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Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons and Dragons, Real Nerd Stuff
97 Plays1 year ago
- https://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/sites/ca3/files/Public%20Notice%20LAR%2026%20and%20113%2001122023.pdf
- https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-hasbro-ogl-open-game-license-1849981136
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators?fbclid=IwAR1iORRKtqa5WTp18d0taT7-YBoSwoKPgBM02Dd1oT3NW5pmhtuDGbTKEXI&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
- https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-game-license-ogl
- https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1428-a-working-conversation-about-the-open-game-license
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:01
Speaker
And we're recording. Hello, fellas. How are you tonight? Hello world. I'm doing good grief. Typical blog sign on. This is what you say when you've got nothing to say. Yeah.
Origins of 'Hello World' and Programming Greetings
00:00:16
Speaker
And that, well, that's like the first thing that anybody ever said in a computer language, right? That's the story behind that before behind that phrase is hello world. I think so. Like C in hello world, see out or something like that.
00:00:30
Speaker
It's like the first thing I ever said on a telephone was Ahoyhoy. Oh, is that really? Is that what that's from? I believe so. Yeah. Just learning the origin stories of all these sayings. I'm trying to think of another one. But no, that's all I got. I just I just have Hello World and Ahoyhoy, I guess. A very goofy origin story.
Podcast Milestones and Audience Surprises
00:01:06
Speaker
Okay, so hello and welcome to Esquiring Minds, episode four for January 18th, 2023. Episode four. Episode four. We made it. It's like a month. We made it. That's a month. That's hanging out with you guys. That's four times that the world knows about that we've gotten together and done this. One other secret time that we've only referred to, but nobody ever gets to hear. I wasn't sure we made it. Because of reasons. Good reasons.
00:01:36
Speaker
I'm still a little surprised at how many people actually listen to the show. Not that we're huge, but it's cool that not just my wife and our significant others are actually listening and enjoy what we have to say. I had lunch with a friend today and casually mentioned
00:01:54
Speaker
not promoting this way, but casually mentioned that I was going to be doing this tonight. You have lunch, you say, what are you doing tonight? He went and downloaded the episode right away and listened to episode one, which was the wrong episode to listen to because we've gotten better. Find one, we've refined and gotten better as we've practiced a little bit.
00:02:14
Speaker
I'm responsible for adding one listener today. We'll see if we can keep him after today. Can we monetize him? That's my question. I don't want to monetize him. I don't want to monetize him. I like him too much. Not worth monetizing. I like all our listeners. No. I like all our listeners too much. You have interesting knowledge though about what we could sell to this one person. I mean, we really could reach out to an advertiser with that information and target it incredibly to that guy.
00:02:40
Speaker
Uber micro marketing. Yeah. There you go. We're inventing it right now. Nobody has ever done this before. Nobody has ever known something about someone and then sold it to them like that. It was definitely an innovator. I'm a disruptor. Yeah, it was definitely an episode of the new girl.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's too. Have you seen? Have you seen Glass Onion? The Netflix movie? Yeah. Oh, yeah. By the way, Jacob Schumer. My name is Jacob Schumer. I'm a local government land use attorney. Other people are other people on this call. Andrew, sorry. Do you want to know? I think we forgot that we were doing this.
00:03:27
Speaker
No worries at all, yeah. So just to kind of give
Meet the Hosts
00:03:29
Speaker
people an understanding of what this show is about in case they can't already tell, it's just three lawyer friends goofing around and it's for your enjoyment, the listener, and our enjoyment, the podcasters. And nothing we say should be taken as legal advice or any kind of advice whatsoever. I'm Andrew Leahy, I'm a tax and technology attorney and I don't play Dungeons and Dragons.
00:03:50
Speaker
He mentions Dungeons and Dragons because we're going to be talking about D&D tonight. Tonight's going to be a D&D-packed episode. My name is Jason Ramsland. I am an employment law attorney. I sue people's bad bosses. That's my elevator pitch that I've really been refining. I'll tell you, I've met five new people touring offices today, potential office sites today.
00:04:10
Speaker
People get it. It's an office pit or a elevator pitch that works. I'm going to stick with it. I see bad. I thought you were saying you met five people today and they were all like, I have a terrible boss that I need you to sue. Or they were the bad employers.
00:04:25
Speaker
Nobody mentioned having a terrible boss. Well, somebody did mention having a terrible boss today, but we're not going to go into that. Uh, but, uh, yeah, it seems to be working out. Sue, my bad boss.com. There's your commercial for the episode. We have a sponsor. It's me. I'm the sponsor. So before I wrapped it up.
00:04:47
Speaker
Before I interrupted us to try to do the intro so we could get it over with, Glass Onion, Netflix movie, Knives Out, sequel, kind of. Yeah, that movie is all about making fun of people who describe themselves as disruptors. Maybe I should like, maybe that's the ironic title that I take upon myself. What did I call myself? A disruptor and innovator? Or disruptor, yeah. In the sales space. I think you should put that in your LinkedIn profile immediately. I mean, as soon as the show is over, that should be the headline, disruptor.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's the target audience for that. For sure. You and the crypto bros, you can finally fit in with your other NFT loving crypto bros. If you put disruptors in your bio on Mastodon or something. All you need is a lavalier. I've been looking for a lane. Yeah, there you go. This land use, I mean, the land use is done. It's over. That's finished. You got to move on to something else now. We are out of
Changes in Filing Deadlines and Legal Impacts
00:05:43
Speaker
land. So, you know, what are we going to do now?
00:05:47
Speaker
No, they aren't. Uh, so did you guys see about the third circuit, uh, adopting a local rule or calling for comment on a local rule, uh, saying that electronic filings filed after 5 p.m. We're going to be counted on the next day. I know you did, but I'm asking you about it. Yeah. You know, you, you know, that we saw it because you sent it to us. Yes. Yeah, you showed us. Yeah.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, I know Andrew. Andrew, you're not a litigator. So it didn't strike your heart. I'll do the opening question here. That way I can sort of step back and let you guys fight this out. Is there any argument to be made where this is a good thing for some sort of quality of life improvement thing? All the younger associates now will be forced to get things in by five and they can go home and have dinner. Is there any argument to be made there?
00:06:42
Speaker
Silence. I can see it. I can see it. But man, do I hate it. Like, there's a lot more. It's a lot easier to have. There's it feels like you have a lot more time to wiggle to wiggle with at like 8am. Because you're already when you wake up because I'm not going to wake up at 2am to work all day.
