All Episodes

August 19, 2025 60 mins
Brad has fully immersed himself in Cities: Skylines, but now he faces a big question—stick with the beloved original or make the leap to Cities: Skylines II, which is currently plagued with technical and performance issues. We dive into a troubling new report on Microsoft, which details the company’s role in supplying Israeli intelligence with cloud computing services. Despite public statements, the report alleges Microsoft knows exactly how its technology is being used. Internal pressure is also mounting, as an Arkane Studios union publicly criticized Microsoft’s cooperation with Israel. Nexon finds itself in controversy after The First Descendant ad campaign was caught using the likenesses of several streamers without their permission, sparking backlash across the gaming community. Finally, we look at Sony’s latest statements regarding Marathon, which suggest the highly anticipated game may be rushed to release.
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
What is up? Everybody? Welcome to this week's episode of
the Dents Fixes podcast Someone ros Brad joined by my
coast Carrie.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
What's up?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
You know?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Even though we took a week off, there's not two
weeks worth of news, I would say, but the stories
that are there are pretty big stories. Yeah, pretty big stories,
which we'll get to later in the show. We also
have a tidy post office edition this week as well,
which we'll also get to later. Let's take care of

(00:42):
the housekeeping first, though. Don't forget to join our discord
at dnspixes dot com slash fans, where you can talk
to us and chat with other listeners of the show
as well. There's always some fun conversations happening in there.
Of course, you can also follow the podcast both on
you at YouTube dot com slash dense Pixels, but also

(01:03):
wherever pods are caught. All you have to do is
go to your podcast Apple choice, search for TNP Studios
and you will find us. They are Apocalypse Black and
Black Cinema and look Forward. And if you'd like to
support us with zeal Good at denspixels dot com slash
Premium just five dollars a month. Help support the independent

(01:23):
media that you love. So I've only really been playing
one new game this week because I beat I beat Bonanza,
which I think I mentioned on the last the last
time we recorded, And I'm going through the postgame in that.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Okay, you think like the finale of that game, like, oh,
like the end of the main part.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, it was a cool surprise. I'm glad that that
wasn't spoiled for those that aren't aware. I'm not gonna
spoil it here if you, you know, if you care
about such things, that you can find out what happens
at the end of dot Com Gananza. But it was
kind of at a left field but a very cool
thing for Nintendo to do. And I think I mentioned

(02:06):
this last time I recorded too, Like I actually did
the last boss fight wrong, Like it's probably three times
as long as it needed to because I wasn't engaging
with the mechanics in the boss fight because I didn't
realize that you could punch back some of the larger
Oh yeah, so I was just dodging.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
Really tricky though, like even even with like punching those
things back at back at him, it does it does
still take a while.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
So yeah, but no, but it was it was fun.
The last two like worlds or zones were really neat.
I thought the way that they kind of had those
laid out, even though they put an unfortunate, uh soft
lock in the second to last area where you needed
a certain amount of gold. Oh yeah, and I was

(02:57):
I had spent a bunch leading up to that, so.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Like I was, what's the thing.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
I was able to get past a lot of that
just by using certain bonanza modes to get to the
kind of next area.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Oh that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
So it's one of these things of like.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
You do but you don't, you can actually get past
some of those soft blocks.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Well, I will say, if you leverage the right forms,
I will say, and I wish I thought of this,
but I thought about it after the fact. If you
get to that part, and you'll know it because like
I said, a certain character will say, hey, like you
need x amount of goal to be able to move forward,
and you might not have it check your smashing stats
because I forgot that you get like gold bonuses from
achieving those, and like it's not something you're checking all

(03:40):
the time. So if you have a lot of bonuses
piled up, you might get several thousand just from popping
in there and looking at that as well, so great game,
la I said, it's gonna be right up there at
the end of the year. It's gonna be pretty tough
choice for me between that Expedition thirty three and who
knows what else may still come out of for the

(04:00):
end of the year. But I played so much Donkey
Kong in such a compressed amount of time that I
had to take a little break. And I have once
again fucked myself by finding a game that caters to
things that I like. That is a massive time suck

(04:22):
that now I really enjoy playing this massive time suck game.
So so funny, funny story. Obviously, I would imagine most
people listening, if not everybody listening, is at least familiar
with the sim City franchise, kind of the og originator
of management games, obviously city building games. It was kind

(04:43):
of the the pioneer for that back in the day.
It was kind of the name in that space, incredibly
popular on top of the world. And then because EA
did EA things after they bought Maxis Entertainment, who were
the developers of the sim City franchise.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, got SimCity twenty thirteen.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, Some City twenty thirteen, the reboot a famously fumbled
the bad, yeah, very badly by requiring online in a
single player game, and then the on lomsday the servers
couldn't handle the load, so basically players couldn't play the
game for the first two days. And also the game
just wasn't an evolution of the franchise that the fans

(05:28):
wanted because there was a ten year gap between sim
City four and then the sim City the twenty thirteen SimCity.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, it was like a soft reboot, right right.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah, But weirdly enough, this small city building game from
a studio called Colossal Order was there was just nicely
positioned to kind of pick up the ball. And with
City Skylines, which came out in twenty fifteen, that kind
of became like the de facto city builder game, kind
of taking Sim City's crowded and City Skyline is great.

