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A Threat to Human Dignity
16 Plays8 days ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about how to respect creatives, the Overwatch Gamemaker's Guild, early GTA6 hopes, Bungie and Marathon's constant troubles, the new pope's fire take on AI, the GOG summer sale, Hideo Kojima's opinion on the Clair Obscur's team size, and hype for the actual Hades 2 release in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Hollow Knight - Resting Grounds
Outro:
- TUNIC - Flux is On
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Transcript
00:00:29
Speaker
How's
Introductions and Weather
00:00:30
Speaker
it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host as always Dave. How's it going tonight Dave? It's going great Jake. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well.
00:00:41
Speaker
It was a rainy day but it was very productive. Got a lot of stuff done. it was It started out raining. and like, oh, I have to wear my water shoes to take the dog out. Okay, cool. And then throughout the day, like the sun came out and it was baking outside.
00:00:56
Speaker
was like, oh, cool. Everything dried up. And then the rain came back. Then the rain came back, yeah. I was um in the car dealership. They were doing inspection for my car and stuff like that. And it was the day has been...
00:01:10
Speaker
It's bright. It's sunny. It's whatever. Instant downpour torrent. hmm. Lol. Instant downpour torrent, which is fun. I mean, if you you don't have electronics or other things that are like going to be ruined by moisture, everybody should experience one downpour, at least in their life, because I do think it's just enjoyable, but harder to get away with it as an adult, unfortunately. So.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, I... It hit me as, like I went to leave the gym. I looked outside. like, oh, no. Yeah. Thankfully, it's not that far. And I wish was just able to, like, lightly jog.
00:01:51
Speaker
um Which, you know, you're clearly okay with because you were at the gym, so... Yeah, that's all we do is walk on the treadmill pretty much. It's all some people did. I don't know. um Yeah, no, it's ah it's a
Juneteenth: A New Holiday?
00:02:07
Speaker
pretty decent day. And I had ah today off. it's We're recording this Juneteenth, which is fun to say because it doesn't sound like a name that would mean anything.
00:02:18
Speaker
Right. It seems completely made up. it It does sound very whimsical. Mm hmm. And it's not like a holiday that's celebrated like you get together and do something.
00:02:30
Speaker
Right. I mean, to be fair, it also is very new. It's like what last five years? I mean, it's. It is last five years that became a federal holiday in the US. that Gotcha. Gotcha.
00:02:41
Speaker
But it's also like um historically, I'd have to look into exactly everything that's associated with it. But it's a historically ah black holiday celebration, a whole bunch of good vibes, things like that associated with it.
00:02:56
Speaker
But um yeah, I mean, I see Teent and I'm like... Well, this is like June is not in the teens as far as numbers are concerned. In fact, it's not even a number. So how does that? But whatever. Another federal holiday. I'm all for it.
00:03:12
Speaker
So, yeah, I also had off today. i'm off tomorrow. And it's like, yeah, any day, anytime you can get off. Dave's Dave's in for it. um But yeah, it was ah it was a nice day, all things considered. And now I'm here recording the podcast. Love to do that. You know, motivated quote Virgil, I think.
00:03:33
Speaker
Was it Virgil? Virgil Hawkins? It's one of those Devil May Cry characters. ah You know what? It's probably not Virgil. It's probably the um the new kid who's not Dante, but he's like actually... was about to spoil something. Oh, jeez. Devil May Cry 5, I guess. Go play that one and you'll know what i'm talking about because I don't.
00:03:57
Speaker
All right. right so yeah So the first topic, um it's been a while since we covered some of these topics. So we're going a little bit back in time for for
Unionization at Blizzard
00:04:05
Speaker
certain ones. But the first one was The Overwatch developers at Blizzard, now that um Blizzard has been incorporated into Microsoft, you know, they tried to stop that merger.
00:04:16
Speaker
They can't. Corporations are too powerful. You're not going to stop them from doing anything. um Yeah, they ah they formed a union, the Overwatch Game Makers Guild, which I believe is following in the footsteps of the a World of Warcraft developers who made their own union themselves.
00:04:36
Speaker
What became of the World of Warcraft Union? i think it's still around. i think it's still a thing. um But this is ah this is just a continuation ah to to mobilize and unionize within the the Blizzard developer teams.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I'm all for unions now that I know what they are. i remember in like ah elementary and like high school, like you'd see some things like or maybe see like a ah little at home VHS was like, oh, but unions are bad. They're trying to fuck up the company.
00:05:11
Speaker
and i was like, that's good. The company should not have all the power in negotiations and other things. Yeah, if you look into the Because there are a lot of like working class people in the United States that are like anti-union because of the propaganda for the most part. Because they they they ate the messaging, essentially.
00:05:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, to be fair, if you hear a lot of that stuff and when you're young and this is the same reason I like to lie to children is because it's going to like sit in the back of your mind for at least a decade before it's ever brought up again, challenged anything.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah. And then you just kind of have like that one that like, oh, the one thing I know about this is, oh, those are bad, right? Right. Because like unions have a strong um strong association with collective bargaining. right like that's the That's the thing that they enable.
00:06:04
Speaker
The ability for a group of people represented to have more power at the table to make deals and things like that. And I think for some reason, like the messaging coming down is like, oh, do you really want someone else bargaining for you? Couldn't you do better if it's just you versus the man? Have you ever sent an email to somebody in your company hoping to get results? Tell me that. How did that go?
00:06:30
Speaker
that good? you Did you get the results you wanted? It depends on the person. it depends on the person. a fashion. um But yeah, I mean, like, why would ah why would the company work against their bottom line or something like that um versus fulfilling there ah the needs and requirements of its workers?
