We pulled this episode directly from our live stream over on YouTube. Come check us out!
The following summary was written by A.I.
When Cole, a true connoisseur of farming simulators, dropped by the studio, little did we know just how deep our conversation would plow into the world of simulator games. We found ourselves lost in tales of digital crops and the open road, drawing parallels between the calm of pixelated fields and the bustling growth of virtual cities. We'd never imagined that a wheel and pedals tucked under a desk could transport someone into the immersive universe of trucking simulators, yet here we were, marveling at the lengths gamers go to for that authentic feel.
Our dialogue took an unexpected detour into the transformative landscape of mods, revealing their power to not only expand the horizons of gameplay but to potentially aid real-world farmers with their crop strategies. We shared laughs and groans over the chaos that can ensue on multiplayer servers, and yet, found common ground in the tranquility these games offer. It's not just about gaming; it's about connection, community, and the unexpected friendships forged in the tranquility of a virtual farm or the camaraderie of a cross-country haul.
As we wrapped up our virtual expedition, our focus shifted to the changing tides of the gaming industry. From collector's editions that left us scratching our heads to the looming shadow of $100 base games, we tackled the tough questions about game pricing, microtransactions, and the digital shift that's changing how we play and own our beloved escapes. We even took a stroll down memory lane, reminiscing about Guild Wars and sharing mixed emotions on the latest titles. It's clear that for us, and for many of you listening, gaming is an essential thread in the fabric of our lives, ever-evolving and always surprising.
If you enjoy our episode's content, come check us out on twitter @KDratiopodcast, YouTube as The KD Ratio Podcast! or on Instagram KDratiopodcast
We pulled this episode directly from our live stream over on YouTube. Come check us out!
The following summary was written by A.I.
When Cole, a true connoisseur of farming simulators, dropped by the studio, little did we know just how deep our conversation would plow into the world of simulator games. We found ourselves lost in tales of digital crops and the open road, drawing parallels between the calm of pixelated fields and the bustling growth of virtual cities. We'd never imagined that a wheel and pedals tucked under a desk could transport someone into the immersive universe of trucking simulators, yet here we were, marveling at the lengths gamers go to for that authentic feel.
Our dialogue took an unexpected detour into the transformative landscape of mods, revealing their power to not only expand the horizons of gameplay but to potentially aid real-world farmers with their crop strategies. We shared laughs and groans over the chaos that can ensue on multiplayer servers, and yet, found common ground in the tranquility these games offer. It's not just about gaming; it's about connection, community, and the unexpected friendships forged in the tranquility of a virtual farm or the camaraderie of a cross-country haul.
As we wrapped up our virtual expedition, our focus shifted to the changing tides of the gaming industry. From collector's editions that left us scratching our heads to the looming shadow of $100 base games, we tackled the tough questions about game pricing, microtransactions, and the digital shift that's changing how we play and own our beloved escapes. We even took a stroll down memory lane, reminiscing about Guild Wars and sharing mixed emotions on the latest titles. It's clear that for us, and for many of you listening, gaming is an essential thread in the fabric of our lives, ever-evolving and always surprising.
If you enjoy our episode's content, come check us out on twitter @KDratiopodcast, YouTube as The KD Ratio Podcast! or on Instagram KDratiopodcast
We're live boys, gentlemen, how we doing, doing great and fucking test yeah good Well tonight we obviously have plus one. This is my cousin, also our number one fan. Sorry, ladies.
Speaker 2:Did you go live from the right?
Speaker 3:I got it yeah.
Speaker 2:You have a whole other thing where four people are waiting on here.
Speaker 1:Is that not?
Speaker 3:I mean, I got people in the chat already People in this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got people in the chat on this one, yeah, anyway, another great start to our podcast is always.
Speaker 2:When have we ever had a good start?
Speaker 1:Well, you guys are the vacuum that sucks the wind out of my sales.
Speaker 2:That's like the opposite of that song. You're the wind beneath my wings. You suck the wind out of my sales.
Speaker 1:You're the wind above my wings. You forced me to crash. We have a guest on tonight.
Speaker 2:His name's Cole and he's here to offer an additional frame.
Speaker 1:Well, that was strategic, I know it was.
Speaker 2:I saw you look at me I purposely pushed your chair down.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get real friendly with you.
Speaker 2:We should have that call Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Introduce yourself, talk to us, tell us what games you like to play, what media you like to consume, because I think it'll this will be an interesting conversation tonight, of like, because I think you bring sort of a different perspective into what games you like than what we traditionally play, because I know I'm different from these guys and I know you're different from everyone here.
Speaker 4:So hello, I'm cool, Hi Cole. Hello guys, Cousin is number one Cousin. By the way, I won't point that out. I play a lot of different games, Like actually, like I play last simulator. So that's kind of what I'm known for.
Speaker 3:It's like farming. Similar truck simulator.
Speaker 4:Okay, that's about it. I don't go any further than like I don't touch like forklift or like that's no, I never touched that one that was. That was one that never caught my interest. I watched that on YouTube never, never played it, never played it.
Speaker 2:I don't care about that's Billy's equivalent of having played it. He watched a video of it I can give a review I watched somebody stream it.
Speaker 4:I can totally review it. That's exactly how I am, but yeah it's welcome.
Speaker 1:Good to see you in the chat, yeah boys, that's what I thought you're saying.
Speaker 2:That's a I was vocalizing chat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so okay. So you play simulator games, so truck and farming, and like, did you ever play Sims, like any of the basic Sims, or?
Speaker 4:No, I tried to play like one of them. Try to take out your audio system. Yeah, I know I played the Sims a little bit. Like me and a couple guys I played games with we tried playing it for a little bit. They got more into it than I did. Like I like the house building like aspect of it, but like after that, like I didn't really care about and I couldn't spend thousands of hours just building a house, this wasn't anything that interested me.
Speaker 1:So like we, none of, I don't think you guys have never really played like a simulator game before. Right, I like Sims.
Speaker 2:I played simulator games, but Sims I've never really what's a?
Speaker 1:what's a simulator game?
Speaker 2:Well, I used to play a lot of like city building games when I was young, so like Sim City, but also there's a game called mythology. That was kind of cool. There's one, but like stuff like that, where you like kind of build a city and an economy and stuff, and like roller coaster, tycoon, you know things like that.
Speaker 3:What's the Sid Meyers Something? Revolution, civilization civilization yeah.
Speaker 2:I like that one I played Civ five. That's probably the last one I play. Is there? Have they released since then?
Speaker 1:I don't think so. I think Civ five is the last one.
Speaker 3:There is. I think there is. Really I want to say so?
Speaker 1:Have you guys ever see play Anno like 18 or 16, 1863 or some shit like that? It's also. It's also like a sim thing. So we've never played like we've only memed on farming simulator, mainly because we know you're listening. So, like, talk to us about like what the gameplay is, like, like why you enjoy, like the mindset that you get into while playing it. You play it late at night to kind of calm down, or is it like you have a community of guys that you play with? Like what? Why do you? Why do you? Why are you drawn to that kind of game?
Speaker 4:I am drawn to the game because I'm in a farming community, that's what I've grown up around, like that's that's what I want to be like in the end, like I might be, like I want to do this, but like farming was around me, like that's just everything I see and do is farming.
Speaker 2:So you farmed, you farmed and then you farmed.
Speaker 4:Yes, and I play with people who farm IRL and then come back and just play a virtual.
Speaker 2:See when Billy says I'm farming. That's a totally different concept for his version of gaming than for yours. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Exactly yeah. So what would you say attracts? Is it just the ability to like be more experiment, experimentative?
Speaker 2:Experimental.
Speaker 3:Experimental in the farming, like just make up words here it's also a lot easier to farm.
Speaker 4:in a video game I can do stuff that yeah, yeah, I can just if everything goes wrong, your whole livelihood is destroyed. Yeah, yeah I know I can like, do terrible in this game and still be able to, you know, survive. You know I'm not like, oh well, I have to file for bankruptcy now. I can just be like, oh, my farm went to shit, I can go just restart. Or, you know, cheat in money or something like that.
Speaker 4:You know what's the gameplay like I mean it's slow, like you can have different gameplay, like it depends on what you're wanting to do. Like like we, like I, have a full, like server that like we play on and like we're realistic, like we're doing everything you know, like we got one, like we set up, like realistic, like bank loans, so like you got to take it out. You have interest, you have to have equity, you have to have like throw something up there to like you know you have to like sacrifice something. Like if you can't pay it back, you have to give up like what's your collateral?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like you have to have this, so it adds a lot more depth into it and that's a lot more fun to do it that way than just to play it Like. The play is fun, but like when you get more realism, like the more realistic you can get, well, still being able to just screw around a lot more fun.
Speaker 2:That sounds stressful as fuck. I'm not going to lie to you, I don't know if I really would enjoy that.
Speaker 1:So it's like you create a character on a server and then you kind of go go from there and or is it like do you start with like a bucket of assets or do you have to like build up to all of those things?
Speaker 2:We got to build up fake credit to get a loan.
Speaker 1:Like you guys have to build a credit score, so you got to go work at the local you know retail store Is someone like our peeing as, like the bank, they do a whole like loan application and signing.
Speaker 2:We have a question.
Speaker 1:We have a question from the chat as well as. Are there bosses in farming simulator?
Speaker 4:No, no, there's no bosses. I mean, there's people who like run their own farm because you can have your own Like a boss like the Dust Bowl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, the Dust Bowl, congratulations.
Speaker 4:Everyone in the map is here now. You can't farm, no.
Speaker 2:No rain for the next 10 years. Yeah.
Speaker 4:No, there's nothing like that. No, there's, it's all. Yeah, you can pretty much have a successful farming year.
Speaker 2:That's wild.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So like we we all sat down like discuss, like how much we want to start with, you know, because like nothing's like set our real prices, Like it's it's a video game, so stuff's a little bit more. You know, markets are different than IRL. Just to make it easier on anything, Cause like you can get to like realistic where you're like, oh well, like you can't do.
Speaker 3:I can't afford it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't, I literally can't afford anything.
