Ads in Our Games? Also, Making Time for Gaming as We Age #377

Foreign.

We're Guardian Down Roundtable.

Each week we pull up a chair to talk gaming, the news, the hot topics and our current obsession.

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What's up Guardians?

Welcome to episode 377 of the Guardian Down Roundtable.

In our podcast, we talk about topics and news that impact our gaming hobby, all while keeping the focus on our community.

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Now I have that option, so I'm using that.

Well, what I want to do tonight is introduce our guest co host tonight.

He's been a part of our community for over two years now.

He's also been a big part of our Guardian Down Roundtable Discord community.

He's the guy with all the life observations while driving cross country.

You can hear his original interview back with us on episode 272 in October of 2024.

Man, where the hell's the time go?

It just seems like we just talked, man.

So please welcome back the other Todd of the other Todd McMaximo.

How you been, sir?

Great, man.

It's finally our, you know, stars have aligned and our schedules are back in sync a little bit.

Yeah, it's just been a scheduling nightmare.

So I'm glad to be back on.

Really pumped about this.

I am too, man.

It's gonna be fun.

I'm so pumped you're able to make it tonight.

I think you said we talked for like four and a half hours when I think you were in your rig, Right.

You're in your cab.

Yeah, on, on, on, on Ethernet, on, on WI fi, probably in a parking lot somewhere.

And we were sitting there talking for four and a half hours.

I think that showed up being about three and a half.

I think you said so.

Yeah, I mean we just, you know, we relate to a lot of things.

Cause we're probably pretty close in age.

I think you're like, I think you're two or three months younger than me,.

But we're almost, I'm two months younger than you.

We're just about the same age, so.

Yeah, yeah, real close.

Yeah.

Oh, before I forget, Happy birthday to Mr. Kingsley Mack tonight.

Tonight is his birthday.

So what do we have on the show this week?

For this week, we have some quick gaming news items that crossed my feed lately that I thought you guys might be interested in.

We have a new segment that I just created called Destiny Watch.

So now that the Destiny game is being revived and has a future, I will periodically check in with Bungie.

If there's anything pertinent, you know, that we need to know.

I'll mention that.

And we do have a couple things to mention tonight.

Next, McMaximo has a topic that I think we can all relate to these days, especially as we age and have families and careers.

I'll let him explain later for that.

For our topic of the week, I'm going to talk about a new patent that Xbox just procured and what this might possibly mean for the future of the gaming industry and the games we play.

After which point we'll shift into our catch up segment.

Share any highlights of our week, what we've been doing since last.

Well, since we last talked.

I have one movie review to share tonight as well.

And at the end of the show, if time allows, we'll answer questions and feedback from our community.

So if you do have a question for us, make sure you go to our podcast questions channel in our discord and enter them there.

Or you can send us an email or a voicemail@guardiandowncast.com Also, Uncle Scum Death has another voicemail question for the show.

Before we go.

Is this Uncle Scum Death tradition coming back, huh?

Uncle Scum Death.

Oh, so balls in your rocks, man.

The ball's in your court, sir.

So I'll wait to see if you throw one in next week.

And the birthday boy himself, Mr. Kingsley Mack, also has a voicemail for us tonight.

All right, so if everyone's ready, let's roll.

Hello out there.

This is Allie Kate, and you're listening to the Guardian Down Roundtable.

Okay, we're going to start out with some gaming news stories that crossed my feed this week that I thought were very interesting.

The first one here is titled the Gaming Industry Season Increase in Employees despite mass layoffs.

This is from Dmitry Krivoff, and he says, despite a wave of mass layoffs, the number of people employed in the gaming industry has grown by almost 1% since 2022.

Jobs are actively shifting from the United States.

The number of people working in the gaming Industry has grown despite mass layoffs, jobs are increasingly shifting from the US to Asia.

According to the AESGC founder Amir Satvat, the gaming industry could lose over 14,000 employees by the end of 2026.

However, since 2022, the number of employees has grown by almost 1%.

Savate attributes this to a geographical redistribution of jobs.

Companies are leaving the US due to higher labor costs as well as in search of government benefits and available specialists.

The US accounts for over 60% of recent layoffs, with more than half of the cuts affecting California.

At the same time, the number of jobs in the Asia Pacific region has grown by 10%, mainly due to China.

In Europe, the figure has remained virtually unchanged.

He also notes that the scale of Chinese gaming industry is often underestimated.

So the overall picture does not look as bad as it might seem from, you know, all the news of all the layoffs in America.

So yeah, so just wanted to.

Just wanted to mention that article.

So it seems, you know, with all the doom and gloom in the gaming industry about how everything has been.

All these mass layoffs, I think what's happening is.

And tell me what you think here, Todd.

I think what's happening is I, we.

I think the gaming studios in the west, mainly America, I think just the cost of making a game, the overhead for, for the game industry overall has just gotten so expensive that it's like.

Unfortunately, it's just like our manufacturing, all our manufacturing jobs got pushed thanks to the North American Trade Alliance.

You know, they went to Canada, they went to Mexico, and then of course China.

I mean China makes everything for us now as far as consumer goods.

But what do you think of this, man?

You think this is adequate?

You know, apropos to what's going on these days?

Yeah, you called this a while back.

You were like, you know, I think that like the creative teams will mostly just be here and then they're going to farm it out to someone else who does the labor cheaper.

And unfortunately, you know, this is the way our market works.

I don't know why people are surprised with this.

I talk about free markets a lot in the, in the discord probably, you know, everybody knows that.

But like I'm just like this.

The problem is people want stuff cheap.

Of course, we all want stuff cheap and we want to be paid well over here.

Well, those things don't necessarily mix with the company.

They're trying to still make their profit give you a low price.

You know what?

I think I saw some where one time, Kingsley Mac probably knows this figure by heart.

But like, the iPhone would cost like $200 more if it was made in the states.

IPhones are already expensive enough, you know, but something's got to give, you know, so if you want cheap products and you're not willing to pay more, you know, people complaining that the prices went up from 60 to 70 and now they're creeping up towards 80 on, on games.

Well, you know, do you want them to keep the price low or do you want all this stuff done in the States?

Take your pick.

Right?

You know, can have both.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think, I think I mentioned this in past podcasts as well, that I think the states are going to get smarter.

They're going to have more.

Have more smaller creative teams.

And then I think they're just going to sub out a lot of the, the perform, you know, the, the programming and artwork and all that stuff.

I think they're just going to just sub it out to subcontractors, keep their.

Well, I don't understand all that.

I don't understand all the back end stuff, but to me it seems like, you know, the actual coding and everything is a job that lots of people can do.

But the creative side of the game is what's so important to get that right, you know, to come up with new ideas for games, you know, new mechanics and all that stuff.

And, you know, so that is the most important.

It's like, it's like Apple saying, you know, that the iPhone or like the, the software, you know, created in California, but, you know, everybody knows those phones are made in China.

Yeah.

You know, so, yeah, they love to keep their creativity here.

Ship the rest of it out if you have to.

I mean, of course everybody wants to keep those jobs here.

We don't really want to ship them out, but as long as workers are demanding more money, which we all want more money, you know, it's like they've got to choose.

Bam.

It's like a suck a chicken or the egg kind of thing, you know, because people want more money because it costs a lot to live in America right now.

Yeah.

My God, my son.

Catch 22 it is.

And my son and I are going to talk about this and feature of our podcast episodes that we're starting here soon about how it's just so hard to live as a young person right now.

I mean, he's lucky he got a house.

He was able to get a house, but he worked a deal through my brother who's in the real estate business.

Most people don't have those connections, so it Was really tough to find a house that he could afford.

And you know, it's just, it's just crazy out there.

Well, they talk about like our parents, you know, and how things were so grateful, you know, and they were able to buy a house and everything.

The one thing they forget though is, is like when guys came back from the war, they came back and sure, they were able to buy a house, but that house was like a thousand square feet, you know, it was like a box in a, in a suburb.

You know, it wasn't like these huge, you know, 2200 square feet houses that we're living in nowadays.

It was different.

You know, people had two bedrooms or one bedroom instead of, you know, five bedrooms, you know, and one bathroom and six kids sharing the bath, work bathroom instead of, you know, three bathrooms in a three bedroom house.

The house size, size of the average house is just so much bigger now.

That's for sure.

But Doc Hooligans in our Discord chat said to me, the layoffs are a result of these companies seeing that they can build parts of games with AI.

I've seen posts by companies in my industry mentioning being able to use AI via prompts to make creative content.

Yeah, I, I think everyone hates to use that dirty word now, but it is just going to become more of our life.

It's going to become more a part of our life whether we want to or not.

And I talked about this in past episodes as well, how AI is going to do a lot of the menial task.

I still think this is a good thing, Todd, because I do too.

It's going to free up all the menial tasks and give humans more time to be creative.

I really think that's true.

I mean, when I, when I make podcasts now, I'll, I'll have, I'll have AI summarize whole videos for me.

So I'll watch the video.

If I wasn't interested in the video, I would never create a topic on it.

But I'll have AI just break it down into bullet forms for me and then I'll write my part from there.

And it saves me so much time.

I used to have to scour, you know, articles and stuff and then sit there and go back and refer to them.

And it just saves a lot of time now because of the, because of that fact.

So.

But it's time and money too.

I mean, I put an example in Discord just the other day.

I was having a wiring issue at my house.

My, my outlets blew in my, in my bathroom And I was trying to figure out what was going on.

I couldn't figure it out.

I thought everything was on this one circuit.

And you know, I asked Google and I usually just use Google Gemini as like a search, you know, but this time I actually, it asked me follow up questions and I answered those follow up questions.

We went back three or four times and it said okay, we figured it out.

Your all of your GFCI plugs are actually on a separate circuit.

And I went is that right?

And I checked and sure as crap it was right.

I mean that saved me what, 200 bucks for a service call.

I was just going to tell you,.

I went out there and flipped a switch and it was done.

And it's money saved.

It's funny, I make, I make TikTok and YouTube content about my industry, about you know, taking care of lawns and pest control and stuff for people.

And this information's out there if people just ask on AI but because I can demonstrate it and have more visuals showing people what's going on in my clients when as I'm doing my clients work and stuff.

I think it just adds that little bit of authenticity that people like.

I don't know.

But well it's going to lower prices too if it works.

Because think about the scenario we were just talking about with the gaming industry.

You got your creative team over here and they're just like maybe they need somebody in China to do something, something small but for the most of just the generic coding that needs to be done.

AI is taking care of it.

Well technically they can lower their prices back on the games.

I don't know if they will.

They probably won't but you know, they could if they wanted to and that's how innovation happens, you know, and prices come down.

Yeah.

Now as long as that's as far as AI goes then I'm good.

Just don't want it taking down humanity anytime soon, that's for sure.

Yeah, or being my girlfriend, you know, being my mistress.

Dead full one Merc.

Hello Team Todd.

Yeah, we got three Todd's in this Discord tonight.

Oh we do.

Zombie, me and you.

All three Todd's of the Discord are here tonight.

Yeah, we need to figure out if we got any more Todd's in here.

I don't think.

I'm not sure.

I did mention Happy birthday Kingsley Mack.

He's in the chat.

I did mention at the top of the show you weren't in here yet.

So I just want to mention that to you brother.

Is he part of the 50 Club yet.

I wonder if he's part of the 50 Club.

I no, I think he's real close.

He's real close.

I think he's close.

He's real close.

I think he's already.

Everyone can call him.

By the way, I did want to apologize to everybody out there because had I known me signing on to do this podcast would run Kingsley off, you know, I didn't realize that was going to happen, you know, but you know.

Oh come on.

No, no, no, no, no.

We explained all that in earlier shows.

But yeah, no, yeah, the Todd Squad.

Kingsley was my homie.

Exactly.

He's my homie.

The Todd squad tonight.

Okay, let's move on to the next story.

This next story is from Riot's Mark Merrill and he we talk about how the games industry is collapsing and he says no, no, it's not collapsing.

Players are correcting it, he says.

Players are rejecting the games industry's live service obsession.

According to Riot Games co founder Mark Merrill, he's telling companies we don't want this stuff.

So he says the games industry is a strange place.

Thousands of developers have lost their jobs, studios have closed once, reliable business models are faltering, and publishers are discovering that there may not be enough hours in the day or money in players wallets for every game to become the next forever Game.

Riot Games co founder Mark Merrill doesn't deny that upheaval.

Speaking at PAX west in Seattle this weekend, however, Merrill argued that the industry isn't shrinking so much as undergoing a massive correction, one ultimately being directed by the people playing the games.

Quote, I see a really bright future, but I see an industry that is going through some structural changes, not dissimilar but on a much bigger scale compared to the sort of packaged goods to service transitions or sort of pre Internet, Merrill says at PAX West.

And this article was from September by the way, so I know PAX west has already done there is a big inflection point, but it's happening across a variety of different vectors simultaneously.

Platforms, formats, AI, a bunch of large overinvestment around live service, etc.

Is all being recalibrated.

Players, not the publishers, will decide what gaming's next era looks like.

The beautiful thing this is him speaking again about it is that it is being recalibrated because players are voting with their time and wallets and we don't want this stuff.

So the stuff that is working is where everyone is spending their time.

And it's the companies, Merrill says, that keep attuned to what players want and will want rather than what the companies want them that are the ones being able to make it through these volatile times.

It's on us, our teams and our whole indie scene to find ways to make it better, he says, to find those niches, to find those incredible games.

He says he remains incredibly optimistic, in large part because demand for interactive entertainment shows no signs of a downturn.

I agree.

The industry's present problems aren't caused by people suddenly deciding they don't like video games.

They are caused by a mismatch between what some companies chose to make and what players actually wanted to play.

It's not like the interactive entertainment is going to be less cool in the 21st century, he says.

There are so many incredible capabilities that are coming online where the possibilities that are emerging for players are just through the roof and will only compound one more thing he does mention here.

He points to improvements in engines, middleware, different AI capabilities, as ways developers may be able to take responsibility for broader portions of a game rather than becoming confined to one highly specialized piece of massive production pipeline.

And so again, this is him speaking.

That's awesome.

Because it's going to continue to continue.

It's going to continue to contribute to raising player expectations and, and it's incumbent on us to figure out how to keep doing justice to those incredible expectations.

And the competition is no longer coming primarily from the traditional centers of the Western games business.

He cited the global success of Genshin Impact and Black Myth Wukong, alongside the continuing strength of developers in Japan and a growing number of European hits, as the evidence of a healthier and increasingly international market.

I think globalization aspect is another really healthy, cool feature of what's happening right now.

It makes more diverse styles of gameplay able to reach broader and broader audiences.

Ah, man, this.

I think, I still think what's going on as far as the games industry, I think we're still calibrating from COVID I mean, they really overhired in Covid because everyone was home playing games and everybody thought this was the way it was going to be forever for gaming.

And it was really an artificial environment that really boosted up people playing more games.

And then now once people are going back to their jobs, even if they're working more remotely, they're back to working.

So they don't have the time they used to to put into a lot of these games.

And this is going to be part of my topic for tonight about companies knowing what the gamers want to play versus what they choose for gamers to play.

But any Comment on this, Todd?

Yeah, I'm gonna say it again.

Free markets.

That's the way these things work.

You know, if, if guys don't wanna play.

Guys or gals, Sorry, if, you know, people, gamers don't wanna play a certain game, they just don't play it if they don't, you know, and the companies will adjust or they'll die.

That's, that's really what it boils down to.

