Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Man Vs Machine
0 Plays2 seconds ago
Join Dave and Jake as they take about their favorite foods, Christian fan fiction, what they've been playing, and catch up on some news in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike for NESiCAxLive (Taito Type X2) - o34 A Hon 00
Outro:
- youhei - KOUYOU
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Follow us on Bluesky so you don't miss a post!
https://bsky.app/profile/soapstonepodcast.bsky.social
Recommended
Transcript
Introductions and Favorite Foods
00:00:42
Speaker
How's going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host as always Dave. What's your favorite food Dave? Oh, that is a challenge. ah Can you give me a subcategory to help? Okay. Yeah.
00:00:59
Speaker
What's your favorite pasta? We'll make it very specific subcategory. I mean, Fusilli, I feel like is is fun to say. does sound fun. decent at picking up sauce.
00:01:11
Speaker
Hmm. I think one of the best of picking up sauce is underrated or the fucking wagon wheels that nobody uses. It's a penny. This bow tie. I do like pen. It's not it's bad in of itself, but i mean, like there's more interest, intricate and textured noodle options. It is true. Yeah, I think I think noodle science is basically tapered off. Like investment has gone to different sectors and.
00:01:37
Speaker
And it would be funny to just have like full size noodle spoons that you basically just dip into the sauce and you just eat the entire thing.
00:01:50
Speaker
I mean, if you want to freeze your spoon before you eat it, I think it's workable. It's workable. Anyways, oh what's my favorite food?
00:02:01
Speaker
yeah I'm going to give you all options and not just by okay all options. I'll be honest. I used to be simp for lasagna, but ooh i won't change my answer. And I still do like a good lasagna, but I have found there are a lot of lasagnas out there where like the consistency of the meat sauce kind of like upsets my stomach. And I don't know what the cause of this is.
00:02:24
Speaker
But legitimately, i got to just be careful if I eat lasagna. It could also just be layers of like risotto or something like that. Maybe that's a problem. A lot of it is like it's 50% cheese. like Now there's got to be more noodles and sauce in that. It's like a good 50-50 split. Yeah.
00:02:41
Speaker
yeah yeah It's one of the things where like if you have if you ask the caloric content, they just like laugh at you and you know, walk back to your complete your order. not paid enough to know how um that definitely that. That definitely is up there.
00:02:59
Speaker
Maybe that's my answer still. for food I don't know if I have a replacement for it yet. Like, if you could have, like, one meal for your birthday and Mango's like, what are you going to make you? what you go like That is has actually been the historical one is lasagna. Yeah. And if I could get it, Butterbrickle ice cream, which is, like, my favorite type of ice cream by a country mile.
00:03:19
Speaker
But I also have to go a mile out to the country to get it because apparently Butterbrickle is, like, an actual name brand candy. didn't realize this. I thought it was just a flavor that you could get somewhere. But, no, you can get, like...
00:03:34
Speaker
like ah ah peanut peanut ripple or whatever, if it would kill you. But I mean, other people could get it. Doesn't taste the same, different thing entirely. No, no, it's about the toffee Brickell that is specific to this candy. So the only places is apparently have ever gotten it where but were places where they were okay just making it themselves basically okay which they might not be legally allowed to do because the candy company makes their own ice cream um we'll sue you yeah exactly right it's like you made i mean there is a penn state creamery that's a good 45 half hour 45 minutes uh from where i am at least if i remember the
00:04:23
Speaker
the road time to get there. They had a good variety of flavors. I think I got like a pumpkin cheesecake oh for mine. yeah I'm sure they have a lot of good standards, a lot of comfort options for like, you like this baked good? What if it was an ice cream?
00:04:39
Speaker
But yeah, they might they might have that. that That would be good. You mentioned cheesecake, though. And this is taking me back to just the caloric dense foods. If you want just the maximum amount of calories that you can get into the least amount of food, cheesecake's up there. It's yeah it's pretty up there.
00:04:58
Speaker
I haven't had dairy in such a long time, so I can't just like jump back to it because my body is like, that's 50% cheese, dude. Yeah. that was That was a rough time working through that lasagna. Thank you, Chet. It was delicious. But God, it wreaked havoc on my insides.
00:05:15
Speaker
But I'm a fucking slut for cream cheese. Cream cheese on
Food Delivery and Dining Trends
00:05:20
Speaker
bagels. That's a little bit in my blood. Cheesecake is cream cheese based. a Pumpkin roll has a cream cheese filling. it's just what's so good. but It's so good.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately, we started with like foods and then we started getting into de desserts and there are a lot of good desserts. There are. Do you want to just DoorDash? Let's talk about what we're going to get separately. ah hu Man, DoorDash is so expensive now, though. I mean, it has been, but I had the realization of, like, for the most part, i'm not I don't think I'm overly privileged or whatever, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how much money I spend on food. I hope that for our listenership, you're in a comfortable financial place where you're in a similar situation. You don't have to think about it all the time.
00:06:07
Speaker
But it did strike me. I was like pretty much any time get food for myself and for Mango, it's like 20 plus bucks easy like 20 bucks is a fairly cheap meal for the both of us yeah it's like 10 a person and that's almost unheard of yes yeah but like you can can you can uh extrapolate to that for like other things you're like oh you go to a restaurant easily 40 50 there is like a ramen place it's not very difficult for us to hit 40 50 with just drinks plus entrees and it's like
00:06:44
Speaker
a lot of money it didn't used to be this expensive i don't think and if if you just go back like 10 years it's like oh yeah it absolutely was not this expensive yeah it's things have definitely gone up um as inflation will always do certain things are you know affecting that but yeah yeah i that's why like when i go out
00:07:09
Speaker
It's more likely I'm go a door dash and like go out somewhere. Yeah. um Because if I don't have somebody to go with, I just want to like sit there and be like, I don't want to talk to anybody. Yeah. um Because I'm worried I'm going to into a situation where I'm like, hey, how's going? Like, what you up to? And then they just start going in some direction. i'm like, I need to get the fuck out of this. And I put myself in the situation.
00:07:32
Speaker
Right. Ejectory seat. Yeah. Yeah, I think the the quality of food delivery services is also in my approximation. Again, I don't use them a lot because here's where I was going with that food, expensive food plus price on top plus, you know, tip and stuff like that.
