Is Gaming About to Implode? The New Player Base & The Secret to Greatness #347

Foreign.

We're a weekly gaming podcast where our mission is simple to bring to light and discuss topics that have an impact on our gaming hobby and at the same time highlighting our diverse gamer community.

Also remaining dedicated to our origins.

Guardian Down Join me, Todd the Gator and my co host Kingsley Mack as we invite a rotating list of guest co hosts every week to join us at the Guardian Down Roundtable.

And now, let's get to it.

What's up Guardians?

Welcome to episode 347 of the newly branded Guardian Down Roundtable.

We've spent nearly seven years as the Guardian Downcast show focusing on Destiny, but now we're taking a more broad overview of the entire gaming hobby.

Every week my co host, Mr. Kingsley Mac, sit down with two rotating guest co hosts to tackle our four topics covering everything from the gaming industry to tech to social media.

Our mission is simple.

We create a dialogue with topics and news that impact our gaming hobby, all while keeping the focus on our community.

We're live every Thursday night, 9pm Eastern time on my Todd the Gator, YouTube and Twitch channels.

That's T o D D T H E G A T R as well as our Discord Live stage.

Hello everybody in the Discord.

How you doing?

A nice turnout tonight.

Once a month we invite a new member from our Discord community to pull up a chair and share their own story with us.

We are a live video show with an audio version available every Monday morning.

We love the live shows and love interacting with the live chat even more.

So jump in, give us your input tonight on what we're talking about and let's things, let's get things started here and start off by checking in with my co host from the great state of Utah, Mr. Kingsley Mack.

How you been doing this week, Mike?

I am good.

I am here and excited to go.

Thank you sir.

Appreciate you.

Our first guest co host was initially back on our show in episode 44.

Yeah, four four titled a gentleman's wager in March of 2020 where he we actually heard his gaming story.

He's been on other episodes along the way as well and he's one of our OGs.

And I mean he is an OG guardian down cast Discord Community member.

He's been in our Discord for over six years.

That is impressive, sir.

He's been a patron of our show since we started it back in January of 2022.

Actually it was he that suggested to us hey, you guys should probably have a Patreon community.

How about doing that?

So the rest is history.

It is another member from the great state of Ohio.

It's Mr.

Arisen.

Phoenix.

How you doing tonight, Phoenix?

Doing pretty good.

Excited to chit chat.

Thanks man.

Appreciate you coming on tonight.

I'm glad you said yes when I asked you to come on because it's been a while, man.

It's been.

Definitely been a while.

Yeah.

Yeah, been a little while.

Our second guest tonight was on our podcast back on episode 164 titled Weapon Crafting is for Dummies.

I don't know what we were talking about back then, but anyway, that was September of 2022 where we heard all about his story.

He's also been on various episodes through the years and even helped me on a past Destiny Help Desk podcast episode when I was doing the Destiny help desk episode 21.

By the way, if you want to go back and watch it, he's one of our YouTube channel members.

He's been in our Discord community for over three years now.

He's one half of the Blueberry Lounge podcast and the POW World podcast.

He's been involved in a lot of our Patreon episodes as well.

He's the career army war games specialist from the great state of California.

It is my friend, Mr.

Native Raider.

How you been, man?

I'm good.

It's good to be here.

It's been a while, so it's going to be nice to catch up.

Appreciate it, man.

Yeah.

Well, we're going to talk about what we're going to be doing this weekend later in our catch up segment.

Can't wait to talk about that.

Here's what we have on tonight's show.

First, we're going to start things off with another Kingsley's Corner with a kitchen.

And Mike will catch us up on any recent news in gaming and tech.

Next, Arisen Phoenix will jump in and present the topics surrounding the state of gaming, actually the state of the whole gaming industry.

And he asked a very important question that I'm sure all of us kind of want to know.

Next, we're going to take a break from the discussion and check in with our weekly Destiny roundup where we'll highlight any news and information concerning Bungie, Destiny 2 and Marathon.

Now that the game is fully released, then it's on to topic number three, where I will discuss a very troubling trend that I'm seeing in the current gaming industry.

And no, it's not what you may be thinking.

And in the final topic of the show, Mr.

Native Raider will be closing things out tonight with his topic surrounding what actually makes a great game.

Since we're all talking about concurrent player counts and all that good stuff, he will break down the components of a great game and we will of course chime in as well.

After which point we're going to shift our focus and kind of catch up with everybody, share our highlights of our weeks, what we're playing, what we're watching, all that good stuff.

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

So if you do have a question for us, make sure you enter them in our podcast Questions channel in our Discord channel or I mean in our Discord community.

And we might read it aloud live on the show, or you can ask it in our chat tonight.

Remember, if you do want to send us a voicemail or email, go to guardiandowncast.com to find out more about that.

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

Hey Guardians, Even though we're now the new Guardian Down Roundtable, all the ways you can contact us are the same.

Just go to guardiandowncast.com where you can email us, write us a review, send us a voicemail that we might air on the show, by the way, and even listen to past episodes where you can also search for a particular guest of the show.

You know, I use this every week to find past episodes that our guest roundtablers are from so you can go back and hear them and hear their story.

Guarding downcast.com.

Okay, we're going to start off tonight with Mr. Kingsley Mac in his Kingsley's Corner with a K. So what do you want to talk to us about tonight, Mike?

Yeah, I have a couple of small stories that I'll just all combine together into a segment.

Each one will be pretty quick and then anyone can speak up at any point you want.

Or if you don't have anything to say, we'll just finish it and then loop back at the end.

The first topic is Apple is disrupting the market with a product they came out with they announced a couple weeks ago.

I don't know everyone has heard about this called the MacBook Neo.

But here's the thing.

PC prices we all know has been going up a lot lately.

RAM is expensive.

Solid state drives are expensive.

Apple now has the cheapest laptop.

What is that crazy?

Oh my God.

The MacBook Neos.

If you compare the specs, they do have the cheapest computer spec to spec comparing to PC.

This computer is an amazing little beast that starts at education 499 and for regular people, 599 and this is an amazing little machine.

It, it would work for anyone who wants to get just general work done, some light photo editing, graphics stuff, but obviously like a work computer doing Microsoft Office, all that stuff.

It has plenty of storage.

You get 256 or 512.

Of course, you know if you need more than that, you're going to go to a bigger computer anyways and then pay a lot more money.

But what they're getting for 512 and all the specs are just amazing compared to other people.

This is so amazing that in fact a former tech lead of Microsoft is giving it a hugely good review.

And they admitted that Microsoft wanted to do something like this.

They were starting to come out with their Surface tablets and push the ARM ecosystem because Windows generally runs on x86, which is intel based stuff, but Apple stuff runs on ARM systems which is generally cheaper to make chips for these days.

And Microsoft wanted to do an ARM ecosystem too, but they have so much history behind them, so much companies and developers that were just pushing against that trend, they could not get the market to accept the ARM ecosystem as much.

So now this former tech lead of Microsoft feels really sad he doesn't work for the company anymore.

But like he was saying that he's really sad that he feels like Microsoft could have been here with amazing 500 laptops in the year of 2026.

But you can't quite do that when you need the cost that Windows needs these days to run and stuff like that.

So just kind of interesting that they can have a computer for basically five to $600 that a Windows equivalent computer would be like $800 these days or more.

That's pretty cool.

That's usually the opposite.

Apple's always way more expensive than anybody else.

So they set themselves up so well and they can make.

This is like almost the smartest move in the long run where even though they, the typical older ones have always been more expensive, IBM has done studies that you get a total lower cost of ownership with Apple computers versus PCs.

Even though they're a little more upfront, they cost less to maintain the.

It costs everything like that.

But also when Apple comes out with new updates year after year, they usually don't raise the prices.

So each year you're getting a better value.

A MacBook Air today still starts at about $1,000 and it's been that price for a very long time.

So that along with them getting so many good contracts with TSMC and everything like that, they just dropped this bomb a couple weeks ago.

With having a computer that starts that cheap.

Of course you can get Chromebooks and little crappy things that are that price too, but or less.

But they are not anything like good computer that this would be.

They don't do anything.

My wife brought one of those home when she first thought and I was like, this thing's useless.

This thing's garbage.

I mean, I think my tablet does more than this computer does.

Yeah, it's pretty bad.

Yeah.

All right, next little story.

This is a real quick update.

Remember how we were talking about the Discord adult verification stuff that was coming up?

Well, they had so much backlash and criticism and people demanding that they show how they're passing their data to the different providers and stuff, which rightly so, people should be concerned that they're basically putting it on hold for now.

This is great news, I think, because I was even concerned that one of the biggest things we were going to have was potential guests that wouldn't want to be guests anymore because you would have to be adult verified to even get into Stage channels.

Well, which this channel is right here.

Well, now they're changing some things where they're going to look at it more.

They're kind of like putting it off till later this year or maybe even longer.

And they're not going to have as many strict rules.

The verification will just be for certain things.

So they probably won't do it for Stage channels either.

So really good news on this.

I'll give more information on the details as it comes later on, but I just wanted to at least give an update that Discord has made a good decision there.

Thank God.

I was worried.

I was worried a lot of people were going to just bow out of Discord altogether.

I mean, our whole community is based around this one platform.

I guess we should always be thinking ahead, right?

Yeah.

We still may have to do something down the road, but at least for not now, for now we are good.

Thank God.

All right.

And then another big piece of news.

Sony made another bonehead decision.

They are canceling all their PC ports going forward.

At least supposedly.

This is ridiculous.

All their PC ports.

And this is so annoying because we were finally getting to the point where Microsoft and Sony and everyone agreed.

Well, sometimes, yeah, you would still have an exclusive for a little bit, but everyone was starting to agree that you're going to make this games on all platforms, right?

Why not?

That just makes it just works better.

Even like Apple and Google have been agreeing to things lately where they provide opportunities to make it easy to switch From Android to iPhone and from iPhone to Android, they actually work together.

It works better that way.

You know, you go to like a car dealership and you see other dealerships next to it.

They actually work better that way.

It's friendly competition when you're next to each other.

And so I think this is such a bonehead decision.

There's a big story about Ghost of Yotei and they were working on it and they heard this news and now that whole port's being canceled.

So it won't be on PC.

It's too bad.

But here's the really interesting thing.

Marathon might have just barely squeaked out because we have to remember Bungie's owned by Sony now too.

Can you imagine if they weren't making Marathon and Destiny for PC?

That would be horrible, horrible, horrible.

I don't know.

I don't know why they did this.

And one last thing is kind of like a bonus news piece and then I want to hear what everyone has to say.

It has been confirmed from a Bungie Insight source that a majority of people playing Marathon are on PC.

It's opposite from Destiny.

A high majority of people playing it on PC.

It makes sense because Extraction Shooters escape from Tarkov.

Typically.

I'll come.

It's like a PC type thing.

Doesn't mean there's not a lot of.

But the percentage.

It's a high majority on PC.

So can you imagine if Sony had cut PC too for Marathon and Destiny and stuff like that?

So I just don't know where they're going with all this.

But what do you guys all think?

I'll let our guests speak first.

Do you guys have any comments to speak up?

Go ahead, bro.

Excuse me.

You're broken up.

I can tell.

No frogging throat.

Go.

Xbox.

I don't know.

I don't like PlayStation so I knew you'd like that.

Has nothing to do with it.

Just like we said.

Microsoft.

Microsoft's making games for all the three also.

And what you know.

But maybe they're going to stop now too because Sony's stopping.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's.

It's all.

Who knows what's going to happen.

I feel at this point like I really don't have much thoughts.

What about you, Phoenix?

It's all good.

But you're.

You're muted.

Yep.

Yeah.

Microsoft may continue pushing on just because of their Project Nexus, their next console.

It's supposed to have PC play like built into it.

So they seem.

From the little bit of news that I've seen, I don't think Microsoft cares as much as Sony does, but they can also say they're doing all kinds of stuff that they never actually do when it all comes to fruition or whatever.

Yeah, now we know with basically the Xbox division kind of going into like a seemingly graveyard mode now, I could see them also being like, well, if Sony stops making ports on all things, then we might as well stop also so they can save money.

I have a lot to say about this later, but do what they have

to do to try to rein it in.

