Transcript
Speaker: How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. my name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How are things? Things are bad, dude. the The weather has been Mm-hmm.
Speaker: he We had a heat wave where they're like, hey, don't go outside. Make sure you drink a lot of water. And then we had a lot of water come. Yeah. Actual actual flooding.
Speaker: And I think there was actually a tornado or tornado warning ah back up towards my old apartment. Hmm. Shane apparently has he's out of town on travel stuff apparently has a tree in his driveway.
Speaker: Well, that's not great either. ah Hopefully no structure damage or anything like that. It's just across the driveway. I heard just across. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: I did have a thought. ah My house is surrounded by trees that are like gigantic, um like very, very tall, scary. um And i am just living on the knife's edge and every single day. Because like if any of those ever decided to come down, it's just the entirety of the house is demolished.
Speaker: ah The good news is I die, i guess. let me Me and my family die, so we don't have to worry about it. but um Yeah, I feel like Yeah, if it was maybe like a really old tree and there was like some severe weather events.
Speaker: Yeah, um I Mean trees but trees are usually Usually hanging out the side of the one I just mentioned. Yeah They're usually kind of just hanging out in the ground There's pulse too, but you had a rebellious tree now and then. like that's That's what the saying is for. like If trees fall in the forest, we can't even prove it. But if trees fall on your house, you're going to hear it and then die, obviously. so like What's that noise?
Speaker: um But yeah, it's I was going to say you mentioned like tornadoes and flooding and trees falling and stuff like that. And I was like, how many of these portents do we need to do? We need to receive before we know it's the apocalypse. Before we acknowledge it's the end times. Yes, exactly.
Speaker: I see four old, old men on horses. They are shirtless for some reason.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, this this is Pennsylvania, so that's not that far out there. That could just be the Amish or something, Mennonites or what have you. I like it so like the the buggy part of the horse. We're like, we're just going straight to horse. We kind of got rid of the the excess. I also like...
Speaker: I they would not none of these groups that I've mentioned would be shirtless on a horse. um That would not match their vibe at all. But in this imagined reality, they're clearly super musculature, right? This is an old man who's ripped on this horse. is um Yeah.
Speaker: But hopefully not. Hopefully no apocalypse anytime soon. We just don't have the X-Men for it.
Speaker: i I started watching X-Men 97 season two. ah I've watched three episodes. I will need to bug somebody to get the rest. But it's it's good.
Speaker: Nice. It feels like...
Speaker: It feels very dense, like a lot happens in it. ah But it also still has the vibe of like a Saturday morning cartoon from the Right. right I mean, that was part of the that's part of the nature of serials, right, is you can have you pretty much have to have a complete story arc within an episode.
Speaker: oh Yeah, it's very different than kind of a a long arc anime or something like that, where you're you're building towards something else later. i mean, you can you can have a little bit of both. Ideally, you have a little bit of both. Here's today's lesson. And we're also pushing the overall plot a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker: like I remember in season one, are you familiar with um Scott Summers and Jean Grey have a kid? i didn't know they had a kid. no Yeah. Nathan Summers, who apparently in some dimension, but he gets sent to another dimension for reasons, but he grows up to be Cable.
Speaker: who's another ex-person from the future, and he time jumps chasing Apocalypse or something. Yeah. um He's from the ruined future, basically, and comes back be like, oh, we got to stop all this.
Speaker: Hey, can I come back to the ninety s and just chill? Yeah. Back when things are cool. Uh-huh. You're actually getting into that now in season two. Yeah. um But in that episode where they had him,
Speaker: It was like they didn't know she was pregnant and then she was pregnant and they had the kid and then it's like, oh, we need to send this kid to Spain. And I'm like, what just happened? No, no, I've seen this in a DC comic somewhere. We're supposed to send him to Spain.
Speaker: um But I will say um if you like X-Men stuff or just tangentially, it's been entertaining, ah really well animated too. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But yeah, it's been a good show. Yeah, it's on the recommendation list. I'm going to have to give it a look-see. I can't remember what it's on. um Disney Plus.
Speaker: Yeah. going to have to find somebody for that. But it could be one of those things where... um the backlog for a particular platform has accumulated enough that it's worth really. All right, we're to let's clear, clear some nights. We're going to get work our way through freaking Mandalorian and this and whatever else the crap we're supposed to be watching on Disney.
Speaker: you' You're putting episode names on like different days of the calendar. Exactly. Lock this out. We're to our month. Our Netflix subscription will start exactly on the first. There are 31 days in January. That gives us,
Speaker: Like 32 days is too much. That is going to double our expenditure. We are we are optimizing for this. It's going to be two Stranger Things episode a day. day. We cannot miss. I'm taking PTO for this. Watches two hours, does other things. Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, probably.
Speaker: With Stranger Things. that's I haven't seen the latest for Stranger Things, but I have heard that it's not as good as the first. So, there you go. Yeah. i
Speaker: First was good. Second was weird. I did kind of like some of like the the backstory stuff in 3? three No. Odin 4.
Speaker: They did some interesting stuff each season. yeah But, man, do I feel like tropes just get injected into any type of public media?
Speaker: Yeah. I always got the impression with the latter Stranger Things seasons that they were basically like They were just like chained down by expectations of exactly what the show would be like.
Speaker: And the times that they they they subvert that and they go off and do something else, they like go full on Narnia. Like they they're just like this entire thing's happening in Russia for some reason or whatever. Like there's not some meaningful, you know, development. It's also interesting in the local space. It's like, oh, we're actually running out of ideas here. Let's.
Speaker: go to the moon or whatever the crap. um Yeah, the only quote-unquote progression is like, ah these guys are a little bit older. Oh, ah high school's weird. Oh, someone's attracted to somebody else. And then, yeah.
