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Layoff the Jump Scares, Vita
79 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about fishing, Vita 2 rumors, the Silent Hill 2 remake, jump scares, industry layoffs, and the difference between owning and subscribing in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Jackbox 8 - Question Series 2 (From "Wheel of Enormous Proportions")
Outro:
- Jackbox 8 - The Poll Mine - Fill Out Survey 1
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Transcript
Dave's Canine Conundrum
00:00:49
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? I'm tired. Yeah.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah. I have a reason this time besides just depression, lack of caffeine. As all the viewers can see behind me, I have a pet buddy now. I am fostering a dog, probably going to adopt if they're not like a total asshole. But I like that you said that for the dog as well as the listeners. I look over and like shape up, shape up or ship out, you know.
00:01:30
Speaker
Now I'm sure a lot of these things will like shake out with time. I'm not super worried about it, honestly But with like the medication she's on she's drinking more water and has to pee more so At least two nights around has been like a 2 or 3 a.m. Like here's pee pee time Yeah, like she will wake me up and I look at the phone like fuck I get dressed to be outside True hydro homie. Yeah. Yeah
00:02:00
Speaker
I'm just a little bit shifted with that. But otherwise, I'd say things are going okay.
Jake's Day-Off Dilemma
00:02:05
Speaker
How about you? That sounds pretty good. I mean, I'm doing pretty well. I have tomorrow off, so I'm excited for that. Actually, as soon as my brain is like, tomorrow is the day I have off, I forgot that it is not currently Friday as of recording.
00:02:21
Speaker
And so as my wife and I were planning out how we want to organize the things we want to do, there's just this massive gap where I just completely failed to acknowledge Friday in any capacity. It's done something to me or my family, and I'm just not acknowledging its existence. And to the point where she started to get a little confused, she's like, couldn't we do that Friday? We can eat those leftovers on Friday. And I was like,
00:02:46
Speaker
Oh, yeah. But now I'm looking forward to that. So that's pretty exciting. Got plenty of games to play, which I'm excited for. More things on the docket that I have not even unwrapped. So that's always nice. And then on top of all of that, Dave was like,
00:03:11
Speaker
You have to play lysopoeia like for the podcast. Let's get through this. I was like, it does. I forgot about it. It does actually seem pretty fun. So I do want to get back into it.
Gaming Distractions and Collections
00:03:24
Speaker
Imagine me is like the the grandparent or some elder in Jake's family who's passed down an heirloom. It's like a little bit worn with time, but it still like has some pieces of like valuable metals, like 24 karat gold in there, right?
00:03:39
Speaker
It just needs a little bit of love and polish and attention, just a little bit of time. And then somebody will be like, hey, Jake, aluminum foil. And he's like, no fucking way. And then he'll play a game for a week. And then someone will be like, hey, Jake, what about this Saran wrap with extra cling? He's like, oh my god. And he's just off to the races.
00:04:01
Speaker
The problem is I distract myself sometimes because I think this comes from a lack of properly aligning my desire to play games in general with my desire to play a specific game, if that makes any sense. I'll try to define that. I bought the game against the storm because I was like, this is a very interesting game and playing a city builder roguelike sounds kind of interesting to me.
00:04:29
Speaker
but I did not launch the game because all of these other games are below the threshold of the like, I could play these right now, right? It doesn't require any sort of incentive to like jump into it. I don't need ambition to launch it, right? Or get back into it. Barrier to entries lower, I would say. There's less inertia. So that's why the list of games that I own continues to grow and the list of games that I play continues to shrink
00:05:00
Speaker
I'm more of a hobbyist, a collectionist, if you will. I just want to have a cool theme library to show off to people. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Mm hmm. That's where that's where a game pass is increasingly nice, because it's like at least I never bought these games that I didn't play. They just rotated out and just they faded beyond. Right. They passed in the window pane. And I lost words with like when something I'm actually interested in comes up or maybe trying something out that I wasn't sure about before.
00:05:30
Speaker
that I find enjoyment from it, but 90% of the stuff that's on there, just like with a massive humble bundle thing, I'm like, don't give a shit about this, don't give a shit about this, don't give a shit about this. Cause like maybe it's like a really cool RPG that you spent like three years of your life on. Maybe like your characters are cool and like, I don't give a shit though. Like there needs to be a hook for me to get involved.
Indie Games and Dunkey's Influence
00:05:54
Speaker
Otherwise I'll just kind of just dismiss the whole thing.
00:06:00
Speaker
I mean, it sounds pessimistic, but that is the reality of it, right? Video games are an ocean of content and we are, but a small fisherman on a lone island. Um, and occasionally we could just pluck one out and we're just like, we look at it for a second and you're like, I'm going to throw it back. If you've played Animal Crossing and you've caught sea bass, uh, you know what this is like. We're like, Oh, another sea bass. Hooray. Uh-huh.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's just, it needs to be novel or has, has something. Yeah. Like YouTube has been recommending me like, Hey, have you seen this a trailer for hell divers too? I'm like, yeah, look super fucking boring to me. It's not something that I would like to do. Um, but maybe it is good. I don't know. Mm-hmm.
00:06:50
Speaker
I do want to continue the tradition of preparing a whole bunch of notes and then opening with something that's not even on the notes. Did you see Dunkey's video where he was playing some of the games they had for the big mode game jam? Yeah, I checked it out. Did any of those games seem interesting? They were all pretty much like a novelty thing for me.
00:07:15
Speaker
The ski slope one seemed like it would be funny for an hour if you had friends over and like we were taking turns on it. But beyond that, no, not for me at least. Um, there were a lot of what I would just consider indie games. We're like, maybe the idea is cool. You're making a game and you're not like a huge studio. Right. But.
00:07:41
Speaker
I don't, I don't want your yard sale game. Thank you. But no, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's kind of, maybe it's, maybe it's too aggressive to pick on them a little bit because they are pretty much all single serving. We made this in a day or a week or whatever type games. I don't know what the length of the game gym was.