I mean, I remember back in Covet, I think you're right about, you know, all this coming from COVID I, I was laid off.

And for, I've never been laid off in my life, but I was off for five weeks and that's when I picked up Destiny because I knew I had 5 weeks to experiment with it and try it, you know, so I can thank Covid for getting me into Destiny, I guess.

But you're a product that.

Oh, makes sense.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, they said in there too that, that gamers don't want live services.

I disagree with that.

I, I, I, I think gamers want my services.

They don't want crappy live services.

Yes, yes.

You know, like, I mean, if it's just they can't keep up with the content that they promise and if they can't give enough content, you know, I mean, look at, look at Division 2.

It's, you know, it's, it's live service and they have all kinds of new content all the time and stuff like that.

But for whatever reason, Bungie couldn't pull it off and so it got old, you know.

Sorry to say that, but I know, well, I'll get it, I'll, I'll dive down deeper into that topic a little bit later in the show.

But I just wanted to throw it out there because I think I picked this article up in September.

These are some articles I picked up a while ago, and I just kind of stash them away for that rainy day, no pun intended, because we're pouring down rain right now.

Sheets of rain.

Is it, it's craziness.

Yeah, it's been happening a lot lately.

One other, one other topic I wanted to mention is this is really funny.

YouTube is relaxing its rules for monetizing violence in games.

Why GTA 6, baby.

YouTube wants that money.

They want those advertising dollars.

They say here they've updated its official monetization guidelines for content creators, clarifying the rules for displaying ads in videos featuring graphic violence in video games.

These changes were adopted several months ahead of the anticipated release of the crime action game Grand Theft Auto 6.

According to the new rules, creators will be able to earn advertising revenue if scenes of brutal executions, dismemberment or amputation appear 8 seconds into the video.

Any graphic violence shown within the first seven seconds of a video or included in the preview will still result in a complete loss of monetization.

The platform classifies graphic violence as brutal murders or severe injuries focusing on body parts or bodily fluids.

However, depictions of obscured or subtle violence are also permitted for commercial revenue.

God bless America, right?

Standard gameplay with minimal blood remains completely safe for commercial integration.

However, videos created solely for shock value, including targeted compilations of the mass extermination of peaceful NPCs, will remain completely ineligible for monetization.

Is subject to strict restrictions.

The relax criteria also affects the display of prohibited substances within the game environment.

Service representatives clarified the gameplay and stage story.

Content featuring the use, sale and advertising of recreational drugs are now fully eligible for standard advertising.

However, strict age restrictions remain in place for content featuring scenes of torture, sexual violence and discriminatory acts.

So creators of Grand Theft Auto 6 videos are advised to remove any controversial elements from their intros and cover art.

Wow.

Holy moly.

Yeah.

When I saw this article, I just had to mention it tonight because that's freaking crazy, man.

Well, I know I'm speaking live on YouTube right now, but this is just so hypocritical, man.

It really is.

I mean, if you're making enough money and you're bringing enough money for the platform, then we'll look the other way.

It's basically what they're saying, right?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I find it shocking that a company would actually make a special rule that will help benefit their bottom line.

That's just.

I mean, whoever heard of that before?

No, this doesn't surprise me at all.

I mean, hypocritical or not, it doesn't matter.

I mean, you know, YouTube is hypocritical in all kinds of things, you know, so it's not just gaming, you know, crazy.

It's not just this game.

I just.

That was.

I just got a.

That was just a chuckle.

I just got a little chuckle of that.

When I read that, I was like,.

Okay, the primary thing I learned from this is that I.

If I'm going to put up a video on YouTube, I need to wait at least 6, 7, 7 seconds before I punch my wife in the face, you know?

You mean.

You mean eight?

Eight.

But if I want to punch my wife, I need to, you know, wait until like nine second mark, you know,.

I'LL have to keep that in mind.

I'll have to keep that in mind when I'm doing.

That's a joke I'll have to do.

I'll have to do a, like a.

A spoken face video and then go into the gameplay once eight seconds passes by.

This was.

Well, honestly, honestly, if they hadn't done this, you know, that's the way to grab people.

People would have been putting out videos of.

Of the most brutal thing they could possibly do in the game.

Like, would be at the first second of the video.

See, what I'm curious about is I've already heard leaks that they have characters that are fully nude riding around in their car, male or female.

I. I'm just curious of what they're going to do about those videos showing fully nude people walking down the street, streaking everywhere.

So I don't know.

I just thought that was funny to mention.

This game is clearly not for me.

It is for me.

This is my.

Go ahead, Todd.

Sorry, Go ahead.

Well, I. I think I mentioned a while back I played GTA 3 briefly, and I. I just, at some point I found myself, you know, taking a hooker in the back of my car, you know, and then taking her money.

And then for good measure, I killed her.

And I thought, what am I doing?

Like, I actually had a guilty conscience about this for really, you know, a little while after.

Yes, it affects me like that because I just.

I'm like, I would never do that in person.

It's a horrible thing to do.

But I understand why some people are like, that's exactly why I want to do it in the game, because I never would do it.

But that's each to their own.

It's just not my thing, you know.

But I think that's what.

Why the appeal of the game is so great, because it's something you can do and not feel bad about it.

But I don't know, man, I have.

I have kind of a conscience when I play.

I mean, I talk about arc raiders, how I've never knocked anybody out because I just.

I don't want to ruin someone's game.

They're in their looting and stuff.

I don't want to steal their crap.

I want to work together to, you know, take down an enemy or something.

But, well, there's all those games that have the different storylines too, where if you choose this, you can choose to do this to the guy, or you can choose this, you know, you can have mercy or whatever.

I almost.

Well, I can't say almost.

I always choose the the good side.

And I may be missing a great storyline on the other side, but I don't know, I just always do, you know, like I've been playing, I've been diving back into Bioshock a little bit, you know, and you have that option to, to save the little girls or to just kill them and take their.

Whatever it's called.

Yeah.

Remember what they call it.

But yeah, and I always save them and it's less points, you know, it's less.

It's less for me, but it's.

It makes me feel good.

You gotta.

Yeah, you gotta play the way you want to play.

That's what game is all about.

You play.

I just don't want to be a bad guy.

Yeah, exactly.

This may be an older comment, but he says.

Doc Hooligan says, I love the fact I don't have to worry about FOMO and Destiny anymore.

Sadly I'm dealing with it on Fallout 76.

I think games will sell better if they didn't have so much harsh fomo.

Exactly.

They keep keeping the cofib growth wouldn't end.

Sorry.

Of all the cycle of life games trends, et cetera.

Kingsley says, yeah, I disagree.

Also Destiny had more people playing when there was more live service.

So the game companies do still need to make more content to have more money.

Oh, I'm.

I agree with the content part.

And he says, Didn't DG Kate's like what the fuck?

Didn't GTA 5 and many other games already have this also?

So they could have relaxed it earlier.

Yeah, it's exactly my point, Kingsley.

It's because GTA 6 is going to take over the world apparently.

And Zombie Pop says, well you can't complain about a game that you're planning on playing.

Todd, I am going to play it.

I don't know if I'm going to stream it though.

I don't know yet.

I'm kind of in between right now on that.

And allocates.

You can complain about a game you're.

Oh, I think, I think she was reacting to your punching your wife because she said.

And Max's wife walks in behind him with a cast iron frying pan.

Keeze says, I'm pretty sure you'd have to have the option to pick nudity level in the game.

That's why I heard today about G26 and Cyberpunk is the same way.

You can pick up the level you want to see and there's always going to be mods and add ons to add the nudity if the game itself does not provide.

Yeah, and Ziping says.

I would imagine GTX will have a streamer Nude or a streamer mode.

Yes, streamer mode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that too.

Yeah.

Where it's going to.

I'm sure all the 12 and 13 year olds playing this game are definitely going to turn off that nudity.

Right, of course.

Hey everybody, I couldn't help but notice you've been listening to some other podcasts.

I checked your feed and I'm deeply hurt, crushed, devastated, and dare I say, pissed off.

All right, there needs to be some changes out here.

I swear to whatever God Kingsley believes in or doesn't believe in, I will hunt you down or someone you care about because you're too hard to find and you've put barriers around you and I want to tear those down and get closer to you just so I can destroy your life.

Guardian down Round table is the only thing you need in your life and you need to understand this.

You need to move on and, I don't know, get a better hobby or something.

God.

Before we get out of the news part, I want to go to our segment called the Destiny Watch.

It's officially the end of an era for Bungie.

This is from Gamerant and this is Andrea Trauma.

After the good news about Destiny 2 officially coming back and vaulted content returning to the game, a new chapter unfolds for Bungie, ending a long era that started in 1996 after Sony formally acquired the legendary studio.

The company has gone through several issues, from poor management of Destiny 2 to its cancellation and resurrection, all while Marathon launched to underwhelming numbers and still struggles to keep players.

Bungie has a lot of trust to earn back, but it's now making the puzzling decision of shutting down its store.

The current plans Bungie has for Destiny 2 and Marathon seems quite promising, but many fans remain cautiously optimistic at best because the studio has lost a lot of its hard earned trust over recent years.

Yes, I agree.

The new leadership is aware, it seems, as Bungie Studio head Poria Torkin and head of Product and general manager of Marathon Josh Dean stated, that the goal is not to make promises and show roadmaps, but to give players what they want and show as much with facts.

Marathon will be undergoing an overhaul with multiple big updates planned and the fact that Destiny is coming back is a win on its own.

Right, and it says it shows the actual tweet here.

It says after more than a decade of serving our players through the Bungie store, we're retiring the current storefront for Bungie and Destiny related merchandise on October 19, we are building a new home for our merchandise that's more aligned with our current goals and visions.

And I think it says we'll just looking at the tweet here.

Okay.

It says we'll share more information on where to find Bungie and Destiny merch in 2027.

As a celebration and show appreciation of our loyal fans, we're currently hosting a Bungie Store x Bungie foundation sale.

All Bungie and Destiny items will be discounted up to 77% off.

Some retired rewards will be restocked.

All orders will order a flat shipping rate of 777.

Man, I'll tell you, the shipping and handling was enormous for this store back in the day.

Yeah, that's why I never ordered anything.

It's crazy.

I bought a T shirt.

It was like you paid another 15 bucks to ship it.

I'm like, it's a T shirt, man.

Stuff it in a plastic bag and put it in a mailbox.

Yeah, exactly.

That is standard ground shipping in the continental US, EU and UK.

50% Of all the proceeds will benefit the Bungie foundation and it ends on October 19th at 10:00am Pacific Time.

Marathon's current storefront will continue to operate in its current form and its rewards and merchandise will remain available at Marathon bungistore.

Com.

Anyway, that's one thing I mentioned that is on the front of Destiny and Bungie.

Another thing that I want to mention is from the Destiny 2 team this week.

We have recently issued a large ban wave within Destiny 2 against accounts found to be violating terms of service either by cheating or by using account recovery, ban evasion or boosting services.

We have further investigated appeals to this wave to validate accuracy.

So they're double checking their list twice, right?

We would like to take this opportunity to remind all players to protect your account.

Do not share your account credentials or use account recovery, boosting or cheat services.

This can be open.

This can open your account up to risks such as being accessed repeatedly on hardware, actively leveraging cheat tools or services even without your knowledge.

Additionally, we are continuing to investigate and action new cheats as they come online.

In Destiny 2, we have recently seen cheats spamming unearned rewards and XP on innocent accounts.

Accounts leveraging these cheats in malicious ways have already been actioned.

We always work to ensure that the cheating accounts are actioned.

The innocent players who are not actively seeking these cheats or their benefits are not punished.

If you encounter any of these accounts or you're a suspect of Cheating or if your account has been actioned.

I love that word action.

It's kind of a.

A PC version of Band, I guess.

Or.

And have any questions, please see their guidelines here.

And of course, a lot of people praised it.

Did you see that cheat where people were just automatically loading in load loot and just.

They're.

They're.

Their XP bar was just going up and up and up from just dismantling stuff.

Oh, my gosh.

No, I didn't see that.

It's crazy, man.

People are getting like, what do they.

Need all the loot for?

No, they're just using.

They're just using the loot to dismantle it for xp.

It's crazy, man.

Okay.

You should see it.

It's just like the loot just, just, just.

Just fills up their.

Fills up their backpack or whatever, and they're just deleting it as fast as it fills back in.

And all they're doing is just deleting, deleting, deleting.

And the XP bar is just going like 200 level 203.

It's just craziness, but crazy.

They're putting this much effort into a game that's idle at this point.

Like, you know, I could see them if they're trying to do it to the new Arc Raiders or, you know, something more popular.

But yeah, for Destiny, it's just sitting there doing nothing, you know?

So why cheat it?

Cheaters suck.

I mean, they all deserve gonorrhea, in my opinion.

Man, I. I just don't.

I just don't understand cheating.

You know, there was a very unknown, underrated YouTuber out there that puts out.

Put out a video.

He did research on why players cheat, why people cheat.

It was like a social experiment, social understanding of why people cheat.

And the biggest reason is people cheat when they know they can get away with it.

You know, just.

They just.

If they know there's no recourse, they just do it.

Yeah, just because they.

Why?

Just because they can't.

What sense of accomplishment does it get when you beat somebody when you're cheating?

See, that's the way I used to think.

Always, Todd.

But I think what it is, is people don't care about the game that.

Are cheating, then it goes somewhere else.

Well, I know, but, you know, it's just one of.

One of many games that they cheat on, I'm sure.

Yeah, well, my wife was telling me she's a big Fortnite player, and she was saying, like, how bad the cheats are over there.

But apparently Epic did something recently where they just a bunch of accounts that they had banned, they just reinstated them.

And just like all the YouTubers, you know, all the creators for that game over there, like what the frick is?

Why would you do, you know.

But they'll, they'll just sit there, you know, on camera, staring deadpan at the, at the camera, you know, as the, as they show the cheaters, you know, and all the crazy stuff they're doing, you know, one shot and you.

From all the way across the map, jumping all the way across the map, you know, it's just insane.

I just like, it doesn't even make it fun, you know, it just runs it for everybody.

I asked across, I had a video about this recently.

Well, it was a reaction video I think from somebody else, but he was like, you know, PvP, it's, it's everywhere in PvP, just cheaters everywhere.

And it's going to run the genre.

You know, I put out a video last week that's.

That's skill based.

It's supposed to be a skill based thing.

I know.

And you're cheating.

Well, what the cheaters do is they marginalize it.

No one cares anymore about being good at something because the cheaters just water it all down.

If someone has an emblem these days, I'm like, okay, did that guy get it be a recovery account.

The cheaters go on and just, you know, breeze through whatever they had to do to get that emblem.

Or did he actually earn the emblem?

And when you get shot in Crucible, you're like, okay, that was a really good headshot.

Was he using an AIM bot or was that just a really good player?

And you just never know, man.

So you always have that doubt.

So when you have that doubt, you don't really realize if it's actually good play or not.

And you don't know whether to judge it either way.

So I think it just waters down the skill levels.

It does, but.

Well, and you're judging your own play too.

You're like, do I just suck this bad or are people this good or are they cheating it?

I know man, I hear you.

Trust me, people, If I'm in PvP with you, you don't need to cheat to beat me.

I'm just saying.

Some comments there.

Doc Hooligan says the store is being integrated into Sony store management, reducing staff and expenses.

It will be relaunched in 2027.

Some of these riders need to get a better grasp of reality.

777 Freight.

Yeah, exactly.

Zombie Pop says as far as the cheat, I Talked about the loot cheat.