Speaker: Aliens. It just turns in... Yeah, I mean, and I accept, like, any sort of coming-of-age story is going to have some of those tropes. I'm not opposed to it. But when it's like, you just keep going back to that well, right? like No, sorry. I didn't mean to say, like, tropes like...
Speaker: something that happens like a love story arc or something like that. I mean, more like some of the dialogue gets dampered down to colloquialisms where like everybody gets it already or they keep re-explaining things to the audience.
Speaker: And that stuff bugs the fuck out of me. Oh yeah, I'm sure don't tell, right? Like I get that some of this is... I actually don't know who the audience for Stranger Things is. It isn't children because the game is the throw is like way too violent to actually just have kids watch it these days, maybe like in the 80s. But like these days, probably not like you. These are nightmare shows like these are shows have monsters that would literally give kids nightmares like. Oh, yeah. a hundred percent. um
Speaker: So like if it is going to be for teenagers up. Can we target that a little bit more, I guess? Right. Because that's what that's what it is. Right. Like this is a story that is not meant for kids about kids. Right. Like if you are a child and you're watching ah it, something has gone wrong.
Speaker: I will say i I still have never seen that movie. I remember there was a time we were at a friend's house and like some other people were over and be like, hey, let's all watch a movie tonight. Let's put on it.
Speaker: And I would not even go in the same room. I'm like, yeah, mom. Yeah, I got back. Tummy hurts. Sorry about it. claw descends grabs you her trees from but but I was older than a child at that point I was probably like and middle school aged yeah Clowns are This is not a hot take. This is actually just universal truth. But, like, clowns are terrifying. I know that there's a fear of clowns, but that's almost unnecessary to have because everyone should have a fear of clowns.
Speaker: um So, I think that... I want to make the distinction. There's two types of clowns. Guy clowns, scary. Girl clowns, hot.
Speaker: That's... So, I'm not disagreeing. But when you say girl clowns, are you thinking clowns are you thinking mimes? Because I hear girl clowns, my brain goes to mimes.
Speaker: Okay, I see what she mean. I guess it's something like the... It's something like the Harlequin makeup. Exactly, yeah. yeah Type vibe.
Speaker: Which, I mean... i mean, Harlequin's also scary. The mimes have like Usually the when she's scary, but she's still hot. Yeah, true. True. I think with I think with mimes, I think with mimes, the tell for me is their their attire is usually black and white.
Speaker: Harlequin type character. Not necessarily. Yeah, that's closer to a clown. I could see that. Yeah, like I imagine riding on a unicycle juggling type makeup.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, they're not intrinsically scary. um John Wayne Gacy has ruined a lot for her for clowns. um So we're not. Why do you think you haven't seen Ronald McDonald in a hot fucking minute? Uh-huh.
Speaker: Now it's ah we are generationally ruined on clowns. Thanks to that. Thanks to that guy. Yeah. Can't even remember where this all started.
Speaker: oh yeah. Stranger Things into it. ah My gripe, I guess, with Stranger Things. I have a lot of them, actually, but I'll pick one specific one. i They just like don't they didn't seem to have like original ideas that weren't just like grab something out of the ether. Like every time the first season having some association with D&D was a hit.
Speaker: It was cool. You know, I think Demogorgon was the first and i was like, cool. There's some association with old school D&D. Awesome. And then every subsequent season, they're like, freaking got to tie it back to D&D. Freaking got to tie it back to D&D. And it's like, I don't care. I like i i play D&D. I mean, screw Wizards of the Coast, but I play D&D.
Speaker: And it was becoming grating on me. Because you know what kids don't generally do across, like, life stage jumps?
Speaker: They go a couple of years out. They're probably not doing the exact same thing. I know they, I will admit, they literally talk about this in the show, where it's like, oh, well let's play D&D Friends. And then everybody else is like, what are you talking about?
Speaker: Tamagotchi or something? I don't know. Right. But... I feel like they don't give it enough of a tie-in to make it a tie-in because they they kind of give it that token sentence. Yes, it's a Each season.
Speaker: um But they're like, oh, this is going to be the next thing based off of like D&D escalation of monsters, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. It also became like very commercialized.
Speaker: Yeah. um Which I get like there's some irony in me saying this literally Stranger Things one like ego placement and stuff like that. It was all just nostalgia baiting capitalism like so much of that was was present. Right. But one, that's all over media all the time.
Speaker: yeah But it was interesting. There was like the air of mystery and you you didn't know what was going on. You didn't have an answer for anything at this point in time.
Speaker: Sure. Whereas subsequent seasons are like, Hey, uh, here's this thing. ah fuck. Here's another thing that, that wasn't even the thing that was like a small thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, i ah I also part of it is like shoehorning things just to keep going back to that D&D reference. Yeah, they're like, oh, this creature's power set. I freaking don't know. but Maybe Mind Flayer or something like that. You're like, oh, maybe it's the Mind Flayer.
Speaker: and it's like, oh, maybe it's Vecna or whatever. And it's like. okay, but like, but me, the actual person watching this show knows that a writer somewhere was just like, we need a monster set. We need a monster with a power set. That's vaguely Vecna-esque. And so we can call it Vecna, right? Like that that's why it feels artificial to me, right? You're, you're basically just telling these, these children are now coming up with like, oh no, we got to like associate this to D and d again, you know, like, and, and,
Speaker: I don't know. Like the part that's nice about it is it gives you a quick friendly name. There's ah actually huge literary and storytelling advantage to be able to just tie a new concept or personality to something that already exists.
Speaker: um But I don don't know if I needed it to be D&D every time. Anyways, it's a gripe. It doesn't because I feel if I'm somebody who's invested in D&D and they start having tie ins to a thing that I like.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm going to be like, OK, can you do it justice? Can you give it accurate representation? Or going be like, this is a D20. I die that has 20 sides. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah yeah Like it could have been worse. Thankfully there wasn't that much. I wouldn't want to play craps with that. Uh huh. I wouldn't by the way. I wouldn't recommend it. No. Um.