00:08:01
Speaker
but they're not meant to be like critically played for an extended period of time or critically reviewed. Single mechanic, if that mechanic's novel, good job accomplished, right? But how do you, okay, I'll ask you another question then. How do you like the idea of big mode running these game jams? And Dunkey in particular is continued involvement in the indie sphere.
PlayStation Portable Rumors
00:08:26
Speaker
Um, I mean, I'm fine with it. I haven't followed Big Mode too much outside of their initial debut of... Yeah, Donkey's been doing video game stuff for a very long time.
00:08:36
Speaker
Um, I'm fine if he's involved with it, but I will say like, if he keeps doing content like that, it's not something that I'm really looking forward to. Um, right. Unless maybe he does cover something. I mean, outside of a game jam, just in the indie space, kind of shedding light on, Hey, here's this cool thing. Right. Maybe I wouldn't have heard about before because like, Oh, Maury was never recommended to me. At some point it was just.
00:09:05
Speaker
through the grapevine and I'm glad that it was a, it came through the grapevine or the algorithm. So maybe that could be another avenue to highlight some cool titles. Yeah, I don't want that to be his whole thing because it's not entertaining per se. It's more informational than anything. Right.
00:09:31
Speaker
I think that's a fair take. I don't think that's gonna be his primary form of content. I mean, Dunkey's done a crazy amount of things as far as there have been reviews of film as well as video games and all this random stuff in the industry.
00:09:49
Speaker
So I doubt that'll change. I doubt it'll just be like, watch me play for indie games back to back for this video very much. But it will be interesting to see what the mix is. I would say that he's probably a front runner for like the indie publishing space because he just has so much momentum as the individual video game donkey.
00:10:18
Speaker
that it carries some weight when you're like, hey, I could be working on a game jam game for, you know, big modes game jam compared to maybe something else that might not get the attention. So I saw it in the comments to that video. Like a lot of people were those indie game developers that were like, hey, thanks for the opportunity. You know, I know our game didn't get shown here, but, you know, it was a good experience or whatever.
00:10:44
Speaker
Um, so it's cool. It's cool that that exists. I do want to see him set up against at least, uh, if not against then in contrast to the triple a game sphere. Um, cause we'll get into it with some of the news for what happened, you know, this month, uh, in gaming. Uh, but there were some ups and downs. So that's how it is. Yeah. I will also say like, if you make your own thing.
00:11:12
Speaker
And it's like a passion project and you love it, whether it's video games, music, something else. It's not easy as an individual, just be like, here's all my stuff. It's now out there, right? Even when we were doing stuff on, I mean, we still post this on Facebook, but they'll say like, hey, do you want to pay for like some advertising space to kind of, you know, shotgun this out to people? I've done it once or twice for shits and gigs.
00:11:42
Speaker
But like you really have to spend time and effort and networking and having social media and doing stuff like that. So it is huge for developers to have kind of an avenue with that, whether it is a game jam or I don't know if you've been, it's been a while since you've been at a convention, but they'll have like stalls for indie games where it's like, Hey, here's this thing that I worked on. Like come try it out and we can talk about it if you want.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, this part is really cool. Hey, this part wasn't as fun type thing. Um, it's been a long time since we had a soapstone stall to expand our audience. Like it's easy to forget that not everybody's where we're at right now. That's true. Um, what's the price of milk? Like $10. What's it cost two bananas? Um, no, that's fair.
00:12:34
Speaker
Uh, but that wasn't on the list. Stuff that is on the list is I saw this, uh, personally in, uh, Moore's law is dead video. Um, but I saw there was mention of it somewhere else on discord rumors of a new PlayStation portable, uh, perhaps a Vita two are in the rumor mail, mail, mail, mail. It's really hard for me to say mill. Uh, how do you feel about a PlayStation portable too?
00:13:02
Speaker
Don't give two shits. That's fair. Next topic. But here's the thing, right? We're in a time where there are a lot of mobile things. People are like, hey, that Switch is doing good. Steam's like, well, what if we had one? What if we had a Steam deck? And other things are being made like that, where it's still a portable game system.
00:13:26
Speaker
But the focus is kind of like, hey, you're essentially holding the screen, but it's a lot bigger than Game Boy. Granted, Game Boy is at a time where you had very limited technology and graphics. So it was working with what it had. But now that we're in the modern era, we're like, can we get that on a screen to go? Right. So I think this is just Sony's way of getting in that space as well. Because I'd imagine it'd be somewhat similar. Yeah.
00:13:55
Speaker
I'm sure that there's people at the company who were never really satisfied with the PSP or the Vita. I don't even know if that was the same product, to be honest. I'm probably conflating two different things. But I definitely agree with that, right? But the point I disagree with is I don't know if we're in the golden age of handhelds right now.
00:14:17
Speaker
as far as mobile gaming. I think what happened is phones took a massive chunk of that, and that's where a lot of people who are gaming mobile, what they're actually doing is they're playing on their phones. If I think about mobile gaming, I don't think about holding a full-size switch, going to what you said, right? Yeah, it's a mobile console. Absolutely you can play with that, like that.
00:14:40
Speaker
Most of the time, I don't like the feel of Joy-Cons. So like this isn't for real. Joy-Cons blow. It's not the way I would. I would separate that into there's mobile gaming where it's like a phone game, which is just like, hey, do you have a thumb? Cool. You'd be right. Versus what I. And maybe this is me just saying the same thing in just a different fashion. Portable gaming. Right. Where basically you still have like a full game system. It's just.
00:15:08
Speaker
You don't need to hook it up to a TV. It has its own TV baked in. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, I don't. This is I mean, I don't know if I have my pulse on the industry, but I don't really know if portable gaming to continue to use that term. If that really is something I have any interest in or in general, there would be too much interest in like that's why I said I don't give a shit about a PSP to two because I mean, I have a switch. It is portable. I've only played it.