Speaker 4:You know it's like that's not really fun. You know no one's like, oh man, I can't wait to get on the game and not be able to afford anything. You know it's like that. That's not what draws people to the video game, you know this is so realistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm living on the streets. Have you seen that Keen peel meme where, like he's talking about how robbing the bank and then he goes into like detail how they're going to rob the bank and then they get hired at the bank and then he's like and then 30, 40 years later we just walk right out of there and then he goes, motherfucker that's called a job.
Speaker 4:That's what this is.
Speaker 3:Do you have? Are you like one of those people that has your, your play area set up like an actual like rig? No, I'm like the trucking simulator.
Speaker 4:I do have like a wheel and pedal and all that for like those, because that makes the game a lot more fun to play. But like, like the Germans are like really big in the simulator games, like they're like huge, like they're spending like thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3:We see those streams of like people and they have like their house or their streaming area.
Speaker 4:It looks like a truck and they're playing Euro truck simulator and they're just like yeah, there's people get really into it and there's people like cater eyes, Do you live?
Speaker 2:stream this.
Speaker 4:No, you should, you should.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's. There's a market for this. There is.
Speaker 4:There's a really big like, especially during, like COVID, like. That's when, like, a lot of people start picking up the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah playing it, but is there like skills that you can learn from playing, like, let's say, if you were a young guy and you were, like you only knew maybe one aspect of farming, is it like could you get into the game? And is it real enough to where you could pick up on at least some of the the language, like some of the words used in that industry, to where, like, it would maybe help you get a job later on that you just talk the talk at least and kind of know what?
Speaker 2:would allow you to fake it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you're getting close enough Like I played a thousand hours of farming. I am. I am a soil scientist.
Speaker 4:No, I mean yes and no. I mean that's not like you might be able to bullshit your way through it, like if you played enough of it, like you could probably get somewhere, but like I don't think the game is realistic enough to be like oh yeah, well, I can just go out in the field. Yeah, yeah you're not going to be like oh yeah, no, I don't run a farm because, so you can economy in the game is a lot different.
Speaker 2:Fake your way through an interview and then day one, like, yeah, like so what do I do?
Speaker 4:Yeah, because like it doesn't show you like running equipment, I mean it's like W A S D, Correct.
Speaker 4:You know, it's like you know there's a couple other no no, surprisingly no there's a little laptop or little keyboard that comes out Exactly, exactly, yeah, no, it's like well, you can get your way through there, like there's a lot of like animal stuff that you can, but you learn a lot about that. You know you can be like all right this, you know, going through the process of like making feed and stuff like that and like and there's people who make mods, like mods are like heavy into the game, like PC playing is a lot better than like consoles, and all that because of the modding community. Like the modding community is what makes that game, everything that it is like, worth it.
Speaker 1:So that I was literally going to lead into that next topic of like mods, because you were talking about the economy and as their mods were, like will match spot prices of like goods in the real economy. Because, like, I feel like that would be kind of really cool where you can do like here's the, here's the soybean based price and if you're farming that, then like it's going to trend up and down and maybe even people can use that to like simulate their own like crops and what yields they're going to get and like what they're doing in real life. So there's mods like that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So, like you can, take me out was just like Jesus. Jesus, yeah, no, that's perfect, yeah, so there's.
Speaker 4:there's a lot of mods like the base game already has, that like you can sell it, like really bad, like you can track, you can see your price fluctuation, so you can track like if the like what month in the game, because they before there was just a mod for seasons so you could actually, like you had to plant in spring. You had to. You know you do all your preparation for the crops and summer and then fall you harvested and then spring air, wintertime was kind of an off you know year that if you know you're doing cattle, you could still like one day for one day, so like all winter you're actually farming.
Speaker 4:No, so it's. They got to like their own time, like system and all that. So you can like fast forward through time, like if you're, if you're not doing cattle or anything like that, you can just like if you don't have anything that's going to be going on through the wintertime, you can just fast forward through that. So if you're not about just sit there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, just fast forward Like yeah, so if you want to play the game, shoveling your driveway yeah, it's like if you just want to play the game just harvesting, planting, all that stuff you can. Hey, just no no, you don't have to deal with any of that if you don't want to, which is what makes it kind of enjoyable, because everyone has a different playstyle. Like there's so many different places, there's people who play the game like, so like really arcadey.
Speaker 4:Like there's people like running stuff that just doesn't exist in real life, because they're like this, that's how we want to play the game. But then there's people like, like my group that we just play, like we try to get as realistic as we can, was still leaving some leeway of like all right, it's a video game. You know you're really going to bore yourself out if you're going like to real this business loan was approved at 6%.
Speaker 2:Unlikely.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, you know, but it's like there's still stuff that we skim out on because it's like it's just not going to be fun. You know, like no one's like I don't want to have to take, you know, a college course to figure. You know how I'm going to do this.
Speaker 4:You know it's like there's we have leeways of like all right, we have like an in game notary, notarized of loan, talk Right Like yeah, it's like there's a point where you're like all right, this is too much, like, this is dumb, you know, like, but try to keep it real but also have fun with the game, because that's what we're just doing there. We're simulator games. Like I play the game to relax. Like, because you ask that, like I play that game to relax, like that.
Speaker 4:Come back like there's nothing stressful about it. Like, like it sounds stressful the way I'm making it sound, but it's like it's really not that stressful. Like, yeah, it's like. Once you kind of figure it out, it's like if you played the game enough and kind of know what you're doing, it's really not that bad. So you just get on there, you play, you know, you just be as with your friends for a little bit and then you go, yeah, yeah, so I'm, so you can do it. Like you rent out dedicated servers, so that's how all works and I'm just playing with people I've just met like, yeah, like the guy, like two or three of the guys I play with I just met like from through like live streams and you can help farm their land.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So because everyone can like create their own farm and like if they're like, hey, you want to come over, you just switch over farms. You just go into like a mini, switch their farm and you just go farm further, Like what they're oh, yeah, yeah, I could I could totally just ruin everything, like I could just get on, like just plant just the wrong crap through everything.
Speaker 2:I have a hard time not being an anarchist.
Speaker 4:Like I was playing a game like this.
Speaker 2:I would get kicked out of every server. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they. There's a big thing like people just go on the like public servers like they have like no passwords or mods or anything like that, and they'll just ruin people's farms yeah. They'll just grief the just ever living shit out of this server and they'll just leave and like that's just what they have fun doing. It's like that's pointless.
Speaker 3:But so do you? Is it just farming simulator? Do you play like the truck, or I play the truck as well?
Speaker 4:Airplane simulator the I would do airplane simulator if I had the money to just invest into like a full rig, like that's one of those I couldn't just like half ass play, like I'd have to get dedicated.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'd have to get like the flight stick, the throttle, like all that stuff. Like I couldn't just be like, oh, I'm just going to play, like I got my controller or something like that, like I'd have to dedicate a lot of money into a setup because I have to admit I've like the few Euro trick simulator ones I've watched.
Speaker 3:I kind of I want to try it like if I had the full setup. I'm like that kind of looks fun, it's just driving a car Even keyboard.
Speaker 4:It's keyboard or controller. It's still fun, like I put thousands of miles and like Euro truck simulator on keyboard. Sam was American truck simulator. That's why I played like the most, like playing with keyboard, like it's just fun.
Speaker 3:Are you able to go across all of America?
Speaker 4:No, so they are releasing them like states, as DLC. So that's how they're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like, it's like California would be a very yeah, yeah, be like an expert level. Yeah, so they start the.
Speaker 4:Western part of IA, so they so they started on the West Coast because they knew that those are like the bigger states to like, you know, just run through and they're like big and empty and other they didn't have to do as much. Now they're starting to like go back and revise, like like California, like if you run through California you can tell like it was old, like that, like that map, like the textures are just like just terrible, like you can tell the difference between what they've just like recently done versus like the first stuff they done. But it's like I think Texas was like the most expensive one. I think that was like $15 for like the state. But yeah they're?
Speaker 4:they're no more than like 11, 12 bucks. So like it isn't till, like like East Coast, I've already said they're just going to bundle, like you know, because like no one's going to pay $5 for the main.
Speaker 3:I only want New Jersey, yeah.
Speaker 4:Because it's because it's scaled to like one to 20. So it's like it doesn't take very long to get from town to town. So it's like you get in the main it's going to be like one city and that's it.
Speaker 2:Maybe a road.
Speaker 4:You know it's like they're not.
Speaker 2:I was watching this guy playing. I always look up, like you know like where we live, just to see what, like you know what that looks like in world. He's driving and then and he's like yeah, we're leaving here now and he's like we're coming up on San Francisco and I was like wait a minute.
Speaker 1:It hasn't been that long as it yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, one to 20 scale. So it's like it kind of messes with stuff like traffic, like AI traffic kind of sucks in the game. So it kind of like messes with like on wraps. But yeah, like on wraps are like really short, like they're not like long, like they are real life. So it's like you have to like merge Like you have to like, just cut off AI like there's like, and they like don't like move over for you.
Speaker 4:So there's been more, yeah, yeah. So it's just like there's been. So many times I've just been sitting there waiting for traffic to get on my way. It's. It's bad, it's and like there's. What's crazy is like AI traffic is already bad, but there's like mods out there that like increase it by like five to like make it realistic, and it's like people have been like stuck in traffic for like hours.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:Like that's not fun, like that there's a point again realism and fun, and that's not fun. It might be fun to somebody else, but it's like that's not fun to me. Like I don't, I don't go, man, I can't wait to be stuck in traffic and play for like two hours just sitting in traffic and then go to bed Like I can't wait to do that. It's like that's not what I want to do.
Speaker 3:Can't wait to drive home from work. Yep, to drive some more, to drive some more.
Speaker 4:And that was terrible Bunch of traffic.
Speaker 2:There's this guy that entered my algorithm. I don't remember his name, but his whole like shtick as he plays. He's like this truck simulator game and he gets in accidents and he like makes it look realistic. And then he like, he'll like hit me like, hold on, hold on now. And then he like throws himself all over and like it's so funny. But then, like I noticed, like every video he uploads is that I'm like oh, this is the only thing, this guy does, but it is pretty funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. And then he'll like go off a cliff and he always acts like there's like kids in the back or something, and he'll be like I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1:I'm so sorry, as they're like oh my God, we got to watch a couple of his videos. He's literally got one, one angle of content.