Speaker: But yeah, at a certain point, it does just kind of feel like like tokenism. But know. All of this is I'm literally just stuck on D&D for some reason. There's so many issues with this show and I'm just stuck on D&D because the the the thing I will give them. Right. This is what I'll give them is there's not necessarily. Well, actually, I was about to say there's no wrong way to play D&D.
Speaker: ah RPG horror stories or tabletop horror stories, horror stories, whatever the subreddit is, is definitive proof that there are wrong ways to play D&D. You may have been at a table where you were adamantly aware that the way people are treating each other is the wrong way to play D&D.
Speaker: But kids just, you know, coming up with fantasy names for things that they relate can relate to that. I guess I i can give them a pass.
Speaker: It's just the show always coming back to it that got to me. Yeah. um' I'm not sure if it's a season you've seen or in the latest one, um but there is a scene where the kids are talking and Like, they're like, oh, they're like there are so many names for, like, this Vecna character.
Speaker: And, like, they're bringing attention to it. And that seems like a lazy way to be like, uh... Uh-huh. You're getting clout, right? You're trying to, like, ah simulate the D&D homage a little bit more or something like that.
Speaker: but I think it's more like acknowledgement to the audience of like, oh, there's so many names for this guy. Oh, that's so crazy. But they wrote the show. They didn't fix that. They put that in. Right. Yeah.
Speaker: So I feel like just making the acknowledgement and nothing else feels. Weird in a show. It just feels kind of hand wavy to me. Yeah. Yeah. I also like here's here's the thing like.
Speaker: for this critique here, I think it's okay that, you know, they keep making D and D references. If this was something important to the kids. However, that I think the show would have been cooler if they started drawing from like different, you know, creepy cryptid sources for like some of these different monsters. Cause like the cryptosphere or whatever it's freaking called, that's actually sounds like it's probably cryptocurrency, but like,
Speaker: There are so many cool like SCPs and cryptids and things in folklore. Yeah. And things in folklore that we've been forgetting. It doesn't have to be like, oh, ah the mind flayer working for Vecna. don't even know if that makes sense, you know, in D&D lore. So whatever. But like.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just laziness, I guess, is the point that I'm getting to. They just get in like ah we have to use the same format trope and it's not really a serial show.
Speaker: It goes all over the place. So, yeah, but come up with new ideas. Yeah. they honestly should have done like a monster of the season. Yeah. Like Demogorgon thing.
Speaker: ah a cool first one. And let's say you want to make season two's antagonist be more threatening. You could even still keep it within D&D type stuff, but maybe pick something from a different area of the game, a different campaign, something that ups the spooky level.
Speaker: Yeah. Like, oh, maybe season three is actually about a beholder and you don't have to tie things to previous seasons. Just be, hey, this is a cool thing we wanted to explore around and see how we could weave it into real life.
Speaker: And that would have been great. Would have been great. the The last thing I'll know I think on stranger things is like I also And I don't necessarily blame them for this but like I don't really like Wizards of the Coast right now a lot of the people that I liked that actually worked on D&D have gone off to work at other companies like they're working on ah Matt Mercer's Daggerheart I think that one's called um and some other systems. Title could be a little bit shortened I think. Right.
Speaker: um And like so i see things pop up on like D&D Beyond and it's like oh here's the adventure book or like the source book or whatever related to Stranger Things but it's like it's because they're cashing in on this popular sentiment that stranger things has cultivated.
Speaker: Right. Demogorgon actually is a starter, not a bad starter. No one knew who Demogorgon was. It's like one of the princes of the abyss, like, not actually at all related to the the character like the character in the show in power sets, except maybe kind of like come into the material plane. But even then, the blood war should stopped that. Anyways, whatever.
Speaker: ah demons are and are ah Devils are in the way of Demogorgon generally getting to the prime material plane. We all know it. But beyond that, it's like they get to Vecna. Vecna is like just...
Speaker: like cliche tier bad guy at this point. Not only is Vecna in ah Stranger Things, but Vecna is also in, ah it was one of the the the final antagonists, big antagonists for a critical role session or a season campaign thing.
Speaker: um Which is not as big as Stranger Things. I'm not claiming that. But it's also like the biggest D&D live play. um And then they added back to Dead by Daylight. And it's like...
Speaker: yeah And once you get to Dead by Daylight, it's over. Right? Nick Cage is in Dead by Data. As a survivor, I thought he was going to be as a fucking murderer. Everyone was hoping. That would have been so funny. Regardless of how it came across.
Speaker: He has ah he has like a line specific for Sadiko, I guess, because he wanted... They just kind of like let him go off. and like I believe that. and so Say whatever you would normally say in situations. Uh-huh.
Speaker: Well, it's kind of like it's kind of a heartwarming story because I think the reason that he even did the Dead by Daylight thing is like because his son played the game. Yeah. um Which is I mean, that's great.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong. That is great. um But yeah, ah it's super commercialized now is what I'm saying. Stranger Things had it. Shows up in all these, you know, new supplements or whatever wizards of the coast is gonna make Hasbro's guaranteed made a million figurines based off of it. And it's just like It's not evil effect that is obviously but like I think The optimistic way to look at it is that this could be a stepping stone to having more stuff
Speaker: like that content in a more public space it won't necessarily be like dnd is 100 fringe it'd be like yeah oh yeah i i've heard of critical role oh yeah veck never stranger things yeah and then maybe you get introduced to other things within the dnd universe maybe you want to look up dungeon of the mad mage or other things I have mixed thoughts on that.
Speaker: you've You've named a specific one for some reason. I'm going to dodge this obvious bait for me to consume the rest of the episode talking about Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Isn't Vecna from Dungeon of the Mad Mage?