And yeah, you know, when they shut down bluepoint Games, I was really disappointed because I think they would have been the perfect company to port Destiny, the original Destiny to PC or come out with a Destiny 2.0 that was in, you know, 120 frames in 4K.

And I would love to re experience Destiny 1 without the 30, without that, that 30 frames per second blur that I just can't get used to anymore now that I've been playing at 60 and 120 frames now.

I, I read that article, Kingsley, and I was like, what is going on with Sony?

It's like, you know what I think what they're doing is they're cutting bait, man.

They're like, you know what?

I know the last CEO wanted to go all live service games and stuff, but it seems to me that Sony is going back to their roots.

They're going back to their original IPs, exclusive content, exclusive games on their own consoles now.

It's like they're doubling down now on the actual hardware, whereas Xbox is trying to be everywhere, but doesn't really care about first game, you know, first title exclusivity on their consoles anymore.

And then you hear at the GDC conference today that they got a whole new console they're making that is going to be even better than the Xbox series X.

So I don't know what to think about Xbox right now.

You know, maybe you remember when I talked about Asha coming in and Phil leaving.

I wonder if Asha is going to incorporate some AI elements into the, into that new console.

I had a feeling that might be the case since they brought someone in who's dealt with a lot of AI systems and functionality.

I'm just curious if this new console and new consoles, period in the future are going to have a lot more of those AI elements built into them where they're more intuitive as you're going and playing your games and stuff.

I don't know, just throwing darts, I guess.

But I couldn't believe it when I read that article.

I Said what it.

Sony, why.

Why would you want to limit yourself to your sales of your.

Just your consoles?

And especially like Willem Scream said in the chat, this is horrible for Marathon, because Marathon I think should be.

I play on PS5.

I don't do cross play and I do solo games.

When I play Marathon, I don't do any cross play and I do solo games.

And my matchmaking's taking about maybe a little over a minute.

So apparently the numbers are still not too bad.

It's not like the Crucible match where you're waiting 10 minutes to find a match.

But that really surprised me, Kingsley, that there's more people on PC playing, maybe because with the console, you have that stupid slow moving.

You can't adjust it either.

There's no way to adjust how fast you can move that.

Not why people didn't know that before they bought the game.

I know, but I know Bungie likes to do that.

They like to have that cursor effect with controllers.

And, man, I'm telling you, when I'm trying to clean up and move around my inventory and stuff, I am.

I'm just as fast as molasses trying to do that, man.

And I'm seeing people on PC going, just switching stuff out and everything.

I'm like, that's why I don't play Crossplay, because people on PC can just.

Anyways, can you.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Can you imagine if we get.

If we actually do get a Destiny 3 down the road or another Bungee game and they don't make it for PC Because I'd be pissed.

Yeah.

It just seems like they're going more retro.

It just doesn't make sense to me.

I think Sony needs to follow Xbox.

This would affect Xbox players too.

Yeah.

You know, so not just PC, but.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you think they might be trying to follow.

Not following suit.

But like, you know how Nintendo is.

Nintendo is very.

They have their games, their set of games.

They just continue on the Marios of Donkey Kongs, whatever, you know, Zeldas and all that.

Like, and that's worked for them, Pokemon's like, for so long.

Like now that Sony's been around for a while and it's got these God of Wars and these certain brands or whatever that is exclusive to them to a certain extent.

Like, maybe that's the idea, the business idea, direction, model.

Like, hey, it works for them.

Let's.

Let's set ourselves apart from everybody else instead of competing, you know, because I feel like Nintendo's always that outlier that just does her own thing and still has success.

Nintendo has.

Yeah, but the thing is, is like Sony already was doing that and then they agreed to be open like everyone else and then now they're going back.

So that's the, that's what makes it worse.

See, Nintendo's always been kind of closed.

Sony used to be closed.

They agreed to be open and now they're going to go closed again.

So I don't know, maybe.

Maybe it's a lesson learned thing.

You know what, Maybe Phil, Maybe Phil triggered it.

I know, I'm really, I'm, I'm, I'm blowing smoke now, but I'd like to think that Phil, that Phil Spencer made an impact with Bungie, with, with Sony.

Maybe not.

Maybe they saw, oh, Phil's not in the game anymore.

Oh, we're, we're.

We don't worry about competing with Xbox now.

They're going to implode on their own.

I don't know.

Hard to say, man, but I was surprised by that story.

I'm glad you covered it because I was jumping at the bit to talk about it, but I had to do a double take when I read it.

I couldn't believe that they want to focus on more original IP and they don't want to share their toys with anybody.

So.

Anything else you wanted to mention, Kingsley?

I cut you off there.

No, I am good.

Okay, well, let's keep moving guys.

We're going to move on to Arisen Phoenix next.

All right, thanks Mike, for that update in news and tech.

But now we're going to move over and throw the talking stick over to Arisen Phoenix.

He wants to talk about the gaming industry as a whole tonight.

So, Mr. Phoenix, it's all yours, sir.

What do you got for us?

My topic was nice and simple.

No way you could possibly deep dive on will the gaming industry get a much needed reset before it implodes?

Fear of failure has been infecting the creative community.

I think the majority of the time it's due to chasing after record profits over innovation.

But every so often, a bold and rebellious person or team breaks the mold.

The question is, will the gaming world have enough breakout hits to return to its passionate roots?

Yeah, I mean, prime example is marathon.

Everyone's jumping on marathon and giving it a bunch of shit.

I mean, does everyone just want 5 million call of Duty games?

I mean, anybody tries to make something a little different and it just seems like people are already pre hating it before they even give it a chance.

But yeah, when you, when you mentioned this topic, a lot of things came to mind.

But I'll.

I'll spread it around.

Mike or native.

You guys have something you want to say here on that, on that statement,

did you have more.

You were gonna say Phoenix, or was that it?

Oh, that, that was.

Well, I mean, no worries.

I just wanted to save my thoughts in case you had more.

I let him pause, Kingsley.

I let him.

I let him take a breath.

I didn't be.

You know, these topics are good tonight.

I'm excited.

These topics are really good tonight.

Well, all I really have to say, we've.

We've kind of danced around this subject in the past and I totally agree.

It's what we said a million times.

That.

What I've said a million times too.

Like there's the famous quote from Warren Buffett when if someone, everyone says to jump on a stock, it's already too late.

Well, same thing with live service games.

People were chasing that way too much after the fact.

And it's simple.

All we need is people.

I mean, it's not like we have.

Shouldn't have live service games, but it's going to be very, very hard and rare to make a standout one today.

Instead, people should be focusing more on the breakouts.

Like you mentioned Phoenix.

And guess what a big breakout was something like Expedition 33.

Games like that, it doesn't have to just be single player games, but I feel like those are the ones that are more likely to be a breakout right now.

That's where the reset needs to happen.

Well, and it's not just gaming.

It's in music, it's in movies, it's all over the place.

Anything that has a budget behind it, they're too afraid to give budget to something like Expedition 33 that's ambitious and trying to do something new because that's not guaranteed profits.

So you're taking a risk.

And we have too many games at this point.

I mean, compared to how it was back in the 90s, we had very few games, but we really dove into them because we had what we had.

Now we have so many games that yeah, there's.

There's just way too much.

And when big studios, you know, thanks, Covid.

When big investors come in, dump a bunch of money, they want a guaranteed amount of money back.

So you can't take as you don't take as many risks you.

You play the safe route.

Oh, extraction shooters are doing great right now.

That game is going to be an extraction shooter because that's more guaranteed.

And I don't think we've quite come out of it just yet.

I think ultimately that's the biggest problem.

Everybody's going to follow that trend, right?

That's what you've seen.

Fortnite came out then how many Battle Royales came out after that?

Right?

Like they saw the success, jumped on the bandwagon.

Same with.

You're talking about now with Survivor shooters and other Call of Duties that are not called Call of Duties, right?

First person shooters and just all that kind of stuff.

So it's, it's cool to see innovation, you know, I think that's, that's what we're seeing from more of the indie side, you know.

And I'm not like a huge, like I get my news from like you guys, you know what I'm saying?

Like I don't go research articles too much anymore.

So.

But just looking at it, looking at like what games are coming out, like, I'm always in Game Pass.

I'm always on Steam.

I'm always checking out different things and I always feel like there's probably so many more good.

There's so many good games out there that we just don't know of yet, you know, because they don't have the marketing budget or the advertising.

You know what I mean?

So I think that's, that's another thing that plays into it.

And when it comes to investors, like I think a company should, and I know it's, it's me saying it from a completely different perspective.

You know, I'm not that, that person in that game studio working tirelessly with his team, his dev team to create something.

But why not just sit there and be like, hey, investor, angel investor.

Like, you know, like you don't have say in our operations.

You know, we're going to make this game.

Or maybe we just need more rich gamers.

We need gamers that, that can be investors, you know, I think that'd be great.

We do.

Phil.

Phil Spencer.

He left.

When, when, When I win the lotto, guys.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

There you go.

Hey, I wanted to show you guys something.

I'm glad you guys mentioned this cuz Reb Ford tweeted out she's one of the.

She's the creative director for Warframe.

Because everybody keeps talking about Warframe, how Destiny needs to become more like Warframe or Merit.

Everybody's been talking to stupid concurrent numbers with Marathon.

And you know, Marathon's not a broad game like Destiny, so the numbers aren't going to be perfectly aligned with when Destiny launched, was first launched.

I want to share my screen here because this was this was just tweeted a few days ago.

Reb Ford chimed in because everyone was starting to talk about I'll share my screen in the discord here.

I wanted.

Everyone kept talking about.

Everyone kept talking about these stupid concurrent numbers.

Is Marathon a failure?

Is it not?

What did Sony want?

You know?

And this is what Rebford said.

She said when Warframe released we had 435 other titles to compete with for the attention of millions of Stream users.

Now games have 20,014 other games in the same year for millions of Steam users that have already been exposed to 80,000 plus prior releases that they have liked.

And here's the graph right here.

2013 this is when Warframe came out.

This is when Destiny came out in 2014.

So when Destiny came out there was only 1700 other games they had to compete with.

And if they weren't in the same genre then it's even less.

But look how things have changed.

Here's Covid, right?

Here's Covid.

Look at what has changed since then.

2025, 20,014 games released on Steam that year that all had to compete.

I have a topic, I'm going to discuss this in a future show, but there is a topic about Steam games that I want to mention.

But I just want to mention that tweet from her.

And on that same since we were going back and forth on Marathon, Mark Noseworthy, the ex vice president for Bungie for Destiny 2 said this players have no idea the dev team size, cost per head, margin, targets or any other strategic goals that the developer publisher might have and certainly can't triangulate any of those looking at player counts, to say nothing of SteamDB not even being a comprehensive view, he also says so while I agree it can be argued it's rational for players of a live service to care about popularity and sustainability of their hobby, the publicity concurrency numbers do not serve that very well.

I've seen players celebrate certain engagement numbers that I knew were actually bad and critique others as game ending apocalypses that were transitory.

Without more context and better data, the fetishization of Steam DB is largely useless to determine LS game health.

I wanted to share those because those were two tweets that happened this week and it perked my ears up.

So yeah, well we're talking about that now.

I feel like we slightly changed subjects, but no, we're talking.

It is interesting.

It is interesting.

On player counts.

On that whole topic of player counts now.

Yeah, it only matters in the long run.

You can't judge any games Total player counts.

You gotta just judge it on the graph.

Like Destiny.

We can more accurately judge that because we've seen it been going down, down, down, down, down, down, down, and it's still going down.

Right.

But a game like Marathon, who cares what the numbers are?

All we care is if in six months to a year from now, it keeps going down, down, down, down, down.

But we don't care what the numbers are right now.

So.

And yeah, there's a lot of people playing games.

There's a lot of competition out there.

Now again, of course, we do know that most people play on PC, so those numbers are going to be more accurate than anything else.

But there's no way anyone should be judging a game that first comes out on.

On that by any means, if you're having fun, continue with it.

And so far what I've seen is the numbers aren't going down that much.

Like it would only.

We would only.

It would only matter if it's six months to a year from now, if they're down really, really low to like 7,000.

