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Attack of the Microtransactions | Windbreaker Podcast
7.8k Plays7 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty chat about the role of microtransactions, and whether they can ruin an otherwise good game.
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Transcript
Introduction to Delta V Rings of Saturn
00:00:00
Speaker
If you've been waiting your whole life for the ultimate asteroid mining simulator, then you're in luck. Delta V Rings of Saturn is here, and it's a game that understands the importance of science in science fiction. The physics-based mining sim drops you in a world where every action has a reaction.
00:00:15
Speaker
Precision spaceflight means a mistimed thruster burst could lead to major ship damage or your hold barfing up all your precious minerals. Will you unravel the mystery of the rings or just spend your time getting rich? Because while money can't buy you everything, it can buy a ton of cool things like fission reactors, experienced crew members, or POGS. Delta V rings in Saturn may or may not contain 90s era spoolier games. Please consult a doctor if you remember POGS, as you are old now.
00:00:41
Speaker
Delta V Rings of Saturn is available now, so head on over to its Steam page today. Hello everyone, I'm a mysterious stranger from the land of Far Away.
Gaming Nostalgia and Guests Introduced
00:00:54
Speaker
And I've come to do a podcast with Sebastian Ruiz. That's a me from a land in between the Far Away. And Marty Sleever. The land's between? You're Elden Ring. That's a Dark Souls, isn't it?
00:01:09
Speaker
No. Oh, I'm thinking of things betwixt. You're thinking of things betwixt. Honestly, if we're being honest, all our games are just remixed of the same five ideas. Poison Swipe there, things betwixt over here. I like things betwixt because it reminds me of my favorite chocolate caramel biscuit bar. Are you a right or a left Twix man?
00:01:29
Speaker
Uh, both. I don't fuck around with my Twix. Just double fist. Both are wands. Then I stick them out of my mouth like fangs and scare the children. My chocolate. Anyway, yes. I've been away for a few weeks. First I was in Washington, DC, filming Adventurer's Knife, you ungrateful bastards. And then I was in San Francisco covering GDC for you ungrateful bastards. And I'm doing a podcast for you ungrateful bastards.
00:01:54
Speaker
Three separate groups of ungrateful bastards. Some overlap, and there's also some individual bastards everywhere. But speaking of ingratitude, this week we're talking about money and the movement thereof. Specifically,
Debate on Microtransactions in Gaming
00:02:09
Speaker
micropayments. Has everyone's got a bug up their arse about new Dragon's Dog for Two having micropayments? How do we all feel about that specifically? It feels like for some reason it's been bubbling up all year.
00:02:22
Speaker
Wait, what do you, Frost, you did the thing where you rub your temples. You did the sensible thing as like, oh damn, does that mean I have to be the, I love microtransactions. I don't expect any three of us to go like, you know what, I love microtransactions. I think we're all, I think some of us are about to defend Dragon's Dogma 2 when we say that as reviewers, we didn't really notice any micro payments going into it. I think there was a link to the store on the main title screen, but then it's never really in your face while you're playing the game.
00:02:51
Speaker
No. This year's been weird because, well, I feel like there's always an ongoing microtransaction live service. What should a game cost? What should I get for my money in a game conversation? But it feels like this year, even the big beloved games have all had some conversation around them with this.
00:03:09
Speaker
We've had sort of, what is Helldivers? What are you paying for if you're paying money to Helldivers? What is Pay to Win? What is Cosmetic? Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth locked its new game plus behind a payment system, which feels very dumb. Persona 3 Reload has announced
00:03:29
Speaker
It's epilogue, the answer, which is a part of its expansion pass, and the expansion pass also includes music from the old Persona games. And so it just feels like every big game has also sort of shot themselves in the foot with, I guess, less held average, but with what seems like unavoidable microtransactions. Who's typing very loudly? Eric, you're very loud typing. It's extremely loud typing. You were so angry.
00:03:59
Speaker
That's OK. Yeah, Frost, I don't know. You've obviously been following some of these games this year. What did you feel about that? All right. So this is where it's a strange position because already you've got people who are like, oh, if it's not noticeable, it's fine. If I love the game, it's fine. I would just like to everyone have a step back at the same time.
00:04:19
Speaker
Can we get back to a point where we can just say it exists? That's more or less what I want to get across is where we've gone away from opinion and now we're trying to sort of use our emotion to change, I guess, truth. There is no sense of like, okay, is this objectively good or bad? I want to objectively say they exist without someone just like, ah, you just said my mother has microtransactions. Like, how could you? She's free to play, by the way.
00:04:48
Speaker
It just comes down to the fact I want to be able to say, hey, these are here, and then we'll have this discussion of like, where's good, where's bad? For the Dragon's Dogma one, it raises the question of if you don't need them, if you can just normally play and not, and it doesn't even arise or even, as you said, Marty, if they're not in your face, is that fine? Well, uh...
00:05:13
Speaker
Is it fine to spend money to get an unfair advantage? Are you cheating by using micro payments? Are you using money to get past the challenge you would normally have had to face?
00:05:27
Speaker
I mean, that's the whole thing about this conversation is single player games and multiplayer games are very different, right? But the last thing he said, are you using it to get over a challenge? Well, I'm just the kind of guy that like, if I give somebody like a burger, if they go home and shove it up their ass, that's on them. I don't care if they've ruined my burger image. If they want to cheat, if they want to pay money to get an advantage, have at it. Maybe that's the real conversation is back in my day, you had cheat codes that gave you all this stuff. Now you got to pay for them.
00:05:57
Speaker
Well, I take the view that saying that you can just ignore something in a game is kind of an invalid argument because any work that goes into that sort of thing is work that could have been spent on something else that could have been good.
00:06:12
Speaker
But in this case, with Dragon's Doctor 2 specifically, my payment purchases seem so dumb and pointless. It makes me think of a publisher going to a developer and saying, hey, what can we monetise? And the developer going, oh, this. And the publisher going, that'll do. And no one ever thinking about it ever again.
Capcom's Microtransaction Practices
00:06:31
Speaker
So that's been like Capcom's MO lately. Capcom's been funny because they've been, in terms of third-party developers, like they've been releasing really good games. Like people think Rezzy and Street Fighter and Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry are all in very good places for those franchises. Almost all those games have pretty egregious microtransactions that are also pretty ignorable.
00:06:55
Speaker
And my thing with Dragon's Dogma is I don't even remember in the opening menu there being a link to the store. I started the game and now every time I go back into it on PlayStation it just boots me right into the game. At no point was there a pop-up that I can buy something. This isn't, it is so different playing a thing like this than say you're playing
00:07:15
Speaker
I mean, obviously, this is a free-to-play mobile game, but before Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came out, I was playing Evercrisis, I think was the name of it, and it's this mobile game that, free-to-play mobile game that sort of retells the story of the Final Fantasy VII games. And I was like, I'm enjoying what this is, but I stopped playing because, like, literally every 30 seconds, it would just inundate you with, like, snare traps to get into its store.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I'm like this at this point, this is like, it's like I stopped going to a certain mall because every time I walked by stores, someone would be like, Hey, do you have a second to come in? Hey, do you want to come in? Like I stop, I get nervous. I go to the grocery store and I feel bad about the little, uh, the, the, um, Girl Scouts.
00:07:55
Speaker
No. I'm leaving the grocery store and they're like, do you want to buy cookies? And I'm like, I just left the grocery store and I bought cookies. Where were you on the way in? Ah, but you didn't buy Girl Scout cookies. I would have had they been in the, don't go to the exit, go to the entrance. What's going on? Why were they at the exit? It seems foolish. I didn't know until I was leaving the grocery store. Yeah. Oh, wait. Yeah. That's when I always see the Girl Scout cookies. I think one time they came to my door and I was really surprised. I was like, Oh, do you still actually do this?
00:08:25
Speaker
Lazy. Lazy girl scouts. Did you get anything? Yeah. Fucking gotta get my samoas. Oh, it's a samoa man. There you go. It's interesting that you both have hit on the same point essentially where Yahtzee says they can't be ignored because it is essentially a resource that's been spent elsewhere. And now Marty's saying the sinful nature of it is when it's intrusive, when it's constantly
00:08:46
Speaker
in your face. And I do have this idea I said a while ago where I say a good game with bad monetization is just a bad game because I feel monetization is as much game design as any other choice that you could have made. Because it is a very conscious effort to put it in there and say, how does it go with our systems? At worst, it's absolutely redundant. And like Yahtzee said, you just wasted time. That could have been like one more bowl cut you could have given me in the hair selection.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, it does lead to the live service the effect that everything in a game is quantified because if it's quantified they can sell it to you. Like that's why you get games of 19 different currencies or crafting elements.
00:09:27
Speaker
which are basically just multiple currencies, but with different frontage. It happens because it works. EA and Take-Two reported that 75% of their revenue last year was from microtransactions. Frost, I think about this all the time. I think in a cold take script last year, maybe, you wrote about how
00:09:50
Speaker
Everyone always says, vote with your wallet, and they did. And the verdict is in, and people want microtransactions. So they've spoken. That's happened. Well, do they though? Because as you've observed, there's been a lot of backlash against microtransactions specifically recently.
00:10:09
Speaker
against
Monetization and Game Design
00:10:10
Speaker
fairly new microtransaction strategies like the concept of locking New Game Plus behind it and all the Dragon's Dogma stuff. And I'm wondering if that's because there has been like a major backlash against the concept of live service video games. I mean, we all saw how everyone turned on Suicide Squad on a dime when we saw the menus in the first trailer.
00:10:30
Speaker
Maybe this isn't like the new wave of microtransaction payments are the publishers trying desperately to find something that isn't just the classic life service monetization model that they can make money on. Hey, maybe New Game Plus will work. Maybe selling the Dragonstalker 2 bullshit will work. The industry has been under a sort of shift lately.
00:10:56
Speaker
Audiences are specifically turning against live service and there's a movement to get away from it.
00:11:03
Speaker
And it feels like it's becoming, uh, it's becoming a harder pill for a lot of people to swallow because games are also going up in price. Dragon's Dogma was a $69.99 game. After tax, it was $75. And so if people spend $75 and then open up a game and then the first, again, this wasn't in the case with Dragon's Dogma, but it's the first thing you see is, Hey, do you want to spend more money? You're like at a certain point, are games just flights?
00:11:27
Speaker
to where it's like, yeah, we're all on the same flight, but some people are having a much better experience than others because of the money they spent. Like some people are in first class. Some people are getting just fucking free champagne. Some people are getting a good dinner than other people are eating, you know, sitting next to fucking Uncle Benjamin as he, as he, I don't know why I was thinking Uncle Ben cause I watched Spiderman over the weekend.
00:11:47
Speaker
I was thinking, uh, national treasure. I was like, what? Yes, the national treasure guy. Um, yeah. So it's like, we can all play the same game, but if someone wants to put up more money, then they can have all the crystals they want, right? That's the start of the game. But does it, does it do anything? Like, um,
00:12:07
Speaker
Like Helldivers was a weird one to frame because you have to, this is where, like they should have been different outcry. But anyway, let's say we're going to McDonald's and there's three different menus. And on one menu, there's Big Macs, the next one's got McRib and the third one's got Chicken Nuggets. If you're using money,
00:12:24
Speaker
after the 30 bucks you've already paid to get in here and you go I want chicken nuggets but you still have to work for it right you still have to work a job and then you're able to pay it but I can unlock that menu first I can expedite the desired route and make it faster whereas if you aren't gonna pay
00:12:40
Speaker
any extra money, you're like, well, I've got to work my way through the Big Mac menu, and then the McRib menu, and then I can get chicken nuggets. And this is why I see it as much as game design as anything else, is good monetization will feel like you are getting a good
00:12:57
Speaker
deal and like you are a good person. That is not to say that you're stupid or a bad person, but it is hard to differentiate between, I am just helping someone maintain their game versus like, well, it's either work a job or help them maintain the servers. Well, I feel like the simplest solution would be for the McDonald's in this analogy to not be wallpapered in gold and carpeted in diamond fibers.
00:13:22
Speaker
There you go. Video games don't need to be as expensive as they are. We've known that for some time, but they can't stop being as expensive as they are because it's the fucking Cold War all over again. We've got to keep advancing towards destruction in case the other guy advances faster than us.
00:13:37
Speaker
Well, and because the CEOs at the top are like, we just need, well, I can get more bonus. Oh, I can get a bonus tied to microtransaction revenue for a year. So yes, let's keep doing this. I want my golden parachute to have carbon nanotube lines on it. Exactly. This is how you end up with like a McDonald's and a burger can of Wendy's all in the same corner.
