October 1, 2025 • 48 mins
Through predatory monetisation, rushed development, and profits over player enjoyment, has the joy and escapism of video games been lost?
To give us a walkthrough, we’re joined by Steve Wright, owner and Editor-in-Chief of Stevivor.com, Australia’s leading independent video games outlet.
https://stevivor.com
https://bsky.app/profile/stevivor.com
http://instagram.com/stevivor
http://facebook.com/stevivor
http://www.youtube.com/c/stevivor
https://discord.gg/7YXk6DcS
https://www.twitch.tv/stevivor
00:00 Introduction and Journey to Video Game Journalism
02:22 The Impact of the Internet on Gaming
04:31 Games as a Service: Trends and Consumer Behaviour
07:19 Community and Co-op Gaming Experiences
09:12 The Shift from Local to Remote Gaming
11:49 The Evolution of Game Design and Storytelling
15:38 Quality Control and Post-Launch Issues
17:59 Community Feedback and Developer Response
21:27 Indie Games and the Democratisation of Development
23:49 Nostalgia and Preservation of Classic Games
24:45 The Rise of Indie Games and Community Innovation
27:02 Navigating Healthy vs. Toxic Gaming Communities
29:03 The Phenomenon of eSports and Competitive Gaming
31:57 The Impact of Competitive Mindsets on Casual Gaming
34:18 Finding Your Place in the Modern Gaming Landscape
36:46 The Financialisation of Gaming: Microtransactions and Subscriptions
37:57 The Role of Early Access in Game Development
41:00 The Future of Gaming: Subscription Models vs. Ownership
44:16 The Potential of Customised Gaming Experiences
46:10 The Positive Impact of Connectivity on Gaming Culture
Let us know what else you’d like us to look into, or just say hello at https://www.ruinedbytheinternet.com/
internet, video games, gaming industry, monetisation, game development, indie games, gaming community, esports, subscription model, AI in gaming
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking, has the
Internet ruined video games? Through predatory monetization,
rush development and profits over player enjoyment, has the
joy and escapism of video games been lost?
To give us a walkthrough, we're joined by Steve Wright, owner
and editor in chiefofsurvivor.com, Australia's
leading independent video games outlet.
(00:26):
Steve, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the
show. Thanks for having me, pleasure
to be here. Before we get into it, can you
tell us a bit about what you do and the journey that led you to
this point? Yeah, and it's a journey that
led me to this country, I guess too.
I grew up in Saskatoon, SK Canada, which is in the middle
of nowhere. It's a lovely place.
(00:47):
Definitely go visit. You'll see everything that you
need to see in a day and then goto better places in Canada like
Toronto or Vancouver or whatever.
Anyway, I, I moved here, well, Ididn't realise I was moving
here, but I, I arrived here in 2001 and had the intention of,
of staying for a three month working holiday that blew out to
(01:09):
a year, which was the maximum allowed at the time.
Apparently it's more now I'm, I'm old and decided to stay.
I went, I went back home for a year, I think 2003 or so to, to
finish off my degree, but becamea permanent resident and a
citizen. And, and my little travel blogs
to vivor.com, which was meant to, you know, my mom could click
(01:32):
on the Big Blue E on her computer desktop and realise I
was still alive. Like it.
It didn't have to be that anymore.
And it evolved into basically just something that I would
throw up whatever I wanted originally and then kind of
evolved into and outlet for me to do video games journalism.
And it's kind of gone like that ever since.
We, we really kind of put the focus on video games in about
(01:54):
2009, I believe. And since then we've got writers
coming in. I can Commission writers and pay
writers to do video games journalism.
And it's, it's a really fun thing for me to do.
It's, it's, it's like a hobby with the video games, obviously.
And it's it's my creative outletin terms of journalism.
And I never thought I would be doing it.
(02:16):
And I probably would have pickeda different name for the website
if I knew I'd end up where I was.
Yeah, well, so look, you know, you said you you made the switch
to focus on video games in 2009.Having been covering games for
so long now, did you ever expectthe Internet to kind of involve
itself and change the industry as drastically as it has?
(02:38):
And what surprised you the most?Well, like, I guess a lot of
things that I do, I kind of owe to the Internet.
I met my husband on the Internetvia via an app that you probably
know of if if you know, you know, and because I was doing
video games journalism via the Internet, I'm old school, but
I'm not old school enough to have written for like Hyper
magazine or anything like that. So in terms of my specific
(03:01):
journey, the internet's always been there.
So I think it's a good thing in most cases.
But of course there's, there's things in recent years maybe,
or, you know, maybe the last 10 years or so that, that maybe
aren't as ideal as they used to be.
But you know, like everything, I, I made friend groups through
the Internet this So it's, I'm speaking very generally, of
course, not not about video games per SE, but there's a lot
(03:23):
of good the Internet does. And in terms of video games and
video game journalism, like it's, it's really simple things
like when we first started and you couldn't get parcels, you
know, left on your doorstop, Like if you missed your, your
delivery, you missed your delivery.
And when I was first going out to EAI, think they, they were
one of the first publishers thatgave me early access game or not
(03:44):
early access games, pre release games, I should say.
They'd send them by the post andit probably be registered post.
And you had to make sure you were at the door to collect the
disc, which had all the, you know, promotional use only, not
for resale, all that kind of stuff because you didn't want
games to leak. That was a bit of a pain.
And then with the Internet, it'slike, oh, OK, well, here's the
code, plug it in, download and away you go.
(04:04):
So it's, yeah, there's it's, there's good and bad.
And I guess we're going to get into that, aren't we?
Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of, you know, I
think we can all agree that the Internet's got kind of good and
bad no matter what we're lookingat it in the context of.
But just on that that point, obviously it's been super
beneficial for you in a personalsense and in your journalism
(04:26):
sense. How do you think it's gone in
terms of the effect on games themselves?
Well, probably the elephant in the room is people talking about
the Internet and video games. It's all, you know, like
everything's a game as a servicenow.
And if you're not familiar with that term, let's just shortcut
it to Fortnite. Everyone's heard of Fortnite,
love it or hate it, free to play.
So theoretically you can download it and jump in, but
(04:49):
there's season passes and microtransactions and all these
kind of devious ways to, to try to get you to to spend your hard
earned. And he, we could probably spend
two weeks on this. But you know, for everyone who
doesn't spend any money, jumps in plays as the default skin
really likes, you know, Fortnite's battle Royale
experience, There's someone who feels the need to buy every
(05:12):
single skin. They've got the Darth Vader,
they've got the Master Chief, they've got all the Star Wars
characters, etcetera. And spend more than they are
generally willing to spend in worst cases.
Or you know, that the smart onesbudget a set amount and, and
spend that money. There are a lot of current games
or upcoming games. There's a there's a trend of
that style of kind of design andphilosophy, but I guess on the
(05:37):
positive, Sony's a really good example of really trying to
leverage this game as a service methodology.
They acquired a a company calledBungie and Destiny is is the
really big title of the moment. It's it used to be how much
history do you want in its current model?
It's free to play and has that kind of spend more money, play
(05:58):
forever, never leave us, keep keep giving us money.
And it it interested Sony so much that they acquired Bungie
and they were kind of infusing that methodology and, and
greenlit several games as a service.
And most of those have either come out and have flopped or
have been cancelled. So I guess that's the silver
(06:19):
lining. Yeah, it it looks kind of bleak,
but I think consumers can fight back or, or choose not to engage
in in some of these things, so. Yeah, look, that's, that's a
good point around the the consumer themselves, because one
of the things that I've seen looking into this topic is a lot
of discourse and chatter to me, even as an outsider around the
(06:41):
games as a service Model 1 Extreme is fully into it, as you
said. But then at the other end of the
spectrum, it is somewhat kind ofgambling and and addictive in a
way. And I guess we've all seen those
news stories and beyond video games, you know, like some kid
has picked up their parents phone or whatever and and spent
all this money in like the App Store or whatever.
(07:02):
So it's all sorts of financial implications, good and bad
around the games as a service model.
But beyond that financial aspect, what impact has games as
a service had on the types of games or experiences that
players seek out and enjoy thesedays?
Well, and so without the financial stuff and, and not
worrying about some of the really, it is horrific some of
(07:24):
the stuff that you do here. Destiny's a good example of a
game that people enjoy and find friendship with.
I, we've, we've since broken up our, our Guild, but we, we were
a group of like 6 or 7 people that would just change in and
out and play together. And it was more about getting on
(07:45):
a microphone and having a catch up then it was, you know, like,
oh, take, take that corridor to the right and like eyes up like
we weren't being, we weren't being very efficient.
So you can with games and it doesn't have to be like games as
a service, but like there are people who who build
communities, who find friendships, who just find the
(08:05):
engagement that they want through a game.
And you know, like not a game asa service, but Gears of War
Reloaded came out recently. My best friend used to live in
Melbourne. He since moved back to Adelaide.
But Gears allowed for or allows for split screen Co op.
So theoretically we could have, you know, if he was still in
Melbourne, sat on the couch and played through Gears of War and
(08:27):
and basically just chit chatted the whole time and just had a
really good time playing together so.
That's that's a good point around the Co op thing.
You know, I think back to my best memories playing video
games I used to love like Mario Kart and you know, like those,
those kind of games, getting allyour mates around.
You're sitting on on the couch and everyone's just having a
bash and just passing the controller and everyone's
(08:49):
looking at the one little screenthat you're you're playing on.
What's happened to games that encourage could all be sitting
in the same place and playing together?
Are they still made or is that being, I guess, made way for
games where as you said, people can can dial in remotely, throw
in a headset and then kind of socialise through video games
(09:11):
that way? So like, I'm speaking generally,
probably at most times, but generally speaking, I guess
games don't allow for Co op split screen as much as they
used to. Because I, I think it's fair to
say that a developer is trying to get so much out of the
hardware, like the Xbox or the PlayStation or whatever that you
have that you're playing on, that they want to dedicate all
(09:31):
of the processing to your experience.
And if they have to basically, you know, create 2 versions of
the same experience on the one screen, that's, I think that's
why there's a lean away from that kind of experience.
I guess that's not really internets fault, that's just
kind of maybe hardware inefficiencies, but there are a
lot of games that like are meantfor coop experiences.
And it's like, let's not talk about Covad too long.
(09:53):
But I, I got my families like myfamily in Canada and my family
in law here in Australia hooked on Jack Box games.
I remember as a kid playing You Don't Know Jack and that's it's
maybe a Canadian, a North American experience more than an
Australian one. So sorry if I've lost all of our
locals. But a Jackbox game is, is meant
for multiple players. And in the old days with You
(10:16):
don't Know Jack, you were, you know, a family of, of four
trying to cram around your keyboard.