Kind of like how Destiny is right now on Steam.

So, I mean, well, I mean, the reason I brought those tweets up is because everyone thinks these stupid Steam numbers, which is one of many platforms that a lot of these games are, are out there for.

And this is what investors are looking at too, because I know that's what Arisen Phoenix was directed to is the investors determining if a game is any good or not.

But I'm going to show you the internal numbers, though.

I'm going to show you numbers.

Right, right.

Here is the.

So the Steam numbers have nothing to do with the investors, really?

Just like how you're.

Well, you don't think investors are looking at that data?

I mean, I think that's.

No, because they're looking at the bigger picture.

They know the numbers from everything, not just Steam.

They know the numbers from the other platforms and then they, they know the cost benefit ratio of how much the game costs to be made.

So, like, even if people are saying like, this isn't, this isn't good numbers, that's why.

Yeah, the investors aren't looking at the Steam numbers.

They, they, they're looking at the numbers that the company brings to them overall numbers and, and data.

Yeah.

And Willem Scream says there were more people playing Destiny 2 yesterday than Marathon.

Funny enough.

Yeah.

If you look at Popularity Report or Popularity Dot report, it was 170,000 people in all platforms were playing Destiny yesterday or a couple days ago.

We don't really have a Popularity Report for Marathon.

So we don't really know what those

actual numbers are because, yeah, we don't know for sure.

The consoles won't share that data.

And the only reason Popularity Report can follow that is because there's a certain.

There's a certain.

I think there's a certain triumph or something that pops up when people reach a certain.

I don't, I don't know how they.

Yeah, somehow they've been able to use the actual user interface in the game to track it.

To me, it still doesn't matter if there was because, yeah, we don't know the total number of Marathon, but like, to me it doesn't matter.

What's more important, you look at the graph and Destiny is at an all time low for amount of total players.

No matter.

If you look at Popularity Report or

Steam or 9,000 on Steam yesterday, I

think, well, popularity reports showing 157,000 total and that is by far the lowest ever in the game.

But that's my point though, Kingsley.

You have 157,000 people playing your game on any given point in time for a day of months and years.

How much?

What is a good enough?

What is good enough?

150,000 people playing your game.

I'd be ecstatic if I was a game developer.

What, what are these investors expecting?

Are they expecting, guys, the 3 million numbers, the big giant numbers that Destiny used to throw up.

You got to remember, they're competing against so many other games now than they did back in 2014.

They only were competing.

I showed you the graph.

1700 other games.

And those are all the same genres of games.

These are all the games.

Well, Destiny's numbers aren't low because of that.

They're low because there's nothing going on.

I'm not, I don't.

Yeah, I'm not.

I'm I'm just saying, I mean, 158,000 people are playing Destiny.

11 year old game.

I mean, okay, an eight year old game.

If you're talking about Destiny 2 because it came out in 2017, but still, that's still a lot of players.

Because we know, because they sold a lot for Final Shape and they still laid off employees.

So either there's two points, there's only two things that that can mean.

It can mean they're too greedy and they wanted a bigger margin.

Maybe they made money still.

Or it could be that they didn't make as much money and their costs are too high and that's why they had to fire some people.

So Again, the numbers don't matter.

It's like we all know it's the internal how much things cost to make and stuff, but Bungie, Destiny hasn't sold anything for a while, and especially since the next expansion is being delayed.

This is really not good news.

They need some more money, you know, for the Destiny side anyways.

Yeah, and Willem even says, you know, even if all the platforms of Marathon are equal, which apparently are not, it could still be 20,000 less.

But.

But Willem, here's the thing, man.

Marathon's not destiny.

Destiny has PvP and PvE game.

What if you were to fairly compare a Destiny game against Marathon, you would have to compare the PvP numbers in Destiny to the Marathon game because they're both PvP games.

And if you looked at the actual PvP numbers in Destiny versus Marathon, there's not even comparison.

You just don't care.

Compare at all.

Yeah, I mean, that.

That's true too, but I was just.

I was just answering his.

His comment there in chat.

But you know, you get my point though.

They're really two different games.

And you're not going to believe me.

Some people say PvP, I'm out.

They're not even going to look at it.

So the fact of the matter is they're two different games and I still love playing both of them.

That's all that matters, man.

Just like you said, Kingsley, play a game that you're having fun with.

Damn the numbers.

Who cares?

Who cares what the numbers are?

And let's think about this.

We didn't even need to bring it up.

I don't even know why you.

I'm bringing it up.

I'm bringing it up.

I'm mad, damn it.

No, I mean, you changed the subject and brought it up.

Let's.

Let's use an example here that Steam severely doesn't.

Or any of the.

Any of the numbers you see, don't.

What about one person game?

What about One Player Games?

They sell 15 million copies, but maybe only 10,000 people are playing it that day.

You can't.

They made their money, man.

They sold 15 million copies of the game.

Enough said.

They have enough money to go make something else now.

The question is, though, service games do

have to have people keep playing them and they needed more money coming in all the time.

That is true.

That is true.

Live service, you're always pumping out content, man.

It's.

It's.

That's the name of the game, man.

You gotta keep the numbers up on.

On life service gains.

But I just.

I'm Tired of people talking about Steam numbers.

Because I. I really honestly don't care.

I mean, if you look at.

Bring it up.

If you look at the marathon numbers, they've been very consistent.

They go up and down because the United States plays a majority of the games and when it's nighttime, no one's playing and you know, other side of the country, and then it's United States, not United States.

It's always like a little.

And if you look, it's slowly going down.

But here's the thing.

We're going through the middle of the week when most people can't play anyway.

What happens when the weekend comes?

You look, if you look at the graph, you take it backwards, the numbers are actually higher over the weekend because more people are home and able to play.

And I've got a lot to talk about.

I got a lot to say about this, but I'm not going to go any further now.

I'll let someone else talk, but you guys could.

I like the popularity report.

The popularity report.

I've never seen this website.

Oh yeah, and I pulled it up while you're talking.

It's pretty cool, man.

Yeah, they do.

You can't totally accept those numbers either because they're using an API hack type thing.

But at least it gives us some kind of a basis of maybe what the total Destiny numbers are, if you count in Xbox and PlayStation 2, because of course we never get those numbers from those platforms.

Yeah, the first thing I looked at was the PvP weapons, like I said.

Oh, PvP weapons.

Let me see.

Yeah, that's crazy.

It's a pulse rifle.

Avoid pulse rifle number one zero.

That's disgusting.

I don't like that.

Well, as J.D.

kent said, the best selling game in 2025 just laid off a bunch of people.

And I know you're referring to Battlefield 6, all those studios that put that game together.

Here's the thing, here's what I think's going on there.

J.D.

kent, their leader's dead, man.

He died in a car accident.

I mean, I was shocked when Vince Zampella died.

I cannot.

I could not believe he passed away.

But I mean, he was really the wrangler of all of those.

He really was the glue that held us studios together and created a. I thought Battlefield 6 was a great game, but yes, the maps weren't big enough and a lot of us Battlefield players, we like our big games.

We can run our tanks all over buildings and stuff.

But yeah, but that is true.

The best selling game of 2025 just laid a bunch of people off and I would say it's because they can't keep up that live service element of it.

The season two.

Who's excited about season two in Battlefield 6 right now?

Not many.

Willem Scream says what I think is Crazy is D2 launch with almost 4 million people on day one.

It wasn't even on Steam at the time.

Yeah, that's true.

It wasn't even on PC.

Yeah, but it's different times though, Willem.

It's different times, man.

Back then, like I mentioned in that graph, I just showed there weren't as many games competing for your time.

And now it's not even.

It's just what do we have?

1700 games back then, it just wasn't even a comparison to 20,000 that were.

That are now released every year on Steam.

If we're talking about Steam, consoles won't tell us anything.

So we really don't know the internals there.

But anyway, but Phoenix, I thought it was a good.

I thought it was a good topic, man.

You could see I could go all kinds of directions with this here.

I want to let you have the final say here since we've all talked over you.

You have anything you want to say at the end here?

No.

Well, I guess ultimately, yeah, I.

If it, if it all crashes, it is what it is.

I mean, I hope it doesn't.

I would like to see more breakout hits.

I mean, look at, look at Balatro.

That was a tiny thing that exploded.

Helldivers 2.

My wife brought up Baldur's Gate 3.

So the people are out there.

I think they're just having trouble funding.

And then the other side of it is some of the people that are really trying to push something unique, they're pushing crap.

So I mean it's not perfect.

It's both sides.

It's investors wanting the guaranteed money.

It's also gamers pre ordering crap that

is,

you know, they're just go ahead and buy it because it's the new Call of Duty and then you load up the game and it bricks your.

Your console or PC.

But there's.

They're going to do it on the next one too.

So it could go either way.

I think eventually it'll pull itself out of there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do think in a small way.

Yeah, I think a small way we are kind of getting that reset.

If you look at like games coming out in 2026, it actually seems so far it's a little less than 2025 and that's probably a good thing in my opinion.

I know people like to have a million games and we're still going to get a million games on Steam.

The really small, goofy ones that are sometimes breakout hits.

But let's have this correction.

Let's have this, like, hopefully, where video game companies realize that we don't need to make as many things a little less life service games, you know, a little more unique games.

And even if it means less games in general by whatever, 10% to 30%, I think we can all live with that.

I think us as over quantity.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

Like in the chat.

Quality over quantity.

I think gamers.

Bullshit meters are much more attuned these days.

I mean, look.

What was that?

Kings.

Kingsguard.

What was that?

What?

What?

One game.

I didn't even play it.

Kings.

High Guard.

High Guard.

Thank you.

I mean, everyone tried it and everyone was like, nah, nah, dog, we're good.

And it's like.

I mean, I think they're closing it.

I think it has 300 people in it yesterday.

And they're closing it down, I think at the end of the month or something.

But.

But Marathon, I think Paul Tassey put a video out this week.

He says, sony, you got to give Marathon a chance to cook, man, this.

You can see players are coming back to play this game.

You can't really micromanage that graph right now.

Let's look over the next 30 days and then make a decision on Marathon.

But I'm enjoying the game.

Yeah.

What did I say?

Am I talking about Marathon again?

Sorry.

Kingsley's calling me out.

The cat.

Kingsley's call me out.

God damn it.

How many times does Taking my toys.

I'm going home.

Can we get a bell sound effect?

He said he's.

Anyways, I can't help.

I can't help myself.

I was really.

I mean, because I. I did play the beta and I. I didn't think it was going to make it, so.

Closing next week.

Thank you, Willem.

Yeah, Closing next week.

Hey, Risen Phoenix.

Thank you, brother.

That was a great story.

You could definitely get me up on my soapbox on that.

That stuff.

But my.

My topic actually is very much related to yours, but I have a little different angle.

But here we.

We're gonna.

We're gonna take a break here.

We're gonna take a little breath, and we're gonna do our Destiny and Bungee Roundup segment right after this.

All right.

As an homage to our roots as a Destiny podcast, we check in with Bungie, see what's new, if anything, in Destiny 2.

And now Marathon.

I Suppose so.

Here we go.

Speaking of Marathon, Bungie has released its first patch for the game update 1004.

And there are several things that have changed.

I'm just going to really quickly highlight them here.

As far as loot and economy.

They've increased the med cabinet and ammo crate spawns on the perimeter and gave free sponsor kits more starting ammo.

That's a big benefit because ammo and Heals are the one things we never had enough of the UESC, which are the PvE enemies.

They're nerfing a few of them.

Reduced health for standard enemies and lowered boss shield HP to make solo runs less of a grind.

Thank you.

Because there was a mission where I had to kill a commander and grab his key.

And I think I emptied my two clips, I emptied both my weapons and I had to go find some more ammo before I could go back and take care of him so I could get the damn key card from him.

There were so many enemies around them too, trying to protect him.

So that's a good thing.

They're doing a little bit of weapon balancing heavily nerf thermal scopes by reducing visual clarity and cutting down the highlight ranges.

They're dropping them from 180 meters to 100 meters.

That's a pretty good drop, Rook.

They've made some changes to.

They fixed his map marker bug and made his WSTR shotgun a compromised item.