00:13:59
Speaker
Because somebody's gonna do it. Somebody's gonna make the move. I just have to make it first. Is this singular with video games as an art form? Like are there comparisons in movies, in books, in music? Like what are the analysis? Well, mainstream movies all suck now. Literally last year we had Barbie and the two highest grosser movies of the year were beloved.
00:14:25
Speaker
Oscar. Oscar dominated. You don't watch any movie. I want to know what movies he's watched, the four he's watched so that I could be like, yeah, you know, if those are all I watched. Yeah, I think the same thing. What were they? You're asking me what movies have I watched in my entire life? No, just last year.
00:14:47
Speaker
You know what? There's a podcast here. I just noticed we should probably maintain that path. Oh yeah. Now you ask. I don't think I have watched a single movie in the last year.
00:14:57
Speaker
The movie industry sucks. I've not watched the movie in a while. Well, maybe it does. It clearly hasn't enticed me back to it. You're right. That's a doofus argument right there. The amount of money the movie industry has to advertise movies and put trailers on every single YouTube video, at least one of them would entice me to actually watch a movie, but none of them have.
00:15:24
Speaker
What is the equivalent of microtransactions in other mediums?
Defining Microtransactions
00:15:30
Speaker
Is there one? Popcorn. Is that not a microtransaction?
00:15:35
Speaker
You know, I kind of hate that we keep calling it microtransactors. The term microtransaction was originally coined. The idea was you'd pay like 10 cents for a comic page or one cent to read a comic page online. And the accumulative effect of all the people reading the comic would lead to a nice profit. But five bucks is not a microtransaction. Five bucks is quite a lot of money. That's like 10% of the game's cost. Oh yeah. How about like post-purchase purchases?
00:16:03
Speaker
fine that's a it's still a dumb name for it ppp's I mean is this like was everyone always brings up the horse armor moment in oblivion like was that the original sin here or was that the moment where it's like oh if
00:16:19
Speaker
this is going to be able to fly and sell a lot, then this Pandora's box has been opened and we're not closing this anytime soon. Well, the horse armour was the usual process. You start with the outrageous thing that everyone calls stupid. Oh my god, you're actually charging money for horse armour. What a ridiculous concept. And then they're the sacrificial lamb. That's the normaliser.
00:16:45
Speaker
You just do something like that, then you do something that's maybe not quite as egregious. Like that first one. Yeah. Yeah. I think people buy in-game currency to save time. Yeah. And then like some people will still complain about that, but they eventually run out of energy and then people just keep doing it and it's all normalized and now we're stuck with it.
00:17:08
Speaker
But the first one is always the one people complain about. Like when Diablo 3 was online only. And everyone complained about that. And now half the games are online only and no one's got the energy to complain anymore. Yeah. And everyone's complaints have moved on to the next thing. There's plenty of energy, I tell you what.
00:17:24
Speaker
Do you, I'm not even, I don't know. I'm assuming the answer is no for you, Yahtzee. Have you ever, with your money, bought something in-game like this? No, I've taken almost pride in the fact that I have never once paid money for a microtransaction. Maybe it does enhance the experience, I wouldn't know. And I probably never will. Well, maybe we gotta get you to buy one, just so you can say for sure. So you can see, yeah. You gotta watch a movie and you have to buy a microtransaction. Oh, okay.
00:17:56
Speaker
It's interesting though, and trust, I'm assuming you have, right? Have you bought microtransactions before? Yeah, and that's why I can empathize with you. Let's analyze this. What was the specific thing that enticed you to buy a microtransaction both of you? Drugs mostly. Marta, you first. Costumes and persona five.
00:18:18
Speaker
Oh, well, that fucking figures, doesn't it? I wanted to be able to dress up my party as parties from previous games and other Atlas RPGs. And I had a great time doing it. Let me tell you, zero progress. You don't remember fondly the fact that the costumes used to be just bundled with the game, like say in the original in like the original God of War, the original Spider-Man on PlayStation one, where you just had a bunch of costumes that were just in the game. I do remember that. Yeah, I do.
00:18:47
Speaker
I do. It was nice. It was nice. 9-11 changed everything. None of those in Tasty yet.
00:18:53
Speaker
No! Why did you decide having extra costumes for your persona characters was worth shelling out actual additional money? I felt like I was tipping the developers because the service was so good. It's like if I met a bar and I'm like, man, you're clearly delivering my drinks before other people's. I like this. I'm laying down a fiver for this drink. It's not like tipping a waitress. It's like tipping a fucking bus driver. You've already paid for the ride. That's the cost.
00:19:22
Speaker
Maybe he took us by a lot of nice sights.
00:19:25
Speaker
Well, he did. No, it's not like he's a very, he's a very bad bus driver if he did. Instead of tipping the bartender, you're tipping the CEO of the two skates factory. I really enjoyed this service. So here, millionaire. Yeah. He didn't fucking need it. Okay. Frost, what did you spend money on? The micro, the first micro transaction I ever done was, it was five bucks for a skin on smite, but this was,
00:19:52
Speaker
Again, with the skins. No, no, no, no, no, no. Love skins. Oh, well, yeah, it was a skin. If it's the actual thing, yeah. Could you just put like a sticker on your monitor over where the character is to look like he's wearing a hat? But it was a donation because it was to... they were hosting a tournament and all the money from that skin was going to the tournament.
00:20:10
Speaker
And then again, the next time where it was like all this, all the money raised for this goes to charity. And I was like, okay, I'm donating. And this is a pin, right? This is what I'm doing. And at this point, it was also like a small indie game. I was like, Oh, I want to support it. You feel like a patron to the arts. Yeah. So I'm a Medici giving my five and also the amount of money I was making relative to what I was making, like overall five bucks is a micro transaction.
00:20:34
Speaker
Okay, it wasn't a specific thing you were putting money towards. Yeah, I was a very, like many people, again, you can feel very generous when, you know, you're hawking out some money like this is for the developers, right? I am voting for my wallet. Yes, but I think Dawkins wrote in Climbing Mount Impossible that charity is at its heart an act of selfishness.
00:21:03
Speaker
It's saying, hey look at me, I'm so great, you need to depend on me to survive, I must be much better than you. That's why charitable behaviour has been observed in nature. Like certain animals put themselves in danger over the rest of the herd so they can position themselves as superior to the rest of the herd.
00:21:23
Speaker
Well, it is an interesting turn. Marty, do you still spend on micro stuff? Because I don't. I stopped after that year. If something would come along that would entice me, that would seem interesting enough. But like, I don't think I've bought any this year. And you think of what would entice you at this point? Persona 7. What's your favorite game right now?
00:21:47
Speaker
I'd really like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Okay, so what would Final Fantasy VII Rebirth have to offer you to make each other happy? Honestly, costumes from other Final Fantasy games. Alright, well we've established we know what you like.
00:22:01
Speaker
No, I'm trying to think of indie examples because I feel like I pulled out an example in a conversation in the past few weeks where I said I felt like giving a little extra money, that actually felt like tipping the developer because it was a small game. Starting Valley is one of your games you go back to all the time, right? Yeah. And that just got a big update. That's never had microtransactions. Am I right?
00:22:22
Speaker
No, he has never sold any of his big updates for cash, which is quite frankly insane. Yeah, yeah, which is nuts. Whereas if he was like, hey, I've released in this five dollar thing and it's just like something relatively minor, again, maybe new costumes, maybe something, some event or something. At this point, would you be like, I've gotten so much enjoyment out of this game over the past decade that I don't mind this feeling like a tip. And I feel like in that scenario, it actually does feel like a tip.
00:22:52
Speaker
No, I probably wouldn't. I paid with money for my original purchase of the game. And, uh, I don't, I don't really feel like I want the additional thing. Then I won't buy it. There you go. Um, I mean, I get, I'm generally the kind of person who gets set in their ways. So if they, if they added a new DLC or a new bunch of content, I'd be like, well, now I'd have to do all the extra work to get that. And I can't be bothered. I'm just sticking with what I know. Yeah. Have any of us donated to Wikipedia?
00:23:22
Speaker
Okay, here we go. Yes, I've donated to Wikipedia. That's like helping fund the library, though.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. I use Wikipedia all the time and I've never paid any money for it. That just seems fair. Yeah. See, this is interesting because of the things that we do and don't pay for in our views of being generous. I stopped justifying generosity, as you said, when of this idea of like, no, I'm just doing this because it makes me feel good. So instead of doing like, here's five bucks for this. Instead, I'll go here. I'm just going to buy five people's copies of this game because I like the developer. It's usually indie games like
00:23:58
Speaker
eyelids or haiku or anything Lucas Pope's done when I'm like here, gifting, gifting, enjoying. I'm not just being charitable, like I want you all to develop taste is how I take that. But in that sense... Well, you know, buying a copy to gift to someone else, that's just, you know...
00:24:14
Speaker
That's getting value out of your purchase, isn't it? Because I'd like give games to a wife and then my wife goes, oh, I really enjoyed that game you gave me. And I'm like, yes, I'm a good husband. You have someone to talk about the thing with and like, yeah, there's a selfish reason
Generosity and Gaming Motives
00:24:30
Speaker
behind it. I guess that's interesting. I'm generally suspicious of charity, probably because like I've been shopping at Whole Foods a lot.
00:24:36
Speaker
And every time you get to the cabinet that says, oh, do you want to donate money to charity? Why wouldn't you want to do that? You bastard. You know, it's just Amazon's part of Amazon's huge tax avoidance scam. So I say no with pride. Yeah. No, I will not give a donation to charity. And now any time that comes, that's just the world that Amazon has created. It makes me very suspicious of anything with an ostensibly charitable motivation.
00:25:03
Speaker
I love how I am between the two of you here. Between your generosity and your not so much cynicism, I think it is. You see it for what it is, so you choose to find other things that you view as actually more generous. If you want it to be about generosity, then go be generous. Don't try and justify your retail therapy.
00:25:26
Speaker
as it were. And I think that to me is the crux of the matter because we're not so much fighting, is it good, is it bad. I think people start to identify with their games and because games are, it's almost harder to separate microtransactions from the games, their identity is starting to be part of what they spend on. So if you say these are bad, I'm bad and can't have that.
00:25:50
Speaker
All right. Well, can we all agree that it is bad if something that one would consider essential to the ultimate game experience is located behind a microtransaction? Yes. Yes.
00:26:03
Speaker
Okay then. What is essential? What is the definition of essential? That's why I feel like this line is different for everyone and not only different for everyone, but different in certain scenarios. Like for me, I am like, I like these games, so I will buy costumes in them. And then I see other games with costumes. And I'm like, you fucking idiots. You overwatch idiots buying your cowboy bebop costumes. And meanwhile, I'm like, ah, all my persona friends are back. That's it. I love it.
00:26:27
Speaker
He's hit it. That's it. If I like it, it's good. If I don't, it's bad. Humans are fucking dumb. Myself included, I'm the human who is dumb. Okay, let's figure out where the line is. If you were playing a shooter and you had to play a microtransaction for your gun, would that be too much?
00:26:47
Speaker
Is it my only gun? Yes. We're starting at the top. Okay. Yes. If I cannot engage with the core mechanic without spending money, I would consider that ridiculous. Yes. Okay. If you were playing a shooter and you had to play a microtransaction for your rocket launcher as well as the rest of your guns, would that be too much?
00:27:11
Speaker
Ooh, now he's talking loadouts. I feel like, yeah. Let's go with specifics. You're playing Quake. You're playing the original Quake, and you can have every gun that's in the original Quake except for the rocket launcher. Would you pay microtransaction for that? Would that be annoying? Well, if you're playing online, then people are going to have a rocket jump, and then that's going to be a competitive advantage at that point. You could learn the grenade jump.
00:27:37
Speaker
I didn't know that was a thing! I didn't know that was a thing! Yeah, Quake, famously the original Quake game has like three guns that are all just a previous gun you've got but better.
00:27:49
Speaker
Rocket launcher is just the grenade launcher but better. I want your line to keep going down because I'm excited when we start talking about would you pay for a bullet because I'm like now that's an interesting game. I want to talk about that game where bullets cost money. Okay, would you pay for a game where you could buy a special bonus bullet that gives the enemy characters big anime bobbleheads?
00:28:16
Speaker
Uh, I would not. And if, uh, like persona five characters, I feel like it might just to troll people. I mean, at this point you're almost talking about like the different modes and like, uh, so, uh, golden eye or perfect dark head, those like unlockable sort of modifiers where you can be like donkey Kong mode or paintball mode, like that kind of thing.