And my buzzer was A and my dad'sbuzzer was L.
And anyway, and it was a quiz show and all you need is is
something to play it on, like todisplay it on like APC, console,
whatever. But everyone uses their phone as
their controllers. So it worked really well on
(10:37):
Zoom, like broadcasting for my computer because people could
just use their phones in their home.
And I guess the Internet is inherently built into that
because you need the servers to be able to dial into to get the
controllers working on your phone.
One of the things you mentioned a couple of minutes ago was
around the, the developers focuson the, the individual
experience rather than trying tobuild something for multiple
people in, you know, one place. They can kind of build 1 huge
(11:02):
thing for multiple places. One of my pet peeves around like
downloadable stuff with games islike, you know, I'm not like a
massive game. I've got a Xbox, I've got a
bunch of games that I love playing on it, but I don't play
it very often. And every time I switch it on,
it's got you know, 30 gigabytes of stuff that I just need to
download. And so by the time that that
(11:24):
downloads, I'm, I kind of over it.
I don't want, I don't want to like even sit and play it
anymore. So I've lost that kind of itch.
But with file sizes like that, with the games, clearly that
this, the Internet connectivity allows for massive exploratory
worlds where you can just find joy in looking around and, and
(11:45):
discovering rather than just that completion or winning.
Has this changed the way that games are created, rather than
needing just a linear narrative?Does it, does it bring more
consideration into, I guess, thestorytelling and the world's
themselves rather than the objective?
That's a good question. And there's there's so many
(12:05):
different games like I don't think there is really an answer.
It's it's are you, are you a walking simulator?
Are you a cosy game? Is, is the the terminology for
like a like a Stardew Valley where or a harvest moon where
you're just kind of going and tending to a farm.
I know Animal Crossing was very big in a pandemic.
My husband loved it. I just I never saw the appeal of
(12:27):
going through everyday mundane chores, but.
Yeah, it was, it was crazy. I never seen people, you know,
like you're saying, I'm I'm playing Animal Crossing.
I've just caught this fish. Look at this.
And I didn't get it, but it seemed very cute.
You know, I'm sure there was some kind of like nice feeling
and and positive rewards come out of that, which was in a very
(12:47):
shit time. Yeah, well, like, I'm a huge
Resident Evil fan and one of like my first likes.
I had a NES growing up. I'm 43, I'm old.
I'm. 44 so. There you go.
Did you have an NES as well? Maybe?
Absolutely did. There you go.
And we moved to a Sega Genesis for the for the next Gen, which
(13:08):
I can't ever remember if it's Mega Drive or Master System.
And I remember one year I got a new Sonic game for my parents
and I like cracked the sads. I was just like, oh, beside
myself because the PlayStation was out and I kicked and
screamed and threw a tantrum to get a PlayStation.
My parents took all the stuff that they had for the Sega
Genesis and all the games and traded it in and let me buy a
(13:30):
PlayStation. But they like, this is their
like the best parenting move they ever did.
They went, here's the PlayStation.
You don't get a game if you, if you have money, you can buy one.
I did not have money. So I played the demo disc for
that PlayStation for like a solid 3 months.
But thankfully my friend down the road, his parents got him
like every game system that never came out, any game you
(13:50):
wanted. So like most days after school,
we would go to his house and like that's where I played the
first Resident Evil. That's where I started to play
the second Resident Evil and then eventually had enough money
to buy my own copy. And I've loved that game and
that franchise for the, it's what, nearing 30 years that it's
been out. Resident Evil is a really good
example of, you know, like trying to tap into something
that Resident Evil is not. So every couple of years they
(14:13):
try to do a multiplayer focused game that's usually like packed
into one of the the sequels and people play it for like 20
minutes and go, this is not whatI'm after.
It's just the old it's oh, they're trying to capture that
games as a service thing where like I could buy a skin or this
on the other. And so like, I think they're
kind of failing in that regard. But like it's, it's always a
(14:34):
side project with the main game.And going back to what you were
saying about file sizes and all that, it's I don't know if it's
an Internet thing. It's more of like a late stage
capitalism where, yeah, it's like how fast can we get this
out? We said the release date was
this. We, we need the game to come out
for this quarter or it's going to ruin our sales, which is
(14:55):
going to ruin our stock up. So all of that factors in and
things are probably released in a rushed sense or an inefficient
sense where files could be compressed or condensed or more
efficient. So you'd have less of a
download. And I guess the the the factor
of the Internet there is. Yeah, we'll just, we'll do a
patch. We'll do it.
We'll do a patch here. We'll fix this thing there,
which I don't think is a good thing, but I guess conversely I
(15:17):
there were games that I used to play back in the day that you
know, didn't ever have the chance to be patched and if
something was broken, one of those it was broken forever, so.
That's kind of leads me onto my next question there.
Now we're talking about breakingand patches and fixing things up
post launch. Another thing that, you know,
I've seen a lot of complaints around was that people are so
(15:39):
stoked to get a thing as soon asit launches and then there's
something gone wrong with it. So beyond I guess having to to
issue a patch to a game just so people can play it, what other
issues has the ability for developers to rush something out
without it being ultimately quality controlled and just
ready to to play smoothly? Video games are huge, like
(16:01):
bigger than movies huge and people maybe don't remember that
or aren't exposed to it, so theydon't think of that.
Sometimes it like it's it's not an issue of someone trying to
rush something. It it becomes a matter of they
have a team of, I don't know, we'll say four or five for the
sake of it. Who are, you know, playing the
game everyday, testing it, trying to find all these bugs
(16:23):
and problems. But you know, as soon as you
release your game to potentiallymillions of people, you suddenly
have millions of testers and they're going to hit every
scenario, every possible combination of how things can be
done and find things that developers simply can't.
So I guess on on the, the plus side there, as we're
collectively doing this work forthem, we are finding issues, but
(16:45):
then there is the ability for those issues to be fixed.
So that's a good thing. I, I don't know if you can
really fully fix that issue. Like it's just, it's really just
a term, a matter of scale. There's so many people that are
hitting up your game. They're absolutely going to
encounter things that you haven't anticipated or you know,
you you maybe didn't thought youfixed it, but you know you did A
and they did B and it's causing those issues.
(17:08):
Yeah, yeah, Our younger brother,he's like, he's like quite into
games. Every time I see him, he's
bought. He's basically, he's gone back
and he's recollecting all the old consoles and all the games
and you know, they're like $2.00to to buy these games now.
And he's like, look, I've got this PS1 game for $1.00 and you
know, all of this stuff. But it's quite interesting that
those are all done and dusted when they're out.
(17:30):
And I guess the complexity of them is nothing like it is now.
But doesn't the, I guess this connection now between let's
call them the players and the producers, doesn't that provide
a kind of a real channel for dialogue that may positively
influence games as it goes over time?
Like, can developers collect that feedback and based on, I
(17:51):
guess the market sentiment, change entire games to to keep
it in I guess the good books of of the market?
For good and bad, I guess it it depends on how how you perceive
good and how a group forms and what a group's intentions are.
So like, a good example isn't really related that I can think
(18:12):
of immediately isn't really related to games, but it's game
related. Sonic the Hedgehog, the feature
film, the first one that came out, the designs for Sonic were
nightmare inducing. Oh.
That's I remember that now. And the, and the, the, the
general public kind of came together and said, please,
please, no, please change this. And you know, that happened.
(18:32):
Another example that people may or may not see as good or bad is
the ending to Mass Effect 3, which I won't spoil, but the the
gist of it is it was perceived pretty much as a lacklustre
ending. So this Mass Effect franchise
was this huge franchise, an RPG where you got to define your
character, make thousands and thousands of choices and come to
(18:54):
very branching storylines. And really, I don't envy BioWare
having to try to take all of those branching storylines over
three games and then somehow figure out how they could
resolve them. Because your, your experience
wasn't the same as mine, wasn't the same as Bob's down the road,
but they tried and and that was their, their concluded piece of
work, their arts, if you want toconsider it art.
(19:15):
And the community kind of went, Nah, do better to fix it
somehow. And they kind of tried to fix
it, but I don't know, I think itwas maybe worse off for, for
trying. Oh, wow.
And I guess right now, you know,if I have heard the term woke
again, it's it's one too many. I have heard it applied.
You know, like I say, I'm kind of an outsider looking into the
(19:38):
world of, of video games, but I,I do see quite a lot of furious
debate around characters you canchoose or their outfit and
things like that. And without kind of going too
far down that path, it seems like same as everything, there's
a lot of outrage culture, you know, it builds an entire
ecosystem of, of negativity thatI, I would assume that the
(20:01):
developers have not done it on purpose to generate that
reaction. Yeah, well, like, and I forget
the name of the Consulting Group, which annoys me because I
would love to talk about them because they they're they're
basically a consulting firm thatdevelopers will engage to think
about diversity in their games. And and this is where like the
woke, you know, anti woke peoplewill come in and say, hey, no,
(20:23):
like that woman isn't as attractive as she needs to be
and why are her breasts so smalland like this garbage?
And then on, like, on the flip side, there's a Australian group
called Collective Shout, which is now trying to target what
they perceive as inappropriate games.
And the game that they latched onto kind of successfully was a
(20:45):
game about like, simulated rape.And that is, yeah, that is not a
game that anyone needs to play. So they're not wrong in that
specific instance. But now they're trying to, you
know, also say that, you know, games involving transgender
people or games with, you know, consensual mature sex in them.
Like they, they have to be removed from Steam and from all
(21:06):
these platforms and you know, they're not my cup of tea in
most cases, but that's, it's notfor me to say what people can
and can't play and it shouldn't be for Collective Shout either.
Yeah, Look, just just even on that point, I guess we can we
can take another a new directionhere.
I'm assuming that you would you would generally have to be like
an indie developer to be to be making that sort of stuff.
(21:27):
But doesn't the ability for for indie developers to make the
smaller games that they want, you know, they could say, look,
we're making a game for 25 people, We don't care, we're
doing it and it's going to be distributed through the
Internet. Doesn't I guess the the Internet
as a now kind of a distribution model breaks down what I assume
(21:49):
would have been some pretty standard gatekeeping in the past
from from bigger publishers. Yep well, and, and that
gatekeeping is is really still there.
The likes of Nintendo and, and Microsoft and Sony all have
Nintendo's probably I don't wantto say the worst, but they're
probably the most strict on whatwell and then for better or for
worse, we'll get into that in a second.
(22:09):
But like they'll have guidelineson what has to be done for a
game to be put on their platform.
And a common thing you'll hear with with games getting updates
or like expansions is that it's slow through the Microsoft
certification process. So that all sort of applies.
