All Episodes

July 8, 2025 96 mins
Even amid widespread tech layoffs, Microsoft managed to surprise the industry by cutting over 9,000 employees last week—its fourth major layoff in just 18 months. We explore the impact on Xbox, why AAA game development keeps fueling these cycles, and what the Xbox brand might represent going forward. Helldivers 2 is heading to Xbox. Is Sony starting a new trend? EA appears to be setting up the next Battlefield title to fail—and possibly on purpose. 11bitstudios is under fire for using undisclosed generative AI in The Alters. We explain why this story is a new concern for folks who are opposed to the use of these tools in games. Borderlands 4 may win back long-time fans thanks to a crucial design change from Gearbox. Brad shares why Foundation might be his “just right” city builder in a crowded genre. In the Post Office, we dive into Street Fighter movie casting rumors and debate whether this upcoming trainwreck could still be worth watching.
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What is up? Everybody? Welcome to this week's episode the
Dense Pixels Podcast and we were host Brad joined by
co host Kerrie What's Up and Terrence going on? It's
actually quite a bit of news to cover this week, obviously,
with the whole Microsoft situation that's going on, and some
news about Janitor of Ai and one of the indie

(00:36):
darlings that came out recently that we actually talked about
on the show a couple of weeks ago. Before we
get into the meat and potatoes though, a little bit
of housekeeping, don't forget to join our discord dentispixels dot
com slash fans, where you can hang out with other
listeners of the show and submit us questions for the
dents pixels post office. Don't forget to check out YouTube

(00:57):
dot com slash denspixels and subscribe while you're there, where
we put out the video or the podcast and video
form every week. If you prefer audio, just search for
TNP Studios on the podcast app of your choice, where
you can find us in our apocalypse black and Black
cinema and look forward. If you want to support us
with Zeal Good at tenspixels dot com slash Premium give
us five dollars a month just to let us know

(01:17):
that you really love what we're doing here. And as
a point of personal privilege, if I can, I'm gonna
plug a new venture for me. I'm gonna start doing
a newsletter because I've been wanting to write for a
while and I've you know, as anyone who's listened to
the show for a long time knows that I have
a lot of other niche interests that I really enjoy

(01:39):
talking about. But weirdly, since I started working like a
like a day job, like a nine to five job,
it's really hard to put out like video content like
I used to around that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
And so.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, so I'm making a new newsletter. It's called mind Swept,
just play from my to gather my thoughts and to
just kind of blast them out there. I'll be doing
it probably a new post every week to ten days.
It's totally free to sign up. You can go to
mind Swept dot club and put in your email address
and that'll get delivered to your inbox whenever I post.

(02:15):
So give that a look, see, and hopefully we'll have
some fun over there, so I'll get to expand a
little bit more on some things we talked about on
this show, and I look forward and some of my
other various interests as well. First post is gonna be
a bit of a downer because, as you two know,
and as some of the listeners know because I talked
about it like forward, last week, my cat unexpectedly passed

(02:38):
away due to complications from a surgery that he had
to have. And I want to talk about dealing with
grief in Trump's America. So that's listen, a downter topic
for the first like proper posts, but it's what I'm
it's what I'm thinking about right now.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
So we'll be fine to write audience because people don't read, you.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Know, I bet you used listeners to this show do.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
And I was saying to the listeners, like, I love
you people like general public.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Oh I think I think one story further down on
the docket goes to show that people read closer than
you might think, Like we'll get.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
To that insanely so to some extent, so the big
news of the past couple weeks there there was rumplings
that this was coming, and it did indeed hit like
a tidal wave. So Microsoft, a company that that in
profit not just revenue last year, but in profit generated

(03:40):
tens of billions of dollars a company valued at over
three trillion dollars if I'm not mistaken, for the fourth
time in the last eighteen months about it, yeah right, weird,
for the fourth time in eighteen months, has laid off
a significant out of their workforce and this effect this

(04:03):
impacted nine thousand jobs this time around, a lot of
which landed in the lapse of Xbox. As you might expect. Now,
the reason for this is due to by all accounts,
this was these were layoffs kind of directed from the

(04:24):
top down, so from Satine Nadella down to Phil Spencer
to help support and fund Microsoft's full steam ahead embracing
of AI. Because as I the best point that I
heard about this was on Jeff Gersman's podcast this past

(04:45):
week where he talked about how like the last big
frontier in the online space was search, and like Google
was really the only company to really like take that
seriously and look at what it for Google, Like Google
now one of the most valuable companies of the world
completely because of they cornered the market on search back

(05:07):
when there was a market to corner on it, and
AI is that next venture. And so now all of
these companies are looking at this as a goldrush basically
and are trying to stake their claim and make sure
that they are there to profit as much as they
can when when the kind of the foothold is established,

(05:28):
and when you're giving billions of dollars to open AI
every year, as Microsoft is, they have a partnership with
Salem and his group, and you want to still keep
investors happy, and you want to still be showing, you know,
high profits. Now, what are you gonna do. You're gonna
trim what you view as the fat, and it's going

(05:51):
to hit the workforce more than anything. And so a
couple of like details of what we know from the
Xbox perspective. Ever, Wild, which was the big next game
coming out from Rare, which has been in development for
over a decade, canceled staff cuts as a result of that.
The Perfect Dark reboot that they showed footage of game

(06:14):
footage of as recently as last year, had partnered with
Crystal Dynamics to help bring that game to the front.
That's been canceled. The initiative the studio that they opened
and created SIMP to work on this game has been
closed without ever publishing a single game. Speaking of Rare,

(06:35):
not part of the layoffs, but a couple of major
studio veterans from Rare have decided to leave, probably in
the wake of what's going on here. Even King is
not immune from this. They laid off two hundred people
at King. Right, who makes Candy Crush? Who was the
real reason like that Microsoft wanted to acquire Activision. Everyone's like, oh,

(06:58):
it's called didy Well, actually know, it's Candy Crush. Candy Crush
makes you know much more than college. He does on
a on an annual basis. Zenemax Online Studios is working
on a new MMO. Had been in development for a while.
Apparently was so good that like Phil Spencer could not
stop playing it whenever he was shown like new prototypes

(07:20):
of what they were working on. Well, that's been canceled
and a lot of people plaid off at Zenmax Online.
A lot of people I know personally, people that I've
had relationships with the past, because of course they're the
state partially stationed up here in Hunt Valley.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Friend, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Not too far away. Turn ten, who's the developer of
the Forts of Motorsport, franchise literally lost half of their staff,
so right, I mean a beginning bro right, Like you
think about the tent Pole Xbox franchises, It's Halo, it's
called it's Gears of War, and it's Force like those

(07:58):
of like the like the original. So forts and Motorsport
is basically dead as they've kind of shifted towards forts
A Horizon being the like the Tent Pole product in
the Fortsa in the forts A series. A former Turnten
developer put online that la basically Forts Motorsports dead, like
the staff they have will be able to maintain the

(08:20):
most recent game. But that's probably about it. Romero Games,
who wasn't even a part of Microsoft. They just had
a they were contracted by Microsoft to work on a
new game, had that project canceled. There's been a lot
of this information going on about Romero Games. They actually
clarified earlier today what's going on there. So basically they're

(08:42):
trying to shop that title to any publisher that will
pick them up. If not, then they'll have to make
significant cuts at that studio. Even though again they're not
directly owned by Microsoft, it's still kind of you know
that you have that trickle down effect as you kind
of go through this stuff and all of that, and
there's more like those are those are probably the big
ones that people probably heard about. And then all this

(09:06):
was like compounded by Phil Spencer in the wake of
these layoffs, like posting an internal email that of course
got leaked out to it's a pressed outlets and stuff
like that that really reads more than it was for
shareholders as opposed to Microsoft staff, but it was addressed
to the Microsoft staff where he basically talks about how, hey,

(09:28):
like guys, we're fucking killing it right now, like we are,
like we're reaching so many gamers, we're making so much money.
Everything is going really well. But also we're gonna be
losing a ton of jobs because we need to fucking
support this AI bullshit that is the that is the
future venture for Microsoft. So really shitty day in the

(09:52):
games media. I know that we don't talk about layoffs
as much because they're happening every week, and you know
what more can you say?

Speaker 5 (10:00):
Then?

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Man, this really sucks. It sucks, like you feel bad
for everybody, but like, I don't know, man, like this
the fact that again this is the fourth round of
this we've seen since twenty twenty three. These are massive cuts,
like like nine thousand people I think, I think it hurts,
like it's like four percent of Microsoft's entire entire footprint,

(10:25):
and for Xbox specifically, like this is the culmination of
this project that started in twenty eighteen where they realized
like holy shit, like we fucked up by trying to
be the everything that you know, the Xbox One was
like the entertainment box, Like we wanted to be the
centerpiece in your living room. That was the wrong direction.