00:28:38
Speaker
I think the reason I'm so cynical about it is because I know a time of when things were, like, the game is the game, right? And also, we talked about Bellatro. You can start a new profile and unlock everything. It'll just give you everything.
00:28:54
Speaker
That's more or less what I'm used to as far as games go. So whenever people nowadays are just thinking, oh, Helldivers and Dragon's Dogma isn't as bad as like, I don't know, Genshin, and Genshin's not as bad as mobile games, right? Where I go, it's not, I don't care for this sliding scale of like, we went from wee shit to bed to just, we only pissed on it now. Just go to sleep, shut up. Like I'm not playing that. So you're saying it should be either everything is fine or none of it is?
00:29:21
Speaker
And we should just like draw land in the sand and say we paid 60 bucks in the store. We unlocked all the content with our credit card in that single moment. And there should be no more like nickel and diming after that. I think that with either a like here's my PayPal to donate to or
00:29:39
Speaker
they can sell extra cosmetic stuff in the sense of like here's the skin because you are not supporting a developing studio, you are buying, you are receiving the skin. Like if that's- Well now we're getting back in the weeds because who's to say cosmetic can't give an advantage. What if it cosmetics was like an outfit that's camouflaged with the background? If it's single player, I don't care. Okay. Yeah, if it's single player and it's not,
00:30:08
Speaker
Sorry, I got really emotional talking about microtransactions.
00:30:11
Speaker
If it's single player and it's not in my face, I don't care. You can let someone spend $1,000 in that game. I do not give a shit. I'm more lenient there, because if it's single player and it is in my face, but I can still get away from that. I play tons of mobile games, and the ads are so intrusive, but I just, I don't know, I do some squats. If anything, they're my workout regimen, you know? Watch a 30-second ad. Get a couple of sit-ups in the way. Yeah, a couple energy points, yeah.
Mobile Gaming and Microtransactions
00:30:41
Speaker
or you could just skip. Just wait a few seconds and skip. No, some of the ones you need in order to like get the thing, you need to watch the full 30 second ad on the game. Yeah. Oh, one of those. Yeah, one of those. I'd only play mobile games that do that anymore. I just played the New York Times crossword app. I was about to say that, but I was like, it's not an own if he's just going to eat it. It's also it's interesting how this is, um,
00:31:06
Speaker
It's become more and more normalized in the same way, slightly different, but how gambling in sports has become more and more normalized to the point where ESPN has shows all about gambling and about odds. And DraftKings has their own media companies and stuff. And then the media is trying to cover, oh, is sports gambling? Is this an epidemic? Oh, no. Would Shohei Itani have a gambling problem?
00:31:34
Speaker
And it's like, well, you're all cashing the checks from this. So like, what's, what's going on here? And I feel like this is like Frost said, I feel like the microtransaction thing is people get mad at the examples they don't like, and then find excuses for the people, for the examples they do like. Except for Yahtzee. Yahtzee doesn't like any of them. I'm still, I'm still going with either it's all good or none of it is. Yeah. I just feel like that's too simple. Like that's just not how the world works.
00:32:02
Speaker
Maybe the world needs to be more simple. Maybe we'd all have a better time if the world was simple, if we all went back to having kings and the kings didn't have bum cancer. Yeah, imagine things were simple. Yeah. I'm more of the clarity. Like if a game says for this single player cosmetic, this thing will not impact gameplay in any way whatsoever. And it's single player, even if it did, no one would be privy to it. 20 bucks, that's all I want.
00:32:32
Speaker
Because you know things could be simpler, as Yahtzee said. We don't need multiple currencies. We know that's just so we can't keep track of how much we're actually spending. You know, that's the thing that gets me is like, you could have not done this. Not so much you could have not monetized and post-purchase purchases. You could have done this in a less scummy way. That's sort of the thing that gets me, but the more manipulative way just makes more money.
00:32:59
Speaker
Like Path of Exile, it's just sheer cosmetic and big whale purchases. And they're just clear about that. Like, hey, this does nothing. This is just for you. Like, okay, I've had it. But... It's also funny that this came out with Dragon's Dogma 2, because Capcom has just done this with all of their big recent games that people have loved with Devil May Cry and with the Resi games. And it's just like this is the one that blew up for some reason. And I don't know if it's like...
00:33:28
Speaker
I don't know if people wanted to get mad at journalists or people wanted to get mad at someone. I think we've gone away from that level of journalism where I grew up on Total Biscuits and Yahtzee's very, to his opinion, and experience Total Biscuit is very like, I am literally telling you what's in this menu. No 60 frames per second, no VSync, no none of that, right? But we've shifted away from that to the point of like,
00:33:53
Speaker
just saying or not saying something is having your opinion as well. If you didn't mention it, it's because you are in the pocket and you think it's okay. Whereas like, I think we've just gotten so far away from, let me state the thing is there and you can have your own opinion on the matter. So, uh, it's a weird place this with, with microtransactions. Don't we go to super chats and see what the audience thinks? Go to the YouTube microtransactions.
00:34:20
Speaker
Ha, ha, ha, ha. We're complicit. Ha, ha, ha. Seriously, give us money. Thank you, everyone. You're all very sweet, and everything costs so much money. That freakin' cost so much money!
00:34:35
Speaker
Just gotta bring them up because I'm not a professional and a professional would have gotten this up earlier. Oh, I thought you did a really great job. I'm really proud of you also to show how big, how big of a thing these are still in, uh, like how this isn't going away. Is that entire like giant Apple versus Epic court case was about like Fortnite having their own, uh, you know, in app store, like in app store that circumvented, uh, apples monopoly on microtransactions.
00:35:05
Speaker
No, yeah, oh is the thing the sha shank was bringing up why bring out the microtransaction thing because imagine Elden ring suddenly like the DLC has a microtransaction where you can like
00:35:21
Speaker
I don't know, have more, more healing vials or something like Dragon's. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. An extra Estus instead, where Dragon's talking to me was sold as a bit of a hardcore game. Is that not the vibe? I heard it was like a little more just less hand-holding do things, you know, I find it kind of piss easy. Oh, nevermind then.
00:36:02
Speaker
Cuz that because they don't said they're adding those in after launch actually they said they're fixing that's in their patch notes this morning They said things are working on is like updating the save system. Oh wait. I hate games now I wanted to see do you think all games should have 100 save files? This was an argument we had when you weren't here I said all games should have 100 save files and it should go down your score should go down by one every Every save file it doesn't have so dragons dollar gets a 1
00:36:07
Speaker
I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief. I've been playing as a thief.
Gaming History and Save File Debate
00:36:29
Speaker
out of 100 in my mind. I
00:36:31
Speaker
I think that's a curious metric to judge all games on. Do you think all games should have multiple save files? Yes. There's yours.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yes. I'm good. That would have been fucking gotcha if he didn't. Oh yeah. Turn on the game. Press start game. Like there's six slots right there. We'll say like, you just picked this. Like you have to pick your slot before you do anything else. It's not a hundred, but six is good. I mean, there's no reason why you couldn't program in more. I just couldn't be asked to create, you know, a little slidey box to be able to show them all. I'm saying that you start taking up a lot of memory or taking up a lot of storage.
00:37:11
Speaker
Maybe for some games, my save files in my game are just like text document dumps. Oh, that's neat. Anyway, about those super chats we were about to go into. Wesley Thomas gives five Canadian and says a fully priced game has no excuse for microtransactions. Back in my day, you paid $50 and got the whole thing and the characters were attractive too. Showing his age a bit there.
00:37:39
Speaker
Wait, back in your day, the characters were attractive on Super Nintendo? Maybe he's one of those people who complained about Aloy in the latest Horizon game having too many paws in her skin. No, they're polysexual, but think of them in polygons. What was the first video game character you ever found attractive, Yahtzee?
00:38:03
Speaker
Just thinking back to all those magazine ads I used to jerk off over when I was a teenager. I'm glad we got here. I love it. This is what I missed. I was probably at that age around the Lara Croft era when Lara when she first became a thing. Sure, sure.
00:38:19
Speaker
So I guess I'd just be boring and say Lara Croft. That's fine. Because she had big titties and a nice face. So what about romance on in Persona 5? That's me. I do. That's like a puberty thing, isn't it? That doesn't really cross your mind is when you're a kid that characters are physically attractive. Yeah. Remember I said I was kind of weirdly attracted to the mouse and rescue rangers, and I didn't know what was going on. Gadget. Yeah, yeah.
00:38:49
Speaker
man. You just brought some memories of Web 1.0 shooting back. Because I remember I once found like a random website in the middle of nowhere that was simply called Ranger Files Against Gadget Erotica, or R-A-G-E. And it was like this discussion brought people who really like Rescue Rangers, but who really couldn't abide the erotic fan art of Gadget.
00:39:17
Speaker
That was great. What a time. And I remember the logo was like a topless gadget looking offended with like a no symbol covering up the nibs. Oh, that's perfect. That's perfect. That gets it across. What was yours? Anyway, it was a gadget.
00:39:35
Speaker
Okay, I guess from the NES game. It's one of the old Tekken's, I don't know, but there was an absolute babe in the cutscene trailer that played at the start and I was as a little kid and at this point I'd been raised with like Lola, not Lola Rabbit, Mrs. Roger Rabbit or whatever. Right, did it make you a winky twinkle?
00:39:55
Speaker
It did not make the winky twinkle for I'm a Spanish and hot blooded and I leaned in for a kiss on the TV. And back then, if you recall the CRTs, if you kissed them, it was static sparks flew between me. Yeah. It tasted like a.
00:40:12
Speaker
But if you put your face too close to the screen, a lot of the detail gets lost. You'd just be kissing a load of red, green and blue bars at that point. That's what it ended up being. That was love. And, uh, you know. I was, like, three? Four? I don't know. I liked women from a young age. I don't know. Well, this has all been jolly enlightening. But moving on. FoxD gives $5 and says some simulation games use microtransactions as the hobby shop model. The hobby shop's just virtual for Trainsim World or Truck Simulator or even Sims 4.
00:40:42
Speaker
Well that's something we haven't talked about. The microtransactions providing the living for people who make extremely niche hobbyist games.
Sustaining Niche Games with Microtransactions
00:40:52
Speaker
I used to know devs who kept the lights on making like train simulators and they made crazy money from that. Like what's the game that's got like a thousand dollars in microtransactions that's just all different trains or trucks?
00:41:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of those hardcore truck sims just have that and it's because their audience isn't casuals. Their audience are the people to where this is almost like the hobby for them. Yeah, it's like the one game they play and they're retired truck drivers and they just want to remember the glory days of driving trucks.
00:41:28
Speaker
Apparently, those people are very, very picky about realism. If you include a new truck in your microtransaction, it has to be exactly realistic, exactly like the truck, how it is in real life, or people will throw a big old strop. That's the gamble you go with when you make something that niche.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, they're like that too. The way like truck drivers, they don't just pay for in-game cosmetics. They'd be pimping their trucks out too. They'd be pimping. They do. Brad gives $2 and says, podcasts are live services and super chats on microtransactions. Beautiful. There you go. Well, we're providing a service. You give us money, we read out your stupid questions.
00:42:20
Speaker
Sometimes it's stupid statements. Not always a question. You know what? I think all these questions are great and you know what? They provide a lot of fodder for some interesting, enlightening and entertaining conversations. So I think you're all great. Yes, he does. And have you lost weight? Oh, you guys are looking real, real svelte today. No, I was talking to them, not you guys. You guys always look great. You guys always look great.
00:42:48
Speaker
Couple of handsome boys. Yeah, that's because you can't see below my waist. You can't see how my muffin top's doing. Backpack gives $5 and says, in the history of indie games, which game do you think was more important, Cave Story or Undertale? Well, Cave Story, I'd say. That was like the pioneer. That was the original, that was the tone setter for PC indie gaming.
00:43:13
Speaker
It's so good about this bloody thing. I have it on Epic for free and I keep looking at it and I was just like... It's the original retro style indie game. To me, it's important versus good. I think Undertale's better probably. Again, having not played Undertale, I assume Undertale's a more enjoyable game, but Cave Stories plays industry. You know, it's like saying like Super Mario Bros. 1, very important game. Later Mario games are better, but Mario 1 is the most important.
00:43:40
Speaker
Cave Story is actually a really well-designed game. Undertale is great, but it's not got the complexity of design of Cave Story, which feels more impressive in a way. Thing is, can you have Undertale without everything else? Because it is a very subversive game, you know? Well, quite. Sure, there wouldn't be no Undertale without...
