From 8-Bit to 4K Episode 26: Crashing Out?

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to from 8bit to 4k. I'm pillow pet, your host this week and with me I have the ever present Mike, Many names and Jackson. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Damn, I was hoping to steal that one from you permanently. [00:00:26] Speaker C: So that's Mike. I'm Jax. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Yes. And we are back again this week to discuss all things video games related. And we got a good. I've got an excited episode. I think there's gonna be a lot of discussion. So I'm pretty excited. But first I want to do a shout out to our Patreons at the shout out tier. We got Codex, Ninja Labana, Uncle Chrisco, Eat the Dab, Skippy, Esquire and of course myself speaking of Patreon, the Patreon we have. You can come in and donate $1 a month and that'll just tell you, tell us that you love us. $5 a month. We'll get you an exclusive feed of some behind the scene audio prep work before each show. $10 a month gets you that same feed. We'll also shout out your name during the intro of every episode. And this also extends to our other podcast, the four words podcast that is part of our network. And you get the same benefits and you get extra show every two weeks. So it's very worth it. And we talk about a lot of things. Join our discord. The link is in the episode description and come to talk to us. Talk with us about games and tell us what you think of our opinions and topics. Give us some ideas, give us some games that you'd like us to play. We are always looking for new games to play together and that's. Guys, what have you been up to? Oh wait, you know what? I keep forgetting to change us around. We do not do small talk first anymore. So I'm going to introduce our first topic tonight. We are going to be talking about highly influential games in history and that helped change the industry forever. Jax, because I'm interested to hear about this, I want you to take charge. What do you got? [00:02:16] Speaker C: Alright, so I'm gonna tell you guys the story about a game you've probably never heard of. I have played this game. It's really good. Designed and made by Tim Sweeney who at the time his company was called Potomac Computer Systems. You may know his company nowadays as Epic Games. That Tim Sweeney. Yes, that one. This game is called zzt. ZZT does not stand for anything. It is just the name of it. It's just a nonsense name, intentionally so. And ZZT was a top down adventure game. You Controlled a character. Everything was ASCII art, so like letters and symbols from keyboards and stuff like that. And you controlled this character and you wandered around a world and you could interact with NPCs, you could fight enemies, solve puzzles. It was fairly sophisticated for 1991. And the thing that made ZZT special, the like secret sauce, that was the reason that this game is important. For whatever reason, the way Tim Sweeney decided to build this, he had the level editor that he used to make the worlds that he made in ZZT included with zzt. So anyone who bought ZZT could then go and make their own ZZT worlds. It had a scripting language so you could code the NPCs, code puzzles, code mini games, whatever you want using this scripting language. And in 1991, that didn't exist there. There was nothing like this in 1991. The fact that you could buy a video game and then make stuff for that video game. We didn't have Doom yet. We didn't have anything like that. ZZT is, as far as I'm aware, the earliest example of this that was this robust, where you could actually use the tools the developer did and make real games out of this game. And that's the important magic of what made ZZT great. The actual gameplay. I mean, it's fine by 1991 standards, but it's really simplistic. But because people could make their own levels on early Internet, because the Internet existed in 1991, it was dial up and it was largely like bulletin boards and stuff like that, people started posting their ZZT worlds that they created. I personally played this game in this time period and I literally. My. My uncle is the one who exposed me to it, and my cousins and I would save worlds we made on floppy disks. And when we visited. He lives 60 miles away. When we visited, we would trade floppy disks and so we could then play each other's worlds. ZZT was incredible. And the success of zzt, Tim Sweeney was selling a few copies a day in 1991. In 1991, he was making about $100 a day off this. And this prompted him to found his company. Potomac Computer Systems was the original name of his company. That's what he released the company as. And because the game was so successful, he renamed it Epic Megagames and actually like established a headquarters and stuff. His dad continued fulfilling mail orders under the original address when people would send the old information to buy the game. Because this was old enough, you had to mail Order the game. It wasn't really sold in stores because he didn't have the resources to publish it in stores. It was a shareware game. Shareware was basically like a demo that you were encouraged to copy that floppy and share that demo to your friends. [00:06:21] Speaker B: How often have people heard that nowadays? [00:06:23] Speaker C: Right? And the shareware game, in addition to a demo of ZZT, had the level editor so you could make your own ZZT worlds. With the shareware version, it was missing a couple of the features and then it had a nag screen when you went to exit, saying, hey, if you enjoyed this, you can buy the full game by mailing to this address. And Tim Sweeney's dad continued fulfilling those mail orders when they came in until 2013. [00:06:53] Speaker B: Damn. Missed my chance, right? [00:06:57] Speaker C: It's incredibly important, not only because it's the first of its kind that was this accessible. Like I said, I made ZZT levels as a kid. If floppies didn't, you know, rot, I probably would still have those floppies somewhere. But they're no good anymore. It resulted in epic games. We would not have Unreal. If not for zzt, he would have gone on and worked for some other company and done something else. We would not have Unreal. That's how important ZZT is. And then also here's the other thing that is a reason this game is so influential. Tons of like, important game designers, some indie, some other, like major industry designers, have stated that ZZT was their first, like, exposure to the fact that they could make video games too. ZZT resulted in so many people growing up and wanting to be video game developers, which is one of the most important parts of its legacy. And why I think ZZT is one of the most important video games ever made is ZZT created a generation of game devs. Specific games that have stated they're inspired by ZZT include games like Frog Fractions 2, if you've heard of that. It was a viral hit a couple years ago. I think the more modern comparison would be Pillow's game he wants to talk about. So, Pillow, why don't you tell us about your first one on your list? [00:08:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So to me, the most influential game is Minecraft. And I know everybody's heard of Minecraft for a lot of this reason. And it's especially important to me because this is created, helped influence a genre that I am, I hold very dear to myself and that is crafting survival games. And why I think Minecraft, and don't get me wrong, there were other survival type crafting games before Minecraft, but nothing as influential as Minecraft itself. What Minecraft was, if you've never played it or haven't really dabbled in it because you thought it was too, too much of a kids game or anything, it was. You are a block person, Steve, and you spawn in this randomly generated seeded map with your fists and that is it. And you go punch things to get materials to create other things so you can create tools to continue crafting and upgrading yourself to punch better things with your tools, to continue to get blocks, to keep crafting, to kill enemies, to scavenge food so you can continue to survive. And it was such a open world concept. And I don't think originally like when it came out with the survival mode, there was no story, it was just a sandbox. You were just thrown in there and you were just surviving and there was nothing else to it and it was just fun. You could get on with your friends and you guys could create your own worlds. The sky was your limit as far as what you could create. There has been some amazing creations that came from Minecraft. You can even build computers and play other games in Minecraft. People have created computers to play. I forget some of the games games in Minecraft and I mean it's really hard to. Because I know everybody, a lot of people know what Minecraft is unlike zzt. But Minecraft being the game that it was just opened up the world to seeing how, seeing how popular it was to create and continue to build on its success and make other successful games in this genre. Not exactly the block