(10:46):
Phil Spencer comes in, He's like, look, we need to
get back to focusing on games. They start hoovering up
studios left and right, like notable studios that you've heard of.
They put They put out some good Yeah, they put
it there. There's been some good games, but the cadence
I think has been slower, which one like, I mean

(11:07):
like stuff that Double Find has put out has been
pretty good. Obsidian of Citian, well, the latest Psychronauts three
D game was apparently great if you're into those sort
of things, but not a big seller. Obviously. Obsidian is
basically putting the Microsoft Games Division on their back and
and and and and truck along which is kind of

(11:28):
crazy to see. And then and there's been some other
you know, decent things here there. But the but the
problem is that Microsoft also became the game the game
pass company, right, and which I right, well, no, it's
it's great for consumers, but if you are but you
have developers that are out here saying like, if you

(11:49):
can't get your game on game Pass, then there's basically
no point in publishing it on Xbox because now Xbox
owners are so conditioned to just get these games as
part of their monthly subscription that they're not buying games
on the platform by buying large Like they're just like, no,
it's not like I'm paying my you know, twenty dollars

(12:11):
a month for game Pass, but it doesn't come to
the game Pass. I'm just not playing it on my Xbox.
Like that's kind of that's kind of the bottom line there.
So you had this like weird, Yeah, that's the other
thing you get like PC game pass. Yeah, right, Well,
and it just kind of goes to illustrate the point
that like they need this big push towards games and
now it seems like the push is now happening the
other direction where they're like absolving themselves of a lot

(12:35):
of the games making, and now they're really just pivoting
into being a services company buy and large, and it's
just kind of insane. And I guess the reason he's
protected is because again he's still bringing profitability. But as
we say all the time, with these massive layoffs, like
it's insane to me that you're laying off all these people,

(12:57):
but the decision makers at the top of the chain
seemingly unaffected. Like Phil Spencer is doing fine putting out email.
He doesn't do anything. He's a mouthpiece. He's just like, Okay,
we're just gonna get rid of almost ten thousand people. Okay,
now what like what did you actually do? Like the
games that are being developed by the people that you
fired is what actually.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Brings the profit.

Speaker 6 (13:19):
Yeah, right, But like I don't want just it's capitalism, man,
I don't understand.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
I don't understand the business ladel. But like the lowest people,
the people that do the work get treated like shit.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Because obviously AI is going to replace all of this
and we just have to figure out how to make
that happen first then obviously.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
And then this is all you said for AI.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, because there's because they're investing billions of dollars and
nope to to make to honestly terrence to generate shareholder value.
That's that's what it is. That's it.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
It all boils down to that, because you know, AI
is the fucking buzzword right now.

Speaker 4 (13:59):
Right Everything is AI.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Now. It's no longer called machine learning, even though that's
what it really is. It's now no longer called large
language models. It's just all grouped into AI. And you know,
as as Brad said, you know, Microsoft is desperate to
be the leader in what they see as kind of

(14:23):
the next great tech software frontier, which is AI.

Speaker 4 (14:30):
And it's co pilot.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
I mean yeah, I mean that's pilot, man. That's that's
step one man, like like forcing copilot every Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
I actually threatened to cancel my subscription, uh to Office
because I need Office for my line of work, and
they let me roll it back to the non copilot version.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well that that's the funny thing. So so like when
you buy a new Windows PC now, like they prompt you.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
To do like giant co pilot sticker on the thing.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Well they're there's that, and then like when you're installing,
to Carry's point, when you're installing like Office for example,
Like if that's something that you use, they're just like
a check out office with copilot, and they make this
like big fuck this thing about and make it look
like you're forced in. Meanwhile, like at the very bottom,
there's a little thing where it's like, hey, I prefer
not to use copilot, and then they literally just like
all right, here's regular office, but just without coilot. Basically,

(15:21):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Even want the fucking talking paper clip on my screen
while I'm trying to write. I don't need Microsoft co
pilot shitty ass suggestions for my writing.

Speaker 4 (15:32):
I have a master's degree in writing.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
I know more than any fucking AI is going to
tell me sick of the shit.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
But it's but basically what it is is that you
have so so Microsoft reportedly is like mandating their studios
start using like AI tools as much as possible in
the game development, and it's about basically getting like I'm
pretty sure the end goal of all of this, if
you're like a big tech CEO that's like, oh, like

(15:59):
A is gonna ren lutionize our business is to be
able to have AI essentially do the work of redundancy
in things that used to hire people for right, so
you can do the same amount of output with less
heads because obviously labor is the most controllable expense. And
they think that they're going to end up at the

(16:20):
same with the same quality level of products, or that
it's or that it's not going to cause the people
that are still there more work, but it always fucking does,
because these systems are not up to snuff at this
point to be able to reliably count on them to
kind of save these man hours that they're trying to save.
But ultimately it just boils down to being able to

(16:43):
spend less money to develop games but hopefully still sell
the same amount of games, so that you're just generating
more bottom line profit and share olds like to see
that some more people are investing in your company. You
can pay out dividends more frequently. And that's literally all
it's for. It's about just just squeezing as much juice
out of the fucking fruit before it's kind of shriveled

(17:05):
up and dead and and and they're doing it against
the will of the general public because people are screaming,
we don't want this ship like like like we've seen
the prop the end product that AI as it currently
stands generates. It fucking sucks. Like it's like like it's

(17:30):
it's fucking milk toast, horseshit. That's just that's just derivative
of works that already exist, because that's all that can do.
It can only learn from sources, right, it can only
learn from things that already exist. And and that's but
but again, companies don't give a shit because they're just like, well,
these people are gonna buy it anyway, fuck it. And

(17:53):
and it's interesting because it's created a lane now where
you can be a game developer or any or company
is in various industry, but we're talking about games here
where you can be a game developer and like stand
on your soapbox and proudly state, hey, we don't use AI,
and it'll it'll get more interest in your product because
so many game developers are trending towards you know, a

(18:16):
little bit here, a little bit there, like leaning on
those tools a little bit more. And and and there's levels, right,
you know what I mean, Like if you're gonna use
like AI as like a fucking copy editor for something
and something that we'll never see in game, is that lame.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Yes, it still sucks.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
But but but we're not gonna We're not gonna see it.
But if you start using it to generate art and
promotional materials and to handle translations and work, and we're
gonna get into it a little bit more when we
talk about the alters later at the show, Like when
you start doing that shit, like it's gonna be noticed
and people are gonna call it. You on it.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
I mean, I know we've talked about it before when
square Enix said what their AI use was for or
f F seven rebirth, which I think is a completely
acceptable use of AI, because what they did was they
trained their bot basically on mouth movements of people speaking

(19:18):
different languages so that they could speed up the animation
process for cut scenes of the characters speaking in different languages,
whether you know, you know, Portuguese or Mandarin or German
or French or whatever.

Speaker 5 (19:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
And ultimately that's still it speeds up a process, but
it's not replacing anything. It's making the animator's job easier
by saying, okay, cool, you know, look at all of
these videos of these people speaking French and then you know,
apply those mouth movements to you know, this spoken word basically,

(20:02):
and I think those kind of applications are fair, but
they're also you know, they're feeding their own machine, they're
feeding their own proprietary software, very specific information for a
very specific purpose, rather than some fuck ass bullshit like
chat GPT, which is just skimmed hundreds of thousands of

(20:26):
copyrighted works without consent, and people treat it like it's
you know, like it's Google. Unfortunately, and now now we
live in the society we live in today, you.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Know, sixty percent of the time it works every time,
Like that's that's that's the motto that they're uh that
they're rocking with. I mean, and again, it's it's just
really disgusting to see and it's just really odd to
see Microsoft again like one of the you know, one
of the three pillars of sorts in this you know,
current age of the gaming basically just kind of like

(21:02):
dive off the podium and are just like, yeah, see
you guys later. Like now, like I could see a
world now where Microsoft just becomes an Xbox just becomes
like a white label hardware manufacturer, where like they're not
actually making the hardware, they're just applying the Xbox label.
Much like we're gonna see with the ROG but I

(21:26):
think you'll see that with other but with boxes too,
Like do we get another Xbox console. I don't. I
don't know for sure that we do. I don't think
it's one hundred percent that we would.

Speaker 6 (21:35):
Be the point for them to right for them, for
them too, when they can say, well, this is an
Xbox and that's an Xbox and and I think we're
seeing that what they now want to kind of achieve.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
They want to make anything like that has game passed
an Xbox basically right like like.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
That they want to have their front end that will
then suck up all of your other stuff. Like you know,
the new Xbox piecee app is in beta right now,
and it'll it can import games from your Steam library
and from Epic, your Epic library and your Gog library
and stuff like that. It doesn't replace them, like like
if you launch a Steam game from the Xbox app,

(22:13):
it just opens Steam and then launches the game because
because Steam still is required to exist for those games
to work correctly. But they they kind of they're they're
back to ironically to being they want to be like
the center of your gaming, like entertainment Nexus essentially, it's
just it's like it's.

Speaker 6 (22:30):
Like, don't it's bizarre because they bought all of those
fucking companies and do ship with them.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
They just wasted this money. It's like we got to
recoup our money back.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
And in many ways setting them up like a lot
of games being set up for failure another thing that
we're going to talk about later on the show. But
like they're you know, they put these games out, they
expect insane you know, returns on investment, and then it
just gives them an excuse to be like, all right,
we'll cut these guys. Like the reason that Turn ten
got cut down is because for it's a motorsport, took

(23:01):
a really long time to develop. The most recent one.
It landed with a lot of fucking problems, did not
make a huge impact and a huge splash at launch,
and people just kind of moved on, and Microsoft's like, ah, fuck, well,
I guess I guess we're not going to invest money
in this anymore because we can't rely on it to
be this guaranteed hit that's going to come out, when ironically,

(23:27):
the reason it's not is due to decisions and changes
in strategy that they made becoming the game pass company,
and they found that game passes kind of plateaued. Like
they wanted to get to one hundred million game pass subscribers.
They're never going to get anywhere near that. I think
the numbers that we know of right now is are
probably a forty to fifty million. It's kind of stayed
consistent in that range for the most part. But so

(23:49):
now they have to pivot. So what's the next thing
that's going to make us a shitload of money? That
thing is AI. So we're going to pivot our entire
strategy towards supporting that in any way that we can.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
Like, once again, forty to fifty million people paying ten
to twenty bucks a month.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
It's not enough.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
That's a lot of money, it's not enough much, but
it's not enough. It's never enough.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
It's never that is correct? Is it is literally never enough?
There there is no there is no amount that would
say she mindset is just foreign to me, It truly is.
That's because because you know, I'm not a million, I'm poor,
That's what I'm saying, Because because you know what it
is to not have, so you know, you know what
it is to have to scrape to scrape by and

(24:30):
Microsoft has since Windows hit the scene, they've never known
that world and right yeah, like like like like they've
never known what that roos so and that's and that's
how you get this skewed uh kind of this skewed
outlook on the marketplace. So but in general, yeah, but
just it really sucks. Game industry is gonna lose a

(24:51):
ton of talent because of these layoffs, and you know,
and now every Microsoft studio right well even more.