00:15:38
Speaker
Like in holding it in my hands when I've had like terrible poops, I'm like, Oh, let me find something I can play. Oh, a story mode of smash ultimate. Cool. But like, that's it. Um, yeah.
00:15:54
Speaker
It's also like in, in the same way it's, it can be difficult to compete in the digital distribution space with steam. Like I'm not sure how many people want a portable system. That's not going to be as adaptive as a steam deck, right? Like if you were to say like, here's the steam deck, but it only plays PlayStation games, I would be like.
00:16:15
Speaker
okay, why did you make this, right? Because most of the types of games I feel like that come out in that portable space, I'm thinking like Stardew Valley, things like that, Hollow Knight even, like these are gonna be multi-platform games that you could already play on a Steam Deck. And then if not that, probably a Switch. So like, is PlayStation trying to enter this market? Is it third tier offering for portable gaming? Like that doesn't, what does that mean? Like what are you trying to do?
00:16:45
Speaker
I don't know. In my mind, like, when you think of Sony PlayStation, what do you think of? For me, it's, oh, fighters. Oh, it's racing games. Oh, it's some other very specific thing. But I think a lot of them tie more to, like, you need the reaction time, at least for, like, a fighter. Yeah. And having my hands, like,
00:17:10
Speaker
I have it up like I'm holding a box, basically. Grant's probably not that big. It's kind of close to the traditional fighting stick and buttons, Dave. That's all I'm saying. It's pretty close to it. Right. But like nobody does that. Like pads are way closer. Yeah. I don't know. It's just. I don't I don't play enough PlayStation games to be like, oh, this would be really good on it. Yeah. But I imagine like
00:17:39
Speaker
Something like a platformer or something that would be slower paced could maybe fit there. A sack boy or something. Yeah. But like, I don't know. Why would you pick that over something else? Yeah. Like it would have to have some very specific first party titles to be like, Oh, I'd pick this PSP Vita two over a steam deck or some other similar offering. Yeah.
00:18:02
Speaker
It is worth the claiming, disclaiming that we're probably not the target audience for this sort of thing either, because like the idea of portable gaming is almost completely pointless to me. Like if I'm going somewhere, it's to do something and there's not like a period of downtime where I'm like on a train for hours or like, you know, an extensive commute where I'm not the one driving or something like that. So like there really is not an opportunity for me to play a game.
00:18:29
Speaker
Like the closest thing is if I don't want to leave bed. That is the best argument you could make for portable gaming to me. And couches are pretty comfortable. So there's no reason for me to purchase this. And the existence of the Switch completely eclipses that. Because if I wanted to, it could be portable. But we probably ragged on the idea enough. Yeah, they're fucking idiots.
00:18:57
Speaker
Get your act together Sony. Uh, watches this rumor. Also, this is just a rumor. So this may never be a product, but it's funny to spend, you know, 10 minutes just mocking them anyways. Who are we? Fox news. Um, we're not, I gotta, I gotta disclaim that. Yes. Uh, not even friend of the show and a rare occurrence. Um,
00:19:23
Speaker
I don't know if I wanna go that far. I will say that their legal team has proven to be better than our legal team. Fair. But also their cons. Yeah. We've never won a case. That's true. It's true, mentioning that.
Pal World's Record Sales
00:19:41
Speaker
towelworld came out this month. We talked about it earlier. I don't think we need to like give it a mini review or anything like that, but I just want to list off a couple of factoids.
00:19:50
Speaker
Uh, massive adoption. Um, there was over 4 million copies sold in the first three days. Uh, it is the second, uh, highest game for, uh, peak concurrent player count on steam. Um, at, uh, do I have the count here? Yeah. 1.8 million players was the, was the peak. Um, which is apparently, uh, behind pub G, I didn't realize that they were the highest.
00:20:18
Speaker
Um, at 3.2 million players, which is so many people. Um, but everybody's talking about pal world and I don't know if it's necessary to jump in with more than we've already said. We'll see if they get sued out of existence. Who knows? Um, it's, it's relatively fun. Anything to add for pal world or you want to grab the next, something else to talk about.
00:20:48
Speaker
Uh, there's a trailer for Death Stranding too. Did you watch it? I did watch it. I did. Yeah. Okay. Uh, they, they teased it before.
Death Stranding 2 Trailer Discussion
00:20:56
Speaker
And some Jeff Keeley show. It was the announcement, I think, right? Where they're like, Hey, we are a hundred percent making this game. I was a trailer with like a.
00:21:06
Speaker
It's basically just a teaser. Yeah. And as always, it looks interesting because Kojima's design on stuff is always fun and novel. I have other words. It's true. I've never seen any of his designs been like, this is completely boring and uninteresting. Let's put it that way. That is true. I see his designs and I was like, this man is barely connected to reality. None of this makes any sense. Why does this exist?
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, but like I like that. What's your name? The fragile lady had like these little glove scarf, which then like covered her her mouth. She was like extra posable limbs. It's kind of cool. And there's like a little. Terrifying puppet thing that Sam had. Yeah, I don't I don't know what's happening. I didn't finish the original game, so. Yeah, well, the puppet, the puppet had nothing to do with the original game. That's entirely new.
00:22:07
Speaker
But there's two things I want to mention about the puppet. One, the puppet is just like another voiced partner type character. And it seems like it's sort of, they have a little interaction where it's kind of a riff on Mimir from God of War, I think, because he almost puts it on his back and he's like, whoa, whoa, not your buttock. So it's like, I want to be like the, I'll be wanting to be writing shotgun. So he puts them in the front. I was like, that was a God of War reference, I bet.