Speaker 3:I think I know who you're talking about. And the funny thing is like before all that he was like a skit artist on Tik Tok and then he hard steered into that because I used to. I was subscribed to him on Tik Tok, if it's the same guy and like I used to watch his skits because they were funny and then as soon as that happened I don't see a skits anymore and I just see like just his crashes on trucks.
Speaker 2:To be fair, he does it good Like he moves.
Speaker 3:Is his Sim Rig like pretty good? No, it's just him in a chair.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's got the wheel, he's got, the wheel Is he a green screen or Like he puts himself on, you know, like on the screen of the game, you know and like, but it's always and I've never actually watched a full stream of this guy. I've only ever seen those clips. But he's always like. He'll say something like oh, we got a shortcut coming up here, oh God, it's not a shortcut. And they're like falling, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. And he literally like commits, he throws himself all over. And they just ex-dead.
Speaker 3:I watched this one stream and I thought it was a good idea too is he was drunk driving, so like it's, the only way you can actually safely drink and drive is playing Euro Truck Simulator and drinking. And it was fun to watch Because he like he kept drinking and he'd get more drunk and he'd get in the accident?
Speaker 1:Was he driving worse?
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was yeah, but it was. It's amazing and it's like that's perfect stream content Like that's hilarious.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome to the podcast. So, yeah, good, and I'm glad we're happy to have you. So we've got our mainline topic tonight is this Ubisoft exec that came out this week, cock talking about.
Speaker 2:Glad we all voted on this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you want something different? Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2:Actually you guys wouldn't want to talk about it and actually I don't make executive decisions.
Speaker 1:What the fuck does that mean, set?
Speaker 3:rails this whole conference.
Speaker 2:All right continue Fine.
Speaker 1:If you want, this isn't a democracy Just listen and listen to what I say. Ok, that's how we roll. Thanks, kyle. I don't even know where to go now.
Speaker 2:Oh, as if it's so hard to go back to what you were just saying you know where was. I. I guess we can move on If you don't remember exactly what you wanted. That was the plan.
Speaker 1:This Ubisoft exec came out today or this week. I guess I was talking about how there needs to be a market shift in gamers in terms of what they like to do, Like to do right which is they need to shift the market to getting people comfortable.
Speaker 3:What you all right, sir? Yeah, I just imagine, after you get your whole thing done, I'm going to be like, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty cool, that's right.
Speaker 2:I don't have any thoughts.
Speaker 1:All right, you guys want to talk about something else? No, you guys are horrible.
Speaker 2:We're just being bad friends. Yeah, clearly Try to derail you.
Speaker 1:Now I definitely don't remember where I was, but basically it was this idea where they're going to shift perspective to getting consumers OK with never owning their own game and kind of like streaming their content or having license or a subscription to basically a database to play other games. And we've talked about this in the past with like Steam is sort of functioning as this now, I mean, when you buy a Steam game, you don't actually technically own that game.
Speaker 2:That's one of those things. Same thing. If you buy anything on PlayStation Store or Xbox Marketplace, you don't own digital games.
Speaker 1:You don't own that copy, and I think this trend, I mean this kind of made ripples and noise, but I mean, if you haven't been paying attention for the last what seven, 10 years? I think this is already happening. This is sort of like old news.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was happening because you could see the reality of what was actually shifting. But now, I mean, high-ranking executives are now just coming out openly talking about it, so it's like it's here, it's been here. It really didn't surprise me, but the reaction online was sort of like this oh my god. But I mean we're in this paradigm now.
Speaker 2:I know we've at least talked about this outside of the podcast, but I feel like we've even talked about this on the show before, of how it's one of those things that you just become comfortable with. You don't even realize it's happening. It slowly took over and then at first we just pissed off about it and then you get to a point of just acceptance, so this whole thing. I think it's shitty that you don't ever really own a game anymore, but, like you said, it's not a surprise.
Speaker 3:And I mean it's like I doubt they'll ever make it to where it's too drastically different than what our current system is, because if they try and shift it one way to where it's like, after a couple of years you have to buy the game again. People would be pissed and that wouldn't stand. So I think it might continue to evolve, but I don't think it'll get any worse than it is now, in my opinion at least.
Speaker 1:Any thoughts? Yeah, I mean it's here to stay. Like you guys said, it's here to stay. I mean we've been in this paradigm. We've been in this sort of marketplace. The thing is it happened with traditional media formats already streaming services for movies and TV shows. It's already happened there. When was the last time you guys bought a physical DVD?
Speaker 4:Like in that.
Speaker 1:DVD Really.
Speaker 2:This morning.
Speaker 1:Oh nice, sometime Non-portographic though.
Speaker 2:Then I don't know Years. It's been so long.
Speaker 1:I love to go to a physical store.
Speaker 2:I still shop out, yeah.
Speaker 1:Pretty recently you bought one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I know there's more recent, but it's like across the Spider-Verse, I've bought that one. Yeah really Racial CD, interstellar, but even that.
Speaker 2:Those are old.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean there's more recent, but I just can't think of them.
Speaker 1:But even that though, Like if you were to take that disk and put it in your computer to save the files on your computer, it won't let you do that. It's encrypted.
Speaker 3:Because that's what the commercial used to tell us you wouldn't download a car.
Speaker 2:There's not a victimless crime.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you wouldn't download a car, but you bought the movie.
Speaker 1:You just don't own the right. You own the movie in that medium, on disk. You don't own the lot you don't own. Yeah or no the disk. You can't transfer that medium to another digital storage device. You don't own the rights to do that.
Speaker 3:What you might be able to you can. You have to do a lot of work to wriggle, I remember because that I used to. You might not be able to do that, but I can.
Speaker 1:I used to use this program called Handbrake that would grab all the files. Because what they would do is, if you tried to download them, it would desync the movie. The audio wouldn't line up, the chapters would be out of order. It was a hodgepodge, but Handbrake would kind of like rip it and put it in a seamless track. It wasn't always perfect, but it worked.
Speaker 3:What need did you have to do that?
Speaker 1:I wanted to have DVD If I'm flying, if I was going on a plane or something like that, and I want to have four or five. He had a massive underground network of client-stributing. I was distributing Toy Story 2 at a rate that never was seen before 10 years after he came out.
Speaker 1:No, the perfect use case was we would have DVDs of TV series and I would want to put it on my laptop for a flight or something for travel, and that was the first time that I ever seen this. We're talking back in 2011, when they started encrypting these disks and so you couldn't just plug it into your DVD driver. You had to have the physical disk. How many times do you buy a video game? You still have to have the physical disk. Even though the whole thing is sitting on your PlayStation or whatever, you have to have that disk in there. No, well, what do you mean?
Speaker 3:no, 98% of my games are fully digital.
Speaker 1:Right, but when you had games in the past that were on a disk you do the whole transfer onto your thing. You have to have the disk in there, Even though it's not even running off the disk, because the disk read speeds are too slow. It's a whole thing exists on your PlayStation, but you have to have the physical copy of the disk in your. That's been a thing since forever the seventh generation which was like PS3, xbox 360.
Speaker 2:Before then, like PS2, Xbox, games actually used to just be read off the disk. That's why you could just pop it in and play. And then I remember, when PS3 era came out, I'll get a game and I'm like wait a minute. Why do I have to wait five hours? To play this. This is absurd. I just bought it and we had terrible internet when it was like, I guess, ok for the time, but compared to what you get now, it was atrocious to be able to do anything.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's why I was never even convinced that the disk itself even contained the game, because you ended up downloading, like this massive file, yeah, and it was like, is there even hardly anything on the physical disk itself, or do you just, are you just, is it like a key to then download the game and their shop or whatever, I don't know. Super weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was confused too when you first said, like if you download, if you buy a game, do you still have to put the disk in. I was like I know that you haven't been a console boy in a while, but that's.
Speaker 1:you have to go and find a physical CD and write the name of the game on it. I have to put a CD in Now and then that awkward time between, like you know, I would say, like the PlayStation 4 days, where you really you had that. Well, the PlayStation 4 actually had a pretty decent store, like maybe it was a PS3 days where, like their store, you really, I don't know, it's kind of clunky, you know it was that awkward time where things, some things were digital but not it was probably towards the end of the seventh generation's shelf life where, like you, started to really just buy things digitally.
Speaker 2:I still remember the very first game I ever bought digitally was Mass Effect. I'm not even kidding, because the first Mass Effect didn't come out on PlayStation 3 originally, it was only on Xbox 360. And then, so the only way that you could play Mass Effect at that time was when the second game came out. Then they finally released the first game on PS3, but digital only and so I bought that, downloaded it, and I remember my mind was blown. I was like what? I don't even need a disc for this. It's insane. I own this game Like 2009 or something.
Speaker 3:Okay, but then the funny thing is now, with the transition from disc to digital, like you buy collector's editions like Cyberpunk over there, I got a steel case without a CD.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did. Collector's editions don't have the discs now.
Speaker 1:And they didn't change the copy the box for it, because there's still a slot for it.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, there's still a slot, Like as if I were to get one. It's like you can buy a second copy at the store and then you put the disc in here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally the Witcher 3. You know just a blank copy. That is so weird. I have seen that a couple of times and it's the silliest thing it's like did they invest in a company that makes those cases? Steel box or something or like. What is the?
Speaker 2:just the nostalgia of seeing that CD ring A lot of people that they like. They like looking at what they own and so they have like they're very meticulous about how they they put their like lineup as far as like their disc holders on their shelf how it looks a certain way.
Speaker 2:So there's a whole community around like collectors that do that. Last time I bought a physical copy of anything was probably Dark Souls 3. I bought the collector's edition of that with the physical disc, which is where we got that Ashen Knight up there next to what's her name from the other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what? What game do you guys own the most copy of? Or do you think you've bought the most copies of?
Speaker 1:Oh God, Guild Wars one, because I bought it for all my friends here recently. That's true.
Speaker 2:I know for a fact. We've been on. This was years ago when we talked about this in the podcast. But I bought Witcher 3 an absurd amount of times, so I bought it. I bought the physical copy of Witcher 3. I bought it once and then I lost it and so I bought it again. And I bought the physical copy of again instead of buying it digitally. So that's two times. And then I bought it a third time. I bought it digitally because if I ever lose this again, I want to have it digitally. So I bought it the third time and then I bought it separately For a reason I can't remember now.