00:07:07
Speaker
Right, but let's say I get to work. I know I got to do a ton of work. I Look theoretically totally it's like yeah, you're just gonna frontload it by six hours. What's six hours in the deadline? It's not really a big deal or seven hours But man in practice that's gonna make the end of the day some so many associates are gonna get like yelled at and screamed at cuz everybody knows the
00:07:36
Speaker
Everybody knows the midnight deadline of the next day of the calendar. But I mean, like, imagine if you practice in multiple circuits, that's just one small thing. You practice multiple circuits and the third circuit is different. But, you know, I can see a lot of theoretical reasons why this makes sense. And people were mentioning pro se filings, like it's going to put them on equal footing with pro se people who don't e-file.
00:08:02
Speaker
and just drop stuff off the clerk's office. But man, just gut instinct. I hate this. This is like, ah, it's striking me at my heart, going like, oh God. Okay, so Jake, one thing that I'm not sure that I understand right now, is this the third circuit making a rule for the third circuit court of appeals? Or is this the third circuit making a rule that's gonna apply to every district court in the third circuit? Do you know?
00:08:31
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. Because, so here's the thing is when you practice in multiple jurisdictions, like I do, I practice in multiple jurisdictions and probably so do you if you're, I don't know if you're admitted to multiple federal courts, but like every, gosh, this is true, whether you work in federal or state courts, every jurisdiction, every court district, every county has their own local rules. Like they can totally do this already. And so you already have to abide by
00:09:00
Speaker
you know, however many jurisdictions that you're in, you have to abide by that many sets of local rules. And this is just taking what seems to me, I mean, you can draw a straight line from this to this from the olden days when courthouses closed at 4.30 or 5 o'clock. And if you wanted your filing to be stamped for that day, you had to get there and file it before the courthouse closed. And so this hearkens back to that time.
00:09:28
Speaker
We haven't lived in that time for a while. In any court that's had electronic filing that I have ever encountered in 13-ish years of practicing, your filing can
00:09:44
Speaker
Be stamped for a day as long as you file it during that day and not it not if it's accepted that day by the by the court Not if it's approved or anything like that. Just if you like submit it It's the electronic equivalent of dropping it in the mailbox if it gets in the mailbox by 1159 you're good This is modifying that and you can see how you know Folks who are
00:10:11
Speaker
involved in the before times, before we had electronic filing can say, well, this is just maintaining what we used to have with the, you know, it's got to be filed in the courthouse by five o'clock before the courthouse closes or dropped in the mail, I guess, in time to get postmarked for that day, which isn't going to be five o'clock most of the time anyway. But even if it's a
00:10:34
Speaker
if you can draw a line to the old times before we had electronic filing, you still had this period of what, 10, 15, 20 years? You've been able to electronically file for 10, 15, 20 years. And so we've lived in the wonderful glow of being able to have until 1159 to file these things. And now you're stealing seven hours back from me is what it feels like.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah. And even if it's a bad habit, we really do like treat that last day as like the cushion day of like, okay, if I really need to, I can just get everything done on that day.
00:11:12
Speaker
Uh, I have a habit of filing everything a day ahead of time, just in case I mess up the calculation. Uh-huh. Uh, but you know, it's nice to have that last day just in case. Just looking at the rule really quick, I think it's just for the circuit, like not the district courts below it, but just for the circuit. I will ask you though, Jason, I don't, I've only done state appeals in federal court. Does the notice of appeal get filed at the trial court level, the jurisdictional notice of appeal, where if you blow that deadline, your case is gone.
00:11:43
Speaker
I've never done a federal appeal. I've never done a federal appeal either, so I don't know.
00:11:47
Speaker
That's my real worry is that there are some deadlines out there that are like, you know, most deadlines, you blow it by three hours. It's like nobody, nobody's really going to care. If somebody gives you grief about it, they're the unreasonable ones. But some deadlines are jurisdictional, quote, jurisdictional, meaning you blow it, you're dead. It doesn't matter. Court cannot help you. And if this local rule makes things jurisdictional, like applies to jurisdictional things. No, that that should not be the case.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah. And ultimately like if everybody's going to, if there's a lot of hand waving about this whole thing, like it's just, okay, plan better, plan around the rule. You know that the rule exists and you can play around it just like you plan around the fact that you have to submit it by 11 59 and you can't submit it at, you know, 1 0 5 a.m. and still have it be timely filed. And so it's just a seven hour shift, right? But it feels like you're taking something away.
00:12:43
Speaker
Ultimately, nobody's career is going to be made or broken by this, but it feels like if you have this absolute crunch of a day on the day that you've got a filing deadline, you've got that padding built in there because you want to file it by five and go home. You're not planning to work until midnight most of the time, but it's nice to have that extra security blanket and file by five doesn't feel like a security blanket the same way file by midnight feels like.
00:13:11
Speaker
So what is the counter argument if not the quality of life thing? Has anybody talked about why the Third Circuit is choosing a movement? This is just one judge arbitrarily thinking this is a great idea? The story I read is that that judge wanted to put people on the same footing as pro se filers who have to profile papers.
00:13:32
Speaker
Um, which I understand that theoretical argument. I just hate it. I'm just like, man, it's so nice to not have to plan to get everything done by 5 p.m. And to have that cushion.
00:13:46
Speaker
Uh, for a normal, you know, a normal office. Uh, yeah, it's actually written in the comments to the proposed rule here too. Uh, it's, uh, let's see, it's what a two page document at the start of the second page here on lines 19 through 24.
00:14:04
Speaker
The federal rule of appellate procedure 26A4, this is exciting, this is good podcast content right here, defines the end of the last day of filing in the court of appeals as midnight in the time zone of the circuit clerk's principal office for electronic filing, and when the clerk's office is scheduled to close for other means of transmission. And so that kind of plays to the point of folks who are gonna electronically file, which all attorneys are required to electronically file,
00:14:31
Speaker
And really, the only folks who can even file by paper are generally pro se folks. So the comment suggests that that explanation is right, that it's sort of democratizing putting things on the same foot for pro se filers or non attorney filers and attorneys.
00:14:53
Speaker
Okay, fine. Maybe I think that attorneys should get a special privilege here, being able to work extra late if they really want to, because I don't know, law school is terrible, and this is a fair bit of compensation for how terrible law school is. It's all you get. Six hours. We get seven extra hours to file our stuff. Yeah, extra work. Thanks, guys.
00:15:16
Speaker
So I don't know. It makes sense. It's fine. It's a local world. It's absolutely within the circuit courts discretion to do it. It's going to apply to, it looks like third circuit appellate lawyers. Appellate lawyers are
00:15:31
Speaker
by and large, kind of a different breed anyway. And I would be surprised if very many of them were scurrying to do last minute things anyway, the same that maybe some of us district court and state court litigators are where we're pushing deadlines all the way up. I want to believe that appellate lawyers are more responsible with their time than I as a trial court litigator am. Who knows?
