0:15

Period. Welcome

0:40

to another episode of Remap Radio. I'm your host, Rob Zacne,

0:42

and this is episode 32 for January 26, 2024. Today

0:47

we are joined by Ricardo Contreras. Let's

0:50

go! Are

0:54

you Microsoft management? Oh,

0:57

God! It's not let's

0:59

go. I think that is you have to go. Oh, no! Or

1:03

time to go. Yee-hee! You're

1:06

Patrick Klapik there, and we're also joined by Janet

1:08

Garcia. Hello. Kato, you're

1:10

so precious. I really appreciate

1:12

your positivity. As

1:15

always, we are a listener supporting the show. If

1:17

you enjoy Remap Radio and wish to become a

1:19

supporter, you can learn more at remapradio.com. Our website

1:21

has links to our memberful page where you can

1:23

sign up for a monthly or annual plan. It

1:25

gives you access to exclusive Remap content and helps

1:27

keep us going as a team. Let's

1:30

get into today's topics. New

1:33

topic, same as the old topic, ongoing topic. Layoffs

1:36

in the games industry. The

1:39

top line when we had sort of slated to

1:41

talk about the most notable layoffs in the industry

1:43

this past week were until

1:46

like about an hour before recording

1:48

the layoffs at Riot. About

1:51

500 people were let go from Riot, and

1:53

we can get into that in a moment.

1:56

But that was sort of eclipsed by the

1:58

fact that... About

2:01

2,000 people were let go from

2:03

Xbox, Microsoft Gaming Division

2:06

this morning with layoffs

2:08

apparently concentrated at the newly

2:11

acquired Activision Blizzard. This

2:14

is still something we're like, I

2:16

haven't, I've yet to say something that clearly like delineates

2:19

who has been hit, Patrick, do we

2:21

have anything yet indicating like which

2:24

teams, which developers, is there a pattern,

2:26

does it sound like a, you know,

2:29

just a cross the board headcount over

2:31

at the new company? I

2:33

think it speaks to the confusion that maybe

2:36

we'll have some clarity when, you know,

2:39

the cycle of the emails go out or

2:41

the HR meetings happen, like what

2:43

frequently occurs is this announce, announcements like

2:45

this happen, but they don't happen

2:47

after people are informed. This announcement

2:50

happens and then people are informed.

2:52

So we're in this waiting period

2:54

alongside, you know, the people that

2:56

work within the Xbox division, but

2:58

what speaks to, I think Jason

3:00

Schreier wrote Bloomberg, put out a

3:02

tweet just a few minutes ago

3:04

ahead of our recording saying essentially

3:06

that he was getting texts from

3:08

workers at the company asking if

3:10

he knew where the layoffs were

3:12

happening so they could get a

3:14

sense of whether it was concentrated

3:16

on their teams and others. So

3:18

I think it speaks to this

3:20

year volume, right? Like it's

3:23

19, 100-ish people, like

3:25

that is a massive amount of workforce

3:29

to be, you know,

3:32

just coordinating those layoffs is itself an

3:34

incredible amount of work. And so the

3:36

idea that we don't have a full

3:38

picture of what's happening is not super

3:40

shocking, but I'm glad you point out

3:43

in the beginning that you said Xbox because often

3:45

what happens is Microsoft, you know,

3:47

is a, as recently as this week, is

3:49

a trillion-dollar company, very briefly,

3:51

at least according to market value, and

3:55

sometimes when Microsoft lays people

3:57

off, it sometimes hits the games

3:59

division. but it's not concentrated there.

4:02

This one very specifically seems to

4:04

be, this does happen, people should have

4:06

been prepared for this as grim as it

4:08

is when there are acquisitions occur, especially ones

4:11

on the scale of an Activision Blizzard. There

4:14

are what they call redundancies,

4:16

which is often concentrated in

4:18

fields like marketing, sales

4:21

in which you have teams in place

4:23

at the company that is acquiring the

4:25

company and those people are not likely

4:27

to lose their job. They're acquiring you

4:30

and some people will be fortunate enough

4:32

to integrate or move around, but

4:34

it's very common for these types

4:36

of layoffs to occur, especially

4:38

at a company at the scale, Activision Blizzard

4:41

being one of the most, one

4:43

of the biggest, quote unquote, independent third

4:45

party game companies out there. The

4:47

fact that there would be an enormous amount of overlap

4:49

with a company like Microsoft that is doing a lot

4:51

of the same work is not

4:53

shocking. I think the part that we're trying

4:55

to unpack is how much of this is

4:59

normal expected turn as a

5:01

part of mega acquisitions, how

5:03

much of this is laundering

5:06

additional headcount layoffs because the industry

5:09

is trending in that direction, how

5:11

much of this is Microsoft

5:14

having completed an analysis

5:16

of Activision Blizzard as a

5:18

unit and discovering, oh, what

5:21

were you all doing over there? I've been building

5:23

for six years to point that

5:25

out. Blizzard's

5:27

been working on a survival game based on

5:30

the Overwatch engine for the last six

5:33

years or so. It's one of

5:35

their, it was one of their products they were talking

5:37

fairly openly about that it was staffing up. They liked

5:39

what they were seeing. Some of the reports internally that

5:42

have been kind of leaked out has suggested the game

5:44

seemed pretty good and look at a game like Pal

5:46

World. Survival games are

5:48

very, very big, but that

5:51

team did not survive

5:53

this acquisition or at least this sort of

5:56

whatever this moment in time is, is everything

5:58

sort of gets finalized between. Activision,

6:01

Blizzard, and Microsoft. So I think it's difficult

6:03

to pull apart all these different

6:05

things, but they certainly add in a direction that is

6:07

a just an unfathomable

6:10

number of people that are in the process

6:12

literally as we are recording this, finding

6:15

out that they no longer have jobs. And I

6:17

think it's it's worth pointing out some something that

6:19

any developer around me is mail I said on

6:21

Twitter which was last year which

6:23

felt like catastrophic cascading layoffs. The

6:27

tweets from companies statements or developers

6:29

that said I've lost my job

6:31

were frequently followed by a bunch

6:33

of studios saying, hey we're hiring.

6:37

Like there are jobs out there. What

6:40

we're seeing in January of 2024 where

6:43

three-fourths through the month we have hit I think something like 60%

6:46

of the layoffs from 2023

6:48

is total, you are not seeing

6:50

those same responses. The like

6:53

there is a media layoff in

6:55

mid 2023 vibe where like suddenly

6:58

when you were newly available unlike

7:01

several cycles of layoffs

7:03

before where it was like, hey

7:06

like let us know you need a

7:08

landing spot, there's work. Stuff

7:11

is happening across the industry at this point

7:13

where people are not comfortable making that offer.

7:16

No or it's just not available. Like

7:18

we're at a such like a saturation. I

7:20

mean you know when we all those cascading

7:22

layoffs were happening in our industry last year,

7:24

the longer that we didn't get laid off,

7:26

well in some ways it was, oh cool

7:28

I still have my job. In other ways

7:30

it's, oh no, you're dumping me

7:32

into a zone. You're just parked in the

7:35

middle of the game musical pairs. Yeah,

7:37

I said there's not that

7:40

many chairs. Yeah and I

7:42

think that's that's something definitely

7:44

worth like something worth

7:46

emphasizing here is that like a lot of times when

7:48

we talk about layoffs we've been talking about like what

7:51

does this wave of layoffs signify what's going on with

7:53

each individual one. There's got two things that I want

7:55

to make sure like people do not think we're conflating.

8:00

One is the thing that like the

8:02

human cost of things like this and the

8:04

fact that like people do deserve to have

8:07

like stable living situations and not have to

8:09

uproot their lives and Not

8:11

have to worry about like how are you going to keep

8:13

a roof over your head? How are you going to you

8:15

know? Put groceries on the

8:17

table. How are you going to send kids to

8:19

school? How are you going to support aging family

8:21

members all like human life stuff people deserve to

8:24

not have to worry about that? But Then

8:28

there's the fact that unfortunately to do all that You

8:31

know the way we have structured our society you

8:34

need a job and a job

8:36

exists for a lot of reasons And

8:38

it can disappear for a lot of reasons and

8:41

so like it's worth pricing that apart I think

8:43

it's easy to think like when

8:45

you're analyzing what's going on can seem callous and to a

8:47

degree We are in the cheap states right we are we

8:49

are observers of the industry but we're not caught in middle

8:51

of this turn I like to think we have a little

8:53

more empathy for it because We

8:56

were in turn like this for a number

8:58

of years like I you know We were

9:00

lucky enough to survive a lot of layoffs advice But I

9:03

would describe my years there is like living as living

9:05

in a spin cycle It's kind

9:07

of is kind of how it felt So

9:10

we're talking about like what's going on with

9:12

different different layoffs. That's not you know at

9:14

no point Are we saying like well obviously

9:16

you know these people deserve to lose their jobs?

9:18

No, that's not that's not what we're saying nobody

9:20

deserves to have the the chaos that's inflicted When

9:23

you lose your job, but it is worth asking like what's

9:26

going on these different in these different stories What

9:28

are these what these publishers and studios doing because

9:31

I do think there's times when it feels like

9:34

People just want to get And I think

9:37

this is where people get most caustic There

9:40

are times we look at what appear to be Successful

9:45

companies with going concerns and it feels like they

9:48

are reducing a head count mostly to fatten profit

9:50

margins and That

9:52

I think the stuff that makes all our blood boil The

9:54

fact that it often means that people who keep

9:56

their jobs or you know doing a classic do

9:58

more with less while

10:00

the extra revenue

10:03

is pocketed by people up top. And

10:05

then there are cases, like what you just outlined, Patrick,

10:08

which is that in a major merger

10:10

and acquisition, you can almost set your watch by

10:12

the time that someone

10:15

is going to go through and try

10:17

to find the places where there's overlap

10:20

between the acquiring company and the acquired

10:22

company and make layoffs. It

10:25

will be really morbidly

10:27

interesting to see with

10:30

these Xbox layoffs how

10:33

far into development staff does

10:35

it go, right? Because

10:38

I think, yes, it's sort of easy

10:40

to understand, like Activision

10:42

as a huge publisher would have had

10:44

a ton of infrastructure and

10:46

support staff that maybe under

10:49

Xbox isn't as

10:51

necessary. But I think one

10:53

of the theories that was always sort of floated about Microsoft's

10:56

acquisition spree and

10:58

a lot of acquisitions that were going on, like,

11:01

you know, in the years, even before

11:03

COVID, especially around the time of

11:05

COVID, was about acquiring

11:07

dev talent at a time when

11:09

it was tough to

11:12

staff up. It was

11:14

tough to find people available

11:17

for work because the market was

11:19

so strong. So I

11:22

think it's going to be very interesting to see to

11:25

what degree is this Microsoft looking

11:28

at, hey, we just acquired a major publisher and

11:30

we don't need all the stuff that a major

11:32

publisher contains. And to what degree

11:34

is Microsoft doing, what appears like a lot of people

11:36

across the industry are doing, saying

11:39

that, hey, there's

11:41

not as much, we're not feeling

11:43

as bullish about the business case for a

11:45

lot of games that we

11:47

would otherwise be making. Right,

11:52

and it's going to take a long time for the

11:54

dust to settle on all that, because it's not, again,

11:57

the acquisition makes this extremely fuzzy. You know, you look at

11:59

the riot. layoffs, which I'm

12:02

sure there are plenty in any of these

12:04

cases, they're always legitimate criticisms of

12:06

the management decisions made decisions they won't make

12:08

for themselves. But you like you look at

12:11

the riot ones. And I forget what the

12:13

division is called that essentially spins

12:15

out. It's

12:17

right forage, I believe is what it's

12:19

called, in which they partnered with independent

12:22

game developers to create games

12:24

based on characters and worlds mostly

12:26

from League of Legends. And

12:28

the idea was like, Oh, like we'll partner with

12:30

these really interesting game studios, they'll do extensions of

12:32

League of Legends in the same way that we

12:35

did this Netflix show, Arcane, that was a huge

12:37

success. Go look at again,

12:39

this is just a base metric, go look at the scene reviews of

12:41

every single one of those games, every single

12:44

one more or less flopped, and it was

12:46

played by nobody. And so those games

12:49

seemed interesting. I tried every single one of

12:51

them for about an hour.

12:53

And I get those

12:55

games for free. And that's not

12:57

to say those games aren't good. Maybe

12:59

that was a failure of marketing of

13:02

like, player awareness, a lot of things

13:04

go into a but that's

13:07

a clear example where other

13:10

layoffs that riot that probably are grossly

13:12

unnecessary and are just going

13:14

along with the tide, probably almost

13:17

assuredly. If you asked me

13:19

did I think riot forage was going to last another year,

13:21

if I if you asked me that before they did the

13:23

last, I would have said no, because it doesn't seem like

13:25

that had been a successful endeavor was successful in the sense

13:27

that they made a bunch of cool games. But

13:31

considering all the other contexts, I was not

13:33

surprised that they decided to shutter that particular part

13:36

of the company that but the thing is,

13:38

that's an outlier. I can look at data

13:40

available to me. And I can see a through

13:42

line for why you would go. This was

13:45

an experiment that didn't work out

13:47

at the company. Hopefully, the two can

13:49

be shuffled around. That doesn't always happen. It's

13:52

cruel. It goes back to the societal decisions we made,

13:54

like you pointed out, Rob, of like, you need a

13:56

job to do basic things. If a thing fails at

13:58

the company you work for. The

14:00

fuzziness for so much of this other stuff is just trying

14:03

to pick apart the why.