He says but once your postmaster is full, it's wasted.

That's why they were deleting stuff in their inventory, on their inventory, on their guardian as quick as it filled up.

It's like as soon as they deleted it, something will come in and fill back in.

It was a weird cheat, man.

It was the weirdest thing.

Doc Hooligan says cheaters are lazy and don't care.

They like getting one up on others just to gloat.

Remember those Xbox modded controllers?

A guy I later befriended years after was making those and I hated players that used it in Halo.

So it was confusing friendship initially why I quit playing Halo.

That's exactly what it does.

Exactly.

It ruins the game.

Why try to get better at something when you just are going to get cheated on?

I don't know, Kingston.

You just switch to another game, you know.

Yeah, and, and I'm.

What I'm telling you what the problem is is these developers need to, they need to be on top of this.

They need to, I don't know, dedicated servers.

I don't know what they do.

I don't know.

They're always.

It's a chasing.

I know it's a moving target all the time because this, this dead and dead and Speranza is the name of the dead end.

Speranza I think is the name of this YouTuber and he actually talked about the cheating epidemic.

He also talked about how the cheaters can get into that kernel in the system, in your actual hardware system and stuff where the developers can't.

Or the cheat.

The cheat software programs can't catch it because it's underneath it.

It's crazy shit, man.

Kingsley says there are lots of reasons why people cheat.

To get something faster and to make money and to gain notoriety and are bigger reasons.

Yeah, I get you saying you don't get it or want to cheat yourself but there are big reasons why.

Yeah, I mean it's always money.

It comes down to money.

Usually it's just a business like anything else, I guess but I don't know about you, Todd, but there's no cheat button for me to treat lawns and do people's pest control.

I wish I, if I had a cheat button and I can still get good quality 5 star reviews across the board.

I mean if you could just hit that cheat button and everything would get delivered right Todd?

Oh man.

If I could just hit a cheat button and go between Kansas City and, and Denver on that long boring.

You just stay home and get your bond Bonds and just keep pressing the button, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, I get it.

I'm a cheater now.

Okay, I get it.

A hypocrite.

Okay, one more thing on the Bungee front.

And Marathon did put out a roadmap, and I'm definitely not going to stay on this very long, but they did put out a roadmap today.

I'm just going to give you the brief overtones here.

October, they have a refresh to progression rewards and live.

And live experience.

December is the new Symbiosis, which introduces marathon's first permanent PvE experience.

An expanded perimeter, a new shell, improved onboarding, and a social space with a firing range.

And then March.

They said these pieces come together through a connected pve, pvp and pvevp survival experiences, expanded onboarding experience, deeper progression and shell customization.

A refactored cradle, a narrative driven quest system, new enemies and an entirely new zone.

This sounds like destiny to me.

A narrative.

A narrative system, A narrative driven quest system, new enemies, an entirely new zone, refactored cradle, shell customs.

I mean, this is basically a looter shooter now, isn't it?

I mean, it sounds like it to me, but that.

I just.

I just want to mention that they're.

They put out a.

They just tweeted it out at Marathon, the game on X.

If you want to look at the article.

I don't.

I want to go through the whole thing, but I just want to brush.

Just mention that they did put out a roadmaps, even though they don't like doing roadmaps.

There's a roadmap, so, you know, who knows?

Bungie, what are you going to do?

Wait, I don't have to crawl in the crawl space?

Exactly.

Zombie Pops.

Don't worry about it, man.

Just hit the cheat button.

Zipping says.

I feel like Marathon died when they compromised on their vision.

Why did Josie.

When Joe Ziegler left Joe's.

Joe saw the light.

He's like, I'm gonna go on to another project, guys.

You guys have fun with this.

The game they originally made doesn't exist anymore and is lacking any real identity.

Kingsley says looter shooters are not really extraction with timers though.

Do you get to keep everything all the time?

No, you don't do lol.

The cheat button for me in the past was my Amex.

Now I repair my own truck.

2003 Cummings.

Oh, you're a Dodge guy, all right.

And not to pay others to do it for me.

Cheat mode.

Just purchased my own floor jack today.

Hey, man, I'll change my own oil whenever I can save the bucks.

Especially on my diesel.

My Ford diesel has, I think it takes 15 quarts of oil.

It's crazy, man.

And what's a, what's a quart of oil cost these days?

It's like five bucks a quart.

Do the math, man.

That's like what, $65 for just the oil cost?

I remember I used to pay 40 bucks just for an oil change.

Anytime I bring my cars, whether I don't care if my daughter's Toyota or my wife's little Honda or God forbid, my Tundra, it's a minimum, a hundred bucks every time we take it to the place now and we.

I usually I'll bring a coupon where it's $15 off.

So.

Okay, it's 85.

I'm telling you, by the time they put the oil in it and the filter and everything, it's a hundred bucks at least.

It here is, it's here in Florida anyway.

The 39.99 oil changes, Todd, they don't exist anymore, man.

They don't.

I'm sorry.

No, they don't.

I, I get mine done at, at the Honda dealer for, on an older honda for like 60 bucks.

Okay.

I, I thought that seems high to me and, but I started pricing all the other places and they were the same price.

So is it a four cylinder and if you.

Yeah, yeah, it's a little four cylinder, four core crv.

But I used to, you know, I, I'd price the, the filter and the oil and you know, time is of an essence for me.

That's my job.

Yeah, it's not worth it to me.

You know, if I could save 20 bucks, don't care.

I can make that up in just a few miles down the road.

It ain't worth it.

That's the thing.

As you get older, it's like, do I want to, do I want to save 20 bucks or do I want to be on my back underneath my truck draining oil and then I gotta drain it into a five gallon bucket.

Then I gotta, and get rid of it.

Then I gotta bring it up to the auto parts place.

I'm thinking all, all I'm doing is thinking of the opportunity cost.

I'm thinking all the time I'm wasting doing all this.

My wife talks about, oh, we need to go to Sam's to get gas because it's, it's 5 cents less a gallon.

I'm like, okay, let's, let's do the math here, babe.

Your car takes 10 gallons of fuel.

That's 50 cents.

Okay, you're saving 50 cents.

Now if you, someone paid you 50 cents to drive to Sam's instead of right here where you're at right now, would you, would you take the 50 cents?

She probably would, but I'm saying I would not.

I, I went on this kick for a little while a while back, you know, I was like, I'm going to use this gas app, gas buddy app and everything.

And I was looking at all the prices in the area and I was like, oh, I can save a few cents here and there.

And then when I actually drove across and got the fuel there, I figured I'd save like 30 cents.

And I was like this, what am I doing?

Just fuel right down the road from my house.

Give it, give the, give the all my business to a local business, you know and I know.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Okay, a few more comments here and we're gonna move on.

Zipping says I drove my 2009 Ford Focus up to like 280,000 miles before I died.

That's really good, man.

If you can hit, if you can hit 200,000 miles, you've already won in a Ford.

Yeah, Come on.

Nowhere.

I'm just saying, I mean, I mean nobody's, nobody's shocked if you say Honda or Toyota.

But with the Ford you're like, my, my son and daughter in law have a Ford Escape.

And that thing has almost 200,000 miles on it.

It runs like a champ.

So if you take care of it.

Yep.

Well, it's a, it's a northern car too.

It's from Minnesota, so it's like rusted on the bottom and of course it is.

Yeah.

Doc, cooling is no way I would purchase a Dodge now.

2003 To 2008 Cummins were great.

Now Dodge is turning into crap.

I, Dude, I've, I've got stories.

I've got buddies who had those, Those, those Dodge V8s in there.

I could tell you some stories, man.

Those V8s are not rammed.

It's a Hemi.

They are not rammed up.

It wasn't the Hemi, but they're not rammed.

Tough.

It wasn't the Hemi engine.

Okay, that's a.

Definitely a good engine.

But Doc, how much is your time worth exactly?

Zombie Doc Hooligan's $1,000.

Replace my shocks around Houston.

I'm doing it for less than 500 including the jack.

Yeah, just be careful, man.

If you're using, if you're putting struts in, make sure you got A strut expander, you know, a compressor.

Don't.

Don't.

Don't punch a hole in your chest when that damn strut comes open on you.

I watch a video, you're going to.

Be here all night.

Max.

If he reads every comment.

I know, I know, exactly.

It's all good.

I love Dude.

That's why I like the live shows.

I love talking with the chat.

I really do.

All right, yeah, I get it.

We have McMaximo's topic of the week coming right up.

Hey, you're listening to Guardian Down Radio.

Stick around, might enjoy yourself.

Guarding Down Radio.

Did I say that?

Yeah, you did.

I did say that again.

It was.

It's got a nice ring to it, though.

That's actually good.

As soon as I went to start.

Talking, it was going, yeah.

Hey, this is Risen Phoenix, and you're listening to Guardian Down Roundtable, not radio.

Stick around.

You might enjoy yourself.

All right, it is time for Mr. McMaximo for his topic of the week.

Todd, I'll just give you the mic, man.

What do you want to talk about tonight?

Well, first, I kind of have a dual topic, but I just want to hit you up on something first.

It's kind of a weird question, and I know Kingsley is going to roll his eyes all the way back in his head so far he probably falls off his chair when he hears this, but have you ever felt guilty about not playing Destiny anymore?

Oh, that's a good question.

Not really.

Reason why?

Well, the reason why is I have, like, 1200 hours in Destiny, man.

I've put a lot of time into Destiny.

I mean, I. I mean, I think Doc Cooligan said it best.

There's no more FOMO to worry about, so I feel like that's true.

When I was on edge to make sure I got the season pass done and everything unlocked and all that, felt like I had to put some time in every week, you know, that the FOMO's not there anymore, so it's like.

It's like I just play when I want to play now.

It's how I play arc raiders right now.

And I'll talk about arc creators later, but they had their new big update today, and I just still.

I just play when I want to play the game.

I'm not in any hurry to get it done.

I'm not worried about something coming up that I'm going to miss out on.

That's the main reason why I can.

I can confidently say I don't feel guilty about not playing Destiny as much as I used To.

Yeah.

What about you?

Yeah, well, my.

My.

Yeah, of course.

You know, I was going by the old saying that if you're.

If you're thinking or feeling something, probably you're not the only one.

Somebody else is too, you know?

So I was just thought, is it just me?

Because, like, especially back when they were right after Destiny canceled and said, you know, we're not doing anything more.

You know, all the creators are like, hey, let's just keep playing.

You know, let's do what we got to do.

Let's make our voices heard.

And I wasn't.

I was doing some of it, but I wasn't doing a lot of it.

And I thought, I'm really not doing my part to try to bring Dead on a Destiny 3 or keep the.

Keep it around, you know, and sometimes I just feel a little guilty that I'm not over there playing.

But it hasn't made me play any more than just the raids, you know, I just keep my guilt a little bit.

I do.

Well, let me rephrase that.

I do feel guilty because we did start our community as a Destiny community, and it's kind of morphed over the years because, you know, Destiny's become less viable.

But here's the thing, man.

Destiny comes back with some killer content.

You know, I'm going to be back playing it.

It'll be just like walking and chewing gum, man.

I'll be right back in the saddle again.

And like I said, keep in mind, we play every Saturday night.

We play a raid or we help bring.

Yeah, either helps bring someone through their first raid or.

Or we, you know, spin the.

What is it?

The.

The Wheel of Chance or whatever it may be that Kate came up with.

You know, we will rate under a certain condition or modifier that just keeps it fun.

So, yeah, I'm still playing it every week.

But like I said, I mean, quite honestly, I have not played a lot of video games, period, because I've got a. I've just got a lot of projects going on right now.

And it's that.

It's that week, even though I've been in the house all week, which I'm going stir crazy already.

I can't even get my walks in, man.

It's craziness.

But, yeah, I mean, I. I sometimes I just feel guilty.

I haven't played a lot of video games lately, but.

But I think that's part of a gamer's life, man.

There's just a period where you get a few weeks where you just don't feel like Playing a game, you just need to take a break from it.

And I think that's perfectly healthy, dude.

I really do.

Well, that, that does, you know, it ties into my main topic, which is, you know, when, when increasingly we have, like you, you're so busy.

You got so much crap going on right now, you know, with your build another podcast and thinking about doing the extra off week podcast and then your.

Main podcast and then I'm doing my.

Then I'm doing YouTube stuff, my Todd the Exterminator stuff through.

And watching movies and watching tv, you know, and spending time with your grandkid, you know, it's like you get so much going on.

It is.

And I'm working, you know, 70 hours a week pretty much, because what I do six days a.

There's just so limited time.

So my question would be, like, how do you choose a game that you're going to move on to?

Like, what are the things that you look at a game and go, you know, I want to play that or I don't want to play that for this reason, you know, Like, I know you, you talked about Arc Raiders quite a bit in your last episode, you know, about why you like the game.

And I was going to hit you up about that, but because clearly you've chosen that as your replacement gain.

Yeah, I've kind of focused on Division 2, but I want to branch out into other games.

But I just, when I look at, when I look at some, some of the like, size the games, like my wife bought that Crimson, Crimson Desert.

Believe me, I have it downloaded.

I keep uploading it every, every week they have an update.

I'm like, damn, I really need to jump in and play that game.

It must be just really fun.

Upload.

They're updating it all the time and she, she.

Yeah, she got into it a little bit and you know, open that thing up and God, it just looks so huge.

It's like, where do you start?

It's like, do I really want to get into this kind of a game when I've got so limited time and I get distracted easily.

Like when I played, when I played Odyssey, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, you know, I couldn't get to the final mission because I just kept getting some, you know, this side mission was going on.

Yeah, it's like I'd fight, run over there and then next time I'd come back through there.

They were all replenished and there was more of them.

And it's like it just never ends.

And I just, I find that I Just can't focus.

I gotta figure out how to just focus on the story because, you know, I was looking at.

What was it?

A Ghost of Toshima.

I really want to play that game and I saw my nephew playing it and thought, man, that looks awesome.

And I thought that it's a huge game.

You know, do I really want to get into this?

And then I looked at it and it.

I googled it and it said it's like 20 or 30 hours a game.

Yeah, it's a single player game that's.

It's not too bad.

But then there's all the extra stuff because that's what I played.

God of War, Ragnarok recently finally finished it.

And it's the same thing.

It says it's like 30 hours of content, you know, in the main campaign, but it can be 50 or 60 if you do all the other stuff.

Maybe I'm just slow, but it took me way More than 50 or 60 hours to play that game, you know, so I don't know, just the time investment.

It's almost like I put so much time and effort into Destiny that I don't really want to get back into another game that I have to give that much time and effort.

Yeah.

And does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Great, great, great transition.

By the way, that's an old podcaster.

Ex podcaster.

Yep.

And Kingsley had a.

Had a comment here.

Before I answer, he says, I love your asking it.

I remember we pre talked about it, but.

So want to hear what you have to say?

Max, My wife is with me right now and she says she feels guilty because I want her to play with me more.

And she doesn't.

Does.

Not anymore.

Well, first, if you don't have to worry about it, you don't have to pick the next game based on something being a main game.

Just start trying something you want and then if you like it, you'll eventually move on to shorter if it's shorter or stay if it's longer.

See, here's.

Here's how I answer the question.

McMaximo is I separated into live service games and then single player games.

And I think this is the reason why single player games have become so popular lately, because more and more studios are starting to make those now and going away from the live service because what does the live service do?

It pulls at you.

Every day there's something new.

Guys, you need to come check this out.

Check.

Come to zur.

Come to zur.

He's got this incredible gun that you can't find anywhere.