00:15:58
Speaker
You know, it's funny. I didn't even think of this, but so briefs and appellate briefs in the 11th circuit.
00:16:06
Speaker
at least, and I bet in a bunch of other circuits, that's not you file your PDF. That is, you send your PDF to a binder who does a specific binding with a specific colored sheet for a specific brief. You get seven copies of a spiral-bound brief with certain kind of paper, and so you don't even really have the option to electronic the file, at least in the 11th circuit where I am.
00:16:35
Speaker
And so a lot of circuits have crazy physical filing rules. And so this isn't going to affect the main pleadings that leaves. But this rule, I know that we're making mountains out of molehills that are here. This is a tiny little thing. But it's fun. It's fun anyway. So I want to do it anyway.
00:17:00
Speaker
Well, speaking of fun, the other major topic we had is great fun that I defer to both of you guys.
The Podcast's Casual Format
00:17:07
Speaker
I know basically what Jake has assigned us to read today for this episode. This is an Oops All Jake episode, basically. Yeah. And so I think you were going to talk about the Wizards of the Coast, open gaming license, debacle, disaster, retread, et cetera, or both of you were.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah. So before we go too deeply into the waters of this, I want to explain something about the podcast a little bit. There is an official or unofficial rule. I don't know exactly. We haven't really, there are no official rules, right? The first rule of Esquiring Minds is there are no rules.
00:17:44
Speaker
Really, this is, in the interest of keeping this fun, this is an intentionally unresearched or very, very lightly researched podcast. So that's why we start off with the heading of, none of this should be taken as legal advice or actual advice because before we gave any legal advice or actual advice, we would do our research. And so this is a podcast that is us
00:18:09
Speaker
goofing around and dealing with things mostly off the cuff. So when Andrew talks about Jake assigning reading, he's joking, it's tongue in cheek a little bit. No, I told you all not to read anything. I told you guys like, no, this is, I put a million links in our file, but I was like, don't read any, I got it. I got it, boys. Look, I'm deep diving on this.
00:18:32
Speaker
I know.
Dungeons & Dragons Cultural Connections
00:18:34
Speaker
Here's my concern. I am such a novice for Dungeons and Dragons that I was concerned that I would be completely outside of my depth. Like, never mind everything you were just talking about with filing and appellate. I don't know what that what you're talking about with that.
00:18:47
Speaker
I am even less of an expert in Dungeons and Dragons. So I had to figure out what what was going on here, at least to sort of base myself and be able to even speak slightly intelligently on this. But what I understand so far is that I'm going to need you to like literally tell me what even these rules that are like what they're used for. But my understanding is basically something was licensed under a very permissive license. And now someone is trying to walk that back. Right. So
00:19:13
Speaker
Have either of you played any tabletop game at all? And by tabletop, I mean like Dungeons and Dragons, anything similar to Dungeons and Dragons.
00:19:22
Speaker
I was born in 1982 and I was raised in a very conservative Christian family and that was like the height of the satanic panic and so there was no Dungeons and Dragons. I wasn't even allowed to play like Final Fantasy video games until I reached a certain age because of what was perceived to be a closer connection to Dungeons and Dragons. Apparently, I don't know, it was probably James Dobson that convinced everybody that
00:19:51
Speaker
Uh, no, you can't play Dungeons and Dragons because it's from Satan because Dungeons and Dragons and I don't know. So no. Well, I didn't play, I didn't play any until I, you sure. Did you role play while you were playing back? And I mean, that's the real question. I pretended to have fun. I didn't play it. Yeah. I didn't play any until I was a lawyer. Um,
00:20:16
Speaker
Because I always wanted to, but I didn't have any friends. So that didn't work out. But you might get the basics. If you watch Stranger Things, you get the basics. There's rolling of dice, you play a character, and there's a whole bunch of rules.
00:20:36
Speaker
And the important part about this is in the 2000s, Dungeons and Dragons, most well-known tabletop game, most well-known.
Understanding the Open Gaming License (OGL)
00:20:44
Speaker
And I'm going to say tabletop because there's a whole genre of things that is not Dungeons and Dragons, where it's similar. You have rules, you have a character, you have, and you basically make up a story. There's one person, usually a form called the Dungeon Master,
00:21:00
Speaker
who is either using an existing story or making up a new story. There's a whole community around making up a new story. But in the 2000s, Dungeons and Dragons was the king then, it's the king now. And they were like, look,
00:21:17
Speaker
Rules are not copyrightable. Everybody knows this. There's like some copyright protection for the actual written manual, but rules themselves cannot be copyrighted. So they're like, how do we copyright this thing? How do we monetize this thing?
00:21:35
Speaker
where anybody can just do the exact same thing and sell their own version, and they'd be fine. And what they did is they put out this open gaming license, OGL 1.0A, and it's a two-page license. It's very simple. I read it in preparation for this. Unlike other topics, I researched the hell out of this, because this was so interesting to me. Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. Here we go.
00:22:02
Speaker
Oh yeah, I mean this wasn't for the podcast, I would have done it anyway. But the idea was they're publishing a version of their rulebook and this rulebook is 300 something pages and we have a two page license agreement
00:22:23
Speaker
that says, you hereby have a perpetual license to use this rulebook for your own IP. You can't say you're Dungeons and Dragons, but you can use this rulebook and you can say you're Dungeons and Dragons compatible.
00:22:37
Speaker
And the way that they were thinking about it was, look, if we make it so that everybody is allowed to use our rule book and then make money publishing their own content with our rule book, that'll drive people to buy copies of our own rule book. We're going to be the only player in town because we are the main, maybe not the only player, but the main player. We're going to sell copies of our rule book. We're going to expand our brand because
00:23:04
Speaker
Even the ones that are not us, even these people selling other stories are still going to use our rule book, drive people to Dungeons and Dragons, and it's going to expand the community. And that's kind of exactly what happened for the last 20 years. And successfully Dungeons and Dragons is kind of the anchor around everything in the tabletop space, which is like, is it a Dungeons and Dragons compatible game? Are there rules to Dungeons and Dragons?
00:23:31
Speaker
So right now I am in a campaign actually with a friend from the public defender's office from years ago and a couple of his friends. And we're playing something called Ultra Modern, which is not made by Wizards of the Coast, but uses the Dungeons and Dragons 5 rule set through this license. And so there's a whole community that is based on using these rules and for different games, for their own fiction.
