June 2024 Podcast: The woeful state of game development, Yasuke and Assassin's Creed, and the games of June

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, and welcome to the Digitally Uploaded Podcast.
My name is Alan, I'll be your host for this week, and with me as always is the
Editor-in-Chief of DigitallyDownloaded.net, it's Matt Sainsbury. Hello, Matt. Hello.
Music.
What have you been playing this month? What have I been playing this month?

(00:22):
That is a very fine question. Not much. I've been playing Make My Own Game.
That's fine. Because I don't have time for playing video games. not
for fun anyway no more funds allowed no
more funds yeah that's fair enough how's that going then how's the the game
making process it is a grind alan it is an absolute grind but it's good it's

(00:44):
fun it's rewarding it's creative and all that kind of jazz but yeah it's just so much work,
you have so much more patience than me because i i would go insane that's why
i could never do You're like coding.
Tens of thousands of words of script and then all the coding on top of that.
And then things don't go right when you test it.

(01:07):
And then you've got to go through it line by line and figure out what the hell
is going wrong. And because I'm not very good at this coding thing,
that takes me a long time to do.
And yeah, it's tiring. That sounds awful.
It's a joy. I'll be happy with the end result. That's the main thing,
right? That's good. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair enough.
And we also have Trent. Hello, Trent.

(01:30):
Hello. What have you been playing this month, Trent? I don't have anything exciting
going on. I've been playing, what have I been playing?
I kind of started playing Endless Ocean, but realized I don't like the story
mode because it's like way too hand-holdy and tutorial-y so far.
So I stopped playing it for a bit.
Outside of that, I probably haven't really been playing much else.

(01:52):
I've still been playing Yakuza, but yeah, I haven't finished it yet.
So that's fair that's a
that's a pretty cool game i thought people were not liking endless
ocean though is that a general trend not
liking that new endless ocean it didn't review very well
overall i liked it i liked it quite a lot actually but yeah
i don't know i feel like endless ocean is the

(02:13):
type of game people like the idea of but they don't
necessarily like endless ocean even the original but yeah
that's actually a good shout story mode isn't as reviewed well but yeah this
the story mode's not as reviewed well but the like endless sort of ocean part
is okay is why skim reviews seems to be the majority of people say that.

(02:38):
Okay. It's nice as a chill kind of just floating around the ocean thing, looking at fishies.
I mean, that's really what the game's strength is.
It doesn't do so well when it's telling a story.
I love that idea of just like having a float. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?
Especially if you're like me and you never actually do scuba diving because

(02:59):
you're gutless and you can't get into the ocean.
This is a moment where I can actually be like, yeah, it's the best thing ever
because I've got my license.
You've got a floaty license. I've got a scuba diving license. I'm a certified diver.
Have you? Really? Yeah. Yeah, I know. In England? No, in Australia.

(03:20):
I'm not diving into the Thames. I go into the water there and I come out with
like four gills and a new eye. I'm not going in that water at all.
Of all the places for somebody who likes the ocean to end up,
you've ended up in England.
I know you've seen those videos of like all the
raw sewage is pouring into the sea and it's like the one thing that
I was kind of looking forward to is being able to jump in

(03:41):
the ocean and then there's like a turd floating next to you there's normal
yeah I love swimming and I
love scoop diving and I think one of my favorite things ever was swimming
around and having those little like blue fishy guys swimming between
my fingers I think it's one of the coolest things I think
I've ever done and doing wreck dives makes me feel like a treasure hunter
and a lot of like that so anything that does that that's fun also like you don't

(04:05):
have the inherent fear of like being eaten by a shark but i've also been playing
some games as well what have you been playing i have been playing i mean i'm
still in boulder's gate because i've never left boulder's gate.
But i've i've redownloaded diablo because they didn't update for diablo which
fixed all the loot stuff and it does seem to be better i know i've said this

(04:28):
about four times on this podcast of oh they fixed it and i play it for a little
bit longer it's very apparent they haven't fixed it,
but this time trust me
they've finished the patch so that means they'll be firing people in
a week or two that's how it works isn't it once they
finish a bit of work they've been fire a bunch of people they'll either

(04:48):
do that or they'll have like a scandal where they
are forced to fire people because they've been drinking more breast milk out of the
stuff fridge that's meant for a baby yeah yeah
good company great company love xbox well well that division blizzard yeah and
on that absolute legendary positive note we're gonna jump right into the games

(05:12):
of the month so do stick around.
Music.

(08:13):
It is a new month and a new month means more games and more games means less
time for you to spend playing other games and therefore the vicious cycle continues.
So Matt, what is coming out this month that can continue this vicious cycle
that we call, I don't know, buying shit?

(08:35):
Yeah, so plenty coming out, I think. Yeah, plenty coming out.
So on June 3, we have Dead by Daylight Dungeons and Dragons expansion coming out.
Don't know about that. Don't know how that works. You play as Vecna.
But it's a thing. Oh, that's what you do, is it? You play as Vecna.
Yeah, you play as Vecna, yeah. Which is pretty cool. That's how it fits in with the horror thing then.

(08:59):
I get it now. They're pushing Vecna really hard at Wizards of the Coast at the
moment because of Stranger Things.
Yeah, I know, I know. know, associating it with horror is a, is a thing.
I mean, I always thought that there was plenty of other horror things they could
have done, they could have done Strahd. Yeah. That would have been pretty cool.
We're doing a Strahd campaign right now. It's my first like proper,

(09:19):
proper D&D thing and boy howdy, it's a fun campaign.
Oh, it really is. We actually did it earlier in the year. So there you go.
It is, it is a classic and it's good fun and they've done a pretty good job
with the update with the, the fifth edition one.
Yeah. Yeah. It's actually, yeah, it's pretty good. Big fan.
What else have we got? June 4, one day later, we have Killer Clowns from Outer Space, the game.

(09:43):
I don't know if that's going to be good. Will that be good is the question.
I don't know. Is that an update of an old game? No, it's the movie.
It's a movie game based on a B-movie from the 80s about Killer Clowns from Outer Space.
And it was announced out of nowhere. And I think it's one of those ASIM multiplayer games.
That would make sense. That's why I'm not going to be interested in it.

(10:05):
But, yeah, I vaguely recognize killer clowns as a thing.
Now I know where it's come from. So, cool.
Alien invasions and B-grade horror and all the kind of stuff,
right? Sounds pretty good.
On June 4 as well, we've got Star Wars The Hunters.
What is that? That's the multiplayer Star Wars-y shooter thing, I think.

(10:31):
Squad-based one. Think. Oh. And people are getting all... Isn't that awful?
Yeah. People are getting very upset about it because it's all woke or something.
But it looks all right. Yeah.
Is it because it's got a woman in it? I think it's because it's got an ugly
character in it or something. Oh, that's pretty woke.
Wait till they see my room. I live in it.

(10:54):
Yeah, I don't know much about it because I'm not that interested in Star Wars games these days.
But this one is, I'm pretty sure it's like an Overwatch style thing.
Is it? Probably not. I'm probably saying the wrong thing now.
But it's a Star Wars, so it's going to do fine. People are going to buy it.
It's too big to fail. Yeah. One day later, June 5, we got Democracy 4 coming out on console.

(11:18):
It's been out on PC for ages and ages, but the console version of it's coming out.
So if you do think that you can do better than Biden, then here's your chance
to set the policies up for your party and try and win re-election and try and
not get assassinated, which is what always happens when I play Democracy for some reason.
I'm not quite sure why. I wonder why my radical policies end up with me being

(11:41):
assassinated from foreign parties.
I don't understand. Well, what happens, it's actually pretty comprehensive.
Democracy is actually a pretty detailed simulation of everything that goes into
a democracy from policy settings and stuff.
And usually what happens is when you start the game, you get elected.
And so that's the kind of the start. You don't have to worry about the original

(12:03):
election. And then you need to kind of maintain your government,
try and get it popular, keep the economy under control and all that stuff.
Usually what happens is within the first year, the Secret Service is raising
warnings about right-wing extremism on the rise.
And it's like I never seem to manage to deal with it in a way that doesn't get
me deaded before the end of my first term. So I'm not quite sure.

(12:27):
You're encouraging it. I'm not quite sure I'd make the world's most effective
politician, but it's fun to toy around with.
I'm actually looking forward to this on the console. I think it'll be really
neat to have on Switch for playing on the bus or whatever.
It seems like a good game to have on Switch. The only issue is I wish the Switch
was a slightly more powerful machine because those sorts of games tend to chug

(12:48):
by the time you get to the end game.
Like I remember playing Civ on the Switch and it was a massive issue.
Yeah, I don't think it's quite as complex in terms of... I mean,
it's visually, it's not a conflict complex.
So it really is just whether the switch can handle the data and the switch does
the football manager games just fine.
So I imagine democracy be a similar kind of situation to that.