But on the flip side, Nintendo also has this and all the
platforms have this issue where gross clones of a game that
(22:30):
actually is succeeding gets shotout and put up on a Nintendo E
shop for 5 bucks and unknowing people buy that instead of the
game they wanted. But a lot of Indies will develop
and put their game out on Steam or H dot IO and we'll be able to
tap into local funding schemes and and that kind of thing.
(22:51):
Like PAX Australia is a really good example.
Just for clarity, can you explain quickly what Steam is
and also PAX? PAX is the, the, the big event,
right? So let's start with that.
Let me just throw out some acronyms.
PAX, I don't think Pak stands for anything.
Penny Arcade Expo. Actually it does.
There we go. It first started in Seattle and
it's it's a convention. It used to be kind of like the
(23:14):
heavy hitters and some Indies and it's really more like the
Indies now. So it's a really good
opportunity to go and meet, you know, the person or the team of
three or four who have developedthis game, play it, talk to them
about them, and then really get to explore the indie scene.
And it's also a chance for Indies to to be able to have
their game seen by a lot of people.
(23:36):
Steam tied in is the the big heavy hitter PC distribution
platform where you can purchase and store your digital
collection of games. There's other storefronts on PC
like the Epic game store. Ubisoft has one, EA has one.
GOG, which stands for Good old games is another.
I really like that all the kind of old ones, all the old Star
(23:58):
Trek games that I love. They're now, you know, preserved
on good old games, so I can playthem on my current PC without,
you know, digging out old consoles, figuring out if they
need an adapter, you know, because they don't have HDMI
ports or whatever. Yeah, so.
That sounds, that sounds cool. You know, and we've been talking
about the removal of that gatekeeping, which almost just
(24:20):
lets anybody make the game that they want.
You mentioned a couple of minutes ago those games have
simulated whatever, which is thethe real dark side of of this
ability. But on the positive side, how
has this ability for for anybodyto really make a game and get it
out there kind of affected building and creating new genres
(24:42):
or innovations or and even communities within the world of
video games? There, if you have an idea for a
video game, it's probably already happened.
If you have an idea for a genre,it's probably already happened,
but there's not to say you can'titerate on it or find a group
that that does like something that you want to engage with and
do it. And there's, you know, that's
(25:03):
I'm, I'm constantly proven wrongin that generalisation.
There are people that have just crazy ideas.
There's a game, it's not unique.It's it's been done before, but
I'm excited for it. It's called Baby steps and it's,
it's like a walking simulator. When people say walking
simulator, they generally mean you're controlling a character
and walking forward and looking around and maybe solving a
(25:23):
mystery. This is literally like you need
to use your controller to move the person's legs and arms and
try to get them actually moving through an environment.
Well, actually like a years ago now I can't remember what it's
called. I just call it QUOP or
something. Exactly, exactly exactly like
that. Nightmare.
So, well, yeah. And I, it's not my cup of tea,
(25:44):
but some people are sadists, I guess, and like, like doing
that. So good on them.
But yeah, like that's that's interesting because I guess
beyond technical know how nothing's stopping anyone coming
up with the idea and putting it out into the world.
I remember a long, long time agospeaking to someone that wanted
to get into video game development and I knew somebody
else that was in it. And when those two kind of spoke
(26:06):
about it, it just felt incredibly daunting, like just
this massively long journey thatfelt over before it even started
for a person 2. But now that you've got so many
people, they can kind of dip their toes in and and see what
happens. As you said, going to one of
those events where you can speakto the other developers, the
(26:27):
little teams, and of course, whoknows what networking comes out
of that and who you meet, what ideas might spawn off there.
And that's in real life. But again, as you touched on a
couple of minutes ago, the that kind of community and connection
through the Internet seems to beenormous now in the world of
gaming. What would you say, I guess the
difference between a healthy gaming community and we've all
(26:49):
heard of toxic ones. Like even if you're not a gamer,
you hear about this like, how does the Internet build both the
positive ones? And then of course you know the
toxic ones. But does it also blur the line
and and allow the shift between the two?
It does like IIA game that I've been playing lately called
Rematch is a decent example of that.
It's it's a developer maybe having a limitation to what they
(27:11):
can and can't do within their game like voice chat etcetera.
Or it's just a decision to to limit some of that.
So rematch is A33V3 or 4V4 or 5V5 soccer game, football game
where you control 1 character, you're in a team with others.
There's it's not AI bots or anything like that.
(27:33):
You're playing with real people and rather than give you the
ability to just scream obscenities at your teammates if
you think they're not playing very well, there's commands tied
to the D pad that will launch like a voice clip like good job
or thanks. And it's weird.
Like when you make a mistake, good job is meant to be
(27:54):
uplifting, even though the soundfile doesn't change.
And it's exactly the same as if you did something good.
Like if you make a mistake and someone says good job, you know,
inherently the sarcasm is dripping off that statement.
So it can be used for good or bad.
But there's, there's kind of ways to control some of that
stuff. And then a lot of the control
really just sits with you as a as a player.
(28:14):
Like my sister has kids who are 16 and 14 now, and the 16 year
old, her son Bob was playing games and it's kind of like,
yeah, just pop your head in oncein a while.
If he's playing like Rainbow 6 and there's voice chat, just
make sure he's not getting abused or abusing other people.
And you know, like, just remove yourself from the situation if
you need to. It's, yeah, it's.
(28:36):
And that's kind of like the Internet in general, Like, oh,
have you stumbled into a welcoming place or is it
somewhere that you shouldn't be?Absolutely.
And and that's so funny around that, that good job.
The sarcasm behind that, which is obviously that competition
aspect. Like everyone associates the
word win with games, no matter whether it's a board game, a
video game or like a sport game.But in terms of that
(28:56):
competition, one of the huge things which which still blows
my mind that that come out of competitive gaming is just this
phenomenon of E sports. The first time somebody showed
it to me, I couldn't believe what I was seeing like in these
gigantic arenas, people playing games on a on a screen down
there. And that to me felt crazy.
(29:20):
You know, I'm going to be showing my age here too.
But I remember being a kid and we used to have this toy shop in
Australia. It's called World for Kids,
believe it or not. And they would have like the
Super Nintendo sit up in there and there'll be just lines of
kids waiting to play, whether it's like Street Fighter or
something, you know? And then that was, I guess it's
the very, very small parallel version of what esports is now
(29:44):
through how spectacularly huge and successful esports is now.
Surely that a brings an incredible amount more eyeballs
and and budget to the world of, of gaming in general, but also
allows so many more people to actually make a living in
various means from, you know, I know you've got to be super good
(30:06):
to, to get to those those ranks and things.
But it does feel like quite a, an aspirational thing, which
doesn't rely on like professional sports relies on
genetic gifts. Whereas theoretically to someone
like me E sports, yes, it would rely on some mental and and
reaction gifts and things. But it does feel like something
(30:27):
that everybody could aspire to get to.
If you're short, you go, oh, well, I can't play basketball.
But this is like everyone, all they need is to play a game.
I think sadly, I think because we've told people our ages, I
think our our time is is done. I think our Twitch reactions are
probably too, too slow, especially if we well, for most
things, most E sports are, are Twitch reaction driven.
(30:49):
So like shooting or sports tactical awareness kind of
thing. So we're we're probably put out
to pasture at this point, but yeah, like.
No doubt and. And every game has if it's not E
sports directly and you know, like big spectacles at stadiums
with people watching you like battlefields or whatever you
want to play has like a ranking system rematch the game I was
(31:10):
talking about before the soccer game.
You know, like I I think I'm in gold league.
I, I don't think I'll ever aspire to hit Diamond League,
but you know, like I, I can kindof compete with people at my
level or where the game thinks I'm at in terms of my level and
aspire to do better or realise I've, I've hit the the ceiling
and, and need to find another game or something.
(31:31):
To play the, the Masters League,I was, I was speaking to someone
recently that they, they said they were like doing masters
sports and they were 36. And I was like, whoa.
I thought that was for people that are like 70, you know.
Yeah. So that's, I don't think that's
something that I'll be, I will be doing becoming an an E sports
pro. But how has that, you know,
(31:52):
hyper competitive environment and even mindset?
Does that affect the way that, say, casual players might look
at games? Does it affect the way that
potentially publishers build games thinking that it will end
up in one of these arenas being played?
How? How much of a consideration is
that? It depends, I guess, on on the
developer's intent. A good example of of something
(32:16):
absolutely impacting the other is a game called Overwatch.
So it was developed by Blizzard and Overwatch had this grand
goal of of being like the next Esports thing to the point where
they created the Overwatch League.
Activision was selling licences like franchises to different
entities, conglomerates, whatever to, you know, to buy,
(32:38):
you know, the Los Angeles team or to buy the whatever team.
And a lot of the work would kindof go back and forth.
So the oh, the league needs thisto happen.
So maybe we'll make a couple tweaks here that impact the
general game. Sometimes they had them like
running separately. Ultimately, I think that the
league kind of failed because they were trying to make it more
of a big deal than people right accepted it to be.
(33:01):
But that's a good example of of someone doing that specifically
with that in mind. Fighting games are are better
examples maybe of people just kind of deciding they're going
to make a league around it. So there's tournaments like Evo
with Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, like you were saying,
even Super Smash Brothers, the Nintendo mascot fighter, where
they'll just have tournaments and you know, maybe, maybe rules
(33:23):
this this one fighter is is too overpowered or has these moves
that are too hard to to deal with.
So like, you can't play as that person for this tournament, that
kind. Of thing it's it does sound
actually quite fun and you know,they introducing kind of
handicaps that they brought in when someone gets a little bit
too good and out of hand. But it's just, it seems, as
(33:44):
we've been saying, the modern gaming landscape is just so big.
Now we've, we've spoken about NES, right?
You pull the cartridge out of the box, you put it in the thing
if it doesn't work, like you blow on all the electric bits
until you break the game and it's like, that's it, you know?
But now there's just an infinitely large world of people
and, and things going on. For someone just getting into
(34:06):
games now, if they're feeling overwhelmed by the modern gaming
landscape, how would you direct them or what advice would you
give them to find a good community and a good experience
for a beginner? Wow.
Well, and that's, that's a hard question because so many of us
are quote unquote gamers and maybe don't realise that or
(34:27):
accept it or acknowledge it or choose to identify as that.
You know, my mother in They, they have like 7 of them now and
they do the crossword, the New York Times crossword and the age
crossword on their iPad. That's technically you're
playing video games. But like, that's not to say you
have to be a gamer. It's pick and choose.