00:22:33
Speaker
But also the puppet, the point two is like the puppet is actually like animated at a lower frame rate than everything else. Yeah. It's almost like he's supposed to be a heart hologram. Yeah. Like that's the kind of vibe it puts off at least. It's really weird. It's a very strange visual effect to have one thing on the screen be a different frame rate. Yeah. And also.
00:22:56
Speaker
Uh, main character who supposedly died in the first game is back, but he looks like he's from kiss and he has a lightning guitar. Yes. It's like it's still voiced by Troy Baker. Uh-huh. Okay. I don't know. Yeah. His, his whole motif is just like flamboyant does not even begin to describe what this character has going on. Like absolutely watch the teaser or the trailer. Um,
00:23:25
Speaker
It's super weird. They also have fragile, like, uh, pretty much like exposition dumping across like the entire nine minute video. And it's like, it's so, it's so weird to me because it's like these games are the definition of kind of like show don't tell, but then they realize like nothing makes sense. So they have to tell.
00:23:52
Speaker
And like, that's my gripe kind of with Death Stranding is you could get to the end of it and be like, did any of this mean anything? And if you just say no, that is the most concise answer you can give. Like, hey, we want to spend 20 minutes telling you about why this character is called Mama and how she has like a ghost uterus that follows her around, like some binding of Isaac character. I'm like, what does that have to do with anything? Yes, it does.
00:24:22
Speaker
It really doesn't. But was it interesting? Yeah, I guess. It's entertaining enough. I don't know. Yeah, I think my final takeaway, you could go back and listen to our impressions in the Death Stranding episode if you want, but my final takeaway was I went into the game thinking the gameplay would be super boring, but I might be interested in the story. And by the end of the game, I was like, I'm not really interested in the story, but I found the gameplay strangely compelling.
00:24:52
Speaker
That's where it ended up. So I don't know. I don't know what Death Stranding 2 looks like, but we'll see, I guess. Yeah. But speaking of sequels, I was going to link it to you, but I figured it would kind of come across your path anyway. A Silent Hill 2 remake trailer. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit weird. Um, I saw like snippets of it. I don't think I watched the entire trailer. I did see like the pyramid head. I think that was pyramid head, like teaser at the end, but
00:25:22
Speaker
It kind of looks like an action game like Which is a little bit odd like I know that Silent Hill 2 had combat. I didn't play it for the record but a lot of people consider it to be the best Silent Hill and It wasn't because it was an action game I Mean I assume it has to be like an action component for you dealing with enemies or monstrosities Yes
00:25:51
Speaker
But it was a type of game where like where Resident Evil was, you know, you got to be like judicious with headshots and stuff like that. Silent Hill was like, you should be running away. Like most of the time, it's actually mostly viable to just not engage at all. Like if you find yourself cornered, you're already screwed up. Right. But the other thing was it looked a lot like some of the Resident Evil remakes that have come out recently.
00:26:21
Speaker
And it's like, you know, it's not the same people, you know, uh, that are, that are making it here. I looked up the developer, I think it's like Blooper or something like that. It's definitely not Blooper. I think it's Blooper. Um, they hadn't made anything else that I was like, it's worth talking about in the podcast. So I don't know. We'll see. I mean, I don't hate the idea of some of these things being remade because there are some classic games, which I should
00:26:51
Speaker
hop on the Resident Evil train at any point, because it's always been like a cool series as an outsider. Um, it's, it's remaking these, I am kind of curious that my toe with the water, but I would need it to be cheaper for sure. Yeah. And Silent Hill too. It's Konami, right? Konami owns that, I believe. I believe that's correct. Uh, I know Capcom owns Resident Evil.
00:27:21
Speaker
Are they owned by the same people? We don't actually know. Yeah. Oh, I have no idea. Yeah. I'm not sure who owns silent Hill too. Cause if not, I mean, it's the only comment we're going to get here is like, okay. Yeah. It's made by Konami. It was originally developed by team silent. Um, and it's being remade here. So, uh, compared to resident evil owner, which should be Capcom and yeah.
00:27:50
Speaker
Capcom, Nintendo Sega, it's been published by a lot of people at this point. So I have a little bit of that kind of like Konami is touching this fear with the remake. Cause like I also, I would be willing to give Resident Evil 2, not Resident Evil 2, Silent Hill 2, the old college try, right? Especially since it's supposed to be like more of the psychological type of horror and a little bit less like,
00:28:21
Speaker
Ah, there's zombies. Um, we're like in Silent Hill, the enemies are shaped by the internal turmoil of the main character. Like this is a really cool idea, but then it's Konami, right? Yeah. I'm always going to be suspicious of them. It's like we were just talking about Kojima and how like we, we expect him to have all this novel stuff.
00:28:49
Speaker
And it's like Konami like dropped Kojima, right? Like the, the stuff that they made that we really liked was probably because it was attached to Kojima. Konami is the, the Plinko machine company, right? Like they're the metal gear survive company. So I don't know. We'll see, I guess. I mean, maybe they have some visionary, some upstart that's going to change their direction, but.
00:29:19
Speaker
Anytime I hear like a big company and then they can somebody who is really their creative drive. Yeah. Um, you probably just fucked yourself. I don't know. A little bit. Let's stick to blink of machines, please. Yeah.
Alan Wake 2 Jump Scare Patch
00:29:34
Speaker
Um, this other one probably don't need to talk about as much because we haven't covered the game yet, but
00:29:39
Speaker
Alan Wake 2 apparently had a patch where they gave you an option to reduce the jump scare intensity. Because one of the few things I know about the game, because this has come up in like news and stuff is like, everybody loves it. Excellent game. Apparently it just has jump scares for like little to no reason. And this has gone to the point of like, someone's like, I really want to jump into like a new game plus type mode.
00:30:04
Speaker
But I just don't want to deal with the jump scares. And so I guess they took it to heart. And this last patch that they released lets people dial it back a little bit. My question to you, going into the game, if you knew that there was going to be jump scares, but you also know that that's not the main reason to play the game, would you reduce the intensity of those jump scares? And why or why not?