00:43:59
Speaker
Undertale is building off the many, many traditions, Cave Story among them. Yeah. People tell me Braid. There you go. That's the real answer. It's getting a fancy version in a month. Oh, that was even that was like years after Cave Story. Yeah. That was like when Indie Game started like penetrating the mainstream and that was a part of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade and stuff like that. Yeah. Indie Game Rockstars. Braid was XBLA. Yeah.
00:44:29
Speaker
Limbo as well, I think, at the same time. Yeah, yeah. Those are two of the big ones. Meatboy. BigGibKitty gave us $5 and says, I think the difference between the MTX microtransactions in Dragon's Doctor 2 and something like Helldivers 2 is that's a live service where you're paying for the game's continued upkeep.
00:44:47
Speaker
Well, we were talking about that, about making micropayment as a conscious donation to the creators. But whether you're doing that to help them physically keep the lights on, or just because you like their products, I guess is up to the individual choice.
00:45:08
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, is that like, yeah, I guess there's the two things. There's the altruistic answer of like, I want to, I've liked this game and so I want to continue supporting the developers, which I've done with some games before. Um, but then there's also the, um, you know, I want to keep up with this live ongoing game and in order to sort of stay in the conversation and stay in the zeitgeist, I kind of need to shell out a little bit of Dosh to keep up with the times of an evolving game. Right.
00:45:37
Speaker
That charged me 30 at the start.
00:45:41
Speaker
Yeah, so that's the other, do you mean that in a good way or in a bad way? Because 30 compared to the 70 I just paid seems like a cheaper game, but 30 compared to a free play game feels like a lot. There was a time when multiplayer only games were sold for like half a fraction of the cost of the single player game, because it was generally understood that if a game didn't have a full single player campaign, it wasn't worth full price. Yeah.
00:46:10
Speaker
I imagine. Those are the days I want to get active. I just want single player games. Now, yeah, there's no replayability. Ooh, boy. You got to justify your full price. Yeah. James Morgan gives 199 US and says the problem is they are aimed at children. Yeah. Thanks, Mrs. Lovejoy. Are they? I will say they were these days.
00:46:32
Speaker
What games? I mean, it's playing dragons talk. How are children making money? I mean, has this really been a problem since the whole smurf berries story? Remember that when some kid was playing like the smurf mobile game and that kept accidentally buying smurf berries with microtransactions because it wasn't clearly signposted that it was like charging to the credit card every time. Yeah.
00:46:58
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think the problem isn't, I think maybe James Bennett, the problem is when they are named at children, which there are some games like, you know, your, your Fortnite's and, um,
00:47:10
Speaker
and sort of anything of the ilk that you could say at that point it's predatory. And there's even been, you know, there was legislation in Europe based on that of like, oh, if your game is marketed towards children, that it is predatory to have sort of those kind of gambling, loot boxy microtransaction things without the need for like parental consent or anything.
00:47:30
Speaker
It gets to semantics again, because our video game's not for children, you know? I mean, they're always exploitative. Some people are just, I mean, it could be exploitative against children, but should we also be legislating against exploiting dumb people? Because that seems like a lot of other money's coming from.
00:47:47
Speaker
I mean, a lot of things exploit dumb people, though. Yeah, but then... Where's the line? At what point are people on their own? At what point are we saying, right, you're not a child anymore, so we're no longer protecting you from your horrible decisions? I'm still a child, help.
00:48:04
Speaker
Anyway, Tommy Salty gives 10 Polish Lotties and says, this is my mark of transaction for second win shenanigans. Well, I think we just need, there needs to be a man, Michael transaction, and everyone needs to be able to yell at that man. Once a year, it's like the purge, except everyone can find a man named Michael transaction and just get all your anger out on him. But that's why we're fighting. That's what you want in the very list. You want to scapegoat in a literal sense. I want a scapegoat or like a sin eater. Yeah.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah that's a that's a problem though because if if you see one person beating michael transactions for like the dragon's dogma thing it's like hey no don't hit him you should hit this one because that one's pay to win you know Michael transactions dad employer.
00:48:49
Speaker
He's just one. There's just one Michael transaction, and everyone can wait in line, and you get to the front of the line, and then you express the Michael transaction you're angry at, and then you're like... Well, that would only work if Michael transaction was responsible for the Michael transactions, like every company who wants to have one in the game had to run it by Michael transaction, and he had to put a big stamp.
00:49:05
Speaker
That's not how Sin-Eaters work. People don't care if it's actually... People just want to get their anger out. They don't care if it's actually... Well, I'm surprised no one's brought this up yet, but it seems the Sin-Eater concept is a slightly flawed idea. Well, we don't have them anymore. Anyway, Voitek gives $5, says Frost, brought up a good point that microtransactions are like cheat codes for single-player games. The only difference is paying for a game you've already bought.
00:49:34
Speaker
It's interesting that they just went away. Right? Like I would, as a kid, I would have just assumed cheat codes were going to be there forever. And then they just went away. They just became this. I don't know when it happened. It just felt like one of those, I don't know if it happened so gradually, I just didn't realize it. But like, does GTA 5 and like Red Dead Redemption, do they have cheat codes?
00:49:58
Speaker
I think these days what we used to call cheat codes were basically like dev codes. So they could debug stuff without having to do all the work. And these days devs can just patch out the dev codes after release. So who cares? Wait, why would you need like big head mode?
00:50:21
Speaker
to troubleshoot. What is that for? Maybe you're trying to find a dead pixel on the face of texture. I think it might have originally started on that, but then I think developers got cheeky and silly and wanted to include those because it was sort of before the proliferation of the internet. It was like, it felt secret. It was like a thing. Oh, my friend on the playground gave me this piece of paper and it has a code on it. What happens if I enter it? Yeah.
00:50:49
Speaker
FoxD gives $5 and says, here's quite a lot of money. I can throw it around like it's nothing. According to Yahtzee, I'm a rich fat cat. Woo. Look, I said in comparison to the original idea of micropayments, $5 is a lot. FoxD. Like I said, the original idea was it was just like pennies, a coin.
00:51:06
Speaker
to read another page, so you wouldn't even think about it. But $5 is a payment you have to put thought into. What do you think the inflation ratio is on microtransactions? Given old money and old costs compared to these, do you think it still stands? I don't know. What would a horse arm look like today? There's no fixed price for any of these. People can put out microtransactions like 30 bucks if they want. It's all just money laundering, really.
00:51:36
Speaker
Also, Foxy, speaking of Rich Fat Cat, the villain of Chippendales Rescue Rangers was named
Cultural Influences on Gaming Discussions
00:51:43
Speaker
Fat Cat. Was Fat Cat, yes. That was one of the villains, yes. Gadget found herself in a lot of scrapes and scraps of that man. Best not thought about, really.
00:51:54
Speaker
SVSGuru2000 gives five euros and says it always starts with just the tip and before you know it, there's the entire arm. She saw us. Oh my god. Maybe it is actually a horse we're dealing with. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean,
00:52:14
Speaker
It's a slippery slope, but the slope's already been slipped, I think. Like, again, this box isn't closing. I'm not, yeah, I would just like to be able to mention it, does it? Sure. Is that just loser talk, though? I mean, slavery was- I think it's realistic talk.
00:52:30
Speaker
I mean, slavery was like woven into every fabric of society around back in the day. It took a lot of work to unpick that. It took a lot of work to be Nazi-fy Germany after the Second World War. Just because it's a lot of hard work doesn't mean we just throw off our hands and say we can't get rid of this. I would argue, I would argue, I would argue that those were slightly bigger problems than microsoft sections.
00:52:55
Speaker
Well, you say that, but the global economy is fucked. We need to be, need to be saving money wherever we can. Yeah. Like universal healthcare. This would be gone immediately. If everybody's got money for, they don't have to spend on their little treats. They actually don't have to worry about the stresses of life. And you'll be like, wait a minute. Maybe I don't want this horse armor.
00:53:15
Speaker
Maybe I want to actually spend it elsewhere, be more generous. So really, what we should be fighting for is socialized health care. That's what this is all about. I think what we should be fighting for is better education so that everyone can be fully informed on why voting against their own interests is stupid. Oh, but it feels good. I love voting against my own interests. Look, big idiot. Also, if you want to buy a great game that came out this weekend without any microtransactions, may I introduce you to Princess Peach, colon, Showtime, exclamation point. What a wonderful seven hours that game was.
00:53:46
Speaker
Well, I thought we already did the ad on this podcast. Kingdom 42 gives $2 and says for Yahtzee's horse armour. Thank you very much. I'll put it on Toffee. Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says cosmetics with a warning that they're optional without flashy Vega-style signs hypnotising dumb kids into spending dollars. How hard is this to implement AAA?
00:54:12
Speaker
Well, you assume they actually want to prevent kids being hypnotized, Alex Armstrong. So as AAA is concerned, everything's working exactly as intended.
00:54:25
Speaker
That being said, this is a whole other can of worms, and it probably shouldn't even be breaking it up. If anyone is upset at microtransactions because they're predatory towards children, but also doesn't think we need to reform our gun laws in the US, your opinion's fucking stupid. Wait a minute. Hold on. I'm just saying that you can't pearl clutch and say one thing is for the children if another thing that is legitimately hurting the children is something that you're like, well, just fine.
00:54:54
Speaker
At that point, I'm not saying that this person- Who the fuck was arguing against gun laws? I am just saying that you have plenty of people, you have the gamers out here who get very angry at microtransactions, and I think a lot of those very same the gamers. Sure. Also, they're using the children as a shield to try to say, this is why they're bad. It's because they're going against the children. I just, perfect.
00:55:21
Speaker
Like, shouldn't the parents be watching over the kids? That's more or less why, Matt. If you're gonna go, whoa, think of the kids. It was like, you know there are people out there that exist that think gaming is manipulative and a waste of time for your children. That lady that was talking about that Tetris kid.
00:55:39
Speaker
Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It just becomes super subjective once more. Like think of the children. How much shall I think of the children? Yeah. You know, should I, you know, maybe Danny games with any kind of cleavage should just be gone. Like where is where is that happening? That's why I just want to get to the point of children not like tits.
00:55:58
Speaker
I mean, every age of child likes tits. I don't think I had opinions on them as a kid. Well, if you're a baby, you like sucking on them. If you're older, they're nice, squashy cushions for you to rest your head on. And when you're even older, you can jerk off to them. I found one of the artsy's universal truths. Tits for everybody. No, there's also a span where I didn't care about.
00:56:23
Speaker
Oh, H-bomb's in the chat. Hey, H-bomb guy, it was fun hanging out. Oh, you're wearing a suit of armor. The three minutes we had to talk at GDC. That's why I think I'd like to form a more objective and very clear approach. Here's what's in the game. Here's what it's known to cause pros and cons. You do what you will with that.
00:56:48
Speaker
Outside of this like think of the children how much children must how many children five children how many children am I thinking about here? Yeah, where do I mean that line? I mean Do you want me to go and? man the Lollipop lady crossing so the children can get to school easily people I don't time for that and and like do people just not do their own research like all that information exists for us like if someone's not gonna
00:57:15
Speaker
not going to put in the effort to educate themselves a little bit before a purchase, then I don't know. It's on you. Well, then we're back to just saying people should be educated more. Yeah, I love this. Which is what it all comes back to in the end. Yeah, I do like this because it...
00:57:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think this even us three here in this room are just reflecting the state of the discussion outside of it is that it seems to just go grander. It's almost unavoidable to just go from here to like, well, what if the economy wasn't shit? What if the politics weren't trash? Yeah, like I say, education, Marty was saying, shouldn't this be the job of the parents? Well, then educate the parents more.
00:57:54
Speaker
Education, education, education, like what Tony Blair said. I see. It's my OSHA background where I just want big yellow signs again. I want clarity so that if someone then is like, hey, this manipulated me, I was like, there's a big old sign right there. Anyway, I got to start getting through these super jets quicker because there's a ton of them still. Oh, Eric, why can't? Oh, Eric, Eric, how are you doing? Gives 50 arses and says I bought every single DLC for Smash, but there's ultimately including me costumes. I'm not sorry.
00:58:25
Speaker
You bought me costumes. That's where my line was drawn. I was like, you bought me costumes. You bought costumes to those ugly little cretins. And then, and then Eric, just as you start judging him, gives another 20 to us and says, am I the only person here that bought Winrar? Yes. Oh man. That throws us all for a loop, doesn't it? Cause I certainly didn't. No. You're like, oh, I could just keep saying no and that's fine. Okay. Well, I will keep doing that.
00:58:54
Speaker
King and Commoner give $5, says for a new microtransaction name I propose ADLC already downloaded content. Clever. Ouch. Pretty clever. Philip J Frylock gives $6.90 US, says please accept my nice microtransaction. Oh, 69, that was the sexy one. Oh yeah, yeah, nice. John Connor gives $5 and says, Illegal question, have any of you sent a Super Chat or Patreon to creators? For me, the smaller they are, the better it feels.
