#59: Tantalizing Possibilities

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On to the show. Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast. This is episode 59.

My name is Colin Waryardiam. I'm joined as always by Chris. His shirt is tucked in. Ray gun, Chris.

We're wearing a tucked in t-shirt today. Yeah, it's a weird out shirt, so I figured it should be tucked in. Because otherwise it doesn't really sound. Yeah, yeah, you just definitely hold it.

Didn't sell the image if you leave it, just dangling in the wind. Now you just saw him. Yeah. Assamat Griffith Park.

It was really cool. Really fun. It was something that I always wanted to do. And then a friend of mine, like, months ago, was like, hey, you want to see Weirdown?

I was like, yes. And then I forgot about it. And then my friend was like, hey, you ready for tomorrow? I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot.

Cool. I think Weirdown is funny as hell. Yeah. Very wholesome.

Yeah. As far as comedy goes, he's like the Mr. Rogers of mainstream comedy. I feel like, yeah, he seems like a nice guy in the interviews I've seen.

I saw this one interview I think where he was talking about how he had, like, Coolio when he did that song in the 90s, like, like, wasn't appreciative of it and stuff and how bad he felt. Yeah. I was like, that's so funny, man. Coolio used to be really threatening.

Coolio's got to be like, what in his 50s now? Probably not the most threatening character anymore. No, probably not. But it was against his paradise.

Well, I'm glad you have fun at the show. Yeah. For the uninitiated. Sacred Simbles is our weekly PlayStation podcast that goes live Tuesday for Patreon supporters at Collins Last Stand's Patreon.com slash Collins Last Stand.

Five dollars enough, gets you early entry access. And then three days later, it goes live for the freeloaders out there. Remember also, and we'll talk about it in a moment. Sacred Simbles Plus is also running.

You could support us on Patreon at any level, dollar or up to get Sacred Simbles Plus access. That is our weekly supplemental episode. Last week's was all about first party studios. And we did a little draft.

People really liked that episode. Yeah. So I was really pleased about that. This week's episode is going to be about violence in games and violence in media.

It's actually something that I didn't want to talk about. And then there's been so much discussion about it that it has spurned me on to say a thing or two about it. And I'm interested to see Chris what you have to say about this as well. Yeah.

This of course comes up in the wake of the shootings in the United States, which are perpetual. And if people can blame violent media, violent games and I got inquiries from the audience to see what they thought about it. So you guys can look forward to that if you support us on Patreon. Jacob Kusterhaus wrote in what's Chris on Patreon, just like any one pen at the $2 level or higher.

And he says, Hey, I want to Chris just wondering if there'll be new shirts for Sacred Simbles Plus. I need one to go with my high quality American made Sacred Simbles shirt. Well, Chris, Sacred Simbles Plus's logo is just a little bit different than Sacred Simbles. I like that that's exactly what I wanted.

What Deagan, my brother did do it is exactly what I wanted to do. Something minorly different. I don't know if we'll have shirts for it. Yeah.

But maybe we will eventually remember you can get all of our shirts, sacred symbols, knockback, et cetera, all made in America. The t-shirts, tinyurl.com slash sacred shirts, tiny URL.com slash sacred shirts. If you want to support us there, we also have long sleeve like sweatshirt like things and sweat hoods. Hoodies.

Yeah. Hoodies is not the right word. Sweats with hoods. I'm like an old man.

So go support us there if you would like. Now, Chris, there's a ton of news to get through before I did that. This week I wanted to get through a few other things, a few other items if it's okay with you. Yeah.

I mean, that's what the show is. First of all, there's been this reporting that Walmart is banning violent video games. This comes from a erroneous IGN reporting. Yeah.

This isn't true. A lot of people wrote into this IGN, Miss reported what Walmart PR said to them. And actually a lot of people, including IGN and the article, blames Walmart kind of for it, being like, we're really upset about what they said to and misled us. But I read it and I'm like, it seemed pretty clear that they were.

What did they say? What was the statement? Let me pull it up. But basically, just to give people a little bit of a background here, we had these two terrible violent shootings.

I know they're pulling the ads. Right. Right. So we had these violent shootings and what basically happens when these mass shootings happen in the United States, as our American audience knows, is everybody kind of freaks out about it.

There's some push to do something and then whether you agree or not, nothing happens. Yeah. So basically what happened is Walmart is removing references to violent video games, I guess, in their shelves, like no ads for violent video games, whatever. Now, this is not that unusual.

Walmart is one of the biggest music sellers that retail in the world, and they don't carry dirty versions or adult versions of the album. So you can only buy clean versions of many albums of Walmart. So it's not like it's unprecedented that they would try to do something like this. But the IG report says, that's weird.

So you can't buy like parental advisory albums. Right. I don't think so. I think it's only.

But you can buy written games. That's interesting. Weird. So we might get to a point where that happens.