00:07:51
Speaker
Pretty expensive. Yeah. um But ah generally, the service is not really worth it anymore. I think like I have like a 50% success rate on actually getting everything that I order. Really? um It's probably around that. like sometimes they're missing a very Most of the time, it's a very minor thing.
00:08:11
Speaker
But sometimes, it's more major. And I'm like... I don't have this issue if I just go to a place and like do a pickup, which is my my standard go-to now. I just order one item. It's really obvious if they have it or they don't. Yeah. It also kind of like it depends on where you order from because like um Asian food places, Japanese, Chinese food, um they'll...
00:08:34
Speaker
They're masters of packaging. They're like, we will micro package this thing in a bag or sorry, like in a paper bag, in a plastic bag.
00:08:45
Speaker
All of this is sealed up and you could like you could drop kick it like across the room and everything would be absolutely fine. um So there's no way that the drivers can like smuggle anything out of it easily or you're like, no, no, you you had to work through multiple layers of industrial stapling in order to get this food out of here.
00:09:10
Speaker
So. Yeah, that helps. Yeah, haven't really what I have ordered multiple items in the past. I really haven't had like missing fries or anything. um I've only had one person say that they couldn't deliver. They're like, oh yeah, I'll try contacting you, but like you didn't pick up. I'm like, no contact was given. Please deliver me my sandwich. I actually checked the no no contact option. and Seems like we're not on the same page. Yeah, that could have been like an error on the system. That could have been the driver themselves just yeah sitting there eating your food. Where's some bite marks, weirdly? They're like, man, they're talking with food in their mouth, telling you they can't deliver your don't what happened to it.
00:09:57
Speaker
audible slurp from the straw anybody
Gaming Discussions and Cultural Influences
00:10:00
Speaker
could ah Yeah, so anyways, that's my favorite food. Thanks for answering But things have been going on in the gaming space some of those things are us Wow What a segue best I've done.
00:10:19
Speaker
What have you been playing recently Dave? Ooh, Dota 2 still. Sure. There's another patch. They've gotten rid of facets entirely.
00:10:32
Speaker
Which is good because they were added to the game since the last time I played. So their removal from the game will come full circle. It'll not be easier for you to come back to the It'll be less confusing. I need them to drop about 50, 60 heroes from the roster and I'll be in a pretty good place.
00:10:51
Speaker
um Outside of that though, the only really new thing that I've kind of touched would be Skate Story I went back to briefly need to actually play through that cuz I am enjoying it. Okay, um Ultra kill fraud layer layer eight which I cannot talk about right But very much enjoyed. Holy shit.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah. And you did show me some of that. And i also can't talk about it. So it's not even a great topic to bring up a second time. But it looks very interesting. They've got a lot going on. And that game will never be finished.
00:11:25
Speaker
um i There's one thing I found out about later. Yeah.
00:11:31
Speaker
So if you're listening and you're checking out layer eight, there's a a point in one of the levels where there is a water cooler off to the side. Sure. Check it out.
00:11:42
Speaker
All I'm saying. Interesting. Interesting. um I had to look up Dante's Inferno. Also, as a fun religious aside, since this is a religion podcast. um How did we get to Dante's? Oh, because of Ultra Kilt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You brought up Fraudley. And I was like, relatively, how far are we to the end? The last one's Treachery.
00:12:04
Speaker
Um, but there are sig there's a non insignificant number of people, which if I were to say that, like, I'm not trying to be an intellectual would be a lot of people believe that Dante's Inferno is actually like in any way related to ah biblical canon.
00:12:23
Speaker
And it's absolutely not. It has nothing to do with any of that. It's just, it was so influential. It's like what people envision hell as. um You're just like, oh yeah, nine circles. It's like the only quote unquote description of hell that got popularized is like, oh this thing. Some people think of hell they're like, oh yeah, it has nine layers. Yeah, the Bible barely talks about hell like at all. They should make a fucking Dante's burrito at Taco Bell. It's so easy. They should. Yeah.
00:12:54
Speaker
Diablo sauce. I mean, Diablo sauce isn't as good as fire sauce. Let's be honest. But I mean, you could have Diablo sauce in one of the layers. There you go. Yeah. Makes sense. um The more you bite inside the spice, you're getting.
00:13:08
Speaker
But it's just very funny when you think about it because Dante's Inferno is basically Christian fan fiction. Yeah. Right. hundred so that's That's all it really which is. Which, by the way, did we really need to add the fan fiction? I saw i saw saw Dave move closer to the microphone. I was was like, ah, here's the blasphemy. It's coming in. He has a glint in his eyes. It's going to shit on Christianity.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, but no, that's just it's just funny when i i when I think about it, because like it's good world building. Well, it's an an interesting story. um And clearly, if it led to something like Ultra Kill, can't be that bad.
00:13:44
Speaker
yeah i hell i mean obviously not tonto's inferno i feel like a lot of our media today is based off of as a lot of media is earlier fan fiction yeah because like how old is frankenstein how many times does that come through like uh what about like vampires and dracula like we've seen it now a lot in media but at some point in time it was a singular thing that one person is like What if this? Yes, exactly.
00:14:14
Speaker
but it's yeah fun to explore those, I think. Yeah. Which is why like other cultures and religions and their various imaginary friends that come up with some of them are cool, cool designs, you know? Yeah.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um no notes. i agree. ah I've been playing a fair spread of games recently.
00:14:40
Speaker
More time in marathon, though not like a ton. I'm not really... It's not the top of my list to jump into. um but it is it is still fun. I had a decent amount of success. But...
00:14:53
Speaker
Honestly, what you said, the first thing you said about it is still basically the last thing you really need to say about Marathon, which is it's an extraction shooter. So yeah everything else. yeah Feelings about being right about that. because i want I want to succeed and do well. Yeah.
00:15:14
Speaker
And I mean, I think it's doing okay. um Funnily enough, it's not doing as okay as another game, which I would actually know. I'll just say it now that I've been playing ah Slay the Spire 2.
00:15:26
Speaker
I will be the first to admit it. I didn't put a bunch of time into the first Slay the Spire, even though it was basically formative for the deck building genre. Like um there have been so many deck building games that have come out since Slay the Spire and almost all of them owe something to it.
00:15:44
Speaker
Not all of them, like there's a lot of original ideas there, but it really showed that it was a genre that had a lot of potential to explode. Yeah. um But the second one, I played that a decent amount over last weekend. That's where like most of my time has been. And the thing that's actually getting me is the co-op.