(06:00):
Is a great game that was supported for eight years
with expansions. It's it's published by Paradox Interactive. Those that
are familiar with Paradox Games know that you know, they
put like like the amount of expansions they put out
for Paradox Games will put like the sims to shame,
and that's like every Paradox game gets that level of support,

(06:20):
especially if it's one of the big ones, which City
Skylon certainly was. And then ironically into late twenty twenty three,
Colossal Order released City Skylon's two, which itself has been
kind of a fucking boondoggle.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, kind of like pretty pretty mid reviews. I would say,
like six and sevens out of ten.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
And still this to this day, like eighteen months on,
they still haven't released a major expansion pack for the game.
There's lots of technical issues with the game.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
There is supposed to be like a PlayStation in X release. Yeah,
those got canceled, not.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Canceled, but just indefinitely postponed.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
So let's be real here.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
They will, they will put it out on their adventure,
but it's just it should have happened by now. So
I've been interested to check out City Skylines, but like,
I'm like, do I want to play this game, like
City Skyland's one that is not going to be supported
with new content, but there's a whole lot of shit there,
and but it's the older version, or I want to

(07:26):
kind of wade into the morass of City Skylines too,
even though it's kind of been a weird state right now.
And then City Skyland's one went on sale for like
ten bucks. I'm like, all right, fine, like you know,
we'll pay ten dollars, we'll give this a role. And
it's fucking great. It's fucking awesome. It is so fun
to just kind of plan out your little city and

(07:47):
build your you know, your road networks, and it does
the sim city thing where it's like like there's certain
buildings that you do place specifically, like special buildings, but
for the most part, like instead of placing down like
homes and residences, like you just zone certain areas for
them and they automatically pop up as people move into
your to your city, and you know, throughout the game,

(08:09):
like there's little milestones that you hit that will unlock
new mechanics. That way, they're not overwhelming you with everything
right out of the gate. And as you grow your
city larger, you get access to more and more of
the game, and you can buy more and more of
the map to kind of expand it out and to
make a you know, take your bustling you know, like

(08:30):
two road, one stop signed town that you start the
game with until like a big metropolis over over a
number of hours, and it's it's very fun, Like, it's
very it's it's obvious why this game kind of took
the crown and even the first one, like obviously like
playing a game that has you know, eight years worth
of patches and refinements and you know, additions to even

(08:53):
the Vanilla experience and stuff like that is kind of
a good place to be in terms of that because
you know, you don't don't have to wade through you know,
potential bugs and glitches, and there's a ton of you know,
guides and help out there on the internet for people
that have played this game for a long time. There's
a shitload of mods that are available, both from like

(09:14):
a content and a quality of life standpoint to kind
of smooth out some of the the rougher edges that
are in the game, which is also pretty nifty. So yeah,
I found another game that I'm gonna dump you know,
dozens and dozens and maybe hundreds of hours into at
some point. But now, like I'm kind of in between,

(09:36):
like do I want to invest into City Skylines one
or do I want to just hold with Vanilla and
wait until to you know, gets its act together, which
hopefully should be I would hope soon because it's, for
fuck's sake, it's been eighteen months since the game came out.
But like every time I see something from those deads,
it's like they're holding on for fucking dear life right now,

(09:58):
trying to keep game, you know, from falling down as
they're trying to build this uff up around It's it's
it's it's just wild how again, Like they have this
blueprint of success and somehow manage to boon Dog, and
you know, part of that is, like, it's the it's
the difficulty of releasing like a Destiny three, right, Like

(10:21):
a lot of people are just like, hey, after eight
years of Destiny too, how can you basically like like,
how can you make everyone start back from square one again?

Speaker 4 (10:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (10:32):
They have all this stuff and all this content, and
they have all their weapons and armor and loot that
they've gotten and all these things, and you're just gonna
kind of take it back to zero again. And some
people like that, but a lot of people that have
been like, well, why would I switch over to this
new game where I'm starting from nothing when I have
this other game here that all my shit is here,
so I don't have to worry about that, And that's

(10:54):
how like City Skylines was such a well supported release
that there were a lot of people that it felt
jarring to go from the original with all this content
to two, which which has like just the bare necessities
again without a lot of the things that that one
has as well, So that's that's also a difficulty for
that as well. But City Skyline is great. Apparently the

(11:16):
console edition is also pretty good if you're interested in
checking that out, but the original one it's still probably
the way to go with this until two becomes the
game that people kind of wanted to be, and who
knows how long that'll take, so we'll see. They're supposed
to be releasing the first expansion later this year. It

(11:36):
was supposed to come out late last year, but alas
they are still trying to build the playing while it's
flying as the old as the old adage goes.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
So I have not really played anything new because I
had mag West a couple of weeks ago, so I
was in prep for that. That was super fun time
both my bands played, and then for basically the last
week and a half, I've been in crunch mode on

(12:06):
a game. So now I've brought this up before, but
my partner Ian and I are contributing music to an
upcoming indie game called Toho Farming Mino Rico's Homestead Harvest,
which is a It is a Toho fan game, So

(12:27):
if you're familiar with Toho just been around for a
long long time. The creator of Toho Zoon almost treats
the property as open source, where as long as you
are operating within guidelines that he puts out, you are
allowed to make fan content and monetize it.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
So this is a Toho flavored Stardew Valley. Essentially.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
There's a lot going on in this game, a lot
of fun different mini games. I've really enjoyed the previews of,
like the mining mini game that's in there and whatnot.
But we've got at nine completely finished tracks for the game,
including a lot of the seasonal themes and then stuff
that you'll hear kind of in conversations with different characters

(13:11):
and some of the shop themes.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
We are also doing the title theme, which is really exciting.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
So yeah, it is again Toho Farming Mino Rico's Homestead Harvest.
It is being put out by Studio Hexi, which is
a one man dev team. Early access on Steam starts
on September fifth. There'll be a little bit of playtest
before that, but it does enter early access at that

(13:40):
point and then I believe the game's only supposed to.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Cost like ten bucks, So please please head on Steam
and wish list the game. If you like Toho, there's
going to be an.

Speaker 4 (13:52):
Adventure mode that has the bullet Hell stuff that you
know and love from the mainline Toho franchise, and if
you're just in it for cozy farm time, and there's
a lot of that. So I'm looking forward to play
testing this myself. It feels very surreal to know that,
like I'm going to be able to play a game
that my music is in, so that's that's pretty exciting.