(13:12):
I don't think that'll be quite the issue that you have.
Anyway, that's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to that. That is June 5.
On June 6, we got Smurfs Village Party. Don't know much about that.
That's going to be utter shy.
I'll put my career on the line for that. That'll be fun. I like Smurfs.

(13:33):
Not in either. I don't know. But I like Smurfs. Has anyone...
I don't think I've ever actually watched Smurf content.
Well, it's because you're a young person, Alan. I'm sure Trent doesn't either.
This is an elder millennial thing. this is this
is my generation thing it's for
old people fair enough i guess i feel
it throw me into this old people thing you're not

(13:55):
an old person trent you're a young and a heart person so you
haven't seen the smurfs but i don't know it is a good point i don't know who
the smurfs games are actually for because people of my advanced age are not
buying crappy licensed games like a fucking sequel in the fucking gba i'm basically a boomer.

(14:17):
On june 6 we've got rocksmith plus coming out i mean they tried to make it appealing
to kids again but then i don't know like it didn't really like there's people
aren't watching it anymore no i'd go for a gritty smurfs game like like gritty
and like gullcamo like killing smurfs and that That'll be fun.
Game of the year. That's kind of creepy, Trenton. I don't know how I feel about that.

(14:43):
June 6th, we've got Rocksmith Plus coming out. That's the one where you actually
learn how to play an instrument properly. It's such a cool, good idea.
But, again, if you're going to learn guitar and you're not already committed
to learning guitar by watching YouTube videos or whatever, then you're not going
to make it, in my opinion. You've got to have that commitment to it.
And I think people go into that series thinking- Watching YouTube to learn instruments.

(15:06):
I know i told you i'm old i'm
like if you're going to learn an instrument you go to an i mean
that's why i started playing an instrument so i started
i started getting into the violin because i was watching like youtube videos
like lindsay that is that is all the violence which were on youtube at the time
and through cellos and yeah but it gets you like into the vibe and then you're

(15:28):
like you know what i'm gonna learn the instrument because everyone cool is playing
it on the youtubes and And then, yeah,
and then you suck at it for, like, ages and never play into it again.
Yeah, there you go. That's the issue.
Yeah, gotcha. Watching YouTube for those things.
White. June 6th, we got White Day 2 coming out. Now, I really enjoyed White Day. That was a game.

(15:52):
Korean horror game? Okay, there you go. Yeah, yeah. Korean horror game set in a school.
You're running around and the janitor is chasing you
and tries to kill you because he's being possessed by ghosts or something or
other it's good it's fun the original and i'm looking forward to this one because
it has been about a decade so interested to see what they've done to modernize

(16:13):
it and all that jazz and whether it actually plays well because the last one was more fun for,
everything else but the way it played so we'll see how this one goes that's
june 6th also on june 6th we got a visual novel called seven days coming out
this one is about a cursed blu-ray disc,

(16:35):
which the ring has possessed i don't
know much more about it than that but it has so that sounds like very like zoomers
looking at what would be like old and like you know horror it's like what about
blu-ray player disc i remember my parents having blu-ray like that but that's

(16:55):
the kind of level that description sounds like.
Not me trying to convince my parents that the PS3 is a good idea because it's
got a Blu-ray player in it.
A lot of people did that. I did that. So I justified it myself to buy it because
I wanted a blue-red player. And that was the cheapest one at the time.
On June 6th as well, it was still June 6th, we've got Tour de France 2024 coming out.

(17:20):
So that's the latest one in the annual bike cycling competition again.
Never thought those would work as video games, and yet every time they release
one, I get kind of put on them.
Yeah yeah it's weird because it's
not it's obviously not a sports game like fifa or
whatever where you're controlling the player to rip the the goal

(17:42):
of tour de france is more about managing the energy levels it's more simulation
style gameplay and it's quite strategic and i do like it for that i'm very bad
at it i always burn out well before the exit because i rush off and lead the
race every time. I do not like staying in the group.
That's the peloton, right? That's the group bit.

(18:03):
Yeah? Where like all the 40, 50 cyclists all kind of,
bunch together and they cycle and they kind of group for most of it and then
the breakaway, the ones at the front, I always insist on being the breakaway
which means I have no energy when it gets to the final sprint and I always lose.
But I do have fun losing and that's what's going to happen and this time around too, I imagine.

(18:27):
Probably. I never learn. Learning's for nerds. Yep.
On June 11th, so a couple of days later now, we've got Battle of Rebels coming
out, which is just the most horrible name, horribly generic name for a video game ever.
But in the single player, a virus spreads in the earth after the aliens invaded
the land and nations are struggling to defend it.

(18:49):
I don't think this is going to be a very good game somehow. I don't know. No, keep reading.
Keep reading. I'm on board. I'm on board. Okay. I'm finding the full description here.
It's a full price game. So. Oh, dear.
United armies from all over the world were formed to stop the invasion.
But in vain, aliens are much more advanced.

(19:11):
State-of-the-art technology enabled them to clone humans.
We are no longer aware of who we are fighting against. Humans?
Aliens penetrated all of the defense lines. Why are they penetrating?
Human aliens surround us, that's what we call them Is this like a weird racist allegory?
This is the actual description of the game human aliens surround us, that's what we call them.

(19:40):
I love that. Some humans will be infected, which will cause chaos after it become a walking dead.
I love that they've just used the wrong modal verbs in every single way.
This is just every single cliche they can manage to throw into a single description.

(20:00):
Aren't you glad that you kept reading? Thank you for that, Alan.
No worries. I'm going to type this into Google and just see what...
Look, I'm already on the fucking way. Let me tell you that.
What's it called again? Battle of Rebels.
I think. Video game. Yeah, Battle of Rebels video game. I found it. What the fuck is this?

(20:24):
How does it have a 4.8 out of 5 on Argos? What is this?
It's a third-person shooter. It looks terrible. It looks absolutely terrible.
It's a wave shooter.
Like i'm sorry i love it this is game someone's tried to make this yeah this

(20:47):
is this is the game of the year somebody put their heart and soul into the asset
flips they bought to make this and it's going to be great the only good way
of shooter is killing floor,
yeah that's not true made of
skirt was no it wasn't it wasn't good it was
not good this looks awful it does it really looks awful doesn't it someone's

(21:08):
tried to make a game but i don't know if they've tried that's the thing now
are we going to win that's a story that has yet to unfold so true no that they're
truing uh okay so that's yeah that's the thing that's coming out,
i'm so sorry hold on system requirements minimum os 10 10. Just 10. 10.

(21:33):
10. Just 10.
On June 11, we've got Rocket Knight Adventures Resparked coming out, which is- Oh, hell yeah.
Three games. Of course. That's classics, right? Those are old games, right? Yeah.
So you can get a pack of them, a pack of three of them together in one.
They're very fun. I've never played them, I don't think. You were a Mega Drive

(21:57):
person, though, weren't you? It was not.
I was not at all. That's why I haven't played them. I was a very Nintendo's person.
Okay, fair enough. Yeah. Not necessarily for any particular reason.
It was just the ones that you had. Yeah, we always just bought Nintendo consoles.
Didn't have unlimited money as kids.

(22:18):
Got the Christmas present was always a Nintendo.
On June 13, we've got Willy's Wonderland, the game coming out.
2.53. What is that? 2.5D beat him up based on the cult film of the same name.
That was Willy's Wonderland. I've never heard of this.
Oh, God. It's just bloody.

(22:41):
The knockoff. Oh, that's the
Nick Cage film. That's the Nick Cage horror film where he plays like the.
Yeah, it's the Five Nights at Freddy's. Five Nights at Freddy's.
Freddy's kind of knockoff horror film that for some reason Nick Cage was in.
They've made a game of that awesome i'm interested
in that now it's not looking good that's sad

(23:03):
no this looks terrible i'm sad now you've ruined my you know those like games
you used to get in like office works that were like $2.50 games in like a tub
and you'd pick it up and it would be called like kill the man and it had like
a guy with like the worst 3d modeling you've ever seen in your life,
that's the vibe. That sounds good to me.

(23:26):
You can look it up. You're welcome to play Willy's Wonderland again.
I'm going to. You can't stop me.
No, but you better bloody play. I'm going to give it five out of five too, you watch.
Do it. I'm going to do it. It gives them happiness. Yeah, why not?
On June 13, we've got some DLC that's worth noting coming out.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, A Dance of Masks. This is the last piece of DLC for Pathfinder 2.