00:06:50
Speaker
ah If instead, individually, it could just pick people off, right? You're just like, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired, fired. Okay, we brought new people in, and it comes up again, we'll more people. These new people don't complain much. Yeah. Right?
00:07:02
Speaker
um And then unions protect you from that. And I mean, specifically in the game development space also, right? Like we've seen the last couple of years, just a slaughter.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah. Of. Did your game do bad? Oh, you're all fired. Did your game do good? You're all fired. Yes. It's insane. Was it middling? You might be okay. We'll see. We'll see. It's like, um,
00:07:29
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it's it's definitely it's definitely essential here. i also,
Blizzard-Microsoft Merger Concerns
00:07:35
Speaker
it's worth worth pointing out, this is you know after a big merger, right? And so what do people do after mergers? Well, they have all their IPs, they have all of this, they might downsize, right? They're like, okay, now that we've ah got all of this, let's go ahead and lay off some of the workforce, right?
00:07:52
Speaker
Or maybe we'll reorder these teams, we'll merge these teams. We don't need all of these people in seats. um Those are all reasonable fears, right? If if a merger happens. Even they say every time we're not looking to get rid of people, that's after the first year. Right.
00:08:08
Speaker
So, yeah, this is this is really only good. And hopefully, hopefully, maybe naively, um ah port ah portent of things to come as far as the um the developer groups inside of Microsoft are Um, because Microsoft has infinite money.
00:08:28
Speaker
this isn't Like they, they probably still pay attention to the money, but like as a game, right? Cause it doesn't really matter if they're playing cookie clicker, right? Like how many grandmas do they have?
00:08:42
Speaker
Um, at this point, uh, so they really don't have to lay people off. They could lose billions of dollars and they'd be like, dang, Well, I guess we'll try not to lose billions of dollars next time.
00:08:57
Speaker
There's like one very high of VP who just doesn't give a shit about their job. Like, eh, I'll check my emails. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's about it. But um hopefully the rest of the industry also follows suit as they can.
00:09:16
Speaker
But really, we just need... We just need the industry industry to stabilize in general for for some of these teams. But AAA is not looking too hot right now, aside of a couple developers. But that's just the way it is.
00:09:31
Speaker
What do you say? I thought Xbox was doing great. Well, Xbox the console, nobody really cares about that anymore. Microsoft leads to fall. Xbox the platform and the trademark and the brand and stuff like that. Yeah, we can put that on everything now.
00:09:47
Speaker
Xbox on the Windows Store, you're good. and right Xbox Game Pass. Xbox isn't physical anymore. It exists in the cloud. Xbox is more of a state of mind. So...
00:10:00
Speaker
ah But yeah, hope to see more more news on that front. And hopefully they continue to have that autonomy that they need. So I want to see people succeed. i do too, even if it is people who work at Blizzard.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, a problem with the people working at Blizzard is Blizzard as a company slash the executive level. Yeah. They mean to throw people under the bus. No, it's fair. And it's it's difficult to differentiate. Right. We've talked about that a little bit.
00:10:28
Speaker
But when a company does something bad and you're like, hey, This is all terrible. I mean, obviously everyone at the company suffers, but that does not mean that you shouldn't hold companies to account.
00:10:42
Speaker
It just means that when you're holding companies to account, you don't go after developers necessarily, unless they're also scumbags, which happens sometimes. You're going after the people in power because ultimately, even if the developers do screw up, maybe maybe all of the ideas that came out for Marathon, we'll talk about Marathon later, but maybe those were all suggested by low level people.
00:11:02
Speaker
higher ups approved of those ideas and ultimately you are responsible for everyone under you that is what leadership is so um yeah so uh yeah pay attention to what people do and uh give them ups when they do the right thing and give them downs when they do the wrong thing so i i will say like down votes i guess i was gonna sweep over that one um I haven't done this in a while or even talked about this in a while, but like if there's somebody you know who's like making content or whatever, just a friend of yours,
00:11:42
Speaker
It does mean a lot to just even say something small like, hey, good job or hey, that was cool. Yeah. um
Supporting Content Creators
00:11:49
Speaker
Because I'm always in the mindset that nobody ever gives ah fuck what I'm up to. Yeah. So just having that reinforcement and validation, even if it's so small, even if you think it's not really going to go anywhere, and it is always appreciated to hear good feedback from people.
00:12:04
Speaker
so As you're describing that, I think of like two examples because like um one, thank you to everyone who reshares us or whatever it is on retweets us. don't know on Blue Sky, but um the Zoli the witch video when she was like, hey, i don't really like to do this, but I opened like a coffee because I have no money for medical bills.
00:12:27
Speaker
And like immediately it was just slammed into the ground with the amount of like outpouring and support um from the community. And like we talked about that in a previous episode. I kind of like tear up even when I like think about that because that's just that's just so awesome.
00:12:42
Speaker
And it's easy to forget that, you know, there's people on the other side of all of this. um And, you know, I know she works really hard because like after that, there's been like so many Zooli videos. It's obviously Night Rain and stuff like that. But even before Night Rain dropped, there was like this increase of content for the community and things like that.
00:13:02
Speaker
um But on the other side, talking about like supporting game developers, any Austin. It's a YouTuber who makes um insane videos for the most part, like you're trying to answer questions like do all of the GTA power lines connect to actual power substations and things like that.
00:13:24
Speaker
ah But one of the things, one of the questions he asked was like in this particular colony in Starfield, um there's like a ton of pipes. And do the pipes make sense? Like what's in the pipes? What kinds of chemicals or gases and things like that? And what are the, what function do they serve here at the the colony?