00:30:29
Speaker
I mean, the joke answer is no, it's not a bitch. Um, the real answer is yes, because I probably wouldn't. Um, I'm not really a huge fan of jump scares. Um, I mean, if they're put in initially, I think it's just to kind of create that tension and keep the player on their toes. Um, if I found it to be kind of like way too much or kind of annoying or grating, I could see maybe reducing it later.
00:30:57
Speaker
if you can't change it mid-game. Yeah, it would really depend on how it impacted me in the moment. Because maybe I'm just like, hey, I just want to play the game and not randomly shit myself type thing. And I could see modifying it then. But I also think it'd be funny if it was like, oh, this jump scare here is like the wall breaks. Somebody comes through, and they're screaming, and they're bloody, and there's a knife. Versus somebody just knocks on the wall.
00:31:26
Speaker
Hello. Right. They just like insanely tone down. They nerf all the jump scares so that like rather than being an instant effect, you see it like fade in and fade out or something like that. I think that's a fair take. It must be a setting that you toggle on or off because I really doubt that this game's like you want to lock in hardcore scary mode like let's freaking go. Right. Absolutely not.
00:31:56
Speaker
What I thought about though, when I saw this was the original fear game and the creepy, the creepy Japanese girl who's, I don't even think really Japanese, but you just have that association after the ring is Alma and that, and some of the early jump scares are related to seeing her for the first time. And like a game can do that, right? But they also did it in ways that weren't like,
00:32:22
Speaker
Ah, this person's just screaming at you and they just jumped in the middle of your screen. It was like the very first time I think is like you're descending the ladder that you just went up to hit an objective or something like that. And you like see her feet like in the last frame when you start descending the ladder. Okay. It was so cool. That's I was.
00:32:44
Speaker
So good. That's actual like design choice there, which is good. Yeah. I don't want the, I'm like exploring around looking for loot or ammo or some shit. And I open a locker and then like something jumps out and it screams at me and it's like super loud and overly intense. Yeah. I don't get anything from that. It doesn't add anything to it. We don't need like a banshee like encounter. Right. So, um, but that's fair.
00:33:13
Speaker
Let's see here. I don't have much to say beyond this but there was a little bit of gameplay for vampire the masquerade bloodlines to Which I'm mentioning here to me. What's that? It looks so uninteresting to me. I think it could be I think it could be good But I don't know if I'm more over on under expecting it to be good yet I mentioned this here because you know, I know Ian listens special guest Ian listens to the podcast and he's always looking forward to this game and
00:33:40
Speaker
Um, coming out someday, you should say, and not being in development hell forever. I liked the idea of the lore in that space. Uh, it's just from what they showed. It seemed very pared down. Now granted, I know it's still very early, but it wasn't a, it wasn't a showcase. I'd be like, Hey.
00:34:04
Speaker
I want to recommend this to a friend type thing. Yeah. Like someone's like, Hey, can you recommend, like, how do you feel about this one comedian? Like, Oh, they're good. You got to check out a clip. You're going to send them a good clip, right? Not like, uh, something I did 20 years ago type thing. Yeah. My, my fear of looking at this is it seemed like it was pretty like combat focused. It was, uh, someone beating up, uh, like mannequins and this like dreamscape and there's some other sequences and things.
00:34:28
Speaker
Um, the mannequins are fighting you by the way, it's not like you're just going into warehouse. Yeah, it's not quite like that. Um, but it was clearly kind of like showing that it's going to be this, uh, Brawley type first person shooter type type game or not first person shooter, but first person type game. Um, which I think is like fine on its own, but the thing that concerns me is the original game. Like the combat was bad.
00:34:57
Speaker
Right, like legitimately bad. There wasn't really anything good about it. And the game was great, right? But it's because they didn't focus on the combat. In this trailer, they're focusing on the combat a lot, right? And if the combat's like mediocre and they're not putting the focus on the other parts of the game to make it better, that's where my concern comes in.
00:35:25
Speaker
So I guess I lied when I said I didn't have anything to say. I got it off the site. Two minute dissertation. Uh-huh. Well, just let me bust out my thesis here. No, it is one of those things where the initial shelving is a little bit lackluster. So you're just kind of hoping that they will make up for it in subsequent trailers. Yeah. Especially when it'll be more polished as well. This is one of those kind of doomed
00:35:52
Speaker
IPs where it's very difficult to get like good games out of it sometimes, which is unfortunate because like, I agree with you. The lore in vampire is excellent. Um, or the world of darkness, I should say, uh, brief aside, cause I thought this one was funny. Uh, I'm sure people saw there was a Pokemon mod for pal world that got taken down within like 24 hours. That was great. It actually led to a site wide ban on nexus for any like Pokemon mods at all. Cause they were like.
00:36:21
Speaker
Nintendo is going to kill us. Right. Which to be fair, probably true. Um, they have the power to do that. So the creator, uh, created a mod that instead of adding Pokemon ads, yellow rat, Firefox. Um, and then changed the, like the first boss fight, uh, like the first trainer boss fight with a trainer named Saul Goodman.
00:36:46
Speaker
and their pal that they used there was DMCA notice. I thought that was very funny. Yeah, worth mentioning at least. Anything in this that you want to take and talk about, anything seem interesting or should I do some rapid fires?
Gaming Industry Layoffs
00:37:10
Speaker
I think it is worth talking about the number of layoffs that are happening kind of across the industry.
00:37:16
Speaker
We alluded to that. It seems to be a lot. Yeah. It's definitely more than just like the gaming sector, but absolutely in game development. Just to list these off, Activision Blizzard, as soon as like that acquisition with Microsoft went through, it seems like they started cutting people. Eidos Montreal laid people off.