00:59:24
Speaker
What do you mean illegal? No. I mean a Patreon to create it. Yeah. I subscribe to Patreons. I've got, I've done, I think that's half a dozen to 10 Patreons probably. That's on Twitch and whatnot. Actually, I didn't think I have subscribed to any Patreons, but I still like you to subscribe to ours. Wasn't there a game once that you did? No, you did not kickstart again. I swear you mentioned a Patreon once.
00:59:53
Speaker
No. Try some kind of wood carpenter. I don't know. No, I reserve my money for my lovely family. There you go. Incredible. And my two kids and a adorable dog. What about when you were a passport? Did you not buy anything? Yeah, I bought stuff. I wasn't on any Patreons. I didn't even like, uh, pay money to the, the, the extremely niche porn sites. I'll go back to this as you are.
01:00:26
Speaker
Urban M gives 50 Polish Lottie and says, there's an old story about the nature of charity that boils down to if you donate for a, let's say, orphanage, whether it was selfish ego boosting or tax avoidance, do you think the children care? But now it's back to the kids. Who are these children? Whose kids are they? Yes. Yes. Name the child. Let's name names. Little Timmy. Do you think Little Timmy cares?
01:00:53
Speaker
Blue McD's nuts gives $2 and says I'd pay to grief twitch monetizes viewer griefing I didn't realize they'd monetize that I know there's plenty of games where you can add your twitch and the viewers can start fucking with you
01:01:08
Speaker
I mean, you can help people also have like the things to like goofs, like you could pay to have a goof pop up on the chat. And that could be a sense of everything I added to my Twitch stream. I added the entire Evangelion congratulations clapping, which takes like 20, 20 seconds to end. And so trigger that. Yeah. Yeah. If you give them like an obvious way to grief that you can funnel them away from griefing in other ways. See, maybe they would have griefed by committing crimes and instead they're griefing. Exactly.
01:01:41
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says, micro payments have been around since arcades were invented. AAA just made it more exploitable by switching pay to try again to pay to continue stroke win. Yeah, it was city when arcades did it as well. We're back to... Then home gaming came along and stopped charging his money for every go and everyone agreed that was better. We're back to quarters. What's your point?
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, saying that it's like the continuation of that is, I do kind of agree with Yahtzee, it's like, well, that was, there was no other way to, you just couldn't have these things at home. And then when it was like, oh no, we can have these experiences at home just fine, or we can get the communal version of it online, it was like, oh, these are kind of pointless now.
01:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, and the arcade tradition tainted video game design for a long time as Frost was talking about how it affects design. The whole lives system was a holdover from the arcade days and games had those for way too long. Yeah. Like even Super Mario Galaxy had lives for no fucking reason. Yeah, the way things are is the way things are, that kind of thing. Yeah.
01:02:53
Speaker
Odyssey was the first mainline Mario game that didn't have lives. Did you know that? That's a fun fact. Did they just take your coins or some shit? Yeah, they just take your coins away when you die. Yeah. Which was the first one to give you lives, but if you lost them all, it didn't matter.
01:03:10
Speaker
I think there were a few of the mainline Mario games in the recent days, like Galaxy, like Sunshine, where you'd lose all your lives and all they'd do was kick you out at the current level. Yeah, so you wouldn't have to restart the entire game, I think that was once. Probably Mario World probably rolled around with the save system. Didn't have to beat it all in one go.
01:03:35
Speaker
Uh, Elise Tanner gives $19.99 and says research shows that people with addictive personalities are exploited with randomized loot boxes and kids get bullied when they have default skins. And those are both examples of things you don't have to buy to play. Still icky.
01:03:49
Speaker
Kids get bullied because of their Fortnite skins. Things get bullied about anything. And this is where you gotta be careful, I'd even say, for us. Yeah, I mean, you can't save everyone, can you? A lot of the, think of the children also stems out to think of neurodivergency, which is exploitative in that sense. Sure. Which just, you know, you could say, yay, you could say nay, and it just goes back to my clarity thing.
01:04:17
Speaker
We wouldn't be here if they were just supposed to sign. It would be tacky. Is that why you guys don't want them? It'd be a very ugly sign. I mean, what do you mean a sign? Like, is this on the, like, it's on the onus of the publisher to put this? Yes. Here's everything included in our game? Yeah. That's fine.
01:04:32
Speaker
Well, the publishers are never going to do that unless it's profitable. So it's up to the government to ensure like having to put your put your score like whatever the what's the restaurant score? Like we don't have any rats. We got this. Yeah. Your health inspector. Yeah. Your health inspector score. Yeah. Do games. No rats and Chuck E. Cheese. What the hell? I had no idea kids were getting bullied because of their Fortnite skins.
01:04:56
Speaker
It's not a common occurrence. The problem is it happens and then people sort of reflect mass empathy on it. And it's like, Oh, what about that? Well, maybe it's true, but the question is what the fuck do you do about that? Besides force everyone to wear the same uniform, like it's a school or more anti-bullying other kind of stuff. You know, it's, it's, we're trying to put band-aids on a lot of wounds here. Yeah. Yeah.
01:05:23
Speaker
I would love for someone to be based on my skin in a game. I would just love, I would love to just be able to look at them and then reply to them and ruin their day. They ask me, it all comes back to education. They should have educated the bully's parents so they got better jobs and weren't, and didn't lead to the bully having to grow up in a broken home and want to bully people. I'd love to see this world of yours where like the bully's bullying now gets educated and then the bully's parents because you weren't taught right now. Yeah, I'd love to see this.
01:05:52
Speaker
Basically everyone gets free school up until I get their doctorates. What's the coolest skin to have in Fortnite?
01:06:02
Speaker
Like, is there like a, you know, designer like, oh, I'm wearing my, my, my, my Nike Air Jordans. Like, is there the equivalent of that in Fortnite? Is it like, my Peter Griffin, my Solid Snake? Did kids don't give a shit if you're running around a Solid Snake in that game, right? No, they don't. Funny, it's the skin I have because I played when I first started and I got the skin for free.
01:06:22
Speaker
And, but this is one of the OGs and hardest to get, but to me, I just feel old, right? Like, Oh, here I am in my old, uh, old skin. Yeah. The one I have, which is one of the OGs is super rare. And it's like showing up in these decked out vintage Nike Cortez is or something like, Oh, it's not like, it's not a carrier. It's just, it's a Fortnite carrier. It's not like a person. No, it is. It was like an alternative skin. Yeah. But it's not like a, it's not taken from another property. No, it's not an IP. No.
01:06:49
Speaker
No, that's what I'm wondering. Peter Griffin is cool. Kids are like, you're not dressed up as family guy, which is like the most basic fucking comedy imaginable. They bully each other back and forth. You're not dressed up as Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. Oh, I wish. Kevin McCosh. No, they bully each other back and forth because these skins start to be seen as the sweaty skins. Like, oh my God, you have this skin and you paid money for it and you're trash. Get out of my games. Kids don't bully for anything. It was, yeah. Incredible.
01:07:20
Speaker
Anyway, if we're not talking about shit I don't care about. Children. Brad gives $2 and says, is ad free upgrade on a free mobile game aid in Manqua transaction? Well, no, I think of that as just buying the game. That's a terrorist negotiation, if I were to answer one. Well, if it's a free game and you pay a little money so you don't have to look at the ads anymore, that's just paying for the game. That's the business model.
01:07:48
Speaker
Isn't it? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. It is. It's good that you mentioned that then it becomes perception because a lot of people would actually say no to that. I'd say, um, I'm going to pay for these free mobile games. That design is going to eat. I see it as a compromise, right? It's like, I'm not paying two bucks. Sure. I'll watch your ads. So.
01:08:14
Speaker
Yes, I'm defending it because this is the monetization that Hatfall had on mobile. You paid to get rid of the ads. That was it. That was the only microtransaction in that game.
01:08:31
Speaker
Why weren't you thinking of the children? I was. I made a nice game for them to play. I wanted their money. Tsunami Dusure gives 20 US dollars and says, Mon hun for you DLC.
01:08:46
Speaker
Monster Hunter 4 or something, I assume. One-time cost, 30% of main game, released a year after launch. Difficult quest, earn armor reference in different series. Mon Hun World DLC. Day one, 70% of main game. Hairstyle, stickers, emotes, and no gameplay. Yep. Okay. I would suggest not buying it. I don't know what else to tell people other than just don't buy it. And they're gonna exist, but like, I don't...
01:09:16
Speaker
Maybe I'm gonna just, it's just a defeatist attitude.
01:09:20
Speaker
It's either play the game and don't buy it or play games without it. I think you have too, it's funny. I think you have too much faith in the world to be sensible. Whereas Yahtzee knows good and well, they need education. Yeah. And I guess my problem is I have a million pieces of art I want to consume, whether it is a game, a movie, a TV show, an anime, like a book, whatever. And I'm just like, oh, if this way, if I'm not having a good time with this one, or if I have any reason not to engage with this one, then great. Off the pile, I'll go to the other, the next thing in the queue.
01:09:49
Speaker
So... Then you get a job as a game reviewer, and then you got to play all of them anyway. But then I get to play the Princess Peach game, and let me tell you what a delight. Yes, yes, yes, we know who your new waifu is. She's great, she has so many different costumes, there's one mermaid one, and let me tell you, some people are gonna, whoo, they're gonna take that in some directions. Alright, bat it down, Mr. Horny for Princess Peach.
Categorizing Gaming Discussions
01:10:10
Speaker
Bonnie gives five Canadian and says, I feel like the discussion really needs to be separated by single player versus competitive or indie versus triple A full priced versus 30 bucks or free to play. Yeah, I think it's like 12 different conversations that need to be had and everyone's trying to have them at the same time. And so we get nowhere because like gaming in itself doesn't mean a whole lot by itself anymore. There's so many different niches. Yep.
01:10:40
Speaker
It's like saying, should we legislate that movies shouldn't have scenes where babies get beaten to death by Satan? There's like one movie where that happens. Yeah. And if it's if it's for the story, then go ahead. It's furthering the narrative.
01:11:00
Speaker
B.S. Marsh gives $5 and says, welcome back, Yahtzee. I hope filming of Enter is Nigh and GDC were fun. Well, these things are never fun at the time, but in retrospect, yes, they are good times. Even if, at the time, everyone's complaining about how they have to keep walking to places in San Francisco and their back hurts and everything smells like poo. You'd be a loser. Just the gamers. Generally. The Cisco or a gamer smell. A bit of both, I suppose.
01:11:31
Speaker
Evan Gottlieb gives $10 and says, did you see the Activision Blizzard advertorial in Adweek today? In my humble opinion. Advertising is about to become the new in-game microtransactions in a way people do not realise is coming.
01:11:44
Speaker
Was that not always the way? Yeah, it's been around. If you play live service games, it's pretty common, has been for a while. To the egregious point where Call of Duty was advertising the game you were playing while you were playing it. And it's like, what, what's this? What happened? I think it was like some bug.
01:12:02
Speaker
I remember a time in the 90s where every game, felt like every game on the Amiga or whatever was sponsored by some snack company or other and they were advertised like at every moment in the game. Like if you played James Pond 2, Codename Robocod, it was sponsored by Penguin Biscuits and like half the fucking backgrounds were just Penguin Biscuits. It's really funny. What about like Yakuza? They advertise all their old games in there.
01:12:27
Speaker
Oh yeah, they advertise like a bunch of different Japanese alcohol brands. That just feels realistic though, right? If you're like running it down of what's supposed to be a real city, seeing familiar brands makes it feel like you're in that city. So now we're into the product placement argument. Yep. Do you remember the first movie where you actually started noticing the product placement and realizing it was product placement?
01:12:50
Speaker
Mike Myers, Wayne's World. That was a gag. You asked me the first time I was a child. I think seeing ETA as a kid and being like, oh, it's weird that they're just having these pieces. I think it was like Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines where I suddenly found myself thinking, boy, they're holding surprisingly long on this Budweiser logo.
01:13:13
Speaker
Yeah. Madam Web had a lot of big Pepsi. Several different types of Pepsi sponsorships. People drinking Pepsi, Pepsi signs killing the villain. It was great. Spoilers for Madam Web. With Pepsi? Yeah. No, like a large Pepsi billboard. The final fight is on that and like the S or the P falls down and kills someone. Well, that's a bit blatant, isn't it? Yeah.