00:16:07
Speaker
You can have up to four people in a run. And it is hilariously funny. Like I, the, the, the moments, the interactions, the micro optimizations and stuff like that, but also just like when things go off the rails, it's legitimately just really entertaining.
00:16:26
Speaker
Um, so I have to ask as the, the audience, is it scaled then to four people where they make everything four times as hard? Um,
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if it's a strict linear scale. You probably don't want like a one-to-one difficulty bump because... um I actually think that makes the game too hard normally. Like, ah but think of like Monster Hunter, for instance. Like if you have ah three or four players, you really don't want like three to four times the health for every monster. Like it actually would be terrible. So it usually goes to like times two. Similar scaling here.
00:17:08
Speaker
um But they scale like there are so many mechanics that are in play for Slay the Spire. Different types of effects. Is there any interplay?
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah. um So that actually, that's the funny thing is um so I've only played multiplayer. I've never played just my own run. And because of that, every time that I've done a run has been my first run as a new character, um like no unlocks or anything like that.
00:17:38
Speaker
And the only one that i ah played that was not all mirror match was the most recent one. This is the ah the regent, which is like a guy on a throne and he you can get like a floating sword that spins around you and you command it and stuff like that. It's cool.
00:17:55
Speaker
I don't think he's that strong, but it is. It is cool. But to your question of interplay, it absolutely exists, especially if you're all playing the same class, because you probably have some sort of status ailment that you can cash in or build up a lot. So like um ah the silent, with the silent.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, you do like the silent and you're like, hey, what if we multiply the poison that's on somebody? What if we like hit them with fast acting poison? Now it's not just your deck that has to like complete the ah Exodia combo.
00:18:35
Speaker
It's like if anyone else on the team that can contribute to that Exodia combo, you can enact it on the boss. I assume it's all everybody's kind of playing at the same time.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yes, um it works with ah it. It uses a stack, but anyone could contribute ah cards like everyone takes their turn at the same time. and So anyone could add them. So there is a little bit of like if you really want to if you really want to optimize, you have chat ahead of time. Yeah, just be like, honestly, the most efficient way to do it. and we probably i don't think we've ever actually done this is be like go to damage.
00:19:12
Speaker
Like we should just call when we go to damage because you might want to stack like vulnerability on the boss or the enemy first. And it's always really funny when you're like the slowest person taking your turn and everyone else has already used all their energy and you're like, oh yeah, now I'm going to make the boss vulnerable.
00:19:32
Speaker
Like, dang it. um But yeah, there's a lot of cool. We had a lot of really fun interactions. Like we almost had a, um, I think it was an infinite loop, but they patched it out of the game where um I think it's beacon of hope is what it's called is the card. But it's like when you get armor, um the rest of your team gets half of that armor.
00:19:58
Speaker
But. The trick was, and I think it might have been full armor, maybe that's how it was nerfed. But if you have two of that that power in play, you get armor. Everyone else in your team gets armor.
00:20:10
Speaker
This is where the infinite came in Two people had beacon of hope. They just because it's a passive. Yep. It's a passive. Every time they're getting armor, they're giving the other person armor and it just it actually soft lock the ah the run. You can find clips of it on YouTube.
00:20:25
Speaker
It's just very funny. Suffering from success and the most literal sense. But I like finding those things. You're finding out about them more so. yeah It's like Magic the Gathering is full of those where it's like, this one thing says whenever.
00:20:42
Speaker
Look through the entire card database. This thing it says whenever this. And then you just put them together and they kiss and then... Yeah. The other thing they did is they have some like synergy cards, which i there there might be some neutral ones, but most of the like classes also have access to a couple, where the card effect is literally...
00:21:03
Speaker
If it was solo, it's not going to do anything. It would be like pretty much useless. um But it's specifically good when you're playing in co-op. like um One of them is take your current armor value and then like give it to another person. a Copy it to another person.
00:21:23
Speaker
Literally useless. Useless card for solo run probably doesn't even show up if it's good game design. But the inclusion of some stuff like that is actually really fun. So yeah.
00:21:37
Speaker
Co-op deck builder. the the The comment I made was Slay the Spire 1 was like they really knocked it out of the park. And then all these years later. With all these other games in the interim, it's just like, oh yeah, they've still got it. They've got the sauce. Like, it's it's a really good game.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, they had a good game loop the first time around, and I imagine they just built upon it a lot. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the last... Especially, I assume, if I was making a sequel and I saw other games being made in that genre,
00:22:14
Speaker
Off of my initial example, I would want to like take some notes from things that they're doing or like Yeah, oh this thing was actually not a great mechanic. We move that entirely. It's like oh, okay. Mm-hmm Yeah, it's what it would be like verbatim. Oh, we'll do that instead. Yeah, but Yeah, that's actually one of my biggest pet peeves in game development is like genre blindness. People feel like they must have all of the original good ideas themselves and then ship it.
00:22:45
Speaker
Right. they they're They're basically treating it like they're... um their ah thought process and their inspiration is genius and anything else would contaminate it. Like you've you've guaranteed have played games like this where you go to like do something and you're like, I really wish I could draw on the map. I really wish I could take notes. I really wish like there were other things that have been done in this genre and this game took no lessons from them.
00:23:15
Speaker
um I hate that. I hate that. Still a very firm believer of what was the word I wanted to use? Integrate and evolve. Yeah.
00:23:25
Speaker
Like We've had jumping in video games, right? So it's very weird when a game I'm gonna say like first person is not Allowing me to jump.
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just expecting to do that as some part of it Yeah, and so unless it's completely designed around like oh it's just a runner thing and for whatever reason jumping is not a part of it like Okay, sure it'd be that thing.
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah, but If it's like a modern shooter, allow me to jump, allow me to run, allow me to crouch slide like things that have been in first person shooters for a while.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, it feels weird to just not include a pretty basic quality of life thing almost. Yeah, exactly. um And I'm not sure I haven't played really enough to know what lessons it's taken from other deck builders.
00:24:16
Speaker
um But the classes are different, like they play differently and you might like some but not like others, which is good. um And yeah, I just I don't know how it compares to everything else. This on its own is actually just excellent.
00:24:33
Speaker
And then they didn't use ai placeholder art. They have like crayon drawings for cards and bosses and stuff like that. And it looks hilarious because they're not trying to hide it at all. They're just like, hey, it's early access. well What did you expect?