(14:15):
So we will be continuing to add music and whatnot
during the early access period as well, just because it's
a lot of music that needs to be done and
there's has only been so much time, not just for us,
but for the other two musicians who are contributing to
the soundtrack. So by the time the full game is

(14:38):
done and rolled out, you know, the soundtrack will be complete,
of course, but there is a lot of byscore Toho
rearrangements in the early access version as well, So please
please wish list the game, please buy it when it's
out in early access. This is very much a labor
of love for pretty much everybody involved. I'm a longtime

(15:03):
Toho fan and a longtime Farming SIM fan, so this
has been a really nice, like you know, crossing of
two of my primary gaming food groups basically. So yeah,
that's that's really all I've been working on. I've been
playing a little bit of the Rhydo HD.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
That I talked about a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
Outside of that, but really it's just been kind of
crunch mode on getting all this music done for the game.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
That's very cool. So yeah, look out for that on
on Steam for upc theaters. Is available on Itch as
well or just Steam right now.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
I believe it's just Steam currently. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
All right, well let's get into the news then. Like
I said, not a lot of stories this week, but
the stories that we do have are kind of substantial.
Something we haven't really talked about on this show too
terribly much, just through ignorance actually a little bit, is
the fact that Microsoft is one of the companies that

(16:05):
the BDS movement has targeted in recent months. For those
that aren't aware of the BDS movement stands for boycott
divens but in sanctions. It's a movement that seeks to
kind of put curbs on Israeli like overreach and things
that their government does by boycotting companies who support them

(16:29):
with services and things of that nature as well. So,
obviously Israel and Gaza have been locked in conflict for
the past almost two years now at this point. Ye
I was going to say eighteen months, but it's been
actually a bit longer than that, with obviously a lot
of a lot of really bad shit happening, especially on

(16:50):
the Israeli side of the equation, with a lot of
wholesale killing of women and children in the conflict, leveling
of blocks and districts, and just kind of indiscriminate bobbing
campaigns and things.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
That sixty sixty thousand people have been killed in the
Israeli genocide against Palestine, including eighteen thousand children.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
So we talked about it look forward quite a bit
for those of you that listen to both shows, So
will not be new news there, But the reason that
Microsoft has landed in kind of the hot seat here
as far as this goes, is because they supply the
Israeli military with their Azure cloud computing system, which is

(17:35):
something in the Israel intelligence have been using for quite
some time. And this has been going on since twenty
twenty one where basically Satian Adel's is Microsoft CEO met
with Yosi Saril, who used to lead the Military Surveillance
Agency of Israel, and basically Microsoft from that point forward

(17:58):
created like a custom sub segment of Azure specifically for
the Israeli military to use. Now, Microsoft's kind of stance
on this whole thing has been like, you know, we
provide technology to a lot of governments and a lot
of you know, other areas and stuff like that, and look,

(18:19):
we're just providing the technology. We don't know what they
do with it, We don't know what goes on with it,
but we we're just providing a service, just like we
would with you know, with anybody else. And an article
report actually that came from an Israeli Palacinian publication called
nine to seventeen magazine and a Hebrew language outlet called

(18:40):
The Local Call have actually kind of outlined more specifics
about the sort of things that the Israeli military has
done with Microsoft's tools and also Microsoft's knowledge of that essentially,
and some of the things that they would do is
like they'd use the system to examine calls that were

(19:02):
made near a specific target. Also data that Microsoft has
helped them compiles been used to blackmail people, detain them,
or justify killing after the fact. And this even precludes
the current war that's going on. It started in late
twenty twenty three. And the thing that kind of underscores

(19:27):
or Microsoft's, you know, really poor excuse of like hey,
like we're you know, we're just we're just providing the tools,
like it's we're not dictating what's going on, is that
the tools they're providing have been like kind of custom
built to the exact specifications that the Israelian military sort

(19:50):
of needs in order to carry out some of these operations.
And that's and you come to find out that a
lot of the people that Microsoft has hired to work
on this specific project that work for Microsoft are former
members of the Masade, which is the Israeli special forces,
who are basically there to make sure that the system

(20:11):
is designed in the specific ways that are needed to
make it the most effective for the Israeli military that
it can be. And so this kind of kind of
again puts Microsoft in a position where it's kind of
hard to kind of handwave these things away and be like, hey,

(20:31):
oh yeah, what's going on.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
And all this stuff, well, especially as the article outlines
like there are internal documents that were leaked where apparently
Microsoft believes that this partnership wouldn't just bring in hundreds
of millions in revenue, but that it was a quote
incredibly powerful brand moment for.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
The Azure platform. Yeah, go fuck yourself.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Like it's a really it's a really shitty way, uh,
to kind of describe that.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
And so it's like it's the idea of like, you know,
giving someone a gun and then being like, well, I
didn't know what they were going to do with the gun.
It's just like obviously they were going to do this,
Like this was obviously what they were gonna do with it.
You can't just fucking handwave this shit away.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Well, it's it's it's essentially the people, you know, it's
the same people that are like, oh, you know, guns
don't kill people, People kill people kind of bullshit that
to stand in the way of gun laws. It's just like, yeah,
but you're you're allowing these people to design these systems
that are custom made for this thing they're doing. And
even if, as I heard this point out another podcast,

(21:41):
even if like Microsoft's contribution is not specifically going towards
like the killing of women and children and that kind
of stuff, it does help free up other resources inside
of the military Israeli military that they can focus on,
you know, other things like that that they would have
to otherwise dedicate with reesis to intelligence gathering and computing

(22:05):
and things of that nature that Microsoft is helping them
out with. So so the BDS movement has been encouraging
customers not just to boycott Microsoft products in general, but
they're not stupid enough to think that, Like like you
can't tell someone, hey, like stop using Windows like that.
It doesn't fucking work that way. Like, if you have
a regular PC, chances are it's got Windows on it.