Speaker 2:I for some reason, I bought it separately. I think it was like an account thing where I got locked out of my old PlayStation account. Like I need it and I wanted to play it really bad, so I bought it again. And then I bought it on the switch. So I bought it and it was full price every single time. It wasn't the wisest decision, money wise, but but I bought it a lot of times have you bought any?
Speaker 4:Not that I know I can't think off the top of my head of what I bought the most copies of.
Speaker 3:I think the only. I mean Mass Effect and the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I those are. I don't really count that. But I did buy Cyberpunk twice. Really why? Because I couldn't wait for the Collectors Edition. Because the stupid thing about it, you know, it was empty steel case but the the code, the download code, was in the Collectors Edition box and so I had to wait for that to get to my house and I was like, oh, I don't want to wait.
Speaker 1:Seriously.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then, you ended up waiting anyways for them to patch it.
Speaker 3:So and then our chat said Half Life.
Speaker 1:How did they bum that up?
Speaker 3:That's how most Collectors Editions are, though, yeah.
Speaker 1:You can't play at launch.
Speaker 2:Not if you buy the physical. It's stupid.
Speaker 3:No God of War. I did that too because the same thing about the Collectors Edition the code is in the box, so it's being shipped to you and I'm like I don't want to wait for that.
Speaker 2:I've only got half life. I've only bought that once.
Speaker 1:I just that pisses me off.
Speaker 3:It's.
Speaker 1:You're telling me that, like you're sure they didn't send you that code.
Speaker 3:Yes, like when you order it via email.
Speaker 1:Yeah, secured link. You can't pre populate it, nothing, nothing. You have to wait and of course it gets there like post launch five days later. Yeah, dude, that, that really irks me. Yeah, that actually irks me. It's stupid. I think this doesn't happen on P. I'm trying to think like oh no, because the master race.
Speaker 1:I feel like I don't know, because, like, when you get, like you can pre load your games on steam, but but that's obviously not a collector's edition. Like, to buy the collectors edition you have to go, probably through, like the publisher or whatever their website, right, so you're not buying it through these.
Speaker 2:Well, sometimes there are special editions through third parties, like there's like believe it or not, I forget which game it was I bought, but it was like if I bought it at Walmart there was a special Walmart edition. Collectors like that kind of thing Can you buy collectors editions from steam.
Speaker 1:I know you can get like the upgraded version, but can you actually buy like if it came with, like a collectible or something like that? Does that come with?
Speaker 4:No, so you like Far Cry. Well, I guess that Far Cry didn't come out to on steam, like the newest one didn't come out there. But no, like usually you can only buy like the, like the premium, like they're like standard or like the the classic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the play five days early edition.
Speaker 4:Yes, well, you can't you always think, almost always have to go through like their actual, like website, like, if I want, like the Far Cry six, like the Lux or like the collectors edition. Yeah, I had to go through Ubisoft.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And there's no, I kind of get that off. Steam, steam only offers, like I said, like the like standard digital stuff like that. Yeah, you can't actually, which kind of sucks, being kind of nice.
Speaker 1:PC average race.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, have fun playing an unoptimized game.
Speaker 2:All right yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a poor, everything's a poor thing man. Well, speaking of video games, what about?
Speaker 2:that what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1:Like I've seen. I've seen some noise of Diablo's pushing this, and of course, it's always going to be the big boys that do this, but they want to see Diablo's a big boy.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's blizzard I know, I haven't heard anything about it.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's not been on my radar. Yeah, as we sit in front of it.
Speaker 1:It. They're toying with the idea of selling their expansion at a hundred bucks. And there's this. Yeah, it is warm in here. Thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2:Sweat over here, thank you.
Speaker 1:They've been toying with this idea of, like a hundred dollar expansion. How long do you guys think how close are we to getting games that are just standard out of the box hundred bucks, because I know that, like a lot of these games, they always sell like some kind of upgraded version that gets you to that hundred bucks. But like how long before we start seeing base games just starting at, you know, 99, 99.?
Speaker 3:Well, they've, they've already done with, like PS5. It's like the average new game is 70. 70, yeah, is the starting price.
Speaker 2:So I think, as inflation goes up, I'd say honestly, I could see it happening within like five years.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:I feel like, I feel like games. I was going to shout but like I feel like games have been like relatively cheap, like they have not kept up with inflation for years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they stayed, they stayed 60.
Speaker 2:It was 60 for your wife, like almost 20 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like that was kind of shocking in and of itself. So it's about time they moved up.
Speaker 3:But here's also the thing is, I think I think there's also possibility that the price won't increase if we keep going with like micro transactions and expansions and stuff.
Speaker 2:That's true, because consoles themselves.
Speaker 3:Most of them, I think all of them they sell it to you at a loss.
Speaker 4:The hardware.
Speaker 3:The hardware. So like why can't? Games might evolve into the same thing, where they're selling it to you at a loss, but they make up for it with micro transactions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see, and like I know this is like what I want, but who gives a shit about what I actually want? But I feel, like Elden Ring, I would actually feel 100% comfortable spending $120 on that game because I know that there's not like an in game, it's a complete game, right, like there's no in game transaction shop, like it is what it is. There's no live service. There's going to be DLC, like that comes out. It's just sort of that's the price for a game. That's going to be live service.
Speaker 1:Where I'm kind of because there's games that, like always nowadays it goes beyond just cosmetics. Right, there will be quality life things. There will be things where it's like time skipper, yeah, exactly, Some something. It's like you can spend 500 hours doing this, or for $3, you know, and so like. For those games.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't necessarily, unless it was the title that was super deeply passionate about. I wouldn't want to see that, you know, priced at the same thing. Like I don't feel like games should be all just like oh, 70 is the standard, let's make it 70 bucks or whatever it is. I feel like, depending on what you're offering, like just like any other product in the world, if you have different features like hey, there's no in game shop, okay, baldur's Gate, I'll give you 100 bucks. There's no in game shop, I'll you know, I'll buy it at that level. And then you've got games that like Diablo or any kind of live service games where it's like, okay, I'll spend 30 bucks, with the expectation of spending another 30 bucks or whatever it is, I don't know it's. I feel like it's kind of crazy that we just pin one price and everybody just sort of releases at that level.
Speaker 3:Well, but I feel like that's kind of tied to because, if you look at like the movie market, right, the movie has an average runtime and video games, even though there is a variation of time for completion, you can definitely probably look at, have an average of probably like 30 hours, and it would be my guess it might be even I don't know what it would be but like. So I almost want to say the $60 based on that 30 average, and then you would have to get some type of rating board to be able to be like well, this game is actually a 120 hour game, so we can up it to $80. And because I don't think we could trust a development company to be like trust me, this game is $120 worth, they would do that to all their games. Call of duty would do that.
Speaker 1:Like that's what I'm saying Like that they all seemingly just converge on this one price point. You go to the store there's you can find 12 different prices for 12 different types of toothpaste. All of them do basically the same thing and have, but some of them have, different features. This one's whitening, this one's extra fresh breath for longer, or whatever you know. Like, each one have different features. So I feel like, I feel like you could, I think the gaming industry is mature enough at this point to have deviations in price based on what you're offering. You know, like the average consumer of a video game I feel like at this point is is you know what you're buying. Like it's not like you're the it's a saturated market in the sense.
Speaker 1:Like you've got the people who knew gamers coming online probably have parents who are gamers and you know it's not like this kid in a basement that's never seen a TV before, all of a sudden getting this like you know what I mean. Like it's a mature audience. I feel like they can really offer a wide spectrum of prices based on the product. It just seems so strange to me that they're like oh, we can get away with a 70, now Everybody goes 70. Oh, we're going to go away with a 100, or teasing that, because Blizzard will tease it, they'll release it at that, and then everybody will sort of fall suit. Why not strategically sort of play around with your, your offering? Maybe there's a reason.
Speaker 3:I would say it's, it's kind of tied to how we view movies, because movies are all the same price. I mean, you know there's collectors, additions and stuff, along with music too, like it is strange that certain bits of media have standard price accepted, like imagine if you went to the store and Taylor Swift's new album was like 70 and then you looked over and somebody else was like $10. Yeah, it's like that'd be weird it is odd.
Speaker 2:There's not. I mean the entertainment. I guess the song gets lumped into the entertainment industry, but it's not. Like you know, like you said, like you know, like all cars are not built the same you don't buy all cars for the same price Games are not built the same. You can't tell me that you get the same amount of enjoyment out of, for instance, a game like Baldur's Gate and then a game that takes five hours to beat, and it's the same price. You know it's weird.
Speaker 3:So it is definitely. I wonder if there's like a commission or committee that's like video game prices and you just stay at 60. I don't know.
Speaker 1:It probably comes down to the music industry. I bet you there's like a handful of publishing companies or like record companies that have all the reach, but, like I bet you, there's probably three or four big players that probably make up a massive chunk of that that industry, and they probably do have these closed doors conversations of like well, you know we have these titles with this brand recognition. You know whether we sell for a hundred or we sell for 80, you know we, some people won't buy it because it's a hundred but it's going to basically be a wash.
Speaker 1:you know our analytics say it's going to be a wash, as long as it's a decent game or whatever. Like I guarantee they have all the models for this, so it'll just be interesting to I don't. It's kind of interesting that it hasn't evolved more than it you know it's funny is there's actually no.
Speaker 2:According to a quick little Google research, there's no. There's nothing regulating this, it's just.
Speaker 1:They're just all converging, all the published.
Speaker 2:All the publishers have just kind of has a silent agreement on what works best.
Speaker 4:Huh.
Speaker 1:So so victory says aren't destiny DLCs more than $60?
Speaker 2:I could be wrong. No, I don't think so. I never maybe more than 60.
Speaker 1:Like light fall was like 30. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Maybe if you buy like the bundles where you like, yeah, you buy all out of the old one or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think they're more than 60. Like I've played I've played MMOs and those when, like those expansions, loss or release those ones costs like basically a full, they are basically a full game, Like the game launched it I think it was too what like when it came out it was like 50 or 60 bucks for their game and it was like 50 or 60 bucks for their expansions. And then, of course, you get 8,000 gems if you order their $100 version which is 50% off and you can use that for in-game golden items and like wow.