It's the only gun in the.

In the game.

Come on.

Come grab this.

It's always pulling at you to come log in and play, right?

So when it comes to that kind of game to maximum, and right now it's Arc Raiders, because Arc Raiders has content.

Imagine that it's got content right now.

And.

But am I like playing hours and hours?

No, the thing I love about Arc Raiders, it is even though it is live service, it doesn't have like vendors where something is being updated every.

Well, it has a.

It has a bounty system.

You know, I like bounties.

It has a bounty system where you can do that daily.

And then it has a weekly bounty system too.

Very much the way Destiny does their Vanguard orders now.

And that's one thing I really dig about the new Destiny 2.

Because you know me, man, I like to complete things and get it checked off my list.

I feel like I've accomplished something even while I'm being entertained playing a game.

But when it comes to the other games, man, I've got so many games in my library that I want to play.

And like, I played the 2018 version of God of War, I started jumping back into that.

We know when he has his son in the game and I started.

I played the beginning of that game.

I'm like, this game is frickin phenomenal.

It looks great.

It's a PS4 game and I'm playing it on my PS5 Pro and it looks beautiful.

I mean, for a PS4 game, it looks fantastic.

It's a 2018 game, man.

And I'm like, I cannot wait to play more.

But you know what?

It's 1am it's time to go to bed.

I can't play anymore.

I'm an adult.

I got to do adult things.

Whereas as a kid, you know, what would you do?

You'd blast through the whole content, right?

You'd blast through the whole story.

Like, you're like, my wife reads books.

She just annihilates books.

She just goes through them, she reads so fast.

And we'll watch a movie, it's based on a.

On a book.

And she'll go, I read that book so fast, I don't remember what it's about.

It's about the movie about.

It's about the movie review we're doing that I'm going to do this week.

But yeah, I separated, Todd.

I separated into live service and single player and the thing and Kingsley's right, man.

The great thing about single player games.

See you later, Zombie.

The great thing about single player games is that they're like books.

You can pick it up, you can play a little bit more of the story, save your spot and put it down and get another book if you want to read another book.

That's a great thing about single player games.

You can pause.

Kingsley says it all the time.

He'll pause, he'll have his game paused.

Even though it shows him playing it, he may have it paused while he's doing a, you know, working with a client or something and then come and unpause it once he's come back ready has time to play it again.

So yeah, when it comes to time for playing games, one player games, I'm not so worried about it.

But the live service games, those forever games that I just mentioned in previous stories, those are the ones that I think a lot of gaming companies are going to really struggle to find people to jump into.

Those black hole games, right?

Those games that they just dive into and never come out of.

That's why it's hard.

New game's going.

Yeah, we've only got so much time.

Whether it's, you know, me working or you doing your million different hobbies or you know, parents that are brand new, parents that are just, you know, they don't have a lot of time.

But to me, like my biggest thing is like I, I'm gone all week, I'm gone for five to six days a week, usually six days a week.

And like if I had a couple hours, you know, every night to kind of dabble a little bit, I would, that, that would be great, but I just don't have that.

And I know myself well enough to know not to take my PlayStation on the road because if I do, I ain't going to get no sleep.

I'm going to stay up too late and not sleep.

And that's not good.

Yeah, I have a feeling you're ad.

I have a feeling you're ADHD like me.

We're both cut from the same cloth.

Because I don't think I am.

I just a dopamine hit man.

That's why we love playing, that's why we are such big good gamers, Gen X gamers, because we love that dopamine hit.

And if you don't have enough of it in your brain, it's kind of funny, man, you cling to things that give you.

Ever since I've been taking my medication, I've lost like £25 and the reason why is I used to turn to candy to get that dopamine hit.

I would eat bunch of junk food.

I would eat too much sugar and stuff.

And I'm freaking.

I'm old.

I'm in my 50s, okay?

So I'm gonna cling to my 50s, but I can't.

I can't eat that crap anymore.

I'm not 10 years old anymore, you know?

So it's funny.

This medication takes the place of that dopamine deficiency, and now I just don't crave it.

I just don't crave it.

And I.

It's finally clicking to me, man.

But I think that's why a lot of us play games is to get that dopamine hit, man, to get that good feeling, chemicals in our brain going, you know, I don't.

I don't get that through the week out of the road.

Like, I'm not, like, jonesing for.

For the video.

I think about it and I'll, you know, look up videos on it and things like that.

But I'm not like, jones into play, but, you know, sometimes I come home on the weekend, I don't have time to play, you know, it's just we got other crap going on.

You got to adult, you know, and stuff, so.

But you mentioned something a minute ago, too, how, like, with the solo game, you can just.

I can play this for a little while and then, you know, go take a break, come back, play this other game for a little while.

I. I have a hard time doing that because I. I know you mentioned this before.

It's like switching up the.

The mechanics of the game.

Like, you know, the.

The controls and everything.

It's like, okay, well, you know, that messes with me a little bit.

I'm getting better at going back and forth from Destiny to Division 2.

But then I switch over to BioShock and I'm like, totally lost, you know, and.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

It's just a bad thing.

So that's part of the thing I look at too, is like, how different is the mechanics on this game, you know?

That's one of the things I look at.

Yeah, that definitely is.

I do forget control methods.

You know, control input.

Sometimes that does.

That does.

Irritating.

It'd be nice if there was a standard controller setting for any game, you know, Be nice if it was more intuitive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I thought you talked a little bit, well, quite a bit about arc raiders last time, by the way.

Kelvin.

Arc raiders.

Arc raiders.

Arc raiders.

Arc raiders.

What, is the boogeyman gonna come out now or something?

He'll have to drink.

I'll have to have four drinks.

I love it.

I forgot all about that.

Yeah.

Okay.

So anyway, like, you know, I think, I think you surprised all of us, Gator, because you had no interest in extraction shooters whatsoever.

And this is on the topic of like going outside your normal genre.

You know, like, it's like I, I, I feel uncomfortable stepping outside my genre that I like because, you know, do I want to spend the money on this game?

I might think it sucks.

And so that prohibits me.

Well, it doesn't prohibit, but it keeps me from wanting to play new, different kinds of games because I'm a, I'm as tight as a frog's ass, you know, So I just don't like to spend money on games.

If I don't, if I'm not pretty sure I'm gonna like it, so.

But you didn't do that when you went, when you left Destiny, you went to a genre that you openly stated you did not like with this extraction shooter.

And yet you found yourself obsessed with the game.

And like, is that, Let me explain.

I don't know how you did that.

Let me explain myself because it's not as.

I don't, I don't want, I'd love to give myself a pat on the back, but let me explain why.

Now.

I did try.

Remember I tried Marathon first before I tried Arc Raiders Marathon.

It did not.

I tried, I tried to play it the way I would play Destiny.

It just was not a Destiny game for me.

And the reason I like Arc Raider so much and this is a big.

That's just what I talked about in last week's little short episode is if, if, if, if Embark was smart, they would have a permanent.

They're doing a test next week.

It's the second next week I think it's.

Geez, I can't remember the date.

But next week there's a week long trout test event where it's PvE only.

You can't shoot other players, you can't steal their shit, you can't do anything.

So you basically go in there and the only way you're going to die is if you let the Ark kill you.

And I'll be honest, the Ark are definitely tough.

They're very smart.

But the reason I really clung to Arc Raiders is because two reasons.

One, it reminds me because it's made from dice developers.

It reminds me of those gigantic battlefield maps that were so precise you could go into buildings and find little areas where you could shoot people from, you know, multiplayer.

I'm talking about the big team battles and Conquest and stuff.

Those are so much fun because there were so many little cracks and crevices in those big battlefield maps.

Not so much in today's battlefield.

Today's battlefield maps are like Call of Duty slash, barely.

Barely battlefield maps.

I'm talking about the big giant maps where you could drive a tank anywhere you wanted.

And you go out on an adventure.

You get your tank and your.

Your key was to keep it repaired.

Don't blow it up, don't lose it for your team.

And go out there and find a strategic area where you could really put the pain on the other team and where the planes wouldn't see and the helic.

The little mini helicopters wouldn't shoot you down.

That's kind of the feeling I get with arc raiders.

I go out, I've got this.

It's a dystopian world.

You know, the Ark have taken over.

It reminds me very much of Matrix because it's just the same premise, you know, it's the end of the world.

The humans live underground now.

The machines took it over and we're coming to the surface for 30 minutes.

That's how long our oxygen lasts or whatever you want to call it, our time before.

See what happens.

You have 30 minutes to go on top of this world and you have to extract before that 20, that 30 minutes.

If you don't.

The Ark throw down a nuclear weapon and you get just.

You get blown away.

They basically hit a reset button in 30 minutes, they drop a nuke, and in fact, five minutes till they'll drop like a little subatomic bomb.

It's not an atomic bomb, but you.

The whole screen rattles and says, you got five minutes, buddy.

You better get the hell out of here.

It just gives you that urgency.

But the thing I love about arc raiders, it has that same destiny feel.

It's futuristic.

It's kind of space age weapons, I guess you could say.

They're.

They're hand built.

You know, they're built from scraps and stuff, but it's that it's a dystopian future thing, which is.

Think about it.

When you go back to Cosmodrome at the beginning of Destiny, what is it?

It's where the humans used to.

Used to thrive on this world in the golden era, in the golden age.

And then the darkness came in and just wiped out everybody.

And then all we have left these days are, you know, amongst the people are these super warriors called Guardians.

It's kind of.

It overlaps so much into the arc raiders world.

That's why I think I really have stuck to it.

Can I say the same about other Life Service games, Marathon?

Nope.

I know it has a Destiny Gun fill, but I just.

It's not the same.

And the art style and everything, it doesn't look real.

It looks artificial.

It's hard for me to believe, and I have to really believe the game.

I have to dive in and accept the game, that it could happen.

So one thing I love about Destiny is it could be possible that that could be a future that we have where, for some reason, we get light, where we have the superpowers, you know?

But, yeah, I saw Fallout play, and a little bit of the new.

You know, he got the new thing, got a little early.

It looks beautiful.

It really does.

But I'm thinking there's only one kind of enemy.

I mean, there are Ark, of course.

There's different types of Ark, but there's only one.

Whereas, like, Destiny, you got, like, six different species, you know, and all different kinds among those.

So it just seems boring to me, almost.

I mean, granted, I haven't played it, so I can't really say that, but it just seems like there's not a lot going on.

Plus, there's that thing that, like, you hate timers, but there's a Timer.

I know I hate timers.

I don't want.

I'm not.

I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder, but I don't want to lose my crap either.

This is.

This is another reason why, like, I never played that.

What was it in Destiny, in Renegades Invasion, I think is what they called it.

Yeah, I didn't play a lot.

Yeah, there's that one thing where it's PvE, but people couldn't come in and just snipe you from a distance.

I'm like, I can die on my own.

I don't need somebody else come in and do it to me.

I hated that mode.

But.

But.

But see, here's the thing.

The same thing over here.

Here's the thing.

If someone shoots you in our creators, they can come and take your crap, and guess what?

You lose everything you brought in.

So there's that.

There's that feeling of loss, and, like, you didn't accomplish something.

And, yeah, you have a safe.

They have that in Marathon.

Exactly.

But.

But if someone shoots me in the Crucible, guess what?

I just spawn right back in with everything all over again.

That's why I love playing Crucible, but I don't like PvP in these extraction Games because you.

It feels like a negative Gameplay event, you've actually lost stuff that you've worked to build.

Like you craft this brand new gun and you, you rent, you update, you upgrade it up to level four and it's like super powerful and has really fast reload and aims down the spite really fast.

And all these things that you really love about that gun that you made for you and then some shoot you while you're looting something on the ground and then you, you die and you lose all your crap and he comes and takes it.

That just, that just doesn't jive with me, man.

That's why if they have a PvE only mode other than this one week test, which is next week, people, if you want to really show Embark that you want to play a PvE only portion of the game, all I'm saying, I'm not saying get rid of the PvP, I'm just saying give us a choice and what they'll find.

And they've done the surveys, it's almost split a third, a third, a third.

How many players want PvP only, how many people want PvE only?

And then there's people in between.

Well, if we have two different playlists, you have a PvE playlist and a PvP playlist.

Like we have the Worlds and PvE and Destiny and the PvP and Crucible or Trials or Iron Banner or whatever.

Over here we have the choice to decide what we want to play.

And for those people who are in between that like both, they got two different playlists they can play depending on what kind of mood they're in.

If they're tired after work, they can jump in PvE and just collect some more stuff or try to complete a couple more projects or whatnot.

But if they really are, you know, they're hyped up, they got the energy drinks going and they want to jump into PvP and see how well they do against other people of the same skill level, they have it available to them.

The reason I don't understand why, why Embark put PvP in their game, because they're going to find out that the PvE only version of their game is going to be just as popular as the PvP aspect.

So.

Well, they're just, just what we talked about in the early article.

They're just trying to figure it out what do the people want?

You know, and they're trying to figure it out if it, if they don't like it, if Everybody plays the PvE version, they'll just, you know, they could get rid of the PvP or just put it on the back burner.

Kind of like Bungie did for after a while.

Like I commented in I Bet a lot of comments on that video I put out.

And people were on the fence.

People were saying no.

People are saying yes.

And I said, well, think about it.

Fixes all the cheating issues.

You don't have to worry about being your game being ruined by cheaters.

Then go in PvE.

You know, if they want to duplicate a bunch of crap just to get all these materials, who cares?

Yeah, well, in a way, that's cheating.

If they can get better.

If they can get better weapons.

Here's the thing, Todd.

Doesn't affect your game.

I can still go out and look for mushrooms and bullets and whatever I need to craft.

Whatever I need to craft.

It's.

It's kind of fun because it's a survival game and it's like a looting game.

It's like a looter shooter with a little survival mixed in.

That's why I clung to it, because it's very much like Destiny.

So don't give me all the credit that I went totally off book onto a different genre when actually there's a lot of similarities between arc Raiders and Destiny 2.

They just need to figure out that part of it, that's all.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there's another thing I was thinking of is like, just the.

I mean, what'd you guys say?

There's like 20,000 games out there now,.

Or 20,000 on Steam last year.

Yeah.

See, it's almost at a point where I'm like, overwhelmed.

There's so many games that I want to play.

I want to play Division 2.

It's a.

It's an all inclusive, inclusive game you have.

I mean, I'm trying to get caught up, you know, for when the cross play comes in November.

So I'm doing all that.

But I want to play Ghost of Tushi or both the Ghost games.

You know, I want to.

I want to.

I want to even go back and I found.

Yeah, what was I just saying?

The Ghost of Tsushima.

No, the.

The old game.

Bioshock.

I found the.

The three pack of that.

All three games for like ten bucks.

So I downloaded it and.

But there's all kinds of games, you know, old Kill Zone, Fallouts.

There's all of these old games that I want to play that I just.

It's like, how do I choose?

And if I choose this, you know, there's five games in this franchise.

How do I choose which one is the best?

You know?

And If I choose this, am I missing the backstory?

You know, and it's like, well, I know I can't go all the way back to Fallout 1 because that's going to take.

I just don't have that much time.

I'll die before that's.

Then do it.

Do what Kingsley does Do.

What Kingsley does is I've been watching his gameplay lately.

He's playing control Resident.

He's playing.

I think he was playing the Witcher 3 today.

And he'll jump into division.

He'll play.

He'll play Destiny.

He plays like four or five different games throughout the week and he just, he just partitions it off.

Today I'm going to play this game.

Today I'm going to play this game.