(22:25):
It's ingrained in the OS. It'd be kind of unreasonable
to be like, hey, if you unless you want to
support genocide in Israel or in in in Gaza, you
have to go buy a Mac. Like now, I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna fucking do that. Obviously, but no,
you can hit them with optional purchases. And they've specifically
called out boycotting things like game Pass and you know,

(22:46):
uninstalling games that are Microsoft published like Minecraft, like Call
of Duty, like Candy Crush and things of that nature,
and not buying Xbox hardware. And interestingly, last week we
saw for the first time some noise coming from inside
of Microsoft itself. Well, I shouldn't say that, because there

(23:06):
have been employee protests at a lot of the events
that Microsoft has done about this, but on the Xbox
side specifically, we saw the st JV Union of Arcane
Studios publish an open letter that was addressed not only
to their parents studio, but to Microsoft in general, that

(23:29):
is demanding that Microsoft takes responsibility and puts an end
to its complicity in the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians. Basically,
the letter says like, hey, like we want to you know,
we're following the call to boycott Xbox products because you're
put and part of the thing that they talk about

(23:51):
is obviously, like they talk about the fact that the
suffering of the Palestinian people is paramount, but you're also
putting your developers and your other divisions kind of in
Harm's way of sorts by leading with the shitty behavior
from the corporate level, like you kind of force them

(24:13):
to bear the brunt of the punishment because of the
things that you're doing right now in terms of, you know,
with what you're doing over there, like the the domino
effect is going to topple down to other areas in
the company, and Arcade Studios being one of them, as
they're owned by Bethesda, who is owned by Microsoft, so

(24:36):
so like, and so I totally understand where they're coming from.
All quote from the letter where they say, quote in
a more direct manner, we think this could very well
affect our life directly by reducing the audience for our games,
thus directly compromising the viability of Xbox games and in
the long run of our very own jobs. And that's

(24:57):
an excellent point, and why I wish more people inside
these companies who have the security and who have the
ability to do so, would move to speak out about
this stuff. Like it would be great. I mean, it
will never fucking happen, but it would be amazing if
like a Phil Spencer could come out publicly and be like, yeah,
like I'm not really comfortable with the fact that, you know,

(25:19):
weren't like we as a company as Microsoft are involved
in this sort of thing. Now again, he's not, because
he's the head of the fucking Games division, and he's
not shit on his boss in that way. But I mean,
this is this is a nice start, and I do
hope that other developers inside of Microsoft Studios, especially those
that are union protected, will follow the lead there and

(25:43):
hopefully make their voices heard to speak out against this.
It really stinks.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
So moving on from there, Nexon has stumbled forward into
the next shitty thing that AI is doing, apparently, so
they released a game earlier this year called The First Descendant.
I don't know too much about it. I think it's
a live service game of some kind, but again it's

(26:14):
one of those It seemed like a very like you know,
insert Destiny clone kind of model of the world's survival aspect,
like you know, the game, right, And so they ran
a ad campaign on TikTok to promote the game that
had a number of video games streamers kind of talking

(26:36):
about and selling the the merits of The First Descendant
in what looked like a paid partnership and there's a
Reddit user who compiled a lot of these ads together,
and when you watch them, it is very obvious that
Nexon used generative AI here to make the streamers look

(26:58):
like and say things that they didn't actually say, to
the point where Daniel Ledemon, one of the streamers who
was featured in one of these ads, literally came out
and said, Hey, I had nothing to do with this,
and they used my likeness and my voice except it
didn't really sound like him at all. Yeah, without my permission.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
Basically, Yes, Here's the fun thing about not just the
United States, but most countries is that there's something called
personality rights, also known as the right to publicity. And
what these rights, whether they are entrined as like a

(27:42):
statute or a tort or recognize as common law, is
that no one has the right to use your likeness,
whether that be your name, your voice, your face, to
basically do something where it looks like you have endorsed something,

(28:05):
for example, without your consent. And that's exactly what this is,
right is this company used generative AI to deep fake
these streamers into essentially endorsing their game without their consent
and really without their knowledge. It seems it wasn't even
that they were asked. They said no, they did it anyway,

(28:25):
but they didn't even fucking ask So, uh, good luck
with the inevitable lawsuit that kind of, because this is
an open and shutcase.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
There have been numerous examples of.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
You know, I mean there have been examples in this
within video games, like before as far as like EA
got into hot Water about fifteen years ago by you know,
allegedly using someone's likeness for I think it was one

(29:05):
of the like NC double A games or something like
that to basically get around the NC double A rule
at the time, which did not allow athletes to monetize
themselves in that way. But look, I have studied a
lot of media law because I have a master's degree
in writing with a focus in journalism, which means.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
I have to know this shit.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
And uh yeah, I don't know why not a single
person at Nexon spoke up and said, hey.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
This is illegal, but uh so there, this is illegal.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
There. Their their merely mouth excuse was that, oh, like,
users actually submitted this as part of like a TikTok
creative Challenge, which TikTok says is a creator monetization program
that turns your creativity into cash by creating user generated
content style ads for your favorite brands, which seems again

(30:05):
shitty on the on in the first place. I mean,
I guess if you're making user generation content that's like
not making someone appear to do or say things they
don't actually do, then that's fine in the grand scheme
of things, like it's gonna be fucking ship because all
ai slop fucking is. But if that's what TikTok wants