Speaker 2:Oh boy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but it's also free to play. And then there's like this whole dynamic there and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know Like it. To me, it just I feel like we have such a mature audience. There's so much information around games, right, like whether it's like a reviewer or people talking about the game, or content around like pre-launch of the game, that people really know what they're buying. I feel like if companies really wanted to squeeze out even more revenue, I feel like they could really pinpoint and figure out like what better pricing.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think that's what they're trying to do now with like PS5 $70 games. They're kind of like, well, let's see how much we can stretch it, and people will still buy. And you know, they're testing it. That's, I mean, the whole video game. That's what they're always doing. They're always testing elder, elder skulls. Was it oblivion with this? The horse armor?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the first. That was the first micro transaction that became like a controversy.
Speaker 1:Everybody blames it.
Speaker 2:Was it like $5? Something crazy.
Speaker 1:Maybe I think it was, but it was. It was like more successful than like any other title that year, so like it made that alone made more money than like any other game that releasing, because everybody that owned that game basically bought it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so you're constantly seeing trying to push the envelope and seeing how far they can get, and then usually somebody takes a little bit too far in public out, you know, outlashes, and then it comes back. But I think that's just what they're. They're going to end up doing with video game prices too is just kind of trying to push it and see what's acceptable for the masses yeah.
Speaker 2:What's that guy's name? I'm forgetting it. He used to be a developer for Blizzard and then he like Bobby Kotick.
Speaker 1:No, he was a CEO.
Speaker 2:Bobby K, and then he, he also worked for the government for a while as a hacker, but he's really. He blew up recently. He's got like the long hair, deep voice.
Speaker 1:Oh, pirate software, Something like that.
Speaker 2:So he was talking about when he was working on WoW. He and his team spent an insane amount of hours developing. I forget what it was. It was like just like a quest path or something that they patched into it. Um, he talked about all the manpower it took and all the like, um, the time it took to develop everything. And he's like guess how much money you made. And he listed it and it was something super minuscule by comparison. And then he's like and then, in comparison, here is uh, this skin is like it took all of uh, maybe 24 hours to develop. You have so much money this may hit. And it was like literally like something crazy, like 7,000% more than what the, the like, um, how much that development was.
Speaker 2:And he's like and you wonder why these companies are putting money into things like this and not quality.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say didn't you send that in the discord Cause? I swear I watched. I think you sent that video first.
Speaker 2:That guy had some of the best takes ever and like video game culture and awareness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, you've you played warlord craft at all? You did, yeah, what it like. How many hours do you think you got into it?
Speaker 4:No more than like maybe 40.
Speaker 1:Oh, like, yeah, like, I, yeah like.
Speaker 4:I like cause my brother is like the only reason I played that game.
Speaker 1:How many hours do you think your brother has A thousand a thousand.
Speaker 4:I mean he's gotta be pushing Like yeah he's been, cause he's been playing for a long time. He's got at least 10,000 plus and that's like taking like big breaks from that game.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the example, you just laid out that I think it's pirate software. I think that might be his name, or pirate games or something like that. I wish he streamed at real hours. He streams at like 2am to 8am. It's ridiculous he does not stream in human hours. I think he's maybe EU or something, I don't know, but he sounds like an American.
Speaker 1:But like that example is literally the horse armor example. It takes like a fraction. It's not content, they're not. It's just like a piece of art that they can then sell it and throw on a you know a skin and people chuck money at it, but then, like Kyle said, like a team of people working on something, it just doesn't have the same ROI you know, but.
Speaker 1:But it's a balancing scale, right. You can't just have all cosmetics and it all pays out equally, because you need the content to then have the. You know, the value of a game like World of Warcraft is in its player base, right, if nobody played World of Warcraft then nobody would want to get in. That's kind of a weird example, but obviously nobody would want to get into it. The fact that World of Warcraft is still successful is because it is successful, right.
Speaker 1:The downfall to any MMO or any like online game is when the community starts to fall off. People go, oh, dead game and then they leave and abandon it and the numbers sort of crash. World of Warcraft sort of always had that like really stable large player base and that's exactly and that's the value of the player base. So you come out with a skin and these skins are like not fucking cheap Diablo four, like some of those armor skins, like the necromancer had a really sick one, like a death one, like a death knight kind of, like a skeleton one. It was like $25 just for the skin and that was like. That was just like is that normal? Like I would never buy that. I'm not the type of person, I'm not that market. Well, I think that's just blizzard misunderstanding, like Fortnite.
Speaker 3:In my opinion, the reason Fortnite gets away with that, like their skins, is because the game's free Diablo wasn't free, no, and so it's like you can't charge $25 for a skin.
Speaker 1:The versus Fortnite. How many people do you think bought?
Speaker 3:it. Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure that you.
Speaker 1:Was it more than what they paid the artist to draw it up or create it? Probably.
Speaker 3:I mean, like you know, any type of mobile game. Like I play this Dragon Ball mobile game, I know for a fact it's supported by Wales. Like people like me who just give it a few dollars every now and then. They don't care about me. It's these. It's these rich people that, like, dump thousands into it. And that's same with Diablo. It's by Wales. Yeah, that's what they're called.
Speaker 2:I've never You've never heard of the term whale.
Speaker 1:No, I guess I'm not you need to go wailing. So it's like you get like your average player base let's say the value of each customer is like a dollar. Then you have whales that like they'll spend $10,000. That's the people you're trying to target in your games and not me yeah, a whale, and so, like you want, to you want to do?
Speaker 1:what if you create content that only serves the whales? You don't give a shit about the average player base. It's those 10 20 people that are supporting the shit out of your game, like Diablo immortal it's like a handful of those people that have dumped that. One guy dumped over a hundred grand into the game and then the next season.
Speaker 3:He was irrelevant, like it's like a trust fund, baby, that just says too much money, you get one.
Speaker 1:or you get a. You get five or six of those in a player base of a million, whatever. It's not unreasonable to think about.
Speaker 2:I'd like to imagine that obviously I would. Now I don't have the capability of dumping that kind of money into something.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'd like to imagine that if I was, like you know, worth a lot of money, like 300 million, that I wouldn't be like that. But I know for a fact that I'm the kind of person that I'd be like and I would do that because that's how I am. On a much smaller scale of games already, where I'm like I'm like, oh, this game's kind of fun, oh, that's a cool skin click, oh, that's kind of click. And I'm like, wait a minute, what have I done? Is Kyle?
Speaker 1:a whale.
Speaker 2:No, he's a baby whale.
Speaker 1:No one ever told him that term because they didn't want to they didn't want to send me Kyle's a narwhal If I had the money.
Speaker 2:Baby whale.
Speaker 3:I love it.
Speaker 2:If I had the money, I'd be a whale.
Speaker 1:Do you buy cosmetics in games?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I will like if it's something like cool that I think looks cool, I will. But like I'm not like just buying anything, like I don't just see, like if I play it. Like when I was like Fortnite was a big thing, like I think I only bought one skin and I was like that looks cool, but I wasn't like all about like, oh, I have to have every week or month, whatever it was that they released a new one, like I didn't have to have it, like I could just get one and be like, alright, I'm pretty content. So it's just because I don't think Fortnite deserved my money and I think Epic Games deserved my money other than that one time for miniscule amounts of money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I mean you got the game originally for free, because I did the same thing for night. I bought the Venom skin when I started playing it, but I really have no desire to buy any others, like I got a cool skin now.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah, that's exactly how I was. I was like alright, I got cool skin, I think it looks cool. That's all I need. If I find another one I think I need, then I'll buy it but I don't have to have every single one that comes out that week. Yeah, but the whales.
Speaker 1:It's always about, like I think, matching that value. Like if I play I don't buy cosmetics, I will buy anything that gives me like a quality. I'm a big quality life guy. I will spend money on stuff that makes my life easier because I don't like repetitive action. I will not play a game that is pay to win. So if there's any kind of like boosting or like a luck based system that you can buy these charges that increase your luck to get a better crap, nope, I will not play those games at all.
Speaker 3:Does Diablo have an XP boost?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think so. They have their premium battle pass gets you through the battle pass faster, but I don't think it. The battle pass. I actually don't even know what the battle pass unlocks, to be honest, man, yeah, I totally stopped playing before season one. I need to go back. I heard the new season is actually gonna be kind of fun. People are really excited about it. So we'll see. But as far as, like I'm not, I don't think I'm gonna buy any, unless they have a drop of fire trailer yeah, and you're sold.
Speaker 2:This is the greatest trailer.
Speaker 1:I have ever seen. Did you listen to that episode when we talked about that? I was, so I had no idea what I never played Diablo.
Speaker 1:I saw their cinematic trailer, which usually those things go right, I don't care about this. I watched this setting and I was like this fucking game is incredible. This looks like so cool. It's like this super fantasy like devil dark, and I was like this looks like a fun game. And then it was like Diablo 4 and I'm like, oh okay, I've heard of the Diablo series and then I got really hyped for it for whatever reason on a cinematic trailer that is like the that is so foreign to me.
Speaker 1:But it worked. Man marketing it got you, it did, and it was a fun game. I enjoyed the hell of it. It was. I got mine. I put 250 hours into it.
Speaker 2:It was. I haven't. I had actually nothing against the game, it's just not really my thing. So once I beat it I was kind of like.
Speaker 3:You did the story. Yeah, I'm not about the the endless grind that like some people love. I get tired of it.
Speaker 1:Well, so you got. What's interesting to me is you played it to the story. You beat the story, basically with Kyle, and you both stopped playing pretty much, yeah right. So to me that was when the game got good, because that's when you finally had enough points to really start specking into different creative builds and you had enough items and you could jump world tears well I like that that I know Kyle doesn't like that stuff generally because he's like starter weapon. Good enough, I'll figure this shit.
Speaker 1:I'll bring it with you but like for you, like that doesn't the build diversity, kind of like really figuring out what works.
Speaker 3:I agree I I did enjoy. I was really looking forward to the bear gone board, but the part that killed it for me was the loot grind, like hearing that I need this specific armor and it only has like a 2% chance to drop them like and then trying to get it and you know it, just it got. The loop was what killed it for me. The loop loop versus. I was excited about the build diversity and kind of doing that, but it was just I needed this specific set of armor and I didn't have it and I couldn't get it well.