But basically, the original IGN article says, Walmart's removal of any references to violent video games and media from stores appears to have extended to the actual selling of video games as well. Yesterday reports came out that Walmart sent out internal communications to stores, asking them to pull down ads, signage, and even demos for violent video games. And then a day later, Twitter user Eric Tyler allowed in, I feel like I know that name, tweeted out that their Walmart isn't even selling games. IGN reached out to Walmart for confirmation and received a following response from LaMia Jenkins, director of National Media Relations.

Quote, we've taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week. And it does not reflect a long term change in our video game assortment. We are focused on assisting our associates and their families as well as supporting our community. Blah, blah, blah.

So the key in there, Chris, right about the miscommunication is it does not reflect a long term change in our video game assortment. OK. So they say in the original statement, this does not affect the assortment of video games. Nonetheless, IGN writes that Walmart is banning or removing video games and violent video games from their stores.

So then the update says, since the posting of the story, Walmart has claimed they were confused over our requests for comment, effectively reverting their statement on a policy around the ban of any game sales. During this investigation, IGN reached out multiple times to ask whether Walmart was halting the sale of video games from its stores. We asked Walmart to clarify yesterday's report regarding video game ads and signage and then added, quote, there are additional reports on Twitter that say certain stores are taking down video game sales completely. Is there any truth to these end quote?

Walmart followed up the reply with the statement you see in the original story. So basically, IGN's admitting that they asked them two questions and that the first question was the one that they answered. So this is the proliferation of the story. I don't know anyone says a massive in this community.

And at the bottom says, I general apologize for any confusion or alarm this may have raised. We are similarly, similarly pissed. That's what says you should be pissed at your news writer for like, if they wrote back and I was like, wait a minute, let's use our logic brains for a second. Yeah.

Walmart, one of the great retailers in the world is going to stop selling video games. Does that make any sense to anyone? If Walmart came back to you with that statement, I'd be like, wait, what? I need clarification before I publish this.

You guys are taking video games down? Yeah. But it's not what the statement said because it literally said in the original statement, this does not affect our long term assortment of games. OK.

Video games for a short term, right, which also doesn't make any sense. Yeah. But they also didn't clarify either. I don't know.

It just seems clear to me that that's much more on IG on the Walmart. And I say that with a lot of love for IG and I use the work there. I mean, no disrespect, but I did want to bring that up because a lot of people have been asking about that. And it was really uncritically received.

Like even when I read that before, it was up there, I'm like, there's no way that's true. Like that would obliterate hundreds of millions of dollars of their business. They're not going to do that. Does it?

Yeah. Do they sell a lot of video games? I think about this. I mean, I know they used to.

I'm sure. Yeah. Other than GameStop, I would be surprised if Walmart wasn't the biggest retailer of video games in the United States. And probably, I would assume one of the biggest in the world at retail.

Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're in California.

We were born and raised in New York. So we had a Walmart on Walmart. All Walmart. I didn't have Walmart until I moved up.

But upstate is a good example. But just that Walmart is like the place to shop and I think that's only fine. And many locales. So when you go in there, buy your groceries or whatever, you're closed.

Sure, you're going to buy video games. So that just struck me as a little weird. And I wanted to talk about that just briefly. By the way, Jeff Kealey is teasing new game announcements.

And I thought this was interesting. He's doing a gamescom opening night stream for people that don't know. Gamescom is a big German game festival that I've talked about in the past. I've been there twice, never again.

Never again. Right. Like we say, 9-11 never again. Gamescom never again.

Never forget. I'm pretty sure. Oh, right. Never forget.

Gamescom never again. I mean, hopefully never again. Yeah. Also, well, yeah, I guess we'll have to do so far.

Never again. Was USS Cole in the 9-11 real quick right after each other? And then it was never again after that. Now, Jeff Kealey is doing an opening night gamescom stream and he calls it the quote, world premiere content and announcement stream.

End quote. Now, what's interesting about this is that Sony is on the list as one of the publishers that will be showing something here. Bungie's on there, Capcom's on there, Sega Square, and Expandi and other others. But Sony is definitely the most interesting name because it says that there will be new game announcements and or new footage.

Now, Chris, what do you think? I think that's interesting. But I don't imagine that it's probably going to be anything that's that's particularly exciting. I can't imagine.

Like, what do you think they would show really? Maybe more medieval or something. Yeah, I can't. That was my first thing.

It could be the last of us released date, something like that. But I don't think that they would do that at Gamescom. No, they would probably say that for PSX or whatever. Yeah.

Or just doing on the wrong. They don't need, you know, it is cool that Jeff Kealey is like doing this kind of stuff. Man, he's getting his money. I appreciate Jeff Kealey.

Hard worker. Yeah, he's definitely a grinder. So I just wanted to throw that out there. We assumed that we knew that Sony was going to be at Gamescom and have some presence, but seems like there might be more to the story now.

So we'll keep an eye on it. Chris, Neo JD wrote in what's on Patreon and he said, what do you guys think of the Boycott Borderlands 3 situation? Have you seen anything about what the hell is that again? Didn't this happen already?