01:13:42
Speaker
Anyway, we don't have any we don't know what to do only she knows the future Fox day gives $5 that says in-game ads in games that simulate the real world aren't a bad thing Increasing immersion and making a few bucks nothing wrong with that
01:13:56
Speaker
Well, it's fine if it's like a contemporary, uh, like open world game when there's just like a fucking Victoria's secret billboard or something. Sure. I guess. We could think about, uh, Norman Reed's crushing monster energy drink in, uh, death stranding.
01:14:13
Speaker
It took me out of the game, every time, instantly. Yeah, so like, isn't he getting like a really horrible buzz from that? Like the point where he just feels really sick and like passes out. Also like the entire infrastructure of the world's collapsed, but like Monster's still there, just... I mean, drinking one Monster Energy drink kind of makes me feel sick.
01:14:34
Speaker
I see. And he's just like downing him like it's water. He strikes me more as a Red Bull guy anyhow. This is now about character integrity. Yeah, at least Red Bull comes in manageably sized cans. Yeah. I can just drink a little one and then get a little buzz. Yeah, the buzzer ones are very big. Way too big. Yeah, that's why I don't want that much.
01:14:56
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says, what about donations to keep the lights on for indie devs like that one story Yachts told about a guy who made free text adventures but had to pay bills? You know, I don't remember that at all. Yeah. But, you know, I think that was just the guy's monetization model. He didn't sell the games. He just went online and said, hey, donate and I'll keep making these.
01:15:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's patronage. That's, I think that's different than microtransactions. Yeah. I mean, if you're trying to make a living doing games, I think it's a dumb way to go about monetizing yourself. I mean, there's plenty of like established systems that are perfectly efficient like steam, for example. But anyway,
01:15:45
Speaker
Chili Head Gaming gives five euros and says, we should stop saying microtransactions. There's nothing micro about a 25 euro skin. Well, that was my point. Chili Head Gaming. What's like not quite micro? Senti. It's a senti transaction. Why isn't it just a transaction?
01:16:03
Speaker
Oh, because well, you have to differentiate it from the original purchase, I suppose. So if it's like one transaction, well, that would be bigger than the original transaction. If it was like a tenth of the original game's price, it would be a centi transaction. We're going based on actual Latin. Yeah, we should get more specific. If this is the world we're going to live in, we'd need like clearer definitions and words. So sure. Yeah.
01:16:30
Speaker
Actually, I think cent would be a hundredth. It was one hundredth of the original cost. It would be a centi-transaction. Deca-transaction. Deca-transaction. Deca-transaction. There you go. What's a third? What? What would be a third? Try. Try-ings-action. A try-ings-action? That doesn't sound right at all. No, it doesn't sound right at all. We called divers just like 30 bucks and each is 10. I mean, are those just like recurring battle passes though?
Music in Gaming and Its Impact
01:17:00
Speaker
buying like a, I don't know, Pokemon Go. That'll pass through something? What? Just weird premium fast passes, that's all. I was more so getting on the word than the actual, do I care? Gotcha. Anyway, moving on. Neeras25 gives 25 rons and says, whenever I read, stroke, watch game reviews, including here, I don't see much mention of the OST. Why do you think he's that? And who's your favourite composer?
01:17:27
Speaker
Well, I guess I don't really notice OSTs, at least in AAA games these days, because they're all just sort of generic orchestral these days.
01:17:36
Speaker
What was it? I don't necessarily agree with that. I just think there's a lot of people who cover games who don't know how to speak educatedly on music, myself included. I know the music I like. I knew the music I don't. When I try to describe music, I'm very bad at it. Music's good if you don't really notice it. If it's set in the mood, then it's doing its job.
01:18:01
Speaker
I know we say that about certain things like sound design, but I feel like there is music I do notice that goes above and beyond. There'll be like the swell of a score or like a really well-placed... I only really notice that if like they suddenly like start rocking out to like some licensed track. Like if your heart shows up in the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. Sure, sure. It's playing while you're shooting guys and I'm like, yeah, I'm fucking into this now.
01:18:29
Speaker
But there's like, Persona, you can't, it's almost impossible for me to separate the music from the game. I don't know, fine. That's true. Persona's really got really good music. But again, those are sort of like lyrical themes that really kick in as a real like, bam, yeah, music starts. And that doesn't really happen if you're just talking about like the background ambient music in something like an Uncharted or a Halo. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
01:18:55
Speaker
I don't really have a favorite video game composer, the rest 25. Um, I guess I'd say the composers of the music from BPM bullets per minute, because they made money music for my game as well. And that's why I like them. I saw good when you're in that shop that put the land. Yeah.
01:19:18
Speaker
Uhh, composers, I like one of the Thompson brothers, uh, Makes, Ilet, and Crip Custodian, because he's got a really strange approach for, um, very, very, like, I suppose it's called Chill Step nowadays, but he also keeps it, um, it feels more ambient, like you would expect in a huge environment, and it feels almost like retro melancholy. As Marty said, we don't know how to describe music.
01:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, I really like Austin Wintory's music. He did Abzu, he did Journey. Whenever he pops up, I'm like, oh, this is great. That's how we do it. Yeah, as he said, we should get educated on music and approach. Retro Melancholy. That's just paper wave, isn't it? See, it feels that way. Yeah, it does. It does.
01:20:02
Speaker
Anyway, Dale Mallows gives $5.00 and says, I got a poop. Thanks for sharing, Dale Mallows. Fox Day gives $5.00 and says, I grew up on Super Mario Bros. and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. I feel bad for kids growing up on Skinner Box Muggle transaction fests like Roblox and Fortnite. Well, maybe they feel bad for you for having to put- Yeah, they look at those games and they're like, you played this dusty piece of shit. Yeah, that's the kind of shit it is these days.
01:20:27
Speaker
The grass is always greener on the... It's got the internet, I think they're fine. And then there's Bellatro. And then there's Bellatro. There's Bellatro. Not a great game for people with very bad motion sickness, but a good game nonetheless. Really?
01:20:44
Speaker
Have you seen how everything just sort of gently swims about in that game? No, I haven't played it. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, very much. It's trance-like. I love it. Interesting. Uh, II gives 250 of some bizarre currency.
01:21:01
Speaker
possibly from the Czech Republic, going by the letters, as there's back to topic of paying for weapons to even engage with weapons. What about MMOs with subscription, i.e. games that require you to buy the game and then keep paying to access it? Isn't that just a string of microtransactions? Well, that's pretty old news, the old subscription model for MMOs.
01:21:23
Speaker
No one does that anymore, I don't think. It's funny to think that that's almost less scummy, in a way. Because you know what you're getting into. Yeah, yeah. It's like I'm going into this. The whole free-to-play microtransaction model is designed to show the player doesn't realize how much money they've spent. Sure.
01:21:41
Speaker
That's the advantage. You know exactly how much you spend. You spend $10 a month or whatever it is. That's the advantage. That's why they're not as clear and as informative as it could be is because overall they make more money this way. I imagine if like the amount of money that gyms would make if they did live transaction stuff, I actually hear that there are other places are going to try and do live services. You know, I'm sure a lot of different businesses and industries are looking at you're like, Oh, this company, EA may now,
01:22:09
Speaker
much revenue based on Michael transactions. God, I just said Michael transactions, not ironic. Well, we've established it's an annoying thing to have to pronounce each time. That's why everyone keeps broadening it to MTX in the comments. We should just call them mics from now on. John Russell gives $4.99 US says, Team Fortress 2 with those damn hats and their loot crates share a lot of the blame for why the industry is nickel and diming its player base.
01:22:38
Speaker
Yeah, they were certainly there from the beginning, weren't they? Valve, how could you? You love Team Fortress. How do you feel about their hat monetization? Well, as I've said, yes, I used to love playing Team Fortress, and I stopped playing at around the time they started introducing microtransactions and character updates, and never really went back. There you go. He's consistent. I like him. There you go.
01:23:02
Speaker
Jason Lottito gives 4.99 US and says Valve over here supporting MTX and Lee its head low. Maybe that was a mistype or Siri didn't hear you properly Jason Lottito but I'm not sure what you want about there. Maybe saying that Valve just allows them on that like Valve doesn't step in. I guess it's not Valve's duty to step in and say you have too many micro transactions in your games on Steam.
01:23:29
Speaker
Well, if they're not going to stop you putting out anime porn games like nobody's business, they're probably not going to come out and stop that either. There you go. Fill My Ass Up gives a hundred Norwegian kroner, I think, and says, I avoid games with microtransactions as a principle because I know the game has been designed around them and making me feel cheated. And I am one of those who got lured into spending nine K in COC. That the thousand dollars or?
01:23:58
Speaker
This is where I say more of that human element, and I don't want to get into too much psych or nothing. But I feel a lot of this conversation comes through trauma, be it their own or others. I can very much empathize with why you would hate microtransactions. But if we step away from it a little bit, I go, why did you spend so much?
01:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's not victim blaming. This is just this empathy and also trying to juggle anecdotal stuff versus just an over-encompassing approach. Well, people with gambling addictions generally, there's an understanding that it's 50-50 really. Like they have a problem, but the casinos are designed to suck them in anyway. Yeah.
01:24:42
Speaker
But yes, the problem the what we need is more education, people should be educated out of their gambling addictions. Bing bong. So simple. We'll just tell them all. We'll just say to them. We'll just say to them all, stop gambling. And they'll go, Oh, wow, I've never been educated in that way before. And then they will stop gambling. Yeah.
01:25:02
Speaker
just from being there's an old Mitchell and Webb, there was an old sketch on Mitchell and Webb's radio show where like one of them was going, was talking about how he needs help. And the other guy says, Hmm, well, have you tried not taking heroin? It really seems to be the root of all your problems there. Yeah, it's a good place to start.
01:25:22
Speaker
Uh, Fi Quato gives five $8 and says, it seems MTX follow inflation alongside game budgets where game prices dote with the exception of the $10 hike this generation. Yes, like that one is being passed on to the consumer or to the consumers who want to engage with it. I guess. They've been like $5 since the beginning, as far as I know.
01:25:50
Speaker
Uh, Banin gives to- Sorry about that. No. Okay. Well, moving on. Uh, Banin gives $2 and goes, secret teaser. H-bomb a guy next to guest, please. There you go. Well, that's up to him, I guess, but, uh, I think he tends to keep himself to himself and he's not putting out his annual video. He's like Santa. It was hard enough getting like, pinning him down for three minutes to talk to him at GDC. I didn't know that's not a body double.
01:26:16
Speaker
Could have been. He knew lots of private details from when the two of us were both posters on the Something Awful forums. So if it was a body double, he knew his homework. Yeah, he did his homework. Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, at least fan games have no micro payments, I think.
01:26:36
Speaker
You're not allowed to, I think. You get sued. No. I mean, that's why Nintendo comes to people when it's like, oh, you started a Patreon free of this thing? Yeah, we're coming for you. You can't charge money for your Mario fan games. Yeah. Because that's not yours. Snake in the Garden gives two euros and says, because Marty's Jester hat made me spit out my drink. Thank you, Snake in the Garden. There's one again. It keeps coming back. Oh, I was even looking down there. Look at us. We got hats.
01:27:05
Speaker
Rovonov the snob gives 20 euros and says we should weaponize the think of the children argument. Nobody really cares about them, but politicians use them for brownie points. So let's have MTX's pushed back under the pretense of doing it for the kids, i.e. Belgium. They do. Belgium's very aggressive about that. If anything, I admire their consistency, even if it is like way overstepping, they at least are like, we're doing it. You said think of the children, and now I am.
01:27:30
Speaker
And just for the future so you don't embarrass yourself again, Revo, not the snob. It's E-G for for example. I-E just means that is to say. So what you're saying there is that the kids are Belgium. That was an improper use of I-E, I'm afraid.
01:27:48
Speaker
Don't you like your EG over easy? Yes, he should have... Was you mansplaining grammar on microtransaction? I'm microtransaction. No, it's an IE versus EG. Yes, I'm mansplaining Latin acronyms. It was a stumble. All those dudes are dead. We could change those words. IE is short for id est, which literally means that is to say. See, I'm learning. I can't remember what EG stands for, but it means, for example, enthusiast gaming.
01:28:15
Speaker
There you go. An example, because that's how it should be spelled. An example? No, just an example. There's a fucking G in it. NMWCH gives $20 and says, do you think the backlash against Dragon's Doctor 2 has something in common with a general gamer backlash against gaming journalists and media figures and latched on in droves as a gotcha?