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, they did that for the first one as well. It was like a nice little like, OK, placeholder. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely a good game. um And then I started Shadow of War again because it's very comfortable. I was thinking about it and still excellent. And I still hate Warner Bros for having copyrighted the Nemesis system because my gosh, I would love to have seen that be iterated beyond these two games.
00:25:17
Speaker
But they're holding it hostage. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so if they didn't hold it a hostage, is there a series you'd like to see that incorporated into?
00:25:30
Speaker
I mean, it's kind of tough because it's basically like the core system. Like there's good storytelling and it's all fan fiction in a Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War. But they're clearly Lord of the Rings nerds.
00:25:44
Speaker
Like you can find and spin like a 3D pot and then a person will be just espousing lore to you in real time. um But the actual game itself is so much. I mean, there's the story, which I mentioned, but then just the nemesis system, like almost everything else that they contributed to the game is tacking.
00:26:06
Speaker
it's It's to feed into this sandbox of um I guess I should define it because I've only said the nemesis system. But the really short example, the really short description is there are a bunch of orcs um and they'll fight each other and they might be in positions of power. You need to oppose them. And then in both games, eventually you get the ability to dominate them.
00:26:32
Speaker
and then basically have your own orcs engage in this hierarchy and like sometimes sneak their way up the positions of power until you can have them reveal themselves and wreak chaos on Mordor.
00:26:47
Speaker
um And it's a really cool system where if you die, you're the grave walker. um So you always come back. You always respawn. But
Epic Games Layoffs and Corporate Strategy
00:27:00
Speaker
they just killed a pretty big deal. So whoever killed you gets promoted.
00:27:04
Speaker
And there's plenty of other opportunities for orcs to get promoted. And so like... It turns into like Pokemon or something weird where like I'm I have my favorite enemy over here, but I need him to be a little bit more powerful. I need him to learn some more immunities or something like that. I want him to be immune to fire. i want him to like be more aggressive or get a heal.
00:27:28
Speaker
So we're going to put him in these situations to like promote him. And then if he develops well, then we'll dominate him. Then he's going to join my army. Right. You just sound like management to me.
00:27:41
Speaker
yeah um But it's, it's a really cool system. So it's difficult to answer your question. Cause I don't know how you transplant that onto something else. It would basically have to be like, in my mind, pretty much a new IP.
00:27:55
Speaker
Um, because you can't be like, oh, it's Grand Theft Auto with a nemesis or like cyberpunk with nemesis or um cyberpunk. I think you could do with like crime lords.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think if it was a sort of like management type game, sim, then yeah, I think you're right. You could probably you could probably incorporate it. um But the interesting thing is they did it in an action game.
00:28:20
Speaker
It's not really just a management game. Like you have to fight these enemies in a third person Batman Arkham Asylum esque combat system that's just more developed than that. So.
00:28:35
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, it's really good. And again, I'm really upset that they basically just discovered a new thing, made a bunch of money off of it, and then buried it. That's the legacy of that series.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's um the work of big business in action. Yep. ye Yep, yep, yep. Oh, the last last note, and I know we've got no news to get to, but um if orcs kill players and you're like online, you're playing online, you can get vendetta missions to avenge those players in order to get what are essentially like loot boxes to get gear out of.
00:29:16
Speaker
um But without like a pay to play component at all, it's just like random loot. And that's really neat. It's just like it's extra gameplay you can kind of tack on because there's no PvP. There's no way to fight other players.
00:29:29
Speaker
But I saw like a ah Vendetta mission show up where it's like this guy has killed five players across games, um which means he killed somebody. It was posted as a mission and then four other people like failed to beat him. I was like, we got this like. Looking at his stats and looking at his just strengths and weaknesses and stuff. This is the other tactical part of it.
00:29:49
Speaker
Trying to figure out how you want to approach fighting different enemies. I'm like, ah, this guy's a pushover. I'll go crush him. And then I beat him. And then later I got my face absolutely kicked in for like two hours by of the same guy. But it's fun.
00:30:05
Speaker
Anyways, love that game. It's ah it's ah it's a sleeper. It's one of my top ten probably all time. Freaking great.
00:30:14
Speaker
other stuff though so that you can talk yes ah so recent news people may actually already know about some of this but um Epic fired a lot of their employees, a lot of their devs. All of this seems... Right. ah how How would you characterize the situation with Epic? Like, how they're trying to make money, how they're trying to sustain themselves, how this is all going?
00:30:43
Speaker
How up-to-date are you and with all of that? mean, not all of their stuff. Um... Epic does fortnight right yes, that is okay, so I only gave their mention their cash cow. Yes um the epic storefront I think exists um But I don't think it's like their main source of stuff It's where they lose it's where they go to lose money is my understanding That's that's their foot in the door thing of like we'll get you in there like maybe you'll check for that at some point just keep putting ads for it
00:31:15
Speaker
Well, they need other things to succeed because Fortnite is probably the only thing people actually spend money on. That was the issue, though. They wanted to compete with Steam. And so they give away all these free games on the Epic Game Store. And they have wellt for literal years. What you is you keep giving away those free games. okay But then those games you give away for free, you're like, man, for five bucks, you could get like a whole cosmetic pack of this one character from that game.
00:31:40
Speaker
That's pretty good. Because Fortnite is ah similar to Fall Guys where they're like, hey, blank canvas. We'll take fucking anybody. You want to be in this game? hit Hit up our business email.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yes. They have everyone. it's It's like Smash Bros, honestly. They probably have the characters from Smash Bros. um But it's it's weird because like they will have like oh a different character from another IP.
00:32:06
Speaker
This is a real-life celebrity. And you're like, huh? uh-huh ah darth vader versus s sabrina carpenter who's gonna win uh-huh it feels don't know like somebody just like shook a whole box they're like you can play with these characters it's wizards of the coast and magic together and secret layers right i wish it wasn't it's not even secret layer dude it's just what they do now yeah Yeah, no, it's all money extraction, which is kind of what this what this goes to, right? So the stated reason, well, one, the background is three years ago, they let go of almost as many people, 830. This time, it's that we just we don't know the exact count. It's over 1,000 people were let go.