Speaker 6 (25:00):
They're gonna try to find like they're gonna go they're
all gonna go Indie.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Well imagine, here's my question, right, like, in addition to
how many people are probably just going to bow out
of the industry entirely and go do something else tech.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
Related, how much does an enormous.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Layoff like this, on top of all of the other
layoffs that we've seen within the last year, scare off
new talent from wanting to try and break in, Like why.

Speaker 6 (25:27):
The fun would I get into the industry?

Speaker 1 (25:31):
And and and now also and on top of that, now,
so like imagine you're the collective and E Day is
about to come out in a couple of months, all right,
and that game doesn't It's like it's not like a
Mega ton hitted, like it scores like a you know,
like a like an eight on IGN, and you know
it moves to you a little bit, but it doesn't
you know, boost game Pass subscriptions or anything like that.

(25:53):
Are you And now you're just kind of waiting there
with the waiting for the other shoot to drop.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
And that's gonna.

Speaker 6 (25:57):
Beastation also, I think so is that also going to
be specifically because I know the I don't.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
I don't think Microsoft puts out exclusives anymore. I think
I think.

Speaker 6 (26:09):
They're just because I know Gears of War remat whatever
the fuck that that one that's coming out next month
is going to be on PlayStation. Also, I don't know
the original Gears of War I don't be on PlayStation.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
I was gonna say, I don't know that it's gonna
be day and date on PlayStation. I think what you
might see now is the same thing they do with
Indiana Jones, where it's like, Hey, comes out in Xbox
and PC first, and then four months later it'll show
up on PlayStation's probably the way forward for them now.
In in weird other news, just kind of randomly since
we're on the Microsoft train, that wall might be falling

(26:42):
down here or there in the other direction as well.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
So the other day I'm like, wait, what.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Hell Divers Too is coming to Xbox X Series X
and S in late August. According to Arrowhead developer Arrowhead Studios,
it will have cross platform play with PlayStation PC, much
as the current version of the game does. This was
a shock to a lot of people. I don't think

(27:09):
anyone ever really thought that Sony would I would do
this with one of their big, big hits. I don't
think you're going to see this happen as a matter
of course for PlayStation going forward. I think you'll see
it where it makes sense. And in a game like
Hell Divers that is reliant on a big multiplayer community,

(27:30):
I think that's what they're gonna last of us, No
ghosts or whatever. Yeah, just stuff like this. So but
an interesting story nonetheless, to just kind of come in
out of nowhere and to kind of put a bow
on kind of like corporate mania. There was an EA

(27:53):
earnings call that they had with their with their shareholders,
and then this is the kind of like fucking poison thinking, right,
that's that's living in this industry like the Terrence's point
where it's never nothing's ever enough. So Battlefield twenty forty
two was a was a dud right like battle like
like came out like it landed like a fucking you know,

(28:16):
wet towel hitting the floor. It took them a long
time to even get it to the point of respectability.
It's still not really doing Gangbusters buggets hell first release,
oh super money, Like, it's like a mess. And EA
just like they see Call of Duty living, you know,
cooking out there. They see Fortnite cooking out there, they
see like whatever the latest battle Reale du jour game

(28:38):
cooking out there, and they're like, we gotta get.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
And and fuck.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
They see Apex, which they own kind of you know,
doing its thing out there, and they're just like, we
just need more fucking money. And so they have a
new Battlefield game that's in development, and EA's executive leadership,
including Andrew Wilson, their CEO, is targeting one hundred million

(29:04):
unique players for whenever this new Battlefield game is going
to be.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Over. I'm sorry, I wasn't paying Yeah, one.

Speaker 7 (29:13):
Hundred, one hundred million in spite of the fact that's
from the release of the very first Battlefield game in
two thousand and two.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Through the release of Battlefield twenty forty two, these series
at large had sold a total of eighty eight million copies.
And these dumb, stupid, crazy morons in the executive seats
over at EA are just like, yo, we'll.

Speaker 4 (29:46):
Be able to hit one hundred million on this one
game alone. It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
Then, you know what's going to happen is when they
so when they don't get anywhere near that fucking goal,
then they will have whatever excuse they want to fire
a bunch of people over there. Yet right, like that's
all this is going to be.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
That really is all right, uh, dice and whatever under
whatever perview that Vince Sampella out because because Vince Sampela
is now technically oversees all things Battlefield for they they
they after Apex came out and it was like, holy shit,
like Respawn does nothing but put out bangers. Apparently, then

(30:23):
you know, Vince Sampello used your call duty magic to
make Battlefield get a hundred million people Like that's that's
basically where they're.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
The most ridiculous. That's almost as bad as Squaring.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
I mean, it's pretty fair bad now to be fair
not to be fair this because this story does not
deserve fairness at all. They are obviously going to release
at least part of the game is like a free
to play sort of thing, so I think that's kind
of where they're angling. But again, like called Diddy war
Zone exists, Fortnite exists, pubg exists, Like those games are

(30:56):
already out there doing their thing. So in orders to
people play playing punk, people still do play publish you
not to not to the numbers they used to, but
they're still there's still pupsy players out there. But it's
not like you're gonna bring in like one hundred million
new players to play this new battlefield game. You need
to pull people from those games that currently exist, and
they're doing very well to this new thing that you're doing.

(31:17):
And again, if all you're doing is like what if
Battlefield but battle Reale, I don't think it's gonna move
the fucking needle, man Like. I don't think that's gonna
be the magic elixir.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
It's not.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
It's not like people that are playing Fortnite are like,
man like, it fucking sucks that I gotta slum it
with Fortnite, I just wish I had this this game mode,
but with Battlefield, Like that's all I'm fucking asshole.

Speaker 6 (31:38):
Battlefield does not lend itself to a Battle Royal the
way that game is designed.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
It just does not. Yeah, the world is too big.
It's too it's it's a slower pace than the rest
of those games.

Speaker 6 (31:50):
Honestly, it wouldn't work. They have vehicles and shit like that,
Like tanks are running around. I mean you have to
take the tanks down, Like, but no, And then is
it gonna be cross platform every single platforms to the
Xbox Tony Switch, Like, how are you going to get

(32:12):
a hundred million people to play?

Speaker 4 (32:14):
You're not.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
I don't think he realized that.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
But but again, it's not it's not about actually achieving
the success. It's about it's about selling a bill of
goods to your shareholders to gain investment and then when
you fail, because you will to carry his point, you said, oh,
this studio, they didn't come through at it here, get
the fuck out of here, like you guys, you know
you guys couldn't deliver. Meanwhile, Andrew Wilson, like it was

(32:39):
a big story. And then he was a couple weeks
ago pocketing like a fucking not not even his base salary, right,
but just like a five million dollar bonus for how
good YAY is doing for the shareholders. Hey, Andrew Wilson,
here's five million dollars just because you're making us so
much money. And what uh FIFA, even even with e

(33:04):
a f C being down compared to prior years, still
bringing in obscene amounts of money APEX despite being down,
still bringing in of scenes amount of amounts of money,
you know, all all that ship. And then's like here's
his money. And Steven Tatillo on his website put out
like a bar graph of Andrew Wilson's salary compared to

(33:29):
like the median EA employees salary, right, and but he
put it in like actual like scale, So like when
you get to like at the top of the page
is like here's Andrew Wilson, and you literally have to
like scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll down the
why right to get to but it demonstrates, but it

(33:50):
demonstrates the point effectively, right where just like holy shit,
like this guy makes so much more money than the
than the rank and file, and you know I get it.
You know, CEO those are you know, in charge of
determining company strategy, and decisions they make have a huge
impact on shareholders because and and they're ultimately what keeps
your company in the good in the public eye, and

(34:13):
you know, from fair or unfairs and may be so
I understand why CEOs make the ship load of money
and still as make it right, it still doesn't make
it make sense. And it and it even makes less
sense when again, these are the strategy, these are the
decisions that a CEO is making. You're purposely setting your
company up to fail, and you're just doing it under

(34:34):
the guys to get more people to invest, and then
you fire people when it to protect that investment when
it doesn't pan out. Because the only the only thing
that shareholders like seeing more than massive revenue is cutting
the bottom line so that so that the profit margin
stays the same. That's that's really all it's about. So

(34:57):
and and we've been talking about this the past couple
of weeks, and it's just dispiriting. And it's and it's
why as we talk about like the real like like
the real passion in gaming, it's happening in the indie space, right,
it's happening where people are actually developing it not to
make oodles and noodles money, but for the love of
the game and and to just try to make carved

(35:17):
out of living for themselves. But the irony is is
that you know, if you have an indie studio that
hits gangbusters, what's gonna happen down the road. You're gonna
get picked up by a big fucking publisher. And then
and now you're part of the machine.