(34:50):
Like there are, there are peoplethat I know who love Star Trek,
barely play a video game. They have a switch for their
kids and like, oh great. There's, there's this narrative
game in a Telltale game style called Star Trek Resurgence that
just came out on Switch. And it's like perfect for that
person because the original version on Xbox and PlayStation
and PC, I tried to get my dad toplay it and he was just a little
(35:12):
bit overwhelmed because he lovesStar Trek and it's a good story
that I wanted him to experience.But he's like, I don't, I gotta
walk this guy around and which button do I hit?
The Switch 1 is more like a, a touch screen.
It's almost like it's, it's beenmade for someone on an iPad
because there's so many different ways to play in so
many genres and so many different experiences.
Like you might just be a smartphone person.
You might sadly be one of those people that plays one of those
(35:35):
games that definitely is out to get all of your money.
I, I wish you wouldn't play that.
I hope you find a similar experience on a console.
But then again, the consoles nowcost upwards, you know, like
$1000. So maybe you know, if you spend
100 bucks a month on your pay towin game thing, like maybe
you're doing it right compared to to me, I can't really tell
(35:56):
you. Well, just just on that point
around, you know, like the the smartphone game,
microtransactions in everything.You know, I remember I was, I
was getting on a flight and I downloaded a casino game.
I was like, this is awesome. You know, I'm just going to play
this. It's like no brainer, spin the
roulette, play some poker, you know, like just stupid stuff,
(36:16):
open it up. It's like you've got like $50.00
in the casino and then if you want more, you've got to pay
more and more and more and more things.
Would you say though, that the way that so many things are now,
subscription models rather than owning anything are
microtransactions and I guess the financialisation like
through small bites within games, whether they're
(36:36):
smartphone or, you know, throughservers and things, is that just
games and publishers aligning with the way people are moving
to pay for things these days? So it's a bit more natural.
Late stage capitalism. I've played like 300 hours of
Star Trek Online, a massively multiplayer online game, Same
idea. It's free to play.
(36:57):
I I spend 100 bucks every once in a while because there's like
a Starship that was on the TV that I really, really want and
I'm fine with that. And then there are people who
probably spend far more money than I do, which is sad.
But I guess on the flip side, all of that money that's being
made by the studio, they will pay developers to make new
(37:17):
chapters of the storyline and hire the actress who played
Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager to come in and, like,
record lines. And there's new content that I
get to play for free. So I didn't answer that.
I'd sidestep that question altogether.
I mean, that's a good point. Let's take that one on as well.
You said that, you know the developers might bring in new
people to create new content andand chapters for the game.
(37:37):
Does that bring more new, surprising perspectives that the
developers could never have imagined the the games
potentially heading down that path when they originally had
the idea? Like, how, how does that work?
Like what? What's a game that has started
out in one thing and then through getting unexpected
people involved, has gone off inanother direction?
Early Access games is my answer to that.
(37:59):
So there there's a quite a lot of games, mostly on on PC on
Steam, where you can start playing kind of like an in
development version of a game oran idea and provide your
feedback to developers. And that will eventually turn
the game into its one point O release or its full release.
And it could be anything from a shooter to a a real time
(38:21):
strategy, a deck building game with cards going back really
quickly to your casino game thatyou bought.
If you haven't played a game called Bilatro, you absolutely
need to. It's on smartphone, it's on
every console that you can imagine.
It's like a poker game, but that's like doing it a
disservice. Doesn't have microtransactions.
(38:42):
So like that there and there aredevelopers doing that.
Like I, I just want to put out agame.
That guy's made money hand over fist for doing that because he's
not trying to like, you know, nickel and dime you inside the
game. You, you pay your, your amount
upfront and you're good to go. Subscriptions like, I'm just
sorry, I'm hitting all these things that you've talked about
recently. Subscriptions, late stage
capitalism. Once again, probably the biggest
(39:04):
one that comes to mind is Xbox Game Pass, which is Microsoft's
big subscription thing. And the downside, like you were
saying, you don't own any of these games and there's larger
implications talking about buying digital games anyway.
But this, this is a really clearcut example of you're
subscribing to a service. It has so many games in this
library, like a Netflix style kind of access, but you know,
(39:24):
one month, the next the game that you were playing might not
be in the library next month. So no, there you go.
If you want it, you got to go pay for it.
But some people really like that, like they'll churn through
games, say they want new stuff. They don't want to have to spend
$100 on a game each time they want to play a new game.
They just want to get this library, play what's there,
churn through it, get to the next one.
And like, again, there's no right or wrong way to do it.
(39:46):
Microsoft, though, is incrediblyproblematic at the moment.
They've acquired a lot of companies.
They've also laid off a whole bunch of developers within all
of those companies. King and Candy Crush is a really
good example. Like everyone's heard of Candy
Crush. I have never played it, but I.
Everyone else I know. About a little, a little phase
of playing it. I, I remember because it worked,
(40:07):
it was, it was the only thing that didn't need a cellular
signal or, or like Wi-Fi to work.
And I remember I, you know, through various reasons, I, I
would find myself in this place where, you know, like the
comfort thing for anyone to do is just say, Oh yeah, I'll just
pull out the phone. And obviously nothing works
except Candy Crush. So I smashed through a bunch of
levels on there. And, you know, I enjoyed it for
(40:29):
what it was, but as soon as I was out of that zone, I wouldn't
look at it again. But just on your point there
around the Game Pass subscription model, does that
also bring similar kind of benefits that Netflix does?
Right? Like you pay a flat fee, you
might start watching something you don't like it, you're not
really financially invested in it.
You're just like, eh, I'll just move on to something else.
So if PE if people can do that through all these games through
(40:50):
a subscription model, how much of them would then go and like
buy the actual game? Or is it they just keep playing
it through the I guess stream? I don't have stats at hand, but
like a lot, a lot of what Microsoft's been saying about
Game Pass is that it is working in that way.
And it could be because you start playing a game, you really
like it and you realise it's leaving the calendar next month
(41:13):
and you're not going to have time to finish it.
So you buy it so you can keep playing.
Or it's you really, really like it and want to support the
people making it. So you decide to purchase it to
make sure you get a new one or, or you know, something new from
that developer. So it, it could work in, in both
ways. A lot of developers say it's
it's a good way to get their game out there in front of
people's faces. And then of course there's
(41:33):
people who say that it's a RIP off and, you know, it's
Microsoft killing creativity andand development And so yeah,
like. It's look, I could I could, I
could understand both sides of of that coin.
And you know, like the the one price trial, a million different
things sounds amazing for someone like me.
So it's just, oh, I'll just testit out for a little while.
I don't know what sort of games are like they're like games
(41:55):
where I drive a car, you know, Idon't need to do the races.
I just go looking around at stuff that's that's good for me.
But just on that kind of subscription model, where do you
think the, I guess the business side of of gaming evolves over
say the next decade? Will it remain or even get more
subscription based or do we kindof get to a point where players
(42:18):
demand a bit more of a return toa one time purchase model?
I, I hope the latter is the case.
I think it's probably going to be more subscriptions.
Kind of like, you know, there, there was Netflix, now there's
Netflix and Hulu and Disney and Stan and Binge and all of the,
the major publishers have dabbled or are, are doing or are
(42:38):
considering similar things. Like PlayStation has their own
version. Nintendo has their own version
now, but everyone has their own version.
It's, it's good and bad. Like we're also seeing kind of
more the late stage capital, some stuff like just the big
dogs buying all of the studios, getting rid of half the staff at
that studio. Because, you know, we already
have the comms team or we already have people who can do
(43:00):
this with King and Candy Crush. They've got developers using AI
to like automate some of what they do.
So they can then get rid of those people and let the
automation take over some of thework, which like that's, that's
to me is a horrible thing because you're missing out on
the the creative side that thosepeople will bring.
I can like, you know, generate new Candy Crush levels, but it's
(43:21):
only going to generate new CandyCrush levels based on what has
been, not an idea that someone has.
It can be implemented. I get horribly dystopian and I
hope it's not going to be the Case, No.
Go for it, go for it. Well, no, I just, yeah, in
general, it's, it's looking kindof bleak and I hope we get
through this in in more aspects than just video games.
Oh yeah, look at me, Me too. And it is, you know, everybody's
(43:43):
talking about AI at the moment and positives and negatives and
there's so much bleakness and you follow that too far.
And it's just like, well, we're going to turn that off.
But, and think about, you know, like, say some more of the
positives. But as that tech gets better,
let's say it does get the ability to, to create new ideas.
Do you think that the evolution,the further evolution I should
(44:05):
say, of, of technology and and connectivity through the
Internet, we'll eventually be able to deliver a uniquely
customised game experience for every player?
Let's say you're in a fully of mercy of helmet playing this
thing and you're almost not not playing a game.
Now you're in another world, butit's completely unique to you
and no one else will get the same thing.
(44:27):
Maybe this is already happening and I just don't know, but do
you think that things will eventually get to that point?
To take this from bleak to extremely like, hopeful and
optimistic. If I could have a Star Trek
holodeck, if I could walk into aroom and just say computer, make
me detective in a 1960s pulp, you know, not like, yes, like,
let's do that. I would be happy to do that.
(44:49):
I wouldn't care what was what was done in the background to
make it happen. Let's do it.
Holodecks for everyone. That's, that's funny.
It's like, you know, that show Westworld and, and there was
that episode, what was that episode of Black Mirror as well,
where they're living in, you know, their, their idealised
life while they're on the outside, just the body there,
which is, I mean, look, if if wecan kind of just plug into the
(45:12):
perfect world for a little bit, maybe that will offset the
bleakness that we could potentially encounter everywhere
else. And the other bit about the Star
Trek holodeck specifically is that Star Trek is this utopian
society where we've gotten rid of hunger and Favin and disease
and people are smart enough and well adjusted enough to go and
maybe have a holodeck experiencefor an hour or two and then
(45:33):
leave and go back to their regular life.
So I think that balance is also something that that we need to
strive for and that if I got bleak again, might be creeping
its way into some of our lives, which is needing, we need to fix
that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Look, is there's so much to think about there.
We could probably spend hours just talking about that.
But but on that note, just to finish up, we've been talking
(45:55):
about how the Internet and connectivity and and technology
has impacted and influenced games, the culture and and the
community. What would you say in your
opinion has been the best part of that happening and how would
you like it to continue as we move forward?
Well, I'm just going to turn it back to me.
Like I I wouldn't be able to talk about video games with you
(46:16):
without having the Internet, without deciding randomly to
take my travel blog and write about Resident Evil 5 and have
people somehow, I guess through the power of the Google
algorithm, read it, decide they wanted to interact with me,
start writing for me, or start reading what I write and, and
letting me build something amazing and fabulous.
(46:37):
And that's my experience as a games journal.