00:32:50
Speaker
um Pretty much, I think there was like 3,000 people left at the company. It's 3,000 or 4,000. People left. So massive, massive shakeup, right? It's like you went down a line and every fourth person, you just you're like, goodbye.
00:33:05
Speaker
um But the justification for this was financial. um The CEO of the company, team Tim Sweeney, was like, we are spending too much money compared to what we're bringing in. Basically, we're not even on this. So we just need to let a lot of people go.
00:33:24
Speaker
um The funny thing about this is earlier this month, he bought 50,000 acres of forest. And so like he's got this weird, super rich guy thing. He's, you know, got millions of dollars.
00:33:40
Speaker
And it's always the case of this where it's like, hey, I'm going to send a bunch of people out. I think that they want to fire people because they're like, oh, we won't then have these costs of these salaries. Right. Yeah. But because he is a super rich CEO, he can just buy land. Yeah. And I think he says this for the sake of preservation. Yeah, he does. He does conservation stuff. It makes it a little gray, I guess. But I Maybe is a good person. i don't know. to me, it smells like a PR move because yeah society has made me distrust everything. Weird. but it's all It's also possible to be like kind of a jerk on the management side, but also have some things that you're not evil about. right You don't have to be full mustache twirling.
00:34:32
Speaker
Yeah, but I think if you're losing money on stuff, the situation the solution is not just to fire a thousand people. Yeah. Maybe you do need to downsize in general. Right.
00:34:47
Speaker
But like I would do that over time and be like, oh, we're we don't need as many people on some of these projects. We can maybe lose some people here there. Yeah. But... Yeah, I'm sure there's different strategies for it. Like, I don't know the strategies to fire people if it's better to have a slow trickle or just a massive drop. Because I could honestly understand how a slow trickle would just psychologically destroy people over time. What person's getting fired a week? Will it be me? Just let's spin the wheel.
00:35:18
Speaker
um But i think what you could say, even if you're taking a business-centric bent for this, is like... they had to let almost as many people go three years ago.
00:35:30
Speaker
They had to let more people go this time. Where is the positive trend and where this is going? right like From a leadership perspective, it seems like they didn't do enough three years ago or something is wrong in their strategy that they ended up in this exact same impasse where they needed to let so many people go this time.
00:35:51
Speaker
And at a certain point, ah It's your problem, right? You you you cause it as take responsibility. Yeah, but I mean that's companies in general I'm gonna sound like such a pessimist But I am But I think from a lot of um higher management or like CEO level, they don't necessarily want to give up their money. they don't want to get rid of other heads of teams or projects or departments.
00:36:20
Speaker
And like one of the lowest rungs is probably just a developer because you're like, We don't need these developers right now. They're costing us money. We're going to fire all of them.
00:36:31
Speaker
And then if at some point in the future, they're like, ah we need more bodies to like make this project happen. yeah You're just going to hire people. Yeah, exactly. Versus like needing to swap out like somebody in management who's getting paid a lot of money or might be hard to replace, et cetera, et cetera.
00:36:49
Speaker
But yeah, I
AI in Gaming and Ethical Implications
00:36:50
Speaker
mean, my my take there is that's every time that you do something like this, you lose institutional knowledge. You have to train people back up. I don't know the inner workings of their system. I don't know how specialized these people were. I've worked at like seven different jobs.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah. Nobody fucking nobody has a good internal system for like keeping track of their shit. Mm hmm.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah it's it's very hard to lose 1000 people's worth of knowledge. Yeah, right. Because I and will bet you money it was not all written down somewhere. Yeah, and there's an indicator for that. So like, I think it's the producer, high level person at the company after this came out on social media and was talking about like not criticizing Tim specifically, but saying,
00:37:39
Speaker
You know, we're all working through this. This is a massive shakeup. This is going to have tremendous impact to what we're able to do with Fortnite this year and maybe into next year. And it's honestly just like it's very it's abnormally um forward.
00:37:56
Speaker
Actually, it's not circumspect at all. For the most part, it's just like. an honest accounting to like how disruptive this is going to be, which is really crazy. the CEO just came out and, you know, said all these people are gone because it does.
00:38:12
Speaker
This is maybe the reason it doesn't happen as much. You don't be as circumspect about this, but like it kind of shows that this was a surprise to so many people that this wasn't a well thought out transition.
00:38:26
Speaker
But all these people just got struck by meteors and then ceased to work at the company. um I think that's a possible read. h I think another part of it is just PR again, where you're kind of like...
00:38:42
Speaker
down Team downsize regardless, but you're setting expectations with your customers saying like, hey, we're not going to be putting up all these new things for Fortnite. Our development cycle is going to slow. Yeah. Regardless of whether that's based on the loss of people or not.
00:38:57
Speaker
um I think it's a way for them to get in front of it. Yeah, that's a fair take. It could still have been a surprise to the producer and other people. but Yeah, I think that's a fair take and and likely true as well. The last thing I wanted to mention on this is Tim Sweeney actually also came out and said, hey, and this is weird. I feel mixed feelings on this, but he said... um paraphrasing all of these people we just let go like everybody else you should hire them up like none of these people were let go because of performance issues these were all other factors uh these are all we never like made our hiring criteria more lax like these are very qualified people that we just fired and it's such a weird thing to read because it's like
00:39:44
Speaker
okay like does that ah i guess maybe that helps them land their next job if that was one of the concerns but it sounds really weird to be like on your resume like i'm just gonna have a link to this one twitter post from my previous ceo saying it wasn't for a bad reason that we were fired yes you can call them up for recommendation right now actually yeah like that's the thing it's kind of like like you it's the maybe this is hyperbolic but it's like you're shot in the back and then the person apologizes like have you improved the situation at all by you know saying it wasn't personal when they removed your ability to feed your family or whatever like i feel like it's so much better to just not say anything you just don't say anything yeah
00:40:31
Speaker
the Like you don't have to you don't have to tamp it down. You don't have to like if you want to help people find new jobs, have that be a department like at your work that legitimately just tries to help people in the job search process.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, like like people do that. It's just the thing. You don't have to go public about it. I feel like so many people are in those types of positions. You're just like, we'll let somebody else deal with it.
00:41:00
Speaker
Not here. yeah I'm sorry that's happening for you. but that is not my problem. Yeah. Yeah. It's some weird hybrid approach. i don't I don't really understand it, but I guess we'll see. We'll see what happens. My anticipation is eventually they'll realize that they basically should stop just burning money to try to compete with Steam because if they were going to like crest some threshold there, they would have.