I feel like, yeah, I feel like this happened because of something with what's his name? Pitchford. Randy Pitchford. But this has to do apparently, and this is, I'm not going to include this in the news, but apparently take two interactive who was the owner of 2K, the publisher who was publishing Gearbox's Borderlands 3, apparently sent like some private investigators to this YouTuber's house because this YouTuber, this Borderlands YouTuber apparently was leaking so much information that they were like, what is happening here?

But this is cause of complete backfiring on take two because people are rallying around the YouTuber and the YouTuber doesn't seem like he's getting information by like going and robbing it from anyone. No, no. He has sources. So what do you make of this issue?

First of all, no one's going to Boycott Borderlands 3 to be cute. Yeah. But second, it will shrink. Take two kind of taking the shit a little seriously, it seems like.

Yeah, that's a bit, it's a bit intense of a thing to do for game leaks, but I think I remember hearing information that suggested that he was charging people for access to a Discord with the private information on him with the leaks on it, which I think is the reason they said that it was more of like a you're charging for industry secrets, basically, which I think was the main problem that they had, but still like sending two people. It suits it black ties with like a fancy pen that blinds you is a bit, it's probably a bit scary. It seemed a little bit over the top to me just because if that's the conclusion that they drew, wouldn't he kind of similarly be making profit by just having ads on his videos on YouTube that I know exactly. For the first time, it just seems like six to one half dozen of the other, really.

Yeah, it seems like a really vague amount of difference is really all that it takes for them to send people to your house. But definitely overstepping a boundary, I think. Just send an email. Yeah.

Just sending out like, hey, you got to stop. Like you're a fan, I get it, but like this is the very least request that like no nobody's charge for access to your leaks or whatever. What I mean, definitely. And when I read by the guy that the YouTuber Chris was so interesting was he did talk to them like readily and then I guess later on was like, I shouldn't even send anything to them and stuff.

So there's like this whole ordeal going on. So Boycott Borderlands 3, if you want, I think it comes out in September, so able to talk to Boycott it before you don't boycott it anymore. Yeah. Garrett Jaggard wrote it in a sense, say, Hey, Command, Colin and Conquer Chris.

One time follower, first time patron subscriber. I am curious to hear your thoughts on Death Stranding reportedly no longer being listed as PlayStation exclusive. Have you been seeing this Roman around the internet in different corners? I have not.

So it sounds not true. Yeah. People have to understand that this game was announced to be on PC originally as far as I understand. I think Kojima talked about that almost instantaneously.

So yeah, I don't know. Now, people are talking about is it going to be on PC at the same time. It's clearly not going to be on other platforms. So I think that this is another.

This is the summer well shit, man, where people like they're looking for a pure PlayStation exclusive just like the Troy become humans on a pure PlayStation exclusive because it's on PC now. So I don't think that there's anything new to report here. I didn't know necessarily that it was going to be on PC, but I kind of just assume that that's the direction that that video games are going in in general, you know, it feels like that's going to happen more and more. So it's like when I hear that Death Stranding is coming to PC, doesn't shock me.

Really? Really? I mean, I guess I could have sworn that they said this. I could have seen that.

I could have seen that maybe maybe not so many, but maybe could have seen it. So anyway, we'll keep an eye on it, but it really doesn't matter. I guess it's interesting though. Now, Chris, we have a few corrections to get into and also some problems that people have with us.

So I thought I read these through real quick. Omar Al-Khatib. Al-Khatib. Ronan, it's an AC and C just wanted to give a minor correction in last week's episode.

Chris said that Bluetooth would be standard with the next generation controllers, but it's been standard with PlayStation since the PS3. To make a PS controller visible to other devices, all you have to do is hold the Share button and then hold the PS button and the light bar will start flashing. He says he doesn't remember how to do it on PS3. Anyway, he just wanted to throw that up.

So keep up the great work. He's loving Sacred Simples Plus. Thank you for the clarification. That is very, I didn't know that that's how you synced the blue.

Did you know that? No. What the fuck? Do you think that I knew that?

I barely can work at an alarm clock. Exactly. Luke Wright also wrote in it said Hello Boys in regard to the latest episode and the conversation on handheld gaming. iOS 13 supports the Bill Shock 4.

I have the beta version of iOS 13 and it works with remote play. Not well, but it works. Lots of lag at the moment and maybe it will improve in the future. So that's just something else we were talking about that needed a clarification.

But John Coulter, he has a little bit of a problem with me Chris. OK. He says Mo Ray. I must raise an objection to the assertion that Young Blood's problems are the fault of of Arkane and that the studio has somehow usurped the development of Wolfenstein and let it in its current direction.

In my opinion, Arkane has a better track record than Machine Games. The designer series has arguably gotten better with each release and the recent pre-reboot was a masterpiece and immersive game design. You're absolutely out of your mind. By the way, with that.

Machine Games on the other hand made 1.5 great games, new order in old blood and then took a step backwards with Wolfenstein II with the new Colossus as you have also discussed recently. I must also object to the correlation drawn between Young Blood and Rage 2. You have often insisted that Rage 2 was promoted in a way to trick the consumers into thinking it was an id software game when in fact Avalanche was always promoted as the lead studio and Id's role was greatly downplayed anytime they were asked in an interview. What I mean by all of this is that we must give credit and blame to the lead studio on a game and for Young Blood that studio was Machine Games.