I get to meet developers and other Gerdos and people from not
only Australia but around the world and developers do that.
They can get jobs now remotely and work for Activision or
whoever they want. It makes dreams and I hope that
kind of thing continues on and people get to to connect and
(46:58):
have adventures that they might not have had without this
fantastic little invention. What a brilliantly positive note
to to finish up on. Thanks Steve.
What's on the horizon for you and where can people follow what
you're up to? Always busy, always video games.
It's it's getting close to the holiday season so all the big
hitters are coming out. I'm playing NHL, which I know
(47:19):
Australians don't care about, but it's like the Canadian guys
dream all of our stuff in terms of of the video games website is
on survivor.com. I'm S Wright AU, mostly on Blue
Sky. Find me on the Internet and I've
just started picking up a gig writing some stuff for Trek
movie. Mostly video game related, but
sometimes not so you can find methere.
(47:39):
Awesome, Steve. Thank you so much.
My pleasure. Thanks so much.
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking, has the
Internet ruined video games? Through predatory monetization,
rush development and profits over player enjoyment, has the
joy and escapism of video games been lost?
To give us a walkthrough, we're joined by Steve Wright, owner
and editor in chiefofsurvivor.com, Australia's
leading independent video games outlet.
(00:26):
Steve, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the
show. Thanks for having me, pleasure
to be here. Before we get into it, can you
tell us a bit about what you do and the journey that led you to
this point? Yeah, and it's a journey that
led me to this country, I guess too.
I grew up in Saskatoon, SK Canada, which is in the middle
of nowhere. It's a lovely place.
(00:47):
Definitely go visit. You'll see everything that you
need to see in a day and then goto better places in Canada like
Toronto or Vancouver or whatever.
Anyway, I, I moved here, well, Ididn't realise I was moving
here, but I, I arrived here in 2001 and had the intention of,
of staying for a three month working holiday that blew out to
(01:09):
a year, which was the maximum allowed at the time.
Apparently it's more now I'm, I'm old and decided to stay.
I went, I went back home for a year, I think 2003 or so to, to
finish off my degree, but becamea permanent resident and a
citizen. And, and my little travel blogs
to vivor.com, which was meant to, you know, my mom could click
(01:32):
on the Big Blue E on her computer desktop and realise I
was still alive. Like it.
It didn't have to be that anymore.
And it evolved into basically just something that I would
throw up whatever I wanted originally and then kind of
evolved into and outlet for me to do video games journalism.
And it's kind of gone like that ever since.
We, we really kind of put the focus on video games in about
(01:54):
2009, I believe. And since then we've got writers
coming in. I can Commission writers and pay
writers to do video games journalism.
And it's, it's a really fun thing for me to do.
It's, it's, it's like a hobby with the video games, obviously.
And it's it's my creative outletin terms of journalism.
And I never thought I would be doing it.
(02:16):
And I probably would have pickeda different name for the website
if I knew I'd end up where I was.
Yeah, well, so look, you know, you said you you made the switch
to focus on video games in 2009.Having been covering games for
so long now, did you ever expectthe Internet to kind of involve
itself and change the industry as drastically as it has?
(02:38):
And what surprised you the most?Well, like, I guess a lot of
things that I do, I kind of owe to the Internet.
I met my husband on the Internetvia via an app that you probably
know of if if you know, you know, and because I was doing
video games journalism via the Internet, I'm old school, but
I'm not old school enough to have written for like Hyper
magazine or anything like that. So in terms of my specific
(03:01):
journey, the internet's always been there.
So I think it's a good thing in most cases.
But of course there's, there's things in recent years maybe,
or, you know, maybe the last 10 years or so that, that maybe
aren't as ideal as they used to be.
But you know, like everything, I, I made friend groups through
the Internet this So it's, I'm speaking very generally, of
course, not not about video games per SE, but there's a lot
(03:23):
of good the Internet does. And in terms of video games and
video game journalism, like it's, it's really simple things
like when we first started and you couldn't get parcels, you
know, left on your doorstop, Like if you missed your, your
delivery, you missed your delivery.
And when I was first going out to EAI, think they, they were
one of the first publishers thatgave me early access game or not
(03:44):
early access games, pre release games, I should say.
They'd send them by the post andit probably be registered post.
And you had to make sure you were at the door to collect the
disc, which had all the, you know, promotional use only, not
for resale, all that kind of stuff because you didn't want
games to leak. That was a bit of a pain.
And then with the Internet, it'slike, oh, OK, well, here's the
code, plug it in, download and away you go.
(04:04):
So it's, yeah, there's it's, there's good and bad.
And I guess we're going to get into that, aren't we?
Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of, you know, I
think we can all agree that the Internet's got kind of good and
bad no matter what we're lookingat it in the context of.
But just on that that point, obviously it's been super
beneficial for you in a personalsense and in your journalism
(04:26):
sense. How do you think it's gone in
terms of the effect on games themselves?
Well, probably the elephant in the room is people talking about
the Internet and video games. It's all, you know, like
everything's a game as a servicenow.
And if you're not familiar with that term, let's just shortcut
it to Fortnite. Everyone's heard of Fortnite,
love it or hate it, free to play.
So theoretically you can download it and jump in, but
(04:49):
there's season passes and microtransactions and all these
kind of devious ways to, to try to get you to to spend your hard
earned. And he, we could probably spend
two weeks on this. But you know, for everyone who
doesn't spend any money, jumps in plays as the default skin
really likes, you know, Fortnite's battle Royale
experience, There's someone who feels the need to buy every
(05:12):
single skin. They've got the Darth Vader,
they've got the Master Chief, they've got all the Star Wars
characters, etcetera. And spend more than they are
generally willing to spend in worst cases.
Or you know, that the smart onesbudget a set amount and, and
spend that money. There are a lot of current games
or upcoming games. There's a there's a trend of
that style of kind of design andphilosophy, but I guess on the
(05:37):
positive, Sony's a really good example of really trying to
leverage this game as a service methodology.
They acquired a a company calledBungie and Destiny is is the
really big title of the moment. It's it used to be how much
history do you want in its current model?
It's free to play and has that kind of spend more money, play
(05:58):
forever, never leave us, keep keep giving us money.
And it it interested Sony so much that they acquired Bungie
and they were kind of infusing that methodology and, and
greenlit several games as a service.
And most of those have either come out and have flopped or
have been cancelled. So I guess that's the silver
(06:19):
lining. Yeah, it it looks kind of bleak,
but I think consumers can fight back or, or choose not to engage
in in some of these things, so. Yeah, look, that's, that's a
good point around the the consumer themselves, because one
of the things that I've seen looking into this topic is a lot
of discourse and chatter to me, even as an outsider around the
(06:41):
games as a service Model 1 Extreme is fully into it, as you
said. But then at the other end of the
spectrum, it is somewhat kind ofgambling and and addictive in a
way. And I guess we've all seen those
news stories and beyond video games, you know, like some kid
has picked up their parents phone or whatever and and spent
all this money in like the App Store or whatever.
(07:02):
So it's all sorts of financial implications, good and bad
around the games as a service model.
But beyond that financial aspect, what impact has games as
a service had on the types of games or experiences that
players seek out and enjoy thesedays?
Well, and so without the financial stuff and, and not
worrying about some of the really, it is horrific some of
(07:24):
the stuff that you do here. Destiny's a good example of a
game that people enjoy and find friendship with.
I, we've, we've since broken up our, our Guild, but we, we were
a group of like 6 or 7 people that would just change in and
out and play together. And it was more about getting on
(07:45):
a microphone and having a catch up then it was, you know, like,
oh, take, take that corridor to the right and like eyes up like
we weren't being, we weren't being very efficient.
So you can with games and it doesn't have to be like games as
a service, but like there are people who who build
communities, who find friendships, who just find the
(08:05):
engagement that they want through a game.
And you know, like not a game asa service, but Gears of War
Reloaded came out recently. My best friend used to live in
Melbourne. He since moved back to Adelaide.
But Gears allowed for or allows for split screen Co op.
So theoretically we could have, you know, if he was still in
Melbourne, sat on the couch and played through Gears of War and
(08:27):
and basically just chit chatted the whole time and just had a
really good time playing together so.
That's that's a good point around the Co op thing.
You know, I think back to my best memories playing video
games I used to love like Mario Kart and you know, like those,
those kind of games, getting allyour mates around.
You're sitting on on the couch and everyone's just having a
bash and just passing the controller and everyone's
(08:49):
looking at the one little screenthat you're you're playing on.
What's happened to games that encourage could all be sitting
in the same place and playing together?
Are they still made or is that being, I guess, made way for
games where as you said, people can can dial in remotely, throw
in a headset and then kind of socialise through video games
(09:11):
that way? So like, I'm speaking generally,
probably at most times, but generally speaking, I guess
games don't allow for Co op split screen as much as they
used to. Because I, I think it's fair to
say that a developer is trying to get so much out of the
hardware, like the Xbox or the PlayStation or whatever that you
have that you're playing on, that they want to dedicate all
(09:31):
of the processing to your experience.
And if they have to basically, you know, create 2 versions of
the same experience on the one screen, that's, I think that's
why there's a lean away from that kind of experience.
I guess that's not really internets fault, that's just
kind of maybe hardware inefficiencies, but there are a
lot of games that like are meantfor coop experiences.
And it's like, let's not talk about Covad too long.
(09:53):
But I, I got my families like myfamily in Canada and my family
in law here in Australia hooked on Jack Box games.
I remember as a kid playing You Don't Know Jack and that's it's
maybe a Canadian, a North American experience more than an
Australian one. So sorry if I've lost all of our
locals. But a Jackbox game is, is meant
for multiple players. And in the old days with You
(10:16):
don't Know Jack, you were, you know, a family of, of four
trying to cram around your keyboard.
And my buzzer was A and my dad'sbuzzer was L.
And anyway, and it was a quiz show and all you need is is
something to play it on, like todisplay it on like APC, console,
whatever. But everyone uses their phone as
their controllers. So it worked really well on
(10:37):
Zoom, like broadcasting for my computer because people could
just use their phones in their home.
And I guess the Internet is inherently built into that
because you need the servers to be able to dial into to get the
controllers working on your phone.
One of the things you mentioned a couple of minutes ago was
around the, the developers focuson the, the individual
experience rather than trying tobuild something for multiple
people in, you know, one place. They can kind of build 1 huge
(11:02):
thing for multiple places. One of my pet peeves around like
downloadable stuff with games islike, you know, I'm not like a
massive game. I've got a Xbox, I've got a
bunch of games that I love playing on it, but I don't play
it very often. And every time I switch it on,
it's got you know, 30 gigabytes of stuff that I just need to
download. And so by the time that that
(11:24):
downloads, I'm, I kind of over it.