14:05

And like is there some world

14:07

you can justify or find a through line

14:09

through? And you know, you look at what

14:11

happened to an Embracer, that's just a company

14:14

that fucked up. Like none of

14:16

– like you can't blame anything that's happening

14:18

at any of those acquisition studios because it's

14:20

just clear they thought they're going to have

14:22

free money forever. And then the

14:24

Saudis don't show up with a bunch of more

14:26

free money and okay,

14:28

not thousands of people pay the price. And it's just

14:30

– I just use the riot case

14:32

as like a rare instance where I feel

14:34

like I can see – I'm not

14:37

trying to justify people losing their jobs and experiencing to

14:39

like to molten their lives. But I think it's a

14:41

clear case where like the risk is – like to

14:43

a degree there's kind of a shared risk there, which

14:45

is like riots saying like

14:48

we think there's a growth opportunity in

14:50

making these games. And

14:52

the risk they're taking is like we're going to hire a bunch of people to make

14:54

this stuff. Risk-containing taking that

14:56

job is like you're at a

14:58

company where you're like am

15:00

I working on the product that they have statues

15:02

of in the lobby? Am I working on the

15:04

thing that pays for everything? And if you're not

15:07

on that project, to

15:09

a degree like you are exposed to greater

15:11

risk just working in the company, even if

15:13

riot itself is like a much more stable.

15:17

I suspect people who worked on

15:19

things like riot forge probably had conversations like

15:21

this a lot about like how

15:23

do we – what's the vibe check around

15:26

this? We did that all

15:28

the time, right? Like you do vibe checks, you

15:30

know, like where do we fit in the company?

15:32

Like I think I always joked when the rare

15:35

time that we would get mentioned in a Vice All

15:37

email is like, all right, boys. We

15:40

made it another six months. I

15:42

get it in all email. It

15:44

means they know who you are.

15:46

And maybe that means that on

15:48

a spreadsheet, we're a little bit

15:50

higher than somebody else because you end up doing

15:52

that, right? And maybe you end up – you

15:54

get stuck there, right? It's not as easy as

15:57

saying, hey, I signed up for riot forge. Hey,

16:00

I've seen the numbers. I don't think this is working

16:02

out. I should move. You might not be able to

16:04

move. And then then you know, you're trying to make,

16:06

you know, it's not like there was somewhere else advice

16:08

for us to shift to either. You

16:10

know, you just sort of ride it out and then hope

16:13

that the industry is in a place, you're

16:15

personally in a place that you can, you

16:18

could do something else. But again, it's they

16:20

flooded the zone. Like there is just, you

16:22

know, I think there was a, you know,

16:24

a separate piece in games industry biz that

16:26

sort of tried to look at

16:28

what is the next couple of years supposed

16:31

to be like. And this is before the

16:33

riot layoffs. This is for the actors and

16:35

layoffs. This is earlier this week, although it's

16:37

three days ago, you know, before all that

16:39

stuff. And, and

16:42

the headline of this business game industry leaders

16:44

braced for up to two years of pain.

16:46

2024 will be a year

16:48

of closures, warn senior bosses, and

16:51

that, you know, our

16:54

thought that 2023, well, that was bad. By

16:56

every indication, publicly, in

16:58

terms of what we're seeing in raw numbers,

17:01

people losing their jobs, and then privately, people

17:03

that are looking at the numbers, and probably

17:05

making the decisions on who's going to keep

17:07

and lose their jobs are saying, essentially

17:10

expect the worst, whatever you think it's going to be,

17:12

it's going to be worse than that. And that is

17:14

a, that's a difficult, how

17:16

do you even brace for that? Like, what are

17:18

you prepping a resume to go where, you know,

17:20

I mean, it's just, yeah, it's really dispiriting. I,

17:23

uh, speaking to

17:26

something that Rob said

17:28

earlier about the sort of shared risk, and

17:30

also the way that that headline

17:32

you just read, Patrick was phrased. Well,

17:35

can you say it one more time?

17:38

The leaders bracer pain. The leaders? Game

17:40

industry leaders. Yeah,

17:42

yeah. The leaders are not and probably,

17:44

but probably should be the ones bracing

17:46

for like, you know, you, I've seen

17:48

a ton of tweets of

17:51

people comparing these situations

17:53

to when, uh, you

17:55

know, Iwata took a pay cut in Nintendo in

17:57

order to avoid layoffs, that sort of thing that

17:59

just. You don't see basically

18:01

anywhere else across the- Did

18:04

he avoid actual layoffs? Who's to say? I

18:06

don't know, but at least a gesture. Right,

18:09

like he took a salary here, like

18:11

it was on the books. He actually

18:13

took less money and supposedly that extra

18:15

money went to continuing to fund the

18:17

people who were already there. But

18:19

like specifically the riots thing is just

18:22

like the most like

18:25

egregious kind of example I think

18:27

of how protected the ownership class

18:29

is in these situations. All

18:32

of the decisions that were made for

18:34

this by the old riot CEO who

18:36

left in May are just

18:39

now coming to bear. And that

18:41

guy just left. He just left to go live in

18:43

France and be with his family more. Like

18:45

he was just like, I'm done. I have

18:47

enough money. Peace. Like I didn't have any

18:49

repercussions for the fact that like there was

18:52

no foresight to like how well

18:54

is it going to like be- how sustainable

18:56

is it going to be? It's

18:58

very much chasing the sort of like,

19:00

well, you know, we could probably make a

19:02

ton of money if this hits, right? Let's fucking do it. The

19:05

thing I'll say there though is that like oftentimes

19:08

that thinking is like how the jobs exist in

19:11

the first place, right? Like it is like

19:14

for a number of years I had to sort of sit with the guy.

19:16

I was keenly aware that like should vice have

19:18

hired me? Like more

19:20

than a point, should vice have hired a bunch of

19:22

people like in its final ways of hiring because when

19:24

you walk in the door and you're like, oh,

19:27

this isn't- this may not be

19:29

panning out the way they think. But

19:32

the fact that they were like, hey,

19:34

this could hit got

19:36

me a job. That's something I wanted to think

19:38

so. Like there's obviously

19:40

always a risk concerning a new enterprise, but

19:43

I think there is certain levels of like

19:46

foreknowledge and like understanding of

19:48

what your IP is and how like

19:51

it can spread into like, like,

19:53

I don't know, like, yes, waypoint was

19:55

obviously some risk by vice, but it

19:57

made sense to have people like they

19:59

already had people talking about video games there.

20:01

So it's just like, let's expand this thing that

20:03

already exists. And like the

20:05

whole riot situation of just like the amount

20:07

of like people that like were a part

20:10

of that, just that thing, instead of it

20:12

being a slow, gradual

20:14

sort of like exploration,

20:16

that it's

20:18

the level of which, the

20:20

level of red for your safety. You want to

20:23

build a big, cool thing or because you're trying to

20:25

build a sustainable enterprise. And then like, you know, it'd

20:27

be a different story if once it starts to fail,

20:29

the person at the top who made

20:31

those decisions to go ahead, you took

20:34

a pay cut or something or like had

20:37

any consequences laid upon them. But you

20:39

know, of course. Well, but a lot of

20:41

times, the months we're talking about like 500 game developers

20:44

and crucially, I think

20:46

largely, maybe entirely in Santa Monica, which is

20:48

a key part of the solution, not overlooked.

20:51

So they're all making at least six figures,

20:53

right? All of this. Yeah, but what's six

20:55

figures in LA? Like, like all of this

20:57

is like really a

20:59

lot of where I do get irritated about this is

21:02

like you're well

21:04

paid on paper, but then we

21:06

brought everyone to expensive markets where

21:08

like losing that six figure job

21:10

means that, oh, you were month

21:12

to month, you were paycheck to

21:14

paycheck. But to Kata's point,

21:17

though, I think the

21:19

awkward part of this is, yeah, in retrospect,

21:21

like safer and more

21:23

responsible to not place this big bet.

21:25

Placing the big bet is probably why

21:28

hundreds of people had jobs for

21:30

a period because it was like, we're just going

21:32

to go jump in with both feet. Hope

21:35

it pans out. Like

21:38

to a degree, I think being conservative on

21:40

that front does mean like you're probably hiring

21:42

more slowly. You're probably like Riot

21:44

Forge ends up being a really small

21:47

skunkworks team that is maybe a very

21:49

stable job, you know, experimenting on the

21:51

margins, but probably isn't as big

21:53

as this. You avoid the ugliness

21:55

and personal disruption of like hundreds of lives

21:57

in a layoff like this. but

22:00

also you don't have the hundreds of jobs that have

22:02

existed for a period of years. That's

22:05

some of the trade off, like to

22:08

a degree, a lot

22:10

of people's careers can

22:12

be spent on the backs of

22:15

people making bad decisions. And

22:17

you might hop from people making bad

22:19

decisions to bad decisions and

22:22

get laid off multiple times, but in the

22:24

meantime, you sort of cobble together a career

22:27

on the back of that, because there's a lot of

22:29

people who are thinking, I'm expanding into this zone. And

22:32

as long as, again,

22:34

going back to the media conversations, there's

22:38

always this vibe of, after

22:42

the so great to have you on

22:44

the team, Future's Bright, the conversation

22:47

after the first day at

22:49

the bar is

22:52

so frequently, so how long do

22:54

you give this? Like,

22:57

lots of people who get into

22:59

a job knowing, hey, if

23:01

this works out, and I hope it does, that's awesome.

23:05

I don't know about that. I walked out

23:07

of, when Austin reached out about Waypoint and

23:13

was Vice Games, and I had a

23:15

meeting with management as a way of

23:17

selling me on the final steps of

23:19

the job. I remember walking out to

23:21

the cab, I had to go to the

23:23

airport, because my wife was still pregnant, and

23:26

about to go into labor in the next couple weeks, so

23:28

I had to scoot home. I looked to Austin and said,

23:30

well, he's like, what do you think?

23:32

I was like, it'll be an interesting year-ish. It's

23:35

like, is that like, you know? And

23:37

not because I wasn't sold. I didn't like it. Just

23:41

for having play out, but yeah. But

23:43

that's, it speaks to exactly

23:45

what you're talking about, Rob, is like, I've

23:48

been here, I've talked to these people. They

23:51

all seem very nice and well-meaning and excited about

23:53

the project. I was like, are those people gonna

23:55

be here in 18 months? And then what do

23:57

we do? But I was like, they're about to give us a

23:59

bunch of money. and we can build a

24:01

thing. Let's go have fun for 18 months. Because that's how

24:03

I thought about it. Like this is not something I'll be

24:05

here for seven years and it was a

24:07

tumultuous seven years. A lot of us have done

24:09

this. We lost the Waypoint brand. Then they gave it

24:12

back to us. I mean like it's just, it's kind

24:14

of wild when you think about the project in totality

24:16

but I thought about the same way.

24:18

And like Austin and I were realistic. It's like

24:21

yeah, this might be 18 months then we all jump ship and

24:23

I guess we'll go somewhere else. Cut to seven years later, I

24:26

just ripped that fucking ship out. Thank

24:28

you. I'll take this wood. I'll build

24:31

my own ship, thank you very much. That's

24:34

part of the issue though I feel like that we're

24:36

starting to hit is there

24:39

aren't new jobs coming

24:42

it feels like. Or at least

24:44

there's gonna be a larger gap before the

24:46

next. There aren't as

24:48

many of the ex veterans at X

24:50

Studio form new company. I mean Ryan

24:52

has one of those. They're

24:55

making that weird MOBA smash

24:58

hybrid game. I

25:00

mean some of those exist but I was

25:02

getting, throughout COVID like the

25:04

earlier days of that, you were getting headlines

25:06

of that all the time. There's

25:09

a lot of money. These veterans are leaving. They're

25:11

forming a new thing. They're off to build a

25:13

game. That just doesn't,

25:15

you're just not, maybe if you're building a

25:17

web three game or you're promising to have

25:19

AI and PCs. And there are

25:21

some folks that are getting away with it. There's some

25:23

X Rock steady folks that just announced that they're building

25:25

up a studio. Some X Rock star people who are

25:28

senior on GTA. But there are very

25:30

few people in the games industry who can say like

25:32

I did the Arkham trilogy. Like I was a lead

25:34

on Grand Theft Auto while it was the biggest thing

25:36

in video games. Most people

25:38

are several tiers below that. Not an

25:41

expertise just in circumstance of how, where

25:43

their careers led them. Those

25:45

sorts of startups are not, or if

25:48

they are happening, what are they more

25:50

likely to be? Like I can hire 20, 25 of my friends

25:53

and let's build a prototype for the next two years. Or

25:56

is it Murakata, which you spoke to earlier? It's

25:58

a couple of us. Like we rather

26:00

get a little bit of money or we can make

26:02

it work on the side and it's a handful of

26:05

us that are building something and maybe you'll get lucky

26:07

and it'll turn into something down the line. It's not

26:09

– there doesn't

26:11

seem to be – there's not life

26:13

rafts for everybody. And like where do those people end

26:15

up? Well, they probably leave the industry. Like

26:18

that's – we're about to experience like

26:20

the most collective, the largest

26:22

brain drain that this industry

26:24

has seen in – I don't

26:28

know. I came here the last time the layoffs have

26:30

been that – I mean 2008, but I don't know

26:32

how that concentrated that wasn't video games necessarily. But this

26:35

last year and a half is

26:37

probably the most concentrated loss of talent

26:39

that will just be completely invisible. Just

26:42

games won't get made.