Speaker: No. Oh, really? Okay. I don't know why my brain put those two things together. Well, here's here's here's your route, Dave. Behind every great plot in D&D, there is probably an evil wizard. Yeah. And that was what Vecna was like.
Speaker: um And Dungeon of the Mad Mage is helmed by a probably evil wizard. i haven't made it to the last floor, so I can't say it. But the freaking Halaster.
Speaker: Oh, hate Halaster. He's the mage for Dungeon of the Mad Mage. um Definitely mad my character hates him too. He's literally killed me at least once. so Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, Vecna is really interesting actually. Don't get me wrong. Cool character. Look him up in like the D&D lore. But um if I could have my way, I think D&D actually has enough representation. I want to see some of these other systems.
Speaker: There's no way. Zero percent chance it would have made anything like a Stranger Things season one. Lancer. Well, yeah, Lancer would be hilarious because you're time traveling to add it to like the 80s whatever. But um and it is fair to say, like, not all of these other systems necessarily would have been at popularity back then.
Speaker: But now today, as far as like the the the systems we need to get people into, like D&D actually isn't it. There are other. There's nothing wrong with playing D&D if you play D&D awesome.
Speaker: if there's a particular aspect that you enjoy more in tabletop games, there's probably a game that does it better. Spending all of my time, Twilight Imperium. Uh-huh. Well, yes, actually, that is that is fair.
Speaker: Although a lot of tabletop games will fill the spending a lot of your time niche. oh That is, there's there's only a few that actually go pretty fast once combat starts, but...
Speaker: Remember when you thought Monopoly was long? ah Those were the days. Yeah. So that's Stranger Things. ah Very brief. i don't I don't have a lot to say on it because it's just one episode, but did watch the... It is the ghost in the shell. I actually checked this recently because I was like, was the the always there?
Speaker: But the new one, the one that's coming out now that has ah one episode... Released right now. It's on Amazon video. Is this live action or anime? It's drawn anime um So it will take them it did take them Oh like 30 years like how they're gonna be doing with a Sekiro.
Speaker: Yeah, okay. It's actually hand-illustrated It's kind of gorgeous like and don't get me wrong like it is it is an artwork um I'm not super familiar with the source. I will admit with ah the source material for Ghost in the Shell. But I specifically looked up the movie, you know, like Stand Alone Complex, anything like that. It is Ghost in the Shell. This one is the Ghost in the Shell. They added the V. i'm saying then It can help the ah ah search engine optimization, I guess, um if you know that.
Speaker: um I think they're releasing an episode every Tuesday. um What is that on currently? It's it's Amazon video. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Probably to peep that then.
Speaker: I really enjoyed watching standalone complex. Mm hmm. Yeah. I remember more of season one than season two. But then I forget like the whole show every five years. So it's nice to go back and check it out again. Mm hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, um my my wife really likes it. Like she's a huge Ghost in the so Shell fan. um And so like I'll be asking her questions. I was like, was it always like this whimsical? Did i kind of miss it? Because like the vibes are, it can still be violent. It's definitely violent, but it doesn't feel like it's,
Speaker: Cyberpunk, it's dark cyberpunk right now. It's like... Yeah, it's not like constant grunge and people are dying in alleyways constantly as you have like cop lights sweep down an alley or something. Uh-huh.
Speaker: It's not like the dark future cyberpunk. It's instead like there's some absurdist twist to it. But people are lighthearted even when all of these dehumanizing things are happening.
Speaker: Yeah, but I feel like... it does a really good job of exploring transhumanism. Yeah. Because I think a lot of the cases, it was just kind of medical augmentations. Then there's obviously like military that explored it and other things. But it gives you a lot of perspective from different parties.
Speaker: Like Togasa is ah one of the cops and he's not modified at all. He's just a normal person. And like they'll talk ah to him and be like,
Speaker: why didn't you want to have faster legs or something? i don't know. It's, it does a really good job exploring all of that and getting different perspectives.
Speaker: Oh yeah. But no, i agree wholeheartedly. I wasn't, I'm not disinterested. I was letting you finish the thought. Like I, it's been a while since I've seen anything ghosts in the shell, but like one of the things I appreciate is so many people have,
Speaker: obvious like cybernetics and things like that or upgrades suits whatever um that you really can't tell if like a person is even a person or are they just being remote controlled right um like is it just a shell literally right um and i I kind of appreciate that it is it is nice and it's actually in some ways even like more extreme than like cyberpunk the cyberpunk universe is not the genre, but the, uh, uh, cyberpunk, like edge runners or something like that, where they don't go, they don't generally go the to the full extreme. Like this person is obviously just remote controlled and their ghost is somewhere else.
Speaker: Um, Instead, it's just kind of like you replace too many of your arms and your brain is starting to disagree with you. Like you replace the first arm. OK, you replace the second arm. OK, you replace the third arm.
Speaker: OK, that's that's that's the dark future. But Ghost in the Shell is really awesome and they have really cool music. um So question is it?
Speaker: New music? They do have some new music. At least I'm not super familiar with the intro, but like I got to the outro and i was just like, this is kind of a banger. And I've listened to it many times since then. Oh, excited because Yoko Kano was the...
Speaker: person who did the music for standalone complex um they do lots of other stuff they're a really prominent composer i think they're still around and still making stuff but if you ever go back and listen to the standalone complex intro well chef's kiss yeah just incredible media um Yeah, the the outro is by Millennium Parade um with ah several, I think, other contributors. I'm not super familiar with the band, but they put it on Spotify. I think like when the episode went live, because I looked at it like ah this morning and it was at like 20,000 views. It also just says like it's released 2026.
Speaker: twenty six and or plays and now it's at 200 uh 9 000 so like i'm not the only person who sought out this specifically to just listen to it a lot um really good nice um yeah so that's my brief aside for for for shows the half halfway point for shows um Really quick on I say really quick. Yeah, this is actually a lie. Really quick, high level. I've been watching um YouTube clips, ah YouTube clips by a games journalist ah Jason Schrayer. don't know. It was difficult for me to say.