Speaker 1:So that's if you're like fall. So I see I understand that because like, if you're trying to follow a guide to a T and it says, hey, this is the optimal, and you're trying to achieve that, that can be very tedious because then you kind of just block out everything that you're getting along the way. But the way I think it's supposed to be played, like as an ARPG, is you basically kind of fall in love with the loot that you're given as you progress, so like maybe it's not the most optimal piece, you know. And like there's what do they call those like ultra rare drops like this, the uber, uber, lilith style drops that like you're basically never going to be able to get and so don't expect it. But that is like best since slot gear.
Speaker 1:But like part of the journey for me that was so much fun was after I do a dungeon or after I do whatever like some open world content. I would go back and I would look at all the golds that I got, or the ancient armor what do they call? It was like ancient and then legend. What was the third tier? I remember legendary or something like that.
Speaker 1:But you would look at that gear and go, oh, this has a better stat but it's worse than this. But because I have that, now I can change this back on my thing, so like I can now have a higher channeling magic. So now I can you know, I can take this piece of equipment off and slot this in, because I don't need that much crit damage, because I get the crit damage from this item. So, like you're, you're getting the loot and you're kind of constantly adjusting this algorithm, like okay, because I did that dungeon, I'm now 1% better. Okay, I'm gonna do again, I'm gonna 1% better. You're constantly playing that game of, like using the loop that does sound like hell, but see, I do think yeah that's so much fun for me.
Speaker 3:I think it's fun, but I don't think it's a tune to me, because I personally would have liked something with, like, higher loot drop rates. I I felt like when I reached the end and I was trying to level up, trying to, you know, finally open up my build, all the loot I was getting was at such a small improvement that it was just it didn't feel worth it to me. And then versus like, for example, the only other game I played that like deeply destiny, right, destiny you would get it was easy to find exotics not easy, but like you had a guaranteed way of the stranger and then the exotics were huge gameplay, shifting weapons or armor, like it was drastic changes and it wasn't as hard to get them as it is in Diablo and so I guess the distance between me getting that epic loot was too long.
Speaker 3:In Diablo versus destiny, I felt like had a better. I didn't feel like I was smashing my head against a wall without getting something good hmm well, you also do.
Speaker 1:You never got to world tier 3, did you so like?
Speaker 3:I went, yeah, I went to it with you. I you had to be there with me. And then you leave and you know, finish the dungeon is me got no, no world.
Speaker 1:So I think we beat the campaign on world tier 2.
Speaker 2:Yeah but then world tier 3.
Speaker 1:You had to do that like unique done. Yeah, we did you. Yeah, we did that with you okay.
Speaker 2:I mean helped he speed ran it yeah and then he's like it's all about guys you got to keep up with me. Dylan, I are fighting the first four, really just blows past them and he's like fun a boss. They're at 25%, like, okay, like.
Speaker 3:I'm like a mile away from where you are right now.
Speaker 2:Get that little XP ring, alright well, I guess he beat the boss, did you.
Speaker 1:But when you got to world tier 3, did you do any like, did you pretty much stop.
Speaker 3:Then I tried dungeons, but I just I felt like the loot I was getting was man because when you were mental it was. It was just numbers versus. I wanted play style changing. Oh, that's a loot I like, like destiny, like exotic. You get one and it's like it totally change.
Speaker 1:It makes you know the final or it's building, defining it's build. The first is, I felt like 1%.
Speaker 3:It was a lot longer until I got to that point in Diablo and I was like I don't, I've already beat the game. The only incentive for me is to get there, and that's way far off, I see.
Speaker 2:I wanted romance options and I wanted to be able to rotate my camera. Those are the two things I wanted. No, I'm just kidding, not have that romance options a joke, but honestly, not being able to rotate the camera. I know that's like so stupid and that's like staple of that type of game, but I hate a fixed camera in a game. It just really bugs me.
Speaker 1:I thought I would hate it more than I did, but once I got locked into the gameplay loop, I was, it didn't even. It didn't even register.
Speaker 2:I want to be able to see all aspects of something and I hate that I can only see things from one angle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree that the camera was frustrating for me because I felt like it was too zoomed in it and I feel like it needed to be a little too zoomed in like I wanted to be zoomed out so I could see more of the map you know when your character, so I want to be a little bit smaller.
Speaker 1:I needed more feel the view. I felt like they did that for like performance issues, because maybe it wasn't optimized at launch. But I would love, like a slider, to be able to increase that, just so I could see a little bit more of my screen. Did you play Diablo 4?
Speaker 4:at all. Have you ever played in a RPG? I play a little bit of path of exile, ernti two dual like doesn't do what that should.
Speaker 2:Whatever the good and I play that further to get that, for it is grating fear were okay on guard from its core.
Speaker 4:Help you, just the ones dedication of like a game as I play. It's is actually I play the field I. I just don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:And like he wouldn't help me either.
Speaker 4:I'd be like dude. I'm like what am I supposed to do? He's like figure it out. And I'm like, well, that's not very helpful, man. I was like, yeah, I can't play with you if you're not, if you're not gonna help me.
Speaker 4:It's like like you don't walk lightly in the cabin. Yeah, yeah, I'm sitting around like this is a very hardcore game from like, cause I was watching people play it before I played it and I was like I'm definitely not gonna like this game. But he's like, oh, do you got to play with this? I'm like okay, and I'm like I just don't understand the game.
Speaker 2:I'm like.
Speaker 4:I just I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:I just don't know what I'm doing Well, like I've seen speed runs of that game where, like people are like changing talents and trees, like as they are like fighting.
Speaker 3:We're gonna respect them. We're gonna change.
Speaker 1:There. It is like they're micro-managing like 50,000 actions a minute and it's insane. You're like this is another level.
Speaker 3:It is crazy, but that's a game I'm surprised you never got into it.
Speaker 1:It's because it's. I didn't know about it. If Path of Exile two drops, I probably will get way too into it, to be honest.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess it's sort of like a seamless world, like it's progression, so they should share resources, I think. So that might be interesting, like in terms of like I think your loot might apply from one to two. I don't know if they've kind of walked that back or what really that means, but it sounds like they're trying to. It's not gonna be like a new game that kind of exists in its own realm and this it's like totally separate. I think there are like kind of like a spider web for Path of Exile. So Path of Exile one and two Two is coming out in a few years. I think there are spider webs that like link the two worlds. But it is I probably will get really into it. I have never really played an ARPG before Diablo four and I'm like this is exactly the game that I, a game that I would love. This is perfect. I totally want to get into that. There was a few. There was like a indie one that came out early, like Halls of Torment, that got like popped off for a few minutes.
Speaker 1:It's only like four bucks. You should check that one out.
Speaker 3:Is it Guild Wars in a RPG? No, it's an MMO RPG, but it has the same play style as an ARPG. Not really.
Speaker 1:No, not really.
Speaker 3:Cause you have like skills and cooldowns, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I guess also, the ARPGs are a lot more mob focused too, and God, there's so much nuance between RPG.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'm gonna try and define it, but then I'm like that doesn't really have to. Like I would say that mobs are in general an ARPG like weak, to where like one or two hits you could just kind of blast through hundreds of enemies. Versus like Guild Wars is much more of like you're threatened by the world, like you can die and there's consequences to dying. But that also doesn't apply like that to everything. So I don't know, it is very much so action driven, where you are like you know doing something and then there's a respect or responsive, you know reaction. But yeah, you know it's. It is. They are very different games, but I also heard this.
Speaker 1:I was watching this video, like that was like 12 years old or not 12, it was probably like six years old, three years old or something and it was talking about Guild Wars II or Guild Wars I's combat system and it equated it to. They talked about it being based on Magic, the Gathering and stuff and they equated it to being very similar to Destiny or not Destiny, what the fuck Divinity, original Sin, and I was like because of all the skill interactions, but it totally does not play like that game, but like the combat is detailed like that and I was.
Speaker 1:Guild Wars one, which I thought was a very weird comparison, but it came from a guy who is like the content creator for Guild Wars, like the series, and it was just kind of mind blowing. Expert opinion. Then I was like all right, I'll trust that opinion, I mean. But it was kind of it was like weird to hear him compare that, compare it to that.
Speaker 2:but According to the forums on Blizzard, arpgs are known as a genre that is single player with online aspects, whereas MMO RPGs are a genre where online aspects and multiplayer activities are not only the norm but forced.
Speaker 1:So then I would 100% classify Guild Wars one as not an MMO and as an ARPG, because all the combat zones are instant space and you're by yourself unless you have a party with you. Interesting, but they are. It is not an open world, which I fucking love about Guild Wars one and hate it about Guild Wars two, because it's balanced for your group right, so like the combat is real and difficult. Versus Guild Wars two it's like you're never really threatened by anything. You just go and like respond in like a way point close by. Because how do you balance like an open world game where if you have a hundred guys running with you or one guy with you, it's kind of like impossible, so like there was real risk in running around.
Speaker 2:We can have a whole episode where we actually really dive in onto these genres ARPG, MMO, RPG, CRPG, more classic RPGs like Elden Ring.
Speaker 3:JRPGs.
Speaker 2:JRPG like it's the most. It's the genre that has the most subgenres. It's insane.
Speaker 1:It's almost meaningless at this point.
Speaker 2:Like I said it before like the fact that Baldur's Gate and Elden Ring are both considered RPGs but are so like furthest apart as you can be from each other. It's insane. Like other genres, I'm literally quoting myself the exact same thing I said last week. But other genres you don't run into that, like Halo and Call of Duty, are very different games, but that's core of their shooters.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's very easy to define them as shooters, but you just don't see that in other genres.
Speaker 3:Billy, did you want to gloat about some achievement you achieved, bro, I could, I could.
Speaker 1:So I achieved a lifelong childhood dream 20 years in the making 20 years almost in the making of achieving God walking amongst mere mortals in Guild Wars One, which is a title that takes, if you were to start a raw account people online say it's like four or 500 hours, that's if you know exactly what the fuck you're doing and bum rushing it and only doing that to achieve it. Sure, but if you realistically it's an achievement that takes and I'm going to say this is not an exaggeration like 1500 to 2000 hours to successfully achieve. And I fucking did it and I did it on my main character. I mean, my account has much more playing time than that, because just to do some of the titles you have to accumulate a certain amount of wealth. So that's a difficult end of self, but I have. I finally did it and I got this achievement and it felt so fucking good guys.