(30:26):
on the platform, then you know, more power to them.
And yeah, I mean that's I I left after after
they kissed uh the president's ass, so that was that
was enough for me there. But basically like and and
next on like basically blamed everyone but themselves. They blame
users for submitting the content. They blamed TikTok's privacy checks

(30:49):
for not catching it. And again, can you believe them?
I don't fucking know, Like doesn't, But it doesn't actually
matter because again this this is just incredibly gross to
me that something like this even happened. And I think
I feel like that as this story gains notoriety, and
especially if Nexon gets by without any kind of consequence,

(31:13):
you might see this sort of thing become more widespread
in the future, which would be which would be real
bad in general. And again, like for those that aren't aware,
like Inside Baseball, like every time I submit a video
of this podcast, like there's a box on YouTube that
you have to check yes or no every time where
it asks like, hey, is there any content in this

(31:36):
video that makes someone appear to do or say something
that they did not actually do or say, And I
have to check that box as no every single time.
Otherwise that content gets flagged with a big like AI
generated content banner that makes it really fucking hard to miss. So, like,
the platforms know that this shit is out there, but

(31:58):
you know, like Carrie said, you know, there has to
be consequences otherwise people are just gonna keep trying to
skirt the issue, and TikTok doesn't give a fuck because
they just they're just looking to make money, like that's
that's all they care about there. They're also not going
to change their practices unless they are hauled to some
sort of account here. So I hope these streamers that
were caught up in this do pursue legal action of

(32:20):
some kind, and I hope that they're wildly successful and
you know, beat the shit out of whoever is responsible
for this massive fuck up to happen.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
And final news story, speaking of massive funds, let's talk
about Marathon boy.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Marathon is probably going to be a hot pile of garbage.
So Marathon was originally supposed to come out in September,
so like in a month time or so. Uh, Sony
and Bungie decided to move the game back to an
indetermined date in the wake of the Bungee might have
stolen or actually not might have. They basically fucking did

(33:00):
steal art assets from a fan creator that made their
way into the games closed alpha. That was that happened
back in the year ye. And so a lot of
people have been wondering, like, well, when or when do
we think we're going to see Marathon. Well, Lynn Tao,
who is Sony's chief financial officer, was on an earnings

(33:23):
call last week and they said that Marathon will certainly
release within the current fiscal year, which, for those that
don't know, runs until the end of March in twenty
twenty six. The quote from Linto First about Marathon, how
we factored it into the forecast, We expected the launch

(33:44):
to happen within the fiscal year. But having said that,
this is not a commitment, no official announcement has been
given yet. Boy, it's always bad news when companies are
always mentioned are mentioning things make it within the fiscal year,
because it sure does seem like that they're going to

(34:04):
do everything they can to get this thing out, to
make whatever money they can from from it on this
year's earnings so that they don't have to carry this
burden into next year. And when you do that, especially
with games like this that are live service and require
a lot of infrastructure and things of that nature, they
tend to come out a little undercooked when they release.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
To put it politely, yeah, yeah, a little underseasoned. Uh yeah, No,
this is going to be a hot mess. Good luck
to everybody at Bungee. I well, I look, I can't
wait to talk about the fucking layoffs that come in
the wake of this game's ultimately disastrous launch.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Well, not only that, but Sony Sony also recently announced
I don't know if I don't camera how long this was,
it wasn't that long ago that they were basically taking
assuming operational control of Bungie just because of how the
studio has been run since it's been in the Sony portfolio,
which is something that people feared when Sony first bought them,

(35:14):
and especially kind of in the wake of the trials
and tribulations of Destiny since the game release, and then
of course what's been happening with it during the Marathon development.
But the funny thing is when that news was announced,
it was met largely with like relief from a lot
of the Bungee fans that I saw online, as opposed
to like the rancorous anger that you might expect a

(35:38):
studio like Bungee losing their independence would generate. Yeah, so
I think I think everyone kind of realizes that, like
the Bungee of old, like if you weren't you know, dead,
certain that it was absolutely gone, Like there is no
doubt I think at this point that it is it
is a different.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Studio that it was dead and buried at this point.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yes, So.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Again, all the best for Marathon. It seems like we've
talked about on the show before at length. It seems
like the answer to a question that nobody asked, which
is the best way I can describe it. It's like, oh,
we got to get an extraction shooter in the console space,
and it's just like, but I don't think console gamers

(36:22):
have been like clamoring for an extraction shooter, Like that's
not like like if you care about that shit, you're
probably playing Tarkov Like that's that's that's kind of the
reality of the situation. Or you're playing Arc Radors, which
is a game that's coming out I think later this
year that had their beta around the time that Marathon

(36:43):
had their alpha, And for as negative as everybody was
around their experiences is playing Marathon, the reaction to our
creators was almost like universally positive across the board. And
that's a game that's fighting in the same the same
space that Marathon is gonna be. So I don't like
their chances. It would be cool to be able to

(37:03):
see Bungee kind of get back to doing what they
do best, not burdened by the you know, ten year
of commitments of a destiny at this point, and not
trying to chase trends with a new, you know, new
genre that is kind of a niche thing. So uh,

(37:25):
that'll do for the news. We will move into the
post office, where you can ask us questions that will
answer on the show at dentspixels dot Com, slash fans
uh film Wander says impossible, but fuck it, name one
nice thing rare under Microsoft has done.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
So here it's impossible.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
No, it's it's certainly not impossible. Well I could name
him a couple of things actually, so our Benjo Kazui
Nuts and Bolts, which is much better game than it's
given credit for. Yeah, it was kind of the precursor
to Tears of the Kingdom in.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Some ways, in a lot of ways.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Also, despite Terrence's misgivings about the early experience, apparently Sea
If Thieves has come around to be quite a nice
little game.