00:23:59
Speaker
These are third parties. There are whole businesses that are devoted to creating fiction campaigns based on these rules. Yeah, Jason.
00:24:12
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So there's one nit I want to pick with you because I have looked through the agreement too. I did homework, begrudgingly. Okay. And so I've looked through the agreement. I don't see anywhere where for Wizards of the Coast, right? Because this is the company that issued, that made D&D and
00:24:34
Speaker
issued this OGL 1.0, this open game license. I don't see where it's monetized anywhere like where they get any because it's royalty free in this OGL 1.0. It's royalty free. Wizards of the Coast aren't making money from
00:24:51
Speaker
Jason and Jake get together and we write this super sweet D&D campaign that we publish and we monetize and we include a copy of the license in there just like it says. We use it under OGL 1.0 and we make $18 selling this thing. We don't owe any of that money to Wizards of the Coast.
00:25:11
Speaker
So it's not monetized for Wizards of the Coast. So I want to make that part clear because I'm not sure it was clear from your description. You may resume. Yeah. So it's a perpetual license, no money. They don't own anything you use. And importantly, there's a part that says that if they update the license, you can continue to use non updated versions of the license.
Controversy Over OGL Changes
00:25:38
Speaker
And so the whole concept of this was they're going to generate this community, which they successfully did, of third party content for Wizards of the Coast. And there have been apparently rumblings of four Dungeons and Dragons. And there have been apparently rumblings that they were going to change all this. In December, the CEO said their Dungeons and Dragons brand was under monetized.
00:26:04
Speaker
And so there was a change, there was change in a comment. And in January, January 5th, I believe, it was leaked that the new version was coming out. And that started a whole bedlam because of the changes that were made to the license.
00:26:27
Speaker
Okay. So on that, was there any sort of thought that this could be coming down the pike? Because in, in, I also did a little bit of begrudging homework in section nine, um, where they say that you can continue to use other licenses that they issue or the content under that license. They talk about authorized versions of the license. That seems like that was sort of put in there at that point in 1.0 a to sort of seed the future for being able to presumably have a deauthorized license.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah. And so when the new version came out, that was what they pointed to was, what does Authorize mean? Because Authorize is not defined. What is an Authorize? Because 1.0a is definitely an Authorized version of the license. And the question is, are they allowed to say, never mind, it's not anymore?
00:27:15
Speaker
Because the new version has a bunch of things that people found extremely objectionable, especially the companies that have built themselves around producing fiction and adventures using the 5.0 rulebook.
00:27:30
Speaker
like royalties. They would have to start paying royalties above a certain income threshold of like $750,000. They had to grant Wizards of the Coast a license to use anything that also used the D&D rulebook. So they were theoretically licensing, automatically licensing the
00:27:53
Speaker
whatever their product is to Wizards of the Coast for free. But maybe most importantly, they deauthorize the 1.0 license. And so it was a huge question of, first of all, what does that mean for existing 1.0 works? That is existing workspace on that 1.0 license.
00:28:12
Speaker
Does that mean they can't print copies of that? The stuff that they spent so much time creating, can they not print more copies? Or does it mean that they can't make new works? But in either case, Wizard of the Coast was saying, and we're never going to know because Wizard of the Coast has backed off, as we'll discuss in a second, but they said that they were deauthorizing version 1.0a
00:28:38
Speaker
which caused some consternation from former Wizards of the Coast executives, which said, that's not a thing. I was there in the room, that's not supposed to happen. Talking about royalties, if I remember correctly, it was like 25% over $750,000. It was seemingly a huge number. By the way, on revenue too, this was not on profits. And so what I was wondering is, because I really have no idea,
00:29:04
Speaker
Do you have any idea, any sense of the scope of the market for these sorts of games? Like what kind of figure are we looking at? I'm not looking to put you on the spot where you actually have to give a number, but like, I literally don't even know the magnitude. I mean, is it a hundred billion dollars? A billion dollars?
00:29:20
Speaker
I've got a little bit of information on this. There was one company, I don't know the name of the company right now, but apparently like in the early teens, early to mid teens, there was one company that on this OGL 1.0 license was actually outselling Wizards of the Coast and making more money than Wizards of the Coast off of this DND IP. Jake, do you know the name of the company? Is it Paizo?
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds right. I don't know if that's exactly right, but it was something at the P. And the guys at D&D, and I think when the CEO says that D&D is under monetized, I think this is exactly what he's talking about. And so you've got these folks who are using this OGL in good faith, authorized to do it, but still using this OGL with no license fee, no royalty that they're paying for it. And they're just
00:30:13
Speaker
achieving a ton of revenue by using this license and they're allowed to do it. I think it's a perfectly reasonable response for Wizards of the Coast to say, well, this is our IP. We are responsible for creating this or we own it. They probably didn't create it. They probably bought it from somebody. Yeah, I think they bought it from another. In true Zuckerberg fashion. He ended up taking it over.
00:30:40
Speaker
The owners of the substantial portion of the IP are getting outsold by somebody else.
00:30:48
Speaker
And that just kind of doesn't feel great. And ultimately, I think that that swung back so that now Wizards of the Coast are enjoying a greater portion of the market share, the lion's share of the market at this point. But I think that's where it started from, this impetus towards further monetization, especially once you get above that three quarters of a million dollar threshold. Yeah, I definitely agree that they were like
00:31:18
Speaker
Jealous? Is that the right word? They're like, look at all this money that we could be getting. But the thing is that even for those companies that were making, I didn't know they were making more than Wizard of the Coast. Even for those companies that were making more, like what they had
00:31:35
Speaker
Isn't that protected in law? Because the actual act of play is totally made up by the players. The thing that makes Wizards D&D Table Cops games special and fun has almost nothing to do with what's written on the page.
00:31:54
Speaker
Wizards of the Coast isn't really contributing that much to the community through its OGL. And that's one of the big reactions to this was a lot of companies were like, we don't actually need the OGL. We're going to take your exact same rules because the rules are not protected.
00:32:15
Speaker
We're going to rewrite the manual. We're going to rename the things because there's some concern that naming constitution is protected. And we're just going to use your rules. And you have nothing to say to us. And so really, they are the center of the world, but there's nothing legally protecting their center of the world, if you know what I'm saying.
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah, and to your point, where did the push come from to release the rules under the OGL to begin with? I'm really asking this question. It sounds like it's a rhetorical question, but isn't that sort of an acknowledgement that they saw this as something to build upon rather than something to monetize itself? Yeah.
00:33:06
Speaker
It was something to build. They wanted to build an ecosystem. They wanted to build upon the whole community. Another thing that we haven't touched on is that it's actually not a lucrative business at all, even if you had the, even if rules were protectable, because if you haven't played it, you can buy one rule book.