At the very least they both deserve equal blame but I vehemently disagree that Arkane is the prime reason for this game being a mess. If anything is probably but that's the higher ups that have forced these choices, they have clearly made similar bad directional decisions on every game in the last year or two. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot to unpack I think.

Well, all right. So the first thing he starts with is that I guess the major thing that I want to talk about I guess the Star Chris actually is that he was saying that he has the problem with me saying that Rage 2 is like promoted as being an id game but it was. I mean I was there I remember. Now they might have said it in interviews but no one reads interviews by the way and when the id splash screen appears before a game starts that makes the assumption that it's not running on id tech but that the game is made by them.

Now I'm not saying Avalanche is just ignored here but I disagree with that assertion. I think it was pretty clear what they were trying to do and I think people were calling them out on that. Yeah, I think so. And that's readily why why and I'm glad to be with Rage 2 ended up being inequality or idcal or now the other thing about machine games in Arkane what do you think about this because I think machine games is the better studio but I can see why Arkane is respected more I mean dishonored is a very well respected series but it seems to me that it's obvious that Arkane made this game in their way.

I think yeah for sure I think the structure of the game screams Arkane you know and that's not necessarily a bad thing it's not necessarily that their design philosophy is bad inherently it's that I think it clashes with what Wolfenstein is and they were tasked with putting together Wolfenstein again I think that's ultimately the promise not necessarily that you know oh Arkane makes bad games that's not what the statement is it's just that this DNA doesn't quite mesh well with this this franchise. Yeah I think it was a mismatch and I don't know it's hard to know I mean you can get the credits and kind of figure it out but it's hard to know Arkane obviously being French also in Austin, Texas but it's hard to know what the French team did and what the machine games team did in Scandinavia but it really doesn't strike me as a machine games game it feels great to play. I think there's a lot of cool things in it but it's not a game that I recommend as much as I thought that I did. I said I still can't beat it by the way even uneasy still can't beat it.

Yeah I don't know what was going on with the difficulty at the end of that game just absolutely ridiculous. Just absurd Tyler wrote in and said hey fellas do you ever just turn on your PS4 and stare at the menu thinking of what to play but ultimately just turn it off and do something else. Oh yeah 100% I've done countless times this week. Yeah I do it as well.

I turn on the PS4 by habit and then I just let it sit there sometimes and look at it just burning energy burning out yeah who cares you know what do I care what do they say it was just a few years I'm definitely gonna contribute to it we can get it down to 11 years if we work hard enough we can get it down to 11 or 10 years. I believe that one day we can get rid of that pesky oceans. Boy little way. So useless we should be building desalination plants.

We should be building desalination plants all over the coast and sucking the salt water up and making it in the drinkable water. What I'm gonna present is brackish nonsense. It is gross the oceans gross. I love swimming in it but that's about as far as I can go.

I don't like anything that lives in it. Yeah it's not okay. I was reading a lot about seaweed this past weekend for some reason and I didn't realize like where you stone. Yeah I mean I usually am.

I didn't realize like I thought seaweed was like a underwater plant. What is it? It's really not like a plant. It photosynthesizes like some sort of very primitive plant.

It doesn't have like root systems and I don't know I was very mystified by this whole thing I didn't quite understand the botany behind it. Right but these things aren't plants like you would expect. Of course nothing in the ocean is. Aaron Shizzle wrote in and said hey see my mind hits a blank for my first acryssimal question so instead I ask you this.

Do you find gentlemen class tomatoes as a fruit or vegetable? Keep on living the dream your friend your highland friend he says. Actually Aaron. Now tomato is technically a fruit crisp but this has always bothered me a lot because we don't use tomatoes like fruit do we?

No but I've seen people bite into tomatoes. Yeah. It's not like that outlandish. Is that what the line is?

Is that you bite into a fruit? In other words if you bite into something that can't make a fruit or vegetable. No that's not what makes it. You can bite into a carrot.

Right. I just feel like a fruit is more like it's less strange to see somebody bite into a carrot or bite into a tomato than it is to bite into a carrot for some reason. Carrots like what are you a cartoon character? Yeah.

You know it just feels like weird. Carrots are good but I never go out of my way to why I'm a carrot. No one's going to go there for a carrot. They're cool.

I mean they're tasty. Are they? I don't mind a carrot every now and again but I'm not going out of my way to fine carrots. You know I'm not going out of my way to order them.

I think the more confusing ones olives. Olives are strange. Olives are gross. Are you insane?

Olives are so good. I like olive oil. But I'm not a bit of them. My Christ.

I don't like olives. They're good lord. They're very weird looking. I'm surprised you like olives because they really look alien and you have a lot of problem with these various creatures and they look like olives.

They look like eyeballs and they have these weird little pits in them. Well just, no I get the peppered ones. Those are the pepper an? Oh is that what they had something in them that you're not supposed to eat?