Speaker 4 (38:15):
Already took the two I was going to see, yeah,
which is but yeah, like see if Thieves is a
game that I want to try getting into now, honestly
because of the fact that, like I heard, the launch
was kind of mid and then they basically pulled a
Noman Sky and they fixed the shit out of the
game with a ton of free updates in the year

(38:38):
post launch, and now it's apparently really good.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
So I have kind of wanted to play that for
a hot second now.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
So yeah, So I mean it's yeah, and again, not
that it's been fucking Sunshine and Rainbow for rare under Microsoft. No,
you know, certainly they were in the Wilderness for for
quite some time. I actually just watched the video kind
of a retrospective on Perfect Dark zero over the weekend,
and I did not realize how much of the fucking
flaming trash he that game. Oh yeah, so yeah, it's

(39:11):
it's certainly it certainly hasn't been a great ride for them.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
But I think for those that it doesn't help it
that Microsoft has canceled so many of their fucking plans.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Well that's another that's another problem too, is they've been
hampered in a lot of ways by Microsoft. But we
don't we don't know whatever Wild was going to be.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
But Viva Pinata was good.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
I mean, there's a lot of people that really like Vipiniana.
I'm not gonna be a staunch Viva Piniona defender, but.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
I don't hate Viva Pinata, but like it's fun.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
Yeah. Look, I'm trying to think of like everything that
they've had that have been like.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
You know, canceled within the last decade.

Speaker 4 (39:52):
So it's like ever Wild Soul Catcher, a banjo kazuoi
cart game was playing and and canceled a Tailwind a
Golden Eye remake like they have had, they have a
Cameo two was canceled like there. There have been a
lot of games that maybe could have been great, but

(40:16):
we'll never know because they were all canceled in the
earlier production stages. So Ever, Wild in particular, I think
really stinks because that's something that was in development since
twenty fourteen, revealed in twenty nineteen, and then canceled like
last year and.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Caused a lot of longtime folks at the studio to
finally be like, fuck it, I've had fu Yeah, well
I'm not. I'm not dealing with this anymore. But I
mean again, like yet, I mean, we just talked about Bunge,
yet another tale of games of a game studio kind
of forced to get out of their wheelhouse and to
move into like a live service sort of mentality, and

(40:56):
they made the most out of it. It just kind
of goes under the radar because it's a game that
has a smaller like following, but still a very committed
following for the people that do actually play See of Thieves.
From what I understand, it's among the most played games
on the PlayStation right now. Yeah, so take that for
what it's worth. Cam says Cody Raheem Rhodes has the

(41:21):
flat top. Does this raise your interest level in the
movie at all? He's referring to a post that Cody
Roads made on his Instagram where you can see his
shadow cast I guess on the lot of the studio
where they're filming a Street Fighter, and he does indeed
have a flat top where I guess he is going
to do some scenes as Gyle. Look, I think it's

(41:43):
cool that they have the flat top in the game.
I mean that was obviously the first and immediate thing
that people noticed about the ninety four Street Fighter review
when John Claude Maan Dam was cast and he's like,
I'm just gonna have like a shaved head. Basically almost
this is going to be what it is talking about
this with with with Jay and Jack earlier today. This
movie is probably gonna be in a train wreck. I

(42:05):
just hope that it's an entertaining train wreck. Like I
hope it's bad in a fun way. I don't think
it's good good.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
I just want it to be fun.

Speaker 4 (42:13):
Like I'm not expecting cinema, but I expect a worthwhile
popcorn movie.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
My fear is that they're gonna take it. It's gonna
be taken too seriously by the actors and the director,
and that's gonna be make it not fun. Like the
thing about ninety four Street Fighters, that it was a
serious film, but it had some very like winks and
nods to the viewer, and it was very it was
very kind of loosey goosey, and that's what made it fun.

(42:43):
That's why that movie is still very watchable today. Anthony asks,
when was the last time you took time off work
to play a video game? The last one that I
remember putting PTO in for I'm sure I've done it
since then. Weirdly, death Loop. I was really excited to play,

(43:03):
if you all remember, and so I took off the
day Death Loop came out and played that for eight hours.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Okay, man, I honestly can't remember.

Speaker 4 (43:14):
I feel like the last time I like requested a
day off for a video game was before I was
like working a full time salary job.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
No, maybe I was. Maybe it was while I was
working at Gemstone. Yeah, I just couldn't tell you. Maybe
probably like a Pokemon game.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
Let's be serious, see the problem The problem for me
is that since my career before my current job was
at GameStop, like I could never request off for those
big yeah, so you had to wait till uh wait
until you got home.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
Most of the last five years, up until like last week,
I've been working either hybrid or fully remote. So it
wasn't like I like need to take time off, you
know what, end Walker. When ed Walker came out for
Final Fantasy fourteen, I did take the day off for that,
So that it's that there you go.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
So yeah, that's the other thing too, when you when
you are emoted, is a little easier to sneak in,
especially if it's a slow day, you can sneak it.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Oh yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (44:19):
Just be like, all right, cool, I've made my meetings,
I've responded to my emails time.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
I'll keep one I'll keep one monitor here just to
keep an eye to make sure nothing catches on fire,
and the other one will be yeah, some other stuff.
So see, Ken says, growing up, was there something you
thought that was normal and everyone did, but as you
got older you realized the opposite. For me, I thought
everyone kept their dominoes in Crown royal bags and black

(44:44):
people only smoked newports. So this this is kind of
like saying, like, what are some embarrassing things that your
family did that that you didn't realize were weird when
you were growing up as a kid. So I'm trying
to think of what a good example would be.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, I saw this question come in and I was like,
I just I don't I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
But here's the problem. Like it because it's never weird
to you. Right now, I can think of I can
think of things that are weird that other people did
that friends of mine did. Like, for example, I had
a friend who when we were roommates, was constantly running
out of towels, like bat like bath towels, like to

(45:39):
drive themselves off as a shower with every week and
he would be and I remember I had to use
his shower because we had you know, we had two bathrooms,
and he used one shower the other. I had to
use his shower for some reason. And I forgot to
bring a towel with me, and I was like, hey,
do you have an extra towel. He's like no, I'm
all out of towels. And I'm like, well, that fucking it.