I don't want, I don't want to like even sit and play it
anymore. So I've lost that kind of itch.
But with file sizes like that, with the games, clearly that
this, the Internet connectivity allows for massive exploratory
worlds where you can just find joy in looking around and, and
(11:45):
discovering rather than just that completion or winning.
Has this changed the way that games are created, rather than
needing just a linear narrative?Does it, does it bring more
consideration into, I guess, thestorytelling and the world's
themselves rather than the objective?
That's a good question. And there's there's so many
(12:05):
different games like I don't think there is really an answer.
It's it's are you, are you a walking simulator?
Are you a cosy game? Is, is the the terminology for
like a like a Stardew Valley where or a harvest moon where
you're just kind of going and tending to a farm.
I know Animal Crossing was very big in a pandemic.
My husband loved it. I just I never saw the appeal of
(12:27):
going through everyday mundane chores, but.
Yeah, it was, it was crazy. I never seen people, you know,
like you're saying, I'm I'm playing Animal Crossing.
I've just caught this fish. Look at this.
And I didn't get it, but it seemed very cute.
You know, I'm sure there was some kind of like nice feeling
and and positive rewards come out of that, which was in a very
(12:47):
shit time. Yeah, well, like, I'm a huge
Resident Evil fan and one of like my first likes.
I had a NES growing up. I'm 43, I'm old.
I'm. 44 so. There you go.
Did you have an NES as well? Maybe?
Absolutely did. There you go.
And we moved to a Sega Genesis for the for the next Gen, which
(13:08):
I can't ever remember if it's Mega Drive or Master System.
And I remember one year I got a new Sonic game for my parents
and I like cracked the sads. I was just like, oh, beside
myself because the PlayStation was out and I kicked and
screamed and threw a tantrum to get a PlayStation.
My parents took all the stuff that they had for the Sega
Genesis and all the games and traded it in and let me buy a
(13:30):
PlayStation. But they like, this is their
like the best parenting move they ever did.
They went, here's the PlayStation.
You don't get a game if you, if you have money, you can buy one.
I did not have money. So I played the demo disc for
that PlayStation for like a solid 3 months.
But thankfully my friend down the road, his parents got him
like every game system that never came out, any game you
(13:50):
wanted. So like most days after school,
we would go to his house and like that's where I played the
first Resident Evil. That's where I started to play
the second Resident Evil and then eventually had enough money
to buy my own copy. And I've loved that game and
that franchise for the, it's what, nearing 30 years that it's
been out. Resident Evil is a really good
example of, you know, like trying to tap into something
that Resident Evil is not. So every couple of years they
(14:13):
try to do a multiplayer focused game that's usually like packed
into one of the the sequels and people play it for like 20
minutes and go, this is not whatI'm after.
It's just the old it's oh, they're trying to capture that
games as a service thing where like I could buy a skin or this
on the other. And so like, I think they're
kind of failing in that regard. But like it's, it's always a
(14:34):
side project with the main game.And going back to what you were
saying about file sizes and all that, it's I don't know if it's
an Internet thing. It's more of like a late stage
capitalism where, yeah, it's like how fast can we get this
out? We said the release date was
this. We, we need the game to come out
for this quarter or it's going to ruin our sales, which is
(14:55):
going to ruin our stock up. So all of that factors in and
things are probably released in a rushed sense or an inefficient
sense where files could be compressed or condensed or more
efficient. So you'd have less of a
download. And I guess the the the factor
of the Internet there is. Yeah, we'll just, we'll do a
patch. We'll do it.
We'll do a patch here. We'll fix this thing there,
which I don't think is a good thing, but I guess conversely I
(15:17):
there were games that I used to play back in the day that you
know, didn't ever have the chance to be patched and if
something was broken, one of those it was broken forever, so.
That's kind of leads me onto my next question there.
Now we're talking about breakingand patches and fixing things up
post launch. Another thing that, you know,
I've seen a lot of complaints around was that people are so
(15:39):
stoked to get a thing as soon asit launches and then there's
something gone wrong with it. So beyond I guess having to to
issue a patch to a game just so people can play it, what other
issues has the ability for developers to rush something out
without it being ultimately quality controlled and just
ready to to play smoothly? Video games are huge, like
(16:01):
bigger than movies huge and people maybe don't remember that
or aren't exposed to it, so theydon't think of that.
Sometimes it like it's it's not an issue of someone trying to
rush something. It it becomes a matter of they
have a team of, I don't know, we'll say four or five for the
sake of it. Who are, you know, playing the
game everyday, testing it, trying to find all these bugs
(16:23):
and problems. But you know, as soon as you
release your game to potentiallymillions of people, you suddenly
have millions of testers and they're going to hit every
scenario, every possible combination of how things can be
done and find things that developers simply can't.
So I guess on on the, the plus side there, as we're
collectively doing this work forthem, we are finding issues, but
(16:45):
then there is the ability for those issues to be fixed.
So that's a good thing. I, I don't know if you can
really fully fix that issue. Like it's just, it's really just
a term, a matter of scale. There's so many people that are
hitting up your game. They're absolutely going to
encounter things that you haven't anticipated or you know,
you you maybe didn't thought youfixed it, but you know you did A
and they did B and it's causing those issues.
(17:08):
Yeah, yeah, Our younger brother,he's like, he's like quite into
games. Every time I see him, he's
bought. He's basically, he's gone back
and he's recollecting all the old consoles and all the games
and you know, they're like $2.00to to buy these games now.
And he's like, look, I've got this PS1 game for $1.00 and you
know, all of this stuff. But it's quite interesting that
those are all done and dusted when they're out.
(17:30):
And I guess the complexity of them is nothing like it is now.
But doesn't the, I guess this connection now between let's
call them the players and the producers, doesn't that provide
a kind of a real channel for dialogue that may positively
influence games as it goes over time?
Like, can developers collect that feedback and based on, I
(17:51):
guess the market sentiment, change entire games to to keep
it in I guess the good books of of the market?
For good and bad, I guess it it depends on how how you perceive
good and how a group forms and what a group's intentions are.
So like, a good example isn't really related that I can think
(18:12):
of immediately isn't really related to games, but it's game
related. Sonic the Hedgehog, the feature
film, the first one that came out, the designs for Sonic were
nightmare inducing. Oh.
That's I remember that now. And the, and the, the, the
general public kind of came together and said, please,
please, no, please change this. And you know, that happened.
(18:32):
Another example that people may or may not see as good or bad is
the ending to Mass Effect 3, which I won't spoil, but the the
gist of it is it was perceived pretty much as a lacklustre
ending. So this Mass Effect franchise
was this huge franchise, an RPG where you got to define your
character, make thousands and thousands of choices and come to
(18:54):
very branching storylines. And really, I don't envy BioWare
having to try to take all of those branching storylines over
three games and then somehow figure out how they could
resolve them. Because your, your experience
wasn't the same as mine, wasn't the same as Bob's down the road,
but they tried and and that was their, their concluded piece of
work, their arts, if you want toconsider it art.
(19:15):
And the community kind of went, Nah, do better to fix it
somehow. And they kind of tried to fix
it, but I don't know, I think itwas maybe worse off for, for
trying. Oh, wow.
And I guess right now, you know,if I have heard the term woke
again, it's it's one too many. I have heard it applied.
You know, like I say, I'm kind of an outsider looking into the
(19:38):
world of, of video games, but I,I do see quite a lot of furious
debate around characters you canchoose or their outfit and
things like that. And without kind of going too
far down that path, it seems like same as everything, there's
a lot of outrage culture, you know, it builds an entire
ecosystem of, of negativity thatI, I would assume that the
(20:01):
developers have not done it on purpose to generate that
reaction. Yeah, well, like, and I forget
the name of the Consulting Group, which annoys me because I
would love to talk about them because they they're they're
basically a consulting firm thatdevelopers will engage to think
about diversity in their games. And and this is where like the
woke, you know, anti woke peoplewill come in and say, hey, no,
(20:23):
like that woman isn't as attractive as she needs to be
and why are her breasts so smalland like this garbage?
And then on, like, on the flip side, there's a Australian group
called Collective Shout, which is now trying to target what
they perceive as inappropriate games.
And the game that they latched onto kind of successfully was a
(20:45):
game about like, simulated rape.And that is, yeah, that is not a
game that anyone needs to play. So they're not wrong in that
specific instance. But now they're trying to, you
know, also say that, you know, games involving transgender
people or games with, you know, consensual mature sex in them.
Like they, they have to be removed from Steam and from all
(21:06):
these platforms and you know, they're not my cup of tea in
most cases, but that's, it's notfor me to say what people can
and can't play and it shouldn't be for Collective Shout either.
Yeah, Look, just just even on that point, I guess we can we
can take another a new directionhere.
I'm assuming that you would you would generally have to be like
an indie developer to be to be making that sort of stuff.
(21:27):
But doesn't the ability for for indie developers to make the
smaller games that they want, you know, they could say, look,
we're making a game for 25 people, We don't care, we're
doing it and it's going to be distributed through the
Internet. Doesn't I guess the the Internet
as a now kind of a distribution model breaks down what I assume
(21:49):
would have been some pretty standard gatekeeping in the past
from from bigger publishers. Yep well, and, and that
gatekeeping is is really still there.
The likes of Nintendo and, and Microsoft and Sony all have
Nintendo's probably I don't wantto say the worst, but they're
probably the most strict on whatwell and then for better or for
worse, we'll get into that in a second.
(22:09):
But like they'll have guidelineson what has to be done for a
game to be put on their platform.
And a common thing you'll hear with with games getting updates
or like expansions is that it's slow through the Microsoft
certification process. So that all sort of applies.
But on the flip side, Nintendo also has this and all the
platforms have this issue where gross clones of a game that
(22:30):
actually is succeeding gets shotout and put up on a Nintendo E
shop for 5 bucks and unknowing people buy that instead of the
game they wanted. But a lot of Indies will develop
and put their game out on Steam or H dot IO and we'll be able to
tap into local funding schemes and and that kind of thing.
(22:51):
Like PAX Australia is a really good example.
Just for clarity, can you explain quickly what Steam is
and also PAX? PAX is the, the, the big event,
right? So let's start with that.
Let me just throw out some acronyms.
PAX, I don't think Pak stands for anything.
Penny Arcade Expo. Actually it does.
There we go. It first started in Seattle and
it's it's a convention. It used to be kind of like the
(23:14):
heavy hitters and some Indies and it's really more like the
Indies now. So it's a really good
opportunity to go and meet, you know, the person or the team of
three or four who have developedthis game, play it, talk to them
about them, and then really get to explore the indie scene.