00:13:43
Speaker
And the reason this relates to what you were saying was ah he reached out to like environment artists at ah Bethesda and was like, do you guys have thoughts on this? Like, did you have any notes on this?
00:13:59
Speaker
And he actually got like these full responses. Like sometimes it was something where he's like, we just thought that looked cool. We didn't put that much more thought into it. But other times it was like, yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. We were thinking this would be a thermal pipe and we'd heat like the residential area and this outpost and stuff like that.
00:14:14
Speaker
And it's just, it does help put it into perspective because, I mean, Starfield was largely rightfully panned for the most part. It's not going to go down as a very endearing long-term game as far as Bethesda is concerned. Not a hot take, right?
00:14:31
Speaker
um Look at the modding community. It's like, it's barely there compared to the remaster. But like, um for Oblivion, I mean. But at the same time, there were the developers that were putting in all of this work.
00:14:45
Speaker
And for someone to reach out and be like, hey, for this particular colony, it seems like there's pipes all over the place. What were you thinking these would be used for whatever? And then they take the time out of their day to respond is just crazy, right? So people are people, right?
00:15:03
Speaker
They do be from time to time.
GTA 6 Anticipation
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:09
Speaker
uh so yeah that was uh that was the um overwatch game makers guild union was what that topic was about did that concisely good time on that one um another thing that happened is you might not have heard this but uh gta 6 is coming well Do you have any interest in GTA 6 based off what you've seen? And have you seen anything?
00:15:39
Speaker
We'll answer these questions in reverse. I've seen one or two trailers. yeah The game looks good. um But I just i don't personally have an interest.
00:15:49
Speaker
I haven't played too many of the previous titles. I think I played a little bit of San Andreas on ps a Friends PS2. San Andreas was good.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, like I enjoyed what time I spent with it, but I don't think it's my type of thing where...
00:16:08
Speaker
I don't want a dense open world where have to be like, well, do I go down this alley? What about this alley? And just wanting to check everything. That's fair. I mean, the the nice thing about GTA is unlike some other open worlds, like if if if this was Zelda, there could be rewards or hidden things all over the place.
00:16:28
Speaker
You don't care about that in GTA. It is largely utilitarian. It's like, well, I'm I'm not exploring, though you could any Austin would, I guess. But it's like, I'm going to go here specifically because I want to go bowling or paragliding or and do some other activity. Right. So you're not as compelled to do those things in GTA type games.
00:16:52
Speaker
like I would say at least. I also don't have the interest to go to a place and then hang glide to another place. That's fair.
00:17:03
Speaker
GTA definitely occupies a front row position in the AAA game space. It might be... i don't know. It might just be like the biggest AAA game.
00:17:14
Speaker
um There's definitely a lot of noise around it. um It's pretty widespread. Yeah, because like Call of Duty is huge, but like it releases all of the time. Yeah.
00:17:25
Speaker
Whenever you say Call of Duty, people are like, oh, which one? Yeah, 19 or something. I don't know. But like GTA, whenever a GTA game comes out, it is an extravaganza these days um because we are a little bit more removed from like the Vice City, San Andreas.
00:17:45
Speaker
type of scopes where it's like they could make these games in a reasonable amount of time now they're expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars yeah and they're going to license every popular song that came out like through the last decade and put it on the radio oh no um yeah it's gonna be on streamable this game is gonna be miserable that um but legitimately i like i I'm with you, by the way, before I like espouse the virtues of Grand Theft Auto.
00:18:16
Speaker
um I didn't even finish for it. I played it a lot ah ah good amount. I enjoyed it and I just stopped playing. I mean, some games are just like that. Like not everything's going to be like, ah oh, I really got hooked in I played it all the way through and tried to 100 percent.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's games I've enjoyed that I still haven't completed recently. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is a like forefront on that list. I never finished it. But it's because people people keep making games.
00:18:47
Speaker
gotta stop. Give me time. But... um Yeah, Grand Theft Auto is going to be this is probably going to be the most produced video game like ever made. um And from what we've seen, like there was an article just on like the beer bottles and how good they looked. And it's like, OK, if you have a beer bottle,
00:19:09
Speaker
And it's floating in a pool. The liquid physics like makes sense. And you can see the bubbles in the bottle reacting ah with like the tension and everything. And you're just in condensation and all this nonsense. It's just like a tech demo. Like it's all of that talk just reminds me of tech demos from back in the day.
00:19:29
Speaker
I mean, if they are able to actually live up to that, that would be really fucking cool and impressive. And to also have it run on systems. Yes. That's the trick. It's another key thing.
00:19:40
Speaker
Um, I've definitely seen a lot of trailers from AAA. Again, this isn't to try and discredit GTA. It's just my general uneasiness or wariness.
00:19:52
Speaker
well I forget what it... Mine's Eye. The trailer for it looked cool as far as like how was designed, the graphics. And then I saw in-game footage when like somebody was playing it. I'm like...
00:20:06
Speaker
Oh, okay. you can You can make things look good even if they don't generally look good. But my suspicion is this game will launch and it'll still look better than any other GTA.
00:20:21
Speaker
On most people's systems, it's not going to be like... It's not like the next crisis necessarily with like the beer physics or whatever. um But maybe it'll be used for benchmarks for a long time.
00:20:34
Speaker
Right, so... It would be nice to have something in the zeitgeist besides crisis.
00:20:43
Speaker
There will never be anything else. that's That's the place that crisis belongs. um just very but It destroyed people's computers back then. It was just so crazy. um But there are a lot of games now that people have trouble pushing like cyberpunks, one of them, right?