(45:59):
That's so I gotta right like, well, don't look, I'm
gonna run naked into my head towel. But I was like,
how are you Why don't you have any towels, extra towelsman,
He's like, well, I've used them all. And I'm like,
what do you mean you've used them all. He's like, well,
they've they've all been used. And I'm like, well, you
just went to your mom's like last week to do laundry,
Like how are you through all of your towels already?

(46:22):
And he used a new towel every day was the thing,
and I'm just like, what the fuck are you talking about.
He's like, yeah, like use a towel and then like
you put it on the floor and then and now
it's started and you get to washed it. I was like, no, dude,
just like you hang it up on the towel wreck
and it dries and you can use it again. And

(46:43):
he's like, what are you talking about? And You're like, bro,
like you just let the towel dry. You can use
the towel again to fucking dry yourself off, And you
can do that for like a week before you have
to change, like the towel and then and then you
put a new towel up and you wash the other towel.
It's like, what the fuck you mean You're grabbing a
new towel out of the closet every day. It's like, yeah,
I'm grabbing a new towel every day, and I just

(47:04):
leave the other one on the floor. Its like like
you're at a fucking hotel. It's like you have a
housekeeper in here that's coming I'm not aware of. It's like,
holy shit, man. So like that's that's one where I
was just like, what the fuck? Like, how like you
grow in your life and you're just like, oh, like
I'm using a fresh towel every day.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah I am. I think maybe for me it was,
you know, looking back, probably the age at which my
parents just let me be by myself in public. It's
probably not normal. Like I was being dropped off at.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
The mall at like eight, Oh, that is pretty young.
I was gonna I was gonna say, n's, yeah, that
is a little young. How Like were you ever a
latch key kid growing up?

Speaker 2 (47:57):
Because I mean I grew.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Up in a neighborhood where like my house was on
the corner and then there were like a bunch of
townhouses behind us, and so I had a lot of
friends in the neighborhood that were either migrade or within
a year or two. So there was a lot of
you know, the you know, go outside, like go play

(48:21):
with your friends or whatever, but like you better be
on your.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Way home when the when the street lights come on.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Without really like it wasn't like my parents were leaving
me at home or leaving me alone, you know, all
the time, but like there there was a lot of like,
oh yeah, like go around the corner and play with
you know whoever, and then you know, when the street
lights come on, like that's when you need to be
on your way home.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Yeah, but I was only ever like a two minute
walk from home.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Well it's funny, so even as young as how old
was I when I started doing last key shit, I
think I think in sixth grade, I basically started being
allowed to walk home from school and I had and
I had my own key for the house, and I
and I would just go, yeah and stay home. And
then during the summertime, like I think that was the

(49:14):
same year that we we didn't have to go to
camp anymore, and I would just you know, chill, chill.

Speaker 4 (49:22):
I mean, like, I think the difference is that, like
my parents, neither of my parents ever worked like a
regular nine to five job, So like my dad was
home a lot during the day, but he was and
I was a broadcaster, so he was doing a lot
of like evening drive or late night kind of sports
talk stuff. So a lot of times, like I remember,

(49:43):
he was working for WTEM and I think it was like.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
He had this like eight pm to two am talk
show on TEM and so it's like he wasn't leaving
the house until after dinner.

Speaker 4 (49:59):
So it's like I would home from school, and a
lot of times both my parents would be home because
my mom worked part time until my sister was old enough,
and my dad had a wacky like broadcast journalists schedule.
So so I mean, yeah, it wasn't like I was
essentially like coming home from school to an empty house

(50:22):
all the time, really until I was like in high
school and my dad had more regular daytime hours and
my mom was back working at the dialysis unit full
time at that point.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
So but yeah, I was.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
I did have a lot of independence growing up, but
it wasn't like, you know, I didn't have to like
come home from elementary school and like have to feed
myself or anything.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Well, just I just look at it because my son
is around the age now that I that I was,
when you know, I started having a bit more autonomy
to you know, stay at home by myself and all
that other other kind of thing. And even if, like,
even if he was neurotypical, I still think that I
might feel kind of weird about him. I mean maybe
not like obviously like things were different. He might just

(51:09):
be his own dude and able to kind of just
cope with those things at this point. But it's just
kind of funny looking back to be like, man, like,
if this is the age that I was when I
just started.

Speaker 4 (51:18):
Right, I mean, I think of how my parents would
just like drop my ass off at fucking Owings Mills
Mall to play Pokemon cards a couple times a week
when I was like nine.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Yeah, that's nine years. That's nuts to be like ninety nuts.

Speaker 4 (51:32):
And it was just like, don't do anything stupid, we'll
see you in two hours, and then like nothing bad
ever happened.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
So I guess it was fine. But like, you know,
I've got you.

Speaker 4 (51:42):
Know, soon to be step kids who are twelve and
seven and like even the twelve year old. I'm just like,
I don't know, man, Like I don't know about leaving
this kid alone.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
So yeah, I think I think that's just more it
than anything else.

Speaker 4 (52:02):
Is just the age at which I was just kind
of like left to my own devices and trusted not
to fuck around.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Let's see. Final question is from twash what game do
you feel like would be better if it wasn't open world?
For Spoken to me, would have been better if it
were linear? I mean, this is not a hard question
to kind of there's so many open world games that
are open world despite the fact that they'd be better served.