Which basically means if he doesn't get a matter fixative, if he doesn't extract with that element, it will just disintegrate in his hands.

It's like the traces.

How many times you can use a weapon before it just disintegrates.

It's kind of a neat, neat thing.

They have in Marathon, the contracts and navigation.

They doubled the distance of objective markers from 10 to 20 meters.

That was needed to be done because I was always looking around like where am I supposed to go for this bounty, this quest, whatever I got to do.

They added.

Don't laugh.

They added new caloric and Traxxas contracts and nerfed the US UESC commander fight.

That's the one I was talking about.

They've done a few map updates.

They temporarily shut down the broken wing quote unquote entrance to the pinwheel because it was making the zone too easy to get into.

And sound wise, they increased the range at which you could hear gunfire and explosions, so it's even easier to third party people now.

Great.

And a few technical fixes.

They patched several server client crashes.

They fixed the Silk balance display errors.

I was getting irritated with that.

That's their version of bright dust in their game.

And reduce the black screen times during map loading.

Okay, this week in Destiny for March 12th.

You can imagine we don't have a lot to talk about, but there is a few things.

They do have a new community challenge called Postcards from the Frontier.

It is live.

You have to take at least two screenshots of Renegades environments, in other words Mars, Venus or Europa and then post them with the hashtag renegadespostcard and your Bungee ID for a shot at the Golden Age emblem.

No AI allowed.

They put a new chapter in the player guide covering buildcrafting little buildcrafting 101 action.

So they actually tell our new our new lights there how to put a build together.

As far as weapons activities and buffs, Seros Weak goes From now until March 17, anything from Suros Foundry are overcharged in the portal activities.

Heavy ammo surge comes next week, 17th through the 24th.

Power weapons will basically have infinite and recharging ammo in the portal trials of Osiris.

This weekend is Javelin 4 with the conundrum Hammer, which is the hand cannon.

Next week is Altar of Flame with the Submachine gun, the Immortal.

And coming soon, Guardian Games March 24.

Put it on your calendar.

I will be there to play it.

Bungie also teased of some Pantheon 2.0 gear and a big June update, but that is all they have told us.

And that's it.

That is all we have for the Bungie Roundup segment this week.

So yeah, we're going to get on to the next topic.

Okay, now they're all caught up with Bungie this week.

Let's move on to the next topic.

And that is me.

My topic kind of ties in with what Arisen Phoenix has kind of talked about tonight, but probably from a different angle that you might not have thought about.

But I think it's a very important trend that has been reported by many industry reports out there and articles and I want to just want to talk about it tonight and see what you what do you guys think about this?

The main thing that I wanted to address tonight is the fact that the term gamers is dying out.

What I mean by that is that us Gen Xers and Millennials and oh baby Boomers also, we kind of grew up with platform loyalty, right?

Remember the console wars.

And I'm not talking about the current console wars.

What about the console wars back in the day like Atari, Colecovision, Nintendo, Sega, those console wars, those were the OG console wars back in the day and everyone had their console that they played.

But you know, of course the most recent One is Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.

But like we talked about Nintendo Switch, they're kind of out there by themselves.

It's a very unique market they're in right now.

And they're even selling physical games still, which hardly any other consoles are even doing right now.

And now that Xbox has basically given up on the console war, it's pretty much done, right?

Or is it because they just teased their Project Helix console touted to come out by the way, and the holiday 2027 season?

I don't know if you guys knew that.

They just tweeted that from the GDC today.

And now if you look at Gen Alpha and Gen Z players out there, this is the future of gaming, right?

They don't turn themselves as gamers.

They label themselves as players of certain games in their communities.

They say things like, I'm a Roblox Roblox player or I'm a Fortnite player, not an actual gamer.

Now here's some statistics that you might be curious about.

93% of kids under 13 are choosing to play on their phones over PCs and consoles.

Still think PC master races still exist.

Now I always go back to that statement from the Diablo devs saying you guys don't use phones.

They, I mean, remember they got blasted at that.

I think it was a.

One of the summer fest game shows I think they were putting on back then.

Research has also found that 15% of kids care about having a core PC.

Their attitude basically is, hey, if the game's there, that's where I'm going to play it.

So looking at it all, the broad identity of being a gamer has been replaced by specific communities instead.

This is a massive issue if the gaming industry is going to adapt to these future generations.

Because that may mean that the console and PC may just become relics that us old timers play on and we might not have the pool in the industry as much as the Gen Alphas and Gen Z's may have, since they are the future of gaming.

So speaking of players defining themselves by the gaming committees they belong to.

The other problem that I'm hearing about out there is that because of this trend, there are what they call the big five.

In other words, the top five games that everyone, I mean this is where everyone is hanging out.

For PC, it's Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Fortnite League and Minecraft.

These five games alone account for 30% of all the Playtime out there.

We're just talking about the 20,000 games on Steam.

There's five that are taking 30% of the market on consoles it's even worse.

The top five games account for over 50% of all the total playtime on consoles.

I've referred to these in the past as the black hole games because once a player jumps into these communities, they disappear forever.

They don't play any other games.

That's all they play.

I mean I only played Destiny for a long time, so there is so much more really.

I can go down the rabbit hole on this one, but I want to stop there.

I'm going to stop myself.

No ten point presentations tonight.

I just want to go around the table and see what you guys thought about this.

Because if this is in fact the future of the gaming industry, where does that leave us today?

Where does that leave us, us console and PC gamers out there?

Are we gonna have to start playing on phones and tablets in order to get the latest greatest games out there?

I'm just curious, what do you guys think about that news?

Yeah, I don't think it'll quite, quite go that extreme really.

Okay, well only because, I mean you also gotta remember they're playing on the phone because that's what's right there and available all the time.

It's the convenience of it.

But once they, you know, I would imagine once they get older, have more, you know, expendable income and all that.

Be like, okay, kind of getting tired of what's on my phone because I can play this brand new big, you know, call.

Well, Call of Duty's on mobile too.

But I'm pretty certain there'll be some titles that's like, okay, yeah, I'm going to build a PC so it looks way better, it's bigger, I have better control.

Well, that alone will separate PC and console games over what's on the cell phone.

I think it's just that's the easiest thing available that, that they have and don't have to worry about the upkeep nearly as much.

But yeah, I don't see it all disappear and I think it's just where they are right now with what funds they have available.

It makes sense.

Or lack thereof, you know.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Phoenix, I get your point there.

What do you think about this, Kingsley?

I 1000% agree with Phoenix.

Really.

This is exactly it.

My daughter's a young gen Z. I know a lot of her friends, her boyfriend wants and stuff like that.

And it's not because they just want to play on phone.

It's just that's what they had and they don't have the money for a console or a PC.

She wants a PC, she tells me that all the time she wants a console.

And so the reason why we have so many games on phone is because obviously the market was there and more phones were in people's hands including young kids versus other things.

So that's why it grew so fast and that's the market that has to be there.

But it does not mean that other things are going away at all.

I mean maybe a little bit if like prices keep going up everywhere.

But then that could happen to phones too eventually unfortunately.

But yeah it, I promise Gen Z people do want PCs, do want consoles.

I talk to them all the time and I was just, just even an acquaintance at work.

She's definitely a Gen Z and she was saying as she's looking to hopefully get a PC soon but you know, just pricing and everything like that.

So it's more just about the price than anything.

It's not that the younger people do not want that, it's more about the price.

Okay, what do you think there Mr. Navy Raider?

I'm totally in agreeance with both of them because I have a Gen Z or my son right He's a Gen Z er, he doesn't really play much mobile games like it's not really for him.

He likes his xbox, he likes his console.

Like he enjoys that.

He wants a PC eventually and I'm sure he's going to get it once he's you know, settled and whatnot.

But the big thing that I wanted to also touch on was like how you're talking about like the different labels that, that yeah gamers are putting it.

It's no longer we're gamers where we're this type of gamer, we're that type of gamer and all that.

And I can see that probably continuing to grow but I think it's going to grow outside of the realm of specific games to more genre based, you know, like oh I'm, I'm more of a first person guy, you know, I'm a sports guy, I'm a racing guy, I'm this and that and the other.

Okay.

The other thing I wanted to say was with, with mobile games again the convenience like you're talking about the price, it's cheap for the most part until you have to no longer look at ads.

Right.

You have to buy that, that premium version of it.

But it's quick, it's easy.

I even got it I paid $10 recently for a game on my phone and I'm not a mobile gamer at all but Civ 6 and I was at the airport and I was at a two hour layover.

So it was great, you know, and like I enjoyed it and it was great.

I don't think, I don't think it's going to take over.

The next thing that I think would take over because the problem with mobile games is small screen.

We want to see resolution, want to see something in front of us like we're looking at each other right now on our PCs.

Right, right.

We want something like that.

The next step would be some kind of glasses.

Not, not AR or VR but like glasses where like boom, like it's as big as you want it to be, you know, kind of thing.

And that's what I can see far in the future.

I don't think we're even close to that kind of like technology toward it.

It runs well, you know, but that's something that's small, that's portable, that you can just take with you, you know, throw on your new Raybone Ray Ban gaming glasses and go for it.

You know, I think as, I think as phones advance more and more I think they'll become, I think, I think Deadpool.

Nailed it.

It's going to be handheld PCs.

I think that's where we're going.

So maybe what is a considered a PC in the future won't even compare to these giant 40 pound blocks of plastic we have next to us, next to our desks here, you know, that have, we may be able to have the same power or even more with built in AI and everything in our hands and maybe we can just project it to a tv.

Maybe that technology will get much easier.

I know you can project on YouTube, you can project your screen.

If you're on YouTube and you have a YouTube app on your smart TV you could just put project to TV and it'll put the screen right there.

I wanted to show you one here.

Cool thing with that.

Handheld PCs are a totally different beast than a phone.

Even though they're closer to the size, you can't have a good gaming system unless it has a full operating system like Windows, Linux, Mac.

But Mac isn't good with gaming.

But you need to have something that can have APIs into graphics and things like that.

And that's why phone games are limited not just because of the size but because of what they can do.

They don't have a full operating system to provide that.

I wanted to show you a graph here since we're talking about.

People are defining themselves by what they play.

This is Roblox.

So I'll put it here too, guys, so you guys can see it.

Roblox 2018.

This is the pandemic right here.

Look what it has done since the pandemic.

Look at what happened in 2024.

Here in the fourth quarter, it just shot up to amazing numbers.

140 million people.

This is active daily users, guys.

Active daily users on Roblox.

I've never played this game a day in my life.

I don't understand what all the hype's for.

I know there's been a lot of trauma and a lot of bad things happening in here, but that's going to happen when you have 140 million people playing your game.

We're talking about concurrent numbers of 70, 80,000 on marathon.

Roblox is laughing at us right now.

Look at this, guys.

This is nuts.

I mean, I don't understand what caused this to happen because that is alarming that so many kids are.

Why is it alarming?

I mean, I want to know what they did from here because this is a general.

This is a general update.

This is a general growth curve.

And then this, this dog leg right here, that's what I usually put.

Perks my eyes, my ears up too.

Is this dog leg right here.

So anyway, I just wanted to show you that because I thought that was a.

We've had big bumps like that in Destiny.

Like when Final Shape came out or sorry, when Forsaken came out a little bit.

Not as big.

Yeah, but not as big as the original Destiny 2 launch.

Nothing's ever compared to those 3 million players concurrently.

What I'm talking about is that ratio of graph going up.

Yeah, I got you.

Yeah, but I don't know, I just.

I just wanted to show you that I was doing a little research on this topic and that's pretty scary, man.

And I don't even know anything about this game.

I mean, I have two Gen Z kids.

One is barely a Gen Z, the other one's solidly a Gen Z.

And I know my daughter's an artist, so she has to.

She lives by her Mac.

Her Mac goes with her everywhere because she's an artist and that's what she used in college.

But my son is a gamer and he has been playing PC games more.

He runs loops around me when it comes to PC games.

But he's 20.

I mean, he's in his late 20s now, early mid-20s, so I don't know.

I saw that article and I said I did a little deep dive into it and I was just curious if you think this will have an impact.

So time will tell, I guess.

I mean, we'll just have to see what the gaming industry does.