00:20:57
Speaker
um You try to run cyberpunk at 4k with high settings and ray tracing and stuff like that. it's like, how many 40 90s do you have? That's the problem, right? um But Yeah, GTA is not going to be a quick pickup for me. I'm probably going waiting for a healthy sale, which will take forever.
00:21:19
Speaker
um But I do know a lot of people enjoy games like this. and there's even like a role playing community for like GTA. Oh, yeah. Role playing servers and stuff. A friend of the show and special guest to Mooch.
00:21:30
Speaker
I think he said he's been playing some GTA 5 online with people. He's been having a good time. Yeah, so hopefully they i mean they're going to continue to support that. There's so much money in it and shark cards.
00:21:41
Speaker
um But yeah, would be remiss at least not to mention it. And we'll probably talk about it at least a little bit more once it drops. And we'll see what this equivalent of the hot coffee mod is. We need like another super conservative lawyer other than...
00:21:56
Speaker
Thompson, who is like, for the people that know, they know, but he's out of the news cycle for like 20 years or whatever at this point since he was disbarred. He was the one that was making complaints about like, um like file suit against the Sims where it's like, hey, if you like use this console code, then you can remove the pixel blur and they have full parts.
00:22:19
Speaker
And yeah e just like showed up in court and like literally didn't even show up. They probably just submitted a briefing and they're like, No, though. They actually don't. This is just bad information. This is not how the game works. They are Barbie dolls.
00:22:35
Speaker
But yeah. Anyways, that guy was disbarred because he um submitted gay pornography to the local court where he worked. um Which was fun. And the local court is homophobic. No, I mean, he he also is very much against this, but he did it in like a protest to say like, look how easy it is to do this. Anyone could do this.
00:23:00
Speaker
And then they're like, well, yeah, but you're a lawyer. So you're going to not be that anymore here. Uh, anyways, his what Wikipedia article, ah Jack Thompson, I think was his name.
00:23:12
Speaker
It's an absolute trip. Look it up. Um, do your research.
00:23:20
Speaker
But moving past GTA 6, this one you posted, um and we're a little bit late to this one, but there's more news coming, branching off of it. Bungie is making this game marathon. um ah they They made all that art themselves, right? Like they didn't, they wouldn't take anyone else's art and use that in that kind of situation, right?
Bungie's Controversies
00:23:44
Speaker
um That's all theirs. You'd say all all the Bungie's art belongs to them. I would say bungees are belongs to them. Yeah. Okay. That's good. That's good. Cool. All right. Next time. No, but as post most people probably are aware at this point, um I can't remember the artist's name. I don't recall specifically, which is a bit of a shame. That'd be great to include here. Just.
00:24:08
Speaker
We'll post this in the video version of the podcast joke. But yeah, they apparently stole a bunch of logos from an artist on the Internet um and then just incorporated them into the game.
00:24:23
Speaker
And it made it through QA, I guess. And they just never, never detected it until the artist, as they do, reach out on Twitter or whatever the crap. And was like, hey, stop stealing my stuff. How does that make you feel, Dave? Is this morally correct?
00:24:40
Speaker
Is it the most correct? My honest assumption just hearing this is that there is somebody who is in charge of doing a thing. They felt lazy and did not want to do the thing, which often happens with like jobs or homework from time to time.
00:24:56
Speaker
And they're like, hey, ais is this big thing. Maybe I can leverage this to make my job easier. Gotcha. And. because I don't think Bungie is like, hey, let's use AI to take this person's art specifically.
00:25:11
Speaker
Right. But somebody at the company definitely did. And I don't know how obvious that is going up. Not to try and defend Bungie. I just don't know the situation around it.
00:25:25
Speaker
um I'm going to send you... I'm going to send you an example. This is going again, it's going into the video version of the podcast. i almost posted this wrong channel to the video version of the podcast ah for anti real is the artist's name.
00:25:41
Speaker
Anti reals example is on the right and the marathon art is on the left. And I'm going to describe this for the audience. just It's like one to one. It's one to one. Basically the only difference here is they pretty much scraped off the text anti real daily series.
00:25:59
Speaker
ah It's so egregious. Literally scraped. I think you can still see some artifact. Yeah. Yeah. So it was really bad.
00:26:10
Speaker
And... It was this big controversy as it should be, right? It's not even the first time Bungie's done this, right? They've gotten hot water for this for Destiny before where like they lifted someone's, um they did like a fan animation or something like that.
00:26:25
Speaker
And somehow it ended up with ah like in a trailer for an upcoming season or DLC or something like that. And it's just like, How? How, though? How how is this happening?
00:26:38
Speaker
um So they had a a live stream, right? Where they basically did this, like, public apology, essentially. But I don't know if that's a good idea. And this one in particular didn't go super well because it just looked like we were crucifying, like, the art director in real time.
00:27:03
Speaker
And it's like... sad people in real time stream, I guess. but What was the point of this? Just send an email or like make a post like everybody else does saying we fucked up our bad.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah, obviously change what you're doing. um But just showing us the sad people does not make it more authentic. No, um absolutely not.
00:27:26
Speaker
especially doing it live right like have we learned nothing from broadcasting yeah i will never apologize live yes exactly like give this is why record give me time to format this um yeah i i think ai can possibly be leveraged in beneficial ways for sure but when it comes to art and stuff Again, somebody took years to develop that skill yeah and develop or design whatever they're working on and then to have it just be stolen by a program that you maybe spent like $5 on a license for?