(52:34):
Like I think, like literally half the games that you'd
be soft comes out with like I like imagine like
some of the earlier I mean, even the current Assassin's
Creed games, Like what if those were more open zone
instead of like open world and a little bit more
focused on on on more designed spaces like that would

(52:55):
be that would be fucking huge. Same thing for like
a far Cry, I feel it could be like like
Farkrid to me could live in a similar vein is
like a Wolfenstein if far Cry was a little bit more,
was a little bit more focused. A lot of developers,
and again like this is this is another problem of
the game industry written large, is that things get popular

(53:17):
and then publishers kind of expect developers to copy trends.
It's not like this is a new thing with live service.
This has been happening since like the mid nineties, when
like the shift to three D was like, all right, well,
everyone's got to develop in three D now, even though
there were several studios that were not cut out. They

(53:37):
didn't have the resources or the talent to make three
D quality, you know, three D space games. But because
the industry shifted three D and because Mario sixty four
came out was a huge successful, now we got to
have our three D platform, or we got to have
our three D adventure game. You know, we have to
have our three D this, that or the other. An
Open World was probably the second big bastion of that

(53:59):
trend is that granted, thought It three came out was
a mega success, and everyone's like, what about Open World?
And so you had a lot of like knockoffs and
clones that you know, were Open World for the sake
of it, trying to copy off GTA. Were a lot
of games that had a very focused narrative story but
told it through the guys of an open world game

(54:23):
and had a lot of bullshit that you had to
weighe through as well. The thing that the thing for
me about open world is if you're gonna have an
open world, the world has to have like a purpose,
like like like the world. The world almost has to
be like a character in the game alongside of the
of the you know, protagonists and antagonists and stuff like that.

(54:45):
Ghost Sosution was a great example of this, where that
area of Japan that you explore throughout the game feels
as essential to the game as any of the characters
do in the game. And so there are many So
that's why I say there are many games that are
open world that really do not need to be, that
would be better off if they were not.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
I'm just gonna agree with you.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
There's I think basically like any Ubisoft open world could
probably just be open zone rather than open world. So
I also like open world games, so I'm probably not
the best judge of character on that.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
See, I typically hate them because again, like there's a
lot of sprawl and a lot of a lot of
bullshit for not a lot of not a lot of
reward unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (55:35):
Yeah. See the difference between you and me, Brad is
I like to hit a pre roll and play Elder
Scrolls and you don't.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
That's true. I like to like lean back and just
be like but you but you know, even though I
personally am not a fan of their games. Elder Scrolls.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Again, the war is characters.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Yeah, like like like feels as important, like like not
the world doesn't feel random in older scrolls, like things
feel like intentional. But yes, yeah, like like like like
things feel intentionally placed and crafted, and you know, it's
not like they're using procedural generation to create this space

(56:19):
like that, Like the developers have an intent behind the
things that they're doing in Elder Scrolls. So yeah, that's
the difference. It's it's yeah, intent is the difference. Like
that's that's the biggest thing. There's a lot of developers
that don't know how to design a good open world.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Yeah, so for sure.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Cool. Well that's it for the post office. Thank you
y'all for so many of your questions. A bit of
a short show this week, but that's okay because, like
I said, the news, the news was light, and uh,
the games will trust me. Next week will be the
complete opposite because I did not realize games Com is
this week and Opening Night Live is tomorrow, so we'll
have all sorts of this week.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
There's a forty five minute Kirby direct happening this week.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Like, look, I gotta tell you we are not We're
not gonna be talking for very long about show unless
Johnny's hypothesis is correct and they're gonna sneak in like
some new Smash Brothers announcement into this.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
It is going to It is Nintendo giving soccer I
a platform to talk about shit he actually wants to
talk about, which is just Kirby. But yeah, a side
note from me another music plug. My band Byscore had
an album come out like a week and a half ago.
It's called out in Front. It's on band camp. You
can buy it digitally for ten bucks, or you can

(57:41):
get a compact disc, which not only includes four additional
tracks to bring the total track amount on the CD
to nineteen almost hit the maximum amount of music you
can put on a single CD. But we also send
like some little shit knacks along with it. So maybe

(58:02):
you might get a button, Mike, get some stickers, who knows,
But look a lot of a lot of a lot
of tunes you might know, like, you know, Snakeman from
Mega Man three is on there, and uh, you know,
you got some Final Fantasy seven on there, and then
you've got shit like the weirdest version of Tear and
one from StarCraft You're ever going to hear in your life,

(58:23):
and the title theme from RoboCop for the game Boy,
and some Pokemon Snap and a bunch of other shit.
I'm really proud of the work we did, so please
pick it up.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Very happy with it. Thank you for the support so far.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
I will quickly say I'm not plugging anything here except
for my newsletter Mindswept Dot Club, which you can check
out and sign up for free. Speaking of vide game music,
after you purchase Biscore's latest album and listen to that
on on randomly, I heard the soundtrack for Super Spy

(58:56):
Hunter for the ne E S recently, and that soundtrack
fucking rips. Yeah, So if you've never heard the soundtrack
for Super Spy Hunter, go go seek that out. It's
very good.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:11):
There's there's a lot of interesting little gems from the
NES and especially the SNS era, but NES has some
some hidden hidden bangers for sure. Also, if you're in Baltimore,
I'm playing in Baltimore on Saturday at bit jen Gamerfest.
It's the largest one day video game music festival on
planet Earth. Allegedly, my Hades band is playing, So come

(59:35):
see Premium Vintage play a thirty five minute set of
very difficult prog metal.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
After I take a fucking.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
Red Eye out to do it, I'm gonna be so tired,
and then I fly back home the next day. I'm
not really sure why I do this to myself, but yeah,
if you like Hades music and the game, yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
So all right, y'all, thank you all very much for watching, listening.
It's been a blast. We'll see you all the next time.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
See ya.
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