26:44

Just things won't happen and we'll just never know

26:46

because they're alternative timelines for a

26:49

world which was slightly different. Yeah,

26:51

it's a rarity to know things like Unannounced

26:53

Arrival Game Project ended. Like for every

26:55

project that we hear ends, there's a

26:57

cajillion more that have been stuffed

27:00

out behind the scenes. You can't talk about it. You have an NDA

27:02

that doesn't let you share your work on it. Yeah,

27:05

exactly. So there's a lot of

27:07

what happens we're not necessarily privy

27:09

to. But yeah, I've

27:11

been kind of just eyeing the timeline to see if I

27:13

can get a sense of anyone

27:16

who has gotten let go. So far

27:18

the only one I've seen is the

27:20

community manager for Fallout was

27:22

let go. So I'm like it's always community.

27:24

Well, that's not even – well, yeah, one – you're

27:26

right. It is always community. It is always those to

27:28

like frontline. It's not even a job.

27:31

I think it's that expendable. It's

27:34

treated super expendable like all right, well-timed

27:36

by cuts. First against the wall, community

27:38

manager. Yeah, like the big – it's like

27:40

– it's like – it's like – it's a drop

27:42

in the bucket. Yeah, this is

27:44

like your public facing face,

27:47

right? Like that's the –

27:49

Well, it is kind of like a horrible

27:52

equivalent of like – it's an imperfect

27:54

analogy. But you know how like every

27:58

store now sucks because everything is – is

28:00

locked down because there's no floor walkers, there's

28:02

no staff to actually make the thing nice

28:04

to interact with. I feel like to a

28:07

degree that goes on where you're like, let's

28:09

just nail that community team to an extent

28:11

because this is... You

28:15

don't necessarily need community team for

28:17

the big public facing top down

28:19

level. Here's the roadmap. But

28:22

the day to day stuff where the development team

28:24

is not available to be like, oh

28:27

yeah, here's what we're working on for the next two years. It's

28:29

the day to day. It's just odd. This position is

28:32

treated as like, we

28:34

got to make cuts. What's the most painless one

28:36

we can make? Community. I don't think that's

28:38

true. It's the best

28:40

biification of video games. Yeah. We

28:44

talked about that. I can't really find a guy talking about that. They

28:46

can wait a few minutes to razor blades. Yes.

28:51

But the other thing is this, to

28:54

the point about... And there's

28:57

good executives and bad executives. One of the

28:59

things that made me want to put a

29:01

contract out on a lot of the people

29:03

who were running the show at Vice when

29:05

we departed is

29:09

that they

29:13

pointedly fucked us on the way out the

29:15

door. The executives who

29:17

were in charge of the

29:19

company, we learned later, again,

29:22

took major bonuses and

29:24

then laid everybody off and

29:27

then filed for bankruptcy so that

29:29

the severance that we were contractually

29:31

entitled to went into

29:33

a legal limbo. I'm

29:36

sure it's a complete coincidence, Rob. I'm

29:38

not a lawyer, but wow, those seem...

29:41

That's an interesting math problem you just laid out. So

29:45

to an extent, the riot stuff

29:47

is really unfortunate, but if they follow through on

29:49

what they have undertaken publicly

29:51

is what they're

29:53

setting out to do with six months minimum

29:55

severance for folks. Minimum severance,

29:58

you... can, if

30:01

you don't have a computer given

30:03

to you by the company, you can request one

30:05

and you're able to keep it. And

30:09

there's things like, I mean, that is I

30:11

mean, honestly, like, it's also sad though, to

30:13

be excited about it, like, yeah, keep my

30:15

laptop. Yeah, but like, when you get

30:18

like, and most like work laptops have like remote access,

30:20

they could shut you off. I mean, like, I know

30:22

that seems like a trivial thing. But

30:24

it is especially if you're like, Rob, where it's like,

30:26

you could say you had 120,000 year

30:29

job, but if you live in Santa Monica, you're,

30:31

I mean, like, I'm not

30:33

saying it's nothing, but it kind of is closer

30:35

to nothing. When I lived in Midwilshire, back

30:38

in 2016, my not so amazing

30:40

one bedroom was 1800 month. Wow.

30:45

And yeah, Janet, I'm curious, like, decent

30:48

one bedroom, like 600 square

30:50

feet, thereabouts, what are we thinking that is

30:52

now? And not in Santa

30:54

Monica. Again, Midwilshire, you're kind of nowhere.

30:58

You're near one bedroom, but yeah, one

31:00

bedroom is always rough. Like in any major

31:02

city, you're getting screwed on the one bedroom because it's

31:05

always like barely less than a two

31:07

bedroom. So I don't know. I mean, I'd have to

31:09

imagine. All. I

31:12

don't know. Maybe it would be like low 2K. I

31:15

don't know. That's really awesome. That's a lot.

31:18

I'm like, yeah, now we're low 2K and

31:20

like the two bedroom is what, like 24?

31:24

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, like I think of what my

31:27

we had when I was with my whole family,

31:29

we had a one to

31:32

three bedroom and I think

31:34

it was about three thousand dollars. I

31:38

don't know. I'm kind of numb to rent prices because

31:40

I grew up in Chicago. So rent has always been

31:42

kind of a lot. But to that point, it's

31:45

expensive. Like living, you know, living in a major

31:47

city costs money and you know, you

31:49

do get a higher income, but you get a higher

31:51

income because there's a higher cost

31:54

of living, you know, like up most

31:56

recently, like it was reported that like a hundred K

31:58

salary for like A family. A

32:00

for yeah put you at low income. To

32:02

kind of. I think this. Sort. Of and obviously

32:04

like. That's. A lot of people living

32:06

off that amount of money. By.

32:09

It it's not that ridiculous. We the of

32:11

the fact that usually there's only wanted to

32:13

earners per household survey thing about like how

32:15

much shots or anything about how many white

32:17

collar jobs are still at that like fifty

32:19

six k It's like. You. Know and

32:21

and gun pulling them Perspective for what would that be?

32:24

In a smaller reads and that number

32:26

would be significantly lower Elections and you

32:28

read that. The. Gut heck is, so that

32:30

suggests a low amount of my. That makes sense. It's

32:32

low income, but for. L A that

32:34

low income is like. A hundred and four people, which

32:36

is quite high compared of the blazers. Which

32:39

is also it is for. Probe.

32:42

Better to me to. Sorry.

32:44

I just woke up a bunch of apartments that

32:46

it is started something like in that area though

32:49

and we're not talking need. Fancy

32:51

place you know to me were.and right to

32:53

push return off is pretty hard road way

32:55

nowadays right is that has been one of

32:57

the criticisms. Arm as generous as this packages

33:00

and looked like one of the things that

33:02

the know. There's a. Broadly

33:04

speaking they're letting people keep their emails on

33:06

for little while longer which I know that

33:09

seems small but I think that is one

33:11

of the first slacken evil axis one of

33:13

the first things to go. It's usually when

33:15

when you off the job Often times the

33:17

reason you find out the boss your job

33:19

is be as you've lost as email or

33:22

slack access. I'm by ah. But. Be

33:24

oh I see. no. I've seen lay offs where people were

33:26

like we knew something was up because we couldn't get

33:28

into the building. Snowmen. Yeah

33:31

now see cars.com or young

33:33

hello I. This really want to second

33:35

then emphasize how. True. That is

33:37

how like. You will be.

33:40

Like. Mid sentence there like and we revoke

33:42

your access as author. They slept like a

33:44

big swears it sucks and now you know

33:46

I'm. And as even sure for. Leaving

33:49

amicably like your stuff goes down

33:51

like. Real. real this is

33:53

no longer a model for doing it

33:55

again because which hr professionals and move

33:57

it was cleaner for everybody for a

33:59

scored multiple And all your shit's

34:01

disabled immediately. And that is true

34:03

if you are like, it's

34:05

Gold Watch Day and it's like, man, you're

34:07

my family, I'm gonna love you guys forever.

34:10

And it's still gonna be like, get out. Well,

34:15

I was talking with somebody for a story

34:17

last year. And

34:19

one of the last they'd spoken, they'd experienced at EA

34:21

in the 2000s, like the Dante's Inferno

34:25

Dead Space sort of era, was

34:27

that you'd walk into the like Redwood

34:29

Shores office in California they have out

34:31

there. And the doors would be

34:34

open, like propped open with something. And immediately

34:36

you'd go, oh, it's

34:38

because people can't like get it. Like you

34:40

would just know before you got an email,

34:42

like you could see the prep happening. They'd

34:44

walk in, you'd see boxes on the ground,

34:47

because they're getting ready to give those boxes

34:49

to people. So they can box up their

34:51

desks. And like, that is so fucking grim.

34:55

But yeah, to your point, Rob, yes,

34:58

Riot did a huge, they were one

35:00

of the first to push to

35:02

return to office because they have a

35:05

big fancy office with like animatronic creatures,

35:07

like very proud of our office. And

35:11

I remember writing a story at Waypoint

35:13

about they were like controversial about their

35:16

COVID policies, like early on, like they

35:18

were very aggressive at all fronts about

35:20

getting people in an office. Like

35:22

that was a point of emphasis. And if

35:25

you uprooted your life to maintain this

35:27

job out there, and then let's say

35:29

you can get another job, well, you're

35:31

probably not gonna want to do remote work from San up,

35:33

you know what I mean? Like it just means that you

35:35

are then even if you do find another job, you

35:38

might be having to uproot your life, because

35:40

Riot forced you

35:42

into this situation in the first place in

35:44

an industry that has broadly speaking been able

35:46

to pivot pretty healthily towards

35:49

remote work or at least hybrid work

35:51

to accommodate people's situations. Well,

35:53

and that is the thing, you know, obviously the

35:55

politics around return to office, we're getting far afield

35:58

at this point. The

36:00

politics around remote work and

36:03

companies mania for we were talking you're in folks

36:05

will hear this interview next week we were talking

36:07

to a studio head the other day Patrick you

36:09

and I were and I

36:12

started asked like do companies have really

36:14

meaningful costs beyond head count? Nance

36:16

are kind of not really like yeah, like Your

36:19

headquarters the lease on that that is real that

36:21

is a real cost There's a good

36:23

infrastructure real cost but by and large we're talking about burn

36:25

rate we're talking about

36:27

head count and and to

36:30

a degree like There

36:33

are like because of the

36:36

places where the industry grew up

36:38

and is often concentrated You

36:41

have to pay people a lot of money because

36:43

rents are so out of control In

36:46

those in those markets and so

36:48

like a game developer and a

36:50

game developer Is a

36:53

pretty expensive proposition to to

36:55

like put on the books often

36:57

just because you

37:00

know Yeah, we're in

37:02

a place like Santa Monica. We are we are

37:04

in a place like the Bay Area And

37:07

even then those people, you know, we're making like

37:09

low six figures It's like you should consider getting

37:11

a roommate. Maybe that could be that could be

37:13

smart What

37:15

does it take to live alone? I'm like, why would I have

37:17

ever looked into that? Yeah

37:21

bold bold of you but

37:23

no, I mean it and Well

37:26

doesn't go out things people might not know like Santa Monica

37:28

is also like the most expensive place that you can get

37:31

here as Well, which granted you don't have to live Next

37:34

to where you work, but it is convenient to live

37:37

Near where you work. So it's a

37:39

well-to-do Beach City. Yeah, right like Malibu

37:42

is like the ultra wealthy retort like

37:45

bedroom community Manhattan

37:47

Beach is kind of its own its own vibe

37:49

There's a city where people work and like that

37:51

has sort of a regional center of industries Santa

37:53

Monica is About as about as you can get

37:56

in terms of rents. Yeah, like

37:58

when people think Of what it costs. And

38:00

looks like to live in L A. They are pacing

38:02

that Santa Monica pier and it. Clearly.

38:04

Dollar month property. That's really small that he

38:06

will money inside of it or like. I.

38:09

Love My Life! I think a video

38:11

couldn't be me at us like yeah

38:13

it is expensive to. Be

38:15

there. Ah, Yeah and

38:17

then it's like any were kind of getting

38:19

sort. Of off topic until I just general to work.