00:37:44
Speaker
and reportedly canceled the next Deus Ex game. So, I mean, I like Deus Ex, that's unfortunate. The president of Blizzard, you know, left and was replaced with the Call of Duty general manager. Discord laid people off. Hasbro, the owners of Wizards of the Coast, was laying off members of the Wizards team. It's just a lot, right? Yeah.
00:38:12
Speaker
Do any of these companies actually cite reasons? Is it just financial troubles? Yeah, the one that comes up the most is that they were operating too hot over the pandemic when a lot of these companies were raking in a lot of money. And then they were like, okay, maybe that growth isn't really super sustainable and we need to restructure. That's mostly what's provided here.
00:38:37
Speaker
Whether it's exercise or, you know, growing a company, slow and steady wins the race. Yeah. I think part of it was just like so many, so many companies, especially tech companies were making so much money. Stock was doing so well during the pandemic. Like that literally just slowing down the growth is enough for them to be like, Oh, we should start cutting folks. And so, um, it's, it is unfortunate if you know, you're affected by any layoffs in your industry. Um,
00:39:07
Speaker
We feel for you there, it's very unfortunate. But this is more evidence. You really shouldn't just trust big corporations in their decision making here. To just be anti-capitalist for just a second. They knew or they had to have been aware that this growth might not continue forever. And to not believe that is just kind of naive and that's the type of thing you should hold against them.
00:39:36
Speaker
But they still chose to bring on all of these people and put themselves in a situation where they would let them go later. Yeah, here's the thing though. That should never be a surprise because if you're a company, your overall goal is to make money, to be shareholders or whoever else.
00:40:00
Speaker
So if you can basically strike while the iron's hot, you will do anything in your power to do so. If you need more manpower to maybe get something out for the sake of sales, you'll do so. Oh, are they costing you too much? Okay, layoffs. It's always going to be a risk reward for how much will it cost us to do this and how much will we get from it. At the end of the day, they don't care about
00:40:30
Speaker
individuals or employees as a whole. Again, this is a widespread thing for major corporations, not targeting individual companies with a statement, but I mean, it's going to happen because of the capitalism that's still baked into our society. Yeah. Yeah, it is true. It is what it is. And I mean, this is one of the reasons that I think that there's been a little bit of a pushback. I'm seeing people talk more about
00:41:01
Speaker
I don't wanna say anti-incorporation, but remaining indie, right? One of the things I wanted to note here was Larian for Baldur's Gate 3 has mentioned that they're not open to being acquired by anyone. And they've gone so far as to, there was a Ubisoft announcement
00:41:27
Speaker
where they said that players are going to, it's something akin to players are going to get used to playing games on subscription services or they won't want to own games anymore, basically. And whether there's a nugget of truth there or something you could derive from that, that's a little bit positive. Overall, it's not a great sentiment for people who want to own things and spend money on things and then have those things stick around.
00:41:53
Speaker
Um, so Larry came out and said that you won't find our games on a subscription service. Uh, and that's basically the reason, you know, they're, they're trying to maintain a much more traditional. We made the game ourselves. We're not beholden to somebody else. You bought the game, you own the game. And it's kind of nice that there's still proponents of that, you know? So, I mean, the main reason they did that is that.
00:42:19
Speaker
You couldn't really beat Baldur's Gate 3 in the time that it would be up during that
Larian Studios' Independence Stance
00:42:23
Speaker
subscription time. So there's no point really. What are we halfway through act two? Okay. Time to return it. You remember those, uh, those blockbuster days or video game rental days where it's like, Oh, well I'm not actually done with the game mom and dad. So if we could just, if we could just, you know, cycle that one more time, be good. If I could get through this. Yeah. It's.
00:42:49
Speaker
It's a different thing. There's obviously cases for it makes sense to rent versus own for certain things. But for major purchases like that, I typically want to own it forever. I don't want to have a time constraint on it. I want to install it later and be like, oh, I have a friend over. I want to show the game to them. It's nice to actually have that.
00:43:12
Speaker
tangible and accessible. Um, the same as like for, uh, housing, like I'm in an apartment because I like paying dumb fees and not having a permanent residence. Um, but for me right now, it's easier to do that, but at some point in the future or for anybody who is already doing this now in their early thirties where they have a house is because they're like, Hey, uh, we want to have
00:43:41
Speaker
Full say over what we do with this. Yeah, it's our space. We want to change it as we see fit And that makes more sense to actually have it tangible I mean, I know we keep praising the Microsoft game pass right because our certain things that we don't necessarily want to spend Full price on we maybe want to try out. Mm-hmm. It's the same as like when you were going to blockbuster Oh this movie came out
00:44:09
Speaker
Is it good? I don't fucking know. It's been $4 and try it versus committing to buying it, right? Right. Because the movies we would typically buy, we would have watched first. Oh, we rented the Matrix? The movies kick ass. I want to have that in my own house so I can watch it again at some point in the future. Right. Yeah. I think you touched on the core of it for me. Like the core like piece of truth that runs through this, as far as my opinion, at least is like, um,
00:44:39
Speaker
I can support subscriptions and still support, uh, ownership for things because I want there to be a choice. Right. And so when Ubisoft comes out with a statement like this, they're like, Oh, we want all of our games to be on subscription and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The rational fear is that's going to be the only option. And I can play a game on game pass. Maybe like I play persona three reload, right?
00:45:04
Speaker
And it's just like, this is freaking awesome. I love this. I would be disappointed if at some point I was not able to play this. I can turn around and I could spend money on it if I wanted to, and know that it's in my library, you know, forever more, right? Same for like Darktide or any other game. But the majority of games, I don't actually need to own forever, right? And there's a good chance that if I wanted to play a game down the line, it could be cheaper.