Speaker 6 (35:32):
At what point, as an indie developer, you've been like,
I'm good, I know you need that money. I know you,
I know that that fucking giant paychecks is incredibly fucking like, yeah,
let me get that. But then they might be like,
you didn't you didn't meet our expectations to get the
fuck out.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
Honestly, I think it depends like like, if it's a
studio that whose studio head is like looking to get
out right, like get a big payday and leave, those
are the ones that are and get sold because the
studio head like they'll make the sale, they'll make a
shitload of money. That it usually does pass down to
people that are at the studio when they get acquired
and so it's not like they're just hoarding it all,
but they just they get a big fat, fucking sack

(36:11):
of money and they're just like, all right, deuces them out.
I'm gonna go do my own thing, Like You're gonna
start another studio probably somewhere along the line with all
this fucking money that I just got. And then and
then the studio just kind of becomes a cog in
the big machine of the publisher. If if if you
are a small indie studio like it, like like I
think of like a yacht club games, right, a yacht
who makes shovel night. They're coming out with me and

(36:32):
the poor. They're still a pretty small team who make
a great product, but they do really well for themselves.
Like like I'm pretty sure that the company is un
very stable financial footing. They have a group of people
that like working together that they're not pressed to churn
out game after game, and they're just like, this is cool,
this is sustainable. We can you know, we can make

(36:52):
this work. We don't have to worry about selling out
to somebody. We can just make it the games we
like to make and just kind of, you know, go
along the downside of that is that if you miss
on a big game, that's where you get into trouble.
Right Like if you if you miss on a game
that you publish and it just doesn't hit well, then
now you're now you're kind of in trouble because you
don't have the constant, you know, steady flow of money

(37:13):
coming in.

Speaker 6 (37:13):
So is Kepler Interactive under anybody in particular or they
did their own entity? They are They're they're publisher.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
They're a publisher. Yeah, I think, I think very publishing studios.
They're a publisher.

Speaker 6 (37:27):
But they're not under like like a gigantic No, no,
like conglomerate. Because they put out they put out a
lot of they put out a lot of good games,
like they put out Rematched, they put out The Seafood,
they put out a clas Cure, they put out a
lot of quality games. But they're not under the guys
of like an EA or a fucking MICROSOFTIGN like that.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
No, they're like they're kind of what you call like
a double a publisher of sorts. Like like, so then
for those that don't know like the different like what's
the difference between the a's, it's generally like how much
is spent on like marketing and stuff like that is
actually the thing that determines whether game is like Double
A TRIPA that sort of thing. So like Kepler kind
of lives in that same lines like an Annapurna does,

(38:07):
or like a like A Team seventeen or like a
Focus Interactive like those, those are the kind of publishers
that are in sort of that space.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
I would say, I would argue that they're making better
their publishing.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
They are no. One percent we're seeing. I mean that
one of the benefits that we're seeing by Triple eight
or by Triple A studios and publishers fumbling the ball
is that Double A is picking up that ball in
a way that we haven't really seen since like the
mid odds, and and doing really well with that. So
I mean, that's that's that's been a that's been an

(38:39):
encouraging sign. So just sucks, man, just it just fucking sucks.
So does a beloved critical darling getting caught with their
hand in the proverbial AI cookie jar. So uh. We
talked about the Altars. Terrence likes it a lot. It's

(39:00):
one of the better ending games coming out that came
out this year. But some players noticed some things as
they went through the altars, specifically the the undisclosed use
undisclosed being a very important factor here of genitor of

(39:21):
AI in the game. So basically, the people found a
in game like background display that had like a text
log that was on it, and as people like zoomed
in on what the text said, because of course, you know,
you leave shit like that in the background, people that

(39:43):
are hunting for Easter eggs are gonna, you know, try
to read what's on that Tot's see, I there's anything
fun and on that text prompt is a is a
phrase that said, sure, here's the revised version, focusing purely
on scientific and astronomical data, as if the prompt was
just literally fed in to chat gpt APT without editing

(40:04):
the beginning party. So well, and the other thing that
was noticed is that the localization of the game in
different territories was pretty haphazard, and that is because they
also used gender Dove AI to handle the translation for

(40:24):
the game in some territories as well.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, so their extremely mealy mouthed response was to say
that an AI generated text for a graphic asset, which
was meant as a piece of background texture was used
by one of our graphic designers as a placeholder. It's
never intended to be part of the final release, so

(40:49):
this was an oversight. It was a placeholder text whatever whatever.
Trying to hand wave it away now, As someone who
has worked in Adobe products for a long time, I
know that Adobe's default placeholder text is lorem ipsum, And

(41:12):
if you don't know what lorum ipsum is, it is
essentially the default placeholder text in graphic design, in publishing,
in web development, in any of this. It is essentially
nonsense Latin though it is derived from an old text

(41:32):
by Cicero. But it has been around for.

Speaker 4 (41:39):
Decades. It's been around.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
It was used in typesetting in the nineteen sixties and
started being used in digital word processors in the eighties.
So I don't buy it for one fucking second that
this was ever meant as a placeholder when ipsum.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
Exists and has existed.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
They're only saying it was a placeholder because they got
fucking caught. Now they're trying to handwave it away as
a placeholder. They really like, if they really wanted a placeholder,
why why not? Why not just use Laura im.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Here's here's my question, why why does the so so
they're like an art director, like a like an art designer,
like put it in there placeholder? Why do the game
developers need a placeholder of flavor text that's happening in
the background, Like what what purpose would that serve? Like
you could just put a big yellow screen in the
background that's just like hey, like this is this is

(42:40):
just placeholder text. And then they they kind of handwaved
the translation piece away. There's like, oh, like this translation
was only for these small in game movies, and it
was zero point three percent of in game text that
was used for AI translations. And that way we could
have the game ready unlaunched and blody body blah. And

(43:02):
here's the here's the big problem with that, right, So,
Like one thing that Steam has done that I think
is really cool is they force developers now that if
your game uses generative AI in any way, shape or form,
there's a session on the store page we have that
is closed that you did it and for what specifically,
so people can make their own determinations on whether that's decisions. Yeah,

(43:26):
and so, the the issue is not so much that
eleven Bit Studio.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Did this.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
It's the fact that they didn't that they weren't upfront
about it from the get go.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
That's what people are really because they thought they weren't
going to get caught, correct, That's yeah. So they've been
getting a racket shit online, and I think it is
well deserved. Like you know, look, I have been very
transparent about my disdain for generative AI, especially platform such

(44:00):
as chat GPT.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
Again, I lost my job at the end of May.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
I've been primarily a writer my entire working career, and
I do not think it is a mere coincidence that
I and the other writers in my department were all
let go roughly six weeks after the company created a
director of AI Initiatives.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
I just don't think that's a coincidence.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
I think that again, Lorem, if some has been around
for literally sixty years. If you need a placeholder, that's
the default. It's literally built in to multiple programs, including
every piece of Adobe software out there, including every piece

(44:52):
of Microsoft software out there. If you need a quick
placeholder just to see how text is going to look
on a peage, that's what it's literally there for. So
I don't buy the excuse that it was just meant
as a placeholder. I don't buy the excuse that only
so much of the text was translated using an LM.

(45:16):
I just don't buy it.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
I think they.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Clearly thought that they covered their tracks well enough in
the process of using AI to have gotten away with it,
and they didn't get away with it.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
You know.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
I literally just added to my band's writers for shows
that if the event that we're playing at uses Generative
AI in any capacity, we will cancel because I'm tired
of it. I'm tired of seeing it. It is lazy.

Speaker 4 (45:48):
There have literally now.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
Been studies that show that people who rely on chat
GPT lose the ability.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
To problem solve for themselves.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
They literally like it's literally turning your brain into fucking soup.

Speaker 4 (46:03):
And people are out here at large.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
It showed us, not the Internet at large.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
No, I mean, I think that's accelerating it.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
But there's there's a big difference between you, like when
you have a question for the Internet, just a huge
difference in you googling something and having to like find
the context and the page on your own. Then there
isn't just typing a prompt into an AI and letting
it regurgitate, you know, whatever it whatever it finds or

(46:34):
what you hope it finds. Because again, like you see
people sharing on social media all the time, like Google
just completely like Google's AI like overview that they put
at the top of the page now at the search results,
like when you type in something just completely missing the
mark a lot.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, I'm like, this is not what I asked for, right,
I go to the website.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Yeah, so, and and the scary thing for me is
is that had they not been so lazy and not
left like the the like the beginning of the AI
response in we might no one might have ever caught it, right, Like, like, no,
no one might have ever been able to catch that
unless they bumped it up against like something that chat

(47:19):
GPT would spit out if you asked it like a
similar question or something like that. It just kind of
showed itself in the same cadence. So like, even though
Steam does have that disclosure, I'm pretty sure that disclosure
is still like voluntary, like there's nothing to inform I mean, yeah,
putting that stuff there. So like, now we live in.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
A world unless valve you know, enacts some degree of
consequence against.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
The But if you never get like that's that's the
other problem. Yeah, Now, so now I feel like if
you're if you're not, if you're someone like carrying like myself. Also,
who doesn't really jibe with this ship being used in
the way that's being used. Now we almost have to
like wonder does this game like use like jenn ai

(48:04):
in some ways? And just for the dumbest stuff, like
like there was a a ship storm kicked up because
Frontier Games, who makes the Jurassic World Evolution games, which
is like the Jurassic Park like theme park builder essentially
game that they that they have out there, they put
on the on their page like they just closed that
they were doing it. But they're just like, hey, Drastic

(48:24):
World Evolution three, like we're using Generative AI for the
scientists portraits in the game, Like that's what we're using
jen Ai for. And it's just like, bro, like you
couldn't just have your fucking staff artists with like fifty right, fine,

(48:46):
Like we're like like like like this is what we're
gonna save time and money for AI, and and people
kicked up a fucking hornet's nest about it, and the
developer walked that ship back too sweet as you would
imagine that they fucking would and that's what it's gonna take. Man,
Like it's gonna take people, Like it's gonna take people
be developers being forward about this ship and players loudly

(49:09):
telling them we do not want this in our games,
so stop.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
People don't like seeing people lose their jobs.

Speaker 6 (49:15):
No, and with all of this bullshit with the AI
being used and you don't need as many workers for
this or whatever. And if you if you tell people
that people are getting laid off in order to use AI,
they're not gonna buy your ship and you're gonna be
in a world of trouble. Like I don't, like a

(49:35):
lot of people have issues paying, like like talking with
their wallets. I do not, but like a lot of
people just will just buy shit just because it's there.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Micah.