And I, you know, that's smart way to do it.

But what I should.

What.

I guess what I'm trying to say to you is, if it's a live service game, pick one.

If it's not a live service game and you're just wanting to complete the story or the campaign in whatever game, Todd, just pick a game that you want to try out and just jump on and say, listen, I'm going to.

I'm going to dedicate two hours.

If I still like it, I'll save the point and I'll come back and play it again.

That's.

That's the way I look at these.

These player story driven games.

Well, so you know, Kingsley or other people like him, we, you know, more of a 9 to 5 thing is that, that sounds great.

You know, you got a couple hours each night, three or four hours, whatever you got, play that game, you know, and then you can switch to another one the next night.

I don't that luxury.

So like if I, you know, I come home and I try to have these long gaming sessions and you know, if I get two, three hours in division is.

There's always something else to do.

So it's like now I just keep doing that.

I never switch back over to BioShock, you know, so it's.

I don't know, it's all in my life.

Your situation is a little tougher than mine because I have a few hours every night and I decide whether I'm gonna work on some content stuff, am I gonna play some games, or am I gonna go watch tv.

I have three different choices every night of what I do.

And lately it's been content and TV shows that has not been gaming.

But that's the thing.

And time for all that.

And then, then Taboo.

Todd, you remember you're on the road all week.

When you get home, your wife probably wants to see you and do some stuff with you too.

So that's even more poor.

Yeah, it's a tough.

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, she said, I'm gonna need you to not, not braid one night a month for a while because I like doing it every, every weekend.

I get it, I get it.

That's a good thing, man.

Yeah.

I mean, she cares.

Yes, it is.

She wants to do stuff with you.

Yeah, man.

My wife knows it's my hobby, so she knows that.

She goes, okay, because she has her hobbies too.

She'll sit there and read a book all Saturday.

She just loves reading books.

She's like, I got the best book ever.

I can't put it down.

I'm like, I know I made the mistake.

I said, listen, do you see any similarities here?

Like when a new game release comes out, how you just can't put it down and you're talking about a book you're reading that you can't put it down?

She goes, how do you mean?

Yeah.

Oh, I was a.

That was.

I really stepped in some shit on that.

Yeah, I was backpedaling for two days on that one, man.

And she'll remember it for the next 30 years too, of course.

And I remember also we were, I was, we were.

It was a very quiet house for a couple days.

I was like, shit.

Yeah.

Some things I say, I swear to God.

I mean.

Thankfully my wife got into gaming a while back, so she understands that when I come home, I want a game and she's, she plays Fortnite, so she's, you know, can do her thing, I can do mine.

We've.

I play Fortnite with her sometimes.

She's tried destiny.

She doesn't like it.

Understands that probably keeps her entertained too.

When you're not home.

That's a good.

Yeah, it's a good thing to have.

Yeah.

She's not working outside the house right now, you know, but my mother in law just moved in and everything, so she's got her hands full.

But, you know, she gets to, she gets to play a little bit every day, you know, so when I come home, she may want more of my time, but at the same time she understands.

Yeah.

You know, hey, he, he never gets the game at all.

That's where she.

And she knows me well enough too that it's not a good thing for me to take the PlayStation on the road.

You guys understand each other?

32.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can, you can Kind of understand when you're married that long.

And also too, that we're stepping into the mental health aspect of gaming, how it's good just to unplug and dive into a world, you know, and not think about anything else.

I mean, when I'm sick, I'll play.

I would play Destiny and I wouldn't feel sick anymore.

I never could understand why.

It's because I'm just not worried about being sick.

I'm really fully focused into the Destiny world and I'm not thinking about, you know, my body's achy and I'm sniffling and all that.

I just am.

So it's really not.

It's a really good thing, man.

You're occupying your mind.

You're not thinking about all your issues at the moment, whatever.

And we all have our shit to deal with, you know.

So.

Yeah, that's a good, good topic, man.

Good topic.

I just want to read a couple of comments here because with the, the, the.

The comp, the, the.

The live stage room just lit up.

Zip King says that is so lame.

Completely defeats the purpose.

Well, zip ping.

You get something different out of retroaction shooters and I.

That I'd get out of.

And Kingsley says, yeah, it's a tough one.

There's something to be said about, about the original idea of the game, how it was created.

Those people that like it should have very rightful say in not changing it.

But then there's also the greater population, what they want disparity.

And Zipping says it baffles me how much the identity of Arc Raiders and Marathon and even Battlefield have been absolutely torn apart thanks to the butt PvE though.

Well, let's keep this in mind too, Zipping.

Arc Raiders was originally a co op PvE shooter and they altered it with the PvE because I'm going to tell you the real reason why they did that.

It's because they understand that PvP is kind of a loop.

It's a content loop, right?

You go in, you go up against other Raiders and you rinse, repeat, and it stays entertaining because it's different every time.

I think they went that route because they were worried they couldn't produce enough content.

And that's always been Destiny's problem, right?

That's the problem.

If you have a life service game, man, you better have a freaking backup lineup of everything ready to just roll back into place and you're going to be constantly working on new stuff all the time in these studios.

And if you don't want a live service game, then Just put out a game that has a storyline or an open world.

Like, I mean, there's a ton of open world games that are so much fun that you can get lost into.

Damn it.

I know there's a game I've been wanting to jump into, but like you said, I've been busy playing another game.

It pulls me from it.

But there's, there's other games out there that are story driven, that as soon as you complete the bosses and you complete the stories, you've completed the story.

The game is still open to you to play.

If you want to go in and relive the fantasies.

That.

That's what I want out of a Destiny 3.

Honestly, I don't care anything about live, you know, a live game.

I just want them to like make a good game and make it every three or four years, you know, and during that whole time, we can play whatever raids or dungeons they gave us, you know, just like we're doing now.

We're still playing even though the game's not going on, we're still playing these raids.

We're just figuring out ways.

And I remember you guys talking about doing that in D1.

There was so little content that you're just trying to figure out new ways to make things interesting.

I play the, I replay the story so many.

We're doing that now.

And, and, and to finish my point, zipping.

Marathon started out as a hardcore PvP game and now they're trying to add the PvE in to try to appeal to a bigger audience because it was a very narrow audience that they were focusing on, which was just a mistake from the start, especially these days.

Man, if you're spending 500 million to make a game, don't make a niche game.

Make something that's going to appeal to a broad range of gamers.

But then, then there's that saying that if you appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody.

So who's right?

I don't know.

You know, that.

Yeah, that's a problem.

As somebody mentioned that earlier, it's like, you know, if a game starts out to be a certain time of game, it might be best if they just stick to their guns, you know.

But yeah, clearly it wasn't working for Marathon.

Yeah.

You know, so they just take a chance.

It's.

It's that whole free market thing.

Take a chance.

See if the people like what you're going to change it to if they don't go back to what you were doing before, you know, or it fails either way and you learned your Lesson.

And Kingsley, zip, ping.

We're going back and forth that are saying, well, either way, I agree.

If people want to make a PvE game, it's always better to do it from the beginning.

And quote, losing this is from zipping.

Losing your stuff as a risk reward is fun.

Part of Extraction Shooters.

I agree.

There is that element of, is this guy going to shoot me as soon as I turn around, or is he going to.

You know, and for some games, that's there.

I can understand that appeal.

And I'm not saying ziping.

I'm not saying to take that away.

All I'm saying is give us that sandbox world to play in, and even if we only have 30 minutes, let us play in it however way we want, where we don't have to worry about people shooting us in the back like little rats that they are and take all our crap that we've been trying to build and stock up so.

Well, I have a. I have a question.

Like, for arc raiders, like they.

In Marathon, you know, you, like, you build an arsenal, but you might only be able to take a few things out.

You can only hold 232 things in your.

In your vault, we have a thousand 1100 spots.

In Destiny, you only have three.332.232 spots for gear, and that's materials and everything.

Everything.

You have a limited amount.

Well, I feel like I played Helldivers very briefly, but it didn't seem like they had, like, these weapons that you had to hold on to.

It seemed like whatever you grabbed was sufficient for the task at hand every time.

So it was kind of fun that you're just going in, you don't care if you come out and you use a different weapon the next time.

But if you're actively, you know, trying to seek out certain things, blueprints or whatever, you know, to.

To build this gun, but then you're just gonna lose it.

No, thank you.

I'll pass on that one.

That's the reason why people chase blueprints, because if they do lose the gun, they can just make another one.

That's the reason why people.

And here's the thing to boot.

With this new.

This new outpost they're making, it's like it's something Destiny should have done a long time ago.

They're making player housing where you can design your own house.

It's a.

It's a.

And it's in the top side areas, too.

It's not underground like where you used to stay.

You actually have a house like a Building structure up top.

And you can, like, decorate it.

You can like, make sofas, put a refrigerator over here, a rocking chair here, a stool over here, a computer table here.

You're actually playing house.

You're actually putting this.

This customized player environment where you can just chill and not have to worry about doing anything.

They're already heading toward the PvE game.

They just haven't told everybody yet.

They're already doing it, man.

The new.

The new frigate flies in, and people climb on it and go loot and get loot before the time runs out.

And they have all this stuff running at them.

All these ark are running at them, trying to kill them, and they're very, very dangerous.

You have to be loaded and stocked to the hilt with ammunition and weapons and stuff.

And people are too busy fighting the ark off to worry about shooting each other.

And as soon as you get your loot, you fly back down to the base just like.

It's just like going into a dungeon.

You finish, you kill the boss, you get the loot, you get what you need to do, and then you exit.

You're gone.

Except in this case, you're extracting.

But it's the same premise.

They're already heading toward the PvE type of game.

But I don't want to get people too drunk on Arc Raiders tonight.

But.

But.

Sorry I brought it up, folks.

Grok zipping's like grock.

Make me make Skyrim a distraction shooter.

Yeah, I get it, man.

But.

But I think that's my.

That's my point, though, is Arc Raiders was always supposed to be a PvE game.

Just was.

You mentioned the social aspect thing, like the social spaces.

That has never appealed to me whatsoever.

I get why people want to do that, but I am like.

And maybe that has to do with me having limited amount of time.

I don't want to spend.

I don't want to spend an hour trying to figure out what my character looks like in Destiny or building, you know, putting a computer table over here and putting it right.

You know, putting decorations on the wall.

I don't want.

I just want to play the damn game.

I kind of have a general rule that I won't play a game if I have to eat to stay alive.

Yeah.

You know, it's like too realistic.

It's too much like life.

It's like these Sims games is like, you got to go out and get a job, dude.

I've been doing that for.

Dude.

You do realize that there's a pressure wash simulator that people love to play when they're instead of getting paid to pressure wash something, they're playing a game.

Pressure washing stuff for everybody.

I, I kind of get that because like you watch those videos of like people mowing you really bad guards and things like that, it's, it's kind of mesmerizing.

I get that.

I've been, I've been on that kick lately.

I've been watching a lot of these mowing guys because mainly I deal with them every day because I, I'm part of that world, you know.

Yeah.

But.

Couple more comments here.

Likes the pressure washing game.

I'm telling you man, I'm sure it is Zipping says I argue with the final test weekend before launch.

They sold a specific PvP product regardless of cycle.

We can argue all day while the game was different 12 months before launch.

But here's the thing.

The one thing I will say about Arc Raiders is I used to never talk to people playing.

Whether I was on the, in the Worlds in Destiny or whatever.

I'd stick to myself.

I, you know, this is my downtime.

I was winding down.

I just wanted to farm Glimmer or get this loot or kill this boss or whatever.

I had been talking to so many people now on the mic, this, the, the, the close quarters mics that open up where everyone can talk to each other.

It's pretty cool, man.

You start talking with people say oh, what are you working on?

Yeah, you trying to get this?

Oh, what are you looking for?

I'm looking for this.

I said here, I just picked one up out of the drawer.

You can have it and you can help each other out and stuff.

And that's what I think is going to happen in the PvE version of the game.

But like I mentioned in my video, there is already a PvP version in the PvE game.

It's who's going to get to that loot first?

It's a race.

You go into the damn battlegrounds and you go into the annex for instance and you go in there and all the freaking drawers have been gone through already and all you got left is junk, little junk materials.

And you're like, oh man, someone's already been through here.

So what do you do?

You go find another area that they haven't gone to yet.

And the great equalizer is that you can only carry so much crap.

So everybody gets a piece.

It just depends on where you're going to get that piece because you can only carry so much in your backpack and then you get over encumbered.

If you put Too much stuff in your backpack.

If it's too heavy, weight wise, then you're just, you're, you know, you're waddling along like you got stuff okay.

In your pockets and stuff.

It just makes you an easy target for, for the arc to shoot you down because you can't move fast.

But yeah, I mean, I thought it was gonna.

If it's, if it's a race to the loot.

Well, speed is not my forte as anybody can tell you that is rated with me.

I'm telling you, man, it's free to play this whole week.

It's free to play this whole week.

Just, just download it.

It's on sale for 20 bucks right now on, on Steam and I think it's on sale on, on PlayStation Store too, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, I just bought it.

I bought it for an alt account.

It was 20 bucks.

I wanted to send some shekels their way for, for changing the game around a little bit.

So yes, 20 bucks in PlayStation Store and I guess 20 bucks, it's half price right now.

Plus you can play it for free.

Just download the game.

It's.

It's big.

It's.

I want to say like 50, 60 gigs.

It's a big, it's a big game and just jump in there and just start wandering around.

And I'm telling you, if, if anything, play the, if you paid the 20 bucks for the game, play the PvE only mode that following week.

And I'm telling you, you'll see where I'm, I'm coming from on it.

But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of opinion.

Everybody has their opinion when it comes to extraction shooters.

And you know, I mean, in the end you have to appeal to the masses because if you don't, you're not going to sell your game.

I mean, you have to appeal to as many people as you can.

If you're trying to sell a game to people these days.

I, I don't know.

But anyway.

Hey, Kingsley, you used a big word here.

I hate games that do encumbrance.

What the heck's that mean?

That's getting weird.

Being weighted down like you're encumbered.

Oh, you're like encumbered.

I see.

It's the same thing they call, they actually say you're encumbered.

On the, on the screen it says you're encumbered and you all of a sudden instead of jogging, you're like, you're like breathing heavy and you're like waddling instead of running like a, like a shaped person.

I pride myself on a pretty good vocabulary, but that one had.

I was like that.

I was drawing a blank on it.

Old man brain.

That's all right.

All right.

All right.

Well, thanks for.

Yeah man, good topics.

Good topics all.

Yeah, I appreciate the Destiny topic as well.

I have one topic here to talk about.

It won't take too long and then we'll get into our catch up segment right after this.

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Later, Guardians.

Okay, for my topic of the week, Microsoft, it seems it was leaked that they filed a patent for a quote ad credit system to show ads on PC and Xbox without disrupting your gameplay.

Now this article is from GamesIndustry Biz.

This is.

Make sure I give credit to the author.

Here it is.

It is.

Sophie McAvoy says Microsoft has patented an ad credit system to display adverts and announcements during PC and Xbox game sessions without disrupting gameplay.

The patent, titled Contextually Aware Management of Interactive Software Application Access.

Holy crap, that's a long term.

Was filed earlier this month as spotted by Respawn.

First, the system is said to identify natural pauses such as loading screens, menus, or the end of missions and rounds before pausing the game to display an advertisement.

During the ad, gameplay and controls would be temporarily suspended to ensure players do not lose progress after viewing the content.

Players would receive a credit to grant a period of ad free play ranging from 15 minutes to an hour or more.