38:21

From home practices but. You'll

38:23

see. A lot of funky stuff with

38:25

that because is also than the people that. Watch

38:28

the com is that will try and say okay was that

38:30

if we're doing work from home. Your. Job is now

38:32

going to be like significantly less compensated

38:34

because like what are we paying for

38:36

we have a hour flight but jobs

38:38

were suspicious while yelling Hundred Dollar Home

38:40

Depot Monaco you made work for Me

38:42

Here are you know in fear Detroit

38:45

but. The ability. Of

38:47

a good resistance higher than is like.

38:51

The. Room They're clearly a lot of concern

38:53

to move through. I know like new abuse

38:55

point about what is the long term effect

38:57

of this. How much

38:59

talent ability experiences be was like

39:01

how many teams are basically going

39:03

to be. Even teams

39:06

that like. Ride this out!

39:08

Murder Projects continue. You're.

39:11

Going to lose especially since so often

39:13

we saw by were wigwam senior spending

39:15

your target and things like this because

39:17

like well this is a big salary.

39:19

And for yeah, it's also lot of

39:21

institutional knowledge. And. There's

39:24

going to be a lot of like

39:26

making things work and like mentorship ability

39:28

but even as a mentorship isn't really

39:30

the primary thing is is like into

39:32

someones valuable ability keep the gears like

39:35

turning them seem them seem humming. He's

39:37

really valuable. Love Times Lay offs like

39:39

this. Like. Screw

39:41

things up for the left behind because

39:43

now it's like we have to build

39:46

entirely new neural pathways or to continue

39:48

to continue working. But yeah, having to

39:50

to into a family world's ties in

39:52

is like there's there's bad industry trends

39:54

and then there's also the fact that

39:57

like. One reason that

39:59

I think. The town is such a

40:01

of of a massive liability on balance sheet

40:03

is. Ever

40:06

like cost of living so high everywhere. But

40:09

especially where the industry is that enough? to an

40:11

extent. You can also say that. This

40:13

has made more valid all ah

40:15

by the fact that. Housing

40:18

costs are so high, cost of living

40:20

is so high that that paying. You

40:22

know, like a paying a game

40:25

developer ah to to show up

40:27

to work. The be floor on

40:29

that now is really really high.

40:32

As them and that is not just you know you to

40:34

to the game and stream of the something I think a

40:36

lot of a lot of places are are a lot of

40:38

and she's or are up against bunch. Of

40:41

had heard one less thing to I want to

40:43

I wondered say that because people should probably read

40:45

this has really interesting ah and I don't know.

40:49

Who's person is ah but is is

40:51

messy ball Peace. Ah,

40:55

That. I'm loath

40:57

to summarize. Suffice it to

41:00

say, It is a

41:02

deep dive into the numbers. Of

41:04

like behind the games industry and it's

41:06

health and performance. Like what happened during

41:08

covert times on what has happened since.

41:11

And I would say it's forecasting is bleak.

41:13

Ah, that it does not feel like it

41:15

was painting a picture of a particularly. Healthy

41:18

Industry From the standpoint of we call

41:20

it the fundamentals right? Like does the

41:22

math add up for for how businesses

41:24

in the sector work out, Where do

41:26

you conference this piece? I

41:29

was shared. it went kind of. i

41:31

are on Twitter ah over the past

41:33

twenty four, forty eight hours as as

41:36

like even trying to understand why is

41:38

this happening right? Like I think like

41:40

the reaction to all of these layoffs.

41:43

this discontinued sort of death march is

41:45

why. Ah, Mom and Dad yards. In.

41:48

Our games are fun at three hundred

41:50

guy. Okay yes yes yes and and

41:52

it's worth ah the at looking up

41:54

his twitter account and and reading through

41:56

em in the top line is as

41:58

you said. I'd. The

42:00

numbers. Suggest. That

42:02

like growth and the game's history is

42:05

like wildly behind where it should be.

42:07

To. Maintain peace with. A

42:10

burn rate spend. Ike and Like sales

42:12

are just not where they need to

42:15

be, and the industry's not where it

42:17

needs to be. And there isn't an

42:19

inevitable. Really? Painful. Course.

42:22

Correction about to occur on and

42:24

is going to occur slowly. And

42:27

it's going to occur over. One.

42:29

To two years and ah, I'm.

42:31

Is it paints a. A painter bleaker

42:33

put em in a field bleak when you

42:35

wake up an easy to thousand people laid

42:37

off and then he pair it with the

42:39

underlying numbers that. Are.

42:42

Elites. When you read that and I

42:44

want to say provides any sort of

42:46

excuse for by the sort of like

42:48

corporate malfeasance that we sexy and a

42:50

daily basis that gets laundered through for

42:52

the regular growth ah and weakness cycles

42:54

of an industry. But when you see

42:56

stuff like this it. It

42:59

gives you a better sense of where we're

43:01

headed and it is a broadly seems to

43:04

point towards. From. The Greek contraction and

43:06

down the next year and a half as

43:08

the industry sort of. Settles.

43:10

Back into arm. Or

43:13

a particular growth pamelia. The numbers are showing

43:15

that were actually like behind growth that would

43:17

have been expected pre cove it like you

43:19

just take would yank out. There.

43:22

Was like three I you know two to three

43:24

years of a code growth. It's like think the

43:26

industry in arena high bar state revenue of like

43:29

number go right growth were talking about like he

43:31

gets into. A How

43:33

much people playing video games? Yeah. not

43:35

as much as you might think certainly

43:37

not as much as the people making

43:39

video games thought they were only plane

43:41

but this time especially based on we

43:43

coded trends and again like even if

43:45

you say well to decline down and

43:47

covered to your point patrick know it's

43:49

it's a decline behind where you would

43:51

expect games to be a to climate

43:54

is not matched by things like streaming

43:56

television with has it's own issues as

43:58

as this article points out But

44:00

that is a place where people are engaging

44:02

more with the content and

44:05

in games to a degree that's happening less. And

44:08

then he gets into narratives that I think maybe

44:10

we all tend to fall back on. They're

44:12

already out of date. The gaming industry

44:14

is really the mobile industry. It's

44:16

so big now and that's where the bulk is. Maybe

44:20

in terms of overall

44:22

market share, that's true. Because

44:24

this piece rolls out too,

44:28

that ain't a healthy sector because nobody

44:30

can break in that people

44:32

in mobile are playing the same stuff

44:34

they're playing multiple years ago. There

44:39

aren't new contenders arriving that's creating a

44:41

lot of growth opportunities for like let's

44:43

invest more in mobile and open

44:45

a new mobile studio and hire a bunch of developers. That

44:48

isn't panning out. If

44:52

there's a sort of a diagnostic argument here,

44:54

it's that to a degree the competition

44:57

for time is kind of being won by free to

45:00

play which makes it

45:02

really hard both to launch new free to play because

45:04

people are already sort of again like

45:06

paired with their forever games that they play

45:08

with their community. But

45:11

then if you're not making a live service free

45:13

to play game, tearing

45:16

people away from those games and saying like,

45:19

hey, come play the $70 single player experience

45:21

is a much harder

45:24

proposition to make and

45:26

people are not taking developers

45:29

and publishers up on that offer as

45:31

much as they once were. It's

45:34

a really good analysis I think that goes

45:36

beyond the headlines

45:40

we see day to day about like

45:42

layoffs and sales of this

45:44

or that and gets into a

45:47

bigger – if

45:50

like game sales figures and layoffs

45:52

are like the weather,

45:54

this piece is about the climate Of

45:57

game history. The

46:00

ways it is concerning. Wanted

46:04

any get it Also points today. Is

46:06

the. Gross. Unpredictability of like

46:09

how are useless to forecast what you

46:11

should be investing in One are people

46:13

going to be interested in where where

46:15

do you place your bets arm and

46:17

a if anything that might be a

46:19

decent enough pivot to. Ah the new

46:21

game that will all be playing for the rest of

46:23

our lives because we all need to play it. Ah,

46:26

Pal World Ah a game that for the

46:28

last couple of years has more or less

46:30

than. Ah look at like of

46:32

the trailer like the games. Like. They

46:34

gave the get You a Gun i that's

46:36

pretty funny and now in as if this

46:39

recording. Ah, I. I,

46:41

I think that sweet and I put in our

46:43

news prep is actually old because it's it. Was

46:45

originally seven million sold in less than a week

46:47

and now we're at eight million sold. In.

46:49

Less than a week? Ah. Powerless.

46:52

Not a game that I think anyone had

46:54

on the radar as oh, I mean maybe

46:57

this will be interesting and it'll be popular,

46:59

but that it might bit is currently about

47:01

to shatter. Fortnight. Concurrence:

47:04

Pudgy. Concurrence: Go to concurrence Like it

47:06

is a game on a scale that.

47:09

Is. Like once every couple

47:11

of years if you're lucky,

47:13

and that it comes alongside

47:15

such great controversy. It

47:17

makes it ah is fascinating are

47:19

all its own of your somehow

47:21

unfamiliar pow world. Yes,

47:24

It's sort of is a diploma. Guns

47:26

is funny. It's also not accurate for

47:28

what the game is. How World Is

47:31

is really a survival game if you've

47:33

any familiar failure to with something like

47:35

Arc. Yo Yo have

47:37

an understanding of kind of what you're up to

47:39

you and say it again. Remark: been set of

47:42

dinosaurs. It's. The Desert

47:44

quote unquote legally distinct pokemon of the

47:46

to put this: Yes, yes, but it's

47:48

a sort of abiding is an important

47:50

things to because it is. This isn't.

47:53

There. a lot of the employer can't even speak to this

47:55

more the most and what will get into that as we

47:58

talk about like what this says about the state of pokemon

48:00

by while still setting the stage. It's

48:04

what you are doing. This isn't the

48:06

game that people want the Pokemon company

48:08

to make. They would rather just Pokemon

48:10

get better. This is a genre distinct

48:12

take that shares aesthetics with

48:15

the Pokemon universe and some mechanics. But this is

48:17

a game where you are dropped, like, you know,

48:19

how do I play this game before

48:23

it was cool, you know, in

48:26

the first day that it came out? Before

48:29

they hit 3 million over the weekend.

48:31

Before it became an existential crisis about

48:33

AI. Before I have seen the always

48:37

sunny in Philadelphia, like, conspiracy meme

48:39

by people with their shaping model.

48:42

I mean, just truly brains were

48:44

broken in the last week

48:46

because of this game. But it is, in

48:48

its simplest terms, a game where

48:50

you drop in by yourself or with friends

48:53

into a colorful, breath

48:56

of the wildy looking world in

48:59

which you build bases, you

49:02

have hunger, you go and fight

49:04

things, you collect things. And the thing you

49:06

like, your main kind of weapon, yes,

49:09

you can have, you can hit things with

49:11

swords and bows, but you have these friends,

49:13

these pals. And these pals are creatures in

49:15

the world that as Kado put it, legally

49:18

distinct, at least as of this moment,

49:20

who could say what the future brings.

49:24

It has been a game that has caused

49:26

a lot of anxiety because

49:33

executives at the company, or I don't know if

49:35

they're big enough to really have executives, this is

49:38

a small team out of Japan, worked on a

49:40

game called Craftopia before this that you

49:42

can look up on Steam. You can see a lot

49:44

of the similarities in the base building stuff that's

49:47

present here in PAL World. But

49:49

they've also done a game

49:51

that is specifically around AI

49:53

generation, like the

49:55

integral to how the game systems

49:57

work, have spoken openly about... AI

50:00

could be useful for game development. There

50:02

is, to date, absolutely no

50:05

evidence that this game uses art generation

50:09

tools to produce anything here. And in

50:11

fact, you are

50:13

arguably contributing to AI

50:16

hysteria by saying that

50:18

Pal World is a game that was created by AI.

50:21

It's much more likely, although we

50:23

don't have any evidence for this either, that

50:26

it's more in the copycat ripoff

50:28

territory. Whether that becomes a legal

50:30

issue is something for the Pokemon

50:32

company to investigate for

50:34

themselves. But I think it's actually a much

50:36

more simplistic thing, which is like, hey, they

50:39

looked at Pokemon, they broadly sort of ripped

50:41

off the art and then crammed it into

50:43

a bunch of systems that

50:45

are super fucking popular on

50:47

Steam, are super fucking popular

50:49

amongst younger players. Survival games

50:52

are huge. Building

50:54

systems are huge. And you

50:56

put Pokemon-esque characters into there,

50:58

suddenly Pal World, maybe not at this

51:01

scale, but being a popular game that

51:03

makes a lot of people happy because

51:05

of these base systems interacting makes

51:07

a lot more sense. Kato, you and I

51:09

played Pal World on Friday.