01:28:38
Speaker
A little bit, honestly. I think that's why we're seeing it happen right now. Yeah, like in Helldivers I mentioned it had anti-kernel software. I usually, I kind of like stick my head into whatever it is that I'm playing and then if I hear a lot of hubbub of like, oh, it's got this anti-cheat inside of it. I don't say this is good or bad. I go, oh, this is it. I look, I go find it and yes, it's there if you want to know, that's it.
01:29:03
Speaker
But by pointing that out, people saw that as me saying, like, damn, this thing is horrible and you shouldn't like it. So people are now like whiplashing the other way of if you're not putting, if you're not saying there's microtransactions, it's because you're OK with this and you're a shill. So it's too presumptuous all around. Yeah. You know, it's that usual hive mind internet argument mentality. If you're slightly in favor of this, then you must be in favor of all of it. And you must hate everything that might be diametrically opposed to that.
01:29:32
Speaker
I also think it's because if you're having a good time with the game, you're probably not angry on Twitter. So the angry voice will always be louder because the content one is not saying anything. Also, if you're a healthy human being, you're not angry on Twitter. Squeech the wheels, get the grays, vocal majorities, et cetera. Ernesto gives $10 and says, I was looking into DD2, but just seeing all the microtransactions on the store made me recoil. Grabbed death stranding. Better, weird, and crazy as Kojima than insane as Capcom's greedy leaders.
01:30:02
Speaker
Ernesto, I opened up Dragon's Dogma 2, and at no point have I ever even seen a microtransaction, so it feels... I noticed the online store link on the main menu, because I was looking through everything in the main menu, looking for the fucking change save slot button. That's something I can get by. That is something I can get by.
01:30:25
Speaker
I had to go to the PC Gaming Wiki to figure out how to delete the existing save. A hundred save files are busted. If your game makes people go to the PC Gaming Wiki, you've fucked up. Yeah, like playing these games doesn't make you a bad person. Just as a giving them doesn't... Just a poorly educated one who should be educated more. It's all about educating. Isn't that your chip? Because you left school.
01:30:50
Speaker
So I left one of the country's highest ranking grammar schools. I'll thank you. I'm learning more now. This explains. Yes. Yes. Like my my old school, my old high school has frequently come out top in the entire country or exam results. I don't think you're allowed to be the essentially the birthplace of Shakespeare and not have that reputation. I don't think you're allowed to.
01:31:16
Speaker
Well, that's fair enough. I mean, Shakespeare is a good writer. We don't know if he was smart. Well, he was talking great. Well, he was writing for the common populace of the time. So yeah, he was like the soap opera writer of his day. But yes, I went to a very good school. That's why I don't have no university education because my high school was just that good. And that's never haunted me to this day.
01:31:41
Speaker
Anyway, Fungus finder gives $2 and says, congratulations, congratulations, congratulate, et cetera. Referencing the Evangelion ending, of course. Is it Evangelion or Evangelion, incidentally? I use Gellion. Ian Jones says Evangelion. Are you sure? Because I did a video once where I was talking about it, and later in the video I used the word Evangelical. And then someone pointed out, hey, you pronounce those two things differently.
01:32:10
Speaker
pronounce it Evangelical. Should it be Evangelion and Evangelical just to be consistent? Yeah. I still think words are jazz and we can do whatever we want with them because we're all going to die soon. So it doesn't matter. I'll have scripts where I'll say data and data and not know the same script. Humane Shield gives $1.99 and says trapped keeper Fortnite skin.
01:32:41
Speaker
I don't know why, but all of those four words together made me think of penis mutilation. Fortnite skin is the thing that gets me, I seem to be a trapper keeper as in like, that was a thing back in the day. At least in the 90s where like that would be a, a trapper keeper would be like a sign of, oh look, you got the brand one. You got like a, you got a Green Bay Packer one or you got a Michael Jordan one. Where is this, this poor over here. Stop, stop, stop. Explain what a trapper keeper is.
01:33:09
Speaker
Oh, it was like a fancy folder at school. Sorry, a Trapper Keeper was like a folder that contained several folders inside of it. And so you would bring your Trapper Keeper from class to class and you could put all your papers in it, but they would have like themed outside. So you get a Spider-Man Trapper Keeper, Michael Jordan Trapper Keeper, whatever the big movie, The Summer Trapper Keeper was. Man, they just gave us folders.
01:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, this was like a fancy three-ring binder. I distinctly remember someone making fun of someone else in class because of their Trapper Keeper and the other person saying, shut up, your parents are divorced. And being like, that's the sickest response. That's what happens. If you get bullied for your Fortnite skins, just find something personal about the other person and get back to them. Man, the things we used to give a shit about before everyone had a phone. Yeah.
01:34:14
Speaker
I also don't trust the government.
01:34:28
Speaker
Don't trust the government. You trust them enough to do your taxes, drive on the roads. You assume I do my taxes. There's no, there's no. Or drive roads. I mean, obviously, yeah, you don't trust specifically the government themselves because it's full of greedy bastards. But you, philosophically speaking, the government is the only thing that can really meaningfully legislate this. Sure.
01:34:52
Speaker
There you go. That's their whole job? A game designer's job? How to answer that very question? And they all just went, you know what, quarters?
01:35:13
Speaker
I mean, most people, they've realised that it's hard to feel like you've been punished if you just reload a save from like two seconds ago. But they've tried having games where you just didn't die, like the original Prey, and people didn't like it. It didn't feel like there was any actual danger. So the semblance of death, even if it's, practically speaking, just going to take two seconds to time out.
01:35:41
Speaker
You can also build difficulty into your actual game proper, like a Celeste, to where, like, you can make it to the end of Celeste without fully engaging with all of its mechanics, but if you want to get everything, you need to prove that you are very good at this game. Jpando27 gives $5 and says, I feel like there's a distinction to be made between loot boxes which prey upon the gambler's paradox and other microtransactions.
01:36:08
Speaker
Yes, I feel like in the industry there's a distinction between the loot box mechanic, which is considered a form of gambling in some countries, I believe. Knowing what you're going to get and not knowing what you're going to get.
01:36:21
Speaker
Yes. And, uh, just paying five bucks for a persona five skin or whatever. He's never going to let that go. It was in persona five, but it was skins of persona four and persona three. And yeah, yeah, yeah, devil, devil saga games. You love it. Marty's a heavy tipper. You're not putting me round on this buddy. Heavy tipper.
01:36:42
Speaker
Fox D gives $2, it says Pepsi Man for PS1, best ad for game ever. Who knows Crash Course, best ad game. Void the Noid. Guess how you define an ad for game. Like if it was like a video game spin-off for a movie or a TV show, is that an ad for game? Spider-Man 2, yeah.
01:37:07
Speaker
Spider-Man 2 on the GameCube was a really good game. Yeah, but if it's aligned with the release of a movie, you're like, oh, get everyone excited for this. The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, and Return of the King, you know, released with the movies to get people excited. I guess there's no reason you couldn't be an out of the game and a good game. Star Wars Battlefront 2.
01:37:26
Speaker
There you go. Which one? Sabre Lily gives $4.99 and says, I remember Rainbow Six Vegas 2 had dynamic billboards that would update whatever movie or product was on them every patch. Yeah. So do I. That was neat. I mean, yeah. It feels like something you could probably abuse. Sure. Goes to the highest bidder.
01:37:55
Speaker
Do you think like maybe something like 4chan would ever do that, like pull their money together to pay for an ad in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 to say, don't play this game, it's shit. And if they did that, would they have to put it in the game? Oh yeah. I would imagine there's just some type of
01:38:17
Speaker
Surely they'd avoid it. You know, like when they were trying to like name this boat and it was something very crass or go to the boat. Yeah. Well, that was like the fourth one. And the only one that was PG enough for it. Same thing with Mountain Dew. It would be like grandma blasting is what they were trying to get it to be. It was a popular one. Yes. Or Pitbull. Let's get them to any Walmart in America. And they dumped it. So he'd end up in Alaska. You know, there's a lot of brands learned the hard way not to do these sorts of online competitions. Yeah. Well, oh well.
01:38:50
Speaker
Humaine Shield gives Fort 99 and says, what shoot game had Pepsi machines all over the map that could not be destroyed? I heard somewhere that the game industry move in five year business plans.
01:39:05
Speaker
I think I remember what he's talking about. There was a case that, uh, no, that's Pepsi man. Oh, there was a case where, uh, the things that had like the, uh, the, uh, product placement brands on couldn't be destroyed where everything else was good. I forget what. Yeah. Hmm. I mean, you can't destroy the monster energy drink and death stranding. No, you can crush it though.
01:39:35
Speaker
Wait, people are saying the Biacommando remake? I love the idea that the guy's like, my dead wife became my arm, but I need a Pepsi. There's only one thing that can distract me from my incredible grief. That's the delicious taste of Pepsi. Oh, that's funny.
01:40:01
Speaker
Uh, Jackson Jewel, member for four months in the Green Gang, says, it's Monday again already. I know. And I've already done my two business trips for the year.
01:40:12
Speaker
Dauer Dodger Esquire, member for four months in the Green Gang, says, Wellness check. Hope you're all in good spirits. You know what, thanks. I certainly am. I called in Brandy, which is a very good spirit. R.D. gives $5 and says, with the purchase to remove ads in mind, if we're to live in this hell, should in-app purchases on storefronts be clarified on what's there to buy?
01:40:35
Speaker
Well, if you don't, if consumers don't really notice the contains in-app purchases warning label as it currently stands, I doubt they're going to notice any larger labels. I mean, have you seen like an Australian cigarette packet? It's ugly, yeah.
01:40:51
Speaker
Luckily speaking, they can only be plain grey with like a plain white logo and then a huge picture of someone's diseased lungs over the top of it and a big slogan on the top saying, don't buy this, it'll kill you. And people still smoke in Australia. You can't stop it when people want that sort of thing.
01:41:08
Speaker
Yeah. Frost, in your perfect world, would I have to scroll through a EULA of all the microtransactions in a game? Because I don't want to do that. Here's the thing. If it's free to play, I see it like a McDonald's, where you can walk into the McDonald's, see what they have to sell, and then just walk out. But if it's like, hey, pay to get in first, it's like, OK, there's also a list of all these other things.
01:41:30
Speaker
I think that just goes along with, like, in old-school magazines. It would just have the game's features. Like, what's in here? Like, it's got two-player co-op. Like, on a Steam page, I look like, is it multiplayer? You know, is it just single-player? What's going on here? You know? So, information. Just information. Information's always good. Knowledge is power. Jackson Jewell gets $5 and says, the only microtransaction should be the ones that don't give any actual advantage, gameplay-wise, unless it unlocks stuff you can unlock anyway.
01:42:00
Speaker
Single player. Puffy's bought the microtransaction for this toy, I think. What is that, a horse? No, it's like a little lion. I saw it upside down the whole time. I was very confused. Puffy's just going nuts. Just going apeshit.
01:42:21
Speaker
Chris MC gives $1.99 and says nothing. Thank you Chris. Super, so be nice to them. I'm gonna like this. There you go. Owlpoot999 gives $35 and says, I started watching the stream a bit late, so I'm a bit behind, but microtransactions should be called anal penetrative transactions. Rolls off the tongue. Well, I don't think they're going to call them that. That would be very off-putting, Owlpoot999. And then no one would buy them? Boom.
01:42:50
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think you thought this through. There are some people.
01:42:56
Speaker
Alex Armstrong, who really wants to be heard this week apparently, gives her dollars and says, have you tried not gambling? It's not that easy, Yahtz. There are these things called temptations and habits. That's why we spend so much dollars on therapy. Yahtzee was being facetious. Yes. I mean, that's basically a decent default assumption to make. But I'm not when I say find better addictions. That's what I do.
01:43:21
Speaker
That's why I got off microtransactions. I was like, oh, there's other things that could really get you. I thought people manage them, isn't it? Why don't you take up knitting? That's not an addiction. Yeah. You don't get the same high. You can get addicted to knitting and then you get another lovely scarf to wear. That's the high.
01:43:43
Speaker
Oh. Alex, don't stop spending money. We need you Alex. I would watch that documentary. Listen to Yahtzee. He doesn't know. He doesn't watch movies. He doesn't know any of that. I would watch that documentary. I can't stop knitting. I'm kidding. Dr. Theo, member for two months in tip jar. Thank you very much. Dr. Theo gives $5 and says, weird game idea. Stardew Valley Times Lethal Company. Post-apocalypse setting. The day is typical farming sim stuff at night is horror resource gathering. Now I'm all but certain I've played games along those lines. That's Minecraft.
01:44:13
Speaker
There you go. Wasn't it times? Like, multiplied Stardew Valley by Lethal Company? Hmm. You gotta multiply them. That's going to be some long, long, massive times. Yeah, that's like, that's like five indie games I've played along those lines. Robonop the Snob gives $2.49 and says, the worst part is I studied Latin. Ha! I.E., the worst part is, I studied Latin.