The patent also indicated that uninterrupted playtime may be quote, defined at least partially by progression or events in the game, such as five rounds of gameplay, completing one level, completing three online multiplayer matches, defeating an NPC, or completing a project or task.

In 2022, reports emerged that Xbox was considering in game advertisements for free to play titles on its cloud streaming platform.

Microsoft began testing ad supported game streaming on Xbox this July.

Xbox Insider program participants can opt in for free one hour game streaming sessions supported by ads which appear before each session.

Core gameplay remains unchanged.

Earlier this month, Xbox announced announced monthly cloud gaming limits for Game Pass subscribers in November of 2026.

Game Pass essential will be limited to 5 hours, premium to 10 hours and ultimate to 15 hours per month.

Subscribers will be able to purchase additional cloud playtime through the Xbox Store once these limits are reached.

Xbox said it made the decision because, quote, the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer.

This week, Xbox announced additional layoffs as part of its ongoing restructuring.

A total of 268 positions were affected at Halo Studios, other first party developers and Xbox Game Studios UK and Rare and Age of Empires developer World's Edge have been transferred to Activision, which will also manage the Halo franchise.

Obsidian has moved under Bethesda, while Playground Games and Turn 10 have merged into a single studio.

What do you Think about this MCMaximo?

Pay to play baby.

You want to play?

I freak.

Love it boy.

Just the more advertisement the better.

That's what I've always said.

You want to play on our cloud services?

You got to watch the ad first baby.

Show the ad.

Not to mention the ads.

But first just the limits.

Those limits wouldn't even be enough for me.

Who has limited.

You know, I'm home like a day and a half a week.

That's not even enough for me.

So who's going to subscribe to this service and then you throw ads in on top of it.

I don't know if Hulu still does this, but used to you'd have to pay for Hulu and there would still be short ads.

Oh it's such a pain.

Nothing, nothing drives me more mad.

It's like if I'm paying for the service, don't make me Watch ads.

That's why I'm paying you.

Don't make me watch ads, too.

Just fewer ads does not cut it, in my opinion.

Amazon finally broke me, Todd.

I was.

I was on my.

I pay for Amazon prime every year, and it goes up.

It's like 100.

And what, I don't know, was it 150amonth, a week, a year now?

And I watch Prime T, you know, prime video, and I'm still getting fricking ads.

I'm like, what the hell?

Oh, you got to get the premium.

Premium.

If you want to get rid of the ads, it's A$50 a month, I think.

I can't remember.

It was like.

I don't know, it was like $17 a year or something.

And I finally caved.

I was like, you know what?

I just can't take these fricking ads anymore.

I want to watch my damn show and not be interrupted by an advertisement.

So I finally caved and paid it.

And I really felt bad after I did it because I really shouldn't have caved because I. I held on for the longest time, Todd.

I was like.

I was adamant.

I was like.

I was like, I'm just gonna get a drink.

It just adds on.

I'm gonna go get a drink.

It just gets too annoying.

And they count on that.

They know that, you know, it's like YouTube.

They know people are gonna pay for YouTube Premium eventually because the ads are so freaking annoying.

Oh, I've had premium for a long time.

I have not.

I'm still too cheap.

Do it.

So I just hit the skip button.

I know exactly when it's going to come up, and I hit the skip button.

And unfortunately, I do show ads on my channel because it goes back to support the community, though the ad revenue, you know, it adds up.

No pun intended.

Understandable.

But most people.

Yeah, and if they have premium, I still get a. I still get a royalty if they have premium and they bypass the ad.

So I'm still getting a piece either way.

But this is the reason why.

Go ahead, finish your point.

Well, ads and games, like, I.

To me, it's kind of like, you know, how some TVs will, like, show a product placement in a.

You know, like, they'll have an Apple computer or they'll be driving a Toyota car, and you can tell clearly that they're, you know, that the logo is in the shot, and that's the kind of advertising, but they're not actively talking about it.

But, I mean, I remember an episode of Bones I was watching a long time ago, they were talking about the Toyota and she was like, let's take my, let's take my Prius.

It's got such and such in it and in the script.

And I'm like, oh, don't do that.

That's awful.

You know, like if you're running around in a Call of Duty world or Arc Raiders or.

Well, maybe not Arc Raiders, but something more modern, Cyberpunk or something like that, and you run past a vending machine that has.

It's a Coke machine.

You know, I get that, whatever.

It makes no difference to me because it doesn't affect gameplay.

But the first time, you know, I. Cora is talking to Zavala and she says, the vets are attacking.

We better stock up on.

You better have some Slim Jim so we can have our energy to go.

Out there and fight.

You know, it's like that.

No, I mean, no, that would be a hard pass.

I would definitely have a double take on that one.

Yeah, I mean, but they're even saying like, you know, at the end of your session or whatever before you get to start the next one.

I don't want that either.

Nobody's going to sign up for that.

Nobody.

Zipink says, the second I see an advertisement on any Xbox games, I'm canceling Game Pass ultimate that I've had since it launched and uninstalling any Microsoft game, you know, you know, good old EA was going to put ads into their sports games.

That's the first thing that, that new connection with Dubai and the, the, I think Saudi Arabia, when they did that big leverage buyout of EA Games, of ea, period, they were wanting to put out.

There was a, there was a story that came out months and months ago that I was going to talk about about how they wanted to put ads in the game, like billboards and stuff on the stadium and stuff that were like running banner ads and stuff.

And I'm like, that kind of takes away from the realism, doesn't it, a little bit when you're.

No, I, I don't think it does in that situation because you're getting advertisements at the place anyway, you know, so, you know, like, you know, you see, you know, sponsored by Ford or whatever.

Sponsored by Coca Cola or.

Yeah, you know, on the, on the banners along, along the, the walls and, and the big screen TVs.

I, I get that, but it's not interrupting the gameplay.

Nobody's talking about it.

It's just there they've been doing that, they've been doing ad placement in movies forever.

And it's obvious sometimes when, when the guy grabs a coke can and drinking coke or pouring a thing of tequila and you see the brand on the screen and stuff that doesn't interrupt my.

It still keeps the realism right that I don't have a problem with that.

But can you imagine taking down a big boss and then all of a sudden it goes to a loading screen and then all of a sudden it stops and you see a fricking ad come on like you're watching tv.

Man that talk about taking you right out of the moment.

Yeah, that'll never fly.

That's gonna be another example.

Remarket people if they put that in there, people are just not gonna sign up.

Well or they're cancel.

I'm glad you mentioned that because Steam loves that Xbox is doing this because they have a policy on they ban any ad gated gameplay.

Steam policy prohibits games from gating poor progression or playtime behind third party commercial ad views.

While a native in universe product placements like we talked about, billboards and all that have historically slipped by mobile style ad networks where watching ads grants playtime credits, unlocks access and provides artificial bonuses violates Steam monetization rules.

And Steam is all about preserving that premium and standard play free to play economies.

So they, they want you to, to buy, spend money on these games and support the developers, not watch fricking ads.

So Steam, I think they tried to maybe a long time ago mentioned something about ads in the Steam community.

There was major backlash over this.

So Steam, Steam was like no, no we're not, we don't.

If you're putting any kind of gated ad viewed gated stuff it's not going to be on Steam.

And that's again while so many people trust Steam because they seem at least they seem like they're advocating for the gamer and that maybe even some of the people who own and run Steam are gamers.

So yeah, I mean that adds to it.

I mean if, if Xbox are PlayStation ever gets to the point where they're just adding them, you know what.

And you can't do anything about it.

People will just, that'll just be more people just say I'm going to PC and going to Steam markets will win.

You know, whoever gives the best product is going to win.

Well you know if they spent the money to patent this Xbox Microsoft, you know they have good intention of probably putting it in at least trying it maybe more subtly, I don't know.

But the good news is patents are patents and you know companies apply for patents all the time just so they can say they were the first one to do it.

And so if they decide to implement it later on, then they've got the rights to it.

But most, I'd say most of the time that they put a patent request in there, it may never ever come to fruition.

And all they have to really do is ask their audience and they're going to find out, you know, before they implement any of this.

Would you be okay with ads?

Hell no.

Everybody's going to say hell no.

Yeah, it's, it's pointless.

Zipping says, I have Nitro.

I can convince people to move to Teamspeak or something else.

I don't see too many ads.

I had to turn off a lot of ad toggles in the Discord settings.

Now I will say this.

I have Nitro as well and I pay a big price every month to.

For Nitro to sponsor and boost our server.

It's part of the reason why we get so many extra features and in our Discord community, like, you know, our labeling and stuff and special little, little treats, little extra things that they put in and in our server that you wouldn't find on another server unless they supported it and boosted it as well.

And we have a lot of people who boost our server.

Gives us a lot of benefits.

But I will actually collect these little orbs through Nitro.

And what they'll do is they'll put a banner at the bottom, like the bottom left and it'll say, listen, watch 30 seconds and we'll give you 240 orbs.

And the reason I actually support this is because one, it doesn't disrupt my gameplay.

It doesn't disrupt what I'm doing in Discord.

I'm like, fine, I'm at the movie theater waiting for the movie to start.

I'll play this ad for 30 seconds and watch an advertisement for a new game coming out.

It seems like it's always game oriented.

That's Discord's thing.

They're all about the gamers.

And I'll watch an ad on a new game.

30 Seconds didn't cost me a whole lot of time because I'm not doing anything anyway.

I'm just sitting there waiting for a movie and I get 240 orbs.

And I just bought a bunch of little cosmetic things for my character using an.

In using a.

Some kind of economy of these orbs that I can use instead of paying cash.

And I guess that's kind of the way they're.

But when you put it, in a game, when you're, when your mind is escaping into this world and all of a sudden you see a, a Goodyear Tires ad, I don't think that's going to work.

I don't see how that would ever work, man.

Let people at least opt in.

Like, like with Discord, you can opt in, you can put, you know, if it's like, play this game for 15 minutes.

I'll go, no, hide this.

I don't want to play a game.

I just want to, I'll watch something for 30 seconds.

If it gives me 240 orbs.

Sure, that's working for me.

Because it doesn't, it's not taking really any of my time.

And all I have to do is play it.

I don't have to watch it, just have to play it.

But, right, yeah, you can go do something else.

Where the hell is our gaming gone, man?

I mean, gaming is so much different now than it used to be.

It just seems like it's still trying to appease those stockholders and not what gamers actually want.

And that's why it kind of tied into that news article I talked about with one of the heads of Riot saying players are reshaping the gaming industry and telling people what they want.

And if they don't, if the, if the companies are throwing it down our throats that they think this is what we want, we're rejecting it and it doesn't make any money.

It's an easy way to correct the market.

Right.

Like you said, free market.

So.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, maybe AI will help with this too, you know, because if that offsets some of the cost of building a game, then you don't have to go out and, you know, pimp yourself to a bunch of advertisers to, to help pay for it.

Yeah.

You know, and you know, I know there's a lot of bad talk about AI and a lot of the public is against all these AI data centers and stuff like that.

I, I would just like to ask people to actually look into some of the facts on these data centers that a lot of times it's a lot of hype.

They're not actually, you know, draining the water and making your energy bills go up.

In fact, at most of the places where those places are being built, they are contributing, the companies are contributing, and the, and the energy bill is actually going down.

If you look at the facts in the right space.

Yes.

So just, just don't, just don't follow the, you know, the dread.

That's just like These companies are just out to screw you and take all your water, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, I mean, just, I'm just saying, just, just don't follow the media blindly on either side.

I always, always get the incomplete picture from both sides.

Yeah.

Depp1 Merc says Hulu still does have ads and you have to upgrade to Hulu Premium for ad free.

Yeah, Hulu was always the budget friendly streaming service, you know, and then they merged with Disney and then it all went downhill from there.

Kingsley said.

And again, it's like, it's like you say if it's, if it's at the beginning of the show or the end of the show, it's less intrusive.

So that's, they've interrupt right in the middle of a funny scene or something and they just put it in the middle.

Like you're now watching the video for cat food.

Yeah, it's like, no thanks.

And this is the reason why I like YouTube TV because it'll record everything for me using my DVR that's built into the system.

And when the ads come on, it's like click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

Yep, show starts again.

I know exactly how many clicks it takes.

Skip through all the ads.

Every now and then they'll throw an extra 30 seconds in there to throw me off.

But I pretty much looking at the screen to see how, you know, skipping through the ads and everything.

I'm just not a fan of ads, man.

I'm not.

And if I'm going to watch an ad, you better sure as hell pay me to watch it like what Discord does.

But you have to be able to opt in or out.

It can't be something that's automatically put in.

This goes back to the reason why I really don't think game streaming, the cloud service streaming, is the way to go in the future.

I really don't.

Because you're going to be so tied in and at the mercy of these gaming studios or these platforms that can turn on or off, they can probably throw.

You know, you hear about it all the time about the, the cell phone companies throttling your data because you're getting up in data.

So they start throttling it where it can only Mac.

You can only see stuff at a certain level and sometimes it's not even viewable at certain levels, just that level of lack of control.

I just think that's just, that's just not the way to go, man.

I really don't.

Some comments here before we move on Kingsley says yeah, you're mentioning the TV services having ads, so I'm surprised the video game streaming services have not started it sooner.

And of course PlayStation will eventually also on the lower ones.

I don't think free market will change this idea much, Max, because we see TV and video streaming services have been doing it for decades.

So now.

So looks like it is mostly holding.

Oh, sorry, Zipping.

You were responding to Kingsley on that.

Okay.

Sports games can put product placement ads in game, but sometimes.

But something like Destiny type of game would end up pushing people away.

That was from Doc Hooligan.

Yeah, I agree, man.

Well, it's hard to advertise in futuristic type games.

You know, you're advertising a product.

Yeah.

You're in the future, you're not watching tv, you're escaping into a video game world and stuff.

And then all of a sudden you see that Zipping says Quake Live was originally a failed attempt at a free to play Quake 3 in your browser that was ad supported with in game ads on models and the maps.

Yeah, and Kingsley says people have looked into it and facts have shown it the other way also in many of the cases.

So the problem is people have different definitions of fact sometimes.

Now here I will.

That's, that's true, Kingsley.

I mean, and, and the problem with this is is you don't really know until after it's built and at that point it's too late.

But I'm just.

But Todd, who do you believe?

I'm just saying, how do you know who to believe?

That's, that's the problem.

If you remember the last time I was on somebody asked if you could change like one thing in the world, what would it be?

I said that we would have news sources that just told the facts and the real facts and you didn't have to try to figure out who was lying and who was not.

You know, it's changed so much.

It's changed so much and no, I'm not going to go there.

I was going to.

Let's not go there.

I was going to go there, but I'm not going to go there.

We can go there offline, I guess.

Yeah, offline.

We could talk about it.

But, but like there again, like I said, this is why I don't think streaming services and gaming is the way to go in the future.

I think as long as I can hang on to hardware supported games where I can have the own the hardware and decide when to play my games and what to play.

And I think eventually down the road, I swear I think there's going to be a law where digital content, you have ownership rights on digital content if you purchase it.

Just like a movie, just like a song, just like anything you purchase is yours.

And I swear, I mean, I know China already does it, they actually have it where you can pass it down to your children.

Any digital rights, the things you own and anything you own can be passed on in your will.

I really think it.

We're heading that way.

I really think.

How crazy, how crazy that China has more before us in this regard than us.

Yes, China.

What the hell.

Yeah, exactly, man.

Oh, hey, we're creeping up in time so I want to make sure we can address the other stuff I want to make sure we can address the other things happening in the show.