51:12

You, I couldn't tell

51:14

if you were joking or you actually were playing

51:16

Pal World late last night

51:18

because last we checked in when we

51:20

were scheduling, you're making it up. You're

51:23

making an, you're making an

51:25

og-noise, Kato. Because when we

51:27

were planning out our week, I asked

51:29

you, should we put another Pal World

51:31

stream on the schedule? Did you, because

51:33

we left our stream and you're like,

51:35

huh. This is kind of a built-in

51:37

empire, offline. Maybe I'll spend some time,

51:39

well, my thought was, these games

51:42

don't really interest me. I do know that they, Kato

51:45

was making noises during the stream that seemed to suggest a

51:47

person that was gonna spend a lot of, potentially spend a

51:49

lot of time in this game. But

51:52

then didn't over the weekend. I like how Kato

51:54

just had words, only sound. We

51:57

think you better know where Pal World's to conquer. My

52:00

thought for the follow-up stream was like let's see what

52:02

Kado got up to potentially playing the game Normally

52:05

because the stream we did yeah, let

52:07

us go into the settings and turn the XP drops to

52:09

20 What the game

52:11

normally dishes them out, but you said no

52:14

you said no no I lived a normal

52:16

life I had a normal weekend Yeah,

52:18

did not I did not engage in this pal world

52:20

nonsense and then you like

52:22

about a minute ago You made a noise so I need

52:24

to know what the noise me Yeah,

52:27

I've just you know actually speaking

52:29

to that downturn in in playing

52:31

in like people who play video

52:33

games I've I've tended to

52:35

like shy away from a

52:37

lot of stuff over the weekend just because I have

52:40

a Lot of house errands.

52:42

I like to take care of but also because yeah,

52:44

I Mean I've

52:46

been recently getting really into board games

52:48

just to have a thing that is

52:50

gamey, but doesn't involve a

52:52

screen I like that

52:55

healthy that's that's grown general. I

52:57

just like aren't But

53:01

so like that leaves

53:03

a week nights, which is a dangerous

53:05

time for for gaming Much

53:09

like dragons dog nice or danger nicer

53:11

day and

53:16

So I'm a fan of Minecraft

53:20

You know back back in the

53:22

day. Yeah, I'm a fan. Here's

53:24

the issue. There's something about my

53:26

brain that really likes procedure

53:29

that kind

53:33

of balloons and expands into

53:35

different possibility spaces so like

53:38

punch tree get wood Then

53:40

suddenly like the world opens up it

53:43

has always got labor filled guns

53:46

Yeah Like

53:50

this I I don't

53:52

play a ton of them outside of Minecraft

53:55

They've never like super but I tried to

53:57

play Valheim once but I wouldn't felt like

54:00

It required, it was

54:02

more fun in a group and I could

54:04

never get a group going, but in

54:07

general. An arc or rust or? No,

54:09

it was just like aesthetically, I was like, whatever,

54:11

I'll go play Minecraft. I think it looks cuter

54:13

and has more things in it already. I never

54:15

really hopped over to one of the other ones.

54:18

And I still, I, you know, I have

54:20

a couple Minecraft servers that I check in on,

54:23

like, very sparingly. But

54:25

in general, that was my entry

54:27

into the survival genre. And it definitely

54:30

just, if they make the

54:32

rant just right, it

54:35

tickles a part of my brain that I enjoy. And

54:38

this one, I started, I was

54:40

like, I'll peek in at a

54:42

bad time of night,

54:45

I was like midnight

54:47

and like, I'll check it for half an hour.

54:50

Just to say that I did, you know?

54:53

So bold. I need to set

54:55

up like a Steam notification for Kado

54:58

that pushes to my phone and I'm like, what time

55:00

is it? What? Kado.

55:03

Well, here's the thing. Not

55:06

on Steam, didn't buy it, right? Playing

55:08

through Game Pass. Right, right, right, right,

55:10

right, right. Because

55:12

in general, part of the reason I have

55:14

kind of obviously didn't

55:19

dive as deeply, I feel, like, is

55:21

I did see just the sort of

55:24

general, like, it doesn't particularly matter that

55:27

they probably, there was no reason, there's

55:29

no way to like tell if they

55:31

used any AI in like the pre,

55:33

I think the only place you could

55:36

really use it in this game would

55:38

be pre-production. There

55:40

were tweets from like the

55:43

current, I'm not technically CEO, but Lead

55:45

Dev on Power World from a

55:47

while back who had used AI generation to like mash

55:49

together a bunch of Pokemon and they're like, look at

55:52

what AI can do. And so

55:54

it's pretty, given how close

55:56

they are to some to like existing Pokemon,

55:58

you could expect that they They may have

56:00

done that with that's how

56:02

they generated the what the looks are

56:04

going to be from the ones that are going to like, you

56:07

know, change slightly. Either way,

56:10

the like, the

56:13

like, the like, even

56:16

tangential connection to that always is

56:19

a little, you know, iffy, because then

56:21

at that point, you're not sure where any of

56:24

the ideas are generated, and it feels

56:28

like easier to just kind of like, not

56:30

engage. But

56:32

aside from that, I feel like the

56:38

the way that they kind of sell this, this,

56:40

this, this world is, you

56:44

know, it's that that like, we took a thing

56:46

that's family friendly and made it edgy, sort

56:49

of like thing where there

56:53

are ways to sort of do that,

56:55

that where you kind

56:57

of make a point or like trying to do

56:59

a bit of satire in there. And

57:01

then there are ways that are just like, the

57:03

edginess is, is, is, is fun, right?

57:05

Like, isn't it funny that we're, we're,

57:08

we're looking at Pokemon being like, they're,

57:10

they're your slaves now. Isn't

57:13

it funny that we have a

57:15

building named the Berry Plantation, specifically

57:18

the plantation, right?

57:21

And like, none

57:23

of that feels particularly well thought out,

57:25

like none of that feels intentional. And

57:29

it's, you know, always difficult because

57:32

it's a non English speaking, dev,

57:34

maybe something got lost in translation,

57:36

who's to say, but like, the

57:39

localization does not leave anything,

57:42

it like does not make a compelling case for they

57:45

were they're doing parody here that is

57:47

interesting and says something about the

57:50

way people engage with Pokemon. It's more like,

57:52

no, we're gonna get huge. Yeah, it's more

57:54

of a remix of

57:56

just like, and it's not That

57:59

interesting of one. I'm. A.

58:03

Lead the way that has a soul a lot.

58:06

I feel like. It's. Like we got

58:08

guns in here. With. Again,

58:10

how they have one million in the market. Ah

58:12

yes, the game. So the same in the marketing.

58:14

A nursery. The cataclysm

58:16

account and I loaded this up. It was like

58:18

yeah, we're kind of doing it. with

58:21

a with by the game early as much

58:23

like for the meme. Is

58:26

interesting. yeah rival find like it's just

58:28

it's just like as a paddle. Love.

58:31

Pokemon of I am we would was going a do

58:33

we have often hostilities wait I thought it would they

58:35

want to push as it is likely have to check

58:37

this out of the I breathe as as a fully

58:39

agree that we have decided to salix as it was

58:41

the one stream and sorta like see with the whole

58:44

deal with the another thing that we're both struck by.

58:46

Off the bat and fortunately I had

58:48

read about this from impressions prior to

58:51

starting. The stream was. The.

58:53

Guns are deeper in the game than you

58:55

think. The suspect that yeah it is not

58:57

side is out as though I. Hello

59:00

Soldiers You have enlisted in the power

59:02

world Army Like peers. You're gonna head

59:04

out into the wilderness like that's it's

59:07

not if you're on duty melting first.

59:10

Oh yeah Me? basically yes look I can

59:12

see the same and yeah I I need

59:14

that little I believe it or I work

59:16

a little and orders yeah we we we

59:18

got some or the who his it's We

59:21

couldn't quite get enough order to make a

59:23

gun during our see were right there on

59:25

the ads but it's under percent that sort

59:27

of. You know that the the crafting. A

59:30

survival game ah ramp of like either

59:32

side load technology like that. The earliest

59:34

weapons that you can build our like

59:36

a wooden club and a bow and

59:38

arrow and stuff. Yeah. Now.

59:42

I haven't played. Arcs

59:44

some that Harper censor whether or not

59:46

this is something that you do there,

59:49

but as did think there was something

59:51

slightly compelling about that at the when

59:53

when playing solo. The

59:55

sort of throw out but one

59:57

of your pals and have it

59:59

basically. Tank while you health

1:00:01

of thing with arrow this i'm it

1:00:03

will kind of a fun like in

1:00:06

gameplay loop for a little bit. ah

1:00:08

and obviously the idea that if I

1:00:10

see that bow and arrow turns into

1:00:12

a gun which is a little bit

1:00:14

more like what people were were expecting

1:00:16

but. In

1:00:18

in general I just felt. You.

1:00:21

Know, I mean. It's Lives

1:00:23

literally derivative by like. The.

1:00:29

Though. There's a

1:00:31

will. There's ways that you can. Ah,

1:00:33

Sort of touch on a on up The moral.

1:00:35

I got an idea that. Comes.

1:00:39

Out the other and feeling like there

1:00:41

was something transformative in In, in, in

1:00:43

it's usage and this is a psych.

1:00:48

Yeah, I'd say it's. Not,

1:00:51

it's not doing anything different

1:00:53

enough from all of it's

1:00:56

source material to be particularly

1:00:58

interesting. I'm. In a do

1:01:00

going to them hooks are in new. World.

1:01:03

Now because I'm going to stop like this

1:01:05

is a think it's a it's the only

1:01:07

only the beginning of Re I believe you

1:01:09

always hits me on a strategy game on

1:01:11

of our survival game rather and I feel

1:01:13

like I can play. I could blame just

1:01:15

doing that thing but at that point I'm

1:01:17

like. What I'm going to do

1:01:20

is I'm going to go back to minecraft than

1:01:22

like start a new world and see what and

1:01:24

fuck around in there for a couple hours before

1:01:26

you note not Thirty eight again for another year

1:01:28

or whatever. So I'm not his his his or

1:01:30

her their private discourse that a little confused by

1:01:32

Mobile York and clue me in because I'm only

1:01:34

of of a power of poker mama that Boomers

1:01:37

Vice City are. Okay

1:01:39

with someone to score Seemed really what a young worry. Is.

1:01:42

When I would say like people were like

1:01:44

mad this game cel oh yeah yeah and

1:01:46

mad that this is by began to Europe.

1:01:49

And I've heard some of self worth like

1:01:51

wealth not really like i'm missing critique of

1:01:53

poker modern doing this I've heard so that

1:01:55

but like. I don't know that

1:01:58

would justify be sort of. The

1:02:00

anger that my girl power old

1:02:02

them. Curious. Yeah. What? Why?

1:02:04

Are people angry? At. Power

1:02:06

of being there and how world

1:02:08

selling like hotcakes. Then. As

1:02:11

soon as oh thank god. Yeah.

1:02:13

I was just gonna see to the i also a see

1:02:15

the how. are simply like an hour with of that the

1:02:17

squad at the curve or it min max. Ah

1:02:20

we also did axes air tight outside

1:02:22

like a boss you know as as

1:02:24

a fever has take one thing from

1:02:26

power Old. I hope they take that.

1:02:28

you should have nxt sit at X

1:02:30

P Gain slider within your difficulty setting.

1:02:33

Let. Me: Crank that up. Funny

1:02:35

when you know it's it's not a narrative a thing

1:02:37

or a breeder really breaking anything you'd like. I'm having

1:02:40

fun the way I want to have fun as it.

1:02:42

Is a day you know And other than

1:02:44

like and of the edge lords did settings

1:02:46

ever her anybody that ever feel less immersive

1:02:49

Michael it's all about. It

1:02:51

and. Turned the

1:02:54

subtitles on any way to

1:02:56

say I was like. Not

1:02:59

gonna lie off again. Like

1:03:01

the next week later they have a lot of

1:03:03

letters for like the hunger and other things. But

1:03:05

anyway back to that the question that you ask

1:03:07

why people are angry armed with as if I

1:03:10

that people. Like. To get angry

1:03:12

minded it's attack as attack us as

1:03:14

like. It. What? It's

1:03:16

like hook is and the hook is. these

1:03:19

are it. Plan a bootleg pokemon and.

1:03:22

And then people also get mad at. People.

1:03:24

Saying that you can see the really pokemon

1:03:26

has like pogrom on really just isn't Pokemon

1:03:28

Dragon Quest and it's got my okay y'all

1:03:30

are really far it's I the a lot

1:03:32

of make. Money then? Perhaps same

1:03:34

as I think. I'd have done

1:03:37

are having read the holiday. With

1:03:40

I it's funny hearing Patrick say like, oh like because

1:03:42

they are You think. Yeah. This is

1:03:44

this is sold as Pogo Guns but it really

1:03:46

is that a Pokemon game. It does not even

1:03:49

close disgusting heads. That's not to say it's better

1:03:51

where it it is different styles of games and

1:03:53

yet I have seen many many many fans say

1:03:55

no This is what I want from Pokemon game

1:03:57

and am I. You're

1:04:00

not playing Pokemon buddy. You're asking if

1:04:02

Pokemon company makes something fundamentally different than

1:04:04

the games they make. Yeah,

1:04:08

it would be like quite literally a spin-off, which Pokemon has

1:04:10

done spin-offs of their games. And I

1:04:13

totally think if they did, funnily

1:04:15

enough, if Pokemon did Power World, like yeah, I think

1:04:17

that could be without, with some fundamental changes. Because anyway,

1:04:20

back to like why people are angry. They got close with

1:04:22

Arceus, right? Yeah, yeah.