formation, but I'm trying to think games like, off the top of my head. You got like Valheim, Valheim Power. All these open world sandbox survival games would, I would think wouldn't be as successful or even there at all if it wasn't for the idea of a survival aspect where you craft in a game. I just, that's. It's right. Everybody, if you've heard me talk knows I love a good survival crafting game. And so that's. To me, Minecraft is super important just for all the games that I play. Mike. [00:11:32] Speaker B: Indeed. So I'm, I'm in a weirdly different position from the others here in that there was one name that kept popping up to me over and over and over again and I couldn't, I couldn't think of anything else to talk about. It was, it was just a company or it was a company, not just a game. Because so many games that I have played have been influenced by this company and what they released. And that is the classic Blizzard. The probably. Well, I don't think it was. They weren't 70, so 80s to mid 2000s Blizzard that defined what genres were in certain senses and created a couple of new ones. We're going to start farther back. I mean we're going to talk about like the Lost Vikings is one of those early puzzle games that's platformer puzzle that it wasn't one of the ones that everyone will look up to, but it was one of the ones that was most accessible to bring around. And it was just so well made. You will talk about people in the industry talking about how this is an important game more than you will hear customers talking because a lot less people played it that weren't so heavily influenced by it that they went on to do more things with the industry. They really captured that spirit. Rock and roll racing, unfortunately the genre really hasn't kept going, but for the time it sort of just hit a click with people. It had, if I remember rightly, rock and roll racing was funny as fuck. It had this. This was really where like Blizzard's signature humor started and that they would continue on into everything that they made. Even in the stuff that is not super humorous. Like Starcraft, which defined what RTS can be. I know Dune 2 was the one that like created the formula that they all follow. RTS would not have been a genre that has existed as long as it has without StarCraft. In fact, the genre would not continue to exist without Starcraft because essentially the main game that is left is Starcraft 2. [00:13:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:54] Speaker B: Before the word ARPG was invented, everything was a Diablo clone. We use phrases like Rogue likes to talk about everything with the genre that talks about what Rogue did. Rogue, another game that we're not going to talk about, but heavily influential. You can't call something Diablo like. So we called them Diablo clones because it did such a perfect job of [00:14:14] Speaker C: the dungeon crawl in exactly the same way that we used to call first person shooters Doom clones before the term first person shooter got popularized. [00:14:22] Speaker B: We can keep going forward with this. The way multiplayer worked on the Internet with the initial application of Battle.net in Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 2 that allowed multiplayer games online is a thing that Blizzard made. You wouldn't have multiplayer maps without them. A lot of ladder games exist because of like how Blizzard created things. They defined clans with Warcraft 3. So many things and it is the most popular. And I don't know if we can call it the most influential because of EverQuest. But World of Warcraft is the name you think of when you think of MMOs. [00:15:08] Speaker C: I was gonna say, do you want to pause and let Pillow talk about his other highly influential game before you continue? [00:15:13] Speaker B: You can go right there with EverQuest because it is the one that spawned it. [00:15:18] Speaker A: I'll jump in and then we'll continue to talk a little bit about Blizzard because, you know, the same thing about Blizzard is so many games have been created and we've talked about it in the past because of Blizzard in their games, but EverQuest is the first MMO that you think of when you talk about older MMOs. MMOs. [00:15:38] Speaker C: It's not the first MMO. [00:15:40] Speaker A: Not the first MMO by any means, but it is the first one that you think of when you think of older original MMOs. It was the first one that caused DDoS attacks. Like, it was the first one that crashed the Internet, bricking the Internet like completely back in the day when the [00:15:57] Speaker B: Internet was really hard to deal with. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't get a whole lot of opportunities to play EverQuest because I was still pretty young when this came out and it wasn't something that really interested me. But I have learned a lot from watching history and history of gaming EverQuest and I do believe still today is still a very popular game with the people that enjoy is. It revolutionized in MMO worlds. And that's. That's where Mike was headed to now. It passed on that crown to someone who took their formula and made it their own, but better and revolutionized the genre again. So Mike, please continue. [00:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah, like without EverQuest, wow would not have taken off. But if you think of modern MMOs [00:16:55] Speaker C: in a more literal sense than you may realize, because World of Warcraft literally was made by a couple of Blizzard employees who could not play EverQuest and hired a couple of their friends in EverQuest because they wanted to make a better EverQuest. [00:17:13] Speaker B: They had their frustrations, but their boss looked at them and went, why are you still playing this when you could make it? And they went, yeah. Oh, we could, couldn't we? [00:17:22] Speaker C: Quite literally, EverQuest is the direct progenitor of World of Warcraft in a way that almost no game ever has. A direct progenitor. [00:17:30] Speaker B: Yeah, Its influence cannot be understated here in that EverQuest is the reason WoW exists. WoW then went on to be the single most dominant MMO that is still running and is still the most profitable MMO and the most well known MMO and the most played MMO 25 years later, almost well 20. [00:17:55] Speaker A: There have been dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of quote unquote WOW killers. There has never been an MMO that has been released since World of Warcraft other than maybe Guild wars, the first Guild wars that has come even close to the popularity of World of Warcraft and continued popularity. Wars is still a good okay, Final Fantasy. That's another very good [00:18:24] Speaker B: to create a new genre for it. So it is a game that had to kill itself completely because it was poorly made and then replicate stuff with wow and then formulate on again because they tried to make a WOW killer and went, damn, we can't do it. [00:18:41] Speaker C: Yep. And Final Fantasy 14, to be clear, is the only other successful MMO that is still going. [00:18:48] Speaker A: You know, it's, it's funny we call [00:18:49] Speaker B: it, but it's free. So it doesn't have the same. [00:18:53] Speaker A: In the same aspect. We call them Doom clones or diablo clones. Other MMOs are just classified as WOW killers. That is dominant. That is how dominant Blizzard is in making. Sorry, how dominant Blizzard was in making their games. They just made whatever they touched turn to gold. Everything they touched turned to gold because they, they, they, they had brilliant minds working for them in early Blizzard days. Like just everything they just, they printed money and they used that money to good use. [00:19:30] Speaker B: If you heard a Blizzard, Blizzard was making a new game, you went, okay, when is it coming out? I'm pre ordering it two years in advance. And then you'd hear they delayed it by another two years. And you went, yeah, they just couldn't get it done right. Obviously it's gonna be a good game [00:19:47] Speaker A: now because it was a very. [00:19:50] Speaker B: Yeah. If anything ever went wrong, you're like, well, obviously they need time and it'll, it'll come out good and consistently right up until Activision bought them. Essentially every single thing they touched turned to gold. And if they had to stop something, they went, damn, we better make something good to replace what we just lost. [00:20:14] Speaker A: That's going to kind of lead us into our next little micro topic that we wanted to discuss is we kind of wanted to flip the coin a little bit and talk a little bit more into the negative side of gaming where we. If you've been a video game player for a long time like we have, you've heard of, even if briefly, the crash of 1983. And our question is, and that we want to discuss and we're going to openly discuss it amongst each other's and we look forward to like, please come into our discord and tell us what you think too. Like, because this is going to be an open discussion. Are we on track for another video game crash like 1983? And let me. Let me preface this by saying when I think of the crash of 1983, the first game that comes to my mind is E.T. [00:21:09] Speaker C: yep. [00:21:09] Speaker A: And the reason that E.T. comes to mind is video games were so popular and people were just throwing money at the industry because it was fun. Video games were a very good, fun way to enjoy time at home. You didn't have to go to the arcade anymore if you were fortunate enough to have a home gaming system and a home tv. [00:21:30] Speaker B: This is. [00:21:30] Speaker A: This is a bad home tv. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Back when these were not guarantees. [00:21:35] Speaker A: And then Atari, Right? Jax, you said that's. Atari created ET ET and this will go from our topic I think we had a few episodes ago or even most recent, the worst movie adaptation ever. And I'm surprised we didn't talk about it. [00:21:53] Speaker C: We didn't talk about it because it's so infamous. There wasn't a point, etc. Is easily the most famously bad game that has ever been and probably will ever be. It is so famous, they made documentaries about going and unearthing all of the unsold ET Cartridges that were buried in the desert. That is how infamous ET Is. So I want to briefly give a little bit of an explanation because I'm not even old enough to remember the video game crash in 1983. I was born in 86. I want to explain what that was so that it will frame the context of why we're discussing. Are we on track for another one? In 1983, video games were doing great. The arcades were huge. Home video games were becoming a thing. And home video game consoles were prevalent. Tons of people had an Atari 2600, and many people had the competing consoles. There was the Odyssey, the Intellivision, Colecovision, another Atari console. The problem is a. You notice I just listed a whole bunch of different consoles. Do you know who makes any of those? Because I know the answer is, no, you don't. Mattel made the Intellivision. Magnavox made the Odyssey. When did you last think about Magnavox as a company? When did you last think about Mattel as a company? Okay, Mattel at least still exists. I think they still own Barbie. [00:23:20] Speaker B: You're not wrong. [00:23:21] Speaker C: So, like, they're at least still, you know, a relevant company. Just. They aren't a presence in video games. They're the second largest toy manufacturer in the world, behind Lego. So, like, Mattel's doing fine, but they made video games Once upon a time. And the reason the crash happened. The crash was a uniquely American phenomenon. To be clear, video games in Japan did not have a crash in 1983. [00:23:45] Speaker B: Video games in Europe were not big enough to be a thing. You think of video games as a worldwide phenomenon? No, it was pretty much just us as a market, Japan as a market, because Japan was half of the people who were making things, and the US was the other half. [00:24:00] Speaker C: Pretty much, there was video games in Europe, but it was not a large market at all. And it would have disappeared if we didn't have a recovery from the crash. But basically, in early Atari days and all these other consoles, there was no such thing as a third party developer. Atari published every game until Activision changed the rules on that. They literally sued Atari when Atari tried to prevent them from making games for the Atari 2600. So, yeah, that Activision, the one that we all hate today, that is one of the most evil companies in all of gaming, got its start literally fighting against big Atari to try to say, hey, everyone should be able to make video games. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Unfortunately, the terrible CEO was still the terrible CEO at the same time. [00:24:48] Speaker C: But, yeah, I think it was, in fact, Bobby Koedak. [00:24:52] Speaker B: It was. He is the one who stole the computers to create Activision. Yes. He stole a bunch of computers to create Activision. [00:24:58] Speaker C: Yes. But that created. That whole thing created an environment where anyone could make Atari games or the other consoles. Atari was the dominant console. Um, and the problem is anyone could make it, which meant that people made shitty games. A lot of shitty games. Now, I don't just mean games that are just genuinely bad, Buggy Unfun, but also, like, there are porn games on the Atari 2600. They're not good. [00:25:32] Speaker B: There's an. There's an infamously bad and, like, racist one with Custer's Revenge. That's it. [00:25:39] Speaker C: Yes, it's terrible. But all of these factors resulted in consumers as a whole going, it's 1983. There's no Internet. There's no reviews. There's, like, one video game magazine. How the fuck am I supposed to know if any of these games are good or not? I'm not gonna spend my $50 in 1982 money on new games. That's a lot of money in 1982. For context, that's well higher than any video game costs today. Unless you're buying the Super Deluxe Collector's Edition. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Yeah, essentially. Imagine every game is the highest Collector's edition possible, and you don't get anything [00:26:20] Speaker A: that jumps the game for just a Second, I just looked it up. $50 in 1982 is equivalent to $173 today. [00:26:30] Speaker C: Yeah, so imagine, yeah, imagine you're literally buying a Switch Lite every time you buy a game. That's about the price you're talking about here. And because there was so much shovelware and no way to differentiate whether the game was good, because the good games of this era were. Had names like Pitfall, Kaboom. How are you supposed to tell that apart from Beat Em and Eat Em, which is a terrible porn game for the Atari? They all look the same. You can't tell what's good and bad. So consumers in 1983 said fuck this and stopped buying them because they, they got burned. People spent $50 and got a terrible game and were unhappy and their kids were mad at them for buying this crappy video game. So they stopped buying video games. That's what the video game crash was. And the video game market didn't recover until I think 1985 is when Nintendo made a toy so that Toy Company stores would carry the Nintendo Entertainment System. That's what Rob the Robot is. Rob the Robot saved video games in America. [00:27:38] Speaker B: Toys R Us was essentially. Doesn't exist in most places anymore. Was the predominant way for kids to get toys and crafts and things for a long time. [00:27:48] Speaker C: Tangent. When I was In Canada in 2024, it was really surreal seeing a Toys R Us. They still exist in Canada. It's not the same company. Someone bought the like brand EB games. [00:28:01] Speaker B: That was the other video game fucking place. Oh my God. [00:28:05] Speaker C: Electronics boutique. But yeah, that was just. That was surreal to me. I was like, did I just go back in time? 20 years? But yeah, Toys R Us would not carry the Nintendo Entertainment System until it was the Nintendo because it was considered electronic, which. [00:28:23] Speaker B: They don't sell electronics. We sell toys. [00:28:25] Speaker C: Yes. So the Nintendo Entertainment System name refers to the Nintendo console and Rob the Robot. It was a bundle and that's how they trojan horsed it in. And then of course, no one actually gave a shit about Rob the Robot. But you know, parents bought it for their kids and took it home. And their kids played that and they're like, well, gyromite sucks, but this Mario game's fucking awesome. And so then people were willing to buy video games again. That was the 1983 to 1986. Essentially, like, video games were dead for three years in the U.S. arcades still existed, but home games were just. It was a dead market for three years. [00:29:06] Speaker B: Can you imagine a world we live in where Games are pretty much just foreign or arcade. [00:29:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Because again, Japan never had a video game crash. They were still making video games the entire time. This was a uniquely American phenomenon. So our topic is. That's. That's the history. Our topic is, are we on track to experience a version of that again in 2026? And why. Why are we discussing this? Why. Why do we think we might be on track? [00:29:36] Speaker A: Jax, I think you said the term that just describes this whole premise that brings us up. Shovelware. I. I would dare anybody to go on Steam right now. [00:29:49] Speaker C: All right, I'm going to do just that. I'm gonna go to popular new releases on Steam on August 17, 2026. [00:29:59] Speaker A: Let me. While you're doing that, I want to make sure I note that, like, most of this shovelware is Almost exclusive to PC. Almost exclusive to PCs. [00:30:12] Speaker B: There are two major, major markets. The bigger one is phone games. [00:30:18] Speaker C: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You don't even know. Okay. Have you guys ever looked at the Switch eShop? There is so much shovelware on the Switch eShop. [00:30:29] Speaker B: I'm