(23:53):
And I'm looking forward to that. Pathfinder, I enjoyed a huge amount.
I must admit, I probably prefer the two Pathfinder games to Baldur's Gate 3 even.
I know I'm definitely a minority when I say that. but they are very,
very high quality games in a very similar mold to Baldur's Gate.
So if you have played Baldur's Gate 3 and you really enjoyed it,

(24:13):
which is most people that played it, and you're looking for some more and you
haven't played the Pathfinder games yet, do so and then get into the DLC.
This is the sixth piece of DLC. It's actually a massive game. Wrath of the Righteous.
That's the one where you can become a lich, right? Oh, yeah.
You can do all kinds of great things in it.
I'm a gold dragon or I'm a lich now. Yeah. I like that.

(24:36):
Yeah. More games should let you become a lich. And for people who don't know,
Pathfinder is basically Dungeons & Dragons. It's just- It's third edition, isn't it?
3.5 edition, yeah. And there's a huge story. I'm not going to go into it in
the podcast, but basically a company that had the rights to do the Dungeons
& Dragons magazines lost those rights, decided, well, screw you,
Wizards of the Coast. We're going to do our own thing.
That own thing was Pathfinder. And a lot of people that got into D&D,

(25:00):
who are kind of sick of D&D because of Wizards of the coast have moved over
to Pathfinder and enjoyed a great deal.
So that's basically the alternate Dungeons & Dragons. And it's good.
So very good games. Give them a go. On June 14, we've got Monster Hunter Stories
coming out, which is- It's a cute series.

(25:21):
Yeah, that's the nice, happy, joy-joying version of Monster Hunter without the
enormously frustrating big 50-minute battles with monsters.
I'm so glad that you've said that because I cannot stand that series for that exact reason.
Oh, really? You're not a fan. Interesting. No, I could not get into it.

(25:42):
I tried with World and then I tried with the Switch one.
Rise? The Japan themed one? Yeah, I tried that. I gave it a genuine go.
I tried it in co-op. Didn't like it. Tried it by myself.
Didn't like it. I don't know what it is. I just can't. I can't.
Yeah, they're not for everybody, that is for sure. I like them mostly because,

(26:04):
I mean, I like the aesthetics and the design of the games.
So I do enjoy them, but I'm not great at them. So I generally rely on having
a really good party to just do all the work for me.
And I just kind of sit around at the back and just chill. See,
I also just feel bad for killing the monsters when they're just existing.
Yeah, there is that. There's actually more and more kind of opinion pieces being

(26:27):
written about that and stuff. But people are, I guess, starting to critique
the series for that reason.
Because I remember even playing Try on the Wii. Like, I got the old tradition
of Try on the Wii. Because my brother-in-law and I were like,
this looks fucking awesome.
We should get this and play it in co-op.
And then we tried it maybe, like, twice. And it was not pleasant.

(26:48):
I don't know. I don't know what it is. But even if Monster Hunter,
the main series, is not for you, do check out the Stories games.
Because they are very different.
They're very very different there's no necessarily yeah there's the crossover
isn't there that people who didn't enjoy the main series won't necessarily enjoy
stories because they're just entirely different games so check them out on june

(27:12):
14 we've got shin gami tensei b vengeance demon,
subquest whatever they're called this plus version is that the the ultimate version of
smt5 right yeah yeah so smt5 was
originally a switch exclusive and they've
now gone multi-platform with it and expanded on it so a little bit like persona

(27:37):
5 royal yes royal persona 4 golden persona 5 doesn't need to be that long is
that the same issue as persona 5 where the game is too long and should not have
been that long it is pretty it is pretty long and it's pretty Pretty challenging,
so that extends the length of it further.
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. There are certain monster designs which are

(27:57):
pretty good that I really enjoyed.
I just like Samara. I like the mermaid. Type mermaid into Google and you'll see what I mean.
I don't think I will. Not generally, but type Shin Megami Tensei V Mermaid into
Google and you'll see what I mean.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to that, I guess.
An excuse to play that game again. It was pretty good. so yeah June 14 yeah,

(28:23):
Scrolling through, there's not a lot that comes out for a couple of days after
that. You've got some more Elder Scrolls Online stuff, if you're still playing that game.
Is that game still big? Yeah, it's still going.
Wild. I never would have picked it.
On June 19, you've got Mushoku Tensai Jobless Reincarnation Quest of Memories.

(28:45):
Now, let me just read the description of this, because it's pretty neat in a
very funny way. A 34-year-old virgin and a jobless shut-in.
He was run over by a truck and lost his life shortly after being kicked out
of his home on the day of his parents' funeral.
You come to me on the day of my parents' funeral?

(29:08):
When he next awoke after being killed, he found himself reincarnated as a newborn
baby in another world of sword and sorcery.
Immerse yourself in the world of the tv anime that's an anime there you go.

(29:28):
Jobless reincarnation in first person perspective you
can re-experience rudius's story by
exploring the various areas partner with characters
with distinctive personalities while developing the skill
tree freely and fight through strategic battles that will test your wits not
my wits your wits that is so if you want to play a 34 year old virgin that gets

(29:53):
deaded on his parents funeral day after being thrown out that's a goal to not be that,
it's an isekai isn't it oh i think it's
meant to be a way of finding escapism actually it
looks like it's a dungeon crawler it's a dungeon crawler
it's a wizardry i mean

(30:14):
wizardry yep i mean i'm so so in
for this now it's a wizardry yay
cool i'm up i'm always up for more wizardry
this is a little bit of a do so then i mean it's a
bit of a divergence i'm aware of that but i really hope
that with from software being bigger and bigger i hope they just fucking release

(30:35):
all of their like kingsfield and bloody shadow tower games just because it's
i think that vibe is now coming back and I'm here for it anyway I'm sorry I
just thought about that when you said dungeon crawler,
yeah that would be good I agree with you there.
June 20. What is it with the descriptions of games this month?

(30:56):
It's just everybody's gone nuts.
We've got a game called Rusted Moss. Okay.
And it's actually got good reviews on PC, so it must be coming out on,
like, console or something.
Okay. And where's the description gone? Oh, Metacritic, you're hopeless.
Ah, here we are. Humanity is on the brink of collapse and will be soon invaded by fairies.

(31:21):
Not again. In again, in a desperate bid to survive,
humans have empowered their own witches with stolen fey magic,
but all is not lost as the humans were deceived.
But all is not lost as the humans were deceived. I did read that right.

(31:41):
For one of their own is not what she seems. The fey have stolen a human baby
and replaced it with the gels, raised by unsuspecting human parents.
Fern is a challenging who's
I swear I'm reading this right Fern
is a changeling whose true loyalties have
emerged alongside a mysterious shadow named Puck she sets off on a journey to

(32:05):
return Fae to the world and end the age of men whose side will you choose human
or Fae it's a twin stick metroidvania there you go that's fun that sounds alright,
I wish it was written better, but that's fun. That sounds alright.
Twin stick shooter thingy. Cool.

(32:27):
Oh, here's something that's going to be good. I didn't realize this was coming
out so soon. On June 21, we've got Elden Ring DLC.
Yeah. There's an excuse to step back into Elden Ring.
I downloaded it again because I was getting excited. I was like,
I want to play that game. That's going to be fun and difficult.

(32:47):
For anyone as well. I want to play a game this month which is higher than a five out of ten.
I'm hoping that Trent gets back into it again and then steps through the
wrong door and ends up in hell town all over again and then.
Hates nothing better than tailored that was fun it's just
tailored i do i do like how elden ring is
like you can step like in the tutorial you can you can
accidentally step into hell realm and just

(33:10):
get stuck like the most notoriously bullshit
area in the game yeah and you just have
a quick path there from the but that's
where the youtubers has told me to grind they're like
go to the hell realm to grind and then it levels
up your character quicker maybe the
part of the journey is not to be quick but to experience it

(33:33):
oh very good alvin thank you on
june 25 we've got super monkey ball banana rumble coming
out hey oh yeah everyone likes a bit
of monkey ball i'm looking forward to this hopefully
there's a classic games in there as a classic
bring it out with your mates over kind of game yep that
everyone instantly understands and is like this is fun i like the target shooting

(33:56):
one monkey golf no no the one where you kind of roll down a ramp and then go
launching out and you've got the hand glider oh and there you're like parachute
yeah that's good that's that is the jam that is good fun,
okay so june 27 we've got a very classic visual novel which i know alan's not

(34:17):
going to be be interesting but this one is genuinely a game to get excited for
for people who like the genre.
Sukihime a cross a piece of blue grass moon is coming out this is a remake of,
an absolute classic by the same people that did faint to stay night and all those kinds of games,
type moon and yeah i'm super super super excited for this this is going to be

(34:41):
great really looking forward to that because I never played the original I know it's got a,
amazing reputation but I've never played it so yeah I'm really looking forward
to this that comes out on June 27 also on June 27 is Nintendo's game for the
month Luigi's Mansion 2 HD,
that'll be fun do people like Luigi's Mansion 2,

(35:04):
I don't know was that one of the ones people didn't,
I think that 3 is beloved love it i think i think luigi's man everyone was pretty
popular was not as well received as one that was the ds one right the 3ds one
yes i think you're right yeah,
It's cool. On June 27th. I like the freaky-ass one. It was great.