00:33:28
Speaker
and be good for a whole five-person group for years and years. Because you only need one rule book, really. And once you learn the rules, you don't need to look at it that much. In my campaign, we have three rule books. Really, we don't really need all three. And most of the time, they are close.
00:33:49
Speaker
Um, so it's not a very, it's not a huge business where the business really is, is like, you know, figurines and maps and, uh, all kinds of stuff that can copyright. Uh, and they are, they are definitely doing that. Um, and. Excuse me. Uh, and, uh, that's where they, you know, maybe they overstepped here and trying to go for the rules.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah. And sort of importantly, because this wasn't really clear to me at the, at the start of this, you've said it several times, but it only applies to tabletop games, right? This doesn't apply to anything else, like video games that are built upon the rule to the extent they can be built upon the rules. None of that, that is not licensed under the OGL, right? That all they're free to, I assume still monetize.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's, uh, oh, you mean like video games could use the, uh, the, well, some video games have used the OGL. Yeah, for sure. If you've played a divinity original sin or heard of it, uh, I believe those use the OGL because those are those use the, uh, Hutchinson dragons rule set, uh, like Baldur's gate and like never winter nights, aren't those based on the same too? Yep. Um, and so those would be based on, those would be licensed under the OGL. They were using.
00:35:12
Speaker
Wizards of the coast IP theoretically licensed thunder. Okay, right Yeah, and that's one thing that people were saying that prompted this was Dungeons and Dragons is a brand. It's a It's a big brand
00:35:26
Speaker
And they want to control it. And they have this OGL out here that says anybody and everybody can use it. You accept this license by using it. So they have basically no control over their brand, even though it's true that you can't say you're Dungeons & Dragons.
00:35:46
Speaker
You can put Dungeons and Dragons compatible and people understand what the OGL is. And you could say I'm using the OGL license. And that was something that people were concerned with with D&D. And that gets into their stated justifications for why they why they did this whole deal. Which I can get into now, which is so there was a huge popular uprising because people love their system. They love getting third party content.
00:36:14
Speaker
And all of these third party companies who make campaigns that are not Wizards of the Coast had themselves a little revolt and said, we have no reason to keep using your OGL then.
Wizards of the Coast's Justifications and Legal Debates
00:36:26
Speaker
We have no reason to keep using it. Because they make money. But from what I understand, the margins are actually really low. It is not 25%. They don't have 25% to give Wizards of the Coast.
00:36:40
Speaker
And so Wizards of the Coast came out with a statement after like a week after the update. And these are the three reasons why they said they published the OGL and this is like maybe made things worse.
00:36:58
Speaker
A lot. They're number one reason. This is the first set. This is the second sentence. When we initially conceived David Letterman style, uh, top, top, bottom three. Can you hear this? When we initially conceived of revising the OGL is with three major goals in mind. First.
00:37:19
Speaker
We wanted the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products. I am super on board with this. Nazis out of games. I mean, Nazis can be in the games if it's Wolfenstein. Here's the thing. Do you actually believe that that's the number one goal? That's the real question.
00:37:38
Speaker
So I think it's entirely possible. I am not in the D&D world, so I don't know this. But I know enough to know that there are some undesirable elements that have really latched on to D&D. And so I haven't done it partially because I don't want to pollute my YouTube algorithm and history here. But I bet you that there is a deep, deep hole that you can go down with like Nazi D&D stuff.
00:38:07
Speaker
I'm willing to wait. Oh, yeah, really? Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
00:38:12
Speaker
It won't, again, it can't say it is D&D, but it's out there for sure. I believe that that is true. I didn't comb through the two page OGL to see if this was the case, but I don't know if they can deauthorize things specifically because of offensive content. I think that that is a great reason to write a new OGL or a revision to the OGL.
00:38:40
Speaker
to keep the Nazis from using your cool stuff. Okay, so let me let me go through the three reasons. And then I'm going to go to the actual leaked full version of the new license, because it's kind of illuminating on their priorities. Second, they said they wanted to address those attempting to use D&D in web three and blockchain and NFTs to stop that from happening.
00:39:07
Speaker
NFT people just as bad as Nazis. So I'm on board. Spicy take from Andrew. And third, we wanted to ensure OGLs for the content creator, the home brewer, aspiring designer, our players in the community, not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purposes.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah. So this is, this is our product. We want to be the ones monetizing it. We don't care so much about, you know, little mom and pop or, uh, you know, the guy, the stranger things kids writing their own campaign. Like we don't care about that. We care about these folks who are raking in more money than we are on our idea. Yeah. They jealous. Um, so, Oh,
00:39:57
Speaker
So I understand. You poor Hasbro subsidiary. I understand. You want to make out of money. You want to monetize that under monetized brand. But maybe you're trying to squeeze blood from a stone because this is not particularly
00:40:20
Speaker
protected. This content is not particularly protected. But as for the hateful content, so they're saying they are deauthorizing OGL. And we discussed a little bit about how maybe that's okay. You can deauthorize OGL 1.0.
00:40:36
Speaker
And they're saying, no more of this. Another IP lawyer was saying that that is akin to revocation because the license in the OGL does not say it's irrevocable.
00:40:51
Speaker
And apparently the default, this is according to this IP lawyer who, he says he's an IP lawyer, I don't know, I'm not. But he says that if a license doesn't say it's irrevocable, then it's revocable. In which case that means that if there is hateful content out there, they can already revoke 1.0 licenses for that.
00:41:15
Speaker
They can already go to somebody publishing hateful stuff under the OGL and revoke it as of now. But under the new one, so under OGL 1.1, this is the entirety of the operative language when it comes to hateful content. You will not use any of the content or works covered by Section 1 for any harmful, discriminatory, illegal, obscene, or harassing purposes.
00:41:45
Speaker
That's not a lot, but also it's not like very good. What's an obscene purpose? It didn't say that you can't use it for obscene content. It said you can't use it for an obscene purpose.
00:42:04
Speaker
Like playing a game. I think you're splitting hairs. Do something obscene. Yeah. But that's what that's what we're going to do in a lawsuit. It said use for discriminatory purposes. So let's say you publish a Nazi, a Nazi book and you say, I'm not using it for discriminatory purposes. It's just, it's just racist content is discriminatory. Right. Right. It's just, you know, it's for the father. My purpose is to see the fellow Nazis.
00:42:35
Speaker
You know, that's not just nobody's going to buy. Like, yeah, that's not what my purpose isn't. I don't think anybody other than Nazis is going to know I exist. So it very least seems very brief. Like if this is their number one reason for revoking an old license or the previous license and issuing a new one, you would expect it would be perhaps a little bit more robust. Yeah, that's as opposed to the, you know, the royalty version.