Speaker: um He does work for Bloomberg and he's basically an industry insider. He's done a lot of reporting on Destiny 2 Blizzard in particular. He wrote a book on like everything that was going on in Blizzard at Blizzard.
Speaker: um that I think came out around the height of all of the controversy um and stuff. so I'm sure that was great for clicks or whatever books do. I don't know. um But he has several interesting videos and I definitely recommend people check them out.
Speaker: ah But I'm just going to ape off of them and mention some things that I thought were interesting. um The first one is basically ah kind of a follow up to just the trend we've been talking about for a while.
Speaker: um But very recently, ah Microsoft ah laid off a whole lot of people in their Xbox game division. um And the background for this, we talked about Microsoft a lot. We talked about Phil Spencer, Game Pass, things like that. That was all part of this idea that getting as many studios making games.
Speaker: It doesn't matter if they necessarily make a profit, but just make games so we can get people on Game Pass. Game Pass is going to get like a billion subscribers and it'll be super profitable. And this is the future of gaming.
Speaker: This is how we're going to like reduce the risk inherent in game development. ah Basically failed. The the TLDR. um There's a new ah CEO for Xbox headed by a woman named Asha Sharma.
Speaker: And anytime that you switch CEOs, it's because something is about to be done differently. Yeah. They're like, hey, the board has voted Steve off because we want to do this. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I wonder if it's a CEO or VP. I'm not actually sure. But in either case, same thing. This is the person at the head of the Xbox division. Um, and she basically spent, I don't know if it was a month or a couple months, kind of just talking with a lot of people and then just came out with a game plan. And the game plan is cut 3,200 jobs, 20% of Xbox in general, um, provided a justification.
Speaker: You know, she said they were losing, 64 cents for every dollar invested. um And said that they are not the best place for all of these studios. And thus begins another great firing.
Speaker: um of a lot a lot of studios. um There's some that I mentioned here Are being sold off to other people ninja theory made Senua undead labs making state of decay three um Other ones are just becoming indie like right off the jump double fine Psychonauts and a bunch of other stuff ah Compulsion games we happy be few arcane that one makes me sad I'm a fan I'm and i'm a big arcane fan sometimes even make good games um the good news is that they're getting the the people that are getting spun off to Andy are getting the IPs for their games and would a bit of money um I don't know how much
Speaker: um but it's huge right like this is an exact you You heard of the Xbox 360. This is the Xbox 180. We are turning around and getting rid of all of these studios we bought a few years ago, actually.
Speaker: Well, um good on them for doing that portion. Not the mass firing stuff um because that is people's livelihoods.
Speaker: But... Like obviously if they are losing a lot of money from just going too wide, definitely narrow down. um I also like that the VP or whomever actually sat down and talked to people.
Speaker: Because anytime you talk to people who do like the day to day parts of the job, they have fucking opinions about what stuff sucks and what doesn't.
Speaker: And a lot of times that just kind of stays amongst people at that level. Maybe their manager, but it doesn't typically go higher because People want to save face. They don't want to start complaining like, hey, ah X, Y and Z sucks about the company because they don't want to have their job at risk. Again, livelihood.
Speaker: um But also a lot of those people with boots on the ground have good ideas to improve what sucks because they've been doing it so long.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's not it's definitely not the worst form of this announcement. Like something clearly had to change from like a business perspective.
Speaker: Something had to change. They were just losing too much money. And that we yeah we haven't even talked about like the Xbox console, but like the previous under Phil Spencer, he was really one of the ones that was like all of our games should also be on PC.
Speaker: Like we are going to I don't think he said it this way, but he's like, we are going to remove any incentives for anyone to ever own a physical Xbox game console again. um And well, I think that they didn't want to compete with ah Sony on that. Right.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, they basically they were like, we're going to we're going to sit out some generations as far as competition in the console wars, basically, and just expect that this money is going to come through and subscriptions on PC. Game Pass was his big bet.
Speaker: um essentially. um The idea for it is good. Like having an online game service library, um but they need to have stuff of their own that is good to put on there. Yeah.
Speaker: And not games that are already free and some rotating cast of stuff. Yeah, i mean, it pretty much is a double edged sword because you're basically, well, one, this was all attached to our subscriptions viable.
Speaker: And subscriptions are only viable if people have a reason to sit, stay subscribed. I was basically personal is is an anecdote, but I was subscribed to Game Pass for, i don't know, half a year, maybe a year.
Speaker: I played through pretty much all the games that I was super interested in. And then I was like, I'm done. Like, I'm good. Yeah. And i actually just have such a crazy backlog of games that I don't need to play games as soon as they come out, which was the full value proposition for day one on Game Pass. Day one on Game Pass at the end of every single you know trailer because they put some big games on there.
Speaker: And then they started to dial it back a little bit. They're like, ah, Call of Duty. It's kind of where we're making all of our money. i don't know if we should do day one. um And yeah, ultimately, i clearly financially, it didn't pan out. They did not get enough money from Game Pass to justify so many of these other games because things like Double Fine.
Speaker: Like I know a love lot of people love Double Fine. ah Their games don't generally make money. you know like Like even if they're reviewed well, which is not a guarantee, um they still don't sell like a billion copies. They don't like make back all the cost of development.
Speaker: um Like what was their recent Wandering Tower game? I will look it up while you buy me time. Thank you. I don't remember the name, but it was something witty and has to deal with lighthouses probably. um But they've been doing just quirky fun stuff for a long time.
Speaker: when we talked about Psychonauts 2, it didn't really seem to have much sticking power. Like it came out and people were like, yeah, yeah. And then a week later, it's just nothing.