And it's also a chance for Indies to to be able to have
their game seen by a lot of people.
(23:36):
Steam tied in is the the big heavy hitter PC distribution
platform where you can purchase and store your digital
collection of games. There's other storefronts on PC
like the Epic game store. Ubisoft has one, EA has one.
GOG, which stands for Good old games is another.
I really like that all the kind of old ones, all the old Star
(23:58):
Trek games that I love. They're now, you know, preserved
on good old games, so I can playthem on my current PC without,
you know, digging out old consoles, figuring out if they
need an adapter, you know, because they don't have HDMI
ports or whatever. Yeah, so.
That sounds, that sounds cool. You know, and we've been talking
about the removal of that gatekeeping, which almost just
(24:20):
lets anybody make the game that they want.
You mentioned a couple of minutes ago those games have
simulated whatever, which is thethe real dark side of of this
ability. But on the positive side, how
has this ability for for anybodyto really make a game and get it
out there kind of affected building and creating new genres
(24:42):
or innovations or and even communities within the world of
video games? There, if you have an idea for a
video game, it's probably already happened.
If you have an idea for a genre,it's probably already happened,
but there's not to say you can'titerate on it or find a group
that that does like something that you want to engage with and
do it. And there's, you know, that's
(25:03):
I'm, I'm constantly proven wrongin that generalisation.
There are people that have just crazy ideas.
There's a game, it's not unique.It's it's been done before, but
I'm excited for it. It's called Baby steps and it's,
it's like a walking simulator. When people say walking
simulator, they generally mean you're controlling a character
and walking forward and looking around and maybe solving a
(25:23):
mystery. This is literally like you need
to use your controller to move the person's legs and arms and
try to get them actually moving through an environment.
Well, actually like a years ago now I can't remember what it's
called. I just call it QUOP or
something. Exactly, exactly exactly like
that. Nightmare.
So, well, yeah. And I, it's not my cup of tea,
(25:44):
but some people are sadists, I guess, and like, like doing
that. So good on them.
But yeah, like that's that's interesting because I guess
beyond technical know how nothing's stopping anyone coming
up with the idea and putting it out into the world.
I remember a long, long time agospeaking to someone that wanted
to get into video game development and I knew somebody
else that was in it. And when those two kind of spoke
(26:06):
about it, it just felt incredibly daunting, like just
this massively long journey thatfelt over before it even started
for a person 2. But now that you've got so many
people, they can kind of dip their toes in and and see what
happens. As you said, going to one of
those events where you can speakto the other developers, the
(26:27):
little teams, and of course, whoknows what networking comes out
of that and who you meet, what ideas might spawn off there.
And that's in real life. But again, as you touched on a
couple of minutes ago, the that kind of community and connection
through the Internet seems to beenormous now in the world of
gaming. What would you say, I guess the
difference between a healthy gaming community and we've all
(26:49):
heard of toxic ones. Like even if you're not a gamer,
you hear about this like, how does the Internet build both the
positive ones? And then of course you know the
toxic ones. But does it also blur the line
and and allow the shift between the two?
It does like IIA game that I've been playing lately called
Rematch is a decent example of that.
It's it's a developer maybe having a limitation to what they
(27:11):
can and can't do within their game like voice chat etcetera.
Or it's just a decision to to limit some of that.
So rematch is A33V3 or 4V4 or 5V5 soccer game, football game
where you control 1 character, you're in a team with others.
There's it's not AI bots or anything like that.
(27:33):
You're playing with real people and rather than give you the
ability to just scream obscenities at your teammates if
you think they're not playing very well, there's commands tied
to the D pad that will launch like a voice clip like good job
or thanks. And it's weird.
Like when you make a mistake, good job is meant to be
(27:54):
uplifting, even though the soundfile doesn't change.
And it's exactly the same as if you did something good.
Like if you make a mistake and someone says good job, you know,
inherently the sarcasm is dripping off that statement.
So it can be used for good or bad.
But there's, there's kind of ways to control some of that
stuff. And then a lot of the control
really just sits with you as a as a player.
(28:14):
Like my sister has kids who are 16 and 14 now, and the 16 year
old, her son Bob was playing games and it's kind of like,
yeah, just pop your head in oncein a while.
If he's playing like Rainbow 6 and there's voice chat, just
make sure he's not getting abused or abusing other people.
And you know, like, just remove yourself from the situation if
you need to. It's, yeah, it's.
(28:36):
And that's kind of like the Internet in general, Like, oh,
have you stumbled into a welcoming place or is it
somewhere that you shouldn't be?Absolutely.
And and that's so funny around that, that good job.
The sarcasm behind that, which is obviously that competition
aspect. Like everyone associates the
word win with games, no matter whether it's a board game, a
video game or like a sport game.But in terms of that
(28:56):
competition, one of the huge things which which still blows
my mind that that come out of competitive gaming is just this
phenomenon of E sports. The first time somebody showed
it to me, I couldn't believe what I was seeing like in these
gigantic arenas, people playing games on a on a screen down
there. And that to me felt crazy.
(29:20):
You know, I'm going to be showing my age here too.
But I remember being a kid and we used to have this toy shop in
Australia. It's called World for Kids,
believe it or not. And they would have like the
Super Nintendo sit up in there and there'll be just lines of
kids waiting to play, whether it's like Street Fighter or
something, you know? And then that was, I guess it's
the very, very small parallel version of what esports is now
(29:44):
through how spectacularly huge and successful esports is now.
Surely that a brings an incredible amount more eyeballs
and and budget to the world of, of gaming in general, but also
allows so many more people to actually make a living in
various means from, you know, I know you've got to be super good
(30:06):
to, to get to those those ranks and things.
But it does feel like quite a, an aspirational thing, which
doesn't rely on like professional sports relies on
genetic gifts. Whereas theoretically to someone
like me E sports, yes, it would rely on some mental and and
reaction gifts and things. But it does feel like something
(30:27):
that everybody could aspire to get to.
If you're short, you go, oh, well, I can't play basketball.
But this is like everyone, all they need is to play a game.
I think sadly, I think because we've told people our ages, I
think our our time is is done. I think our Twitch reactions are
probably too, too slow, especially if we well, for most
things, most E sports are, are Twitch reaction driven.
(30:49):
So like shooting or sports tactical awareness kind of
thing. So we're we're probably put out
to pasture at this point, but yeah, like.
No doubt and. And every game has if it's not E
sports directly and you know, like big spectacles at stadiums
with people watching you like battlefields or whatever you
want to play has like a ranking system rematch the game I was
(31:10):
talking about before the soccer game.
You know, like I I think I'm in gold league.
I, I don't think I'll ever aspire to hit Diamond League,
but you know, like I, I can kindof compete with people at my
level or where the game thinks I'm at in terms of my level and
aspire to do better or realise I've, I've hit the the ceiling
and, and need to find another game or something.
(31:31):
To play the, the Masters League,I was, I was speaking to someone
recently that they, they said they were like doing masters
sports and they were 36. And I was like, whoa.
I thought that was for people that are like 70, you know.
Yeah. So that's, I don't think that's
something that I'll be, I will be doing becoming an an E sports
pro. But how has that, you know,
(31:52):
hyper competitive environment and even mindset?
Does that affect the way that, say, casual players might look
at games? Does it affect the way that
potentially publishers build games thinking that it will end
up in one of these arenas being played?
How? How much of a consideration is
that? It depends, I guess, on on the
developer's intent. A good example of of something
(32:16):
absolutely impacting the other is a game called Overwatch.
So it was developed by Blizzard and Overwatch had this grand
goal of of being like the next Esports thing to the point where
they created the Overwatch League.
Activision was selling licences like franchises to different
entities, conglomerates, whatever to, you know, to buy,
(32:38):
you know, the Los Angeles team or to buy the whatever team.
And a lot of the work would kindof go back and forth.
So the oh, the league needs thisto happen.
So maybe we'll make a couple tweaks here that impact the
general game. Sometimes they had them like
running separately. Ultimately, I think that the
league kind of failed because they were trying to make it more
of a big deal than people right accepted it to be.
(33:01):
But that's a good example of of someone doing that specifically
with that in mind. Fighting games are are better
examples maybe of people just kind of deciding they're going
to make a league around it. So there's tournaments like Evo
with Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, like you were saying,
even Super Smash Brothers, the Nintendo mascot fighter, where
they'll just have tournaments and you know, maybe, maybe rules
(33:23):
this this one fighter is is too overpowered or has these moves
that are too hard to to deal with.
So like, you can't play as that person for this tournament, that
kind. Of thing it's it does sound
actually quite fun and you know,they introducing kind of
handicaps that they brought in when someone gets a little bit
too good and out of hand. But it's just, it seems, as
(33:44):
we've been saying, the modern gaming landscape is just so big.
Now we've, we've spoken about NES, right?
You pull the cartridge out of the box, you put it in the thing
if it doesn't work, like you blow on all the electric bits
until you break the game and it's like, that's it, you know?
But now there's just an infinitely large world of people
and, and things going on. For someone just getting into
(34:06):
games now, if they're feeling overwhelmed by the modern gaming
landscape, how would you direct them or what advice would you
give them to find a good community and a good experience
for a beginner? Wow.
Well, and that's, that's a hard question because so many of us
are quote unquote gamers and maybe don't realise that or
(34:27):
accept it or acknowledge it or choose to identify as that.
You know, my mother in They, they have like 7 of them now and
they do the crossword, the New York Times crossword and the age
crossword on their iPad. That's technically you're
playing video games. But like, that's not to say you
have to be a gamer. It's pick and choose.
(34:50):
Like there are, there are peoplethat I know who love Star Trek,
barely play a video game. They have a switch for their
kids and like, oh great. There's, there's this narrative
game in a Telltale game style called Star Trek Resurgence that
just came out on Switch. And it's like perfect for that
person because the original version on Xbox and PlayStation
and PC, I tried to get my dad toplay it and he was just a little
(35:12):
bit overwhelmed because he lovesStar Trek and it's a good story
that I wanted him to experience.But he's like, I don't, I gotta
walk this guy around and which button do I hit?
The Switch 1 is more like a, a touch screen.
It's almost like it's, it's beenmade for someone on an iPad
because there's so many different ways to play in so
many genres and so many different experiences.
Like you might just be a smartphone person.
You might sadly be one of those people that plays one of those
(35:35):
games that definitely is out to get all of your money.
I, I wish you wouldn't play that.
I hope you find a similar experience on a console.