00:43:02
Speaker
is, the royalty language is like a couple, many paragraphs. They hammered that out pretty well. Yeah, it's, it has a whole reporting structure and registration structure, tiers, you know. But apparently, here's the thing. That's what I'm telling you. I've been playing Deadlifts Africa this whole time. Plot twist. I think you guys are right. I think that was actually number one.
00:43:29
Speaker
Because because they immediately like they're just like we don't need a royalty. We don't need a royalty We don't care like please stick around But they they really I think I think you're right. I think they want to protect their brand because Because they're putting movies out man. Did you guys know there's a Dungeons and Dragons movie coming out? I
00:43:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There's a, it's, it's got like a not, uh, inconsiderable cast. It's got, who's the guy who's the guy who played Kirk on the Star Trek reboot. It's got that guy. Yeah. It's got, it's got a killer cast actually. Like I don't, I don't know if it's going to be good, but I really liked the cast. It's what Timothy Oliphant. Is that who it is? Oh gosh. I don't know. Hang on one sec. You keep talking. I'll look it up. I hear your clickety clack.
00:44:19
Speaker
of quality games made from games. I'm thinking of battleship, the movie, which I didn't see, but I understand to be mostly a punch line. It's got Chris Pine. I don't know why I thought it was Timothy Hallifant.
00:44:32
Speaker
Jumanji, you're forgetting Jumanji. Was there a Jumanji game? I actually don't know. I don't think I was assuming that. There was no way. But you know, you know what is a good. OK, this is going to be my most galaxy brain take of the podcast so far. You know, it's a good role playing game movie, the Lego movie.
00:45:00
Speaker
because that was all about that dude role-playing his Legos in his basement. I don't know if you haven't seen the Lego movie, spoilers. It's a dude playing Legos in his basement and that's the whole thing. That sounds horrible. That sounds like a terrible movie. It's an awesome movie. The Lego movie, the animated one. Anyway.
00:45:24
Speaker
Now you know. But yeah, so they want their brand to be strong. But what really seems like they screwed up here is Paizo and these little companies were not making that much money.
00:45:41
Speaker
And that's who they really threatened. They weren't making enough where it's worth it when D&D, the reason why they pulled back was they were making like 30 bucks a month off of, that is, versus the coast, was making like 30 bucks a month off of people paying a subscription for tools online, which is extremely protectable, extremely monetizable. And they were about to come out with new digital stuff.
00:46:07
Speaker
for Dungeons and Dragons stuff, they have a digital store, all stuff that they can really easily monetize and sell a lot of, especially if they bring in those third parties. But they wanted, they were going after, you know, maybe they would have done a little bit different if it hadn't leaked, but they were going after these third parties.
00:46:33
Speaker
Um, and they were giving them like seven days notice. One, another thing that's making it worse for them is that they keep saying this is a draft and like, it's an ongoing conversation.
Future Strategies for Wizards and Community Reactions
00:46:43
Speaker
Uh, but they had given binding contracts to a lot of third parties and said, you have three, you have seven days. You either take this contract or you, you, uh, whoops. Uh, you either take this contract or you stick with the riffraff with the normal OGL.
00:47:02
Speaker
for that everybody else is going to deal with. They were offering sweetheart deals to certain publishers. I don't understand how 25% of revenues makes it out the door. I understand they're under monetized. I'm with you. I got all that. But 25% of revenue just seems outlandish. Of course, there's going to be backlash. That's an insane amount of money.
00:47:26
Speaker
And so I've been tooting off on this on s.social or Mastodon Instance. I think they would have been a lot better off. They can have the brand protection parts. But imagine if they updated the OGL to say, if you create a PDF version of your
00:47:51
Speaker
of your game, you have to sell it on our marketplace. You have to make digital tools. Then you get your your 25 percent because then you play. You do the Apple. You make your your little app store. And you have no actual protection. Other people can, you know, can come and can can find it in other places. But you get your Apple store and then you get your line of cut without saying it.
00:48:21
Speaker
I know. Yeah. And like Apple, you point to it, the same no hateful speech, like the content concerns, right? That's what you use the same argument. Look, we're just trying to keep all of all of this clean. We're trying to keep it a safe place, etc. That's it. Yeah, I think it's a great argument. Or a great, you know, route they should have taken. Hasbro, hit me up if you need, you know, business advice.
00:48:45
Speaker
Um, yeah. So I think that you are underselling it just a little bit here. So for whatever it's worth, cause we don't get to look at the internal books of Paizo, right? But Paizo, according to these, uh, according to my Google search, which obviously is going to be correct and not at all, uh, suspicious or subject to review or contest.
00:49:06
Speaker
Paizo's estimated annual revenue is $34.7 million per year and they have 156 employees. It's not like a small operation. I don't know if they do anything else that they generate revenue from other sources, but it's not an inconsiderable business.
00:49:29
Speaker
But I like just like quickly googling it. I had found one that says 12 million. I found one that says 5 million. I mean, it's not a considerable, but like they're also sending people to you.
00:49:42
Speaker
It's like, yeah, you could try to get a piece of that, but they are generating more money for you just by existing when they don't necessarily have to send that to you. That's the real thing, is that they are making that money, but your entitlement to that money is so weak.
00:50:02
Speaker
because they can just copy your rules. They can really just copy your rules. Well, that's gonna be the true test here. The true test is gonna be, all right, now that, and apparently, spoiler, I guess, for when Jake talks about this in two minutes, but apparently Wizards of the Coast is backing off of the whole monetization scheme, at least for now. But if that's the case, if Wizards of the Coast is gonna monetize this, then great. We'll have a little test and a battle about
00:50:31
Speaker
Whether, whatever it is that Pyzos or whoever Pyzos is standing in for anybody who's monetizing the D&D content through OGL, either 1.0 or 1.1, we're going to find out just how valuable that IP is if they try to make something without it.
00:50:51
Speaker
And yeah, so they came out with a new statement today, but they've had a couple of statements. But they are now totally redopting or totally changing how they're going to go about this story.