00:41:27
Speaker
um And so I don't know what they're doing at this point. Yeah, I haven't been actively um watching them since the initial Epic Store launch. when Yeah.
00:41:38
Speaker
And that popped off when we were talking about it and the value comparison. um But I don't know how much they've had it in the way of exclusives. I remember Hades 1 was a thing, and that's why I was initially involved. yeah um But I'm not sure how much they have beyond that that would really be...
00:41:57
Speaker
Like, hey, you have to come to us for this outside of obviously Fortnite. What was funny is ah Slay the Spire 2 was actually it was on the cusp of being an epic exclusive. But because of some of the licensing ah shenanigans, they would have had to jump through. They just chose to not move forward with it at all. And they went to Steam now, like one of the biggest, if not the biggest game this year so far. Like, it's just crazy how successful it's been.
00:42:25
Speaker
um Which was actually, and ah you know what? Segway. Next topic. Slay the Spire 2. Very successful. Here are some comparative numbers um for peak players.
00:42:37
Speaker
Bellatro, 44,000 players on Steam. Slay the Spire 1, 57,000 players on Steam. or on on steam So you can see this is an increasing number for each of these. Monster Train, 18,500 players.
00:42:54
Speaker
Far fewer. It's actually funny that Monster Train is included here. And Slay the Spire 2, 575,000 players, complete peak player count for an early access game and over 3 million copies sold in the first week.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's a kind of nutty, but very promising for the indie space. Yeah. Or whatever this company is now. I don't know if you make enough money if you just jump to AAA immediately. These AAA fucks! They're too rich. They need to got to invest in forests.
00:43:31
Speaker
I really did enjoy Slay the Spire 1. I think like Rusan is like probably the progenitor of deck building games. Yeah, I think so. And...
00:43:43
Speaker
it did it well enough and then kept building upon itself. Um, cause I think when it started, it was just two characters. Yeah. I don't remember there being a lot. It was an early access for a while as well. Yeah. But I think they got up to four or five. I think even when I stopped that they were still adding stuff.
00:44:01
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, I'm glad that it's doing well because it's, I haven't picked it up yet because I've been, yeah Just not in the movie. Yeah. um It will still be there later. Yeah. But for how much I enjoyed the first one, I can't imagine not liking the second one. Oh, yeah.
00:44:19
Speaker
Definitely. At some point, you'll have to pick it up just for like just to throw some co-op matches at it because it it is very fun for that. Yeah, and also there's not enough co-op games in general. Mm-hmm.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah. That's a lot of it's like, we made a single-player experience, or here's this thing where, like, as many people can connect as they want and, like, go do whatever. Yeah. Be like Marlo Briggs. I've said it for years. That was the last time I said it was years ago. Weirdly back in 2023, right after the Epic Desperate.
00:44:56
Speaker
um But yeah, very successful there. Other changes, things going on. So 5. How familiar are you with what this is?
00:45:06
Speaker
um how familiar are you with what this is I think it has to do with cameras. and Okay. It does sound like it would, um but it's actually different. ah So this is um the latest NVIDIA technology. And I don't, I do have a conspiracy tinfoil hat that the reason they're talking about this is because they recognize that some of the AI bubble is about to burst and they need to like not be 5,000 miles away from gamers at the point when that's their only audience remaining.
00:45:43
Speaker
Um, But ah that's the tinfoil hat part. What it actually is, is DLSS is usually um dynamic upscaling for video.
00:45:55
Speaker
So it's just your video card is using its power to take something that's lower resolution and turn it up to a higher resolution. it looks nice on your screen. DLSS 5 is do that same thing, but then like let AI have a go at it.
00:46:10
Speaker
And There are demonstrations of this and most of the ones you can find online now at the point that we're reporting this are memes. ah that There's a lot of really good memes.
00:46:24
Speaker
I've seen the Resident Evil 9 one of Grace where it's like, ah there's this video game character versus Here's this IRL lady. yeah Yeah. They have things like the they'll have like Squidward and then like the the Giga Chad looking Squidward. The handsome Squidward is like DLSS 5 or whatever. I feel like there's so many meme formats where it's like before after this thing that thing. Uh huh.
00:46:53
Speaker
yeah they had a gamers nexus had a video on it and their thumbnail had um the host steve like a normal picture of him and then like a picture of him with like an anime girl filter or something like that it was just very funny this is the one on dlss um
Final Thoughts on AI and Community Advice
00:47:10
Speaker
but the thing that we don't know from the technical perspective well one the internet hates us that we know um I would argue that some of the results look fine, but across the results that they showed us, like a lot of them kind of don't.
00:47:27
Speaker
We said like actual deformation of like a soccer ball and limbs kind of vanishing in movement and like all the other issues we've had with AI upscaling. Right, but... But because of the other things we've had with AI, it will improve.
00:47:41
Speaker
Yes, it will improve. At a point, there will be no arm or ball issues. Yeah. So if it gets to that point, Do you think that there is a case for it or would you still be against It it depends on the implementation.
00:47:57
Speaker
And this is this is the core part I'm um um curious about. Because right now there's basically two different like branches of explanation for how this works. The one that um ah jensen ah Jensen Wong, is that right?
00:48:12
Speaker
the Yes, CEO of NVIDIA said, is basically like, Developers can use this as a tool. They can basically feed it information to describe how it should be interpreting what a face should look like for a given character.
00:48:28
Speaker
Something like that is what he described. There's a lot of technical mumbo mumbble mumbo jumbo that I don't think can actually be true, but I don't understand all the technology, so I don't want to like you know come out in direct opposition.
00:48:40
Speaker
But if he's like, hey, if you're using this technology, then... you know, Grace's face will always pretty much look like this. It'll look this this way with like ah these shadows under her eyes and this makeup and like whatever, whatever.
00:48:55
Speaker
If the developers control that, that's one thing. And that's basically like the case where I think that this is actually justifiable in a way. Because you're saying like, this is just another tool.
00:49:07
Speaker
Like no one gets upset if you turn graphics from low to ultra. And then you're like, oh, the character looks better. But if it doesn't work that way and it works the way some other people are saying it works, which is like they basically are just taking the frame and then doing an AI filter that yassify it is the term that's been thrown around.