Speaker 6 (49:44):
But uh, you know, people need to learn to like
to speak with their wallets so they can actually get
shit done. Like this is off topic, but Target, for example,
Black people have have fucking boycotted Target. They have lost
like a billion dollars, They've lost a lot of money
m hm, and they just stop. We just stopped going because.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
All because they're just like like, we got a buddy
up to the Trump administration and make a big think
about the DAI initiatives and.

Speaker 6 (50:12):
It's like Goode's hurting right now. That's what needs to
help if you want games to get back to where
they used to be. Like, stop buying every iteration of
fucking Call to Dude, stop doing it. It's the same
fucking game every year. Stop buying every iteration of FC
or Madden. But here you don't need to play it.
Here's here's the challenge, though, is that the three of
us care about this ship. The people who listen to

(50:36):
the to the Video Game podcast every week care about
this ship. John Q gamer who just buys his Call
of Duty and Madden every year, probably doesn't even know
they shouldn't or give a fuck even even if I did,
you know what I mean. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, yep, So that's that is the challenge. But but again, Terrence,
I think your philosophy in a situation like this where
it is a smaller studio or an indie and stuff
like that, I think you can have a lot more
impact on those studios less so that you can on
like the bigger studios, because again they're not like the
Altars is not going to sell ten million copies probably,

(51:11):
so no, but.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
I have to wonder.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
I have to wonder how many people requested refunds once.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
Yeah, this this news broke.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
I mean, it is just one of these things of
like a newer studio like that, like to come out
with something that up until this point was being perceived
as kind of like this year's Indie Darling and in
some fashion or for.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Me, someone who hadn't bought it yet, but you know,
I was. I'm intrigued by it, and Terrence's view of it,
you know, certainly did nothing but pique my interest more.
And now this kind of pours a bit of bucket
of cold water on some of that.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
Yeah, it's it's hard from my perspective, it's hard for
a company to basically rebuild that trust after they have
blatantly uh you know, lied to their target audience.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
So uh yeah, I don't know. It's it's so easy.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
It's so easy to not fucking use AI man, Like
I chest, We've been doing it for so long, and
now everybody's like, I need Chat GPT and it's like,
oh it's I go to that one meme that's just like,
oh dude, you need Chat GPT to make you an image?

Speaker 4 (52:27):
Oh are you little baby. Do you need it to
write you an email too? Or you a moron? Do
you need the bobot to fuck your wife too?

Speaker 3 (52:34):
It's just like, I'm so sick of it. I'm so
tired of chat GPT man like. And if you use
chat GPT, you're a lazy asshole, point blank. If you
use chat GPT, you're lazy and stupid.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Yeah, Jay, thank for your.

Speaker 4 (52:52):
Fucking helf, Thank for your fucking self.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Use your nod.

Speaker 4 (52:56):
Damn brain, it's there for a reason. You're literally turning
your brain.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
Into by just like, you know, leaning on something that
cannot think for itself.

Speaker 4 (53:06):
I can't stress this enough.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Large language models are not true artificial intelligence in any fashion. Literally,
all they do is they spit out words in a
specific order based on what the next word is most
likely to be, based on what pieces of information it
has been fed and is not thinking. It is not
doing anything. It is not originating any kind of thought

(53:29):
for itself. It is literally just like spitting out what
the answer might be based on what it kind of
already knows, and.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
It can be manipulated into, you know, favoring certain outcomes.
If you need any evidence of that, just read some
of the stories today about what Elon Musk has been
doing with Groc, because Groc is apparently two woke for
the liking yeah for the lak against witter users because
Groc is just pointing out uh oh kill them, Yeah,

(54:02):
like is pointing out facts and uh Conservatives don't like
Twitter users don't like that. They want to be They
want their positions to be reaffirmed.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
So again, I.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Put a no AI, no generative AI stipulation in both
of my band's writers today because I am so sick
of this ship.

Speaker 4 (54:21):
And here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
If you think that I, an individual with a fucking
master's degree in professional writing, cannot spot what chat GPT
bullshit looks like, you're fooling yourself.

Speaker 4 (54:34):
I see it every fucking time. I know exactly what
it looks like.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
I know exactly the flowery language chat GPT uses for everything.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
And if you want to pay someone to.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Overuse M dashes and lie to you, just do it
for me, because I can do it better.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Let me tell you someone, as someone who likes to
using an M dash, the fact that that's been kind
of co opted by I'm tired of M dashes.

Speaker 4 (54:56):
I've never liked m dashes.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
They're better. They're they're better than parenthetic because I think so.
So speaking of dipshit conservatives, President deal makers, you know,
negotiating the ninety deals in ninety days, even though we're
like at the end of the ninety days and there's
no deals except for like with Vietnam, and that sucks.

(55:21):
One of the countries that he's in a pissing match
with right now, our neighbors to the north in Canada.
As a result of the economic uncertainty to borrow a
phrase that's going on between the US and Canada, Nintendo
has confirmed that starting on August first, they will be
raising prices of many products and services in Canada because

(55:44):
of changing market conditions, though notably from a product perspective,
this is only going to be impacting original Nintendo Switch
hardware and software and accessories, not Switch to. However, Canada
will see an increase in other nintended products as well,

(56:06):
like Amebo and Nintendo Switch online memberships. So not trying
to shoot on the new thing pricing increasing for the
old thing. We don't know what those price increases are
going to be. Nintendo said they would announce them on
August first. They would let people know what the deal is.
But if you're up north and for some reason still

(56:27):
want to get a switch one and assorted software.

Speaker 5 (56:31):
Uh, you switch one directly from a Nintendo retailer, mind you,
as opposed to like a likely just a good pre
owned or refurbished switch from fucking Facebook marketplace, like.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Well they got free es gaps that whatever.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
They also have it. They also have a shittily valued
dollar compared to the money isn't what you That's what
you get for calling your dollar a loony. So the
final bit of news story, Gearbox has announced that they

(57:13):
are making a change to Borderlands in Borderlands for that
might just bring back a lot of LAPS players into
the franchise, that's how seismic this change is. Apparently, when
Borderlands for releases, the game will have a clap Trap
slider which will allow you to reduce or even mute

(57:33):
the amount of dialogue coming from the series mascot robot
clap Trap, which, despite the changes in tone across the
Borderland series, somehow cloud Trap has always remained the same.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
So hilarious.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Yeah, if you're if you're not a fan of clap Trap,
you can now mute him and look yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
Because it was.

Speaker 6 (58:03):
It was cool in the first dude, and then a month, fuck,
it just got wild, annoying, and I'm like, I don't, yeah,
fuck up, don't. It's not funny anymore. Yeah, Like that's
just that form of humor in general. Like Handsome Jack
was funny, those two twins, whatever the fucking three. I'm like,
all right, none of this is funny.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
That particular brand of humor wore itself out by two
thousand and eight, like, and.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
I think that, I mean, to their credit, I think
they realized that because a lot of the reviews of
the game said, like, hey, like kind of kind of
sucks that we waited seven years for new Borderlands game
and all we're getting is the same fucking toilet you know,
dick jokes and toilet humor that we've had that you know,
the series should be able to move past at this point.
And yeah, the story definitely was not a highlight of
the Borderlands three by any stretch of the imagination. So

(58:50):
good change. I think now, if you make sure that
Randy Pittford doesn't voice a character in the game, I
think we'll really be uh, we'll really be off and
running with Borderlands for so just get just keep Brandy
on the bench man, Like I know Randy thinks he
needs to be out there, but just just fucking bench
that dude and just let let let him be apparently
a good boss who just carries porn around with him

(59:12):
for some reason, but still by all accounts a good
dude to work for. Uh, just really massively annoying. So
just a quick detour into games. The game that I've
been playing a lot, so city Builders and me have
a it's it's it's weird, right, Like I find stuff
that you know, a lot of city Builders where you know,

(59:33):
I like certain aspects, but there's some aspects of the
game that I really don't like side to kind of
like push on past those aspects. Like an Ano for example,
Like I like the production chain gameplay of the Ano series,
I don't necessarily need like a narrative, like a fully
scripted dialogue narrative in my city Builder game, Like that's
not really what I'm here for. But Ano has like

(59:54):
has that in spades, something like manner Lords, like I
like manner Lords lot and manner Lords sometimes looks too
heavy for my liking, and sometimes like the economy can
be really really strength, you know, suffocating in that game
at some extent. Well, I've stumbled upon a game called Foundation,
and I think Foundation might be like my Goldilocks city

(01:00:18):
builder for me at least.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Foundation was a game that was in early access for
a while. It launched the one point zero earlier this year.
It's a medieval style city builder that has like kind
of like your production chain gameplay that you find for
a lot of other city builders, where you have to
you know, build X to get the raw resources to
produce Y, which will ultimately issue produce Z, which your
villagers need to be happy. And once they're happy, you

(01:00:42):
can upgrade them to higher classes so they can work
more complex jobs and so on and so forth. And
you're trying to make this beautiful medieval village, town, city,
what have you. But Foundation does a lot of really
cool things that it's it's like they're taking the best
parts of a lot of the genre and kind of
combining into one game. So the first thing that's very

(01:01:04):
cool is the game was incredibly customizable for how you
want to play it, Like they really let you toggle
every aspect of the game, so like if you don't
like weren't sweating money like if you just want unlimited money,
you can do that if you want to. If you
don't want to have to worry about village or happiness,
you can do that if you want to. If you
want to focus more on like the like the military

(01:01:26):
part of the game, you can like go down a
custom pathway to explore that more, and the game will
kind of push you into that direction a little bit
more than it would normally. You can also kind of
generate your own map each time you play, so like
if you want to play on a map that has
like a lot of lakes and rivers, like, you can
do that, And there's a slider for that. You can