(35:27):
We've got Pocket Bravery coming out on June 27th. That is a fighting game in SD style.
So, funny, cute characters with big heads, basically. I love that.
It's based on fighting games of the 90s, so it's going to be very heavily inspired
by, you know, Street Fighter 2.
I'm waiting for them to make a more third-strike game. It actually looks pretty

(35:48):
good. It looks Pocket Bravery.
This is an original, so this is a new game. It's also been made for people that
really like their fighting games, so it's designed to be very challenging, I guess, to master.
So it's got a strong competitive scene. It is actually quite popular on Steam,
or sorry, it's been well-reviewed on Steam.

(36:10):
It's got, at time of recording, 364 reviews with a rating of 9 out of 10.
So if you've got the fighting game community on board, if they like your game,
then they're pretty notoriously hard people to please.
So a 9 out of 10 rating for a fighting game is a pretty good sign, I would think.
So that's coming out on console and stuff on June 27.

(36:31):
We've got another visual novel coming out on June 27 as well,
Iwakura Aria. I don't know. I'm going to type that in.
Iwakura Aria. This is a mage's one.
Mage has been the legends of the visual. Ooh.
This one looks nice. The art in this one is lovely.

(36:55):
Lovely as in lovely or lovely as in nice? No, no. Lovely as in very nice looking art.
Okay. Yeah. And for some reason, I think Lindsay, our news editor,
has covered it because I type it into Google and our story pops up.
I don't remember reading this. Sorry, Lindsay.

(37:16):
But apparently, we haven't covered this on digitallydownloaded.net already.
Ready and there you go so i
should read more of the website that comes out
on june 27 on june 27 we've got another visual novel radiant tale fanfare on
june 27 we've got if you want to play the classic gothic games there's a two

(37:40):
pack of them coming out in physical form they're great Gothic 1 and 2. Yeah.
Gothic 1 and 2 is a collection.
June 27, Neptunia versus Titan Dogu. That's another Neptunia game.
Don't know if that is actually, because that might be just coming out in Japan,
I think, since I don't remember that being announced for right now.

(38:06):
In the west they pump those fucking every day
don't they yeah i recently reviewed the
most recent one game maker
neptunia game maker and i did
the searching around and there's been 24 neptunia games
released in the last 10 years so 15 years how
do they 24 releases in 15

(38:28):
years that's pretty impressive right some of them
are remakes of and re-releases of the
remakes and whatever but even then i
think it's an average of one per year original game
still which is like the fifa of rpgs that's the that's an annual franchise it's

(38:48):
amazing just how that's mental yeah how rapidly they pump those out we've got
wanderer the fragments of fate coming out on June 27.
This is a remake of the award-winning critically acclaimed VR time travel adventure game Wanderer.
Not Shearing the Wanderer, just Wanderer.

(39:09):
Just Wanderer. I don't know much else about that, but if it's a VR thing,
then I'm not interested.
Okay, we've got City Skylines 2 coming out on console on June 30. Cool. Yay.
I really enjoyed City Skyline. I just haven't played it on PC because I'm more of a console gamer.
So I haven't played Cities Skylines 2 yet.

(39:32):
I am looking forward to that. I think people mostly like Cities Skylines.
I think Cities Skylines 2 has an issue on PC.
The one that makes it run like absolute crap. How does it?
Yeah, I think something like that happened. Like the performance is apparently just awful. Right.
So we'll see if it's the same on console.
Yes. Okay, so this looks fun on June 30, there's a game called Bloomtown,

(39:58):
a different story coming out.
You probably haven't heard of that because I hadn't either.
It's a RPG with turn-based combat, monster taming, and social RPG stuff set
in a seemingly pleasant 1960s Americana world.
So, you know, Stranger Things- I like this. Inspired RPG.
I typed it into the Google thing just to see what it was looking like and you

(40:23):
can apparently have a dinosaur with jetpacks biting on your side a T-Rex I like that.
And cybernetic legs I really like that Yeah, he definitely has this vibe of 60s,
It has the vibe of kind of Saturday morning cartoons and stuff going for it.

(40:44):
I'm in for that. And yeah, it looks pretty good, actually.
I am cautiously optimistic about it based on a quick Google search.
June 30, we've got some convenience store, a game of working and dating at a convenience store.
Cool. Okay. That's the thing that exists for some reason. Reason?

(41:08):
Alan's favorite game, for sure. You got me.
How did you know? On June 30 as well, we've got The Lullaby of Life.
The Lullaby of Life, you are the catalyst for change in a universe since its
beginning until the origin of life.
Explore this amazing music-driven world that combines the sound of musical notes.

(41:32):
That's a particular place for that description to finish. the sound of musical notes.
Into puzzles. Here you go. Using texturity and agility, help it to reach its
maximum splendor using the power of sound to make life bloom.
You will encounter challenges in the form of musical puzzles and characters
that will help you in your journey accompanied by cinematic moments of full

(41:56):
color and music. Color and music?
Yeah. Wow. Actually, it's pretty challenging. I'm trying really hard.
It has good reviews on PC.
It's got like 80s and 85s on PC. And this, I guess, is the console version of
it that we're talking about here.
The Lullaby of Life game.

(42:20):
Oh, yeah, this is pretty charming looking. The graphics are nice.
So there you go. That'll be a musical puzzle game thing for you.
If you like your tetrises and your phantavisions and all the rest that seems
to be where this one is pitching itself,
there you go, we've got Irem Collection Volume 3 coming out on June 30 as well

(42:41):
that's the classic developer of arcade games, Irem I don't know what's in that
collection but it's coming I remember them.
Irem are pretty good Blade I think a lot of these June 30s are placeholders.
I think a lot of these will move because there's an awful lot of games coming
out on June 30 otherwise.

(43:02):
Blade Shimmerer is a game where you play as Shin, a demon hunter who has lost
his memories and is now exploring the world together with his sword.
The transforged formed Lumia Demon Lux, so you're a demon hunter with a demon sword.
Sweet. Okay. That works. Then we've got, on June 30, Voice Love on Air,

(43:23):
which is a boys' love dating 18 sim games centered on voice recording sessions for radio drummers.
So there you go. Yep. That's a thing.
June 30. So I'm pretty sure some of these will move. June 30,
Sam and Max, The Devil's Playhouse Remastered comes out too.
Sam and Max being classic point and click adventure games. They're fun.

(43:47):
Yeah, they're pretty good.
And then we've got, that's it actually. Because then we're going to July.
The first thing of July is the next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV.
And that comes out on July 2. So, yeah, that's it.
Lots of games in June, but I guess the best way to characterize it would be
not too many big releases, eh? No, just Elden Ring.

(44:13):
Just Elden Ring is the one. That will make a lot of money.
But other than that, it's mostly smaller size stuff. Not that they will be bad games.
There's a lot of good stuff in there, I think. Just no big headline games.
I'm just like, the absence of the Sonys and Nintendos and Microsofts from next
month is pretty... Because no one bloody works at Microsoft anymore. Yeah, that's true.

(44:37):
But anyway, what are you going to play from that? I know you'll be playing Elden
Ring, Alan, but... Yeah, that's literally that.
If you picked something from that lineup, is there anything in particular?
Nothing really stands out. What's the Nintendo game for that month?
Luigi's Mansion, is it? Yes, that's the one.
That's it. Yes, I've got that pre-ordered, so I'll be playing that.

(45:00):
Cool. That's fine. What are you going to play, Matt? Apart from that cooked
one that I've already forgot the name of, because it was so cooked.
No, no, no. I'm definitely keen on Tsukihime, the visual novel,
because as a visual novel fan, and also as somebody doing that myself,
playing that would be good research, because it is an iconic classic.