aware there's a lot on that. [00:30:30] Speaker C: Oh, my God. [00:30:31] Speaker B: It's not more than there is in a phone. [00:30:33] Speaker C: So I would always. No, but it's. It's one of the, like. It's one of the four horsemen of the video game crash Apocalypse is. That's the ease of. [00:30:42] Speaker B: Kids are playing games. [00:30:43] Speaker C: There's so much shovelware on the Switch where the kids are. That is going to disenfranchise kids from video games as a whole. [00:30:52] Speaker B: This is where I'm going to start arguing with you immediately because of something that happened when I went with someone else and we talked about something that was going on with a. Not E3, but whatever. E3. The game development thing that went on. One of my friends was at this conference and he was talking with somebody else who was like. So we. We put down our game and we wanted people to test it, and we had the controller down and we had the keyboard in front of it, and the kid pushed aside the controller, pushed aside the keyboard, and tried to start pushing the screen. Because they've never done anything besides play tablet games or phone games. [00:31:27] Speaker C: Yep. [00:31:28] Speaker B: They don't even recognize what a controller is. [00:31:31] Speaker C: Yep. [00:31:32] Speaker A: That's true. [00:31:33] Speaker C: And that's emblematic of what these things have caused. Now, you mentioned the Steam thing, so I want to just read off some of the titles that I'm seeing on August 17th on Steam on popular new releases. Popular new releases, mind you, because I have not heard of a single One of these. And maybe that's a me problem. Now remember, I'm me. I definitely have the mature content turned on. So there's gonna be one of those. A couple of those. [00:32:00] Speaker B: Okay, let's go. [00:32:02] Speaker C: Little Sim World. Ploink the Pale Mimic, Medieval Horse Dealer Simulator, Crown Hold. Monster Girls. You can't say no. Pegfinity, which somehow is not one of the porn games. Mafia Queens, which is I was about to say that has to be Luchbound and Tidy Up Together. Now, of those I'd be willing to bet most of them are real video games. I would be willing to bet at least three of them are actual shovelware. And I'm only confident on one of them. One. [00:32:41] Speaker B: Which one are you confident on? [00:32:42] Speaker C: Medieval Horse Dealer Simulator. That sounds like absolute shovelware. [00:32:47] Speaker B: That I'm almost guaranteed is Monster Girls. You can't say. [00:32:51] Speaker A: I was. I was going to say that Tidy Up Together is just another just friend slop good for like five minutes of gameplay. And then you're like, oh, okay. This is just like every other Together game I've ever played in my entire life. I guarantee you go through and you go to the developer it is. [00:33:07] Speaker B: But it's also five bucks in comparison to medieval horse dealer, which is 20. [00:33:13] Speaker C: Now I want to drive home why I think the Switch is the bigger like signpost of why this is bad. I'm gonna do the same thing on the Switch Eshop. I pulled it up on my computer and I clicked deals because many times when people are going on these stores, they wanna look at oh, what's on sale right now. This is what I see when I go to deals on the Switch Eshop Maestro Sniper Dan Woodo Moonlighter 2. Okay, that. I know what that is. That's a real game. Zombie Arise. Therian Crush Wild Animal Boys, Therian Crush, Wild Animal Girls Black Tower, Enigma, Agylos 2, Incrabrantal, Caro Caro Cowboy, Midnight Anomaly, Mystery Slot and Learn. World Flags. Spot the difference. Like it's just there's. I have seen one real game that I have actually heard of as like five rows of games. Oh, I. There's also Get Fit, Furry Edition and Beach Volleyball Boys Hot Spike. This is the Switch. [00:34:25] Speaker B: Mind you, I was about to one of those sounds like it came from your recommendation specifically. [00:34:31] Speaker C: No, this is the switch eShop. I just checked deals. This is what Nintendo is highlighting. [00:34:37] Speaker B: So the question is, does Nintendo also have a preference? We've seen you've done something similar. You're going to get this reference now. [00:34:46] Speaker C: No, it famously the discovery on The Eshop is so fucking bad. It has no idea what the hell kind of games you actually enjoy and play. And it makes no effort to surface things that it thinks you might actually be interested in. So none. [00:35:02] Speaker A: All this begs the question, are we on track for another video game crash? In my opinion, no. No, we are not. And let me explain why I think we're not. Now there are the. The switch we are talking about where the games are like you said in front of kids gonna make kids not want to play them because they're awful. Are we on a crash for kids? On a video game crash for kids and younger generations possibly. Or a re innovation of video games for old heads like ourselves? No. And let me tell you why I think we're going to be fine. Because they're on Steam. There is a great refund policy that you can get your money back if the game is just garbage. And it forces publishers either to publish a game that forces you to play it for two hours for two hours to become a decent before it turns into just a crap game or they don't get money. [00:36:04] Speaker B: So with the popularity of the Steam deck and now the Steam machine actually like being out there, I think this is now a valid take. If we were talking about the world in which PC gaming is what we're talking about alone, that would be less valid because most people who are adults are still not PC gaming. There are still console gamers. Yep. Now. [00:36:27] Speaker A: And that was going to be one of my. That was going to be one of my next points is Jax talked about it earlier. We have access to reviews now. Myself, personally, I have lost faith and trust in pre orders. I just don't do it unless it is a game that I know for a fact. No matter what, no matter what happens, I'm buying it. Grand Theft Auto, I don't. [00:36:49] Speaker B: I don't care what the reviews are. I'm trying this. [00:36:51] Speaker A: Yeah, the Witcher because there are games out there that get bad reviews that I enjoy. Like some. It's not up to IGN and all them to tell me if I like a game or not. I don't trust IGN reviews anyway. I go to Reddit. [00:37:04] Speaker B: You and I are also in the part of we will play games where I'm playing this early, it's missing something. But I need to make sure these people, I trust them as a developer. They've shown me things before. You can do better. Take the money and fix it. So things like CD Projekt Red with Cyberpunk that came out notoriously bad. They gave out refunds. But if you were one of the early adopters, people who pre ordered different things, they made sure if you bought that game you were gonna get your money's worth. [00:37:41] Speaker C: Palworld just had its 1.0 release not very long ago. It was an early access game for a fucking year. [00:37:47] Speaker A: I think we're in good hands when it comes to gaming, but I think there is definitely going to be a huge generational gap that is going to create complications with games. [00:37:59] Speaker C: That's where I go with this is I think games for people like me are going to continue to exist as long as my generation wants to spend money on games and we do. Yeah, that's simple as that. However, and this is where I worry, I do not see a world where the current generation of children have anything like what I experienced with ZZT where I as a 6 year old play ZZT and I aspired to be a video game developer. I spent my entire childhood until my early 20s when I got into college and learned how to program a little bit and realized this is actually not for me. That's why I'm not a video game developer by the way, is I. I tried programming and I really didn't enjoy it. [00:38:46] Speaker B: That is, that is part of the reason why I did not as well. I was also a like my major in college was video game design. I went through three years worth of this into programing and a design into functionality. I understand the business very, very well. I could not. [00:39:01] Speaker C: I spent half my senior year of high school at a vocational school learning video game design. Do you know trying to remember the name of the video game college in Redmond? [00:39:12] Speaker B: No, I wouldn't be able to remember that one. [00:39:15] Speaker C: It's digipen. Have you heard of digipen? [00:39:17] Speaker B: Actually I may have heard of it. I just would not be able to tell you much about it. [00:39:20] Speaker C: It's fine. They had. I live in Washington. They had a like vocational school that was in my town. I went there in high school. I spent half my senior year at a vocational school making games, which is how I knew it wasn't really for me. Like I stuck through it because I was signed up for it and I was there, but it wasn't really for me. But where is the next generation? Where are kids of today gonna get that initial spark that