(01:01:46):
determine like how how hilly do you want the train
to be? How you know, how much clisse side do
you want? Do you want to be coastal? Do you
want to be you know, in the hills? Stuff like that,
and and so gives you a lot of a lot
of replayability there and then the other thing it does
that's like super smart. Typically in most city builder games,
the thing that you have to place most repetitively are

(01:02:09):
like your residence is usually like the houses where your
people live, and like you know, how when you're building
like your farms, like you know, generating the fields for
those and stuff like that. What Foundation does that's really
clever is it actually uses like paint brush tools for
a lot of this stuff that you normally would have
to be putting down like roads and houses for So
in Foundation, I don't actually like build a house for

(01:02:33):
each resident that I need to build a house for.
I just paint an area of that map and say, hey,
this is where I want my residential area to be,
and as people come into town, they will just automatically
build their houses only in that area. And roads are
automatically created based on the paths that the villagers are
actually using to get around the village. Like the roads

(01:02:55):
just kind of naturally happen, and you can you can
kind of manipulate that by putting down like fencing and
stuff like that, so you can kind of make the
builders go where do you want them to go. But everything,
like the more tedious parts of the city builders kind
of get smoothed out by Foundation by kind of using
the different systems that they have, and you obviously still

(01:03:16):
place the production buildings and stuff like that, but like
kind of the stuff that it gets annoying to have
the zone out and kind of lay down yourself game
kind of handles for you, and that's pretty slick. The
other thing that they do that's pretty cool is they
have these monument buildings, so like your manor house is
the first one where you live, and then they have
like a church that you can get later, and you know,

(01:03:38):
like a tavern. And not only can you kind of
customize these buildings by building on individual pieces, but you
can actually grow them over time by adding like new
features to them. Instead of placing a new building, you're
just kind of expanding on the initial one and making
it like this huge centerpiece of your town, and it
gives you a lot of different options and choices to
kind of go with that. I've lost the lot of

(01:04:00):
time to this one so far. This is another one
of those games where like I played for like six hours,
and I learned all sorts of new like optimization strategies
that I didn't know the first time through. So I
fucking scrapped everything and started over and kind of rebuilt
from the ground floor. I guess City Builders are like
my version of Micah in character creation suites in games

(01:04:21):
where he'll like spending an arduous amount of time building
up a character and then just scrapping it two hours
later because like he doesn't like how it looks when
you actually get into the game world. That kind of
thing I hate. I did the same thing. Yeah, I
don't blame you, but that's me with my town. That's
me with my town. So, like I said, like, I
have these residential zones, like they're just kind of intermingled throughout,

(01:04:42):
and I was like, no, this is bullshit. I want
this to be the residential area. I want this to
be like the workman like production area where like the
stonecutter is and like the lumberyards sit. I want this
area to be like the farm area. And so like
you you've had you sit there and you can plot
it out really well, and it just makes it easy
to do. So the foundation is very cool. Added to

(01:05:03):
the pile of city builders that I that I like
a lot, still kind of slows down the mid game,
like all city builders kind of tend to do. I
think that's just an unfortunate side effect of that genre.
The early game is always the best version. And Terrence,
like we were talking earlier, because you said you played
against the Storm, which I've talked about on this show.
That's why I like Against the Storm so much. It's

(01:05:25):
because Against the Storms just like, here's the early game,
and then here's the early game again, and then here's
the early game again. It's right, it's the best city
builders over and over again, essentially.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
So I smell YouTube video. He's like, this might be
the best city building game of all.

Speaker 6 (01:05:40):
Time, right, because it's because it's always the beginning of.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
It, right, because as soon as you get to the
point where you don't have to touch the city for
ten minutes and you just have to kind of let
it do is thing to generate resources, the levels over
and you go to the end, you go to the next,
the next territory. So but you foundation good in my opinion, Carrie,
you want to talk about that in this case?

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Yes, Summer Games Done Quick is happening this week. It
runs through Saturday night, July twelfth. Already off to a
fun start. I watched some of.

Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
The roller Coaster Tycoon run this morning.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
That was wild as someone who played a lot of
Roller Coaster Tycoon as a kid. But if your unfamiliar,
Games Done Quick is a.

Speaker 4 (01:06:26):
Semi annual.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Speed running marathon for charity They also have some spin
off events such as Frame Fatals. The summer edition of
GDQ goes directly to help Doctors Without Borders, which is
a fantastic charity that does.

Speaker 4 (01:06:45):
A lot of wonderful work around the world.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
So Dave, Yeah, my god, we really do. But lots
of really fun speed runs. I'm personally looking forward to
finishing this podcast so that I can immediately watch the
Legend of Zelda, Lags Awakening, DX.

Speaker 4 (01:07:01):
Run any Percent, No out of Bounds.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
Lots of fun stuff planned for later in the weeks,
such as Mario Karts, Super Circuit, Majora's Mask, Sonic Adventure two, Castlevania,
Rondo of Blood, a Maria Only Run. I'm curious about that.
There's the uh they used to call it the Awful Block.
Now they call it the Silly Block. So that's usually

(01:07:27):
a late night block of games that's all kind of nonsense.
So that's going to feature shak Fu, Pocket Bike Racer, Hercules,
the Legendary Journeys, Emergency Call, Ambulance, Skatehorse, Sega, Marine.

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
Fishing, a bunch of other very silly games.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
But you've got some You've got some speed running classics
in here, right, Like we're not gonna have a speed
run marathon without an appearance by Super Metroid, so that's
happening later in the week. You know, Mega Man three
should be fun. That's a co op any percent. I
don't know how that's going to work. Sonic Heroes I'm
excited for. I think the one that I'm really really

(01:08:11):
looking out for is Monster Hunter Wilds, which will feature
both a lockout bingo competition as well as a four
player apex showcase, so lots of fun stuff, and then
the finale game is Delta Rune Chapter one and two.
Look I like watching speed runs, I don't. I'll say

(01:08:33):
I normally do not participate in speed runs myself. However,
if you are attending mag West next month, I will
be doing a live speed run as part of the
mag Fast programming schedule, so you can watch me speed
run Paradise Killer any percent on Friday afternoon in the

(01:08:56):
Magfast Stage lounge, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
And the way that we will be doing this is
I will be speed running the game while my.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
Partner Ian who's also my guitarist in my band by Score,
will be playing selections from the soundtrack live while I
speed run the game. So that should be a very
fun time. I'm going to basically finish the game in
fifteen minutes or less. That's kind of giving myself a

(01:09:29):
five minute buffer because I've done the game in like
nine minutes before.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):
But yeah, if you want.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
To come watch me, watch me speed run Paradise Killer,
and you're going to maguest huh is it is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
A narrative detective game that carries.

Speaker 4 (01:09:45):
It is an open world murder mystery.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
You said they'll be finished in fifteen minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
Yeah, So here's the thing about Paradise Killer is that
what you're supposed to do is explore this nice little
open world island and uncover all of these mysteries.

Speaker 4 (01:09:58):
But what you can do is you can and immediately.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
Turned right back around, start the trial, say that guy
didn't and fucking leave. So there are ways to finish
the game in ten minutes or less. That's actually one
of the Steam achievements is to basically speed run the game.
So I've gotten pretty good at it. I gotta start
practicing my runs a little bit. But that should also

(01:10:21):
be streamed, so I'll be sure to post a link
to the mag Fast channel when that is coming up.

Speaker 4 (01:10:27):
But yay.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Speed running is good and it's even better when it's
for charity. The mag Fast charity I believe you'll be
able to donate for and all of that money will
go to I think it's Child's Play, so another great
gaming related charity.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
So yeah cool and yeah games the quick always good
to have in the background if you're just need something
to have kind of face, you know, whizzen buy as
you're doing other things. So looking forward to checking some
of that out. Let's take it then to the post
office where if you are in our discord Unsman's dot
com slash fans, you can ask us questions that we
will answer on the show every single week, just like

(01:11:06):
Mark did where he asks, uh, probably a silly question,
especially for those of us of a certain age. Have
you ever left a game for so long that you
have to restart it because you've basically forgotten how to
play the entire game? Yeah? All the time, Like like

(01:11:27):
it happens a lot. I don't know why game developers don't.
Like some game developers do this not enough, in my opinion,
Just put a tutorial in the game menu that you
can access at any time, so that if you so
that if you've bit away from the game for a while,
you can get a quick refresher of your skills. I

(01:11:49):
don't like, like, I don't know fucking fuck all about
game development, and I can't imagine that's that art, especially
if the tutorial exists upfront in the game, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 4 (01:11:58):
Yeah, so honest, what I what?

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
I there was one It might have been like the
DS era of Pokemon, but some of those games would
basically tell you, like what the most recent like three
or four things you did before saving your name were,
which I thought was nice because that's another thing in

(01:12:21):
big RPGs or single player games, like yeah, a story
so far recap? Can I get a last time on
fucking Dragon Quest?

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Nettle Gear Solid. Mettle Gear Solid did it way back
in nineteen ninety eight, whenever you came in and loaded
your saved game. There's like, hey, here's what basically happened
right before you saved.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
Is very handy because my brain is mush and I
can't remember big story beats as well as I used to.

Speaker 6 (01:12:53):
Think recent Dragon Age Inquisition because I hadn't played in
ten years.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
That was a very long checker fan. But it happens
a lot yeah. Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
And he also asked, are there any musicians or groups
you'd want to see take on a game score that
you haven't seen yet. I figured this is like micro
targeted me.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
I'm lying that I am.

Speaker 4 (01:13:18):
I am working on a game.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
I am working on a game right now, enters early
access later next month.