Speaker: Yeah. And maybe it can be that. Sorry. see oh was it was either Keeper or Kiln. Keeper. Keeper. Kiln, I think, is a newer thing. um But like Keeper, I saw a trailer for at something and then I never heard about it again. Yeah.
Speaker: And kind of similar with Kiln, because that's like the... the party game where you are vases when you like different pots handles different effects.
Speaker: Yeah, that looks correct based off of the image. So your your memory on this and awareness is far better than mine. As though to reinforce your point, I had no idea what this game was until you started describing it.
Speaker: But the other trouble with ah going as wide as they have is a lot of the money for marketing is going to go to their main stuff.
Speaker: If main stuff isn't on Game Pass or has already kind of been experienced on Game Pass. If there's just like a list of a thousand games One might not necessarily look interesting to me just off of the thumbnail.
Speaker: Right. And I might just say, hey, these are the one these are the one or two games I wanted to check out this month. Kind of treat like a Netflix subscription. Have it for the month and you're like, okay.
Speaker: And then you can like wait another six months and try it again. Which I think a lot of people who are on top of their finances are more likely to do than... Obviously, if somebody just has enough surplus where they don't care, they could just leave it a rolling subscription. i just think that's typically a lot less common.
Speaker: Yeah. And they they had a price bump, which looks like financially it was apparently necessary for them to hit their goals because they still didn't. But like um the other thing to note for those those indie games like these double fine games or things close to indie double at least like they are meant to keep people subscribed.
Speaker: that otherwise are looking for the big triple A games, right? Like historically, i understand it looks different now, but a lot of people were subscribed to Game Pass, myself included, for Starfield, right?
Speaker: Starfield was a big triple Bethesda thing. um Again, i understand it was a different time. It was a different time. i'm not saying anything yet.
Speaker: But, you know, Starfield doesn't come out every year. You don't have Doom the Dark Ages or whatever the crap is going to be your next big AAA coming out like every month to keep people on the hook.
Speaker: So Phil Spencer's idea was we buy all these studios. They continue to make their games that might not necessarily make a profit, but they will be interesting enough to keep people on Game Pass.
Speaker: We'll put them on Game Pass. Game Pass will continue to see value in returns. And that was the strategy. And I don't... Like, if we were to time travel back, it doesn't sound insane to me. No, it doesn't. It sounds fairly reasonable, but...
Speaker: This is where I think Steam kind of has them beat is they will have ways to showcase games where you are going to be more interested, whether it's a hey, here's your discover. Hey, oh that's true these people recommend these games in this type of genre or having like a ah trailer or like somebody is streaming a certain game.
Speaker: yeah They showcase games on the main page. you're like, okay, that thing looks cool and I wouldn't have known about it if it wasn't literally shown to me. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The times I get collateral by the Steam store page is, have it happens too many, too many times, too, too, too many times. Literally today i was on the store page i was like,
Speaker: I'm not going to play it right now. I already own it on GOG, but yeah, i want to support Owlcat. So let's grab Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous again. This all in one version that has some DLC I don't have on GOG is like five bucks or something like that. It's some massive discount. Absolutely. I'll grab it.
Speaker: There was nothing like that for Game Pass, right? I wasn't. They had a page for marketing deals and things like that, but it required you to go to Game Pass to see it.
Speaker: And this is the common community problem when it comes to like social spaces. Literally, Epic's biggest issue probably with the Epic Game Store is just like, how do we actually get people to look at games to buy them?
Speaker: Right? Like, lot of issues with EGS. That's a big one. Mm-hmm. But yeah, ah that hasn't been working. So it looks like Xbox's strategy now is try not to lose all of their street cred by slashing and burning all of these studios, which Electronic Arts absolutely would do or has done in the past. They have not lived that one down.
Speaker: um But a lot of people are still going to lose their jobs. ah Some of the studios are sticking around and they're still being decimated or an appropriate destructive word that's even more than 10%, which I think is what decimation literally means.
Speaker: I heard recently, i think, that I thought it was supposed to mean the opposite where you are essentially bringing it down to 10%. Maybe it's that. If it's that.
Speaker: It's also incorrect, but it's more it's more aggressive. And so I would I would use it. In fact, check me on that. um But some of the studios that are definitely impacted by that are ZeniMax, which is ah publisher.
Speaker: um They're being structured specifically to work on their big games rather than doing as much experimental stuff. So Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Quake, Wolfenstein, Doom. On the Wolfenstein, Quake, Doom side, those are traditionally id properties.
Speaker: It unfortunately seems like they just got struck by a lightning bolt. Like um there was reported on social media by someone who's either still with the company or they're they're outgoing.
Speaker: um that the entirety of Ed was basically reduced to us so to support staff. Like, um people who have been with the company for, like, 30 years are just gone.
Speaker: Wow. And that's massive. Like, maybe it's just because I'm old, but, man, like, the people who worked on Doom, like, across the entire time.
Speaker: Doom is for video games. What Berserk is for...
Speaker: For video games. I guess for video games. yeah know The more i think about it. But yeah, for for for anime. Or not anime, but manga, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's been there the whole time.
Speaker: um And so that's kind of crazy to hear. Right. So it's not all it's not all deflected by some like equivalent good news. Like a lot of people are all also just losing their jobs. um So it's going to be rough.
Speaker: And I mean, PlayStation's been doing similar things. This is literally an and industry trend. um And we could probably spend an entire episode talking about why we think this is happening.
Speaker: I thought... why do you think this is happening? They want money. i think... Isn't Sony's recent thing that they don't want to do physical media anymore? They want to go to just ah live service stuff. you're like, hey, your PlayStation hooks to the internet.
Speaker: here are all your games online right well they want uh sole publishing right they want to improve their margins on every game that they sell so like if new god of war god of war ah neptune comes out um they'll be like oh if we can if we sell this exclusively through the ps store then they're not going to have to pay a publisher i think it's up to 30% Sony themselves probably never pay 30% for distribution in
Speaker: publishing. they probably have a much better rate. Yeah, they'd have like, they if if they don't have bargaining power, I don't think anyone does. um But like, you know, platforms like Steam would take their cut.