1:04:24

It has like a lot of DNA of a lot of

1:04:27

things in it. But I think people are angry because they're

1:04:29

like, hey, this is a rip-off

1:04:31

game. It's, you know, even if

1:04:33

you don't, there's like legal stealing and then just

1:04:36

like the vibes, right? Where it's

1:04:38

like, you don't have to, they don't have to

1:04:40

break the law for us to know that's Wooloo,

1:04:42

you know? Yeah. Like it is.

1:04:44

You know, it's meant to be kind of a bootleg Wooloo.

1:04:46

And it's funny that Wooloo can have an AK47. That

1:04:49

is the hook. And

1:04:52

I think people are like, that hook is cheap.

1:04:54

It's tacky. It's creatively bankrupt.

1:04:56

And if you play it, you

1:04:58

are the arbiter

1:05:01

of the end of

1:05:03

what games as art should be. And I don't think

1:05:05

people who are angry would say that that's their, that

1:05:07

is why they're angry. But that is, I think what

1:05:09

it generally boils down to

1:05:11

of like, you're feeding into tackiness,

1:05:15

which, I don't know. The things

1:05:17

that are popular are not necessarily going

1:05:20

to be these high art moments. I

1:05:24

am shocked this game is so popular, but

1:05:26

at the same time, it doesn't shock me that

1:05:28

it is so popular. I'm more shocked that it works enough to

1:05:30

be this popular. Like I thought this

1:05:32

would come out and be like a broken mess. Like

1:05:34

what was that game that just came out the day

1:05:36

after? The day after. It's

1:05:38

part of why it was like, I don't really want

1:05:40

to stream the day after. But I do, you know,

1:05:42

there is a benefit to streaming this broken mess in

1:05:45

the Pokémon with guns game. And like what we found,

1:05:47

I heard the Game Pass version was a little more

1:05:49

busted for other people. I

1:05:51

had a perfectly pleasant time

1:05:53

with what was broken

1:05:55

seemed like early access stuff as

1:05:57

opposed to like the game didn't crash.

1:06:00

It ran fine. Like we got to you

1:06:02

know, it was rough around the edge in the way

1:06:04

that you expect the game that In

1:06:06

theory will be iterated on for several years to

1:06:08

be rough around the edges Yeah,

1:06:11

and it like I Feel

1:06:14

like a lot of the things that I saw where

1:06:16

was this sort of Idea

1:06:21

about we shouldn't reward

1:06:25

but kind of blatant hit plagiarism and and

1:06:30

There's a there's a I

1:06:32

have a very sort of Kind

1:06:37

of I

1:06:40

mean, I'm just gonna say I feel like you can steal

1:06:43

from corporations and that's okay There's

1:06:45

a there's a difference between the

1:06:47

idea of taking an individual artists

1:06:50

work and you know making

1:06:53

money off of that versus You

1:06:57

know Taking something that has

1:07:00

like the the Pokemon company has more money than

1:07:02

God like if they want to see what they

1:07:04

will see and Vibe

1:07:07

in that tweet which was Yeah,

1:07:10

Patrick you're about to read read the tweet.

1:07:13

Yeah, so the Pokemon company put out I

1:07:17

think though I think the I think the

1:07:19

translation says please stop fucking asking us about

1:07:21

yeah I Know

1:07:23

there's been a ton of speculation

1:07:25

about What what

1:07:28

is is this legally legally like

1:07:30

distinguishable? Is there an issue here

1:07:32

legally for Nintendo people also complete

1:07:34

Nintendo with the Pokemon company? Like

1:07:36

it's more complicated than that. Those

1:07:39

are like intertwined companies, but like

1:07:41

they are separate entities anyway In

1:07:44

queries regarding other companies games, which

1:07:46

is such a funny title

1:07:49

for a memo We have

1:07:51

received many inquiries regarding another company's

1:07:53

game released in January 2024 We

1:07:56

have not granted any permission for the use of

1:07:59

Pokemon intellectual property assets in that game. We

1:08:02

tend to investigate and take appropriate measures to

1:08:04

address any acts that infringe on intellectual property

1:08:06

rights related to the Pokemon. We

1:08:08

will continue to cherish and nurture each

1:08:11

and every Pokemon and its

1:08:13

world and work to bring

1:08:15

the world together through Pokemon

1:08:17

in the future. The Pokemon world.

1:08:19

I'm going to suggest that Pokemon are real and

1:08:21

if you love them in their hearts, don't

1:08:24

steal them. But you know my read on

1:08:26

that was in one

1:08:29

on one level chill like don't

1:08:31

you if we have lawyers right. Yeah,

1:08:33

we can fight this fight ourselves. Yeah.

1:08:37

And but also Nintendo,

1:08:40

the Pokemon company are not companies

1:08:42

that traditionally respond to inquiries like

1:08:44

they usually just no comment or

1:08:47

don't comment. So

1:08:49

it does speak to

1:08:52

the virality to the

1:08:54

popularity to the intensity of the

1:08:56

like specifically around the conversation on

1:08:58

this game that the Pokemon company

1:09:00

would feel the need to issue

1:09:02

a statement that it

1:09:05

made such legalese saying regarding another

1:09:07

company's game. They won't even say

1:09:09

like say the name Pokemon

1:09:11

cut like they won't because I'm sure a lawyer

1:09:13

told them don't. They can

1:09:15

reserve the right to take action

1:09:17

if they feel it's necessary. But

1:09:20

Janet I forget who is the guest on min

1:09:22

max. It is also like an IP. Oh, Haley

1:09:25

McLean. Yeah, she's our community

1:09:27

manager. Yeah, we will maintain a

1:09:29

community manager. Yeah, yeah, like

1:09:31

a really, really need one. You

1:09:36

know, Ben, he just likes to throw the cash around. He's like,

1:09:38

let's just throw a community manager in there. Yeah,

1:09:40

Haley McLean is a video game IP lawyer by

1:09:43

trade and then a cash flow. I think it

1:09:45

was probably a clip on Twitter I saw on

1:09:47

TikTok. It was one of the more popular TikToks

1:09:49

related to a power

1:09:51

world. It's been viewed like a million

1:09:53

times. But essentially, you know,

1:09:55

like she walked through what what the steps

1:09:57

would be for Nintendo.

1:09:59

slash the Pokemon company to take and it's to

1:10:02

boil it down something much simpler than how

1:10:05

she explained it, which is well worth reading is like, I

1:10:07

don't know. Do you think a judge would

1:10:09

agree it was a ripoff? And like that

1:10:11

sort of Yeah, the gamble that the Pokemon

1:10:13

company absent, like you're doing discovery

1:10:16

and like finding out like there's a memo

1:10:18

that from the executive thing like, like,

1:10:21

yes, like copy those copy those models and

1:10:23

import them into Maya. That's unlikely to be

1:10:25

the case. It would be a judge looking

1:10:28

at these two characters much

1:10:30

not very different than the way the

1:10:32

internet spent an entire week looking at

1:10:34

model meshes and going, is

1:10:37

this a direct copy? Or is this, you

1:10:40

know, legally distinct? But also thinking

1:10:42

of like, the other layers that which

1:10:44

that's kind of re reopening the thing that you

1:10:46

kind of want to go over quickly. But there's

1:10:48

like other aspects that too of you know, what's

1:10:51

the impact? Like, what's the purpose behind it? You

1:10:53

know, is it parody? Is it not parody? Does

1:10:55

this actually affect Pokemon's bottom line? Are people actually

1:10:57

confusing me? Like, there's all these other layers besides

1:11:00

like, I think we can all agree that like

1:11:02

that thing looks like Wooloo, but also like, that

1:11:05

might not mean anything. You know, a lot

1:11:07

of Pokemon, I don't know, it looks

1:11:09

like a cute sheep thing. That's

1:11:11

the thing. Like, there's another

1:11:13

round cute sheep thing and it rolls

1:11:15

around because the ball. That's the

1:11:18

ball. I think. I think

1:11:20

you like to Rob's point, like, I

1:11:22

don't think it's, for me, at least

1:11:24

what I've seen, it's definitely not to

1:11:26

me, just people mad that power world's

1:11:28

popular. It's like the anger turns both

1:11:30

directions. So they just feel like there's

1:11:33

a lot of like discourse and anger around this game. Because

1:11:35

then you have the other end of people being like, well,

1:11:37

that's Wooloo. And then people are like, oh, Wooloo is just

1:11:39

a sheep. Are you and then you get a lot of

1:11:42

it's been a week of logical fallacies. When

1:11:44

you get like people just taking big swings.

1:11:46

So what are you saying Pokemon owns sheep?

1:11:49

What we have? We can't look at an

1:11:51

animal and make an animal. I made the

1:11:53

same animal. And it's a lot of like,

1:11:57

it's a lot of I mean, in general, when you

1:11:59

evoke Pokemon. And it's gonna be

1:12:01

hell on our own. I'm also a big Pokemon fan as well.

1:12:05

I too share this affliction of this terrible,

1:12:08

I feel like it's one of the worst communities in gaming as

1:12:10

a Pokemon company, as a Pokemon fans, because

1:12:12

nobody- Better or worse than Silent Hill

1:12:14

fans? I think it's worse because-

1:12:17

That's so big. Y'all keep showing up. Yeah, I guess

1:12:19

there's more of them. Y'all keep showing up is the

1:12:21

thing. People will be, like

1:12:23

with Power World, and that's something too, Power World can't

1:12:25

even really exist as its own game. I think there's

1:12:27

a lot to talk about, Takada's points

1:12:29

of both the appeal and the

1:12:33

blandness of having so many flavors come together

1:12:35

at once that there's not really, like I

1:12:38

don't really get a strong feeling of identity

1:12:40

and takeaway from the game outside of like,

1:12:42

sure they had that Pokemon guns kind of pitched

1:12:44

that society made, but I'm like, oh, well what

1:12:47

am I really doing? Like parts of the game

1:12:49

feel at odds with itself, but I feel like

1:12:51

beyond the game criticism itself, like there's

1:12:54

just so much mess of conversation around.

1:12:57

I feel like this evokes hatred

1:12:59

that's buried in a very shallow grave of

1:13:01

people that are also just mad of

1:13:03

like the direction of the Pokemon franchise. Well,

1:13:05

if Pokemon's not gonna do anything with their

1:13:08

games, sorry, someone had the bravery to make

1:13:10

a good game. Really people

1:13:12

are so mad. Stop

1:13:14

reading my tweets for

1:13:16

baiting, Janet. And I'll kind

1:13:18

of like, I'll end this quickly because I

1:13:20

could go forever with so many examples I've

1:13:22

read about from just different sides

1:13:25

and people mad that other people, like yeah,

1:13:27

it's just a big mess. I think to

1:13:29

speak to what Kato mentioned earlier, at

1:13:32

the risk of sounding like a corporate shell, I

1:13:34

am not like as, I wish they

1:13:36

didn't have like Boolean Pokemon in here. And

1:13:38

I get that it wouldn't be what it is with, if

1:13:40

they didn't, so like, I don't know, get your bag, but

1:13:43

I feel like there's been so many Pokemon clones. Like

1:13:45

I think you can make, or

1:13:47

Pokemon vibe clones, like with like, oh, these cute

1:13:49

little creatures, animals. And I think

1:13:51

Power World does have some designs that do

1:13:54

feel unique to their game, to

1:13:56

at least some degree. Again, you could argue a lot of games have

1:13:59

chickens, right? But like, whatever. Like there's

1:14:01

plenty of creatures that I think are

1:14:04

less like, I

1:14:08

don't know, copy pasty than like other ones. So I

1:14:10

just feel kind of like- I mean,

1:14:12

a pal that isn't implied

1:14:14

that it has sex with

1:14:17

humans and pals. Oh

1:14:19

my God. Also, we do meet the people.

1:14:22

Now I'm interested. Hang on.

1:14:25

With a pal that's like, stay away. I

1:14:28

mean, I wouldn't be shocked if like that

1:14:31

when they add new creatures, you see

1:14:34

this game go in a

1:14:36

distinctly different- like I would be- okay, maybe

1:14:39

I wouldn't be shocked, but I kind of would

1:14:41

be shocked if when they add new creatures to

1:14:43

this game, it didn't start to try and carve

1:14:45

out a little bit of its own identity to-

1:14:48

now it's so popular that it has an opportunity. This

1:14:50

isn't a flash in the pan. This

1:14:53

is a big game. It could be sustainable

1:14:55

if they play their cards right. My

1:14:58

belief is at some point they

1:15:00

will begin to diverge creatively from

1:15:02

the creature side. Well, you might start seeing

1:15:04

like some of the ones that look more

1:15:07

like Pokemon start to disappear. Like the arc

1:15:09

of MOBAs. The like, oh,

1:15:11

this character, you know, we're just updating it

1:15:13

to bring it more in line with sensibilities.

1:15:17

It's no longer Harley Quinn, quite to the same

1:15:19

extent as it was before. Oh,

1:15:22

this is not a world of- this is not a Warcraft.