(45:21):
But for fun, I'm going to pick up Super Monkey.
Music.

(47:45):
So, the biggest news of last month, probably for most people,
was the news that Microsoft, after buying a company, has decided to destroy it.
I don't know if that'd be big news for most people. It's not.
Don't give a crap, they just want the games.
But for the industry, it is definitely a huge bit of news, unfortunately.

(48:10):
It's awful. I mean not to be like obvious
because I feel like me saying people losing their jobs is awful is like
well yeah what else what other things do you have to say
but I know that we have
two devs Arcane Austin who made I
would say arguably like one of the biggest like success stories
of the PS3 360 era

(48:34):
they've been making consistent bangers except for
Redfall because that's red force something else and they've just been gone and
then you have tango gameworks uh mikami's company that he's now left that is
now just gutted even though they've released some pretty good games like high
fire rush probably the best microsoft game in a very long time.

(48:55):
And they've just killed it the thing that bothered me
was that they like one one day after
they made that announcement that they're shutting
these studios one of the executives in some
other area was talking about how they need to find
more games like hi-fi rush yeah so
you just close the studio you just close the studio that made hi-fi rush but

(49:19):
you want more games like hi-fi rush maybe don't close those studios if you want
them of course he's talking about the simpsons yeah of course they're talking
about you know wanting to acquire more studios but But to be honest,
anybody that sells their studio to Microsoft is just – it annoys me, right?
Because if you set up a studio – in theory, I don't know how these people actually think.

(49:43):
But in theory, the idea is that you set up the company and it's meant to be
like your legacy and you give a crap about it, right?
Yeah. I don't understand why these people sell their companies to Microsoft,
not just Microsoft, but also EA and –.
Embracer Group and all of those other kind of predatory capitalist companies.

(50:04):
Why would you sell your company to them knowing full well that it'll be closed for whatever reason?
But if there's even one game that's not a hit or isn't released soon enough
or whatever, your company goes on the chopping block.
Why would you sell your legacy like that and put it at risk like that?

(50:28):
If i was building a game if i was building a game developer studio i would want it to be,
stable you know i'd want it to have a future i'd want it to continue to produce games,
well past my time at it so why would you sell the com your company to one of
these ones i i don't understand that and it annoys me because it just means

(50:49):
that across the entire industry including the people that make the great games
the ones that we like there's just no.
Interest in creating something that lasts
like no and that's miserable and i'm
talking about companies like tango game works like
mikami and ninja theory because at

(51:10):
time of recording they're about to release the game oh we all know we all know
that if that game doesn't do like spectacular numbers and they're immediately
producing the next one they're going to be one that is at risk because they're
also one of the microsoft companies everybody's talking At the stage of recording,
everybody's talking about whether Ninja Theory needs to be worried about the

(51:32):
studio, and they probably should be.
But again, they sold their company to Microsoft.
So I'm as annoyed at them as I am at Microsoft for just- It is a bit of the
kick a beehive, get stung by bees, what the fuck did you expect kind of vibe.
Yeah, I just don't understand it. But these people make games,
these companies make great games that I like playing and they just don't seem

(51:56):
to respect the studio itself.
It just seems to be this thing that they create purely because they want an
exit and they want to pocket their millions and go.
It doesn't seem like there's any interest in, because all the people who are
making the games are the ones doing the art, there doesn't seem to be any interest

(52:16):
at the top at actually facilitating that. in a sustainable way.
I think after a certain point it stops being about the art. It then becomes work.
Yeah, it annoys me. That's why I have plenty of respect for.
Larian studios because they've said that they're not selling hopefully they
yeah hopefully they actually mean

(52:38):
that and it's not just a thing they said to the media but that
studio seems to genuinely care about what they're doing and
wants to back it up and continue to produce
these kinds of things into the future and another
one why they're making their own stuff now rather than keeping on
with the indie because they've they don't own anything they've made anymore more
and that's exactly and and cd project

(53:00):
red is another one they found a way of remaining independent
you know they listed on their stock exchange and that's
a huge risk for a company to do it especially by itself and while i'm not a
big fan of cyberpunk i'm certainly i respect the company for wanting to find
a way of maintaining its independence and staying you gotta respect Sustainable as a company,

(53:24):
because this idea that you build up a company and sell to one of these big publishers
is just, it's just, I don't understand.
And it happens on the media side as well. Like all these publications,
they grow to a certain size, they get sold, they sell themselves into one of the media groups.
And then the media groups just trash the legacy of that publication.

(53:49):
Like look at what's happened to destructoid or
god any any number of other
ones that have become part of the gamers group or however you pronounce it
or i wouldn't do that like if somebody was come to me and throw millions of
dollars at me and say you know so so digitally downloaded to us i just couldn't
do it because i want the website to be there for the long term and yeah there's

(54:14):
It's just the capitalism of this video game industry is horrible.
It is horrific, isn't it?
The cutthroat nature of it. I mean, again, Arkane Austin made one bad game.
It isn't about the quality of the games. That's even the gamer argument,

(54:35):
though. That's what I mean.
They made one bad game, and they don't deserve to be fucking deleted like that.
That's awful. It's definitely not about that. And that's why people are saying
everybody needs to go out and buy Hellblade 2 because otherwise Ninja Theory
is on the chopping block.
Ninja Theory is on the chopping block whether people buy Hellblade 2 or not. Aye.
The reason that Tango Gameworks and Arkane were closed down was because they

(54:59):
were that far away from producing the next game.
That was really what it was. So Microsoft decided they were going to slash a bunch of companies.
Companies the ones that are easiest to slash are the ones that are furthest
away from releasing a new product because otherwise you've got to kind of keep
them on the payroll for a long time before they'll have a new product to sell
but of course in the meantime Activision which is now part of Microsoft has

(55:23):
just announced that they've set up a new studio and.
They're creating a whole new IP and all of that kind of stuff.
So rather than keep the people employed at Tango Gameworks to make a new game,
they've just killed all those jobs and started up a new COD.
I also don't know if you heard about this as well, but the Dead Space team,

(55:47):
the remake team, were in pre-production for Dead Space 2 before they got merged into Call of Duty.
Oh, right. Were they? Yep. so they're
basically dead even though they pulled off a game
that rivals resi 4 in terms of sheer quality like
oh again it doesn't matter about the quality sales figures
quality doesn't matter these things don't matter i know but that's

(56:08):
to these people that's the point that's the point that's the
point i just i
don't know i mean we're gonna see because the thing is
the thing is the reason that
microsoft made those acquisitions was because microsoft wants to own
all this content to throw
into game pass it needed an awful lot of stuff to make

(56:31):
game pass work as a product right and so
by acquiring all of these companies they've got this stuff that is going to
be on game past into perpetuity they won't drop off when the publisher decides
to to pull it from the service or whatever and that's it that's what they cared
about they don't care about the people. They don't care about the talent.

(56:53):
They don't care about the ideas. They don't care about the art.
They don't care about anything else.
Just acquiring stuff. Just to sit on it and hold it because that's the asset that they wanted.
That's awful. And there needs to be consequences. I think that's the biggest thing.
Like over in other industries when stuff happens, when capitalism they're not

(57:15):
great by any means. The film industry is not great.
Publishing industries are not great. These are not benign industries in their own way at all either.
But when stuff happens, there are consequences in those industries.
You piss off the screenwriters enough, they all go on strike,
and then all of a sudden you've got nothing to produce.

(57:39):
That's really the difference. In the games industry, there's just no consequence.
You can't, these companies can't unionize because the industry actively fights against that.
There is nobody that, there's nothing to really stop these companies doing what they want.
Yeah. There really isn't. They can do whatever they like. And they do. Because they can.

(58:03):
Without consequence. I mean, you think about how much money they spent paying
off Bobby Kotick, like to get him out of the company.
And then you think about all the jobs they've just completely destroyed
just out of nothing and it's
like well okay there's priorities here obviously and it's
never been about actually making cool stuff there's never been about anything
i think that's been some posts which means saying that that price would be basically

(58:26):
enough to keep like all those studios still like employed for like a ridiculous
amount of years like just by like like what they paid for the
payoff for that guy so that's disgusting
it's honestly feral and the
other thing that the other thing that industry struggles with is that

(58:46):
since games have become bigger and bigger and bigger projects you know grand
theft auto five is it five we're up to six six is coming out in like next year
so that that game has been in development for such a long time and it's such
an expensive project and all that.
The way that the industry is organized is you need an awful lot of people to

(59:08):
create their game. Once that game's created, those people...
Are expensive to keep around because you're not producing another game.
So in the film industry, you're looking at a film will have a thousand people working on it, right?
But the film itself is kind of organized as a single business for one project.
Once that film is wrapped up, everybody is kind of out of a job.

