speaker A: Thanks for your wonderful gift to gaming. [01:36:35] Speaker B: Champion Kat, the developer of the Prince. [01:36:38] Speaker C: Of Persia, the lost crown, which looks very good, by the way. I've been seeing a few people play it, enjoy it. They've revealed they want to make a. [01:36:45] Speaker B: Legend of Zelda spinoff. [01:36:49] Speaker C: Which doesn't seem too far fetched. [01:36:51] Speaker B: Cap. [01:36:51] Speaker C: Maybe. I personally do this article saying it doesn't because Nintendo and Ubisoft have previously collaborated in. What's that game? Mario and the Rabbits. Cross pollination potentially could happen. [01:37:04] Speaker B: What do you reckon, mate? I mean, hey, who knows? Give them. Could. [01:37:11] Speaker A: It could potentially happen. I mean, the more recent rabbids IP crossover didn't sell particularly well, so maybe there's less of a chance. I mean, who knows? This more recent prince of Persia one did pretty well, but I don't know, man. Ubisoft seems to be a bit of a sinking ship. I think the next few games that they release are going to be really. [01:37:34] Speaker B: Important for the kind of future of that developer. [01:37:38] Speaker A: So I think this more recent Prince of Persia game was a real good way forward for them. And I think the approach to the Assassin's Creed franchise with their Mirage title that kind of a little bit smaller, sort of more self contained experience are definitely them listening and trying to make the most of what they've got. But, yeah, we'll see what happens. I can't see Nintendo enabling anyone to do anything. Zelda adjacent. In all honesty, Mario, I think, is a little bit different. [01:38:09] Speaker C: Seems very close to the heart. The Zelda stuff, I don't know. [01:38:12] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll see. All right, now, grizz. [01:38:18] Speaker A: Monster Hunter Rise releases a patch. Basically what happened was Monster Hunter Rise released a patch to fix the game not running on Steam Deck. Now the reason it was not running on Steam Deck is because the patch before that injected brand new digital rights management stuff, which is traditionally not well received by gamers because inherently DRM software that gets added to games have some degree of performance impact because it's literally running extra shit in the background to ensure that people aren't pirating their video game. Now the issue with the DRM that they injected was it didn't run on Linux. And guess what? Steam Deck runs on Linux. So suddenly the game broke for Steam Deck and they scrambled trying to get it work. But I think the other issue is it's also not running as well as it did on Steam deck either, which kind of sucks. Classic, though. [01:39:19] Speaker B: Also weird time to release DRM. [01:39:23] Speaker A: This game, Monster Hunter Rise, has been. [01:39:25] Speaker B: Out for a year. [01:39:29] Speaker A: Why release DRM now? That game is probably on fucking game pass by now. So I don't know, it just seems really weird that they'd release that now. [01:39:37] Speaker B: But anyways, there you go. [01:39:38] Speaker C: Now, Cap, arguably one of the most beloved Assassin's Creed games, Black Flag. And personally, I think the water graphics. [01:39:46] Speaker B: In this game were quite pivotal for this. [01:39:49] Speaker C: Unbelievable. Very beautiful, beautiful. There are some little signs that potentially developers from the Skull and Bones Assassin's. [01:39:58] Speaker B: Creed team have moved to an unannounced. [01:40:01] Speaker C: Assassin's Creed project in September 23. Rumor has it that that particular game is Assassin's Creed four black flag remake, which could be cool. [01:40:14] Speaker A: Yeah, again, I think Ubisoft may be trying to get some low hanging fruit in terms of recouping some costs that they haven't been able to recently. And I think that's probably a pretty good place to kind of agree with caging, right? I'm not super keen on more remakes. [01:40:35] Speaker C: Unless it's bloodborne, right, cap? Unless it's bloodborne, man. [01:40:38] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, just give me bloodborne too. Don't remake Bloodborne. Well, enable Bloodborne to run on current consoles and pc, but give me Bloodborne too. That's what I really want. But yeah, there you go. All right, Grizz. An official Dungeons and Dragons VR game has been announced by the creators of Demio, which is a co op fantasy tabletop experience, which looks actually, Demio looks really sick. But yeah, the fact that these guys have been able to, I guess, get the ip of dungeons and dragons to make their own kind of VR D. [01:41:14] Speaker C: And D tabletop thing, that'd be so fucking cool, man. I must admit, big time for me, being able to play dungeons and dragons in roll 20 sitting at my home. [01:41:25] Speaker B: Pc with anyone that I want to. [01:41:27] Speaker C: Online is great, but imagine being able to do it in VR and roll dice and actually see maybe some of the assets that someone's making in a. [01:41:36] Speaker B: Tool like that I think is really cool. [01:41:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the whole rule set and stuff and bringing that into. [01:41:47] Speaker C: I. [01:41:47] Speaker A: Guess that space could be really damn cool. So I'm pretty excited about all that. Bring it on. Your turn. [01:41:57] Speaker C: Yeah, go on my turn. [01:41:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:41:58] Speaker C: There we go. Horizon forbidden Westmate complete edition is coming to pc on March 