00:49:31
Speaker
Then I'm concerned because now it's like, okay, let's take what's portrayed on the screen and we're going to make changes to it that the original artists had nothing to do with. Right? Yeah. It's just like AI, give me your version of this. Exactly.
00:49:46
Speaker
Exactly. And who wants that? Like, How weird would it be if two people are playing the same video game and you're like, oh, man, like this character totally looked like this. And then you like look at someone else's screen and the guy actually looks different. Right. Like that's a pause that's a that's an entirely plausible outcome, actually, if that's the way the technology works.
00:50:10
Speaker
I would hope that they would at least sync that up at a point, but still, I, yeah, I mean, I can't have anything but reservation for AI stuff at this point.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah. Because all of the ah instances where it's been used have been like, okay, you're using way too much resources to run this the first place. um Also, a lot of times it's just stealing other people's work and giving you an amalgam of it.
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah. It's my one friend's mom is posting way too many videos on Facebook now. And I'm like, God damn it, lady. like no None of these are real.
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah. And like, i don't think she's sharing them like because it's AI. It's just... something in there resonates with them and they want to share with like, Hey, this is a funny video or here's a positive message or something.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah. It's got engagement bait baked into it. Yeah. Yeah. But that's where it gets scary because if the older generation is having trouble now, they are fucked.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah. I think we're fucked at a point. Yeah. I mean, we've been around it enough where I still think at this point we can kind of point out and say, this is AI or it's suspicious enough to be like, let's look into it.
00:51:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's no hope for my, this is my hot take. There's no hope for us basically. Right. Because did you we're the generation that embraced TikTok and the following generation did. Right. Like how could you ever say AI would fail? Right.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah. And not to bring geopolitics into this. Sure. But need to scale it up a bit. That is going to be, or rather it already is, but it will continue to be an ongoing concern as far as like misinformation. Yeah. Because Johnny on the spot could make a video making false claims about something.
00:52:04
Speaker
That could be me. It be somebody else. It could be somebody in like high political office. It could be. So news, I think in general, which already has its own issues, is going to have another angle of difficulty as...
00:52:17
Speaker
Similar to Photoshop, if you remember, there were so many like that's Photoshop and you can use that as like a blanket excuse for like, that wasn't me. That was a i Yes.
00:52:29
Speaker
You're just like the things that I want to believe are real and the things I do not want to believe are Photoshopped or they're And it just turns into, you know, whatever you choose to believe.
00:52:40
Speaker
sure to copy on their bad ran It was AI. Yeah. yeah um There are actually, I'm going rapid fire some related things about AI since we're talking about it here.
00:52:53
Speaker
One of the things, maybe an indicator that the bubble's bursting is Sora, the app that open AI develops for ah ai video generation. If you saw SpongeBob being pulled over by police officers, it was probably a Sora video.
00:53:11
Speaker
um And ah notably, they could never actually get Disney characters out of their generation. And so they ended up making a deal with Disney where Disney was actually going to invest a billion dollars in the technology to and partner with OpenAI and Sora.
00:53:31
Speaker
But apparently they've just realized that it's a money hole. It's just a money pit and they've just been throwing money into it. And people were making videos and none of it really came back to any sort of commercial profitability in the same way that like code generation has for Anthropic and Claude and other companies that would actually spend money on something.
00:53:51
Speaker
And so they're just going to close it down. Just the whole thing. Goodbye to the partnership with Disney. No more a criminal SpongeBob. um sora spider-man videos or anything like that it's just um yeah it's going away i will be sad to not have spongebob get arrested anymore ahhow we'll have the we'll have the two billion videos that were created with that exact prompt and we'll just have to rely on those for the rest of the time i guess i will say that i am surprised that like
00:54:27
Speaker
Disney or like a company that's that big and has a Universe of characters not all in the same universe, but like they have all of their different franchises series Yeah, and if they just need to generate more content where it's like oh we want to have a little mermaid short Mm-hmm and Let's use the animated one because that didn't make people upset because she was white, I guess. And it was the the first one.
00:54:55
Speaker
Yeah. And you could make a video with that promoting something. Yeah. I mean, i was really surprised that they made a deal with them at all. So this opened with Disney suing open AI because they're like, you do sure to seem to be generating a lot of Mickey mice um and all of our characters.
00:55:16
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure the deal happened because open this is this is behind the scenes what I believe. But OpenAI i just basically conceded there's no way they could actually prevent people from making these characters. Like, it's too ingrained in the model. It's too ingrained in the training data where they just fed it infinite DVD rips of Disney movies.
00:55:37
Speaker
And, like... There was no way out of it. And so they're like, oh, we have to make a deal basically. And then the reason that Disney probably made the deal was because they knew they knew they had them by the balls to be short. Like there was they were like, we could just sue you into oblivion at any point. Wouldn't you rather have us on your side and we'll just carry all this leverage over you, the the leverage of Damocles over OpenAI?
00:56:02
Speaker
And honestly, maybe that's the reason Sora's going away is they just like, they're like, well, we don't want to just be absorbed by Disney as soon as they feel like they should. Yeah. So, but I don't know. Right.
00:56:16
Speaker
ah We'll see if more information comes out, but that's a question for a reason. Yeah. Do you think that, let's say a couple of years from now, that we're going to have like 300 different AI options? No. Or do you think that it's going to be like, there's three, three that have had a fuck ton of money invested in them as far as like development, marketing, etc. hmm.
00:56:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's going to be the ones that can actually be profitable, right? Because that's the issue right now. Like the U.S. economy is held up by literally investment in AI. Like so much of last year's GDP was just money we threw into the AI hole.
00:56:56
Speaker
um But the only way that those companies, this is the way that all of the tech companies work, the only way that they're successful over the long term is if at some point they find a way to make money because eventually people remember that they're all actually ah obsessed with that stuff.
00:57:13
Speaker
And investment forever with no returns is actually a bad investment. Yeah. So right now. still waiting for them to shoot down the... ah I think SAG-AFTRA is having an ongoing thing with that, an ongoing battle. Yeah. But having AI actors and stuff.
00:57:34
Speaker
Right. Because someone's like, oh well, we can just make Hollywood. man aha Yeah. And I mean, there's there's plenty of people in that camp. I think I'll be surprised if it ever completely goes away in all of these. You're probably going to have a handful of image generation, handful of video generation, handful of like popular coding assistant tools and stuff like that.