I mean, if they go the Diablo route and start making more mobile games and they start putting these games less frequently on consoles and PC, then we'll know.

Then we'll know that's going to be what's going to happen.

So.

All right, well, maybe it's not as big a deal as I was making it out to be.

Maybe.

I guess.

I don't know.

I thought that was a good story.

But the other side of it that just clicked for me is like my daughter State, they were playing on Xbox a lot there for a while.

The problem right now is they're just not interested in anything.

And the games that they do get interested in, it comes out, they start playing it and it's like a lot of games, it's just bad.

It comes out broken and, you know, disjointed.

So they're just not interested in most of the games that are out there right now.

I know my son definitely played Slay the Spire too.

He's a big Slay the Spire guy.

My son loves those Hades, those types of games.

But I can't get him to play Destiny.

I can't get him to play Marathon.

Just not into the shooters.

He likes the other stuff, but I mean, maybe that's promising.

I guess time will tell because I don't have any.

I mean, my grandson's not even 2, so we won't even know.

All I know is when I have my phone on, the kid can't stop looking at it.

He thinks it's the eyes of God.

I swear to God, I mean, he's.

And you turn the tv, you turn a TV on and he's like, amazed.

So we have to really be careful with screen time.

That's how I was as a kid with game boys, before phones were.

And it's because it was something small, portable I could take with me.

But even then I played it a lot because it's what I had.

But I still knew better games were on computers and better games were on consoles and stuff.

And then I eventually upgraded to that.

Well, the way things are heading, it sounds like consoles and computers are going to be luxury items soon.

You're going to have to really have a lot of games.

Yeah, that is a concern.

Be able to play on them.

So maybe they're they have no idea.

Anyway.

All right, I'll end it there.

Mobile is definitely for convenience.

You know, at the end of the day, yes, it's the convenience factor.

Let's face it, with all the gotcha models they have out there, it's.

I can't stand mobile games, man.

I can't.

I really can't.

I tried, I tried to do the new Destiny game and I just didn't like the way the controller even, even if I could configure my controller to play on it.

It's just such a small screen, man, I'm so spoiled with.

I mean, I'm looking at four monitors right now.

I can't imagine looking at a tiny screen.

Now I will say this.

When we had the hurricane in Florida, Balatro was a damn lot of fun on my phone.

But Balatro is a very simplistic, graphics wise, a very simplistic game.

I'm curious what a more realistic looking game would look like and if the, if the chip in the phone didn't overheat and explode from all the computing power it has to use.

Anyway, that's a topic for another day.

Okay, Mr.

Native Raider is his next with his topic.

We'll be right back.

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All right, for our last topic tonight, Mr.

Native Raider is going to close out our topics tonight with his question, what makes a good game?

I'm curious to hear what all.

All about this.

I think you talked about it in your.

Your podcast too.

I think you mentioned.

So talking stick is yours, sir.

I mean we, we haven't got to it, bro.

Oh, it's coming up and having way too much good conversations in the podcast that it runs long.

It's like all Right.

We're gonna save that one for another week.

Right.

Remember those days?

Next week?

Next week.

I think it's like.

I think I wrote this like maybe a month ago.

So it's been like three, I think three episodes or something like that.

So I.

It's perfect.

Perfect place to talk about it.

So what I wanted to talk about, essentially, is good versus bad games.

And I'm not talking metrics, I'm not talking, no offense, graphs and anything like that.

Like, I want to know your opinion, like, your opinion of what makes a good game.

And I wanted to run over some of the different bullets that I kind of came up with on the fly when I was making this.

This topic for my show.

And.

Yeah, so starting off with I'm gonna read the.

The topics, and then we can all chime in whenever, whatever.

But game design, genre, popularity, monetization, model, graphics, story, lore, mechanics, continual updates, community, and communications from the studio.

So those are like, kind of like those.

Those bullets.

You guys obviously jump wherever you need to or whatever you.

Maybe I missed some.

Something.

But I wanted to start off real quick with genres.

Like, what is the genre that really attracts you?

Like, where you get that whole new list of games coming out for the next year or something like that.

And, like, there's a genre that just sticks to you.

Like, what is that one that, like, you're like, I'm interested.

It's obviously everyone has different opinions and personality types of what makes a good game for them.

So there's no right answer.

Yes, exactly.

There's no exactly.

Judging it by, oh, well, they made X amount of dollars for this amount of concurrency.

There's a right answer.

There's a right answer.

I got a graph right here.

Hold on a second.

Me.

Pop it up.

All right, let's go.

I like says gator's the right answer.

I mean.

I mean, I do think there are times where I don't know if I'm jumping the gun on this.

I only bring into the.

My own personal equation.

If a game is good, if it's maybe one that I normally wouldn't like, but then I still see the reviews are doing good.

I think that's when you actually can and should bring in, like, okay, even though the game's maybe not for me, a lot of people are liking it, so it's got to be a good game.

You know what I mean?

In that case, I think it's okay to add in, you know, how a game is doing.

But if it gets bad, you don't need to bring that into your own personal equation.

You can still like the game if you like the game, right?

With that being said, let's.

Let's start with this little side question.

Is there a game that you guys played that everybody didn't like or hated or talked, smacked on or was not as well received that you just like, I love this.

I'm enjoying it.

It's fun.

Destiny 2.

Because everybody's hating Destiny 2 right now.

Bad joke.

Sorry.

What?

We got robotics going on again?

No, not again.

The robots have taken over.

And that was my answer also.

I mean I was, I was kind of joking, but we.

I was, I was making a joke before I I bl.

I messed up in.

In discord.

That Destiny 2 was a game I played that everyone else thought was terrible.

I was.

That was meant as a joke, but apparently Discord didn't like that answer.

Anyway, watching.

Continue.

Always watching.

No, I mean that's, that's.

The basic of this topic is.

Is just to get your guys opinions on what you guys really think is what makes a great game versus a bad game.

I mean, starting with a great side of things.

Like what is a.

Like what do you look for in a game when you look at these different bullets that I had listed, you know, is there anything that grabs you?

You know, and I, I wanted to start off with genre.

If there's a genre that really pulls

you, obviously I'll give a couple of shooters.

Shooters.

Oh yeah, go ahead.

Sorry.

I'm gonna get my.

My words in before I get blocky again.

It's shooters for me.

It's always the shooters because that's what I've.

That's.

That was my first online game was Resistance 2, I think was the first online shooter I played.

And it was.

I think it was third person Kill Zone two, obviously all the Call of Duties ever since Modern Warfare.

And then of course Destiny blew me away in 2014 and now it's Destiny 2 and now it's marathon, so.

And then a little bit arc raiders too.

The shooters.

It's always shooters for me.

But I do enjoy playing and I don't know if I have the patience to play them, but I really enjoy games like Elden Ring.

They really fascinate me.

And there was another one that came out from China last year.

It was nominated for Game of the Year, but it's not coming to mind.

It's in my library.

I just don't want to look it up right now.

But things like that.

So.

Yeah.

So for you, does it.

Does a genre.

Is that something that makes a good game for you.

It has.

Not entirely.

It has a lot of weight.

Black My Fu Kong.

Thank you, dad Bod.

It has a lot of weight because one, A lot of games, shooter games especially the controller configurations are very, are very much.

They cross over very well.

Whereas if I jump into a role playing game, I gotta figure out what does this do, what does this button do?

And I can get frustrated with controls sometimes.

So yeah, that would have an impact on me how easy I can ease into that new game.

So yeah, to me it's.

I, I can say I like certain genres, but that's not what makes a great game.

For me a great game is.

And yes, I'm probably going to more likely play games and genres that I like like.

I like action adventure games.

I like action RPG games, ARPGs.

I like any kind of game.

I wouldn't necessarily just call it a shooter.

I would call it.

I mean, yeah, a lot of these action games will have shooting or fighting or something in it and.

But I really like if they have a heavy, heavy exploration, slash big world element to it too.

But that's just the genre what makes the game great.

Because we can have an action adventure game.

That's crap, right?

What makes the game great is I'm playing it, I'm having fun.

And then they throw something big into it.

You get like a third of the way in and you all of a sudden realize that the world got five times bigger or the skill tree got five times bigger, or they have some story element where someone dies or something crazy happens that just.

Oh my gosh.

And, and you need that somewhere like a fourth to a third of the way in.

Not maybe the biggest hook of the game, but you need some big thing where all of a sudden the game is like so much bigger, a little bit in to kind of get you on that hook.

I feel that, I feel that actually a lot with.

Wow.

Wow does that for me.

Like it's, it's so you feel linear in a sandbox world for the most part.

But then all of a sudden you start gaining abilities and you hit that threshold of whatever level it may be, you know, and it's like unlocks this tree or those abilities or something like that.

And it's just like, like it's not.

It doesn't get boring because it's like, now I got a whole new set to learn.

Destiny did that too, because I was playing it.

I remember when I started back and I'm playing the single player game and I really enjoyed it.

But if it wasn't the fact that it opened up with Raids, I'm like, oh my gosh, what's this now?

Some big amazing thing.

And then I found out I had to play it with other people and I'm an introvert by nature, so I said, ah, do I want to?

Blah, blah, blah.

But I'm so glad I did that.

That's what really opened the world of Destiny to me was, you know, seeing that there's like these other big things that.

Oh, you played the campaign well.

There's Raids also, the even bigger thing and, and, you know, not to mention buildcrafting also.

But I feel like Jesse's buildcrafting was a little more linear.

It didn't have like a big jump.

Like, like, I. I really like some games that have like a big jump, like a big punch in the gut, like, wow.

But.

But yeah, the rating thing got me excited.

I can definitely see that.

What are you, Phoenix?

Is there, Is there any of those topics that really pull you or multiple topics?

Yeah, probably multiple.

Yeah, I, I would as pretty much all of you were talking.

Yeah.

When the game allows you to kind of slowly ease your way into it and figure out whether you're enjoying this bit or not, and once you go so far, you're probably enjoying it.

And then they're like, okay, here's the actual game.

I think that's very beneficial for a lot of players, even outside of.

And then outside of genre, across all genres, when you give the players customization so they.

They make it more their own.

When you give them like, games like Mass Effect, when you give them a choice that actually has an impact in how the game runs, that automatically gives you repeatability.

So you're going to come back to it a year later and you're going to play that same game again.

Because now you can build yourself as a completely different character, run a completely different class and build and all that.

And now you're going to be an evil character and the next time you're going to run it again in a.

In a year and you're going to be neutral.

And I think, I think of more of things like that.

As far as what makes a good game is how.

I mean, obviously if they ease you into it too much, jumping back in when you already know the stuff can make it kind of a slog.

But allowing the player to ease themselves into the world, decide whether they want to stick around or not, and then customization, you feeling like you actually have impact on the world, because if they give you a choice and it changes nothing.

It's a deflated balloon.

Means nothing.

But when you feel like you're actually affecting the world around you, I think that stays with players a lot too.

As you're talking, adding to my notes for my show when I bring this topic up, because you hit two points right there that I think are huge, right?

Customization, repeatability, right?

Those.

Those are.

Are massive.

And I think those are what draws a lot of people in, you know, and then also the.

The idea of having basically almost like three phases of a game, right?

The.

The tutorial, learning the game, the main game, the end game, you know, And I think that's also really important that the stages of the game.

So yeah, Bunny's making forgets that first parts for my.

My next show, the new player experience.

What are you talking about?

It's not good no more.

Is there one?

I mean, I guess there's an article you can go read, but there's nothing the game that helps you along.

I mean, it tries to.

I mean they.

They went backwards, right?

In Destiny 2, they went back and they tried to make something on the fly.

Kind of like building an airplane while it's from the air, you know.

But yeah, that.

I think that's.

That's a good point, man.

Definitely want to mention that in your show because if it doesn't have a good experience, acclimating the player to what's going on and how to actually play and enjoy the game, that's such a big step, man.

And I don't know how.

I mean, Bungie just made such a great game with Destiny, I guess that people just overlook that part and just join communities like ours and got advice from other players to figure out what am I doing wrong here?

Where do I need to go?

Why can't I get my.

Where do I find my emotes?