So we're going to do our catch up segment right after this.

Hey everybody, this is the wonderkid Jealous gaming and you're listening to Guardian Down Round table.

Let's get into our catch up segment for tonight.

Todd, obviously I want to start with you, man.

I haven't talked to you in forever, man.

Catch us up.

What's been going on in your life?

Any changes recently in your life?

What have you been watching?

What have you been gaming?

Fill us in, man.

What's going on?

Yeah, well, I mean the whole reason I'm on this podcast is because of a change.

I used to go to work at Friday at 4am and they did some changes where they took away some premium pay from that 4pm 4am shift.

So I had to go to 2200, which is, you know, 10pm so I'm driving overnights now, which has its pluses and its minuses, you know, less traffic and all that stuff.

But at the same time, you know, 4:00' clock in the morning rolls around and you've been awake for, you know, six hours and you're kind of like, ugh, you know, your body's like, you should be in bed, dude.

So there's that.

But that has freed up my Thursday nights, you know, to come on here every now and then.

So that's awesome.

It's a win.

Yep, yep.

So that's good.

But work's awesome.

Well, I mean it's as awesome as you can be for being an over the road truck driver.

Walmart.

I drive truck for Walmart for those of know.

And they treat us really well, pay us really well.

So that's all good.

Some bad news in the area.

My father in law passed away last month.

So sorry about it.

Yeah, it kind of sucks.

And you know but you know, people are.

When they're 85 and they're in bad health, you kind of expect it.

So it's not like it was not expected.

But you know, we've had to move my mother in law into our house with us and that's been a challenge over the last month or so.

So I would like to suggest anybody out there, no matter how old you are, if you've got kids or you're leaving somebody behind, please take care of this stuff before you pass.

I mean, you know, set these arrangements up, please.

Because it is, you know, the last thing your family needs that's left behind is to try to work out funeral arrangements and pay for the funeral stuff and all, you know, just don't leave your family with it, please.

You know, I'm actually need to work on that myself.

It's.

This has kind of just been opening my eyes for all this immortality, you know, mortality sucks.

But anyway, so we pretty much got that done.

So hopefully we get things back to normal as far as getting her moved in here and everything.

Let's see, tv.

What have I been watching lately?

I have, I have enough time to watch maybe like one show at the end of my shift just to calm down before I go to bed.

I watched On Ronan Red Lion's recommendation.

I watched All Things Great and Small, that show about the veterinarian in the 1940s during the war.

That, that's a great show.

It's still ongoing, waiting for the next season of that.

I watched all of the Middle with Patricia Heaton, that sitcom.

Oh yeah, that was pretty funny.

Malcolm in the Middle.

No, not Malcolm in the Middle.

It's kind of like, it's kind of like the network version of that.

It was on CBS or something like that, you know, so it's kind of a less.

Little less crude, you know, but it's still really funny, you know, it's designed for mainstream tv.

That was a great show.

And I'm now watching the Chosen, you know, which is Story of Jesus.

I was very curious about that one because, you know, when you start talking about doctrine and you start filling in blanks that aren't really, you know, in the, in the Bible, you gotta be careful as they're not going too far off script, you know.

So I, I've really been watching that with the discerning eye, trying to think and it, and it seems really good so far, you know, like.

Well, for example, you know, they're talking like, you know, Jesus had 12 disciples.

So they, they have the disciples talking about you know, their doubts, like, we're following this guy, you know, are we.

You know, like, what are we doing?

We don't even know what we're doing, you know, and there's doubt.

And they didn't talk about that in the Bible, but you can totally imagine them going through that at the time.

So, yeah, I think it's.

I think it's good.

And doctrine, doctrinally, is that the word?

Yeah, I think it's, you know, lining up pretty well with the Bible.

So I've been pretty happy with that.

It's a great show, if anybody's interested.

Right.

You'd say it's.

Yeah, it seems.

Yeah, yeah, it seems.

It seems.

So.

So we got.

Yeah, so I'm in the process of that.

Enjoying that one.

As far as gaming, I pretty much switched over to Division 2.

I do my raids on Thursday night and I switched over to Division 2, which is kind of like Destiny, but in a real world, except for you can't jump, which I really miss.

Yeah, no, but it's a great game.

I mean, it sounds very similar to Arc Raiders in a lot of ways.

Like, you know, there's projects, there's blueprints, there's an open world that you can go and explore all kinds of things and find little cubby holes and, you know, all kinds of little side missions, things like that to do.

Really fun game.

I've been focusing on trying to get that done because Crossplay is coming in November, so I'll be able to play with, you know, Zombie and Kingsley and some of the guys who have it.

I think Barley's got it maybe.

And maybe Kelvin, I'm not sure.

But that.

That ought to be fun.

So I'm trying to get through the story mode on that, so I'm ready to go.

So I think that is about all that's really going on in my life.

Amen.

I think.

Yeah.

I just want to mention, you mentioned your mother in law's moved in.

We had to move my mother in law as well because she fell several times.

And I've talked about this in the prior podcast episodes, but she is in a retirement home now.

Full retirement, full support and everything.

Because she fell so many times that her dementia is really, really bad now.

And it just kills me to see her because she was a once very vibrant woman who is now drooling.

Yeah, they're not the same.

Yeah.

You know, it's just sad to see and I really think, not to get too spiritual here, but I really think some higher power wanted me to See these two versions of my parents, my in laws that, you know, retired, Pretty much led a pretty sedentary life.

And then I look at my parents, who.

My dad has not stopped working.

He's still doing AC work.

He's still in the H VAC business.

Him and his.

My dad and my mom, they always ride together to bids or do stuff, and they're always moving.

My dad's gonna be 81 next month, man.

Wow, he's in really good shape.

I mean, he's.

He's been helping me.

I'm getting a split unit put in my office here because this thing is.

This whole office just cooks.

And my normal AC system just can't keep it cool enough.

So I've got a split air conditioning put in here.

We've got it all installed and the board went out on one.

On it or something.

So we're waiting for that part to come in.

And I just saw him today, in fact, and I went to breakfast with him in the morning.

And dude, if there's one thing I could tell people is definitely spend time with your family, especially as they get older, because you're never gonna know when.

You just never know when that day is gonna come when you don't see your dad or your mom anymore, you know?

So.

Yeah, But I totally empathize with you.

I understand what you're going through.

We didn't.

We weren't crazy enough to.

To let her move into our house.

We brought it.

We brought her to our house for Christmas one season, and that was a big mistake.

It totally ruined Christmas.

I mean.

I mean, she just doesn't understand what's going on and.

And just.

Just totally really put sour things.

Well, thanks.

Yeah.

Thankfully, all of ours.

It's like she's got some physical issues, you know, mobility issues.

Right?

Definitely now.

Yeah.

The most.

A lot of drugs.

A lot of drugs.

I hear you, man.

I hear you.

They're all on drugs.

We're all on drugs as we go.

Yeah.

Let's see.

Since I released my video on ARC Raiders, the PvE mode controversy earlier this week, I did jump back into our craters.

I did play the frozen trail update today, and I gotta tell you, man, I don't know what changes they made, but when you play on the pendola pass, which is the new map, it's huge, by the way.

The arc enemies are tough.

In fact, I was watching Dr. Disrespect play today, and he wanted to stir up a fight.

You know him, he's a PvE PvP guy.

He wanted to fight somebody and it was so funny.

He was chasing all these people around trying to rat him and this bully, this new bully enemy comes up on him and just stomps all over him and he's carrying a free kit with like a lightweight gun and stuff that they give you with the free kits.

And then he, he's almost dead and he runs around the corner and another raiders there and shoots him in the head with one shot and kills him and he's just spewing mad and I'm laughing my ass off because dude, go play Call of Duty.

That's what you play, man.

You like those fast twitch acting maps.

Don't go play arc raiders.

But it was just.

I was, I was laughing my ass off watching that because it seems that seems the rats are too busy trying to stay alive right now.

And maybe that's on purpose from, from embark, but I don't know.

I'll let you know as I play more of it.

But my God, the frigate is just enormous.

It's literally like a, it's like a little mini raid.

It floats in the air.

They have these little portals would come down, you hop on them and it brings you up to the ship and then you have all these levels of the ship you have to try to work your way up to.

It's very much like Marathon's game ship.

You know where you get flown up to the ship and you have to get these rooms to.

In every room you get to the final area where you can.

But they have loot areas everywhere on this frigate and it's just a lot of fun.

A lot of people have not been able to do it because it's just the enemies are just so freaking thick.

Watching wise.

The Voice blind auditions just finished up for the week.

I love the Voice, man.

I, I actually watch clips of the Voice, you know, Australia, the Voice, Denmark.

I mean there's man, there are some talented people in Denmark.

Let me tell you.

Those people can sing, man, but they're, they're.

I love the.

I love the Voice.

Always have.

And the blind auditions are always my favorite because it's always you're seeing this new fresh talent that they can't see, you know.

And when they turn around it's like a big surprise.

They.

Yeah, they're moving on to the next level of the competition now.

But I always love the blinds.

It's always the most fun.

Traders is back.

I'll be watching that tonight after the show because it airs like tonight and like I said, I've mentioned this before.

What I love about that show, it's just a really fun social experiment.

Every season is really different because you begin to understand how different kinds of people tick.

And it'd be a great, I think it'd be a great psychological for like psych students to watch because you can just see how things work out.

But I'm in three fantasy football leagues and I have been being, I have been on a winning streak.

I was in first place in my two NREL life leagues and I think I was in second in the, in the, in the GDC fantasy football league.

But man, Brittany squashed my ass last week.

Last week I did terrible.

I won one game out of all of them and none of my players performed like they were supposed to.

But that's through.

That's fantasy football for you.

My wife and I did see one movie this week using my AMC stubs, a list membership, of course, where I can see up to four movies free every week on any screen, any format.

And of course you can reserve those movies and your seat online with no extra fees.

And I know I don't get paid to say that.

If I did, I would mention that they don't have any kind of sponsorship program.

They're behind the times.

But the movie we saw this week was called Verity.

It stars Josh Hartnett, Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway.

And it's kind of a, it's kind of a, a weird trio movie between these three characters.

And it's about this world famous, this worldwide famous author played by Anne Hathaway, who was unable to complete her latest book due to a car accident.

And she hires this ghostwriter, played by Dakota Johnson, which is a much younger version of Anne Hathaway, if you can imagine, to get, you know, into her notes and finish writing the book.

And all this, of course is coordinated by her famous author's husband, played by Josh Hartnett.

And you can put two and two together.

They have an affair and she's sitting there, she can't move.

She's like supposedly she's, you know, she's can't move.

She's in like a coma or something.

I don't know.

Anyway, from the car accident, nothing is of course what it seems in the movie.

It's very much a suspenseful type movie, but it has a really weird twist at the end.

It gets really dark in the end and I don't want to ruin it in case you guys want to see it.

I will say that my wife and I were not on the same page with this one.

I thought it was better than last week's movie, that primetime movie I mentioned last week.

But she thought it was.

She thought otherwise.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics were not kind to this film.

33% From the audience, from the, from the critics.

Audience fared a little bit better at 71.

I agree with the audience on this one.

I give it three and a half stars.

I think it was good, but not great.

It's probably not going to end up on my top 10 list for 20, 26 of movies, but I was really entertained.

I thought the twist at the end was cruel but very fitting.

And I recommend watching this one if you do have a chance to see it.

What was the name of it?

It's called.

It's called Verity.

It's like a, it's like a thriller.

It's like a thriller type movie.

Okay.

But next week we are going to be seeing Digger with Tom Cruise.

It's a parody around billionaires and the social reckoning is out now.

That's the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

I have high hopes for these films.

I really hope that are going to be good.

People are very split right now with Digger.

Either people are hating it or loving it.

But I'll report, you know, I'll report back with my take in a future episode.

So I did, like I said, I did try the frozen trail update this week.

As far as destiny goes, like I said, I mentioned in last week's episode, we brought a new member of our community law through his first desert perpetual raid.

And I believe we have another raid planned for this Saturday night.

So if you catch us live, I go live 10:30 Eastern Time on Saturday night.

It's a late night raid and if you, if you fail to miss it or you're in the uk, you know, where it's already bedtime, you can watch the replays on my Twitch and YouTube channels.

It's Todd the Gator.

T O D D T H E G A T R and see how much I messed up and threw.

So yeah, that's it for me.

We got some questions for the show, Mr. McMaximo, so let's get into that right after this.

Hey Guardians, would you like to send us a question for the show?

There's several easy ways to do it.

It.

First, join our Discord server.

Discord GG GuardianDownroundtable.

There's a link in our show notes down below as well.

There's a channel in our Discord labeled Podcast Questions where you can type in your question for the show.

So come hang out with us and we might read it out live.

Second, you can send us an email or.

What I really like is for you to send us a voicemail with your question at guardiandowcast and we might play it live on the podcast.

Think of it as talking with us right on the show.

Hey, we love voicemails.

So let's hear them.

Thanks for listening.

And later, Guardian.

This is the final segment of our show.

This is where you get our questions from, you guys.

And we're going to start off with some voicemails.

We first have one from Mr. Uncle Scum Death and I don't know, are we going to have a Skun Death's corner every week there, Mr. Mr. Uncle Skun death.

I'm just curious, but yeah, I think you and Kingsley are going to like this question.

So here we go.

Hello, Scum Death here.

You might be able to hear the PS4 Pro screaming behind me.

Yeah, I'm playing the Division 2 at the minute.

This game really reminds.

I'm about to two or three hours in now.

This game really reminds me of Syphon Filter from the old PS1 days as one of my favorite games of all time.

The old Siphon Filter.

Let's question for the show.

What is a recent game that reminds.

You of a sort of retro game?

Might be a stupid question, but you know, this really gives me the Siphon Filter feels.

Yeah.

And I'm loving it, so love ya.

All right.

What do you think there, Mick Maximo?

He's playing well.

I don't.

Yeah, yeah, it's great.

I'm glad.

And he can join the clan when we make a clan.

I think Kings is planning on making a clan for that.

Kingsley already did, I'm sure.

Yeah.

No, the one I think of, I don't play a lot of games.

Obviously we've talked about that.

But the one I can think of most recently is Astrobot.

I played that and it was.

It kind of reminded me of those old school platformers that I played a lot, you know, the Sly Coopers and the Jak and Daxters and the Ratchet and Clanks.

I love those games.

I wish they came out with more of those type games.

So as soon as I got Astrobot for Christmas, I and Destiny had a little break.

You know, one of their down times.

I. I played that game straight through as fast as I could.

Just loved every second of it.

It's great.

Yeah, it was Crash Bandicoot for me when it was with us.

Great.

It's so hard to think of it as an Xbox game right now, because PlayStation owned that game for so long.

Yeah.

So weird how.

How those IPs get thrown around these days.

But I got.

I played all the, all the Crash Bandicoot games.

Our whole family would sit and take turns playing every night.

And I really miss those games, man.

And I did start playing Astrobot.

And I tell you what I've been doing lately as I've been playing some playthrough videos for my grandson when he comes over, because this is a very good game for him if he's getting into gaming.

And he's totally addicted to that thing, man.

Crazy Taxi, he loves that game.

He wants.

Every time he.

And he's so smart, he'll come in and go, hey, Pop, Pop.

How about some Crazy Taxi?

He's two and a half years old, man.

Two and a half years old.

I'm like, that's great.

That's a fun game, don't you think?

I'm like, who is this kid?

He's your grandkid, that's what.