Speaker 4 (01:13:25):
So I mean, I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
Trying to think, because like, scoring is different than just
like writing music. It's it's very different from writing like
a pop song, right, Like, and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
So or he's doing one, isn't he?

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (01:13:47):
Is he?

Speaker 4 (01:13:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:13:48):
He is?

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
Well he did he did Quake's interesting. Yeah, and he's
done like themes. So he's currently score the new Naughty
Dog game.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):
So, but of course he's done like film scores as well.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
You know, if if Daft Punk didn't stop, I would
have loved to have seen Daft Punk do a a
video game score.

Speaker 4 (01:14:20):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:21):
In terms of bands that like, I actively really like
and listen to a lot of I love the band
called Twarp and they have they have a lot of
very fun instrumentals in addition to the tunes with vocals
that they do. But they have a song that's literally
meant to be like a Mario Kart song. It's clearly

(01:14:43):
inspired by the likes of like your Coconut Mall and
you know, Koopa Troopa Beach and stuff like that. So
I guess it depends on the type of game, right,
Like I would love Twarp to score like a KRT
racing game just because they've already like written music based
on Mario Kart or inspired by Mario Kart, and I

(01:15:04):
think it would be fun to see them actually do
a proper like Kart Racer soundtrack in full. But you know, again,
scoring scoring a video game is very much like scoring
a movie. You know, you have to kind of you're
there to capture a mood more so than to like
create a really catchy kind of hook. So you know,

(01:15:26):
it's it's tricky, but yeah, I would say, you know,
I would say, I would say Torp. I would like
to see Torp do some stuff with with video games,
just because they've done a lot of video game adjacent stuff.
And yeah, otherwise me, I would like to do more
video game work.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
Cam Or says, this isn't a question. Well, I guess
it's technically a question how he phrased it. He says,
I mean, can you just give the best picture Oscar
the street Fighter now right, And this is in reference
to the latest Street Fighter movie casting news where it's
rumored that Cody Rhoades is in talk to play Kyle

(01:16:07):
in the upcoming street Fighter movie. Uh. To refresh anyone
who might not have heard some of the other casting choices,
I think most of these are confirmed. Jason Momoa is
reportedly playing Blanca in this film. Roman Reigns is going
to be reportedly playing a Kuma. They fifty cent was

(01:16:28):
announced as playing ball Rock and got a heavy endorsement
from grand L Bush, the last actor to play Ballrog
on film. I'm sure he really cared about that. Uh.
And Uh. The one bit of casting that I think
is actually really good, uh, David Dalmackian, I think is
how the last name is pronounced, makin whatever it is.

(01:16:50):
He's been cast to play and Bison, which I think
could work pretty well. Because this movie is gonna be terrible,
you know, but but it's gonna be terrible in an
interesting way.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
It's gonna be it's gonna be two terrible and I
don't know, man like I think you can if they
mean it, happiness of it, I think it can still
be really fun.

Speaker 6 (01:17:13):
Like, are they purposefully doing this because this casting is outrageous.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
It is they're not taking a movie.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
But but you know that Cody Rhoades would rock the
fucking the flat top.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
He would do it a flat top.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
He would do the flat top. Cody, if this is true,
like he wouldn't even have to cover his tattoo. He
could just he could just leave that ship be like
fucking I'm God America. Fuck yeah. So they're just not
taking the movie serio. It is basically what they're saying.
You don't you don't think a movie. It's casting road

(01:17:46):
Reins as a Kuma is not is not taking it seriously?
Is that is that your looks wild? They're crazy right.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
Like fucking fifty cent ball rog or mother fucking Orville
Peck as Vega like a musician is a gay cowboy
yeehaw man who does like musicals.

Speaker 4 (01:18:12):
I think he's done. What what fucking musical was he
in Cabaret? I don't know. My sister likes Orville Peck
a lot. So here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
If he ends up being cast as Vega, then maybe
that maybe that means my sister will actually come do
a video game related thing with me. For the first
time in thirty five fucking years, So that would be fun. Personally,
I think if we're casting wrestlers as as street fighter characters,
then Russif needs to be cast as Zangief.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
Yep, that that that would be, That would be great.
Why not?

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Now this, now, this does go against the recent Hollywood
trend of not just using what actors of whatever nationality
to play characters that are of specific nationalities. I think
Samoa Joe could make a great I Honda if you're
not worried about casting a Japanese person as he, even
though I think you probably should cast the Japanese person
as Honda if you're gonna have him in the movie.

(01:19:05):
But I think Somemojo could rock that ship pretty hard.

Speaker 6 (01:19:08):
I'm looking at this Orval Peck individual. He's always wearing
a fucking mask.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
Is that? Why?

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
There you go? That's probably why. That's probably why that
makes that makes a lot of sense. I also heard
someone suggest like, hey, for indy wrestlers, like just like
Kenny Omega be Ken and yeah, why why not just like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Just do it, just do it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
It'll be great, be terrible.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
Yeah, Like.

Speaker 6 (01:19:35):
There's been there's been a like movies turning that have
been actually very video games turning into movies that has
been good in the last couple of years. That's just
going to fall right back into fucking in line, aren't they.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
I I can't. I can't believe that you're not approaching
the Street Fighter movie with with the utmost faith and
confidence in your heart. This ship, Oh yeah, they don't care.
They don't give a ship. Okay, let me let me,
let me ask let me, let me ask you this
question more ridiculous casting Cody Rhods as Guyle or Chris

(01:20:09):
Pratt as the voice of Mario.

Speaker 4 (01:20:12):
Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt is more ridiculous Chris Pratt is.

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
And I think you know what I feel like the
difference is like, even if Cody Roads sucks in this role,
which he almost certainly will, he at least is what
I mean, Like he's an actor, but like he he's
actually a big fucking dork who plays a lot of
video games. And I feel like, unlike Chris Pratt, Cody

(01:20:36):
Rhoads would be able to bring a level of enthusiasm
to the role that I don't think Chris Pratt did.
Like Chris Pratt was a perfectly cromulent voice of Mario.
But you know, I feel like when we're getting into
live action territory, you really need someone who's like actually
going to like get the source material. And I do
think that that is a point in Cody Rhad's favor.

Speaker 1 (01:20:59):
If only if only Captain lew Abada was still alive,
that would have taken care of that problem right there.
For the market, we what we could have had. Uh,
Johnny asks thoughts if any on this whole stop killing
games movement? Well, yeah, so for those who thought what
it is, I had not heard a lot about it

(01:21:19):
until quite recently actually, But this was a online petition
started by a YouTuber uh that's specifically targeted at the
EU because apparently they have a law over there that
if you basically get a certain number of signatures on
a petition about a specific issue, it does force the

(01:21:40):
EU Parliament to debate on it. It just crossed the
threshold of a million signatures last week, which I think
is a big milestone that's needed for the for triggering
this and essentially what it is imploring and and was
in This was kind of spurred on by Ubisoft's decision

(01:22:03):
to shut down the original Crew, the Crew because it
was reliant on having online servers, And basically it's a
it's a plea and a ploy to get legislators to
force game publishers to not allow their games to be
completely taken off line to the point where they can't

(01:22:24):
be playable anymore. As obviously games like that that you
know can't be played at a certain point kind of
runs fly in the face first of all, it's very
anti consumer, and secondly, it kind of flies in the
face of games preservation, which is in a ever precarious
position as time marches forward and online is more reliant

(01:22:45):
for more and more games.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
Yeah, Ultimately, like a big sort of focus of this
particular movement is the fact that like games, when they're
listed on an online storefront, you are being the impression
that you're given is that you purchasing a game. You're
not renting a game, you're not leasing a game. So
if you purchase a game, then why should access to

(01:23:11):
that game suddenly stop when the company that published it.

Speaker 4 (01:23:15):
Decides to stop access to that game?

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
So, you know, while I think that some of the
people who are kind of behind the movement themselves are dingises,
I do think that there is kind of a point
just insomuch that like, yeah, like if I buy something,

(01:23:40):
you know, I should be able to play it indefinitely
because I purchased it and therefore I should own it.
And then if I'm not purchasing ownership rights to that
game or to my copy of that game, then the
publisher needs to be more transparent in Okay, well, what
you're doing is you know, you're purchasing you know, a

(01:24:02):
lease to this content or access to this content until
such time as we decide to no longer support that content.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
Well, and to be and to be clear, to be
clear that that is what publishers are doing. Like like
when you're buying a game, like if you actually read
the terms of service, the and the eu LA, that
it literally does say like, hey, you are not oh
you don't own this. You're purchasing a license to use
this product, and that license can be revoked at any
time for any reason essentially, And and the purpose of

(01:24:33):
this move of this movement is to get that language
ripped out of the eu LA where the publisher can
revoke access and kind of force them. Hey, like if
you want to make an online game, that that's you know,
relying on online connection. That's cool, but you have to
be able to sunset it to an offline mode of

(01:24:53):
some kind when you don't want to support that game,
you know, through having active servers anymore. Because I bought this,
I should be able to continue playing it, even even
past the point of of what you think is obsolescence.
You know, you you the publisher. So look if it,
if it does well, and if it enacts change, Uh,

(01:25:15):
that's great. And you only have to change it in
one region for something like this to impact change for all,
because it's not like they're gonna turn off you know,
keep it, you know, keep the servers on in Europe,
but not in other parts of the world. Stuff like that.
Like if you're gonna do it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
You're gonna do it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
Naysayers of the movement have basically said like that will
just cause publishers to stop making these types of games then,
to which I say, okay, Like like like if you're
if you're not gonna if you're not gonna support it
long term, uh, then bully for us. Like it's kind

(01:25:53):
of insane. Uh, Like looking at stuff like multi verses
for example, and I guess you can still play that
in like a very siloed offline mode still, but like
the fact that that game can you know, purpose doesn't
exist anymore is like kind of kind of fucking wild.
So yeah, I think it's ultimately a good thing and
if it likes it, if it if it gets changed

(01:26:14):
to happen, then all the better for us as consumers.
Cam asks in honors in honor of the nwo's anniversary,
what are your favorite nWo memories? Cam randomly pulling on
the twenty ninth anniversary of the formation of the then WO.
For some reason, I did.