(59:32):
They look to the next job.
That works in the film industry because the film industry has always been built around that.
It's not about having full-time employee people into perpetuity.
The games industry set itself up in the original days
to be just a standard kind of employment model where
you go to a company you work there and you just kind of stay there until
you find a new job or you retire that doesn't

(59:54):
work so well when the game
projects are the size that they are now you can't hire 2
000 people to work on a gta game
and then release the gta game and
then keep those 2 000 people on until you get around to making
the next project because and the industry
has been very poor at finding a way of kind of managing that

(01:00:16):
again that's this is all on the industry's fault the head they should have found
a solution for this rather than just have this cycle that they've got now well
where they buy studios they fill those studios with people they hire higher
higher higher and they hire on a kind of full-time basis as soon as the work's
finished, as soon as the game's released,

(01:00:36):
they then fire because there's no consequence to firing people.
The Japanese industry is organized a little bit differently because it is harder
to just fire people in Japan.
There's labor laws, they work slightly differently.
So because of that, the Japanese games industry is more sustainable.
People, the company only hires somebody if they expect to keep that person beyond

(01:00:59):
the scope of the one game that they've hired people for so as a result those
games don't get to be as big as gta's they don't get to be as big as assassin's
creed or whatever but the people there.
Greater stability they don't need to worry about losing their jobs after they've shipped the game.
And i think that's a better model even the in water

(01:01:19):
thing that is always brought up with this when nintendo stocks were like heavily
heavily down he took like a 50 pay cut to ensure he didn't have to fire anyone
and i think that's like you would simply not see that he didn't he i'm sure
he had like i'm sure it's he's not a bad person he wasn't a bad person and he
wanted to do the right thing by his company as well.
But it wasn't just him being generous.

(01:01:42):
It's because it would have been
very difficult for the executive team in Nintendo to just fire people.
You can't do that in Japan. It doesn't work the same way.
The labor laws make it very hard to do that. That's why Japan has some,
there are some famous examples of companies
that if they don't

(01:02:03):
need somebody what they do is they give
that person nothing to do and i
mean rich literally nothing to do the dream job because i'll
take that no but when you think about it right that mean you're under japanese
law you still have to you can be fired if you don't do your job or what you
know is kind of expected so these people have to go to work they sit there looking

(01:02:26):
in front of the computer all day having nothing to do you can't use the computer
for playing games in japan Japan,
either the networks and whatever, these office computers.
So you're literally kind of sitting there doing nothing day in,
day out, day in, day out, day in, day out until you quit because you can't handle that anymore.
That is often how they try and fire people or get people out of a company in

(01:02:50):
Japan because of the labor laws.
So when Iwata cut his salary and stuff, it was because firing people was actually
very difficult in Japan.
Oh, there you go. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting thing.
And that's why we don't have all these stories about studios in Japan just hiring

(01:03:11):
and firing, buying and getting rid of.
The times that it happens is more like Square Enix kind of dumping its overseas
assets because they're easier to get rid of. like Tomb Raider developer and
whatever, than its internal ones within Japan.
And that, like I said, that means that the Japanese games industry is smaller

(01:03:31):
in terms of its big blockbusters.
It doesn't produce as many of those as we all know.
And that's because they can't scale up as quickly as the Western industry can.
And they can't scale up because they can't then downscale afterwards.
Yeah, you can't just like pump and dump. Exactly, exactly. Exactly.
And the thing that sucks is that there would be a bunch of people in,

(01:03:54):
a bunch of gamers, that would say that the Western system is better because
they get better games as a result of it.
But I would suggest that I would be quite happy to sacrifice the GTAs of the
world if it meant, not sacrifice completely, just downscale the vision of what
is created through those games.
It doesn't need to be the size of a fucking-

(01:04:16):
Four games. Yeah, exactly. I don't think we need $500 million games.
I would rather have games that cost $50 million to make, and these people not
have to worry about their jobs after they've finished work on it. Exactly.
I mean, my favourite games have been games that are avoiding that sort of vibe.

(01:04:40):
I mean, not to again be like Baldur's Gate 3 is amazing,
amazing but it is and the way that
larian has dealt with it making sure like that you
know everyone is getting the correct amount of time
and respect and the way that they're actually being really active about
the way the company is run i think that's fantastic and i'd like more transparency

(01:05:00):
with that because it means i can then look at things and say i don't want to
buy this because this sucks and obviously at the end of the day i know i'm just
one person who's not gonna buy like a video game they don't give a shit about
me and that's fine but it's my little,
my little part of my soul that goes this sucks and i hate it and i want to do
a little thing about it but you know what's the well there is there a way we can push back against it.

(01:05:28):
Well that's the thing we don't we can't yeah i mean they always say vote with
your wallet and just don't buy the games and all of that.
I guess we do do that. I personally don't buy anything from Activision because
of the company that it is.
And that does mean that I go without some things.

(01:05:51):
Like, a good example is Diablo. I don't mind Diablo as a game series,
but I haven't played the most recent one because I just, that's my limit, really.
But the thing is people who do buy it.
There's kind of nothing wrong with that because you're not supporting the company

(01:06:12):
either because what you're actually contributing to the company is effectively nothing.
The buying power of an individual person is irrelevant.
It doesn't matter if one person decides to give Blizzard 80 bucks or whatever or not.
It's not even a drop in the ocean. It's just really nothing.
Figure so unless you're able to organize a mass boycott of something you there

(01:06:38):
there is nothing that we can do as individuals and that's of course part of
the point of capitalism yeah that's why.
It works because the companies know they can
do whatever they want and there's just
nothing that can be done about it i mean look at a harry potter
that one is a great example of very organized
campaign to try and punish it for being

(01:07:00):
harry potter it didn't matter uh and
it didn't matter it sold well really really well it just
it doesn't matter there's nothing we can do
we can even if we try and organize that we just can't do anything at the end
of the day the only time the only time i've seen it work is is what happened

(01:07:21):
with hell divers and yeah that was wild That one worked,
but we're talking literally the entire planet decided to dump the game.
And it was encouraged by the community manager.
Yeah. So, and I guess we have seen some isolated instances, like we managed as a community,

(01:07:46):
we managed to get companies like Ubisoft to step back on NFTs for now,
because people just flipped out completely when they experimented with those. Yeah.
But we're talking about just such a massive scale of things.
And ultimately, people are not going to really go without on a massive scale to punish a company.

(01:08:12):
There's just no way that a large enough number of people would boycott a Diablo
and go without Diablo for Blizzard to pay attention. Yeah.
That's a different kind of level. even even overwatch like a game that everyone
was like really sucks it's we should like be against it still like people playing

(01:08:33):
that fucking game i'm still playing that game and it's embarrassing,
there's a great screenshot oh the modern warfare 2 one yeah there was a great
there's a great screenshot out there you you can find it easy enough by googling
it for people listening where uh they somebody set up set up a steam group to
boycott modern warfare 2 and then all the players'

(01:08:57):
public activity in that group was playing Modern Warfare 2.
So, yeah, that's a pretty good summation of just how difficult it is to organise
a movement to get something done about video games that we don't like.
And the other thing is, of course, all of this stuff we've been talking about,

(01:09:17):
we've been talking largely about the personal impact.
So Helldivers 2, the reason the campaign against that was was so effective was
because the people playing the game were the ones being affected,
so it organizing the movement to do something about that was
easier when it comes to shutting down studios studios the
impact on the individual like me i'm not affected personally by ninja theory

(01:09:38):
being shut down so yeah there's a there's a difference there like there's not
without that element of self-interest other than i want more ninja theory games
but other than that the kind element of self-interest,
there's no motivation for consumers to do something about what's happening to video game studios.
Yeah, that's probably the issue of just individualism in general.

(01:10:02):
Yeah, it's another capitalism thing. Yeah, everything is capitalism.
Yeah, the fundamental reason
that capitalism works and crushes any efforts to push
back against it is because it just understands that
people are motivated by self-interest first and foremost so companies
can can manipulate that for their benefit yeah yeah people go away for a bit

(01:10:28):
and then like you know people will start complaining oh where's this game i
want and then all of a sudden we're back again it'll be a different studio and
it'll be like yes i've got my content who cares yeah it'll be a different studio
with one of the people on the team who made it.
Was a junior programmer. Yeah. Yeah.
There's an example of that, I think. Back to blood. Back to blood, whatever it's called.