00:28:10
Speaker
get the fuck out of here. You did not put in that time and effort. You did not pay for that time and effort to the person that you know provided the thing. Yeah, and I mean, I actually, when I was looking at this story, I didn't even see any reference that it came out through AI.
00:28:26
Speaker
but It could very well have, like, in in the future. or Other examples could. But I think this is direct lifting. Like, they literally... Oh, no, no. i remember now. Breaking news for this old story that's already been reported. But...
00:28:39
Speaker
um the bungee employees were following anti-real socials and then her art showed up in marathon and so it's literally just plagiarism right it's literally just stealing um yeah i can't even say anything to that plagiarism is bad yes It's just theft. it's It's just theft. Yeah. So ah at least they owned up to it. That's the only good thing here.
00:29:11
Speaker
But Marathon's not doing too hot right now, guys. If you're a Marathon fan out there, um they canceled all of the art. They can't or not all the art. They canceled all of the marketing.
00:29:23
Speaker
for marathon so ah our last episode was on like games fast uh playstation state of play um you might have noticed a distinct lack of marathon advertisements during that and since uh it's yeah it's because it went to zero like they are not marketing this game anymore and the latest was that they have indefinitely postponed its release it was ah going to release this year um i believe in q3 or q4 Uh, now we have no idea when or if it's going to release. Is this from like all the negative feedback where people are like, this isn't marathon or this looks very generic?
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of concern like in the player base. Um, as as there should be, right? Because who are the people who are still following Bungie at this point? Destiny fans, right? Like Halo, they don't own Halo anymore.
00:30:16
Speaker
um They pretty much just make Destiny. And they're coming out with this game that's another extraction shooter, which to be completely honest, doesn't have a whole ton of overlap with with Destiny. And if I think you're like, if you're a PvP oriented streamer or something like that is like,
00:30:35
Speaker
Is Destiny your go-to? i know there are some out there. I'm not trying to like disparage PvP Destiny streamers, but there are better supported PvP games, right? and Oh, yeah, for sure. So like where does where does the audience for Marathon come from? Because a lot of people want like them to return to single-player narrative experiences. I'm kind of one of those people.
00:30:56
Speaker
And there are people who good with them doing like more co-op stuff, um like what they've done with Dungeons and Destiny and raids and things like that. Like that could be a fun game, you know, if you you designed it properly.
00:31:09
Speaker
But then there's extraction shooters and there's so many extraction shooters. It feels kind of like the first big boom I remember is like when Minecraft took off and then people were like,
00:31:21
Speaker
You like crafting, huh? And then there's like this major influx of games on Steam where like, we're not Minecraft, but... Yes. Looks oddly similar. We are. I think it's something like that where they're kind of adopting the trend just very late.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah. Like maybe if they pioneered Expedition shooters with Marathon, that would probably be a big thing. Oh, that would be huge. um But since there's already so much in the space and you're now taking this very niche IP and you're like, what if it was this new thing you kids like?
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah. there they're always, i don't know, i don't know what it is with studios and like making live service games that are just another one thrown on a pile, right?
00:32:11
Speaker
um Like Concord, for instance, right? It's like, oh, how's Concord doing? You would think that people would have learned some lessons, right? But the reality, to me, this is my opinion, the reality is at a certain point,
00:32:29
Speaker
even genres can be pretty populated with games, especially in the multiplayer space where it's like, why should I play your game though? Right? Like, why should I play marathon instead of call duty war zone or escape from Tarkov or any of the other extraction? Those are the only two that really matter, but like any of the other extraction shooters, um, why should I play another hero shooter?
00:32:54
Speaker
Uh, when, you know, Valorant, overwatch, whatever exists. Um, You really... I'm not saying people shouldn't make those games, but they need to make those games different.
00:33:07
Speaker
Right? Yeah, it needs to be something enough to have its own identity so it's not just literally two different colors of the same thing and you're like, I guess blue is more of my thing than red.
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah. Like, I like the aesthetic for Marathon, but... What else does it have but like compared to other extraction shooters? And like why is this not different enough that people are like, we're not sure whether to call it an extraction shooter or not. right like That's what I think you need to do as you make the game that's like, it doesn't fit perfectly into this one box.
00:33:41
Speaker
That we could just say it's an extraction shooter. Right. um Because I actually think it's more dangerous to be the same right now than it is to be different. Because if people think that your game doesn't bring anything, they're not going to even play it.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's literally you're like if you're going to a picnic and you bring potato salad.
00:34:08
Speaker
Let's say you're the third person who brought potato salad. That's a lot of potato salad, yeah. Like, let's say you came 15 minutes after everybody else. Do you think people are going to go for your potato salad specifically?
00:34:20
Speaker
hope The first one was good, and the second one is also good. Maybe if they run out. But it's a thing where you just you can't do the exact same thing as people before you.
00:34:32
Speaker
Yeah. because again like what was that foam stars which is supposed to be something a little bit uh like oh wow but my brain keeps wanting to say squid billies um you're talking about game yeah the squid lanes inklings and splatoon thank you yeah i'm getting old that's right But yeah, like that at least, i don't know how well it did, but it was at least a unique concept to where there's like terrain on top of it you're generating.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah. or There's like a different dimension to it. yeah Okay, that's at least building off of something and making it your own in that space. Exactly. Right. And I actually I like your analogy here with the potato salad.
00:35:22
Speaker
And to go a step further, this is you bringing potato salad, but you showed up late and everyone else has been eating potato salad for like the last three hours. right No one's going to eat that potato salad.
00:35:32
Speaker
Yeah. But I mean, that's I don't know. Making fun of Marathon at this point is just poking the weakest, scrawniest child ah because it has so little going for it.