Speaker 1:I never thought I would go back to this game and play it, and I don't know what it is if this steam sale like it's been so successful. But a lot of my old friends have come back to the game. We've been playing the game that we've been jumping on, trading some of our old items to each other, helping each other out, doing some of the old content, and it's like we're locked in and having so much fun.
Speaker 1:My wife's been playing it. She's been having a lot of fun. We beat the first game. We're about a little bit through the second game. Right now there's four total. It is, I feel, like a kid again. I feel like a kid again. I'm having so much fun.
Speaker 1:The combat doesn't feel dated. I love everything about it. I'm having a blast. It's definitely dated in terms of graphics. Sure, it's definitely dated in terms of server latency you don't get the best ping and so it sometimes gets a little rubber bandy and stuff like that. But honestly, I have not really experienced any issues with it. The game does feel alive. There's hundreds of people playing it at any given time, like probably even thousands, to be honest.
Speaker 1:The yearly events gonna happen here soon, where they do the Chinese New Year, they do a Chinese New Year event for three weeks or something like that and it transforms the whole world. They do a whole Winners Day thing. That was everything that was Christmas themed. It's such a cool, fun, interactive world and your loot drops, changes. You'll be killing something in the world, cupcakes will drop or candy canes will drop, and they do different things Like give you sugar rushes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But I completed my Guam and then I went on and completed even a more nutty thing which you can only get if you have Guam, which is like 50 out of 50 home monuments. Which something cool game. You'll know a lot about this. I got 50 out of 50 on that but that was because I had that's less so a character achievement, much more an account achievement. So it's much more representative of what you've done in the game.
Speaker 1:And because I got my Guam, I was able to finish that, which was fucking cool. And that title bleeds into Guild Wars II, so you get rewards in Guild Wars II too. So that's kind of cool. But yeah, man, I did it. I did it. I took me probably after coming back took me probably 300 hours since coming back early last year, maybe even a little further back than that, probably 300 hours since then to do all the final stuff that I needed. And, man, I'm having time in my life so much fun I'm not stopping. I'm already coming up with like new challenges that I want to do, stuff that I want to come up with and try Like I've got a whole guild of dudes that I played with in Guild Wars II that are like not gonna grind the game hardcore or anything like that, but like that are like coming up with cool challenge runs that they want to try out and do and it's fun man.
Speaker 3:So what would you say? Your guys' games are that you go back to like Billy.
Speaker 2:I don't go back to any game like that. I mean, I go back to games, but I don't over. How many hours do you have in Guild Wars?
Speaker 1:True, Between all both titles north of 8000.
Speaker 2:I don't have a single game that I played that much 8000 hours yeah.
Speaker 1:Which I would wager is still less than all the games that you've ever played Probably.
Speaker 2:That's still in, Maybe, but not an all one game, though. That's the thing like 100%. So like I mean I've put a lot of hours into the only game that I go back to. The only game that I go back to that I guess would be like niche now to play would be Knights of the Old Republic. It's a very dated kind of game now, but I play that game probably at least once a year. I play through the beginning then, but if you total up all the hours I put into that, it's not even close.
Speaker 3:Not even drop the bucket, compared to 8000.
Speaker 2:I mean, I probably in total maybe have 500 hours in that game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but how many times do we talk about like have you ever played this game?
Speaker 2:I've never played it, it's true, it's because I've over these years, I've only played Goers 1 and Goers 2.
Speaker 1:Like it's really that's it. Like you guys are playing, you know, 50 hours here, 60 hours there, 20 hours there Me one game, one game only.
Speaker 2:I have 8000 hours in Super Mario Sunshine. Yes, what's that party game?
Speaker 4:Like you, go Mario Party, mario Party 8000 hours in Mario Party 8000. That's great.
Speaker 3:I have 8000 hours in Pet Simulator on the DS Nintendox, nintendox, yeah, fed multiple litters.
Speaker 1:Extreme Bacon says that sounds like an addiction. It is more than addiction. It's love, it's the lifestyle. That's what it is I mean, is it reciprocated? Yes. Did you get anything special for your I don't regret a single minute that I played in that game. I've met some incredible people. It's taught me a lot. It made me fall in love with computers. It's why I do what I do. It's why I have a relationship with this guy, because I grew up with his brother playing video games.
Speaker 2:Not the fact that he's family Times.
Speaker 1:I got a lot of family that I don't really talk to, so well, I mean not really, but I got a lot of family that I don't talk to as much as him and it's defined who I am. So, like I said, like yeah, it's like a lot of hours, but imagine if you added up total playtime, like on your PlayStation 4 or your PlayStation 5, or that number would be crazy and it'd probably be online and not all those hours are like some of that shit. I was doing AFK stuff. I mean it's not like I'm sitting there for all 8,000, but it's lost a decent amount of playtime Grinding something while watching YouTube.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Doing Shumash or studying, getting my college bachelor's degree, playing at whatever time.
Speaker 2:All right, weird flex, you can get his degree while playing video games all the time. Not the Bragg or anything Humble Bragg.
Speaker 3:I don't know what that is the Swiss heart.
Speaker 1:Is that like you need help?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I don't know how to remember that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that means you have a problem.
Speaker 2:You should see it. You should see it there.
Speaker 3:Do you?
Speaker 4:eat Cheerios.
Speaker 3:I'm not full.
Speaker 1:That definitely looks like the Cheerios thing.
Speaker 2:You know what's funny is you're the most well adjusted quote unquote gamer nerd I've ever met and as far as like you break all the stereotypes because you have as many hours as any extreme gamer as you could have. But you're also the most outgoing, charismatic person. I might know which is like the exact opposite of what the stereotype is. The troll.
Speaker 4:Most people have 8,000 hours in the game or not, as like talk.
Speaker 2:They don't talk to people? Yeah, they dwell in their house.
Speaker 4:That's what people's 8,000 hours in a video game do. Well, I think.
Speaker 1:I couldn't do this in a game like Night Sailor Republic or like Mass Effect. I couldn't do, and there's people who like will grind it to. I bet you there's speed runners that have like 8,000 hours in Mass Effect or something trying to eke out. I can't do that. I was drawn to Guild Wars because of the game play, but the social element kept me there. True.
Speaker 2:And there's games like Mass Effect and the Night Sailor Republic and single player focused games. There's not enough content to do that.
Speaker 2:You can't do that over and over and over for 8,000 hours. I mean, if you were doing it using as a hangout session, talk to friends. That's different and there's just. Mmos are designed to be played like that. They're constantly pumping out new content. They're constantly figuring out things to do for the community. So if you had 8,000 hours in a game like that, or public or any single player game for that matter, there's like a real thing going on with your brain.
Speaker 4:You're like let me like like.
Speaker 2:no social aspect to it at all. You're just playing by yourself for 8,000 hours Like.
Speaker 1:What's your most like.
Speaker 4:I think the only game that I come back to a bunch like that's actually like story kind of wise is like Far Cry 5. That's my favorite game ever. I only have like 130 hours in the game. Just I've only played like ever replayed. That's like. That's a game I was like think about.
Speaker 3:Is Far Cry 5 boss, or is that?
Speaker 2:No, that's three. No, three is boss, that's five, is the?
Speaker 4:that's all the religious cult numbers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in.
Speaker 4:America. Yeah, ok, that's nothing to do as well, like it's just the most like relatable, like the one like story that you can see, like happening, like that Cold never taken over the world, like, yeah, you could see that happen.
Speaker 2:Four is the one with that weird dude in the Himalayas. Yeah, three is boss Three is boss. I was when I play was to. That was actually really good. The one and two.
Speaker 3:Huh, yeah, I played five.
Speaker 2:I had not anything like memorable Right.
Speaker 4:People the way that. Oh man, I like the villain from Park. I was the best Right.
Speaker 2:Especially Far Cry. You could say a lot of things about that series, but they have very memorable good villains.
Speaker 3:Yes, for sure, Especially after three. Although you know I do have to say I played I, even though I really enjoyed primal, I don't remember anything about the villains.
Speaker 2:Because that was the like, the BC, like yeah, it was like thousand years ago and that was cool.
Speaker 3:I enjoyed doing that, but I don't remember anything.
Speaker 4:That's also just like a filler game. Yeah, like they came out like Far Cry New Dawn.
Speaker 3:Oh blood dragon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, blood dragon. Yeah, it's like the new action hero.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like new dawn to like fill in the gap between five and six.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And also give you a finishing story to five because they didn't finish it for you. Like they're just like oh, what happened after here? And it's like that's it.
Speaker 2:Extreme bacon fixes heart yeah.
Speaker 3:And says there's your heart, thank you. There it is. I would say the game for me that I go back to the most is probably fallout New Vegas. I really enjoy that game. Yeah, it's a good one and I, you know, I turn on wacky wasteland and I don't know it's, it's it. I just can go back and I I guarantee I choose the same choices the truth is over.
Speaker 2:It was rig from the start.
Speaker 3:But I just like that game. It's got Matthew Perry in it. Yeah, rest in peace, yep.
Speaker 2:He, I, he did not do good job voice acting that game, but you know what it's there. It's a part of history. Bob, new Vegas was Obsidian. Yeah and yeah, they, they. Actually it wasn't Bethesda, they did it under Bethesda's banner, but it was obsidian that did it. And the outer worlds? They did the outer worlds, which is one of my favorite kind of indie RPGs.
Speaker 3:Next they're doing a vowed which is supposed to be like elder scrolls.
Speaker 2:It doesn't look that. Okay, I'm gonna reserve judgment, but it looks kind of like a mashup of Fallout and elder scrolls like with the humor and stuff and it just it feels kind of Off like I don't know if that works in a fantasy world environment. So I'll wait to see, because I do like obsidian a lot. That's how I felt about outer worlds is like I didn't like that had a fallout vibe to it.
Speaker 3:It felt almost too too far, like if all out is, this is like a six on the dial. Yeah, outer worlds felt like an eight. I really liked outer worlds.
Speaker 2:I agree with you, but I, for some reason that worked for me in that environment, but that doesn't work for me in a high fantasy environment, if that makes sense. Maybe I'm just being no, no no, that makes sense.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's why I didn't outer worlds. It didn't really work for me. It's just because that environment I wanted, I guess.