makes them want to become the next Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, Tim Sweeney. Pick your influential game developer of yesteryear. How are we going to get the next generation of those? Because kids today are going to play Roblox, they're going to get burned by a pedophile trying to pick them up on Roblox and they're never going to be allowed to play video games again because their parents won't let them get online because they had a pedophile try to get them. [00:40:16] Speaker B: That's, that is a thing that's possible and has sadly happened. [00:40:20] Speaker C: Kids today are going to go on their switch and get too accurate to be scary. Your true feelings revealed by this image and go, wow, video games suck. Why do I want to waste my time with this and go play on their phone instead? Where the games don't cost money and [00:40:38] Speaker B: they're gonna, or, or they do, they just don't cost their money and they don't realize it. [00:40:41] Speaker C: Right, right. And the video games of tomorrow are going to almost exclusively become shovelware that is a glorified casino or shovelware that is designed to manipulate you into spending money because that's what makes the most money in gaming today. So occasionally we get mega hit like core gamer titles that make a shitload of money. But do you know how much money FIFA made specifically off of their ultimate team stuff, which is the microtransaction system that they use in like 2025, just that portion of FIFA, not counting the, you know, $60 to buy the game, made half a billion dollars in one year. [00:41:32] Speaker B: So a lot of, a lot of this is what we're talking about when we talk about how we are not fans of where the gaming industry is going in this, in these trends. There are a couple of things that are like, they are so predominant in the industry right now and they're so popular and what they do is they give you tools to do things. That means that there is still some small bits of hope. Minecraft being as big and popular as it is and being a creative engine that it is, with such a massive development and freedom to mod that it has, is one of those titles that gives me a lot of hope for that next generation. Point being, there are so many kids who play Minecraft and go, oh my God, I can build anything and everything. [00:42:21] Speaker C: Not just play Minecraft, but want to be the next big Minecraft youtuber or whatever game. The, the, the, the kid's desire nowadays isn't to make video games, it's to be a streamer, to be a YouTuber. And the ways to succeed at that are still to be a creative person, to make things, whatever those things may be. That's how you succeed at those things. Because 99% of the kids who go on there and they go, oh, my favorite so and so popular streamer of the day. All he does is play video games and scream and react to them. I can do that. No, you can't. You're not entertaining when you do that. No one will watch you. You'll be like me, where I get three viewers on an average day when I play league and one if I'm not playing league. [00:43:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So the other. [00:43:09] Speaker C: I'm not calling you out listeners. I'm telling you like, I stream because I enjoy streaming. I am not a successful streamer. [00:43:16] Speaker B: The other portion that like, gives me hope is, and this is going to be painful to say because half of what it is is also shovelware. But it is Fortnite. Fortnite has such a huge popularity and it is the entry into the rest of Epic. And it gives you access to all of what Epic gives you. And if anyone is at all curious about that, that means you have access to an Unreal Engine developer. [00:43:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I think we unanimously agree. If there is a video game crash Apocalypse or like Seismic Shift, it's not gonna be like the 1983 one. Video games are not going away. [00:43:57] Speaker B: The other potential crash. And this is where things are like, dangerous. But also kind of sad we mentioned it briefly is games may just out price people because they're fucking expensive to make. And living in this world is getting really goddamn expensive. [00:44:16] Speaker C: Games are expensive to make and the hardware to play games on keeps going up price. The PlayStation 5 has gotten price hikes multiple times in the last year. The Xbox Series X has gotten multiple price hikes in the last year. The Switch 2 is about to go up in price, I think literally on the 1st of September. So good luck finding one in stores right now if you're trying to beat that price hike. By the way, that's why I bought mine two months ago. [00:44:43] Speaker A: I like talking about price hike. Like, look at the Steam deck. Like, it is almost doubled in price. [00:44:49] Speaker C: The cheap versions of the Steam deck simply aren't offered anymore. And the expensive version that is still offered is like $200 more than it used to be. The Steam machine is much more expensive than Steam wanted it to be. When they did it was. [00:45:03] Speaker B: It was designed to be about $400 cheaper. [00:45:07] Speaker C: Yeah, they intended it to be like the one terabyte version would be like $800 kind of thing. That was what they specked it out for. And then AI happened. Yeah, the Apocalypse for RAM happened. [00:45:20] Speaker A: We kind of glossed over it. Mike mentioned it and we didn't dive into it much. So I want to jump into this before we talking to what's going on in our lives. Mobile games are also a problem. We talked about what mobile and iPad and all that is causing people to not understand what a controller is. But we want to talk about shovelware. It is rampant. Mike started to talk about it and to me, I don't call it shovelware on phones. I call it gotcha games. [00:45:54] Speaker B: That is a great phrase of turn [00:45:56] Speaker C: of phrase because yes, most gotcha games are shovelware. Absolutely. But shovelware is specifically referring to the quality and level of effort the creators put into making an experience for their customers. And that's why it's shovelware. Some gacha games truly do care about giving a good experience to their customers while they are also trying to milk you for every dollar you're able to give them. [00:46:24] Speaker A: And oh yeah, yeah. I mean now it's not even about the micro transactions in these gotcha games. You know, the first one that comes to my mind that I thoroughly enjoyed was Summoners Roar. I don't know if you guys ever played that. It was fun. You collected, you know like they. How they all are now. You, you get s. You buy rolls or unlocks or whatever and you get S. Tier champions, whatever. [00:46:47] Speaker C: I, I have to laugh every time I see an ad for a gotcha game. And they're like 200 free polls if you sign up now. And I'm like, so what you're telling me is that the odds of getting anything good in your game are so bad that you expect to maybe give one away in 200 polls. [00:47:03] Speaker A: Right? That's pretty much exactly what it is. Upgraded roles to me now it is just these games, these mobile games that are just littered, littered with ads that force you to pay your four 99, 99 cents, $99, whatever for one week or lifetime free of ads. Like just to get away from it. [00:47:28] Speaker B: I, I can do a segue from this into things we've been playing because I forgot about this. So for the first time ever, because I have explicitly not put old games on my phone because it's a danger for me at work to have games distracting me. [00:47:47] Speaker C: You do work in a machine shop. [00:47:49] Speaker B: I installed a game on my phone. It very much meets what I enjoy in 5, 10 minutes of bullshit time to do things with a game. You've probably heard of it called the Tower. [00:48:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I played that a long time ago. [00:48:05] Speaker B: It is essentially an infinite tower defense as, as you have one, one tower that you're building and trying to survive as long as possible. And you play it and you go along and you build defenses, strengths, utility parts. And it, it goes into the minutia of what tower defenses do, which is why I enjoy it. You can choose. I go into crit build, I go into pure damage, I go into all attack speed, etc. Etc. Things like that. One of the features, the two features that are going on, I have not put any money into this game. One of which is spend $10. You never have to look at ads again. Anything that would have given you a bonus from watching an ad is now just given to you. But you don't have to watch ads. I heavily considered that for a while and I'm like, I don't really want to pay any money so I'm not gonna do it. [00:48:57] Speaker A: Admittedly I have paid a couple ad things on games that I knew like I gave it like a week and I'd be like, yeah, I'm gon keep playing this game for a while. It's a good time sync and I still play them. [00:49:08] Speaker B: If this game is still on my phone in a month, I will probably have bought that because that means