01:44:43
Speaker
Well, that's not a proper use of IE either. I didn't study that and I think words are dumb, so... I took 99 things of Rosetta for Latin, learned nothing. But the J1? Yep. Okay, I've just looked it up. EG stands for Exempli Gratia, which means for example. Huh, so there is a G in it. Yeah, I'm just trying to... I'm just gonna try to commit that to memory for now on so I can seem clever.
01:45:10
Speaker
You know how else you can seem clever? Watch Oppenheimer. I don't wanna. I watched five minutes of it over someone's shoulder while I was on the plane. All I saw was... All I saw was Killian Murphy having some very awkward sex.
01:45:32
Speaker
Oh, it was great. Which one? Was it in the bedroom reading the Bhagavad Gita? Or was it in the government interrogation? I don't know. It was just a sexy bit out of nowhere. Happy! Happy! Adam Haas. I think that's the next one. Yes. Adam Haas gives $5 and says the gaming has evolved just as movies have. And our movie now is not like the 80s. You must understand how things have changed to continue participating.
01:46:02
Speaker
Well, it's quite. That's why I don't watch movies. I'm down with the kids, you see. Well, the kids aren't going to the movies anymore. They're all watching TikToks and YouTube video essays. They all went to Barbie. They showed up in droves. Yeah, because it was a meme. They only went because it was a meme to go and see Barbie. You generally think that many people went as a joke.
01:46:24
Speaker
Nobody went to Morbius. And that was a joke. Well, I guess it's fair to say that people go to comedy movies as a joke. Oh, well, that's because they want to enjoy the humour. More of a joke, not as a joke. That's funny, though, the way you phrase it. There's a semantic argument for you. Oh, no, I mean, anti-Semitic. No, wait a minute. Do we always go to comedy movies as a joke?
01:46:47
Speaker
Oh, for the joke. Hopefully, I'm not the joke. Or this, I'm not watching this ironically, no. I'm ironically paying money for a ship. I want the goofs. I mean, I think Rated R got softer, but that's elsewhere.
01:47:03
Speaker
Nick in the garden gives two euros and says, are amiibo physical microtransactions? Sorry, Marty. I had so many amiibo and they just keep coming. I thought they were Funko Pops. No, they're just little toys. They can be used on games. Like I can rub an amiibo on my switch and like Link will get some watermelon or something. But I don't do that. I just like putting them up here and I like looking at them because it makes me a little less sad for a small amount of time. Well, they're not that much fun as toys, are they? Because they don't articulate you can't
01:47:30
Speaker
No, I just like looking at them. I like knowing that Chibi-Robo from Chibi-Robo and Sora from Kingdom Hearts are near each other at night. But are you the target audience? No, I'm a fucking idiot. I'm an idiot. That's why I bought them. The kitties want to play with their toys. No, kids aren't playing Amiibo, I don't think. I think it's for like, midlife crises. Okay.
01:47:56
Speaker
I mean, uh, they were buying it when it was, um, what's that other toy game? Sky something. Yeah. I mean, it was not a game though, where Skylanders I think were for the kids, Lego dimension for the kids, Disney infinity for the kids. This is just for us. Did Disney infinity do all right? No, I think they put a lot of money into it and the games were pretty good, but, um, yeah.
01:48:23
Speaker
I remember hearing it didn't really do too well. I believe the kids aren't really into classic Disney the way the grown-ups are these days. No, if I'm not mistaken, I mean, they looked at the developer and were like, Oh, you're good at handling IP. And I think that was the studio who made Hogwarts legacy, which sold the Gillian fucking copies last year. Well, anything with Harry Potter and is going to sell a bajillion copies. Agreed. Except those are the recent movies that were very bad.
01:48:53
Speaker
The brain sturgeon gives 2 euros and says, nothing to ask, just sending you some euros. Thank you, the brain sturgeon.
01:49:06
Speaker
Don't you mean, oh my god, how grateful we are that there are still more? Oh, yes. I mean, oh, lovely, there's still more. Humane Shield gives Saw 99 and says, Yahtzee, have you seen Dune Part 2? Now think about this, Humane Shield. Think about the ongoing theme that has been coupling up occasionally in this podcast. Do you think I've seen Dune Part 2?
01:49:28
Speaker
Anyway. Did you ever read Dune? He seems like someone who would read Dune. To continue the super chat, he also says, if yes, did you enjoy the life of Brian reference? Now that is a film I've seen. It's a good movie.
01:49:41
Speaker
Uh, have I read Dune? I start, I started reading it once. I don't think I finished it and it's a bit, it's a bit of a slug. I feel like there's none of like scoundrels for him or water. It's a very, very dry. Yeah. It's a very dry. He's a very dry. I need like reading books about water. I'm still on big worms though. Don't you? You're like a big worm guy. Uh, the shy hallowed, they call it. I really love big worms.
01:50:09
Speaker
I don't know. Where did that come from? What makes you think I'm going to be a big worms guy? Do you not like big worms? I love big worms. I'm not the biggest fan. Oh man. Big worms are great. Tremors. Yeah. Tremors. The Sarlacc is an inverted worm. I have never seen tremors. I have seen return of the Jedi, but I have a lot of questions about that whole Sarlacc business. Yeah. So do I digested over the course of a thousand years. I'm like, Oh, you're just going to die in a few days.
01:50:35
Speaker
Yeah, but also, I'm pretty sure thin air digests you faster than that. Yeah, that's bad at digesting.
01:50:44
Speaker
Yeah, you wouldn't feel a thing. It's like 0.001% of your body per day. Life is digesting us faster than that. I could trim my fingernails and I'd be digesting myself faster than the fucking sarlag would. The sarlag needs fiber. That's what I'm getting. Fiber in the diet. Anyway, patented Pike gives $2 and says, game with microtransactions should all be 18 plus only. There is a thought. OK, go legislate that now. Technically. Right to your congressman.
01:51:12
Speaker
technically aren't they um if they were to have like big purchases in them because my question and one of them was where are kids getting all this money from do your kids have a job yet um unless their job is mess up my nice clean living room then no so yeah then so it goes back with marty of like why are the parents giving the kids money of course they're irresponsible parents and need more education bitch bash bot oh educate them more
01:51:40
Speaker
MTN nerd gives $5 and says, what about getting rid of in-game currency? MTX should connect directly to the store and acquire a credit card each time. Would that take away the magic, Marty? The magic of the individual purchases? Because as you had said in Australia, they have these grey packs and long cancer all over them. Does that take away from the magic?
01:52:05
Speaker
Does it offend? Even. Yeah. I wonder how much it works too. I guess there's no way to know, right? People still smoke in Australia. Yeah, exactly. Chris MC gives £199 and says the MTX Killer Baldur's Gate 3 was good. Thoughts on originals?
01:52:27
Speaker
I never played them to be honest. The problem is it's not the, to me, it's not the MTX killer Baldur's Gate 3. It is an exception to the rule. Yeah. And you know, corporate looked at that and went, imagine if they had microtransactions, the fool. Yeah. Yeah. Those imbeciles at Larian. Yeah.
01:52:51
Speaker
Odd Cam gives $2 and says, Marty is anti-what? Thanks for the Abzu stream, by the way. Oh, you're welcome. He's anti-semantics. How wonderful is Abzu? Have you ever played Abzu? I think I did. That's the underwater one, right? Yeah, yeah. Some of the Journey team split off and did that and it's kind of underwater Journey. Yeah, it's like... Oh, I confused that one with Grry.
01:53:14
Speaker
They are very blue. Green? You told my Gris? There was the other four letters title. Oh, you told my Gris? With a blue cover. Gris. Our owlpoot999 gives 35 Zara and says, well, let's be fair. Yeah, some people are into that. I have no idea what we were talking about at the time.
01:53:37
Speaker
Uh, whatever. I was brow beating Al Putin. I know nine about eyes. Yeah. And I've forgotten what that was as well. Probably worms. Okay. There's some people under worms. I'll be, are they talking about being digested for a thousand years? Oh, it might be. Yeah.
01:53:54
Speaker
Well, you know, I didn't see how you'd be into it because as I say, you wouldn't feel anything. Yeah. And you'd die of old age long before you had any noticeable part of your body removed. You've just returned to the womb. And yeah, I just know there's the fucking Star Wars fans who like got all their fucking expanded universe books open explaining how, no, actually it is an agonizing process because the Sarlacc
01:54:19
Speaker
For some people I have the whole time by giving you nutrients, but you feel pain the whole time and you don't die. Yeah. So this is for some reason, the evolutionary advantageous to the sarlacc. God knows how. This is like the matrix, but you don't get to pretend that you're a middle management. Oh, weird. Anyway, uh, dipshit, the clown gives four 99 and says long time listener first time caller. Thanks for the great podcast boys. Thanks dipshit. Uh, thank you. You're welcome dipshit.
01:54:48
Speaker
fun name to say. Why can't you all be named to deny that? Something that's fun. I wouldn't complain so much about having to acknowledge you all. It's already in your head. Get rid of the middle man he says. And then, and then Eric paid us another nine arses so we could show us some poo. Oh, he brought some poo out of his eyes. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for the poo from your ass, Eric.
01:55:14
Speaker
And that's it, we got through it all finally. Tophie can finally stop staring balefully from the couch cushion over there, because I can finally take him for his walk. Thanks for watching, stroke listening to the Windbreakers podcast. I hope we all learned something about microtransactions today.
01:55:32
Speaker
What have we got coming up this week? Well, there's no fully ramblymatic this week, because I was away last week at GDC still, but we are going to have a little something video along similar lines that hopefully is not quite as much work for me. And of course, Yahtzee Tries will be back on Wednesday afternoon.
01:55:52
Speaker
And the edited video will be back on Sunday because Jesse's freed up from doing the other shit we had him on. I don't think this Sunday. I think the idea is this is the first of two weeks and then Oh, that's right. Yeah, I believe that's yeah. So we'll be starting those again two Sundays from now. But it will feature this week's stream amongst others. And I've got a semi-ravel about it coming on Thursday. Assuming Matt hasn't like died from jail lag. I've been slacking with him. He's that boy's living.
01:56:21
Speaker
Well, how do you know it was him? I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. That's the trouble with everyone living in different countries, I suppose. I asked him what to describe a packet of cigarettes in Australia. That's what I asked. Yeah, you do that. Yeah. And then you'll also have some GDC diary stuff probably next week. Yes. Correct. Great. On top of Wednesday's video, which will be GDC related.
01:56:46
Speaker
Yeah. What else is there to clone that's not got me in it? Frost, you did things. You made them. I did a thing. Third time's not the charm for Star Wars, unfortunately. I know some of you are probably excited for that for the past 20 years. Alas, put those away for the next 20. It's going to be a while. And then, yeah, as far as videos go, you got that one. You got the old Helldivers one to have a look at. And then working on another one, probably going to talk about that Kotaku thing.
01:57:14
Speaker
With the 50 articles a week, eh? Interesting. Why do so many... Do you ever wonder why so many games media outlets have these strange standards? How did we get there? It's a mystery to me. That's it for me.
01:57:30
Speaker
It's a mystery to me. And then to tune back in later today, 6 p.m., the Hidden Gem Hot Monday Energy crew will be back playing Void Stranger, one of my favorite little under-the-radar games from last year. So they'll be having a good time with that. And then we should have all the normal streams this week. We should be back to Yahtzee Tries and Firelink and Tell Them They Cry and Nick Things and all that, all those goodies.
01:57:57
Speaker
Yes. We're finally all back from our trips and back to normal. We are. And you know what? Since we're not going to see you until next, next week, I hope everyone has a nice Easter. Oh yeah. That's this weekend. The bunny. Do you guys do Easter bunny stuff with the kids? I used to love that bunny. Oh yeah. My wife loves doing the Easter stuff. We're going to have an egg hunt. We're going to do all, all going to have the whole shebang. Going to invite the family over for dinner. Perfect.
01:58:28
Speaker
Heck yeah. And one last superjack from Robonop the Snog. He gave 249 euros to say, have a good walk. Ah. I'm sure Toffee will. And then four people gave it a little thumbs up. How long has it been the case that people can put thumbs up on superjacks incidentally? A week. A week and a few days. I'm giving it a thumbs up too. Yeah, I figured that was new. Yeah.
01:58:50
Speaker
All right, then, uh, he's coming in for him. Something's creeping up behind me, but I'm not sure what it is. Good audible shake. All right. See you next time, everyone. Hi, everyone.