00:51:05
Speaker
or about updating the OGL. They're going to publish a beta version of the OGL sometime this week and for feedback. And that version will not include any license back. That was also a huge
00:51:24
Speaker
part of the problem with the original one is that anybody who created content based on the OGL automatically gave Wizards of the Coast the ability to do whatever they wanted with that content. Yeah. Let's begin with that for a second because that happens in Section 12 of the OGL 1.1, right? And that section is basically about, hey, look, we don't want to run into we Wizards of the Coast. When we're developing content under our own D&D,
00:51:54
Speaker
property, we don't want to bump into other people's ideas that they're developing simultaneously and basically get blocked out of this new development and new creative sort of spin off of our own intellectual property just because somebody else is doing it at the same time that we are. And so that license back is pretty draconian and heavy handed. And if you look at it through the lens of what they're doing in 12A,
00:52:24
Speaker
Uh, or in section 12 overall, like they're trying to make sure that they get the fair opportunity to develop and like, oops, we accidentally came up with the same idea for, you know, prismatic mind flayers of the depths of Grimordia or something like that. Like if they stumble upon the same thing, yeah.
00:52:46
Speaker
real time coming up with that there. But if we stumble upon the same idea, the same new mechanic, the same kind of character at the same time, like I think they even say it in the OGL 1.1, like accidents happen or great minds think alike or something like that. And so they don't want to get blocked out of their own IP.
00:53:05
Speaker
That's their explanation. Here's the actual words. You agree to give us a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensible, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose. So it's like, oh, this is our explanation.
00:53:25
Speaker
We get to use anything you use. You make forever. We get to give that to anybody else. We get to make money selling that to anybody else. That's the you know, so they they can say they have a bunch of like kind of fanciful explanations of what they're trying to do. But you know, if I'm one of the third party companies, you're not banking on that explanation. It says you say you get a forever license for anything we make and you get to sell it to whoever you want.
00:53:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's not acceptable. But that's not going to be included in the new version. Or that's what they say.
00:54:03
Speaker
Time will tell. That's coming out this week. To be clear, that was not in the regular old Schmo OGL license 1.1. That was in the commercialized, we're selling this for profit. So for people who are not selling it for profit, people who are just making it on their own and not
00:54:27
Speaker
demanding compensation in order to share it with anybody else. They're not getting that license back provision, but when you start being a company or even an individual who's selling these things, then you get that license back provision.
00:54:43
Speaker
and uh it literally in the preamble jake you're selling it short a little bit here cuz you're reading twelve because that's the spicy one but the preamble in section twelve says sometimes great minds think alike we can't and won't cancel products out of fear that they'd be viewed as similar to
00:54:59
Speaker
be viewed as similar to licensed works. And so they're telling you in the actual OGL 1.1, the commercial version of it, here's why we're doing it. It's not that you have to trust their words. It's literally in the contract. That's the motivation. And since it's in the four corners of the document, you get to use that to interpret the document.
00:55:21
Speaker
You can use it to interpret it, but the, the actual operative language is, you know, it is what it is. Yeah. They've said that they're taking it out now, which is like, okay, like you're not doing the bad thing that you threatened to do, but you still threatened to do it. And that still kind of sucks. And, and again, just to bring it like, you know, it just, every time it pops into my mind, if it's, if this is something that I'm a third, if I'm a piezo, like I can walk away from this the moment I want to.
00:55:52
Speaker
That's the thing. I don't need your OGL at all. I can make my own rules. I can make your exact same rules. I can say that my book is D&D compatible. I just have to potentially worry about you coming to fight me over something, but if I'm careful enough, then it's not even that big of a fight. And if I'm a big Paizo money-making machine like you say I am, then I'll beat you in court.
00:56:22
Speaker
So do you really want to roll that particular 20 sided die? Yeah, I don't know. Oh, exactly. There are some good, there are some good videos on this. Legal Eagle made a good video, but maybe brushed over the fact that actually you really want that, that, uh, certainty. You want to know that Wizards of the coast isn't going to come after you if you're a business.
00:56:42
Speaker
you don't want to deal with that.
00:56:59
Speaker
Lawsuits aren't fun for anybody but the lawyers and oftentimes not even fun for the lawyers. Neither of these companies I think is itching to sign up for this sort of legal battle the same way that Epic was itching to get dragged into a thing with Apple.
00:57:17
Speaker
That's a special case, probably motivated by a special set of personalities is my hunch. Nobody likes lawsuits. They're not fun. Yeah. I hate getting sued. I hate my client getting sued, not me getting sued. I've never been sued as far as I know. I love filing lawsuits. It's so fun. That's one of my favorite things to do is push the send button on filing a new lawsuit. I love it. Don't sue me, bro.
00:57:46
Speaker
I'm not going to sue you. Not yet. So, does Wizards of the Coast sort of harm their position by backpedaling them? I mean, like, if you take it on face value, the reasons for their, you know, revoking and issuing 1.1, it seems, well, then why, how can you backpedal? I mean, you can't, you got to protect the hateful content, you got to monetize, you got to protect your IP. Why are you listening to a bunch of nerds, you know, a human cry?
00:58:14
Speaker
Well, they're backpedaling temporarily. They're not saying that they're not going to kick the Nazis out. And they're not going to say that, you know, the pornographic Dungeons and Dragons stuff is going to be allowed to continue unabated. What they're doing is temporarily backpedaling, especially as it relates to the royalty provisions and the license back provisions. I think those are the ones that people got primarily upset about.
00:58:39
Speaker
and probably some of the ambiguity about what happens with all of the stuff that we created under OGL 1.0. I think that there's a pretty clear answer to that, that things that were created under the intellectual property that was created under OGL 1.0 is going to continue on
00:58:58
Speaker
governed by OGL 1.0 and only the stuff that's generated going forward had OGL 1.1 hung in there and become the open gaming license, then it was only going to be things that are developed from the date of the inception of OGL 1.1 going forward.
00:59:19
Speaker
not developed so much as published, decided upon is like, what do you do with projects that are midstream? If they're not published, they probably go under OGL 1.1, but I'm far from a copyright or a patent or trademark lawyer. So I may be totally wrong about that.
00:59:34
Speaker
I think it would depend on whatever Wizards of the Coast says. They would have to put out some announcement saying, OGL 1.0 is hereby deauthorized. Here is OGL 1.1. And then if you're a gaming company that has not yet published something, then I don't know, you make your estoppel argument in court if you really want to go to court.
00:59:59
Speaker
I believe they also clarified that any existing works will not have to be taken off the ship, will not have to stop getting printed if they want to stay under the OGL 1.0 license. I think the reason that they backpedal is so that they don't completely nuke their entire business and destroy all of their goodwill
01:00:21
Speaker
And probably what they're doing is like, oh, okay. We thought that we were doing a good thing here to get rid of the Nazis. It turns out that we also did some bad things at the same time. So we're going to want to hear from you guys about how to fix all this so that we can get the Nazis out and also not make all of you enraged at the same time.