Some of them but some of them are deep pitted and they put peppers in them. It's amazing. Yes I don't know I can't do it. You got problems man.

I don't think this is why but I agree. Finally trendstining has a question that is so annoying that I hate it. I actually hate this one. Okay that's why I wanted to put it in.

Trendstance take on Chris. Are treadmills just enslaved roads? Those are making sense Trent. Are treadmills just enslaved roads?

It's a Marie Richards Mr. Fantastic level stretch in. Are they enslaved roads? What is a road is a road free?

I don't understand roads aren't free. Roads are also don't move. Yeah. So like it's more like a look.

It's more like a like a Mobius strip of road that's constantly trying to escape but never can. Right. It's like a round hogs day road. Yeah.

Where it finds itself back where it was. See you make a good point. Regular roads are slaves. Right?

I mean he's asking are treadmills just enslaved roads but roads don't have any agency. They're just slaves to cars. If anything they got way worse time because they're just outside in the boiling sun. Dogs are peeing on them.

Oils just sprang all over them. Yeah earthquakes rip them apart. Trent I think you're backwards on this one. I think you're thinking all the backwards.

Yeah the treadmill is living the lavish life air conditioning. You know that's really it. Right. I guess I guess.

Yeah. That's a terrible question. I hate that. With all my heart.

Crystal's getting to what we're playing. You have here in our list Resident Evil 4. Yeah. I've played it in a very long time and even like even back then when I played it I kind of like half heartedly played it.

I played a little bit of it. I was like guys it's fine I guess. Yeah. But I'm actually liking it a lot.

It's definitely like a step backwards from Resident Evil 2 remake. Like as far as controls go. The camera is like surprisingly wonky. Yeah it's not good.

It's astounding. It's not an atmosphere to it. I really like it. Like way more of an atmosphere than I thought it would.

But it's still creepy. Like it's really good. Yeah I mean I love Resident Evil 4. I don't think that it holds up control wise anymore.

What I always remember about the game is how brown it is. Which is a different kind of overcast and brown outdoors. It's got a whole different kind of. It's not all others.

It's got a whole different feel to it. And that's what I really love about that game and why I think it's so special. It's because it takes place in Spain which is interesting. I remember that was like the beginning of like is this racist kind of stuff that was happening in video games.

You're killing only Spanish people. That obviously came to a head with Resident Evil 5. Yeah. It's like a lot of people outrage if it was just white zombies.

You're like where's the representation? Yeah. That would have been more actually wouldn't it have just been racist period if in Resident Evil 5 they were just like it's just white zombies. Yeah for sure.

I'd be like what the fuck it's Africa. It's like don't set your game somewhere if you don't want to kill those people in zombified form. So I'm glad you're enjoying Resident Evil 4. Are you playing on PC?

I'm playing it on it was free on Game Pass. And I was like oh weird. Okay I might as well play this. Oh cool.

Yeah so I've been playing it on that. Definitely play it feels weird on Xbox controller because I think I played it on was it on GameCube? Yeah it started on GameCube. I played on GameCube and it's like well I don't know.

Takes some getting used to but really good. Yeah came to GameCube and then came to PS2 I think a year later. I said last week I think when we discussed it briefly I still think the Wii version is the best version of the game. Which is weird but true.

Chris I wrote here on my list I played the Division 2 and fellasiel now we've talked about both of these games but I wanted to bring them up because I beat both of them this past weekend. You beat the Division 2? I beat the Division 2 by playing the video game and getting to the end of it. Right.

And you know I just it was on my cross media bar and I was like you know what I'm just going to go back and play this and it's so good that game really is great. And I really really enjoyed getting through to the end of it myself. The one complaint I have about it is that the level cap seems to be a little low. The level cap is 30 and I was surprised that even with this new content out that it's still at 30 but I know that there's a bunch of post game like a whole meta thing upgrading which is really cool.

I was actually really impressed by that if I didn't have other stuff to play I would probably have stuck around and played the game more because I do like how there's like this. It's almost like a prestige upgrading system. And it's not a bad game at all. No super solid especially like it's as far as tactical third person shooters go it's genuinely solid.

I really like it. I kind of think about it like I want to go I don't think I'll platinum it because that requires so much but it's like I'm going to clean up a few more of these trophies and have a little more fun with it. I like playing it by myself I think it's just really fun like man versus the world kind of shit and like very meticulously and slowly going through the maps and missions it's cool. The world designs really good too.

Like just like a general way out of the map and how much is how much details and everything but it's not like detail for the sake of detail sake it's genuinely like stands out. Yeah it's there's a lot of little stuff in the game that all I have to something big I really think that they've done a nice job. I think the division now that I played all these other kinds of games in the service but the division really speaks to me. I hope that they continue to you know crank those out every couple years because I'll definitely play more.

The other game of Felsiel again I've recommended Felsiel and by the way it's Felsiel FELLSEAL FELLSEAL. FELLESEAL. Two separate words. Arbiter's mark is the subtitle and it's a strategy role playing game as I told you turn base just like Final Fantasy Tactics.