1:15:25

This is not a Warcraft character. But

1:15:27

to a degree, it's just been- I'm kind

1:15:30

of there with Kato to the argument

1:15:32

that like, it's less

1:15:34

like steal from corporations than like Pokemon have

1:15:36

been around a long time. Just

1:15:38

like you should be able to be like- it shouldn't have

1:15:40

taken this long to be like Steamboat

1:15:43

Willie's gonna get up to some nonsense. It

1:15:46

shouldn't have taken that long. And

1:15:48

like- And if it was a Steamboat Willie

1:15:50

Pikachu, I didn't think I'd sign that deal. But

1:15:52

it's okay to produce like- it's okay to produce

1:15:54

like kind of mediocre middling

1:15:57

products that are like, you know,

1:15:59

basically- taking, like that

1:16:01

should be okay. Taking stuff

1:16:03

that's been around and become part of the

1:16:05

cultural fabric. We live in a framework where

1:16:08

that is not, it's clear a lot of

1:16:10

people are like, hey Pokemon

1:16:12

company, you should shut these people down. There's a lot of people

1:16:15

who want to be cop about this thing. Where

1:16:17

it's like you should use, turn

1:16:19

the IP guns on this

1:16:21

company. But I wouldn't say this is

1:16:23

like, this isn't Calvin

1:16:26

peeing on something. Or

1:16:30

it is. Like just write it up like, maybe

1:16:32

it is, but like. Well

1:16:34

I mean just a sort of copy of the

1:16:37

Bill Watterson drawing and then yeah like. I

1:16:39

mean to say, pal world is trying to be the,

1:16:42

Calvin is peeing on something of Pokemon,

1:16:44

right? Like. I

1:16:47

just don't think it achieves that. Because it's

1:16:49

more transformative work than Calvin peeing on something.

1:16:51

I was like, there's more happening there. Yes,

1:16:53

I think just barely but. In terms of

1:16:56

meaning, it may not be that distinct from like

1:16:58

what if Calvin was peeing on stuff. Right, right.

1:17:00

It's just that it has that thing. The vibes

1:17:02

are Calvin peeing. The look is.

1:17:04

The vibes are exactly that sort of

1:17:06

like, it's edgier than the

1:17:08

original thing. Isn't that fun? That's

1:17:12

fine. But like yeah. It doesn't

1:17:14

feel edgy in the game though, right? That was

1:17:16

actually one of the things that I found. It

1:17:19

doesn't, it doesn't. It's hard to write. Because like

1:17:21

there's things where it's like. Less so than

1:17:23

the marketing, right? Like it doesn't present itself

1:17:25

as like, hey, welcome to

1:17:27

fucked up Pokemon. Like it's not. If

1:17:30

anything, it's like welcome to breath of the wild.

1:17:32

You hear a little chime when you get it

1:17:34

to enter a new area. And I'm like, ooh.

1:17:36

Yeah, everyone's focusing on Pokemon. But it's taking from

1:17:38

multiple Nintendo games quite frankly. Eventually we're gonna see

1:17:40

this image. Which I'm about to post into our

1:17:42

chat. Hold on one second. It's a factory. It's

1:17:44

a factory one, yeah, of course it is. Right,

1:17:47

like that exists somewhere in the

1:17:49

world. There is a gun manufacturing

1:17:51

factory with Pokemon in it. And you could

1:17:53

probably end up making that gun manufacturing factory

1:17:55

with sad Pokemon. We can all dream. Oh

1:17:57

yeah, remember what we learned during the game?

1:18:00

that S-A-N, which

1:18:02

I thought maybe was like sanitation bar that

1:18:05

goes down over time. No, that's sanity.

1:18:07

They're literally being worked to, you know,

1:18:09

losing their minds, apparently. Like that is

1:18:11

the mechanic that's in the game. Yeah,

1:18:14

that's commentary. Yeah. I

1:18:18

don't know. And it's so, yeah. Don't you

1:18:20

understand the reason I got an inflatable Costco

1:18:22

hot tub out on my backyard was for

1:18:24

my own personal sanity meter. Right, exactly. You

1:18:27

gotta refill it. That's

1:18:29

why I couldn't get mad at that. Like,

1:18:32

it's not a meowith, but like whatever cat character

1:18:34

that we had in the game. Just refuse to

1:18:36

work. Just refuse to work. Snapping

1:18:40

all day and like fucking. Have you seen

1:18:42

it in the corner? Like you

1:18:45

can, it tells you sort of like the, like

1:18:47

what your pals,

1:18:49

labor workers, however

1:18:52

you want to describe them are doing. And we

1:18:54

just kept noticing out on adventures. The game's like,

1:18:56

yo, that cat ain't doing shit. We'll

1:18:59

build them a spa. And we went out

1:19:01

on a spa quest to like get the

1:19:03

ingredients we needed to build this spa. And

1:19:06

the cat did just enjoy the spa. Didn't really

1:19:08

get even back to work. And it was like,

1:19:11

it was so, I have to admit, I

1:19:14

think that is accidental humor. I

1:19:16

don't think the game really intended for that

1:19:18

to be funny, but I have

1:19:20

to admit like enough moments like that

1:19:22

occurred through this like strange mishmash of

1:19:24

systems and tone that however

1:19:26

it arrived at it on purpose or

1:19:29

by accident, I found it to

1:19:31

be a distinct enough thing that I

1:19:33

was, I am not shocked then that it has

1:19:36

taken off the way that it has because I

1:19:38

do think it is a, like

1:19:40

individually I understand the ire and then even

1:19:42

conflate it with the AI

1:19:45

conversation. Like it's all of that makes sense

1:19:47

why it got so toxic so

1:19:49

quickly, but like it's like, gone

1:19:52

to my head and like, I really enjoyed

1:19:54

the two hours I have with it. Like, I

1:19:58

don't know what to tell you. Like. The

1:20:00

game was fun and like I consider intellectually

1:20:02

to pick apart all this other stuff but

1:20:05

also Game fun.

1:20:07

Well, yeah, and I think too Well,

1:20:10

go ahead. Oh well. I was gonna say one of the things that

1:20:12

they like do understand obviously

1:20:14

about the pokemon side of things is that

1:20:17

If you just have to give them just enough personality

1:20:19

to To like have

1:20:21

those interesting air cases, right? Like and

1:20:23

there's enough like systems in the game where like you're

1:20:26

gonna get those Every once in

1:20:28

a while and like who knows, you know our

1:20:30

10 hour 15 hour 20, right? Whether

1:20:33

or not that shines still exists, but at the beginning there's

1:20:35

a little bit of that like ooh because

1:20:38

you know people like this sort of game and

1:20:40

also it leads into like um

1:20:43

the What's the game

1:20:45

i'm thinking like the factorial it ask

1:20:47

like can you make? this

1:20:50

thing Uh automated in in

1:20:52

a way that's really efficient You know you get

1:20:54

the right pals in the right spots to do

1:20:56

the right jobs and each pal has its own

1:20:59

Specific job it can do on

1:21:01

the base and you need different ones. So

1:21:03

like that part is kind

1:21:05

of interesting but like it

1:21:08

feels It definitely

1:21:10

feels like it's it's because uh What

1:21:15

pokemon is Is

1:21:18

less a specific genre of game

1:21:20

at this point than the

1:21:22

world where pokemon exists right,

1:21:25

like every time there's a new side game

1:21:27

like whether or not it like pops off

1:21:29

or not like a million

1:21:32

like tons of people are gonna buy it

1:21:34

just because it is the creatures that they

1:21:36

love that Have

1:21:38

the specific personalities that they've had

1:21:40

for well over however many fucking years.

1:21:43

It's how old am I? Um

1:21:46

Uh, you know, like it's it's that thing

1:21:48

of like oh, I know I

1:21:51

love I love it when gengar is a

1:21:53

little asshole, you know I

1:21:55

love my gengar And

1:21:57

he knocks over all my shit. Fuck Yeah,

1:22:00

I also love Gengar. Because

1:22:04

Pokemon taught me to love Gengar. What they

1:22:06

taught you to love Gengar. Yes. And

1:22:09

then like, there's

1:22:12

just enough there where they're like, you

1:22:15

know what, I can pretend that this is a Wooloo. I

1:22:17

can just pretend that my little

1:22:20

Wooloo is running around picking up

1:22:22

rocks for my little automated base.

1:22:24

My little Wooloo is like the

1:22:27

ox, you know, nominated for short

1:22:29

documentary and then the tears Oscars.

1:22:33

A sand hail of avocado and

1:22:35

their Lulu. And

1:22:38

it's, you know, I

1:22:42

think it partially does speak to just

1:22:44

sort of the how fucking big, like

1:22:48

we don't need to belabor that part

1:22:50

really, because everyone knows how

1:22:52

fucking big Pokemon is. Like you might kind of,

1:22:54

you kind of forget for a second between games

1:22:56

and then you see the numbers on the new

1:22:58

game, even if it's really fucking bad or

1:23:01

if it has a lot of problems in the

1:23:03

opening areas. It still sells

1:23:06

gross amount of copies, right? And

1:23:09

like the

1:23:12

Pokemon company isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So

1:23:14

I think too, that's like it's almost

1:23:17

again with the power thing. It's

1:23:19

the snakey as some tail, right? Right. Oh,

1:23:22

you're mad power world. A game you don't think is good

1:23:24

is doing well. Well, I've

1:23:26

been mad that Pokemon has been doing well. And

1:23:29

that's kind of the vibe. Like it

1:23:32

really is just a lot of hate getting thrown around. Yeah.

1:23:35

But yeah, I got

1:23:37

so much to say. I

1:23:39

will say just at first, like my vibe was

1:23:41

like, man, like Janet's got

1:23:43

this health, emotional distance from it. Just

1:23:45

like, you know, floating above it all. And now

1:23:48

it's like, oh no, she's camped up there with

1:23:50

the rebel army. Like,

1:23:52

am I on the wrong side? I'm scared. I'm

1:23:56

just saying some people with the cropo Pokemon. Some

1:24:03

people are just like, Pokemon should be better and

1:24:06

we're gonna, we're gonna, we are not coming down

1:24:08

into the cities. We are not, we are not

1:24:10

striking a curve. You need to give that woo-woo

1:24:12

a fucking gun. This is what's missing. See,

1:24:15

my thing is like, and maybe this is like,

1:24:17

I don't know, everyone feels different about bootlegs too,

1:24:19

where it's like, there's many types of

1:24:21

bootlegs. Yeah. Bootlegs are stoops. There's

1:24:24

like, you know, whatever. I think we've all had some

1:24:26

form of like a bootleg or a dupe product at

1:24:28

some point in our lives. But for

1:24:30

me, like with Pokemon, like, I

1:24:32

wish I could do what would

1:24:35

probably be like more enjoyable, right? Where it's like, I

1:24:37

can just pretend that I don't know the

1:24:39

name of the pal one, the little pal is Lulu. Like,

1:24:42

I can't because I know it's not. So I'd rather it

1:24:44

just be bunker or, you know what I mean? There's

1:24:48

so many. And again,

1:24:50

like obviously in that world, power world probably wouldn't

1:24:53

be as, I might not even played it in

1:24:55

the world that it's, you know, Bugsnax

1:24:57

world, essentially, it kind of like taking that idea,

1:24:59

but making your own set of creatures. But

1:25:02

I find that to be so much more, I

1:25:04

think there is space for like people to make,

1:25:06

you know, their own personality in the space. And I wish

1:25:08

that this team leaned into that

1:25:10

slightly more because like you can have like, you know,

1:25:13

okay, I don't think you're like, everyone can make a

1:25:15

deer, right? But it's like, all right, well, this is

1:25:17

like, it just feels a little

1:25:19

too close to I want to be able to

1:25:21

have more space, not because not just because I

1:25:24

want Pokemon's IP protected, but because I think

1:25:26

it allows for like, let's make

1:25:28

this its own like cool thing,

1:25:30

you know, Cult of the Lamb was fun, because

1:25:33

it had a lot of the same loop of

1:25:35

you go out, you have this gameplay, like, you

1:25:37

come back into this space thing, it's another it's

1:25:39

cute, but oh, my god, it's dark, look, everyone's

1:25:41

dying. And I have my own

1:25:43

light piece with the how that system just

1:25:45

flowed from someone that like

1:25:48

hanging out with my like little cultists

1:25:50

and stuff perspective. But I

1:25:53

think there's, you know, that being said, like,

1:25:55

there's very clear appeal to like, this

1:25:57

kind of loop and like, obviously, yes, like the

1:25:59

saying the episode out loud, every

1:26:01

game is an amalgamation of

1:26:03

other games to a degree. You know, it's

1:26:06

not like that's the other thing. See, like

1:26:08

people were like, Oh, what? So no one

1:26:10

can make anything. Oh, you can make fake

1:26:12

vampire survivors, but I can't make fake arc

1:26:14

Pokemon. It's just been, it's been, it's been

1:26:16

hell. It's been hell. Well,

1:26:18

I mean, like the thing, the last thing I'll say on

1:26:20

this though is like, yeah,

1:26:23

ideally you'd see maybe a little more

1:26:25

originality, a little less dark inspiration from

1:26:28

Pokemon. On the other hand, like,

1:26:32

if it's not, if it doesn't

1:26:34

crib so directly, is this thing

1:26:36

a success? Exactly. Have you created

1:26:38

a thing that like, and put your time into making

1:26:41

a thing that people are going to like engage with

1:26:43

and care about, or are you going to be yet

1:26:46

another game that goes on Steam and

1:26:48

just like, you know, disappears like a

1:26:50

rock, you know, thrown into

1:26:52

a pond? Um, I think

1:26:55

we've, I think, you know, we've, we've got enough

1:26:57

there that everything's going to be satisfied by our

1:26:59

take on, on power. We'll

1:27:02

be happy about that. Um, you

1:27:05

know, you don't need to write in. Uh, you

1:27:08

know, we nailed it. Uh, so I

1:27:10

think we can, we can leave the discussion there for now

1:27:12

and we come back. We talked about some more games we

1:27:14

can play with.