Speaker: Walmart takes their cut. ah Making discs also takes some money. um Whereas digital from your own servers is basically just like Scrooge McDuck into the vault, right? Like, yeah they're going to take a lot and then the developers will get whatever developers get. but that Does that concern you?
Speaker: I mean, kind of. Like, the part that concerns... Well, the reason it doesn't concern me is because I don't have a PS5 yet. So I can actually... I've waited long enough, tested the markets, you know, like, kept my options open, that if it looks like it's a dead end for me, I do not need to pursue it.
Speaker: um I'll let you part with for Astro Bot sometime. Uh-huh. I mean, Astro... It's a good time. There's still good games. Like, don't get me wrong. The games are still good. Developers are still making good games, but...
Speaker: It does concern me from the perspective of like but both from the perspective of what I would expect would be the right decision for Sony and always also as a consumer.
Speaker: As a consumer, we have fewer fewer choices. They're still going to have like little pieces of cardboard you can buy from game stores or Walmart or whatever. That's just like, here's a key and you can put in this key to own the game.
Speaker: There's really no difference between that and buying it from the PlayStation store, except like Walmart is going to get a cut in the case of selling the cardboard. I think eventually they'll probably get rid of the cardboard, too.
Speaker: um The reason it's bad for me as a consumer is now before i had the option to like, you know, trade games with friends or, you know, shop around at different retailers to see where I want to buy a physical copy, get a used copy, all of that stuff.
Speaker: um The reason I think it's bad for Sony is all of those things we talked about, like Epic Games Store kind of like trying to lock down their community to be like, hey, come to us. Come to us to buy your games.
Speaker: Literally, like every publisher has tried to do this. ah You had like ah the origin client. You had whatever Ubisoft thing was. You had ah Epic Games Store.
Speaker: Good old games still exist. I actually like them. ones That one's fine. But it is a split. Like, and the differences between good old games and the rest of those is if a game's on good old games, it's also probably on everywhere else.
Speaker: If a game was on origin specifically, well, they kind of didn't want to put it on anything else. And that's going to be the same situation PlayStation lands in where it's like, okay, well, do I care about your game?
Speaker: If it's only available through the PS store, am I going to see it? Right? Like, I don't know if it's not on Steam. am Am I going to see it?
Speaker: ah Some of that. Yeah. um I do think it is a financial concern for Sony. The fact that consumers can have a physical thing and then theoretically trade around with a billion people.
Speaker: um But from a consumer side of things, that's just smart. Like in the same way, like if you have furniture and you no longer are using said furniture and don't need it, but somebody else does.
Speaker: You would give them the thing or have them part, whatever the fuck it is, instead of having them go out and buy a new couch. Right. And i I do wonder how much that actually came up, right? Because like I didn't trade in my used games. I didn't sell. I don't think I've ever sold a used game.
Speaker: I do collect them though, right? Like I don't have a collection of PC games anymore. It's mostly on Steam and good old games. um And nobody has a disk drive anymore. So yeah. And it's yeah been over 10 years. Earlier, earlier, I made this exact same analogy. and It's like it's been 10 years since I had a disk drive on my computer. And then like I actually time traveled 10 years. and I was like, oh, no, that's nowhere near far enough. back So wait, are you telling me you you put drinks on your desk?
Speaker: I mean, It's a thinker, kids. It's a thinker. It's such a you there are There are videos of people who have done this. You got to be careful about how much weight is in the cup. I seriously think that was something that happened once and then became an old wives tale and then got just passed around. Kind of similar to like things in middle school. You're like, yeah, that must be true.
Speaker: ahha Never have any evidence of it, but also nothing to disprove it. Yeah. It's just nice not to have another. That would have been like pre SATA, I think.
Speaker: oh And then eventually sata. There was some obstacles out of there, but trips. Uh-huh. The other thing I was going to say that I think donkey touched on in his video, um but should be a concern for everybody is okay, I now own this thing online for how long? Yeah. Until I say, hey, um we don't want you to have this anymore or we don't want to support this anymore or, oh, the server shit the bed type thing.
Speaker: Yeah. All that type of stuff could go wrong or they could just like Destiny's been with sun setting stuff. You're like, oh, this is something I have access to forever.
Speaker: no. Yeah. And. There's there's been a lot of actual we don't have time to go into depth on the topic, but like discussion on games preservation recently, there's been hearings in the UK and in California recently as well.
Speaker: um And unfortunately, the people who oversee these committees have no idea what people are talking about. So they're just going to like be super receptive to lies and nonsense like Minecraft private servers are piracy.
Speaker: They're not. You can download it from the main site and just run it. That's well part of how the game works, but whatever. Okay. um But, like, yeah, game preservation is a huge factor here.
Speaker: And if every single thing is licensed, including all of your single-player games, like... you're going to have a bad time. And i have personal anecdotal experience for this because, again, you play with, that's what was called, for Ubisoft.
Speaker: Freaking Splinter Cell Conviction. multiplayer like co-op game loved to just not work or go offline and have to like resynchronize and all this nonsense um assassin's creed i think two was one of the first single player games that i remember that had always online drm like it literally had to phone home or the game stopped working yeah and like those are all bad things this is just in the same family right like if they ever decide hey the thing that you paid money for ah we're gonna turn off your ability to do that now like okay bye right like um yeah and there's nothing in the way of recourse for that one because it's
Speaker: still kind of unprecedented i don't think there's as much around it uh legally um but there should be some type of way to protect consumers as well ideally um
Speaker: yeah and i mean a lot of it is just like there There is legislation like that, I think, in the EU where it's like because basically the argument that you make as a consumer is I paid for this and then you took it away from me. Yeah. I don't care what your EULA says.