00:35:47
Speaker
And this could also just be the last dying gasp of the Bungie studio ah since they basically were acquired by Sony. Sony, by the way, is the same overarching studio that um had the Concord thing happen.
00:36:03
Speaker
um And nothing good has come from Bungie since acquisition. ah
00:36:11
Speaker
Make a union now, instantly. If you haven't made a union, like do it now. But anyways, yeah. We'll see. yeah I think earlier at a previous episode, I was like, we'll cover Marathon more as it gets closer to its release.
00:36:23
Speaker
I don't know when that's happening anymore. Honestly, it's because they played justice in the trailer that I had any interest at all. It was really cool. Yeah. and I was like, Oh, marathon.
00:36:36
Speaker
That's an old thing, right? I honestly legitimately, if they made marathon a narrative single player or co-op shooter, even, um,
00:36:48
Speaker
That would be awesome if they made it something like, hey, this is our take on a system shock esque thing. That would be even cooler, right? Make it an RPG in some respect or something like that.
00:36:59
Speaker
Instead, they literally just admitted we're not focusing on lore. So like Durandal is one of the AI in the voice in the trailer and expected nothing more than that. And I'm just like, I do not care.
00:37:14
Speaker
You have sacrificed this IP upon the altar of life services. Anyways, I think Disney would call this nostalgia bait.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
The Pope on AI and Labor
00:37:29
Speaker
But you mentioned some grievances against AI. It's not just you. It's also the head of the Catholic Church ah who said recently he called AI a threat to human dignity, justice and labor.
00:37:47
Speaker
So, you're switching religions, I guess. do you feel about Paul's system cow, Dave? So, I've talked about this with one or two people. um Down my road, there is a sign advertising some local business. I forget what the fuck it is.
00:38:04
Speaker
um But it is done in an AI art style that takes after up. And it is disgusting because it's just a bastardization of I know the person did not work on that. It's all I'm saying.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Right. And in general, because like we we mentioned this earlier with companies, they don't really seem to give a fuck about people, which is why we were emphasizing unions.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Let's say you don't need to hire people to design stuff for art. Oh, you can have this program do it. Yeah. Like if their bottom line is money, they'll get rid of people immediately.
00:38:44
Speaker
Hey, do you like self-service checkout? Yeah. No. Cool. I like two of them so that I could do it if I bought a single item. But otherwise, but we actually have stopped using self-service. Check out any places that it's basically still available. If we've got any amount of items, you're just like, I'm just going to in queue for the one with the cashier because it's so much better, right? Like...
00:39:11
Speaker
mean I still do self-service checkout I don't want to talk to people. I just want to do my thing and leave and not have to interact with people. like You should have the option, I guess is what I'm saying.
00:39:23
Speaker
And I mean, i i can see the argument you're making, right? But yeah, it's They're going to market it as, hey, this is easier for you, the consumer.
00:39:35
Speaker
And maybe it is. Right. But the other half of that, the other side of the coin is we don't need to employ people to run this cash cash register. Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
yeah We'll have one person who's going to kind of oversee the people who are fucking it up or running into a system issue and they'll come by with a card and swipe up. Here you go. Yeah. But that's now one person instead of 10, right? Yeah.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, we have one remaining cashier lane and everything else is self-checkout or local grocer. So... But my TLDR of that is like, I do agree with the Pope that it is a threat on yeah people.
00:40:16
Speaker
He also made he made one other statement here, which I also agree with, which is these tools shouldn't be demonized, but they need to be regulated. The question is, who will regulate them? It's not credible for them to be regulated by their makers. There needs to be a superior authority.
00:40:30
Speaker
Given this is being said by the Pope, I assume he's saying that God this should regulate AI. But if not that, then, you know, i agree with what he's saying as long as he's saying it's not God, I I don't think he actually means God. I think he means himself. Yes, that i makes a lot of sense. I am the superior authority. he's but He's still high off of his appointment.
00:40:54
Speaker
um But yeah, I mean, I remember when AI first came out, the people who are like rushing to be like, oh, this is such a big deal. And like, we're going to have to regulate and all of that. They were people like OpenAI, like organizations like OpenAI that were still like pushing for regulation because they wanted to be in control of that conversation.
00:41:16
Speaker
And it's also... ah a little bit of that pull the ladder up behind them deal. Right. So of course they're going to push for regulation and things like that after they've already scraped the entire internet, um, and every YouTube video and all of that.
00:41:34
Speaker
Um, But yeah, why should we trust them with that? We absolutely shouldn't They have vested interest in abusing regulation to their own benefit. Do not let the organization, like the industry itself,
00:41:50
Speaker
regulate itself that's dumb right like what's crazy is like there's still outside of uh that specifically there are other i won't say full industries but like areas and where businesses essentially do self-regulate because shitty laws were put in practice do not actually have regulations for that yeah um and that's a a scary thing because If I'm the one who's in charge of reporting when I fucked up, you might not hear from me very often at all.
00:42:22
Speaker
ah Right. I've never made a mistake. Uh-huh. The audit? The audit's good. Thank you. We have completed an internal investigation of Dave, and Dave has been cleared of all charges.
00:42:35
Speaker
Dave is going on four weeks paid leave while we conclude our investigation. Yeah. Yeah, but I love this story. Like people literally laugh at for being bullshit because it is. yeah. Yeah.
00:42:51
Speaker
I understand that like you can't necessarily share all details of an happening, but like. you gotta You got to feel like it's just very much inside baseball for them. Yeah. like hold but meanability andn Visibility builds trust, right? And the opposite is true, right? So people, if there's just some black box and you're just like, justice is happening over here, right?