Speaker 2:I guess it was just you wanted, like you, like your sci-fi a little more serious.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like it mass, mass effect. I guess that makes sense. Could you imagine if cyberpunk was like as silly as like?
Speaker 2:follow, it just wouldn't flow. That vibe just doesn't know characteristic.
Speaker 4:No, I never played it. I was gonna yeah, I was gonna pick it up when it first came out and then it kind of like flopped. I was like good thing, I didn't buy that cuz like my brother and people you played with bought it on there like it's trash and I'm like, yeah, I saved on myself on, you know it's funny is I've.
Speaker 2:I was like I've been like the biggest like apologist for cyberpunk, like on this podcast for like last two years, yeah, and then I always maintained I was like, but I was fair at the start but because I was so like, I was so vocal about how much I loved it that they forgot about that. We went back and listened to the old episode, the very first review, yeah, and Dylan was actually way more towards it than I was. I was very critical. Dylan gave it a nine out of ten at lunch. We're the only ones that matter. But I Don't know the game I actually believe it or not I think I it's not my favorite game of all time, but the game I think I have the most hours in. No, I mean, I have a lot of hours in cyberpunk, but Dark Souls 2 I got a speedrunning and I did that like for months. I would beat it probably once a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I speedrunning is like a total. Yeah, there's no difference in content, but in terms of time played you have to put in yeah, I the best I got.
Speaker 2:I did a glitchless speedrun. My record was like three hours and I would do that at least once a day and I used it at first it was like ten hours a day and then I'd like really like got good at it and then I did that for like a couple of years Like straight, and then I just one day just stopped playing. So I definitely have like probably over a thousand hours in Dark Souls 2. Whoa, but that's and it's funny because that's not even my favorite game.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's just the one I went back to and played a lot and dove into.
Speaker 2:I could go, I could probably play it now and I could probably still get like a sub five if I, if I played it. You think so yeah.
Speaker 1:I really do. That'd be a fun little get. We should get together and do that. That would be good, is it on, like the newer consoles or no? You have access to it.
Speaker 2:I think scholar the first thing you could play on the newer console, but it's like a ps4 version. But I do.
Speaker 1:Would you play it on ps3 or 4?
Speaker 2:I play I when.
Speaker 3:I was running, I was playing on PlayStation 3? No, I think you can play it on PS5. You can, oh, you can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can but it's not the p. They don't have a PS5 version.
Speaker 1:It's not a remake, it's oh, it's just so you just have to rebuy it. Yeah, it's a list of things to read.
Speaker 2:No, I bought it already.
Speaker 1:Because if you have, it on ps4.
Speaker 2:You can download a PS5.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's. That's actually really cool. Yeah, games, game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, go ahead games like outer world are great break from the bigger favorite games is what extreme bacon said.
Speaker 1:What so? What is I'm not familiar?
Speaker 2:with outer worlds is a Is like an exploration kind of thing. It's a. It's a space fairing sci-fi RPG in the vein of like fallout. It feels like fallout and but it's indie, so it's not. It's actually not that big of a game, to be honest.
Speaker 1:The world where you land and then, you like, try to set up a base and operations.
Speaker 3:No, no the game, like the story itself or the vibe of the world, even though I know I would say it's more silly than this. I would say it's close to firefly, like the the whole thing is Space very beginning.
Speaker 2:The captain dies because your your escape pod lands on him and you like a shitty way to die?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you, you go to his ship and then you have to the whole first part. You have to like repair the ship and it's called the unreliable, and then you, it's called the reliable, but then they like spray paint the on in front of the reliable and you end up becoming the captain of the unreliable and you build this crew and you basically Take on the, the bad guys and all because you're just this unwitting Person that ended up being the captain of this. So it does feel a lot like a more silly, fun version of firefly in a way.
Speaker 1:That's kind of neat.
Speaker 2:You might actually I mean you might have some enjoyment out of it. It's not a huge commitment. The game isn't that expensive anymore. You could probably beat it. If you're like mainlining the story, you can beat it pretty quick, actually, like maybe 15 hours. You can get a total. You can get a lot more hours out of that if you're like a completionist, but the main story itself really not that long. I remember being like, oh wow, I'm already at the end.
Speaker 2:Well, and you can beat it like right off the bat if you there's a certain way you can so there is one way you could beat it Really quickly if you're very dumb because it's an RPG, so you got a speck and all these things and if you're like really unintelligent, then you can't pass an intelligence check. That's really basic like Halfway through the game, and if you mess that up, you launch into the sun and you're die in the credit roll.
Speaker 1:That's what that's the most unsatisfying and that's how speedrunners beat the game.
Speaker 2:They have a really dumb character and they get to that part.
Speaker 3:But that's what obsidian does really good, like with fallout new Vegas, their amount of customization in allowing you to like your character, to be how you build them and actually Actually act like. It is amazing like in fallout new Vegas even you could have a dumb character and you could be like you could be dumb, like you say dumb stuff to characters the dialogue actually changes. Yeah, he's like not smart me speak a few word, or you know stuff like that. It's just, it's fun because it allows you to actually do this guy gun yeah.
Speaker 3:Versus like you look at Bethesda's fallout and it's more like no. Even if you have zero intelligence, you still can talk to people.
Speaker 2:You know what's funny is, the outer worlds is also like, like cyberpunk is a very anti-corpo.
Speaker 3:Yeah like.
Speaker 2:That's what the game is about. Basically is you take on the corporations that are dominating the Halcyon cluster and yeah. So it's kind of funny, but it's totally not the same tone as cyberpunk at all, but it's again. It's a very even. There's even characters like their corporate ranks. So some of the characters you have to buy is like corporate commando, Corporate general or whatever you gotta shoot them and take them out.
Speaker 3:So to bring it back to a vowed Kyle, did you play and did you enjoy fable?
Speaker 2:Um, I did play fable. I played the second one. I never played. Why did play the first one? But not enough to really have a good opinion on it. But I put a lot of hours into the second fable. The third fable I didn't really like too much. It wasn't as good to me.
Speaker 3:But like, did you enjoy that? That not as a fantasy. I I did in some regards, but I had never on the level that I enjoyed, like Oblivion or even game like Skyrim you know, like because I wonder if it's gonna be closer to that about is gonna be closer to like fable, where it's like it's kind of a storybook.
Speaker 2:Well, what threw me off is because it takes place in the same universe as their pillars of eternity game and pillars of eternity is like a very kind of Serious. Is it like baller?
Speaker 3:high fantasy.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's, it's similar to like a game, like ballers game, and so when they Translated it into this type of setting it felt almost out of place. You know, I maybe I don't know, that's just me, but I think, if you look, I think the consensus is kind of where I'm at if you look at like the community reaction to it, because they just released like a new thing.
Speaker 3:I've been seeing some stuff I haven't watched. It was like a new trailer or a developer Diary or something like that. Recently, yeah, I've been seeing a lot of feedback from that I mean, I'll always support obsidian.
Speaker 2:I really like obsidian, mm-hmm. They they also did the South Park RPG. So fractured but whole. No, no, they didn't do fractured but whole. Stick of truth, that was Ubisoft that did that one, but they did sounds like a souls thing, so bad. They did the stick of truth, I wish I had a giant butthole, the stick of truth was actually a really good.
Speaker 2:RPG and I remember I bought it on a whim, I played it and I was like this is actually really good. And then I told Dylan about it at work and I was like you got to try this. And then Dylan came back and he's like it was actually really good and like he beat it in like a couple days.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but like and I mean fractured buttholes only so good, because it's basically stick of truth continued.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like the, the stick of truth is it's kind of parodying. It's kind of parodying high fantasy, dungeons and Dragons, and then the fractured but whole is parodying like Avengers and like superhero. Yeah, and the whole like I. There's so many quotable, memorable things from those games.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite boss fights was from the fractured but whole and you have to fight this like giant, like elder rich horror, no, no, I'm talking about her name is like Boutay she's Boutay, or something like that and she's like this giant, like stripper, that's like chasing you down and you have to escape and you, you fight her and you constantly have to move and If you're, if you're not moving correctly, like she'll like kill you by sitting on you. Spontaneous Boutay because her name, yeah, and it's like so over the top, so it's like extreme, but actually some of like the best turn-based strategy RPG Elements I've ever played in a game. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah like it's, so it's, it's wild man.
Speaker 2:You. Honestly, I'd recommend anyone to just give those games a shot.
Speaker 3:The humor in it is so funny. Just it like just playing the game. You're constantly laughing.
Speaker 2:Like on the second one, because they're all superheroes. Uh, the one kid, um, the diabetic one. He like gets super strength from like going into a diabetic rage. He like like Give himself like I don't know like orange juice, like yeah, like he'll drink, like like something really sugary, and then he like goes into a rage and he like punched new walls like the Hulk.
Speaker 1:And then there's literally a part of the game where he dies, oh yeah and he, like he sacrifices himself.
Speaker 2:It's all heroic, but he, like it, just has a diabetic like common, like. It had it been and it, oh man, it's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like a fun game.
Speaker 2:It's really fun and they're cheap. Now you can buy both of them together and bundles for like 20 bucks maybe and the way the graphics are.
Speaker 3:It looks like the show, so it's not it doesn't need to look pretty no like, as it looks like, south Park. Wow, you're the new kid.
Speaker 1:Wow, well, we've been ripping here for close to two hours over an hour and a half. So, dylan, where could people find us?
Speaker 3:they can find us on YouTube, instagram, spotify, any major podcast listening platform you listen to as well as on YouTube, we stream every Tuesday at 7 PM Pacific time. Come join us, you know. Watch the stream.
Speaker 1:Comment hit that bell notification so you know when we're going hit subscribe.
Speaker 2:Smash that like, button Smash it. Is that a? Just when we say smash that like, do people, the youtubers, even say that anymore?
Speaker 1:Yes, do they just say ages.
Speaker 2:No, does that age us?
Speaker 1:Oh, I was like is it ages?
Speaker 2:Oh, I was like that's a really weird take but maybe Ages us for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but everybody knows mash that you know you know, you know, you know, you know, I know. Shout out to our guests. Thanks for joining us. Yes that was fun and we'll see you guys next week. Bye, guys.