(01:10:52):
Is it the Sony studio that's doing it? Or is it Microsoft?
Can't remember. But there was, I think it's a Sony studio.
There was a company that was set up a couple of years ago.
This happened around the same time as Microsoft, so it was doing all of its
announcements, so I think it kind of got lost.
But there was a company that was set up to produce a new IP.

(01:11:13):
It had veterans from Activision and all of that creative, you know,
the really top creative people.
And it was going to produce a new AAA thing or whatever.
Sony bought that company three years later without actually having revealed what the game was.
Sony's announced that they're closing that studio. But what they've done is
they've taken the kind of couple of key people from that studio and set up yet another studio.

(01:11:35):
So all the other people in the studio have lost their jobs. they've
kept the kind of the the creative people to start again effectively and i think
what happened there was the game was in a state that was probably unsalvageable
like it was just there was no way
that they could get that game to to to release and rather than scrap it,

(01:11:57):
start again within that studio that's the figured out a cheaper way to do that
would just be to set set up a new studio and sack a bunch of people by closing down the previous one.
It's so miserable. And it's just so transparent what they do and then just get
away with it over and over again.
Yeah. I mean, it's also the same vibe of like the, the movie,

(01:12:19):
like Warner Brothers just writing a movie off on tax and deleting it.
It's got that same sort of energy. Exactly. And that's, again,
that's a really good example of just how, oh, that studio was Deviation,
by the way. I found out it was a Sony studio.
Yeah, but that's a good example of that. The arts kind of loses out.
We all, not that I think that the Warner Brothers films would have been particularly

(01:12:42):
great works of art, but as a concept, it means that we lose all that work.
All those man hours that went into making that film just get lost and scrapped
because the commercial interest is stronger to just dump it than actually go
through the expensive releasing it, marketing it, and all that kind of stuff.

(01:13:03):
And it's again the thing is with the wanda brothers
uh situation is there were actual buyers which were like oh we'd buy this like
netflix wanted to buy it and it would have been more than what they would have
got with a tax write-off and it's like nope we're gonna get rid of it still
it's just like fucking miserable but there's a special place in hell for all

(01:13:23):
these these people, you know what I mean?
Unfortunately not, because again, capitalism, they win.
They've won. Yeah.
Short of our little Marxist revolution, um, they're, they're just the winners.
We're all the winners. Just a little one.
Just to show who's replied to revolution. Yeah.
Music.

(01:15:28):
Okay, so this news is going to be a little bit late by the time the podcast
comes out, but it is current as we record this, and we did want to talk about
it because it is pretty interesting and also worth talking about.
Two days before this podcast, Ubisoft put out their first really big trailer,
I think. Was it the reveal trailer?

(01:15:50):
Yeah, it was the reveal trailer. Yeah, it was. I mean, we already knew the game was coming.
We already knew what it was roughly about but they've finally actually given
us some material about it and it's the
assassin's creed set in japan what's it called for
silence or something like that yeah whatever
it's called it's i don't care assassin's creed

(01:16:10):
stabbing again yeah that one so that
one's set in japan right and we now
know that we already knew this the main
character is yes yasuke who was real japanese it's
called shadows shadows there you go so yasuke is
the main character there's also a secondary character which is a
female ninja and they're going

(01:16:32):
to go around doing stuff in japan around the sengoku era which was the warring
states period same period that samurai warriors kind of covers and also neo
yeah basically neo and samurai warriors and all of that and now also Or so,
this Assassin's Creed game.

(01:16:54):
Unfortunately, a bunch of people were not happy about this at all.
And not for the reasons that you would hope people would be annoyed with Ubisoft,
i.e. Ubisoft being Ubisoft.
But people are annoyed that the protagonist, Yasuke, is black.
Because that's what he was historically.
Surprisingly enough. For people who don't know much about that era of history,

(01:17:18):
Yasuke was an African child soldier that was captured when he was prairie,
and he was pushed into service. He was a slave for the...
Portuguese. Yeah, Portuguese, yeah. What to say? Portuguese Jesuits?
He was a Portuguese slave, yeah.
Priests. So they were the only ones that were allowed in Japan at the time,

(01:17:41):
and one of them, a very high-ranking one, had Yasuke as a bodyguard.
So he accompanied Yasuke, accompanied this guy to Japan, and they met with Nobunaga
Oda, who was the – essentially he was the de facto leader of Japan at that time.
He was certainly the most powerful warlord, and he was very
close to effectively unifying the entirety of

(01:18:03):
japan there were a couple of holdouts but he was very much on the on the way
and to becoming sure he was the big dog he was he was the one that you did not
want to run into on the battlefield basically anyway he was he was pretty progressive
guy he was the lubu of japan yeah he was the lubu of japan he was he had a pretty
fierce in reputation like these days he he was

(01:18:24):
called the demon and he had
a sinister reputation in the arts and and that
kind of follows through in a lot of games he's kind of presented as darth vader
the most evil man in the world yeah like literally this sport of satan but he
was actually a lot of that reputation came from the simple fact that he was
he was pretty brutal like he he did some things that were less than nice but

(01:18:47):
he was also effectively over the conqueror and the people that were being conquered did not like that.
So they tended to portray him pretty poorly.
In reality, he was actually a pretty progressive guy.
He was very much about international trade. He was very interested in talking to the Portuguese.
He embraced freedom of religion, believe it or not.

(01:19:10):
He was one of the ones that didn't persecute the Christians when they came through.
And at that time, that was a pretty progressive thing to do.
And he was very kind of forward-thinking in terms of distributing wealth to
the people, his people, his community,
not just hoarding it within the samurai caste.

(01:19:31):
And what this is leading to is he met with Yasuke and found him absolutely fascinating
because not too many black people in Japan at the time.
So he actually arranged to have – this sounds horrible, but slavery and all
that. But he arranged to have ownership of Yasuke transferred to him.

(01:19:52):
Once Yasuke became part of his household as such, he actually made him a page,
which was effectively- It was a fast track to samurai. Yeah.
You weren't a samurai yet when you were a page, but you were definitely going
to be a samurai is the thing. It was a very kind of high-level prestigious position,

(01:20:15):
and he was no longer a slave. He was actually-
As such. And he was very- Nobunaga was a big fan of the guy.
He gave him attendance, and he was given freedom to kind of wander around,
and he was quite well-liked by the people and stuff.
He was also built like a brick shithouse from all historical- Oh, he was giant.
Like, he was a full head and shoulders taller than everybody else around him.

(01:20:37):
He was also, as a child soldier, he was also built like a warrior.
A brick shithouse. And yeah, he was certainly the guy that the samurai would
not want to run into on the battlefield, simply because he was just
you know so much bigger he was a giant to them
and yeah unfortunately all of
that story came to a close pretty soon after because nobunaga

(01:20:58):
got cooed and killed and yasuke kind of disappeared after that because he wasn't
yet a samurai effectively so we don't really know what happened to him after
that the history's kind of which is why he's kind of a perfect character anyway
assassin's creed game the the long yeah exactly he's a he's a fascinating character
he He had an amazing history that we know of,
and then his end is open,

(01:21:21):
which is great for video game developers because it gives them something to work with.
So, yeah, he's the character. And this last week, we've seen just the most obnoxious
debates on the internet about the guy.
It all started because a bunch of people decided to use Wikipedia like they
were experts in history and started saying, well, he's not a samurai and whatever.

(01:21:44):
Historically, that is inaccurate. People who are not historians. Yeah, yeah.
People who just don't understand history and are bad faith actors.
You know, they just don't like the black guy. So, they're looking for reasons to criticize him.
And they're saying, yeah, he was a retainer. Retainers were samurai.
And he wasn't a samurai. They're trying to discredit Ubisoft for using them as a character.

(01:22:07):
And they're using historical arguments that don't back up.
Just actually false arguments. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then the other side of
that is the second character in that is the female ninja.
They're also not happy about that because, you know, just women.
Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, well, women didn't fight in battlefields and such and such and such.

(01:22:29):
The historic reality is that there were a lot of female ninjas back at the time.
They had a name and everything. They were called Kunoichi.
And there were some warlords that really specialized in using them as spies and whatnot.
Not so that is also historically
accurate to have a female ninja in that
time so ubisoft being ubisoft the

(01:22:52):
one thing they generally get right is the historical research i
mean that's the reason that i can have continued to play assassin's creed games
all this time is because as historical fiction they kind of work i know and
they obviously have fantasy elements in them and aliens and golden apples and
all kinds of other i was gonna say in this series but but you know as.