21, which is like not long. So we've got the last Horizon game on pc already. So this is just following suit, is it? [01:42:10] Speaker B: Cap for a pc release now, do remember that Horizon forbidden West released around. [01:42:20] Speaker A: The same time the Elden ring released. So now that Horizon forbidden West DLC and everything's coming up pc, maybe we might be getting Elden Ring soon, who knows? Just to kind of completely fuck up their. [01:42:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like from actually the gaming industry just wants to fuck over forbidden west or the Horizon games in general by releasing great games at the same. [01:42:47] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:42:48] Speaker B: Yep. [01:42:49] Speaker A: All right, Grizz. Sony has acknowledged that they have an ip called bloodborne by asking bloodborne cart to rename. So if you weren't aware, basically, Sony traditionally seems to just kind of be unaware of the fact that it has an ip called bloodborne by the pure fact that it does nothing with its ip called Bloodborne. Anyways, regardless of all that, there was a little indie game coming out based on Bloodborne and the Bloodborne franchise and the classic meme of the whole idea of Mario Kart. But imagine if it was bloodborne. Someone created that and did it in like a PS 2D make kind of visual style and was ready to release soon. [01:43:33] Speaker B: Sony reached out and said, hey look. [01:43:36] Speaker A: Can you maybe just rename it and take some of the branding off and we'll be fairly gentle from there on out? How's that sound? So it sounds like the developer is going to go ahead and rename and. [01:43:48] Speaker C: Move. [01:43:51] Speaker B: Blood cart. [01:43:56] Speaker A: Bloodshot. [01:43:58] Speaker C: Let's go with that. [01:44:03] Speaker A: My money's on that. [01:44:05] Speaker C: So any OGR fans into old school. [01:44:08] Speaker B: Runescape may have heard this news, maybe. [01:44:11] Speaker C: But there is an official hd well pack, I don't know, something mod pack. [01:44:17] Speaker B: Coming to the OSRS client and mobile. So new textures, water reflections, you name it, it's coming. Yeah. [01:44:31] Speaker A: I think the cool thing is they're not kind of detracting from that kind of classic visual style of old school runescape. Just kind of giving it a bit of bloom, making it kind of look a little bit prettier, giving it some nice shadows and stuff. It's still maintaining a lot of that classic kind of, I don't know, it's like plasticine. [01:44:52] Speaker C: Right. [01:44:54] Speaker B: This is my question here. People play old school runescape because it. [01:44:59] Speaker C: Looks like the game they played when. [01:45:01] Speaker B: They were at fucking school. [01:45:03] Speaker C: And they want it to look that way. [01:45:04] Speaker B: Right? If they wanted it to look better. [01:45:06] Speaker C: They would go play something like wow. [01:45:07] Speaker B: Or even the new runescape. [01:45:12] Speaker A: I think this is the same as putting the graphical shaders on Minecraft. It still has that kind of base aesthetic. It just looks slightly nicer. [01:45:24] Speaker B: Okay. [01:45:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not like a full overhaul or anything. It's literally just adding a few shadows and softening a few of the edges. I think this is a good thing and I think most people will probably cop it now. One thing I did hear was that this kind of thing was already available as a third party mod and Jagx tried to shut that mod down because Jagx are just those kind of guys. And then the community kicked up a massive stink and then Jagx was like, okay, you can have it, don't worry. But then they wanted to release this as well. [01:46:01] Speaker B: So it'll be interesting. There you go. Is it a opt in or does it just happen? Is this going to piss? [01:46:08] Speaker A: I think it's opt in. I think you can choose whether you have the old or new style. [01:46:12] Speaker C: Interesting. [01:46:13] Speaker B: All right. Anyways, that's the bloody show, you beauty. [01:46:18] Speaker A: Thanks for being here, legends. Look, just before we leave, just want to say a big thank you for jumping in live, having a bit of a chat. Thank you for the big raid, jazz cook. You're a legend, mate. And thanks to our wonderful regular legends that come in and say g'day and have their say in the twitch chat. If you want to do the same, you can do so by going to Twitch TV, Oceanicgaming radio. Otherwise, if you want to listen in your own time, you can do so by going to any of your favorite podcasting platforms, looking up oceanic gaming radio. It's pretty easy, pretty simple. Otherwise, just go to OGR show and you'll find all of our wonderful links. You can even join us on discord. [01:46:58] Speaker B: If you'd like to do so. [01:46:59] Speaker A: The link is there. [01:47:01] Speaker B: You can have a bit of a. [01:47:02] Speaker A: Chat with us offline. And yeah, our twitter is there as well. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter or if you'd like to pay us money, I mean, you can. It's an option. It's an option that is available to you. Go to patreon.com slash OGR show and put some money in our bank account so Grizz can do some TikTok dances. Yeah, it's going to happen. [01:47:23] Speaker B: Cool. [01:47:24] Speaker A: Anyways, that's enough from us. We'll see you guys next week on the oceanic gaming radio. [01:47:29] Speaker B: Show it. Yeah. Thank you, brother. [01:47:32] Speaker A: For the rabbits. Peace out. Wild.