I mean, there's a million questions we get all the time in our discord, but I'm looking at your list here and the big one for me.

This may sound shallow as hell, but graphics mean everything to me.

I want to feel like I'm getting pulled into the game.

I want to feel like I'm looking around like I'm in a virtual reality headset.

I want to be involved in the game.

I want that immersion.

And I'm sorry if it's an 8 or 16 bit game side scroller.

It's just hard for me to get involved.

There's some really good ones out there.

There's some really fun ones that I played with my son.

Independent games but they just don't do the same thing as for Blotro.

But I mean, Balatro's.

It's a.

It's a.

It was.

Here's the thing, Kingsley Balatro doesn't pretend to be it.

It's a.

It's an arcade game.

It.

It's.

It.

It comes with its own preloaded variables.

Try to spin it, but it's an arcade game, though.

It's like.

It's like going into a.

To a.

To a casino in Vegas.

There's.

There's no way you're gonna.

There's.

There's no way you're gonna get realism on a.

On a.

On a slot machine.

It's all cartoonish.

That's the way.

That's the.

That's the.

The way it's supposed to be.

Yeah, I mean, it's way.

It's supposed to be bright colors and stuff, but I want to feel like.

And I'm getting a little of this in Marathon, but I get.

I would get probably the best vibes I got in any game I've played so far.

As far as being enveloped in the game.

If you were to take out the Destiny franchise, it's Elden Ring.

Elden Ring was so enormous, you could go anywhere.

You could walk forever and still not get to the end of the map at that part.

Gave just that possibility that I could go anywhere.

It's really open world, but you're going to get your ass kicked as soon as you turn the corner and that night sees you.

You know, things like that.

Elden Ring just nailed it.

And that's.

That is.

I'm just going to say it right now.

That is going to be one of my games of the month coming up this year.

Because I've so wanted to go back.

I've been jonesing to go back and play that game.

But I'm so loving shooter games.

It's hard for me to get drawn out of those areas either.

Because, I mean, with Arc Raiders and Marathon alone, there's so much to unlock.

There's so much progression and stuff.

And that is another thing that has to tie me in.

That goes in with the hobby game mentality, where you're working on something after work every day.

And this is something I was going to mention in my article is the fact that as we get older, we don't want a lot of games that are super cerebral.

We would just want to sit down, pop a beer and be able to just jump in and work and chisel away at something that we want to.

I don't know, get a medal or something or some kind of cosmetic item or something.

More than ever, as we get older and more tired after work and we're not, you know, we don't have all day to play a game like a lot of these streamers do.

More and more games.

People want simpler games too, at the same time.

So, yeah, there's a lot of graphics, too.

I love.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, I mean, that's why I don't like Balatro, because it looks gross to me.

But I remember being a kid and I was always a futurist and I knew technology where it could go.

I mean, I didn't know exactly, of course, but.

And playing the video games, I'm like, I want more.

This isn't good enough.

I want the graphics to be more realistic.

So I've always been a graphics person myself.

That being said, it's not like I'm going to totally turn away a game that has eight bit graphics, but I have a strong aversion to them because I feel like these days it's more just about being retro or popular or trying to go off of something.

I'm like, they didn't have to make Balatro look like that.

They could have made the cards look realistic.

You know, there's enough graphics on a phone to do that.

But yeah, I like games that have good graphics.

Balatro will surprise you there.

But I think that's a personal opinion.

You know, Balatro surprise you, though, because there is a lot of graphic overlay in that that you don't see right away.

Like certain games that have like a, like a sheen, the card has a sheen to it.

And you know, it has.

It's a special card because it's glistening.

Not again, dude.

Sir.

I even switch phones.

I even switch phones.

I'm going to just let it play, but go ahead, keep going.

I'll just be quiet and hopefully my audio stabilizes in the discord.

All right.

Yeah, that's like the basis of the topic was to just see what you guys own personal perspectives is on what makes a good game.

Because that's something that is to each individual on what they like and their own preferences.

Because almost like the previous topic that we talked about with how many people are playing and how this.

And rating the success of games and all that kind of stuff, like that's, that's cool and all, but, like, I mean, I played Pal World, right?

I. I started a podcast, like day one of it, launching for it, and there was a lot of hate on that game, you know, they hit 20 or 2 million concurrent players like they were only second to PUBG.

And I think still, I think they still hold that rank up there.

I believe.

Not sure, but.

Yeah, but it, it captured me.

It was fun.

It was.

I enjoyed it.

And I think that's.

That's the most thing for me is when it comes to looking at what makes a good game, I.

It's not necessarily about these specific things.

It's like a combination of these and weighing what's more important.

You know, I could have a great game that's fun to play.

I don't care if I have to hear from the studio and get weekly updates, you know, like I e. The twab, which I love the twab.

The twab was great.

You know, I wish more, you know, people would do that, but at the same time, it's not a necessity for me.

You know, I want something that's just enjoyable.

I want to come home and play a game that's enjoyable, that has a challenge, that makes me want to grind towards something.

You know, I. I think the grind aspect for me is the big thing when there's a payoff at the end.

Like, like gator.

You always say that.

The carrot on the.

Yeah, the carrot on the stick.

Right.

Yeah, like I, I need that, I need that.

And then obviously it has to have PvP.

Um, well, it's like getting the.

Getting your paycheck at the end of the week.

Gotta get paid, see the benefits of all the work you put in.

Yeah, exactly.

A hundred percent, man.

And that.

I think that's, that's the great thing and that's that dopamine, dopamine rush.

And now everything's just so quick with the dopamine.

I like that kind of long grind and then it's done.

Yeah, yeah, but that, that was my topic.

Yeah, it's.

It's good.

It's a good, good thing to talk about.

I mean, definitely have all kinds of different areas you can go there, different directions.

You can go on that topic for sure.

I mean, that's.

I'm looking at your list that you put in Discord here.

I'm like, man, I could.

There could be a topic for every one of these that you put in the, in the Discord here.

So.

Yeah, but.

All right, thanks.

Thanks native.

Appreciate it, man.

That's.

That's a good topic and can't wait to hear you and Sweaty talk about it on Blueberry.

That'd be good.

Yeah.

I'm gonna make Sweaty rank What's more important to him?

I think that's what I do.

Yeah, I think it'd be good.

Cool.

All right, time to catch up, guys.

We've talked about our topics, and hopefully you guys enjoyed the.

The back and forth on that.

We're now going to switch over and see what the hell has been going on with these two guys lives over the.

Over the long distance since we've talked to him last.

And also me and Kingsley have a few things to say as well.

Right after.

All right, boys and girls, this is where we catch up and talk, especially with our two guest co hosts here and see what they've been up to since we talked to them last.

And it's been a long time since I've talked to these guys.

So I want to start with you, Phoenix.

Tell me what's going on in your life.

Any changes?

Anything happening there?

I think you said you had a job change, and then anything you're watching or playing or anything you want to talk about, man, this floor is yours.

Yeah, there's been some significant changes.

Got.

Got moved to a different position at my job, so no longer checking people's parts in qc.

I'm now painting and welding and cutting the material for them to.

To make the parts, stuff like that.

So it's.

It's definitely more.

More interesting, kind of.

I'm at the start and the end of.

Of all the projects now.

Learning welding is fun because I've.

I've never done that.

I'm curious, are you doing like, tig welding or using electricity or using a torch?

Mig.

Mig.

Mig.

What'd I say?

Tig Mig welding.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, tig is a type of welding.

Yeah.

It's just you.

You hand feed the.

The filler rod into there, whereas mig, it's pushing it out of the gun.

I got you.

I know enough to take it.

Yeah, it's been pretty interesting.

Eventually I'll start learning tig and whatever else, but right now it's down to the guy that's been doing it for 20 years.

So he's got a doctor, and I'm

fine with leaving it to him.

Yeah.

Put something in his coffee

then.

As far as here at the house.

Yeah, it'd been far enough ago.

My oldest daughter's moved out probably about a year ago now.

We just finished show choir season with the two girls I got left here at home.

So my middle daughter, she's a senior this year, so this is her last time going through, which was kind of neat because there are a couple weekends ago we got to go to their last competition, and because it was her very last one, they let her be one of the kids to go up on stage to collect the trophy, and they were grand champions.

So that was another cherry on top.

My youngest has been doing.

Was doing band in junior high.

Well, now she's a freshman, and she decided that she was going to be in three of the four available bands and was talking about joining the fourth next year.

I was in three of the four.

Yeah, dude, it's.

I'm telling you, being able to read music and play it is one of the joys in life, man.

I miss.

I miss playing in an orchestra and jazz band and stuff, and improvising and stuff.

That was always fun, man.

Good for her, man.

Good for her.

And she's really been getting a kick out of it, dude.

Before you know it, you're going to look around, it's going to be so quiet in your house.

You're going to go, wow, I can't believe it's already here.

The empty nest.

It'll be here for, you know, about

three, four years left.

Native knows a little bit about that.

The empty nest.

Are you.

No, it's not.

Quite.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost, almost.

I've been.

I've been catching up with Native through his podcast because ever since you guys, it's been you and sweaty again.

You guys have talked about your lives and stuff, and it's really cool.

But.

So what is.

What's going on in Ohio right now?

Phoenix.

Anything new, man?

Anything of note?

Scarlett was putting down Ohio, said there was really nothing going on.

He says, I can't believe you called it the great state of Ohio.

There's nothing really great about Ohio, but I don't know what part.

I guess east, west, south, north part of Ohio do you live?

I'm in the Midwest.

Midwest, okay.

Of Ohio.

Basically due east of Indianapolis.

Oh, okay.

So a lot of cornfields.

All the towns are tiny.

So I think that's actually what makes Ohio great, is not a lot going on.

It's just chill.

I apologize.

I probably asked you that probably two and a half years ago.

I just have a terrible memory.

I.

Maybe, yeah, but I also do.

So if you did ask it, I don't.

I'll tell you what, man, when you first popped on the camera, you look good, man.

Look like you're.

Are you eating healthy and working out and stuff?

Because you look good, man.

I mean, not saying you didn't look good in the past, but you got a little more.

A little more gray.

In the beard.

I mean, welcome to the club.

I think that's part of having three girls.

It is, man.

It is.

Native.

Native.

You native.

You're using coloring, aren't you?

Dude, I know you got some gray hair in there.

I just.

I just.

I just adjust the settings on this camera.

Is that what it is?

Black Point Max.

Well, Phoenix, it's good to hear from you, man.

I'm glad you're on tonight.

It's good to catch up, man.

I appreciate you be here, Native.

I know from what I've heard on your podcast, the Blueberry Lounge with you and sweaty spooks is that your son went off and enlisted, and he just got back from boot camp.

No, he's not.

He's still out there, actually.

Oh.

Oh.

He was home for break.

That's what it was.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He came.

So he came for his.

His class, like, fell in a.

In an awkward time, right.

Because there's Christmas leave, so mandatory winter leave drills.

Horns have to obviously go on vacation as well.

You know, they have to take their time off, so he has opportunity to come home.

So he came home for a few weeks, and it was great.

We got to enjoy Christmas with him and all that good stuff.

And then he had to go right back, so he did that.

And then we got to see him again in just this past month in February for his turning green ceremony.

And that's him be officially becoming a soldier.

Right.

But he.

He enlisted for infantry, so it's just.

He stays there.

It's basically the same thing that now he's doing more advanced infantry tactics and different weapon systems.

So, yeah, we get to go see him again in April, and it's.

It's really exciting.

We're excited about it.

So.

Yeah, I know like you said, your wife was cutting onions that day.

Had to go a little tough.

Yeah.

Dropping them off.

Yeah, man.

Went through it too, man.

It sucks.

You get used to them.

That's for sure.

You get used to them, and all of a sudden, they're.

They're leaving.

They're.

They're going away.

How'd this happen?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm excited for him and everything like that, so I'm excited to see him again and see his graduation and him put on that.

That coveted blue cord and officially becoming an infantryman.

So, yeah, it's exciting times.

It's a.

It's another change in our chapter as well, you know, for us to.

Like, you talked about empty nesters.

We're about to be empty nesters.

So next chapter.

Gotta figure it out and see where we go from here.