00:45:33
Speaker
Um, if I'm able to play on subscription now, so there's a very, there's some utilitarian reason to try a game first, this game pass, then buy it, which is what you mentioned. Um, and I think the, uh, the anti-consumerism comes in. If you say like, uh, we don't think that this game should even be available on a subscription service, or we don't think that this game should, uh, be available for purchase, you know, long-term. And yeah, it's a.
00:46:02
Speaker
a weird hard side for either case. Um, one of my concerns with a subscription only based model is rotation. Yeah. Like this happens in Netflix all the time where, Oh, I can't watch the office anymore. Oh, it's only in the UK. Use Nord VPN. Um, but things like that will happen where you basically, you're beholden to that library and what it's going to shift to. Yes. Maybe you did want to check out lives of P.
00:46:31
Speaker
Oh, that expired last month. Sucks to suck. Yeah. So there might be other games you still have access to, but it's just what's within that cycle. So it doesn't feel as good to have that then taken away. Let's see here.
00:46:53
Speaker
Otherwise in news, I wanted to call out a couple things that have been funded here. One of them, I mean, I think I started, I mean, I know I started a game discussion thread about it and the Discord server, but Stormgate made a lot of money for their Kickstarter. And I don't know if we've really talked about it on the show before, but this Kickstarter wasn't really to like finish the development of the game. It was still around some of those features.
00:47:23
Speaker
free to play RTS from some of the people who made Starcraft and Warcraft. No longer with Wizards, obviously. Do you have any thoughts on the game, any early impressions or anything like that? I haven't seen any gameplay for it or anything. That's fair. I've seen a little bit. I do appreciate some RTS stuff, though I feel it is far beyond my capabilities now.
00:47:53
Speaker
to be able to manage something like that. I mean, that's what co-op modes are for. And I do believe they said that they were going to have some sort of, they even said like three player co-op, which is kind of crazy to me. That exists as, this is not their game, but if you own Starcraft and the arcade mode for that, where people can like make their own games.
00:48:16
Speaker
It took like a couple of years, I believe, but they have all three of the Starcraft campaigns, Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void, all playable in three-player co-op, and they ramped up the difficulty to accommodate that. You just left like three bases, more enemies, all the mission objectives, all the scripts, all of it. It's crazy. That isn't this.
00:48:41
Speaker
Uh, I hope this lands, but a free to play RTS makes me a little concerned about how they're going to really implement it. And some of the early looks, I'm like, uh, I'm not sure, but hopefully it succeeds commander skins commander skins pretty much. I think they've said that they want to release like mission packs for some amount of money. And I'm like, I kind of just want to like own a campaign when I drop money on it, you know, but.
00:49:07
Speaker
I don't know if they bundle that all together and it's not going to be like a periodic release or something like that. And I pretty much am just buying a campaign. That's fine. Then it's the same thing, but. Um, then the other one I wanted to call out, although this has nothing to do specifically with video games. So I'll be brief, but there's one of the mats that are, uh, uh, game masters, uh, Matt Covel, uh, is making an upcoming tabletop RPG with some mechanics that I'm a fan of. Uh, they got $4 million.
00:49:37
Speaker
on backer kit. And it's think like D&D or something like that, but with more of a bar brawl focus to some of the mechanics. And it's cool. I recommend definitely checking it out. They have a YouTube channel with a bunch of mechanics questions and things like that. And as they go through, I'm like, yeah, D&D should have done this better. It's the same thing when we were talking about Baldur's Gate 3, where I'm just like,
00:50:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like absolutely got this core mechanic people have known for so long because it's not that good anymore. So I see that so many things can still get backed. Yes, that's true. I think a lot of people play games, whether it's a computer game, console game, or like a tabletop RPG. And when you're playing it enough, you're like, I like this.
00:50:33
Speaker
I'd like to make some changes here. So eventually like, like we'll talk about it at like a high level. Like, man, I wish they would change this, but then there are some people who are like, all right, I was up all night. I came up with a new game system. Yeah. And it's cool to see people who have that imagination and drive actually make it tangible. Exactly. And then they kind of like put that idea out in the ether to other people like, Hey,
00:50:59
Speaker
would you pay me money to like maybe make this become a thing? People are like, that sounds fucking cool. Right. Yeah. No, it's it's it's definitely it's definitely for nerds, but it's like if you played D&D or something like that and you're like and someone tells you like, all right, in our game, when you roll an attack,
00:51:19
Speaker
You go straight to rolling damage. There is no hit. Like if your brain just kind of like explodes a little bit or immediately starts to interject and be like, no, that's wrong because XYZ or whatever. Like you might be a nerd and that's, that's kind of what they're going for. Um, but.
00:51:36
Speaker
I'm very excited anytime they talk about the ideas that they've discarded because they don't work for this reason or another, but, um, other stuff. Uh, this one's a brief mention, but, uh, there's a game called rift breaker came out some years ago. It was basically a mech base building tower defense esque, not really survival crafting, but more base building, um, type game. It was, it was pretty cool. Uh, and apparently they're releasing an expansion or planning an expansion, I should say.
00:52:06
Speaker
that straight up adds co-op to the game. So if it's a reasonable price or ad, I might try to conscript Dave and we can both drop planetside and build and destroy stuff in giant max. I'll see you on the battle bus. Yes, on the battle bus. Where are we dropping? I honestly would not mind some more co-op stuff. I feel like so many of the games I still currently have in my library are
00:52:34
Speaker
It seems like a cool single player experience for me to try. And then I see friends playing things online. I'm like, I should, I should pick up that game that they're all doing together, but I just don't have the interest in it. And I don't want to be like the, the one sticking to what it's being dragged along. Like I'm pretending to have fun with people so I can be social.
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's my bloodborne is the game I think about going back to sometimes. I was like, I mostly just played that for the episode. It was fun. I have not gotten all of my enjoyment. I want to get out of bloodborne. I can't justify playing bloodborne at all from a podcast content creation standpoint, from a multiplayer, like social engagement standpoint. So it's, it's so far down the list, but that's the way it is sometimes.