(01:23:14):
Could we call it historical fantasy they they do blend
a lot of really good quality history into them
and that's why there have been various efforts through
the years to kind of strip the combat out and whatever
and actually use them as kind of a historical resource for
teachers and stuff as well and i
think based on what i've seen so far of this assassin's

(01:23:36):
creed they've done that with this one too so yeah
i'm very much looking forward to it i think yasuke is a fascinating character he's
going to be it's going to be an interesting game i think
i think what really gets me about it right
and this is just me
being pedantic and annoying
but where was this crowd when they had a welsh guy in the caribbean oh i was

(01:24:01):
there there's all like where was where were they i i do remember there were
some people that were like assassin
creed liberation was the worst Most of them, for arbitrary reasons,
really what they were talking about is Black Woman as the protagonist there.
But yeah, you're right.
People have been pretty comfortable overall with accepting Assassin's Creed

(01:24:24):
games doing weird things with history as long as it's been.
Why were they complaining about Ezio being in fucking Constantinople?
Yeah. But for me, it's more, where were these exact same people when Koei Tecmo
made a game with the white samurai?

(01:24:44):
Because a lot of these gamers, the fundamental point they're trying to make,
doing a terrible job of it, but the fundamental point they're trying to make
is they're making a game about Japan.
The protagonist should be Japanese.
They're trying to sound progressive in what they're saying, you know,
diversity and all that kind of stuff.
But they were all quite accepting of the white samurai, also a historical figure

(01:25:11):
and an interesting character himself.
They were quite accepting of that when Corey Techno made Nioh.
So, yeah, that's nonsense. And there are plenty of other games,
of course, set in similar eras or other times in Japan where you can play as
a Japanese samurai in Japan.
Rise of the Ronin was just released a couple of months ago.

(01:25:33):
Ghost of Tsushima was released ages and ages ago, but now, but you can certainly still play it.
So, they've done that. Those are all there. I don't understand why people would
be unhappy with a different character.
They've got all these other games with Japanese samurai fine.
It was great to have the white samurai as a character in a game.

(01:25:54):
It's great to have the black samurai.
There's one black samurai in all of Japanese history. He's a fundamentally interesting
person as a result of that.
Why not have a game about him? I don't understand why people would resist it
on that basis. They're like, no.
But again, it's not. I mean, this is just the argument debate.
Really, they just don't like the black guy. They don't like the black guy.

(01:26:16):
That's really the underlying reason.
It's a shame because like again what you're saying it's
a cool character it's a great idea there's
a great book i think it is just called
the african samurai or something it was
released maybe nine or ten years ago now and it
tells his story as far as is possible with

(01:26:38):
the historical records that we have and it's a just a
fascinating story like he's a he's a
great persona within in history and anything
that kind of continues or to makes people
aware of his story is a fundamentally good thing what gets
me as well is that i was because i looked on
japanese twitter to see what the vibe was from japan

(01:26:59):
oh they love every single tweet was just like hell yeah yes
yeah no they love him he's he's a very popular character because
he's cool as hell yeah he's in every single
anime and manga like he's a character in
half like japanese media because they weren't
every samurai exists there really weren't
many foreign samurai i mean to become a samurai firstly

(01:27:21):
because japan was shut off through most of this anyway so
it was very hard to to even kind of have interactions with
the japanese and secondly we are talking about the noble class that's the samurai
with like the equivalent of knights and lords and kings and whatever and so
it was very difficult as a foreigner to become a samurai it didn't happen very

(01:27:42):
often at all every single foreign samurai is fundamentally interesting because of that.
And the Japanese love them all. William Adams, the white samurai.
Is an enormously popular character as well.
And Yasuke is cool. He's popular. People like him.
He's a pop culture icon in Japan these days. So, yeah.

(01:28:05):
I don't know what they aim to do.
I genuinely don't. I don't understand what this argument is going to achieve
by saying, oh, they shouldn't have this cultural figure stone as the main character
of Assassin's Creed game.
The last one was about a viking in

(01:28:27):
britain were you pissed off about that that we weren't
playing as an english person like there is
so much about it that is so bad faith that it's just like you're not i mean
the last one was actually a middle eastern guy in baghdad i forgot that that
existed that's a really good one i really like that one that was a great game
i really really liked the character

(01:28:48):
too mirage has got me right back into assassin's creed it's like smaller
isn't it oh much smaller yeah that's why i liked it that's so much more appropriate
yeah this one's a big one unfortunately so it's going to be a hundred hour you know,
sacrificial life to it kind of thing but i
am going to play it because obviously interested in japanese history and yeah

(01:29:10):
again ubisoft does for all its faults ubisoft does do a decent job of researching
the history and making sure that they're doing a they're accurately deliberately
portraying the historical elements of their games.
Yeah, I just wish their games were better sometimes.
Without trying to create too much controversy on the podcast,

(01:29:30):
I am expecting that this one will be better on the history side of things and
the cultural respect side of things than Ghost of Tsushima was.
Because as I've said to my great detriment often enough, the problem I had with
Ghost of Tsushima was it was basically a white guy's fantasy about what Japan is.

(01:29:51):
And they just threw every single... It was like they came up with a checklist
of the most Japanese medieval things I could think of.
And they just systematically worked through and made sure that they...
Matt, you're hating on the cherry blossoms. Yeah.
They did have cherry blossoms, Matt. They did have cherry blossoms.
The one that always got me was the haiku poetry recitals while you're buck naked in a hot spring.

(01:30:17):
And they were never about nature? It was just so over the top and ridiculous.
Yeah, okay, hot springs exist, but the romanticism about how they were portrayed
and just, it was just so white guy fantasy.
See and that you can hop off you can like hop off that dick it's fine you can just like it normally.

(01:30:44):
Yeah exactly exactly that's exactly it and
i think that this one despite being made
by a western studio will be better on
that because again the ubisoft actually
does this like the one they said in egypt origin
origin origins was pretty good for that origins
was pretty good for being a pretty authentic take on

(01:31:06):
on ancient egypt and the assassin's creeds are set in the middle east do do
a decent job of that mirage is a really good example of that and over in america
the though the the assassin's creed games did a pretty good job of of highlighting you know,
revolutionary america in assassin's creed 3 and so on and so forth so i i do

(01:31:29):
think that they'll probably be a little bit more grounded this this assassin's
creed will be a little bit more grounded than Ghost of Tsushima was,
it wouldn't be such white guy fantasy.
It'll still have bullshit stuff about how space is coming down to destroy us
from aliens. Yeah, it's still going to have all the alien space.
It'll still be absolute piss. Annoying.
It'll still have all of that Assassin's Creed stuff, and that's fine.

(01:31:51):
But the way that the setting itself will be pretty...
It'll be done with a groundedness, which I think will be good.
That's why I like Rise of the Ronin, because it was made...
Because it was made by Japanese people. It doesn't have the kind of the the goggles.

(01:32:12):
It goes to shishimaki that was a much more grounded yeah kind of open world adventure so,
yeah it's fair i just really with any
luck with any luck some of these people that are just having the gut reaction
against yasuke hopefully some of them go and actually learn something about
him because you have so much more hope for these people than me because i want

(01:32:33):
them all just like to perish just die no i mean some some of the bad actors
obviously never going to learn but i do
hope that some of them are just not aware that he was
a real figure and now being made aware of that
they go and learn something about him because anything that
teaches people things is a good thing and that would be a
positive outcome from all this yeah again i think you're thinking a lot of these

(01:32:57):
people because the amount of takes i've seen that are just like why black guy
i want to play asian why aren't we getting asian representation and it's like
what have you ever given a shit about that.
Well, I mean, again, to look at, compared to Neo, there was actually some mumblings
about why they would whitewash a Japanese story.

(01:33:20):
This was before Neo was released. This was just like at the very start when
it was just kind of announced and people didn't really know who William Adams was.
And there was, it wasn't anywhere near as kind of loud or obnoxious as the response
to Assassin's Creed, but it was certainly, there were, there were some comments about it.
And then the game came out, people realised it was a good game,

(01:33:42):
and learned something about William Adams, and then those kind of comments went
away. I learned about William Adams because of Neo.
I actually didn't realise there was a white samurai before I'd played that game,
and then I played it, and then I started to read books about the guy,
and I went to his kind of memorial in Japan, and I've become a big-time fan

(01:34:03):
of him ever since. sense.
So these things, video games can have a learning outcome.
And I do hope that at least some people learn a little bit about Yasuke as a result of this game.
Music.

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