Maybe we'll move to Ohio over there.

Wait, you were talking about.

Yeah, you were talking about.

That sounds nice.

You were talking about in your.

In your podcast that you were thinking about picking up your roots and moving somewhere else.

Is that still in the plans?

Yeah, absolutely.

So looking at, like, you know, just checking out different places, you know, different states and all that, and getting Airbnb checking out the location.

Nice.

Seeing if it's something that we like, we enjoy, and then buying a.

Buying some land, building a house and.

And wait for grandbabies.

You have the coolest job, I think, of anybody in this discord community.

Nah, you literally.

You literally monitor and put on war games, and I think you're involved in some of the strategic putting of.

Together some of the games as well.

Or is my stretching it?

I got half of that.

Are you.

Are you.

Are you involved in putting, like, objectives together and actual.

Put.

Put the actual strategies together in those war games and objectives and stuff that they're supposed to do?

Or.

Or am I stretching it?

No, no, we don't.

We don't put those together.

We just monitor.

Okay.

You know, and I. I'm not even at that level anymore since the last time I talked to you, I bumped up.

So I.

More at a higher.

Higher level leadership.

But we.

What my team does is.

Is sits there and monitors how the battalions and the brigade execute their.

Their battles in accordance with the training objectives that they have from the senior trainer.

So they sit there, they do that and monitor it, put it all into a package, and, you know, feed the army with, you know, hey, this was good.

This was bad.

And then they can sit there and, you know, execute training according to that and provide coaching and mentoring to.

To make them more lethal or more capable.

Sounds like a cool job still from a.

From a brigade.

Not anymore, man.

Like, most of the time, I'm just dealing with pay problems.

I'm dealing with staffing, hiring, firing, just all the.

All the.

The BS part of the job.

All right, I get it.

I get it.

So what else is going on, man?

Anything else you want to mention?

I mean, I think the big thing since.

Especially since the last time that I've been on here, talked to you in depth like this was, you know, I've been finding my faith more and inspired.

It's been really nice.

So just going.

Going to church, learning scriptures and it's been.

It's been really nice.

So that's something.

That's been a heavy focus for me.

That's awesome, man.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

People finding their path, man.

That's the name of the game, really is.

Yeah, it's important.

My son's been involved in that lately.

My brother has been, I was, you know, I've been raised Southern Baptist, so.

And all about that stuff, so.

Man, it's just good to hear from you, man.

I know I'm going to be talking on your podcast next weekend.

Is that right?

We pushed it up.

Not, not this Saturday, but yeah, next

Saturday, the following one.

And I will.

Whenever you, whenever you put the podcast out.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I can't wait to talk to you in Sweaty man and catch up.

So, yeah, go put questions in the.

Questions for the channel or questions for the show Channel in bbl.

Nice, man.

I, I, I appreciate you coming tonight, man.

You're, it's always so much fun when you come on the show, so I appreciate you, man.

Mr. Kingsley.

Mack, what's going on this week in your life, man?

Anything new?

If funny one thing came to mind.

It's boring, but I'm, I'm happy about it.

In my business.

I changed my invoicing system.

Okay, Everyone can laugh now, but hey, I'm speaking.

Look, look, look.

I mean, you know, I run my own business, but FreshBooks used to be a good product.

It's like a version of QuickBooks, but they, they went online in the cloud way before quickspoon did.

Oh.

But guess what they're raising their price to.

And I was already paying too much.

I was already paying 65amonth.

They're going to 75amonth starting next month.

I'm like, screw that.

It finally got me to switch invoice.

Ninja.

I highly recommend $14 a month.

You can run a business, at least a small business, you know.

So I gave FreshBooks the kick to the curb.

I started with QuickBooks.

I used to have the, you know, where you buy the program, but then it got.

It kind of disappears with the old computers.

It's hard to move around.

But now I have the online version and it's really sweet because it automatically fills your journal, you know, your, it follows your checking account and immediately fills in, almost does the bookkeeping for you, almost.

You just have to double check it and monitor it.

But they started me out at 25amonth, which I thought was a really good deal.

Dude, I'm paying like 38, 42amonth.

Every, it's like every quarter of the year.

They raised the price on me.

It'll go up more.

Yeah, it's like they know they know I can't go anywhere else because I've got my accountants tied into it.

Everything's tied into it now.

So it's.

I'm like in a.

But you can.

That's the thing.

Like Invoice Ninja will do all that too.

They'll also tie to your bank account.

It wasn't as hard a switch as I thought.

I was able to find export of all the things and then import.

And then I had to like even the auto payment things with that was I was most worried about.

Cause I don't want to like contact my customers again to have them redo their CCs because you know that's kicking the bucket.

You don't want.

You're kicking the can for asking for trouble.

But I use Stripe as my payment processor and I was able to like line all that up automatically.

They have an import for all that stuff too.

It was amazing.

I can't give enough credit to these people, even though probably people listening like, what the hell?

We don't care to hear this.

But yeah, nice job, man.

Definitely.

It was.

It was fun for me.

But no, I've been playing.

I've been enjoying a lot of fun, you know, having so much fun in the new season of Division.

Always an amazing game.

You know, like we've been saying, it's had its highest numbers ever.

That game's doing something right for sure right now.

And also the new season of Diablo just started yesterday.

Having a lot of fun in Diablo, playing as a spirit born this time and exciting.

Going through the skill trees there and the amount of things like these are both things that I. Destiny could take a lot from is the amount of builds and endgame and things to keep you on the hook is way more in Division and Diablo than it is in Destiny.

So I hope they can add more of those things in later on with that.

But I always joke, you know, I'm the D3s are my big games.

Destiny Division, Diablo.

Yeah, yeah.

And I did finish.

I don't think I mentioned it on the previous show.

I did officially finish Resident Evil Requiem.

Oh, you did.

Amazing game.

Yeah.

Ending really good.

Well, you know, when you have a single player game, you're having a lot of fun.

I like to play through it.

There's no reason to pause.

I mean, having fun.

So was the.

Got through it and it's a good game.

Was the end real epic or was it okay or compared to your other games okay?

No, the end was good.

I would say though I didn't even care.

The game was just More amazing building up to it.

It was also one of these games Native, where like, they had the biggest bait and switch crazy story thing.

I don't want to spoil anything, but there's the elevator scene, if anyone's played the game, you know what I mean?

The elevator scene in the.

Really in the hospital area.

And the way they lead up, they're showing this cut scene.

You're like, no, that's gonna happen.

That sucks.

That sucks.

It sucks.

It sucks.

And then something else happens that also sucks.

But it's not what you were expecting.

It was such a good twist.

I.

All I remember is the last one that was in one house and I was like.

I was watching some streamers play it and I'm like, no, dude, there's no way, man.

Anything.

Ghosts or spirits or zombies falling out of walls.

And I'm good, man.

You know, if you just don't believe in that stuff, then it doesn't scare

you, you know, I try not to, but after I saw Paranormal Activity, I still don't have my feet over the bed.

I still.

They stay under the covers, man.

They don't stick out.

Ghosts know to only affect people that are scared of them.

So, you know, it must be, you know, that's why they don't bug me.

That's why I stopped playing Destiny, because I was, I believe, the throne.

Real.

So no scary.

Yeah, you just not believe in it and then you'll be fine.

No, but fair enough.

It is a.

It is a jump scare type of game at times, for sure.

Yeah.

No, that's basically it for me.

So I'll.

I'll pass it over to you.

So we'll talk about Raid stuff.

Yeah, I want to give first, I want to give the boys over at DPS dudes playing stuff a shout out.

I was on their show this week.

Man, it is great catching up with those guys.

I can.

I haven't realized how long it's been since I've talked a lot on Bell and Danger Powers and of course, Mr. Rodimus prime himself.

He's in chat tonight.

Yeah, I had a great time.

We talked about marathon.

I don't want to spoil too much because he hasn't put out the show yet.

But we.

We caught up.

We had a couple top 10 lists at the end.

I really like that part.

And we actually got a movie.

This is a great idea, Rodimus.

They actually have a movie.

You know, we have a music sound sound, you know, playlist that we've had over the years.

He has a movie playlist that movies you should try and he gave me his list and I'd go through and of course I found a couple movies that I think the his guys will like.

But yeah, just going to give them a shout out.

I had a lot of fun.

That was a great, great time hanging out with those guys.

I do have a movie review by the way.

My wife and I went and saw another movie at the AMC theater using my AMC stubs.

A list membership.

Of course.

We went over at the place over at Disney and they have these super huge theaters.

They're like, they call them the XL theaters over there.

It literally is 5 to 600 seat.

And it's just crazy how big these theaters are and they sit right in the middle of the complex.

It's the coolest thing.

It's the first time I've been in the in those theaters.

I'm usually going in the Dolby theaters or whatever and ample room to sit.

Huge auditoriums, man, it is just amazing.

Of course it wasn't fully full, but no movie theater is anymore these days.

The movie we saw was the Bride.

It was written by Maggie Gyllenhaal, it's Jake Gyllenhaal's sister.

And it's kind of a reimagined take on the Bride of Frankenstein.

Beg your pardon?

Roboti.

I'm sorry, man, you'll just have to make.

You just have to tell you.

So, yeah, I'll turn my virtual camera off.

We'll see if that makes a difference because the stream can still see me.

Can you hear me?

Is that better?

Better or worse?

Say something again.

Hello?

Hello?

Keep talking.

Anybody there?

Yeah.

Is that better or worse?

Still a little robot y, but not as bad.

Yeah, it's still a little robot Y.

I'll keep my camera off.

We'll see what happens.

We saw the Bride.

It was written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

This is Jake Gyllenhaal's sister.

And like I said, it's a reimagined take on the Bride of Frankenstein.

I would say it is a little bit of Frankenstein versus Bonnie and Clyde versus like 1930s corrupted Chicago.

Kristen Bale plays Frankenstein and Jessie Buckley, which is an up and coming British actress here in the States, is just killing it.

I mean, if you might have known her from Hamnet, which is probably going to get an Oscar nod this year, she plays the Bride.

But the thing was, it was kind of all over the place.

One time it was about bringing the bride to life and then boom, we're off to the corrupted politicians of Chicago, the corrupted mayor and stuff.

The time references kind of just jump back and forth, which kind of made it a little jarring if you're trying to follow along, you know, if they're going back in the past or what.

Rotten Tomatoes has it at 57% and IMDb has it as a 5.9 out of 10.

I'm about in the same place on this one.

There were good parts of the movie and there were times and I was asking myself why did they need to put this into the movie kind of thing?

So I'm in agreement with the critics on this one.

I gave it three stars.

It was just, it was just okay.

So if you see it, let me know what you guys think.

I'm always curious what you guys think compared to my scores.

I have to give a shout out to our Saturday night Raid crew.

We decided to run out and teach two new Raiders, the Desert Perpetual Raid this past week, shout out to HD Tech and dad Bod Hero.

And we talked two of the encounters before calling it a night.

And I believe we plan to jump back into Salvation's edge.

But a little announcement here.

Elmer Fudd Games, which will be on our show next week, by the way, is hosting another tournament and it is an Arc Raiders tournament, so I'm really looking forward to doing that.

My partner is none other than Mr.

Native Raider here and he's going to have to guide me because I don't have a backpack as big as his.

Probably he's probably been playing a little bit more than me, but I'm really looking forward to going around and scavenging.

And the way the tournament works is you take a screenshot of your before pack and it's all about the net, how much you're gaining in value per round and I guess the people with the most money win.

And of course if you get knocked out, you get zero.

So little strategy there on how you want to play it.

You want to play Buried City, you want to play the little Easier maps, or do you want to play some of the higher end maps?

It's up to you.

It's kind of a gamble, so I'm looking forward to doing that.

That's this Saturday, by the way.

9:00pm Eastern to 11:00pm Eastern.

I'll be streaming it on my YouTube and Twitch just like you guys are watching it, right?

The podcast tonight be on the same channel.

And yeah, we'll see how this old man struggles and sees if he can keep up with all the the younger players out there.

So, and I don't know if we're going to try to do a Salvation's Edge, I think we're talking about maybe possibly Sunday doing it.

We'll have to just see how that works if we can get everybody together to do that.