Speaker 3 (01:26:34):
He brought it up, so I did wear my my
parody shirt.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
So my favorite nWo moment is probably when Kurt Henning
turned on the Four Horsemen during the War Games match
to join the nWo and slam Rick Flair's head into
the cage door essentially, like that's That's probably the one

(01:27:00):
that sticks out for me, because most of my other
fond n WO memories are of the n w O
getting their ship handed to them as opposed to like
coming out with the upper hand.

Speaker 6 (01:27:13):
I don't have any I didn't like the n w
O was cool, right, they changed it. They literally changed
the face of wrestling, But probably when they first arrived,
when like when Kevin Nash and got whole first arrived.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
But they weren't the n wut the outsiders else. Yeah,
like you know who are but you don't know why
I'm here. That's all I remember.

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):
Yeah, shockingly, the the introduction of Hall Cokean. Actually they
like made less cool for a little.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
I was like, Hogan, here's the thing. I don't fucking
like Hogan. I've never liked that.

Speaker 6 (01:27:50):
When they made him, when he was like the third man,
I'm like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:27:56):
It was a big fucking deal at the time. You
had to be there. You had to be there. I was.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
I was there. Yeah. No, I'm not saying you.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
I'm saying for people, for people that don't realize how
big of a deal.

Speaker 6 (01:28:07):
Oh so he's a heel now and now he's just
dying of the beard black, get the out of here.

Speaker 1 (01:28:11):
And I don't like you.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
I hate him. I've always hated you, guys. But that's
neither good. Really.

Speaker 1 (01:28:16):
All the best NW moments all sent around Kevin Ash's
involvement in some way, shape or for him. I feel
I feel like he's secretly like the the core, uh,
the thing that made it all work's.

Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
Sure out hees.

Speaker 3 (01:28:32):
Look, I don't remember a lot of old WO moments
because I was a baby, but uh probably I would say,
like the one that like really stands out to me
is when they beat the piss out of Ray Mysterio
at Disney World.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
Oh and lawn darded him. And that was that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:54):
The fact that it was like that it was at
Disney in particular is really kind of what like makes
that stand out?

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Was that also the same? Was that also the same?
I wonder if that was the same show where the
famous Hall Cogan spray paint uh and I.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
And come from h.

Speaker 1 (01:29:20):
Also good was the uh was the uh the Kevin
Nash making fun of the Four Horsemen tribute when they
did that skit in the ring as well with a
terrible prosthetic makeup that he had ship like that so
August Ship. Yeah, the n likes it. It was definitely a
moment of time, but they immediately ruined it by just

(01:29:40):
kind of like like Hall coagain held the title and
just did forever because at the end, like that that
was the that was the real dawn of the fucking
you know, fuck finish running era, where like Cogan would
always have the title on the line, always be set
to lose it, and then here comes the nw O
to just blow up the match and cause a big

(01:30:01):
fucking problem.

Speaker 2 (01:30:02):
So it just ran into the ground.

Speaker 6 (01:30:03):
Yep, n W, the wolf Pack and w Bread and
Black n W like originally all right, y'all doing too much.

Speaker 4 (01:30:10):
I mean, we still have the Latino World Order.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
It's not the same, it's not the it's not the
real l w O. And then and that was the thing,
like it did partially through w CW's fault and partially
not through w w's fault because other wrestling promotions kind
of picked up that ball and ran with it. It
kind of got beaten to the ground. Like e c
W had the the Blue World Order with like the

(01:30:33):
Blue Meani and Stevie Richards and ship like that, and
you know, like you had the l w O back
then as well, and that was the whole fucking thing.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
So like it just kind of Japanese wrestling they did.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
They had they had the Japanese n w O or
n W Japan as was as it was called. So
wanted a piece everyone everyone did want a piece.

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):
And then Russo came in and.

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
Fucking fucking and then you have the ill fated nWo
revival in w w E.

Speaker 2 (01:31:01):
That was terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
That was terrible, It was bad.

Speaker 8 (01:31:04):
It was bad from tal Vince did that on purpose,
probably to fuck them over, probably, but yet it's still
persisted like even longer past that, like like they kicked
out Hogan and like remember they brought in like Sean
Michaels and and then they brought in Booker T.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
And then they did a racism on Booker T and
kicked him out of the group and you know what,
other ship so hm Booker Booker T was really hard
done for this first couple of years at w W
w W.

Speaker 6 (01:31:36):
Yeah, yeah, not not because he was like but he
had to get himself full and he did and he did.

Speaker 1 (01:31:42):
But ye would they with a ridiculous gimmick that he
performed with Gusto and it fucking works.

Speaker 2 (01:31:49):
Yeah, it fucking worked.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
So uh do Terrence the last question, I'm Terrence, I'm
so glad you're here because it would have been really
awkward for me and carried to happen discuss by ourselves.
Duke asked, Who's gonna tell Jacob Fatu to chill out,
because apparently he thinks that he has a hall pass

(01:32:12):
to use the N word.

Speaker 6 (01:32:14):
Look, Jacob, I understand you from the Bay Area or whatever.
You ain't black, like Simonians ain't black, Like I don't
think anybody in your family like well, you know the Rocks.
Technically his father was black, but he he goes back
and forth as far as what he wants his heritage
to be every once.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
In a while.

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
But it depends on what's marketably advantageous.

Speaker 2 (01:32:35):
Right, Nah?

Speaker 6 (01:32:36):
Nah, Like the thing about Jacob fa to like nah,
I would say something, We're gonna beat me up and
be like, come on, bro, he can't nah. Like the
Ussos for example, you know, like they get they get by.
The fucked up thing about the w W or wrestling

(01:32:57):
in general, right, is that the ussos are like.

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Very black coded mm hmm, stereotypically black coded.

Speaker 6 (01:33:04):
They got grills and all this other ship and like,
but they don't let like the black wrestler get that
ship off, except for maybe like the street mm hm.
And what's his name is not really what's what's it's?

Speaker 3 (01:33:16):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
I can't remember the name. I can't go trying to
get too No, not Carmelo the street prophets, but like
what's what.

Speaker 6 (01:33:25):
Montest Ford montest Ford, Angela Darks, Angela Dawkins. I don't
think they're like that. That's that's those are characters. They're
characters like they're very they're like mind tests. Ford is
not like that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
I mean, look at look at look I mean I
will say, look at the bright side. I mean if
that's if that's what we're going to use as black
representation characters, then we've come a long way since Crime Time,
which which which is what you could look at literally, so.

Speaker 6 (01:33:53):
Who's wilid Like the East like the it was playing
George Bush right, they had like a George Bushes looking
like and stole that next wallet, Like come on, like it's.

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
Offensive, dude, that's offensive.

Speaker 6 (01:34:05):
But yeah, like they get away with like black representation,
but they're not black, like neither one of their parents
are black. No, it's just kind of like all right, man,
like why do they get to do that? But like
you have, you know, black wrestlers that you just kind
of overlook. I think we can't act that way because
the stereotyg typical. But like the Samoans get to do

(01:34:28):
whatever the fuck they want.

Speaker 2 (01:34:30):
It's kind offensive. I think Triple As is a fucking racist.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
You're coming back around to the Malcolm malc.

Speaker 6 (01:34:39):
I'm starting to think that motherfucker's racist. I don't see color,
Like I don't believe. I don't believe you triple Ah,
but you know, I don't know. Again, like we said
last week ago, a couple of weeks ago, like the
honeymoon phase over that he's fucking up the problem. But yeah,
like now he don't get a pass. I don't get

(01:35:00):
a pass. And I just said it, but like that
called him, but he doesn't. And I don't believe.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
You're black. You can do it if you want to.

Speaker 2 (01:35:08):
It's like, look, double standards exist. Sorry, they just do.
I'm sick of white people saying, can you see it?
It's like because because.

Speaker 4 (01:35:17):
Like because we're white, because.

Speaker 3 (01:35:20):
Embarrassing, the same reason why we shouldn't have fucking dreadlocks.

Speaker 4 (01:35:23):
Man, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:35:25):
Well technically no, no, they didn't don't do that. Shut up. Yeah,
like no, he don't get a pass. That no.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
Mm hmm no, there there you have it. There you
have it. And and I'm and I'm pretty sure, uh,
knowing Micah's racism against Samoans, that Michael would have agreed
that he does not.

Speaker 4 (01:35:52):
Just saying Micah is racist against some.

Speaker 1 (01:35:56):
Ado audio evidence of this that he and more importantly,
he's not here to defend himself, so I can say
whatever I want. That's how that's how it works. That's
the rules. That's the rules.

Speaker 2 (01:36:08):
You clip that mic.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
Oh, he'll hear it. He'll hear it. He's gonna listen.
I know you will, so he'll he'll he'll hear it
at the end.

Speaker 4 (01:36:17):
That's that's back next week. You can be like, man,
what do you guys saying the ship for?

Speaker 1 (01:36:22):
That's that's that's his treat for listening to the end
is he got He gets to hear himself slander, he gets.
Oh my goodness. That's a good place to add the show.
So again, don't forget to uh to drop into Discord
Densmiths dot com, slash fan subscribe wherever you find podcasts,
and go to Dencefiss dot com slash Premium to support

(01:36:43):
independent media ak a us with your dollars. Uh. That's
gonna be it for us. Thank y'all very much for watching, listening.
We'll see you all the next time.

Speaker 6 (01:36:54):
Se
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.