I won't have to deal with the ad thing. And it is annoying to try and go, well, I need to get this extra currency to try and get some upgrades on things. So I'll, I'll watch the ad for a minute and it let's do this. I can put my phone aside and have some food while it goes on the ad. Screw it, I don't want to do that. I want to keep playing. And that's, that's the gotcha portion of that gotcha game. Because that's how that is the gotcha. Hey, you want to do this, do that, and then once you've spent money once, you are significantly more likely to spend money again. Which is why that is the first function. Hey, you can turn off your ad things. I don't blame a free game for having ads. They have to make money somehow to keep making games. [00:49:59] Speaker C: Sure, I've bought probably the most phone games that I've actually paid for out of any of us would be my guess. [00:50:06] Speaker B: I've paid for one phone game. [00:50:07] Speaker C: Actually I paid for threes on the Google Play store. So I've actually bought like a phone game from Google Play and then I bought a lot of Android games from Humble Bundle back in the day. [00:50:23] Speaker B: Didn't know they gave you those. [00:50:24] Speaker C: There were a whole bunch of. And to be clear, I pulled up, I logged into my Humble Bundle and looked to see what the list of games are. Some of them are just. They're real games, but they're just not very good. That's a fair number of them. Some of them are straight up ports of other games. Like there's Broken Sword. Broken Sword is an old point and click adventure game. That's a real game. There's the original the Bard's Tale. There's Carmageddon. Those are real video games, but they're old video games that reported to mobile. But then like Bloons TD 5. Bloons TD is a real fucking video game. It's a phone game. And it does phone game bullshit in the current version of Bloon because this is. This is the previous generation. The previous version is what I got on. I have. I think Bloons TD6 or something is the current one. But Bloons TD is a real video game. Several of these are just like indie games that are very much the like tech demo type indie games. They're fine, but they're. I wouldn't have paid for them if they were just sold separately. And then I have one that actually stood out to me as this is a phone game designed for phone games. And I played the whole goddamn thing. I would have bought this on Google Play if I didn't get it from Humble. Knights of Pen and Paper. Do you know what Knights of Pen and Paper is? [00:51:40] Speaker B: It sounds familiar. [00:51:41] Speaker A: Sounds kind of familiar. [00:51:43] Speaker C: It's an rpg. It's an RPG that is not full of a bunch of bullshit. It's a turn based rpg. It's very D and D inspired and your characters break character to talk amongst themselves because you are playing as basically a D and D party and it's just a paid game. I would have bought this on Google Play. If I didn't get it from Humble. I would have straight up paid for it. It is worth it. And it's a phone game. It's a great premise, it's well written, it's charming, it's funny. We don't get phone games like that anymore. That was a game released in 2012. [00:52:26] Speaker A: One thing that I really enjoyed about older mobile games is you talked about it kind of. Yeah, you did. Where they were putting older games on mobile games where you could like play like your older games that you enjoyed. [00:52:42] Speaker B: I did play for Dragon Quest 3. [00:52:45] Speaker A: I don't remember what game, what it is exactly called, but it was a Mario Mobile game. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was kind of fun. I do remember paying for that, but do we have anything else we want to bring up on this topic before we go ahead and finish off what we've been up to? [00:53:06] Speaker B: My one, this is a personal gripe with people. I understand games are expensive. Don't gripe too hard. They're much cheaper than they should be. [00:53:15] Speaker C: Yes. When I was a kid, video games were 40 to $50 for a game. And me today can beat that game in three hours. [00:53:25] Speaker A: Remember when I said just action games back then were the equivalent of almost $200 today? So yeah, don't. Yeah, don't get too upset that they haven't changed too bad yet. But that time is coming. [00:53:36] Speaker B: You are lucky as hell the prices have stayed as low as they have. If they didn't have such a big reception problem, games would be in the hundred plus. For a regular triple A game right now. [00:53:49] Speaker C: We wouldn't have triple A games. They would not exist. Full stop AAA games would not exist if they. If they cost what they would cost commensurate with inflation. [00:53:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:59] Speaker C: IF games were $150 right now as the base price for a regular video game, the video game industry would be dead. We'd only have mobile games pretty much. That's why they're so cheap. [00:54:09] Speaker B: Or everything would be subscription based. [00:54:10] Speaker C: Actually, yes. [00:54:12] Speaker A: Where you get your game passes, they're not making money off the game, they're getting money off the game passes. And the hundreds of people that have an Xbox game pass appreciate and respect. [00:54:23] Speaker C: When something like Silksong comes around and gives you an amazing experience that is long as fuck for 20 bucks our world, 30 bucks. [00:54:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It take, take a look at the games, take a look at the deals and realize that some of these people have given you so much. [00:54:46] Speaker C: Yep. [00:54:46] Speaker A: All right, well, Mike, you told us a little bit about what you got going on. Jax, let's hear about what you got going on. You got a good few things on here. [00:54:56] Speaker C: So the quick one, I'm still playing path of exile 1. My character has reached that threshold that happens in an action RPG where you feel like a God. I literally did not die through all of level 98. I'm now level 99, which is wild because I died over 300 times in the preceding 97 levels. But I've hit that threshold. I have good enough defenses, my damage is absurd. I just shoot Palpatine Red Lightning across the entire screen and everything dies and it's glorious. I love Path of Exile. For that level of progression, you go from being a shitty pleb with a stick to a literal God of death. [00:55:37] Speaker A: With trees swinging all around you. [00:55:43] Speaker C: Patrons will know what the hell that's about. So I'm still playing it. I love Path of Exile. I'm working on getting my challenges done now. Because if you do 36 out of the 40 challenges, you'll get a microtransaction that is the ocean portal and I want that. Other than that, I've been watching a lot of anime. The new anime season has been pretty good. Honestly. We've got some hype shit. There's a new season of the Saga of Tanya the Evil, which the original season came out nine years ago. To give you an idea of how long this season two is like in the making, there's new seasons for a whole bunch of rom coms, which I'm a rom com guy when it comes to anime. I'm enjoying 100 girlfriends. I'm enjoying. Why can I not remember the title? You and I are Polar Opposites is really good. And then there is Kaiju girl Carmelise, which literally is about a teenage girl trying to navigate high school and romance. But also she's a Kaiju and she turns into a Kaiju when she gets stressed out or overly excited. Like literally turns into legally distinct Godzilla. Out of her control, grows to the size of a skyscraper and only is kinda sorta in control of herself. And she tries to navigate romance with that as her condition. It's fun. Ghost in the Shell is back. Ghost in the Shell fucking rules. [00:57:18] Speaker B: Is it? [00:57:19] Speaker C: Yes. There is a new Ghost in the Shell by Science Saru who Science Saru rules. They're the people who did Dan to Dan recently. They made the Scott Pilgrim anime on Netflix a couple years ago. Science Saru is really good. And this new Ghost in the Shell is more like the original source material. Motoko Kusanagi has a full personality. She is a person. She is horny. It is great. I love the new Ghost in the Shell. I am enjoying the shit out of it. I need to watch more because I'm a couple episodes behind. It's on Amazon. By the way. There's also an anime that I think the Internet has misunderstood called Chainsmoker Cat. The Internet seems to think this is an ad for smoking and it is very much the opposite. Media literacy is dead, guys. This is an anime about a cat girl who is an absolute train wreck and her life sucks because she is addicted to cigarettes and cannot stop smoking. Literally cannot stop smoking. She finishes the last cigarette. There's already another one in her mouth before she even realizes it has happened. When she realized she has no money until payday and has six cigarettes left. She was like, okay, I gotta ration them. And by the time she finished planning out how