But then again, the consoles nowcost upwards, you know, like
$1000. So maybe you know, if you spend
100 bucks a month on your pay towin game thing, like maybe
you're doing it right compared to to me, I can't really tell
(35:56):
you. Well, just just on that point
around, you know, like the the smartphone game,
microtransactions in everything.You know, I remember I was, I
was getting on a flight and I downloaded a casino game.
I was like, this is awesome. You know, I'm just going to play
this. It's like no brainer, spin the
roulette, play some poker, you know, like just stupid stuff,
(36:16):
open it up. It's like you've got like $50.00
in the casino and then if you want more, you've got to pay
more and more and more and more things.
Would you say though, that the way that so many things are now,
subscription models rather than owning anything are
microtransactions and I guess the financialisation like
through small bites within games, whether they're
(36:36):
smartphone or, you know, throughservers and things, is that just
games and publishers aligning with the way people are moving
to pay for things these days? So it's a bit more natural.
Late stage capitalism. I've played like 300 hours of
Star Trek Online, a massively multiplayer online game, Same
idea. It's free to play.
(36:57):
I I spend 100 bucks every once in a while because there's like
a Starship that was on the TV that I really, really want and
I'm fine with that. And then there are people who
probably spend far more money than I do, which is sad.
But I guess on the flip side, all of that money that's being
made by the studio, they will pay developers to make new
(37:17):
chapters of the storyline and hire the actress who played
Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager to come in and, like,
record lines. And there's new content that I
get to play for free. So I didn't answer that.
I'd sidestep that question altogether.
I mean, that's a good point. Let's take that one on as well.
You said that, you know the developers might bring in new
people to create new content andand chapters for the game.
(37:37):
Does that bring more new, surprising perspectives that the
developers could never have imagined the the games
potentially heading down that path when they originally had
the idea? Like, how, how does that work?
Like what? What's a game that has started
out in one thing and then through getting unexpected
people involved, has gone off inanother direction?
Early Access games is my answer to that.
(37:59):
So there there's a quite a lot of games, mostly on on PC on
Steam, where you can start playing kind of like an in
development version of a game oran idea and provide your
feedback to developers. And that will eventually turn
the game into its one point O release or its full release.
And it could be anything from a shooter to a a real time
(38:21):
strategy, a deck building game with cards going back really
quickly to your casino game thatyou bought.
If you haven't played a game called Bilatro, you absolutely
need to. It's on smartphone, it's on
every console that you can imagine.
It's like a poker game, but that's like doing it a
disservice. Doesn't have microtransactions.
(38:42):
So like that there and there aredevelopers doing that.
Like I, I just want to put out agame.
That guy's made money hand over fist for doing that because he's
not trying to like, you know, nickel and dime you inside the
game. You, you pay your, your amount
upfront and you're good to go. Subscriptions like, I'm just
sorry, I'm hitting all these things that you've talked about
recently. Subscriptions, late stage
capitalism. Once again, probably the biggest
(39:04):
one that comes to mind is Xbox Game Pass, which is Microsoft's
big subscription thing. And the downside, like you were
saying, you don't own any of these games and there's larger
implications talking about buying digital games anyway.
But this, this is a really clearcut example of you're
subscribing to a service. It has so many games in this
library, like a Netflix style kind of access, but you know,
(39:24):
one month, the next the game that you were playing might not
be in the library next month. So no, there you go.
If you want it, you got to go pay for it.
But some people really like that, like they'll churn through
games, say they want new stuff. They don't want to have to spend
$100 on a game each time they want to play a new game.
They just want to get this library, play what's there,
churn through it, get to the next one.
And like, again, there's no right or wrong way to do it.
(39:46):
Microsoft, though, is incrediblyproblematic at the moment.
They've acquired a lot of companies.
They've also laid off a whole bunch of developers within all
of those companies. King and Candy Crush is a really
good example. Like everyone's heard of Candy
Crush. I have never played it, but I.
Everyone else I know. About a little, a little phase
of playing it. I, I remember because it worked,
(40:07):
it was, it was the only thing that didn't need a cellular
signal or, or like Wi-Fi to work.
And I remember I, you know, through various reasons, I, I
would find myself in this place where, you know, like the
comfort thing for anyone to do is just say, Oh yeah, I'll just
pull out the phone. And obviously nothing works
except Candy Crush. So I smashed through a bunch of
levels on there. And, you know, I enjoyed it for
(40:29):
what it was, but as soon as I was out of that zone, I wouldn't
look at it again. But just on your point there
around the Game Pass subscription model, does that
also bring similar kind of benefits that Netflix does?
Right? Like you pay a flat fee, you
might start watching something you don't like it, you're not
really financially invested in it.
You're just like, eh, I'll just move on to something else.
So if PE if people can do that through all these games through
(40:50):
a subscription model, how much of them would then go and like
buy the actual game? Or is it they just keep playing
it through the I guess stream? I don't have stats at hand, but
like a lot, a lot of what Microsoft's been saying about
Game Pass is that it is working in that way.
And it could be because you start playing a game, you really
like it and you realise it's leaving the calendar next month
(41:13):
and you're not going to have time to finish it.
So you buy it so you can keep playing.
Or it's you really, really like it and want to support the
people making it. So you decide to purchase it to
make sure you get a new one or, or you know, something new from
that developer. So it, it could work in, in both
ways. A lot of developers say it's
it's a good way to get their game out there in front of
people's faces. And then of course there's
(41:33):
people who say that it's a RIP off and, you know, it's
Microsoft killing creativity andand development And so yeah,
like. It's look, I could I could, I
could understand both sides of of that coin.
And you know, like the the one price trial, a million different
things sounds amazing for someone like me.
So it's just, oh, I'll just testit out for a little while.
I don't know what sort of games are like they're like games
(41:55):
where I drive a car, you know, Idon't need to do the races.
I just go looking around at stuff that's that's good for me.
But just on that kind of subscription model, where do you
think the, I guess the business side of of gaming evolves over
say the next decade? Will it remain or even get more
subscription based or do we kindof get to a point where players
(42:18):
demand a bit more of a return toa one time purchase model?
I, I hope the latter is the case.
I think it's probably going to be more subscriptions.
Kind of like, you know, there, there was Netflix, now there's
Netflix and Hulu and Disney and Stan and Binge and all of the,
the major publishers have dabbled or are, are doing or are
(42:38):
considering similar things. Like PlayStation has their own
version. Nintendo has their own version
now, but everyone has their own version.
It's, it's good and bad. Like we're also seeing kind of
more the late stage capital, some stuff like just the big
dogs buying all of the studios, getting rid of half the staff at
that studio. Because, you know, we already
have the comms team or we already have people who can do
(43:00):
this with King and Candy Crush. They've got developers using AI
to like automate some of what they do.
So they can then get rid of those people and let the
automation take over some of thework, which like that's, that's
to me is a horrible thing because you're missing out on
the the creative side that thosepeople will bring.
I can like, you know, generate new Candy Crush levels, but it's
(43:21):
only going to generate new CandyCrush levels based on what has
been, not an idea that someone has.
It can be implemented. I get horribly dystopian and I
hope it's not going to be the Case, No.
Go for it, go for it. Well, no, I just, yeah, in
general, it's, it's looking kindof bleak and I hope we get
through this in in more aspects than just video games.
Oh yeah, look at me, Me too. And it is, you know, everybody's
(43:43):
talking about AI at the moment and positives and negatives and
there's so much bleakness and you follow that too far.
And it's just like, well, we're going to turn that off.
But, and think about, you know, like, say some more of the
positives. But as that tech gets better,
let's say it does get the ability to, to create new ideas.
Do you think that the evolution,the further evolution I should
(44:05):
say, of, of technology and and connectivity through the
Internet, we'll eventually be able to deliver a uniquely
customised game experience for every player?
Let's say you're in a fully of mercy of helmet playing this
thing and you're almost not not playing a game.
Now you're in another world, butit's completely unique to you
and no one else will get the same thing.
(44:27):
Maybe this is already happening and I just don't know, but do
you think that things will eventually get to that point?
To take this from bleak to extremely like, hopeful and
optimistic. If I could have a Star Trek
holodeck, if I could walk into aroom and just say computer, make
me detective in a 1960s pulp, you know, not like, yes, like,
let's do that. I would be happy to do that.
(44:49):
I wouldn't care what was what was done in the background to
make it happen. Let's do it.
Holodecks for everyone. That's, that's funny.
It's like, you know, that show Westworld and, and there was
that episode, what was that episode of Black Mirror as well,
where they're living in, you know, their, their idealised
life while they're on the outside, just the body there,
which is, I mean, look, if if wecan kind of just plug into the
(45:12):
perfect world for a little bit, maybe that will offset the
bleakness that we could potentially encounter everywhere
else. And the other bit about the Star
Trek holodeck specifically is that Star Trek is this utopian
society where we've gotten rid of hunger and Favin and disease
and people are smart enough and well adjusted enough to go and
maybe have a holodeck experiencefor an hour or two and then
(45:33):
leave and go back to their regular life.
So I think that balance is also something that that we need to
strive for and that if I got bleak again, might be creeping
its way into some of our lives, which is needing, we need to fix
that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Look, is there's so much to think about there.
We could probably spend hours just talking about that.
But but on that note, just to finish up, we've been talking
(45:55):
about how the Internet and connectivity and and technology
has impacted and influenced games, the culture and and the
community. What would you say in your
opinion has been the best part of that happening and how would
you like it to continue as we move forward?
Well, I'm just going to turn it back to me.
Like I I wouldn't be able to talk about video games with you
(46:16):
without having the Internet, without deciding randomly to
take my travel blog and write about Resident Evil 5 and have
people somehow, I guess through the power of the Google
algorithm, read it, decide they wanted to interact with me,
start writing for me, or start reading what I write and, and
letting me build something amazing and fabulous.
(46:37):
And that's my experience as a games journal.
I get to meet developers and other Gerdos and people from not
only Australia but around the world and developers do that.
They can get jobs now remotely and work for Activision or
whoever they want. It makes dreams and I hope that
kind of thing continues on and people get to to connect and
(46:58):
have adventures that they might not have had without this
fantastic little invention. What a brilliantly positive note
to to finish up on. Thanks Steve.
What's on the horizon for you and where can people follow what
you're up to? Always busy, always video games.
It's it's getting close to the holiday season so all the big
hitters are coming out. I'm playing NHL, which I know
(47:19):
Australians don't care about, but it's like the Canadian guys
dream all of our stuff in terms of of the video games website is
on survivor.com. I'm S Wright AU, mostly on Blue
Sky. Find me on the Internet and I've
just started picking up a gig writing some stuff for Trek
movie. Mostly video game related, but
sometimes not so you can find methere.
(47:39):
Awesome, Steve. Thank you so much.
My pleasure. Thanks so much.
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
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