01:00:43
Speaker
Because you still have to deauthorize 1.0 in order to kick the Nazis out, right? Yeah. I mean, that deauthorization, and there is some, I imagine, among some of the D&D fans, there's some concern just with the fact that they are deauthorizing the old license at all. They're not interested in hearing why. The fact that you seeded that in the original, and now you're using that sort of backdoor to get rid of 1.0, I can imagine some percentage of players will be put off by that, no matter what the reasoning is.
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, and I've been trolling D&D memes and the D&D subreddit to see the reaction to all this. And yeah, they see even the most recent statements seem pretty clear, like the implication is the OGL 1.0 is going to be deauthorized.
01:01:37
Speaker
And you're not going to be able to create content out of that license anymore. And some people are definitely mad about that. And I think having that licensing, that royalty provision and that license back provision in the leaked version definitely made everybody think that any change, like they're just going to view this whole change as a money grabbing scheme, like no matter what they say.
01:02:00
Speaker
even if the primary goal is actually to take control of the brand. And they definitely had to do something because the Walkback was prompted by people canceling existing subscriptions for D&D Beyond, which is the online service monetizable. They're about to come out with a new version of D&D called 1D&D, which has, I guess, some kind of online element.
01:02:29
Speaker
and that they were hoping to, you know, to monetize heavily because and then nobody that that potentially could have physical books where other people could build and maybe online components where they could be the marketplace for and pull the Apple Store deal and they didn't want to ruin those launches. So or D&D beyond is already exists, but one D&D they didn't want to ruin. So
01:02:56
Speaker
OGL 1.0 needs to go anyway because it is not a perfect contract. It is missing certain key things like there's no merger clause in there that says that
01:03:13
Speaker
all of that this is the entire agreement between the parties and that no other agreements exist and that all prior agreements are extinguished by this agreement emerged into it. Like it's missing. That's a boilerplate thing that should be in a contract. It should be in there and it's boilerplate because it belongs in basically every contract and it's not in there. So like OGL 1.0 needs to go. It needs revision.
01:03:41
Speaker
Maybe not exactly the revisions that it got and the way that those revisions were rolled out, that probably could have been solved by some good PR department work. But OGL 1.0 needs to change. It doesn't necessarily have to change like this, but it needs to change.
01:04:04
Speaker
Well, I can't claim to be part of the community or something. I've like played like seven total times or something like that. You're an OG. You're a D&D carpet bagger. Yeah, I am. I am like your local. Somebody. Yeah. I'm like the this. This is the like equivalent of when The New York Times goes to like an Indiana diner and is like, what are the diner people saying? And the diner people. I like that. Yeah.
01:04:31
Speaker
the diner people. That's where I encountered them. They live there. That's their only identity is that they're in a diner. I think Esquiring Minds has its first meme, the diner people meme. What are the diner people going to say, Jake? Yeah. Oh, you can read plenty of New York Times articles about that.
01:04:49
Speaker
All right. Well, fellas, thanks for the interesting discussion. This is a really interesting topic. I had a lot of fun with, uh, what little bit of homework that I did against my will to do all of this. Uh, so I guess now every week we've been doing, uh, we've been doing recommendations or just like summaries of what's going
Personal Stories and Recommendations
01:05:10
Speaker
on. Uh, I guess, uh, Andrew, what's been going on with you or what recommendations do you have for us?
01:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I have a little bit of both. What's been going on is I've had a dog that has had a series of surgeries for bladder stones. So my recommendation is to not have your dog have bladder stones. And if you do to hire someone to take care of them post-op or something, I've been doing nothing but just carrying this poor old guy outside and stuff. And so nothing really exciting happening over here. How about you, Jake?
01:05:46
Speaker
I sadly have another dog with health problems of his own, an old pit bull. He's winding outside of my office as we speak because he's just got back from the bet. But on lighter note, we're all nerds here, but I maybe go a little harder on that. Sure do.
01:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, and I apologize for how the gamers are about to take over all the culture with all of our adaptations the way that comic book nerds have done with cinema, which also I also watch a lot of comic book movies. But so.
01:06:29
Speaker
You know, there's been a lot of video game adaptations in history. But finally, one is happening. For a high profile franchise, somebody's really putting in effort. And of course, I'm talking about Nier Automata versus 1.1 anime on Crunchyroll.
01:06:49
Speaker
Uh, I'm not an anima guy, but near automata is, uh, a very unique gaming franchise that is like unique with a very unique story. Uh, unique is binary. It either is or it isn't. It is extremely, it is 90, 95% one of a kind.
01:07:13
Speaker
Honestly. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I'm so filled with rage right now. Jason is sweating immediately. Yeah. Oh my goodness. On the spectrum of uniqueness. I got to turn off my mic for a minute. I got to turn off my mic now. On the spectrum of uniqueness, it's like, you know, pretty far out there. But yeah, that's, if you're an anime person, I'd recommend it. Also, The Last of Us is getting an adaptation on HBO. Somebody did that, I guess.
01:07:42
Speaker
How about you Jason? You're really burying the lead there because it's hard to be out in the world at all without hearing about The Last of Us right now, which I haven't watched yet. My recommendation right now is I have, I really like, I have watched all three of the currently published seasons of the show on Apple TV Plus for all mankind. This is a show that is basically
01:08:08
Speaker
What if the space race continued between the Soviet Union and the United States? And so the show starts off in the summer of 1969 with the moon landing. Gosh, I really hope it was 1969 that that happened. We'll be really embarrassed if I'm wrong about that. Okay, good. And then spoiler, heavy spoiler, do the spoiler horn. Okay, your time to fast forward has skipped ahead.
01:08:37
Speaker
the Soviets make it to the moon first and they win the space race to the moon. I love all three seasons of this. They've progressively gotten better, but now I'm going back and rewatching season one and holy smokes, like free watching truly excellent shows and sort of peeling back the layers of the onion that you didn't catch the first time or recognize the importance of it the first time. Like that's a really cool part, a really cool experience.
01:09:05
Speaker
strong recommendation for the show For All Mankind. It is a good like character drama with some sci-fi wrinkles, but not like, you know, Star Trek Star Wars sci-fi. More like what if history had been a little different sci-fi? And that's really fun. I like that. So cool. Strong recommend for For All Mankind.
01:09:28
Speaker
I will quickly circle back. I didn't make a recommendation. I just talked about a sick dog and that's sad. So I'll conclude with, uh, everybody should go watch the Mandalorian season three trailer, right? Oh yeah. Whatever. No, no, just the trailer. It looks cool. Looking forward to it. And, uh, I enjoyed our, uh, chat this evening, uh, fellas. Pleasure talking. Bye world. Goodbye world. Bye world. Bye world.