she would ration them, they were gone because she just chain smoked them without realizing it. This is like so much more fucked up than that. I am. I am leaving out a lot. This anime is disgusting. Yeah, it's super fucking gross. Intentionally so. And it's dark because it does not present a world like, oh, she's gonna have a happy ending. No, the presentation is very much, this girl's life sucks and it's going to suck for the rest of it because of the choices she's made. Chainsmoker Cat's kind of awesome. Also, the intro song is an absolute banger. I got one more I want to mention before I move off of anime because it's weird and I don't know what to make of it yet. I've watched a few episodes. There is an anime called Goodbye Lara and it literally has a like thank you to Hans Christian Andersen at the start of it. Which probably should tell you more or less what this is. Because the first episode of this anime speedruns the Little Mermaid. It is just the Little Mermaid, but crammed into 20 minutes. And it ends with the Little Mermaid being rejected by the prince, as happened in the original Hans Christian Andersen novel, not the Disney version, and turning to foam and disappearing. That's episode one. And then she wakes up in her clamshell 200 years later, modern times, and is trying to fulfill the I need to find love. To try to restore the mermaid kingdom that fell to ruin in the time that she was gone. I don't know where it's gonna go from there. Like, I've watched one episode past the intro. I want to know where they're going with this because it's really weird and interesting that they just speed ran the Little Mermaid for one episode and now are doing their own story with that as the, like, backstory and premise. And also it has a very retro anime aesthetic that I love. I've done one other thing in the past couple weeks. I got a gun. So I'm not gonna go into why. Suffice to say, I'm not happy about having to get one. But I got a gun. I bought a Glock G40 or Glock 43X I think is what it's called. Um, it's a compact handgun that is easily concealable. I have a concealed pistol license nowadays, and so I got a gun and my wife has never shot. I used to shoot regularly 20 years ago, literally like through childhood into very early adulthood. And I have not used a firearm since. So my wife and I grabbed a couple pallets because we have a bunch of pallets that are just like discarded pallets, went out into the forest, found a berm that we could shoot into, propped up the pallets to make a makeshift target, staple, gunned some cardboard to it, pasted some targets on that cardboard and shot the shit out of it. All of my memories from over 20 years ago of like range etiquette, how to handle yourself, gun safety, all of that instantly came back. I still remember how to make sure that I am being safe with a gun. And the first thing I did before we ever loaded a round into the magazine of this thing was teach my wife every single one of those safety rules. This is a 9 millimeter handgun. And despite all of that, the first thing she did on her very first shot was even though she had her hands in the correct position, she then instinctively moved her thumb in the way of the slide when she pulled the trigger and the slide wracked and smacked into her thumb and hurt her pretty bad for the day. That was the only shot she fired on the first day. She's fine. There was no lasting injury. Thankfully, we lucked out. Firearms are not toys. These are not safe objects. Even with all the safety instruction, me being there and seeing that her hands were in the correct position before she ever pulled the trigger, she still got hurt. But that being said, shooting still a lot of fun. [01:02:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I'm myself, I'm a Taurus fan. I got a Taurus G G3C. That is my personal protection that I use. I don't, I'm more of a rifle guy. I like the, you know, bolt actions and those, I think those are really fun. Especially out in the country where I live. I have more availability to shoot, but I do not. I've had my, my Taurus for three, four, five years. I shoot it once or twice a year just to make sure that it is cleaned and been fired. I have no hopes to ever need it or want to use it. [01:03:21] Speaker C: That is always the case. As a firearm owner, you hope you never need to use it, but the [01:03:28] Speaker A: rifles, you should hope you never need to use it. [01:03:30] Speaker B: By God, some people are a little too trigger. [01:03:34] Speaker C: People who hope they have a need to use it should never own it. Full stop. [01:03:38] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:03:40] Speaker C: Referring to like self defense weapons. Obviously hunting is a different thing. [01:03:44] Speaker B: There's a different story there. [01:03:45] Speaker A: And that's why I have rifles. I have rifles for hunting and you know, the proper use to keep, you know, the old school food on the table, if that's into your thing. And just I know a guy who [01:03:58] Speaker C: goes bow hunting, which sounds fucking awesome. I wish I was in shape enough to consider learning to do that. [01:04:03] Speaker B: I would love to do that. I'm probably the most anti gun of the three of us. Like, I understand I have fairly draconian views on. On gun ownership. [01:04:14] Speaker C: You also live in Chicago. [01:04:16] Speaker B: I also live in Chicago. But like I. I also went through a phase and know what it's like to shoot a gun. And it's real fun. [01:04:26] Speaker C: They're really fun as long as you don't have something bad happen. So you have to just make sure you're being safe. And that's. We've gone shooting a couple times now. She has fired more shots. She knows how to handle it safely now. We're being very careful. [01:04:41] Speaker A: It is one of those tools that if you make a mistake, it cannot be taken back. [01:04:47] Speaker C: Yes. [01:04:48] Speaker A: There is no reset. No, no saying you're sorry. Like it's just whatever. [01:04:52] Speaker C: You can't reload your save file in real life. [01:04:55] Speaker B: I will, I will give. [01:04:56] Speaker A: You are stuck with it. [01:04:57] Speaker B: Two. Two things. Obviously you both, you both know this or you should both know this. Always store your guns unarmed with the ammo not directly next to it. Don't keep them in the same spot. [01:05:11] Speaker C: Depends if it's locked up. Ammo in the same spot but not loaded in is fine. [01:05:15] Speaker B: I'll rephrase that. As long as you don't have kids, like pillow does. [01:05:18] Speaker A: No, my gun is safely with a cable through the gun. [01:05:23] Speaker B: Because I have seen people who have gone into safe. [01:05:25] Speaker C: In a gun safe. Yeah. [01:05:26] Speaker B: I have seen kids who have gone into the safe and pulled it out and had access to both things at once. So if you have a kid, separate them. [01:05:33] Speaker A: If you are carrying, do not keep one chambered. That is important. [01:05:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And for the love of God, don't bring it out just to show it off. [01:05:44] Speaker C: It's not a toy. [01:05:46] Speaker B: If you're going to be like in a place you're going hunting, everything you know that you need to undo the ammo, have nothing in the clip, make sure things are done. There have been more death accidents by guns. Even with like as many safety features as you may think of going on movies, it happens all the time where people will accidentally die because of improper safety usage. [01:06:09] Speaker C: Literally happened. What was the movie? Rust, I think Rust. [01:06:12] Speaker B: Someone did that [01:06:14] Speaker C: literally two years ago. [01:06:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. [01:06:19] Speaker A: For the love of God, do not put it in your waistband. [01:06:22] Speaker C: Use some sort of proper holster. Not going to tell you which kind, because that's very personal. But some sort of proper holster. And if you do want to show it off, great. Take your friends that you want to show it off to set a time, go to a proper range and do it the correct way. That is the way to do it. [01:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:41] Speaker C: A proper range does not necessarily mean [01:06:43] Speaker B: a, like an indoor shooting range. [01:06:47] Speaker C: Like, I live in Washington. We have Capitol Forest is a giant public land forest. There's a shooting range there that is like semi organized but completely, like, unmonitored. It's fine. And that's also not where my wife and I went. We just found a spot in the woods because that's something you can do [01:07:07] Speaker A: other than gun safety. Mike. [01:07:10] Speaker B: Okay. I have. I have two other things that I've been doing. One I'm going to expand upon, which I've talked about briefly before. I've been doing a lot of Warhammer stuff, like the. The miniature Warhammer. I went from just doing some Necromunda to now I am doing a lot of building and painting. And it's become a Zen