I finally this weekend went back and beat it. There's still more stuff I want to do because there's special endings and stuff but Chris what I find so interesting about the division two and Felsiel is that I put the games down and then went back and played them again later and was really glad that I did and this is a very unusual thing for me. Usually when I put a game down I can't go back to it after a while but this is like a new era for me. It's weird.

Yeah it is exciting. I was really excited about it. It's hard for me to do that too. If I put down a game and I try to pick up again I'm like I'm going to play something else that I'm used to playing instead.

Yeah I mean definitely. It took me a little while to get used to it but then I really started pushing it. Then I was like I'm going back to Rage 2 and then I put Rage 2 and I played that for a little while and I don't know I'm functioning at a higher level right now. Let's say that.

You're high functioning. I'm high functioning. That is true. Jason Olmstead wrote a new one on Patrons and Heebells.

I just wanted to support Collins' opinion on Persona 4 being a fairly good game but slightly overrated. I just want to clarify I think it's a very good game and it's very overrated. I just wanted to say that. I guess the number one spot in every list for the best beta games leading me and others to believe that the game must be something really special but after trying at least ten times to get into the game only to lose interest several hours in I've decided it just doesn't have that special sauce I want but you my friend are playing the wrong Persona game.

I have officially beaten five and can confirm it is 100% one of the finest turndays role playing games ever. Every game mechanic has been streamlined and smoothed to perfection. I loved every bit of my 120 hour playthrough. So with my newfound understanding and appreciation for the series I decided to go back and give four another shot.

Unfortunately I like the game even less now. After playing the newest iteration the flaws of its 11 year old predecessor were only emphasized so Colin maybe give Persona 5 a try. You might be pleasantly surprised or you might think it's just a dumpster juice who knows thanks for the content. Just keep poking them innards.

What the fuck does that mean? That's not the start. Keep poking those innards. Oh gross.

Jesus that seems a little perverted. Yeah. Jason I don't know about that. Yeah it seems like visual novels.

Yeah we're not talking about the weird beta games. Yeah. Alright so Jason I and everyone out there want to be really clear. Stop recommending me Persona games.

I gave you your Persona 4 play. Okay I did it. I sat there and I played and I played it for more than 30 hours now. Yeah.

It's just not as good as you guys claim to watch. 120 hours is a long time. That's every Marvel movie twice. That's a lot.

But here's a lot of time to put in a game like that. Here's the thing you guys for years since I was on podcast beyond for years. Told me to play Persona 4 begged me harassed me constantly. I played it.

Okay I gave it a shot. It's fine. It's not bad. I like it.

I think it's good. You played it at the time you would appreciate it more. Probably. Probably not though.

And then so you have the audacity. You have the audacity to recommend me Persona 5. Stop. I can't take it anymore.

You weren't enveloped by that world. You don't want us to go back to that world. I just don't. I know I think you guys are fucking with it.

Is Persona like a Final Fantasy type deal where they like it's a different cast of characters every time? Or is it like a single group of characters that you follow? I think it's very much like Final Fantasy in the sense that it is a different group of characters in a different story. But there are some like Chocobot or Kattar the cactus up there pointing at my shelf.

You guys obviously can see it. Those are like in many Final Fantasy games. Kakar obviously every one of them basically six. That thing looks like one of those one of those animatronic Christmas toys that would sing Feliz Navi Daad that would dance.

Do you remember those? Yeah I do remember. I don't see it. But I remember what you're talking about.

Kakar is awesome. I love it because he's ever seen him in the game before. So basically he appears. He looks like a cactus that's running and he's worth a ton of experience points and gold if you can kill him but he basically escapes immediately.

He's a sentient cactus that you have to kill. Yeah. I mean it's not that weird. Is there any torment that is displayed?

Is there any hint that he's aware of how monstrous he is? No. I think he's confused why everyone's beating on him. I don't know why he would be confused.

He's a living cactus. Yeah that is true. He'll immediately kill it. Yeah.

I always love. I was thinking about Final Fantasy 7 recently because we'll see it in the remake. In early Final Fantasy 7 there's an enemy that's like a gigantic house that you run into and like right how are you going to do that? This made a little more sense in the polygon Lara.

How are you going to visualize this? These weird Japanese- I'm all over you. I'm saying house fighting you. It'd be like Monster House.

Oh yeah. I could work actually. Fair enough. Did you know that every day like ASMR can actually be healthy for you right now?

You're improving your to learn more ways, man. Chris was getting to the news. Let's do it. There's a lot to get through.

I know. I don't like I have an hour into the show here. Number one. The gaming industry has beaten the American government to the punch yet again announcing regulations it will be instituting on itself to help regulate loot boxes which are becoming increasingly important to fund various studios and publishers while at the same time being looked at by many is unfair.