00:43:20
Speaker
We're going to tell you what happened, but you know, I was just gonna say that slap on the wrist it was pretty hard we used a a wooden ruler actually this time that's don't worry that racist cop he doesn't work here anymore he works the next county over there were too many black people here for him anyway so yeah but actually in that case yeah um So anyways, we'll see what else what other hot takes the Pope ends up with. But not a bad start.
00:43:51
Speaker
And very funny to me. Right? Like... Did not expect some of these early comments that make the news to be related to AI of all things. Because again, like all popes, he's a million years old.
00:44:03
Speaker
ah But ah still somehow more technically capable than all of our Congress people. So that's good.
00:44:14
Speaker
Except AOC who streams among us.
GOG Summer Sale
00:44:17
Speaker
so That's great. I remember that was a good time. That was very funny. um here's your time sensitive piece of news GOG is having a summer sale it's at least going through October 7th that's at least this one thing XCOM 2 $3 US s dollars ah that's like no money in US dollars these days um and I think that's a pretty good deal for that game if you like XCOM
00:44:52
Speaker
It is a stress simulator, but it's still a really good game. And if it's too stressful, you can cheat. There you
00:45:02
Speaker
I'm fine with cheating. Cheating is different than theft. ahha In the context of video games. Yes, exactly. um But yeah, GOG. ah Check out their summer sale. They have a bunch of stuff.
00:45:14
Speaker
So if you haven't picked up Cyberpunk or something by this point and you don't want it on Steam, there you
00:45:20
Speaker
And Hideo Kojima. Might have heard of him. heard of him ah cla obbs He says that clear obscure development team is the ideal team size with a quote.
00:45:30
Speaker
They only have like 33 team members and a dog.
00:45:35
Speaker
And i office dog pretty legit. It's a good idea. Right. I've only ever experienced one office dog, but it was delightful. Mm-hmm. Keeps morale up.
00:45:46
Speaker
Mm-hmm. You also have to pick your trash up. That's true. Yeah. Because they they will find it. Mm-hmm. um But it also it helps because you can be like, it's it hey, guys, it's crunch time.
00:45:58
Speaker
And then it's just like, okay, we're feeding things to the dog, right? It's not like actually staying extra hours. Yeah. That's a pun, obviously. Video game developers know what crunch time is, but um this reinforces something I might have talked about before, but small teams are better than large teams.
00:46:17
Speaker
um This is pretty much known. There's a lot of studies around this. And if you have hundreds of people working on something, expect that thing to be the least least efficient implementation of that thing you can do.
00:46:30
Speaker
It's okay to have a whole lot of small teams working on a whole lot of things that feed into a large thing. But as soon as you have too many people in one project, that project just becomes a homogenous mess.
00:46:45
Speaker
um Starfield.
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah. it A lot of it just comes down to communication. I forget the actual statistic, but it's something I'm sure everybody's heard. Where basically people...
00:47:02
Speaker
as a species like we can only really account for so many people in our group yeah and then beyond that it's hard for us to actively keep them in our thoughts like remain in contact like re really only it's like a tribal type thing where it's like hey you know the people here who live by you maybe it's like 60 people right right um but the more people you add the more back and forth communication there has to be but that many more people need to be on the same page um you have to keep track of all these people doing the correct things uh at the same speed that you're expecting right um it just becomes a lot of points of failure
00:47:50
Speaker
Whereas if you are a smaller team, ah super giant, round you can actively work together, have a very clear line of communication and ah where the project's going to go.
00:48:05
Speaker
and Yeah, you can be flexible, right? Like, if someone has a good idea, you don't have to have a million other people approve it. You just have the other people who generally are accepted to have good ideas to be like, yeah, that's a good idea.
00:48:21
Speaker
Let's do that, right? um And, like, I guarantee you something like the Grand Theft Auto development team, is that game going to be absolutely polished? I suspect it will be, but...
00:48:33
Speaker
Is it going to do interesting things? and you'd You'd have to show me, right? Like, I'm not going to assume that out of the gate. But if you had, like, two psychopathic indie developers, they're probably just gonna make the best game ever made, right? Like, they're going to make something interesting, which is more important than having good graphics.
00:48:53
Speaker
It's more important than having a bunch of licensed music. So I get what Hideo Kojima is saying here. The Death Stranding credits were also very, very long. So maybe, maybe this is basically saying he's going to fire most of his team. I don't know.
00:49:10
Speaker
um i know a lot of that's localization and things like that, but. No, I believe him. And I think that this is actually maybe he wasn't explicitly saying this, but this is an endorsement of Indy, right? Because he's but he he said Claire Obscure is the example in this case, like 33 people and a dog.
00:49:29
Speaker
Those are like ex-Ubisoft developers. right like they just left ubisoft and then they went out and they made a game of the year contender right so like what do they have you know in addition to what ubisoft was providing well no actually it's just they actually just minused ubisoft right like they literally just removed themselves from the rest of the company kind of truncated their bit and uh uh-huh it's not that they have more resources it's that they're more focused now so yeah the other part of that you were saying as far as like the having good ideas go through again this is gonna be me shitting on companies but that's what we do the more layers you get removed from these are the people working on the thing boots on the ground types yeah you lose scope and perspective yeah
00:50:25
Speaker
Like even like one level of management above, can be like, they don't know fucking anything that's going on. ah Let alone like your your VP and executive level who are probably not going to have direct weigh in on design stuff outside of, oh, we we can't do that because the board would not like it. That's going to hurt this demographic. but but but but Right. It needs to be live service.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's you're going to have a lot more constraints, to say the least. Yeah, and the decisions may come down from the top, right? Having more of a vertical progression is just... That's just a lot more people to filter ideas through one way or another.