00:58:00
Speaker
But... at a certain point like darwin is going to take effect and it's like the ones that can't compete will not have enough market share they'll be too expensive they have to charge more now they can't even they can compete even less now they're gone right like because it doesn't make sense to have all of these people spending billions of dollars on image generation or video generation if like At a certain point, if you're like in third now, you got to ask yourself, honestly, am I going to sprint to first or is Google just going to stay in the lead? Right.
00:58:41
Speaker
I think if you're at that point, this is my business mind kicking in. Um, you could be a solid third option if you have a lower price point. And that's what brings people to you. Right. So you have like your, this is your absolute high end AI stuff. Obviously it's going to cost a premium and you have like your middle the road and then you have your, don't want to say community tier, but like it's going to be the most accessible for like an average person who's using it for shits and giggles. Right. Yeah.
00:59:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, and I think the trick, the the the road bump to that is that right now, AI is the cheapest it'll ever be, basically. So if you're struggling to compete with the other ones that are still trying to push ahead, like it's not going to get easier.
00:59:33
Speaker
um And you also have to, like that's your life bar, right? Your money is what people have invested in it. And if that life bar runs out, the company doesn't exist anymore. You file for bankruptcy and you're one of the many that will have filed for bankruptcy at the end of this.
00:59:47
Speaker
So you got to ask yourself, do I have more life bar than Google does? Because they can afford to operate at a loss for forever, almost like until the sun goes out. Yeah. Google has the money. Yeah. As far as like a company. um Sorry, in the US. Yeah.
01:00:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:08
Speaker
So like it's tough, right? Like these are the questions I think they're asking themselves and a lot of other companies are going to be asking themselves and why we're going to see a lot of these models probably go under is you have to find some turn to make this profitable and competitive with everyone else who had It's honestly just a science fair project. That's a, that's a perfect analogy in my mind for this.
01:00:32
Speaker
Everybody, went home to their families and their families, depending on their tax brackets, contributed to each of these science fair projects. And now they're taking them back to the fair. And like, how many of them are vinegar and baking soda volcanoes? I honestly, I thought that immediately too. I'm like, it's a volcano, dude. Uh-huh.
01:00:53
Speaker
Um, but yeah, they can't all win. And, Because this is online, right? It's not like it's a local thing. um Whichever one is the best value, whichever one has the lowest price, the best result, whatever.
01:01:07
Speaker
Everyone's going to have access to that. Why would you use anything else? Right. You can't. True. Say like mom and pop short store nearby closer than Walmart or whatever. I think I'm imagining that the split's going to be more.
01:01:22
Speaker
They're going to each kind of find their own niche. Mm hmm. So like things are more LLMs, large language models. I think that they might lean into more of the, oh, so you want an AI girlfriend or boyfriend? Right. Mm-hmm.
01:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, the specialization might specialize in video or image or the coding side of things. Yeah. And you actually, you touched on a very raw point for but where this is all going. The AI girl. Well, well, I was going to say the ah yes, but specifically, if you offer something that other providers do not offer because of ethics, then you could have an audience. That's true. Yeah. Right. So you're going to see the worst things are still available through AI. It's just not going to be hosted in the U S so, yeah.
01:02:18
Speaker
Um, Hopefully regulation will regulate it. That's what's going to happen. and Yeah. Any day now. bernie day know This isn't included in the news, but Bernie Sanders is putting forth um a moratorium on data centers. He wants to just like ah official pause.
01:02:36
Speaker
Just be like, this is moving too fast. Let's put in a pause for this. I don't think it's going to go anywhere, ah but good on him. Yeah, I appreciate that a politician's not trying to actively fuck us over. Nice change of pace. um But yeah, I would not hold my breath for that. Yeah, probably not.
01:03:01
Speaker
Well, we are at time, basically, and I still have so many fun things to talk about, but I'm going to end on this last one because it's still basically AI related, so it's in the same theme. you can The AI overview that automatically gets generated for us when we have these podcasts, we'll understand it's part of the same topic. um a Headline, man pleads guilty to generating songs with AI than having bots stream them billions of times to make over $8 million dollars in royalties.
01:03:30
Speaker
this was bound to happen it's basically food for the dead internet theory people um but the guy just was a creator quotes creator published his songs and then i don't know if it was spotify or a different platform it's probably spotify probably spotify had a bunch of bots just listen on repeat if ads played them whatever just let it go And there you go. $8 million. dollars You control both sides of it and you just pull the money out through fraud.
01:04:04
Speaker
But he did get caught because as all bad fraudsters, he got too greedy. Yeah. So. i was gonna say the reason i actually know that that is a thing that can happen is I know one person who not to that degree, ah but did that for a friend's band. They didn't get into too much details, but I'm willing to bet that they had a script involved yeah on a server and just continued to listen.
01:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately for them, it is the most suspicious behavior you can basically do. Just be like, this person only listens to music all the time ah with no breaks and no sleep. Yeah, right?
01:04:47
Speaker
And one musician, and that's the only musician they've ever listened to you on our platform. Hmm. And their username UQXY372. Right. Yeah.
01:04:59
Speaker
Yeah. But that's the news. There's other stuff we'll have to cover next time. But ah let's see. With everything that we covered here, everything going on, what's your what's your advice? What's your Zen words of wisdom for our most astute listeners here when we talk about video games or just how AI is ruining video games?
01:05:22
Speaker
I don't know if that you were you're building up specifically to a give me more time to think of response or to drive me into a corner and you're like make it harder. It's related to pasta. What's your what's your advice as it relates to. I had something regardless without pasta.
01:05:42
Speaker
That's fair. Um. Life is hard. like Life sucks a lot of the time. I'd argue 2026 more than Holy shit. That feels weird to say out loud. um But yeah, I hope you can find solace in your AI lovers. um As always, also look look into and look out for your community of people, your friends and loved ones, neighbors. Even if you don't love them. don't love all my neighbors. Right.
01:06:14
Speaker
Get along still want to them well. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's good advice. community is going to be more important than ever. download the episode. you want to be a part community, we need somebody to be in charge of chickens. That is true. And also squirrels, maybe. They're not doing so well around Dave for some reason.
01:06:35
Speaker
um But... i have a separate story for you after. ahha no that's fair. um But take care of your community. If you want to join our community, all of our socials are down there in the description.
01:06:48
Speaker
And as always... We'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.