The US and predatory at worst. The entertainment software association, the American gaming industry's lobbying arm in Washington and the organization responsible for E3, organized the new regulations. According to the website Games Industry International, the ESA's chief council of tech policy Michael Warnock said in part, quote, I'm pleased to announce this morning that Microsoft Nintendo and Sony have indicated to the ESA a commitment to new platform policies with respect to the use of paid loot boxes and games that are developed for their platforms. Specifically, this would apply to new games and game updates that add loot box features and it would require the disclosure of the relative rarity or probabilities of obtaining randomized virtual items and games that are available on their platforms.

As well, many of the leading video game publishers of the entertainment software association have decided that they are going to implement a similar approach at the publisher level to provide consumers this information and give them enhanced information to make purchasing decisions and quote the website notes that this is precisely what Apple and Google have done on their own platforms beginning in 2017. The ESA notes that these regulations will go into effect in 2020 and that the following publishers are on board outside of the hardware manufacturers, Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Bungie, EA, take to Ubisoft WB Interactive and Wizards of the coast. The ESA's move to self-regulate is identical in many ways to the ESA's creation of the ESRB or Entertainment Software Rating Board, which began in 1994 as a response to governmental threats to regulate the industry for violent and explicit content. Well, that's all good.

So what do you think about this? I think this is a smart move. It's a positive step for sure. Yeah, I think so.

This keeps the government out, which is I wrote this on the internet or on the internet on Twitter. The gaming industry in America is incredibly adept at keeping the government out of its business. Yeah, very much unlike a lot of other industries in the United States, the gaming industry is all over keeping the government out, which is amazing. They're very libertarian in that sense.

And the ESRB for people that don't know, which is where you get your rated M or your T, that's not the government. The video game industry decided to do that itself when the government threatened the gaming industry that they would regulate them if they didn't do it themselves. So this is another step in that direction, basically poking and prodding them so that there's no legislation. So I think it's positive, too, but I don't think it's going to change anything.

Maybe, I don't know. It's hard to say now because it's such a weird thing that's even happening in the first place. So to predict how this will go or whether or not it would make any difference, I think, is kind of pointless. I do think this is going to be enough to keep the government out.

Honestly, I think they're going to continue to try what is going on here. I think this is kind of like a safe face kind of thing. But I don't know. We'll see.

It's weird. The probabilities are interesting because I assume that's to stop it to be looking at it like it's gambling straight up. But I feel like people that have been the casinos, and we talked about my love of gambling and casinos, you do know the odds. If you don't know the odds explicitly, a lot of the tables will tell you the odds explicitly.

If you play Blackjack, it'll tell you you have certain odds to pull certain cards and stuff like that. They're not using one deck, they're using multiple decks. But if you watch the World Series of Poker, it always says there's an 88% chance that person with this hand is going to win. So the probability is even there in gambling.

So I don't know that it delays that particular fear well because basically now they're just saying, well, I never looked at it as gambling to begin with. I think you're just buying something. It's like buying a pack of baseball cards, in my opinion. It's not gambling.

But this actually makes it seem like it's more gambling than it was. Because now they're like, you're the probabilities. It's like, okay, just like when you're playing a hold of them or whatever and they're like, well, here's the probability you're going to get a flouse. It seems like it's kind of counterintuitive.

But I guess that's some problem. Number two, Sony has revealed the best-selling digitally sold games from the PlayStation Store for the month of July, 2019. PS4's top 20 best-selling games were in order. Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto 5, Plants vs.

Zombies Garden Warfare 2, Rainbow Six Siege, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Spider-Man, EA USC 3, Crash Team Racing, Nitro Fueled, Rocket League, PUBG, MLB The Show 19, Need for Speed Payback, Battlefield 4, Devil May Cry HD Collection, FIFA 19, Destiny 2, Daisy, The Sims 4, Game Beasts, and Red Redemption 2. PSVR's top 10 best-selling games were in order. Beat Saber, SuperhotVR, Vacation Simulator, Five Night at Freddy's VR, Help Wanted, Job Simulator, Blood and Truth, PlayStation VR Worlds, Arizona Sunshine, Astrobot Rescue Mission, and Drunken Barfire. The best-performing free-to-play game was Don't Even Think, followed by Fortnite and Apex Legends, while Fortnite dominated the DLC and expansions list.

As a recall, Sony no longer reports, PSV to sales data, so we have no information on that. Drunken Barfire is an amazing name. Yeah, it's a good one. Really clever.

I don't know anything about that game, but it's stuck into the PSVR list. I was also pleased to see Vacation Simulator in there as well as that came out, and Blood and Truth is holding on as well. But I wish we knew the relative numbers. Like, when you see a game, let's say, Blood and Truth at number five or number six, does that indicate that sold 10,000 copies?

5,000? 25,000? That's not that I'm curious about. Who knows?

Number three, this is an interesting one. Quantic Dream, the French team best known for its long-running second-party relationship with PlayStation. Of course, they made games like Heavy Rain, Detroit, Become Human, and Beyond Two Souls. Has officially broken free of Sony exclusivity, which we already knew.