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we're back. Patrick, you

1:30:05

and I have both been playing the

1:30:08

latest in the Like a Dragon

1:30:10

series, the successor

1:30:13

series, the Yakuza from Rio

1:30:15

Gagatogu Studios, Like

1:30:17

a Dragon Infinite Wealth. Quick

1:30:21

question. Did you play Like a Dragon?

1:30:25

Okay, so my answer to the Yakuza

1:30:27

series is that

1:30:29

like every five to six

1:30:31

years I try one and go, this seems

1:30:34

dope. And then I

1:30:37

play it for five to ten

1:30:39

hours and get scared off

1:30:42

by the like density of what is

1:30:45

available in the game. And perhaps the unevenness? Nope,

1:30:48

not really the unevenness. I

1:30:50

think I'd have to get further. That's maybe

1:30:52

with a 30, 40 hour mark. But

1:30:57

this is so funny. I have

1:30:59

to do. I did

1:31:01

not even know that I played

1:31:03

this Yakuza game, but I had something called Full

1:31:05

Circle. So playing the game Infinite

1:31:08

Wealth last night, there's a particularly funny sequence

1:31:10

with a character here

1:31:13

that you meet when you finally

1:31:15

make it to Hawaii, the main location of the game,

1:31:17

which comes shockingly far

1:31:19

into the intro of the game. Anyway,

1:31:22

just really funny quote, this really funny

1:31:24

character. And I share

1:31:27

a tweet just saying like every, you know,

1:31:29

the line from the character is, and I

1:31:31

was like, what the hell? Who's

1:31:33

after I have to kick to meet some motherfuckers around

1:31:35

here? And then I tweeted that

1:31:37

as like every time I walked to a room full

1:31:40

of strangers. Anyway, someone responded to

1:31:42

that tweet. Jason

1:31:44

Gallup. And they said, I wrote

1:31:47

this line for the localization. And it was

1:31:49

thanks to you talking up Yakuza 4 on

1:31:51

the bomb cast back in 2011 that I

1:31:53

first got into the series. Hope

1:31:55

you enjoy the game. Rob, I don't. I

1:32:00

don't remember playing Yakuza 4 and

1:32:02

talking about it on the podcast

1:32:04

in 2011. Until

1:32:07

I saw that line, I was going to

1:32:09

tell you my history of the Yakuza series

1:32:11

starts with playing a little bit of Yakuza

1:32:13

0 and talking about it on Waypoint Radio

1:32:15

and deciding that these games are just too

1:32:17

big for me. They seem delightful.

1:32:20

But it turns out I played Yakuza 4

1:32:22

and my guess is had very similar opinions

1:32:24

about the franchise. But you

1:32:27

played the spin-off, right? I remember you talking about one

1:32:29

of these. I played Judgment all the way through. And

1:32:32

someday I'm going to go back to my lost

1:32:34

judgment save. I really want to

1:32:36

get to the bottom all that bullying happening in

1:32:38

schools in Yokohama. Very

1:32:40

important. Yeah, a

1:32:42

national concern. I

1:32:45

didn't play like a dragon in

1:32:47

part because I was like, I

1:32:49

just don't know that the like

1:32:52

active time battle-ification of Yakuza is

1:32:54

like necessarily what I want. Now

1:32:57

turns out I might actually get much

1:32:59

sicker of beat-em-up

1:33:01

combat than I do of the

1:33:05

RPG combat. Like playing

1:33:07

like a dragon, Ishin was

1:33:09

like a holy shit, I can't take this. I

1:33:11

just cannot take like I just want to go.

1:33:14

I want to walk 10 steps down the street without

1:33:16

like getting in another brawl where I'm just going to

1:33:18

like spam a few combos and get through it. And

1:33:21

like a dragon has a lot

1:33:23

of combat, but it feels maybe a little more

1:33:26

creative and interesting by virtue of

1:33:28

being active time. But the

1:33:30

point is the thing I didn't

1:33:33

fucking play is like

1:33:35

a dragon. And like a

1:33:37

dragon, if it did well, for

1:33:39

the first several hours MK and I were

1:33:42

like, this is great. Like it feels

1:33:44

like, you know, we were worried that, you know, not knowing the

1:33:46

context of the story that we feel a little bit lost, but

1:33:48

like, oh, this is great. Like totally like slipping right in. And

1:33:50

it really, really onboards you really well. That's

1:33:53

your for four hours. And

1:33:56

then it's like, here

1:33:59

are some plots. developments that

1:34:01

are entirely contingent on you

1:34:04

knowing the history of Kasuga and

1:34:06

the fate of his Yakuza clan

1:34:08

and his parentage and his background

1:34:11

and you know who his boss

1:34:13

was in his

1:34:15

old Yakuza gang. And

1:34:20

really quickly I was like,

1:34:22

oh fuck, this would

1:34:25

all be landing a lot better

1:34:27

and more successfully if I knew the

1:34:29

background of this character especially because

1:34:31

when you first meet

1:34:33

Kasuga I think you might get the

1:34:35

wrong impression of him from where his

1:34:37

life is at at the start of

1:34:39

Infinite Wealth versus who he actually is

1:34:41

as a character, what his old deal

1:34:43

is. So

1:34:47

to set it up, so

1:34:50

your character opens,

1:34:52

he is sort of

1:34:55

making it work as a sort of low

1:34:58

ranking corporate contractor for a job

1:35:00

placement service. Hello

1:35:02

work. But

1:35:05

his real specialty is, I

1:35:07

think it feels like all the Yakuza games have

1:35:10

this slight sociological bent

1:35:12

to them which goes to very

1:35:14

funny places in Infinite Wealth but

1:35:17

one of the real things

1:35:19

that this game is getting into, maybe the last one did

1:35:21

as well, I don't know,

1:35:23

but like Lost Judgment

1:35:25

it's dealing with the fact and

1:35:27

the fallout of the dissolution of

1:35:29

the Yakuza effectively, the fact that

1:35:32

Japan finally shattered the

1:35:35

Yakuza past really

1:35:37

stringent and

1:35:40

arguably civil rights violating laws to

1:35:42

make it impossible to just function in

1:35:44

civil society if you remember the Yakuza

1:35:48

effectively breaking up these organizations and driving

1:35:50

a lot of their membership out and

1:35:53

throwing tens of

1:35:55

thousands of young would-be

1:35:57

gangsters out of work. Casa

1:36:00

Good is one of those guys

1:36:02

but he's kind of making it

1:36:04

work as someone who is helping

1:36:07

place. Other. Yonkers

1:36:09

members with legitimate jobs up

1:36:11

at in a society where

1:36:13

like you know, You.

1:36:15

Don't have a you don't have work

1:36:17

history and nobody wants to hire someone

1:36:19

who you know was clearly an ex

1:36:21

gangster. He's finding jobs of his people

1:36:24

and I was thrown off. He's when

1:36:26

you meet him. This game is what.

1:36:28

Best credit sequence of African seen. Ah

1:36:30

and the series has the credit sequence

1:36:32

as. This one has a

1:36:34

great credit sequence and you're tossing, it

1:36:37

is the coolest, most put together guy

1:36:39

in the world. Map.

1:36:41

Credit sequence and hard with him waking

1:36:43

up in would effectively as as flop

1:36:45

in a shack at the top of

1:36:47

the building and you start to realize

1:36:49

that how Cassius he himself has like

1:36:51

oh my god put my life together

1:36:53

and doing good work and I'm cool

1:36:55

On the whole the world's my oyster.

1:36:57

The reality is. Is

1:37:00

badly paid. He's living in a

1:37:02

shack. Hand about the existence.

1:37:05

And. In the early hours, the

1:37:07

game even that will existence falls the

1:37:09

fuck apart. And his life in

1:37:11

Japan collapses. And.

1:37:14

Right around that time he is put.

1:37:17

Is. Given a lead. The

1:37:19

Mississippi? Okay, Paisley last me. A

1:37:22

bit tire. You. Meet

1:37:24

a bunch of people from his past. And.

1:37:27

They're like so as you know ah

1:37:29

yeah over there was a baby swap

1:37:31

back in the the you know the

1:37:33

back in the era of the of

1:37:35

the boss. Ah and ah you know

1:37:37

that's where the master was being hidden

1:37:39

was Athens but we you don't realize.

1:37:42

Is. That actually the young Prince of your

1:37:44

crime family. Wasn't the bosses son

1:37:46

is all. It. Was you

1:37:48

cast ago? You. Shouldn't have

1:37:50

grown up in that so planned. Now.

1:37:52

Sit there and like he did, Who's.

1:37:55

The boss. Was. there a kid who

1:37:57

the on mr i don't know any people And

1:38:00

they explain it with lots of cutscenes, but

1:38:03

like there are dense webs of relationships and

1:38:05

meaning that like There's

1:38:07

literally no way There's no

1:38:09

way for the game It's

1:38:11

this is a game full of incredible writing And so

1:38:13

I don't think you can fault the

1:38:16

game for being able to like dramatically Land

1:38:19

something that you and I have zero

1:38:21

context word it is an impossible They

1:38:24

give us the facts, but there's no way

1:38:26

for the emotional weight to have any

1:38:29

sort of meaning for you Or I and

1:38:31

so it's like I have context now But

1:38:34

all I have are like you've just

1:38:36

given me a flashy Wikipedia entry, which

1:38:38

is going to nearly flashy not Really?

1:38:41

Yeah, and again, it's not the game's fault

1:38:44

but I'm So

1:38:47

did you fall off it after this point? No,

1:38:49

I was gonna see Hawaii Long

1:38:54

story short, Kasuga You

1:38:56

got to go to Hawaii because

1:38:59

the mom you didn't know

1:39:01

about is in hiding there and We

1:39:05

have to make it right with her and she deserves a

1:39:07

chance to meet you and you deserve a chance to meet

1:39:09

her And we'll sort

1:39:11

of like Resolve this this wrong

1:39:13

that was done to you all due

1:39:16

to you know, 80s early

1:39:18

90s like Yakuza nonsense So boom

1:39:21

after like six hours of the game in

1:39:24

hanging out with his friends in Yokama. You're

1:39:27

off to Hawaii and You're

1:39:30

on your way to meet your mom and

1:39:32

things don't go well and In

1:39:37

short order it appears that

1:39:41

the woman you're looking for Akane is

1:39:44

missing nobody knows where she is and There

1:39:47

is the remnants of a really dangerous Yakuza gang

1:39:49

after her Kiryu

1:39:51

shows up as

1:39:53

like looking cool as fuck and

1:39:58

He's like now a private investigator working

1:40:01

for what appears to be like an Illuminati

1:40:03

type organization who are also looking for a

1:40:05

county. And

1:40:09

you know then obviously, Kasuga is trying to find

1:40:11

her and the question is like

1:40:14

where is she, why is everyone looking for her and like

1:40:17

why did she go into hiding before any

1:40:19

of this broke? I would

1:40:24

also say there's some and then

1:40:27

there's a whole lot of like the sociological bent

1:40:30

goes to interesting places in the setting of

1:40:32

Hawaii which we might

1:40:34

get to as well Patrick. One

1:40:36

of the the most

1:40:38

menacing forces in in

1:40:41

Hawaii in this game is

1:40:44

an army like

1:40:47

a mob slash an army comprised

1:40:51

of ex-homeless

1:40:54

that are just like boiling with rage at

1:40:56

the injustice of society and these

1:40:59

are the swolest, thickest homeless you've

1:41:01

ever seen. It is like an

1:41:04

entire wrestling

1:41:07

promotion. Just put all their dudes out on the

1:41:09

streets and gave them machetes and

1:41:11

they're so badass the cops are just like well we just

1:41:13

have to turn the streets over to these guys. We can't

1:41:15

go anywhere near it. And I'm

1:41:18

like is this the best way to

1:41:20

talk about endemic homelessness

1:41:22

in high-income areas?

1:41:25

I don't know. The game has you know I

1:41:27

can't speak to the history of the series but

1:41:29

I mean even before you leave to Hawaii you

1:41:32

see like a flasher

1:41:35

like someone comes up to you like in

1:41:37

a in like a robe and doesn't show

1:41:40

you their junk but they wear an

1:41:43

underwear and then the scientist appears it's

1:41:45

like that does a Pokemon satire like

1:41:47

an actual satire an actual parody of

1:41:50

Pokemon like hey there's a

1:41:52

lot of weirdos out there and we need you

1:41:54

to categorize like we need you to catalog them

1:41:56

and so on one hand

1:41:58

yes you have this game that

1:42:00

in some way represents like the way

1:42:03