thing in that it's a great escape. It is my. I need to get out of here and go do something. I'm gonna go to my store that I like to go to. I'm gonna hang out with the people that are there, and we're gonna build together, we're gonna paint together. I may randomly pick up a game and play with some people because I may or may not have a couple thousand models in my car at all times. It's. It's something that, like, it has become my once per. Once a week minimum, get out, go do something. And it. It's helped me a lot. Leaving my house, which was a problem for a long time of me not doing anything but sitting at my computer. And so this has been a good way for me to get out and do things. And really, hopefully I'm trying to work with some of the people there to maybe do a D and D group. If I can do that off, like just meeting some people and talking with them for a month or two. Fucking let's go. I hope so. I'm not gonna go into the minutiae of the games for Warhammer that I've been doing. But suffice to say, the last actual game I played was one of the most interesting things I've done, and I lost because I failed to reroll low. When you roll, when you play Warhammer, everything is D6 is all the D6 is everywhere. And so statistically, obviously everyone knows if you roll two D6s, seven is the the most likely number. So if you get lower than a 7, it's not likely to happen. That game I failed. 2 rerollable 6 up saves straight cost me the game. Still one of the most fun things I've done in a long time. It. Even losing feels good because I'm hanging out with people that are fun to be with and just being able to play games with them is an experience that I'm enjoying. The second thing that I want to talk about is I. I know I've talked about my love of Soulslikes games before. I've talked about it extensively. I don't think I've ever talked about one of the most intriguing ones of them. It's a game that has done quite a bit different while being very similar within the genre. It's called Lies of P. And for a very long time I was very worried this was just a kind of shitty clone for a soulslike clone, because those come up all the time everywhere. You'll see people try and make the bandwagon on something and try and get into it. It's popular right now. Let's make a game for this. Lies of P is so unique in how it has decided to make its changes within the genre. It's one Liza P. It's your Pinocchio. And the world has fallen to puppets. And it's already just an interesting thing and you're trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And in a weird scenario like the way you talk, you. You're a puppet, but you're Pinocchio. So you're also kind of a person. And that means you can do something that other puppets can't do, which is lie. Hence the Lies of P. And the more you lie, the more interesting things become. Because you're now taking in this. I don't want to know. That's. That's spoiling things. Can't talk about that. [01:10:57] Speaker C: I have not played this game. I do not like soulslikes. And I know that Lies of P is generally considered one of the best Soulslikes that is not made by fromsoftware. [01:11:05] Speaker B: Out of all of them, this may be the one that is closest to something you may enjoy. It has the most fluid style of combat, especially with how you can customize the weaponry, which is one of its really core mechanics is I found these couple of pieces. We're gonna mess them together and put them together. And now I'VE made my own weapon. It. It plays how I want it to play. I took this thing. I took this thing. We go. And that's really like the mechanic that it made that is different. And the thing that Jax hates the most is. Is committed. Like long strikes. [01:11:46] Speaker C: I like my games with animation canceling. [01:11:49] Speaker B: There are some animation cancels in this. Not a lot. So if you were to enjoy a game, this might be it. I'm not gonna have him. I'm not gonna force him to play it. Even if I win something and try and force him to play it. [01:12:02] Speaker C: It's fucking $60. I wouldn't buy it anyway. [01:12:08] Speaker B: It's got the feel that Souls games have, which is the other portion of it. It's that really dark, oppressive atmosphere. Like the end of the world has happened. What the hell is going on? And it tells a great story. [01:12:25] Speaker C: So I don't even like the genre. And I know about this game. [01:12:29] Speaker B: I think. I think if you have any love of Souls like games and you are at all interested in another franchise besides just fromsoftware. Sorry about that. Take. Take a look. Take a look at Lies of P and I think you will find something that is special. And if I'm not mistaken, Lies of P just got an update recently. So they may still actually be doing work on stuff with it. [01:12:59] Speaker C: Lies of P Overture was last year apparently. [01:13:02] Speaker B: I'm sorry, Last year? Yeah. Which. Hey, that's. That's another big thing for them. [01:13:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I might check it out if it goes on a decent sale or something. [01:13:12] Speaker B: Because it has several times. That's how I got it. I got it on sale. [01:13:15] Speaker C: It looks like it's come down to 30 bucks a few times. [01:13:18] Speaker A: Okay. So myself, I just recently. And it just came out. It came out two weeks ago roughly on the 6th. But I just picked it up the other day. Is a cozy shop management game called Restory Chill. Electronic replay repairs. And it is a cozy. You can play with one hand. There is no keyboards needed other than the press spacebar. To give you a hint on what to do next. You take apart old retro gaming systems. For example, you got Tamagotchi and Atari respectively. The names are changed for obvious reasons. All the way up to modern Xbox and things like that. [01:14:06] Speaker B: Please tell me it's called the Y box. [01:14:07] Speaker A: I don't. I think they're pretty close to. It's like the XII box or something. I've only gotten like seven hours. Six hours into the game. There's a. It's like 12 hours long. If you just do the main story up to 20 hours. If you do the side quests and get the multiple endings, just really. You get to play at your own pace. There is no speed running to it. You don't have to do it quick. You people bring you stuff to repair, you repair it, you buy stuff on the marketplace to get spare parts to sell and you just make money. It's just a nice cozy sit down with a good soundtrack that you can kind of just relax and unwind and hit that itch of. For me, I like taking apart stuff and putting it back together and it kind of gives that scratch without actually having to ever do it. You're based in Tokyo in early 2000s. So it's just a fun little cozy game. And that's all I've been really doing. It's easy to play when, you know, the kids take a nap or I'm sitting on the couch and I got 30 minutes, I can just jump in it real quick and save whenever there's no pressure to it, no horror to it, no under, you know, no detrimental story to it that I've learned so far. Check it out. It's on sale right now. It's only. It's 10% off. I think it's like 17.99 or something. The. The developer, slash publisher, they. They do pump out some decent games and then also some shovelware. So they're guilty of the same thing if every developer and publisher on Steam is when it comes to this genre. But it does have over 6,000 overwhelmingly positive reviews. 96% of the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. So if this is. If you like shop management and you like cozy, go check it out. It's worth it. They do have a demo, I believe as well, that you can test out so you don't have to buy the game directly. Yeah, and that's. That's all I've been doing other than the normal, you know, League of Legends, mayhem, norms. [01:16:27] Speaker C: Yeah, we've all been playing a lot of League lately. [01:16:30] Speaker B: Yep. [01:16:30] Speaker A: But you can go listen to that on our other podcast, the Four Wards. So go, go check it out. And you guys got anything else you want to add or. We're gonna close this up. [01:16:43] Speaker C: Let's wrap it up. [01:16:44] Speaker A: All right, so that has been from 8bit to 4k. Thanks for stopping in and listening. You got Jackson. You can find him on Twitch at Twitch tv. Jackson, Twitch tv. Mikeofmanynames. And that is for Mike of many names. And then myself is Twitch TV pillow. Pet. Go on there. Show us some love. Like Jack says, we're not successful streamers, but we stream for the love of streaming and hope that you guys can get some enjoyment out of the games that we've been playing. If you want to hear about a little bit more in depth of what we got going on, go check out that, that Patreon. We talked about a little bit of plans that we have going on. So if you're interested in hearing a little bit of sneak peek into that, go, go check out our Patreon. But other than that, for Jack Soman, for Mike of many names, have a good night. [01:17:43] Speaker C: Bye Bye. [01:17:44] Speaker B: Good night, everybody.