00:51:08
Speaker
And if you're so far down that you're basically just code monkey, like how are your ideas ever going to be seen by the people who make decisions? Probably won't be, so...
00:51:21
Speaker
yeah Have you tried sending an email to someone in your company? Can't do it. Can't be done. um But yeah, skip a bit ahead. We've got just a couple more things to cover here and we'll leave you for this episode.
Hades 2 Early Access
00:51:36
Speaker
But word on the street is Hades 2 not long for this world where this world is early access.
00:51:49
Speaker
I'm excited because now you can actually play it as well. That is true. For some reason, I own this game. I'm not sure. It's impossible to know, I would even say.
00:52:00
Speaker
How that happened, but it's in my library. We'll we'll never know. After a brief gift pop-up. What date, by the way, did you did it show up in your library? it was There was some other stuff going on at the time. It's hard to say, but...
00:52:18
Speaker
i think I think Dave gave me this for my birthday, I believe. It was my birthday. I'm getting nods from Dave. um I haven't launched it yet because, to be completely honest, um I am very excited for Hades 2. Hades 1 is the best roguelike game, maybe, full stop, um which is...
00:52:40
Speaker
Big deal, because there are infinite of them. um But I freaking love that, even when I don't always like roguelikes, to be completely honest.
00:52:52
Speaker
But I also played it in early access back when it was on Epic Games. And... I played it a little bit and I was like, i kind of, I enjoy this, you know, like I like what I like the vibe this is putting down, but I don't want to revisit it for all of these early access updates. I just want to see it in its final state.
00:53:12
Speaker
Like I, when I played it, you could only fight the, is it Numidian Hydra? I think Numidian, Numarian. The prefix was, but yeah, it was the Hydra was the the final boss. Number Hydra. Yeah. Yeah.
00:53:26
Speaker
uh, and it was like impossibly difficult when I played it. And I was like, I either suck at this or this is like impossibly difficult. And then later I got to like the actual game and i was like, okay, that was, they were, they were just making it the door boss. They just didn't want you to beat this thing.
00:53:40
Speaker
Um, But for Hades 2, I'm excited to see it in its finished state. That's kind of kind of why I've waited to to launch it up. um That's fair. I think a lot of people will share that feeling.
00:53:54
Speaker
Yeah. I will say, though, if you are curious about dipping your toes in the water, basically, the early access state was released in. was already a full game.
00:54:06
Speaker
Right. And they've really only been adding stuff since. And to be fair, I think it definitely makes it a lot more fleshed out with these patches they've had. um Have you been tracking it through the, um through the updates?
00:54:19
Speaker
Not actively. They did have an update like a couple days ago. I did a run or two just to like see. It looks like there's going some new weapon aspects, ah some other story line or character interaction progression.
00:54:33
Speaker
um I'll be honest, I've slightly fallen off of the dialogue between characters because even though every time it is unique and so well thought out and written.
00:54:47
Speaker
Yeah. My brain just goes to like, I want to kill stuff though right now. But I have weapon. Yeah. And I don't want my run to be longer.
00:54:58
Speaker
Yeah. So... I've sadly been skipping some of the dialogue outside of like the major story points. But it's really good. If you liked Hades 1, you're going to like Hades 2.
00:55:10
Speaker
If it's anything like Hades 1, most of the dialogue is like... a few decibels above ASMR. Also, everybody's like whisper talking everything. All the characters are hot and have nice sounding voices. Uh-huh. Yeah. ah It's very funny, but kind of true. um especially bold Especially Boldy.
00:55:33
Speaker
So, yeah. and Dave's given given given me eyes but yeah I won't say anything. no judgment. Okay.
00:55:44
Speaker
ah Hopefully returns in Hades too. We know I haven't played it, so that can't be a spoiler. Um, but yeah, that's, I think a good, a good note to end on. We'll follow up then, uh, keep an eye on that game.
00:55:57
Speaker
I'm sure we're going to cover it. Cause again, sequel to the best roguelike game ever made according to exactly me. Um, It's a godlike roguelike. Exactly. That's a really good tagline, by the way. That's really good.
00:56:10
Speaker
ah Black and white could have done it. Peter Molyneux missed another one. Could have released a black and white roguelike. Didn't do it. Spent too much time on a fucking sailor song.
00:56:22
Speaker
Yeah. I hope the black and white jokes like land with at least one person was playing CD-ROM shit way back in the day. They're oh my god, I remember, yeah, I got them wood and like sheep or something? Uh-huh. They sang it sing this long song.
00:56:42
Speaker
ah No, it was pretty insane. It was a different time. You had to be there. was a different time. um But yeah, we're going to call it there. We'll circle back at a future point with even more news.
00:56:52
Speaker
um But not... there's a different There's a different thing that has that title. We're Not That. ah That's a YouTube channel. I've actually been watching some of their stuff. It's really well put together. I think it's actually a video podcast. It's not even just because the the the channel's Some More News.
00:57:11
Speaker
I think like Even More News is their podcast or something like that. Yeah. We're too close to that, but being that we're also a podcast. Not affiliated. Friends of the show. Something like that.
00:57:22
Speaker
Anyways, we're going to end this before we get sued. Thank you guys for listening. As always, check us out on the socials posted in the description. Follow us. Forward us. Do whatever it is. Blind carbon copy us.
00:57:34
Speaker
And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.