00:53:25
Speaker
a rare positive piece of news here. So NCSoft developed a lot of MMOs over the years. One of those MMOs was City of Heroes, which is no longer with us, it was decommissioned.
City of Heroes Server Licensing
00:53:37
Speaker
There was a private server, I think it was called Homecoming, that came up. And NCSoft was just like, it was just some years later, but they're like, hey, here is an official license, you can continue operating. Usually private servers,
00:53:53
Speaker
you could say generously operate in a gray area. And most of the time you could be like, those are just the open seas of piracy, right? Like you own none of these assets and you're using them. But it's kind of nice. I don't hear about news like this for private servers all that often, even for games that are dead. So. I think even a while back, Blizzard
00:54:19
Speaker
I think shut down one of the last wow vanilla servers. Yeah. Mm hmm. Which people in the community were not super happy about because they're like, well, hey, you don't offer this shit. So what's up?
00:54:32
Speaker
You know what the other piece of context for that was is they cracked down on that and then they offered a vanilla server. Then they opened that. Wow. Classic. Yeah. Um, and yes, you could say, Hey, this isn't that dystopic. They do literally own well, but it's still kind of scummy to treat your community like that. It would be better to entice them with a carrot to come back to the base game.
00:54:58
Speaker
not be like, oh, you are most dedicated fans. We're cutting you off, right? Yeah, I think it's better to have some avenue of offering for things like that. It's the same thing with Nintendo's music. It gets used everywhere. We've used it for interest. We've used it for outros. YouTubers use it all the time.
00:55:23
Speaker
silver gunner. Um, yes. And then that person is like, Hey, don't do this. And people are like, we'll pay you money for it. And they're like, well, we're not going to offer you to have our music and anything. Uh, okay. Well, then people are going to continue to pirate it or use it against your terms of use. I don't know. It was kind of a, it reminds me of a quote. I think it was Gabe Newell, but if not, I'm attributing it to him.
00:55:53
Speaker
It was like piracy is an issue of distribution, um, where like, yeah, there, there's always a, uh, you know, a fair amount of pride of piracy. I don't think as much really as some people think there is, but I don't have the numbers. Maybe I'm wrong, but I guarantee a lot of people just stopped pirating games once they could just choose to buy a game and then have access to it even faster.
00:56:18
Speaker
You know, cause the server is downloaded real fast or something like that. So do you remember, do you remember prohibition? Do you remember back then? Yeah, those, those are the golden years for me. You know, Jake doesn't drink, so it was great for him. Everyone's like me. But yeah, it's that thing of basically you're removing something that the general populace wants and they will still find a means to get it.
00:56:45
Speaker
even without that. So it makes more sense to make it as an offering and then, you know, set it up with whatever protections. It's the same with like other health care options or like abortion. It's just, you know, it's a lot easier and safer if it can be approved and monitored, et cetera. Right. Instead of forcing people to go through back channels.
00:57:14
Speaker
Yeah, I looked this up. Prohibition was apparently 1920 to 1933. So that was a little after my time. I wasn't paying that much attention during that, but I agree, for the record. And then, you know, we've got to end, I think, on some positive news here. I mean, the previous stuff was positive too, but this is the most positive, right? Because it has to do with sex.
00:57:41
Speaker
So Cult of the Lamb apparently had a little bit of a, they announced that they were having an update and people were like, is this going to be the sex update? Right, because that's what people would ask. If you'd known them for any amount of time, then you know. And they're like, all right, we'll do that, but only if we get like 300,000 Twitter followers, which obviously immediately caused that goal to be smashed.
00:58:07
Speaker
So that is going to be the next update is this X update for Cult of the Lamb. They're adding a mating tent for your little followers. And apparently this can result in an egg, which then becomes a new follower. They're going to have some sort of sin mechanic attached to all of this. I don't know. It's something.
00:58:30
Speaker
Um, and then you can sacrifice the egg to feed your father. I mean, probably you could already sacrifice your followers. So it wouldn't be a huge stretch. Um, how do you feel about the sex update for cult of the lamb? Is that what it was missing? Do you think in that launch? No, my feelings are just all kind of the same of cult of the land. Like it's, it's cute and fun for like a play through, but I guess there's not enough in it to really.
00:59:01
Speaker
have me go back to it. Combat wasn't super great. I did enjoy some of the cult management, but after like a play through, like I'm good. I feel like I've seen all there is to see. Right. Yeah. It's a cool thing that they added. It's just. You think it's the mating tent. That's the, they didn't go far enough, right? It's they're doing the word you tend to get any back at all. Naturally. Yeah. There had to be something. They have to go beyond the Sims. Woo hoo. I think.
00:59:30
Speaker
If there's not like pixelated mosaics or something like that, what is the point? This is not really a sex update. I'm glad we're in agreement for that one. They also apparently added shiny poop to the game, which is just like a rare poop for people who play the game. Sometimes your followers just leave their poop in places. And I think you could like use it for farming and this is going to be even better for that. So.
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's news. Yeah, it's kind of where I'm at. It's like, yeah, all right. Yeah, that's fair. But, you know, that was January. I think we covered just about everything. I think that's it. Yeah, that's absolutely all of it. I don't know why anyone goes anywhere else for news.
01:00:23
Speaker
Now we pretty much are the be all end all everything kind of encapsulated. Yeah, absolutely. Um, if for some reason you go somewhere else to news, uh, tell us where you go. Um, soapstone podcast at gmail.com. Just let us know. We'll have our people reach out. Um, or if you have feedback on this episode and you want to discuss some of the all encompassing 100% of news that happened in the month of January, you can do so at Facebook, facebook.com slash soapstone podcast.
01:00:54
Speaker
or no wait that's already said or or facebook no that yeah we covered that and as always we'll see you in the next one and as all ah shit you said that one bye