But the problem is, once you sit down and play Crazy Taxi, he doesn't want to leave.

You got to pry it off of him.

And I was really worried there for a couple weeks, but he's.

He's lightened up.

He's lightened up lately.

But.

But yeah, man, I'll play.

I'll sit and I'll have him sit in my lap here, and we'll watch one of the screens here on the PC and I'll play a gameplay.

There's a video where they actually shows the whole playthrough of all of Astrobot.

And he's enthralled with it.

So I think what I'm going to do once he hits like four, I think, well, you know, preschool, age, probably maybe five.

I'm going to play Astrobot and have him come over and play with me so we can maybe flip the, swap the controllers or something if one of us dies or whatever.

Do you still have your PlayStation 2 or not?

No, I have.

I've got two of them.

PlayStation 4 and a 5.

That's all I got left.

Yeah, I got those PlayStation twos.

And one of these days, you know, when I'm older, I'll probably whip them out and, you know, replay those games again.

I mean, it'd be great for a kid, you know, because they have no access to online.

Yeah, you know, exactly.

No online at all.

So you can just let them play those games.

That'd be great.

Yeah, that would be.

Thank you, Uncle Scum Death.

Thank you for your Question.

I'll look for your next one next week, sir.

All right.

He's got a great accent, doesn't he?

He does.

I love him, man.

I love it.

I love it.

Lee is the greatest.

He's just.

He.

He has a cart of gold, man.

He's.

I. I really wanted to visit him when I was there last and he was out of town.

He was in South Africa when I was there a couple summers ago.

I was so bummed, man, because I really wanted to meet the dude and we couldn't be more different people.

I mean, he is totally different person than I am.

He's into, like, death metal and.

Yeah.

Beard down to here.

And he's just not the same kind of person that I would be.

I'm much more.

I don't know what the word would be, but I'm more vanilla.

Maybe like vanilla rap.

Right, Kingsley?

More vanilla rap.

And he's more like dmz.

Dmc, or not dmc, but like one of those really hardcore rappers back in the day.

Can't think of it.

Anyway, speaking of Kingsley Mac, he has a question for us here and.

Oh, he sent a voicemail as well.

So here, I think this is for you.

I think this is for you, McMaximo.

Here we go.

Hey, this is Kingsley Mac.

You know, Todd, you couldn't get rid of me that quickly.

Now I'm calling every week or every time, but did have a very interesting thing this time.

Who knows, Maybe I can start calling in with little crazy conspiracy theories or something to mix it up.

But the news.

You know how I had my expose a few months back about the history of Jason Jones and starting Bungie?

Well, he's starting the new studio and I don't know if he talked about it earlier in the show, but a studio called Stone Kite.

What sounds really interesting is they're doing variable forms of media.

Their first proof of concept thing is just a comic book, but their main thing is they want to make video games.

They want to do video games with potentially even like TV shows or other things.

Maybe he's doing this because Sony never actually let them do that with Destiny, even though they claim they would have other forms of media and entertainment with Destiny.

Here's the crazy conspiracy theory.

You know, we always talk about the potential destiny killers.

I mean, I never said that with things like Anthem or whatever, but could this actually be a studio that could be a killer of Destiny?

Interesting thoughts.

Very impressed.

It's Jason Jones, though, and hope to hear some good things from the studio.

Anyways, talk to you all later, everyone.

Bye.

Thanks, Keeasley.

Thanks for sending that in.

What do you think there?

I actually saw this come across and I was like, I was kind of torn because the first thing that came to mind is that saying of Jack of all trades, master of none.

You know, it's like if you're trying to focus on everything, are you going to be good at anything?

And then, I don't know, but.

And even the title of the article said their first thing, you know, they said they're trying to be innovative and everything.

And then the first, the headline said that they.

The first story was about AI robots going rogue.

And I thought, wait, isn't that the Matrix?

I mean, it's, I mean, that's not exactly a new innovative idea, is it?

I mean, it's a fresh topic because that's what's going around right now, but it's not exactly, exactly never done before.

So I don't know.

I mean, he's a game developer, so.

And I know he's got a lot of contributors.

I saw.

I didn't recognize any of the names, but according to something I read, they said that it's a lot of really well known people good at their craft.

So.

Yeah, and he's.

I guess we can hope for the best because I would love to see like, like, say like Kingsley was saying, just not, just not a video game.

I mean, look at how popular Fallout and the series was.

You know, right after the games, you know, were out, then they put out Fallout, the, the TV series, and it was fairly popular.

But I, I don't know, you know more about this than I do, but aren't most of the franchises, when they go to TV just not that great?

Well, what, what, like didn't they have a Halo series or something?

Yeah, I saw the Halo series.

I thought the Halo series was okay.

I mean, it wasn't terrible, but.

Yeah, I mean, it was okay.

But I mean, if they're designing, say, say you're designing a game and then you're, you're gonna try to fit it into a TV and you're like, well, we can't.

How do we do that on tv?

You know?

Or they're talking about doing audio.

Well, audio has a whole other aspect to it where you can actually describe what the person is thinking.

And that's much harder to do on, on a TV screen.

You know, unless you're going to do like a, a narration kind of a thing, you know, like Stand by Me or something, you know, where they're narrating and that kind of, I mean, that works in some scenarios and not others, so I don't, I don't know.

It's just, I don't know.

We'll see.

I mean, good.

Best of luck to him.

I hope it works.

I mean, he's one of the OGs, so, you know, he has a ton of money from the sale of Bungie.

He's got the money to back a lot of that stuff.

And I think he's starting with a comic too, which I guess is laying the foundation for this game studio.

David, not Dave.

I'm sorry.

Jason Jones has always been one to tinker and play around with stuff, so I'm, I'm always optimistic of anybody who's super creative.

And I mean, he's behind Halo, man.

I mean, no one saw that game coming, so I, I, I wish him the best.

Sure.

Make it the Destiny killer.

Kingsley.

I'm ready for it, man.

I mean, all we need to just find someone who can do it better and, you know, Destiny has never had a competitor.

I don't care what you say.

No one has been able to compete with Destiny in their realm.

And maybe it will be someone from within the company that starts their own studio.

I don't know, it's hard to say.

Well, they don't have access.

I mean, I'm assuming he doesn't have access to the Destiny stories though, which is sad because, you know, Sony's sitting on this landmine art.

Landmine, this gold mine.

It's not a landmine, it's a gold mine.

This is what, they're just not doing anything with it.

This is what perplexed me about Fallout.

For such a popular series that you, you gotta admit, they didn't see this coming.

You didn't see these people that are all of a sudden gonna be pulled into this Fallout world and you didn't have a game ready to, for them to play.

This was such a bad timing, so.

Such bad timing, man.

I mean, they really dropped the ball on the Fallout.

They should have had a brand new Fallout game ready to roll after that series was released.

But maybe they were.

I think if Todd, I think Todd, when he was interviewed, said they, they really didn't expect it to go anywhere.

They didn't expect the popularity for this, this TV series to be as big as it turned out to be.

So I'm like, dude, come on, man, you serious?

I don't know.

With the history of most video games, movie, you know, being turned into movies, I guess I could see his point a little bit, but man, the casting, everything was just done so well in Fallout.

Just such a great show.

We have a few questions.

I would, I would welcome new Destiny content, you know, on tv, but there's no new game out, but I would still take it, you know.

You know, Sony owns all these studios for TV and for movies.

I.

It was such a. I really.

I.

You.

You.

Anybody who's been around long enough on this podcast knows I was talking about Sony being a great thing for Bungie because they can actually put it in other types of media like TV series or actual movies that go to the.

To the theaters, you know, and I really thought that's the way they were going to go, but I guess I was just looking too optimistically at the whole thing and maybe when it comes to ones and zeros, you know, maybe it's just a more realistic to just do whatever they did.

But anyway, got some questions in the discord here.

I want to make sure we ask.

This is from Dave.

Such amazing news for the fan base.

For myself, I haven't played another first person shooter since because nothing compares or feels the same yet.

Just like what I just said.

My question is more out of curiosity.

How will this be done?

I thought the vaulting happened due to server and engine limitations.

Does this mean they are working on moving Destiny 2 across a newer engine to support it at the same time?

Seems like a massive amount of work if they're going to make a new game, make a new games as well.

Etc.

What are your thoughts?

This is a video that Paul Tassey put out this week.

He goes, why would they go to all the trouble to bring back the gate, you know, the, the sunset content in the Destiny 2 game, you know.

And my answer to that is is because this just one step and many steps to reinvigorate the franchise.

How are they going to do that though?

What do you think, Todd?

What do you think they're going to do, man?

I mean, is it going to be.

I think me and Kingsley went back and forth on this a couple shows ago.

Is it going to be new episodic content?

Is it going to be just new stories added into the end of the Destiny Online world like I think it will be, or will it be a Destiny 3 game?

Which way do you think they're going to go here, man?

I don't, I don't know.

The, like the whole decision to sink this much money into just going back and giving us old content because they feel bad doesn't seem right.

There's gotta be something else behind it other than they feel guilty for taking.

Content from us that is not.

There's gotta be something in the future coming down the pike.

But what it is, who knows.

But I mean they clearly didn't want to.

If, if they're not going to bring out anything in the future, why would they care if they've pissed us off?

Exactly.

You know, I, believe me, it's, it's all about money.

Yes.

They have to gain the trust.

I mean that's what you know, Mr.

But Mr. Destiny said at the game developers conference, you know, you got to build trust first.

But then he, then he kicked himself in the dick when he said, you know, we can't over promise.

But anyway because it creates patterns.

Right?

Well you got to build trust and keep trust.

That's the problem.

They, they had the trust, they, they lost it.

Yeah.

I think that's what they realize is they first have to start by bringing back the content that we paid for.

You know, that's kind of a, that's kind of a no brainer.

Well in the beginning of the Destiny 2 story, like it like you're just lost when you come in.

Of course, you know, we, you guys have talked about that.

That's a crucial part of the Destiny 2 story is when they kick you off the ship and you have no light, nobody.

And Redwood rocks, man, it's great.

Very few of us got to play that, you know.

And when it was sunset we weren't able to go back and play it.

And a lot of new people who decided to jump in like we had a new member today in our discord says I've always wanted to play Destiny and now that I know that they're bringing back the game, I figured now's the time to get back into it and go ahead and start trying to play it.

This was a new member just joined today on our Discord and I'm like, man, can you imagine that a lot of the new players that came in have to go through that five minute video to catch them up on all the story of Destiny.

Yawn.

That's so boring, man.

And I, I don't know about you, but I don't have a very long attention span as it is watching a five minute catch up video on the history of Destiny 2.

You might lose me.

People might just hit that skip button and just, just start playing and hope that they can learn more as they play.

But it's such a, so terrible that that new player experience is so bad, man.

This is why I still think that if they do Bring back and do come back and have a destiny online world.

They would have to put it on a new, at least an altered or an updated engine to be able to hold all of this content.

Because right now apparently it's like spaghetti code, right?

If you mess up something over here, then the Vex do something over here because the engine's so old, it's been out for so long and they've updated it, you know, they updated it I think with final shape.

I think that's when they updated the engine.

They increased the did redid something to the lighting and the worlds and stuff.

And I think what they did is they actually stripped some of the details in the world to, to account for the added content.

But I don't know man.

I mean only the studio heads really know how that's going to happen and.

But Dave, it is a very relevant question to ask because it's crossed our mind too.

So thanks for asking it.

Thanks for asking the question, man.

Excuse me, we have a few other questions here.

Okay.

Okay.

This is from Kingsley Mac.

Yeah.

Why did you all tease me and then I couldn't be on the show with Max?

Lol.

But second real question.

If you had to pick another profession then what would you do now?

Not saying.

Any regrets about current one, what would you pick differently?

For me, I'd probably get into psychology.

If you had to start it all over again, Todd, what would you do, man?

Would you go the same route?

No, not a chance in hell.

I mean it's not this job sucks.

It's being gone sucks.

And the fact that, you know, being away from home all the time sucks.

And really that's where you make the most money in trucking is if you're away from home.

I mean I looked at a local job around here and it was like 20 bucks an hour.

It's like really.

I mean, come on, I can make that close to that at McDonald's.

You know, it's.

They just really get you.

If you want to stay home, they're going to get you in pay.

So I don't know.

I've.

I've talked to Kingsley about this a little bit.

I don't know exactly what it would be but I think I would like to start just my own business.

Something small like is a one owner operator like you and Kingsley are doing where you don't have a bunch of employees.

It's just you something.

Yeah, I mean I thought about getting into Mac Consulting when I was really into it, believe it or not, before I met Kingsley.

But I Didn't have the.

Know how to do that.

And, well, you have to talk about.

Things like encumbrances and stuff, so.

Yeah.

That's a big word.

That is a very big word.

Yeah.

Sorry that had to be around.

Yes, of course.

No, I. I don't.

I don't know.

I just.

It wouldn't be truck.

And I know that for a fact.

Don't get me wrong, this.

This industry has done me great.

I've.

I'm doing really well financially and everything here, so I can't complain.

But it's not exactly a great life.

And it would have been worse if I had had kids, but I didn't.

I helped raise some nephews quite a bit, but it's totally different when you're having to be away from your kids.

I get that all the time.

I get that.

Yeah.

Okay.

For me, I've always wanted to have my own business.

I always knew I would have my own business.

I just didn't know at the time what I was going to get into.

I went into college begrudgingly.

I didn't want to go to college.

My parents forced me into college.

They paid.

My first two years.

I went to Valencia Community College here in Orlando.

I got my AA degree.

And then I. I took an accounting class in my last year of community college.

And I really liked it.

I liked accounting.

I liked the bookkeeping aspect and all that.

And I said, okay, what.

What can I be professionally where I would know all parts of business and still be able to have my own business?

I was thinking like a private practice, you know, like a CPA or something.

So I went to Fisher School of Accounting.

I was gonna be a cpa.

It only took one semester for me to realize I did not wanna be an accountant.

Because you would go in that class, you would have these little geeky guys with little bow ties.

No offense to anybody, likes bow ties.

And they would freaking crank out this.

They would give us so much homework to do and we had to go twice a week.

And you'd have one day to get all this home.

I remember I was up late in my dorm up at uf and I was trying to get.

I was.

It was taking me for each accounting problem, it was taking me 20 minutes.

And I had like 30 of these problems I had to do.

And it was due, like, the next day at class.

I was like, there's no way I can keep up with this, dude.

My mind is not made for accounting.

I love the aspect.

I love that I can look at my business when my Accountant gives me my tax returns that I pay him to do for me because I don't want to do it.

I look at it and I know exactly what he's doing.

I can know exactly what he's doing with the bookkeeping.

But I don't know if you've ever looked at a book of pronouncements.

It.

Think of it as financial law, where you have.

It's a book about this thick.

Think of it as like a double bible of every situation and how it is applied to the tax code, man.

I was already.

I.

When I got.

I bought that pronouncement book to go through, they already lost me, man.

I was like, I'm done.

It's going to be a marketing degree.

But I always knew I wanted to have a moment like this.

Yeah, account accountants, too.

If you ever think about it, like, you know, if somebody's trying to describe the difference between an exciting job and a boring job, they'll say like, oh, a firefighter or an accountant.

You know, it's like I always said, it's like the go to boring job.

When I was a kid, I thought saying lawyer was smart.

So I'd always tell people I wanted to be a lawyer.

And I did not want to be a lawyer.

I just said it because it made people go, oh, you want to be a lawyer, huh?