But now we know the full extent to their post-placation ambitions. Thanks to an interview with Website DualShakers, they conducted it with Quantic Dreamhead, David Cage. Cage told the website that he and his team had basically decided to leave the PlayStation to an exclusive ecosystem a couple of years before Detroit even launched. And that quote, after having worked exclusively with PlayStation for 12 years, we thought it was the right time for us to put our money where our mouth is, however, Cage stresses that nothing negative happened with PlayStation to push them in this direction.

So we always had a great relationship with Sony PlayStation. They have always been very supportive of my work, and we have always been very loyal to them in return. So we had a very open talk about all this, and they allowed us to release our catalog of titles on PC and quote, interestingly, while Quantic Dream says its future games will be available on many platforms, including Possibly Mobile, what's most interesting is that it's also going to start publishing other developers' games. So there's a few things in here.

They decided to leave Sony years before Detroit came out, so there was really no hope that we were going to get another one of those games for PlayStation. That net ease, of course, was a Chinese company. We didn't discuss that here, but they invested in Quantic Dream. Sony allowed Quantic Dream to publish its PC, a game on PC, which is interesting, so they didn't just do that on their own.

They couldn't have done that. But they're going to allow the people that they work with to retain their IP, which is something that they were not allowed to do. So as far as I understand, actually, I don't think Quantic Dream owns any IP at all. Going all the way back to Nomad and the Indigo Profseam, something like that.

I don't think they own any of that stuff. So new times for Quantic Dream. That net ease stuff has increased me out, though, honestly. Like there's so much Chinese money flowing in.

It's like, what does that mean? What's going on? People have a problem with that with what's going on with Epic, too, because Tencent, I think, owns a piece of Epic, and there's apparently some Chinese spyware in the launcher. I don't know if that's really true.

I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true, based on what I've looked at. That seems weird. But it is strange.

Like, a bungee got like a Tencent or like net ease investment, too. Yeah, there's Chinese money flowing. It's funny how people talk about it, too, because it is dark money in a way, because it's coming from a communist ecosystem, a communist economy. And it makes you wonder, like, to what end, what are you trying to do?

Make money, but then maybe admit that you were more capitalist. And you're like, although I think that they've been implicitly admitted that for like 30 years now. Yeah, for sure. Number four.

It's clear now that Microsoft is planning on playing a different sort of game with its fully owned studios, where Pia puts out into the world. Website Push Square relays word from Game Informer's podcast, in which Matt Booty, who is the head of Xbox's first studio, it's great name. Yeah, fantastic. That guy's tough as fuck a bit.

Oh, you have to be. I work with a guy named, my editor-in-chief when I left out a jam was named Steve Butts. Yeah, yeah. Which is another...

I had a friend in my high school named Jackson Dipshit. Pretty rough room. Website Push Square relays word from Game Informer's podcast, in which Matt Booty, who was head of Xbox's first party studios, was asked specifically if Double Find's games would appear on PlayStation and elsewhere, even though Microsoft just acquired the studio quote, yeah, I think we would, in terms of putting games on other platforms. I think that the question is less binary about, should it be on Switch, should it be on PlayStation more, does it make sense for the franchise?

In other words, is it a kind of game where it would benefit from the network effect of being on a bunch of different platforms? Or is it a game where we could best support it by putting resources into it and making sure that our platforms, things like XCloud, Game Pass, and Xbox Live, are really leaning into the support of the game and quote, that's pretty interesting stuff. This, by the way, I got so much shit when I said that at one point Microsoft was talking internally about putting Halo Master Chief Collection on PlayStation. That was something I heard from an incredibly reliable source back when I worked at IGN years ago.

Yeah. But it's true. And this is kind of the move that they've been working towards for a while now. I would love that.

That would make a lot of sense. They do this with Minecraft already. Map out. He did talk about that apparently in the interview and we know that.

And we talked about how I think that's weird right from their standpoint, but they obviously have a blue ocean strategy of getting their games and a lot of stuff. This makes me wonder, I just saw my buddy actually Drew Murray, who's one of the leads of the initiative. And he used to work at Insomniac. He was the creative director of Sunset Overdrive.

He was the creative director of Resistance. And he's over at the initiative now, which is Microsoft's new studio here in Santa Monica. And I just saw him. We talked about nothing related.

I just saw him when I was walking to the store. But it started jogging my mind. I'm like, huh, I wonder if their game will be on PlayStation. I wonder what Microsoft is really planning to do with these various teams.

And Double Fine has a long pedigree of multi-platform. And like we said, actually we're in bed with PlayStation for a little while when they were doing full throttle remake and all these kinds of things. So I think that this is them starting to talk about and laying the seeds, Chris, very slowly, just like you do in a marketing and PR plan, just start getting it out there. So that when Double Fine's game isn't, then it does come to switch or it does come to PlayStation that people aren't blown away by that.

I think this is the game they're playing. I think so. I believe dollars to fucking donuts, Chris. If someone with a medium molecule or no audio, I can ask them the same question.

They would be like, there's no way that our games are coming on any other platform. So this is a different kind of thing they're doing here. And I think it's positive. I'm excited.