Speaker: I paid for this and you took it away from me. And even if so even if it's a dumb committee, if you phrase it like that, I paid for it and then they took it away from me. Like.
Speaker: Generally, people get what's happening, right? um And I don't know, this is kind of just a self-own too, right? Because like they're putting themselves in a position where like this is just a weakness in the distribution system.
Speaker: Like if you think about discs, you're like, great. As long as users have discs, that's the thing that they bought. That's the thing that they own. If they broke their disc sucks to suck. That's the thing we sold you. Right. Yeah. But as long as you have that disc, expect you could install it even if your PlayStation is offline.
Speaker: um Now, if they go to all always online or not always online, but ah no no physical disks like, well, PlayStation kind of has a obligation to make sure that you can continue to download the thing that you bought.
Speaker: And if they revoke that. They're going to be taken to court. It's going to be, I bought this and then they took it away from me again. Right. So like, I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. We'll, we'll see where they end up. Um,
Speaker: Yeah. So do we think that Nintendo is now going to be the the top contender of video game policy? and They just stayed where they were basically in like last place and everyone else keeps like shoving sticks into their bikes. That's basically what's happening.
Speaker: The thing is like i think I think Steam, which when I say Steam, I mean like the PC market because it's Steam pretty much. is still still the best.
Speaker: um But I don't know. Gabe gets a couple more super yachts and maybe Nintendo can catch up. like Maybe that'll be enough. um It is really funny how much money he has, though. oh i think i think he I think one of his super yachts is literally just going to be used for like oceanic research.
Speaker: And I'm pretty sure it's because he has two. I'm like...
Speaker: So he's leasing it out or he's like, oh he is doing the research. I think he's going to have scientists do the research. But he's like, oh, i some this should probably be used for something. And I have a different one. So here you go.
Speaker: It's like the the rich ah benevolence sort of sort of thing. But you start to see when ah i can't remember how absurd it is. But like it's like the the millions of dollars of revenue per every single valve employee.
Speaker: It's not that that's their salary. It's just if you take the amount of money they make and they you divide it by their employee count, it's like the most profitable. It's like outside of like ah MBS in Saudi Arabia. It's like the most profitable per headcount type of deal. You have to be the head of a sovereign wealth fund in order to beat them all, I think, basically. Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, anyways, interesting times. Hopefully everybody finds their feet as far as the the jobs go. i know it's going to be rough, right? It's just kind of rough in tech right now in general.
Speaker: um But. Yeah, we don't spin into the the AI stuff that companies are going to try and push more as far as game generation. Yeah.
Speaker: Anything they can use to kind of help solve the question of how do we reduce the cost and the risk involved in how pricey games are right now?
Speaker: Um... And like we've covered it a lot in previous episodes. We talk about like, hey, you don't need graphics to be absolutely crazy. But I also do appreciate when they are.
Speaker: Right. Like God of War, ah the ghosts. God of War is gorgeous. Ghost of Sushi. Yeah. Like my sushi died. yeah That was that was the exciting event. Yeah, that was that was the prologue. The of the open world opens up. Yeah.
Speaker: But like, yeah, I think as a whole, I mean, we're probably not going to solve it in this podcast, but game developers, publishers, mega publishers that own the entire world economy like Microsoft need to start asking the questions of how we can do this sustainably without like slashing and burning people, I guess.
Speaker: um All I'm saying is, uh, Deltarune's doing okay. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, that was the funny thing, is one of these videos, they talk about, like, um, why does why doesn't everyone who was fired from Bungie just join an indie studio?
Speaker: And... That's a very funny question to ask. I mean, it feels like there's a lot of obvious answers to that. it's like you might have kids. Maybe you want to stop working at the end of the day. Some days, maybe you don't want to persist on ramen and like food scavenged from the local, of the community dumpster.
Speaker: Like these are the situations that like starting indie studios are oftentimes in. And even then, Schreyer had the perfect analogy for this.
Speaker: It wasn't just gambling if you make an indie game. It's gambling where you don't know if you've won or not until years later. Like you buy a ticket. That's terrifying. And then you just don't know if you win or not until years later. And that's what game development is. And it's like, nah, it's not going to be easy. and there's going to be so much competition for what positions exist.
Speaker: And like, where's the money coming from at this point? Right. Like, I don't know, but.
Speaker: ah tough ah I'm going to save future thoughts for future episodes because I can I can always rant about certain stuff or what they should be doing. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I'll see if we can save the notes for this one to next time for the the Indie Ain't Easy block because there's some there's some interesting stuff to talk about there. And I like some of the anecdotes for certain games and what the developers went through.
Speaker: um
Speaker: The teaser for that is I didn't realize the person who made blueprints owned mythic spoiler. That's very funny to me. That is such a weird association. The MTG site?
Speaker: Yes. Huh. i've I've used it a lot in the past. i be like... What's that on the new set? You were supporting the development of blueprints when you visited the site, so good on you. That's it, though. That's the one fact of trivia I'll throw in here that I can even exempt Dave from the Words of Wisdom.
Speaker: Words of Wisdom, start a magic spoiler site if you're going into indie game development, I guess. So, hmm. Noted. It's very specific. But thank you guys for listening.
Speaker: ah Hopefully this was an engaging and eminently palatable experience for your brain. Hopefully the games industry gets a little bit better as we go through the year.
Speaker: We can all ride on the coattails of Grand Theft Auto or something. um But yeah, there's still good games coming out. Still other things we'll definitely talk about. um If you are impacted by anything going on, we wish you you know the best and hopefully you can very quickly find your footing. But yeah.
Speaker: Otherwise, appreciate you guys listening. um Thank you for stopping by. Check the show notes if you want to reach out to us on our socials. And as always, we'll see you in the next one.
Speaker: Bye.