If not, we'll be regrouping next Saturday for probably Salvation's Edge, Jump Shout out to Run a Red Line, Allocate, and of course, my partner, crime, Mr. Kingsley Mack, here for helping those two new players learn this last week.

It's really fun.

I really have fun doing our raid nights.

Looking forward to doing it again.

We'll just have to see if we can get it put together here.

I did play some more Arc Raiders.

I'm really loving that game.

It's a very different game than Marathon.

And of course I'm playing a lot of marathon.

I want to give a shout out to Batman and Zero from the community.

They jumped in and I actually did my first night where I actually played with a group.

I've been playing this game strictly solo and it, like Kingsley mentioned a long time ago, it's kind of like a horror game because you're having to tiptoe around and be very stealthy and very quiet.

But playing with Batman and Zero, it was a lot of fun.

And man, do you get your bounties.

Bounties, okay.

You get your contracts.

All that stuff gets done much faster.

I don't know if you knew this, but you can actually.

I mentioned that.

Yeah, you can actually combine contracts.

It's probably nice, but I, I Plus,

people can just protect you.

You know, why you're.

Yeah, of course.

But I. I still play some solo today.

I got rained out halfway through the day and I decided to jump on and play a few rounds.

And I thought it was.

I thought a good time.

Got some stuff done that I needed to get done, but I'm enjoying the game.

I'm kind of feeling my way out through it, but I think it's a lot of fun.

That's it for me, guys.

Why don't we go and see if we have any questions from our community.

Hey, Guardians, if you would like to ask us a question for the show, head over to guarding downcast.com to send us a voicemail or email us with your question.

However, the best way to send us a question is to write it out in our podcast Questions channel in our Discord community.

You can access it on the Discord app on your phone or on the web.

It's Discord GG Forward slash, Guardian Downcast.

Don't think about it.

Just do it.

Do it right now.

The links are in our show notes later.

Guardians, foreign.

Boys and girls.

This is the final segment of our show.

This is where we get our questions from you guys.

And we got a couple here in the discord.

We'll go over them here and go around the horn, see what everybody thinks here.

The first one is a destiny question from Mr. Barrel Barley 406.

He says, I've got a fun one for you guys and the guest.

What are the oldest guns you keep in rotation?

I use the Thunderlord.

Corrective action, corrective measurement, the heavy machine gun from Vog and the targeted redaction hand cannon.

What are the oldest guns you use in the Destiny game?

You guys don't have them up, but I can pull it up.

Well, the oldest.

I bet I can.

No one can beat me on this unless they use it also.

But this came out on day one.

The sunshot.

You could really.

It's one of the first exotics you could pick.

I forget what the other one was, but Sunshot's even older than Thunderlord and I still use it from time to time.

Love that gun.

I mean non exotic.

Only ones I can think of.

I have an inaugural address that I got during Leviathan raid.

I still love that pulse rifle.

I won't ever get rid of it unless Bungie just destroys it out of my.

You use it?

I use it on occasion, especially in Crucible because It's a.

It's a three.

It's a 390.

It's.

It's a.

It's a regular adaptive, but it's.

It's just smooth as butter when you fire it.

And it has the, you know, the fixed stuff.

It has a kill clip and Outlaw, which was a really good perk to have back then.

But you know, it.

It has just the basic, you know, perks on.

It doesn't have the perks that we see on the guns today.

Other than that.

I would say my hammerhead.

Oh no, not my Hammerhead.

The.

My other pulse rifle from the season of the Forge.

One of the original.

I know they brought it back with.

Into the light, but it would be my robot.

Were you looking at a window right then?

No, I'm just pulling up Dim.

If you see it is something, then

probably be my blast furnace.

My blast furnace.

I've got my original blast furnace with just the simple perks on it and just an aggressive burst 450.

It's just so much fun to use.

What about you guys?

Oldest weapons you guys are using in Destiny.

Like we don't play Destiny.

What's that game?

I pulled a dim just to see if I still had it in my inventory and I do.

It's Uriel's gift.

Oh yeah.

I probably used it last time that I played just to pull it out because Euro's gift was.

It was so good back in the day, like the beginning of Destiny 1 or Destiny 2.

Especially when it came to trials.

Yeah, I like that one.

Nice.

Yeah, it's a great one.

RiskRunner OG the one I still use.

JD Kent.

Yeah, RiskRunner.

I use it in the.

I use it in Desert Perpetual Raid when I have to climb all those platforms on that one encounter where I have all those stupid swarmers come at me when I'm trying to climb and, you know, connect the nodes so I can climb even higher, you know, because they're all shooting arc.

I just let them hit me once with arc and then I just unload on them.

Never have to reload it.

It's really nice with that catalyst on it.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Phoenix, you got one.

Yeah.

I don't remember the name of any of them.

I know I had a machine gun I was using, but it was probably, I don't know, Witch Queen era, maybe a little earlier than that.

That I would.

I was still using that regularly.

Exotic would be the Sky Burners Oath.

Use that a lot.

Nice.

Because that was real solid.

Yeah, Skyburners.

That was a sleeper, bro.

Like, even in PvP.

Like I pulled that out a few times.

PvP.

They're like, damn, that hits hard.

And then you could do that alt fire.

That just like gets them around the corner when they're trying to.

Yeah, hell yeah.

Just hit.

Fire that thing and let the little balls of fury come find them.

It was awesome.

I. I still use the out of bounds anytime I load up Disney, which hasn't been for a little while.

I get the hankering every once in a while.

But my out of bounds is still my go to.

Thing's beautiful.

Out of bounds is that it doesn't some kills.

Is that the scout rifle?

Was it just a.

No, it's a.

It's a sub.

It's just a. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sub that you got in the Crucible during a couple seasons or whatever.

Yep.

And it's still.

Still my favorite.

I think that was originally.

I think that was a dead orbit weapon, I think.

Yeah, man, that was.

That's it.

Submachine guns are fun.

They could be fun.

That's for sure.

Kingsley already mentioned yours.

Yeah.

The blast for The.

The hand.

The fiery hand cannon.

Yeah, I got you.

What's its name?

I remember.

I can look it up on you don't remember.

If I look it up on my dim, I might robot again.

So I don't want to do it.

You call yourself a Destiny fan and you don't remember one of the exotics?

If it's a hand cannon, don't talk to me too.

I don't like hand cannons.

I didn't say exotic.

Exotic would be the might of multi tool for me.

Sorry.

Anyways, it's called Sunshot.

Sunshot.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

The blazing hand cannon.

Okay, we have one more question.

Here it is from our resident theologian.

It's our dad bod hero.

He has a statement here and I'll just start reading it this definitely you guys who play Division might want to hear about this.

It's been pretty wild seeing the resurgence of Ubisoft's the Division 2 lately for a game that many people thought had already peaked years ago.

The community's coming back, new updates are rolling in, the players rediscovering the depth and builds and Endgame really shows what can happen when a live service game actually is supported long term.

In an era where so many live service titles launch big and disappear just as fast, the Division 2, quietly proving it still has life left is a reminder that consistency and commitment to the community matter more than chasing the next big trend.

It does make me wonder though.

When games like Concord and High Guard shut down almost immediately after launch, Concord was live for only a measly 15 days and the game took over 8 years to develop.

A game like Anthem being abandoned by EA before ultimately shutting down its servers years later and these games truly failing because players don't want them?

Are they failing because players don't want them?

Or is it because publishers and shareholders expect an immediate return on investment instead of treating them like long term investments the way successful life service games usually are?

It's a seven year old game the like the Division 2 can rebound with the right support.

How many other games might have eventually found their audience if they've been given the same patience instead of being shut down the moment the quarterly numbers didn't hit expectations?

And at what point will shareholders understand that building a gaming community takes time?

When a game that costs tens and even hundreds of millions to make is thrown into the market with the expectation of instant success, isn't it almost guaranteeing failure by prioritizing short term quarterly results over the long term growth that actually turns games into Lasting communities.

Maybe the real in game boss for live service games isn't the players, it's the quarterly earnings reports.

As usual, loaded question.

Kingsley, you want to dive right in?

Yeah.

I actually have to push back on this one a little bit.

I usually agree fully.

I mean, the overall point is true.

But we didn't even get to quarterly reports yet with Concord and Highguard.

Those two games were a different story.

It just.

Concord launched so, so low anyways.

It was hopeless.

And Highguard, if you look at it, it came with one number and it went down like crazy.

Yeah.

See, Division didn't do that.

Yeah, it kind of started smallish.

It started good enough and it was just flatlined for a long time and then eventually went up.

And I think that's why they gave the division a chance.

And it's doing really good now.

It's actually going up.

The point is valid for sure.

But I think Concord and Highguard are the best examples.

Those games probably did need to die.

Well, High Guard was free to play.

Concord was 40 bucks.

So that shows you the different models or different ways they expected to get a return.

Concord just was flat, period.

No one wanted this game.

And then High Guard started with a bang, I think at a hundred, a hundred thousand concurrent on the first day or so.

Yeah.

But it dropped crazier than any game I've seen.

You know, I guess they could have given that one a chance, but I think it's.

It's.

Division didn't do that.

So, you know, Division just was flatlined, but High Guard just went boom, like way down.

And I heard division was like $3.99.

Division two, you get really good deals on it.

It goes on sale, I guess.

No, it is now.

It not was okay.

Yeah.

It was full price when it came

out, of course, but it was three.

Yeah.

I got you this thing.

I think that probably that probably helped Division 2 a decent bit also just because that's probably how I had it on PC was.

I caught it on a sale.

It was like, well, I played day one.

I played a little bit.

Kingsley keeps saying, it's good.

I'll jump back in.

And then I was on that for a couple months.

So everybody's got the massive Steam library and buzz starts stirring up and why not jump back in and then find out.

Oh, it's great right now.

Sweet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's doing really good right now.

I gotta check it out.

Man, I love Division 1.

I never played Division 2.

I'm the same boat in Horde in

Division 1 and it was great.

I'm the same boat.

Even better.

So.

Especially now, there's so much endgame stuff in it and the building stuff.

You can do, like all the complaints we've had with Destiny over the years.

The way you can like merge things together and build things and stuff.

It works really good.

I played Division 1 as well.

Is Dark Zone still there?

Yeah, Dark Zone's still there.

Hell yeah.

All right, I'm in.

You tell him, Rodimus.

Yeah, I mean it's a good point.

Dad Bod hero.

He's very game savvy.

He has some really good topics when he brings questions to the community.

So thank you for that, dad Bod.

Appreciate you, man.

Hell yeah.

But that's all we had.

That's all we had question wise this week.

I did want to say one other thing before we leave tonight.

I want to congratulate Master Oogway, aka Master Gator, aka Spicy8496.

He won the Year of Prophecy Collector's Edition last week.

I shipped it out a few days ago.

He's already got it.

He's already posted a pic in the Discord and I am freaking jealous, man.

That game, that, that Collector's Edition, I didn't even open it.

Amazing.

Taco King donated it to the community for me to give away and I never opened it.

It sat in my office.

I couldn't believe how good it looked.

The statue, the picture statuette of the three different guardians, the gold and bronze on it.

It looks so good.

So check out the.

The general chat channel in our Discord if you want to see it.

It really looks good.

Got a compass, got some coins in there.

I mean it's probably got some bits of lore as well, I think.

But just want to congratulate him.

He did finally get it and I asked him to post a picture when he did receive it.

So he just got it today, it looks like.

So congrats again, Master Oogway.

I do plan on.

I do plan on having some more giveaways in the future.

I'm thinking some new Guardian Down Roundtable T shirts on the, you know, down the road.

Maybe even some new decals or something.

Maybe even some goodies for our Patreon community as well.

So keep an eye on our announcements out there in our Discord server and I'll let you know when he's had.

We have these things lined up and in place, so.

But that's it guys.

That's our show tonight.

I wanted to thank risen Phoenix and Mr.

Native Raider for joining us tonight.

Great Conversations, guys.

I appreciate you guys coming on.

Sorry, my voice was real butting out.

I. I have no control over what's going on there, so I'll have to figure out what's.

If I have a memory leak or what's going on.

But thank you, Risen Phoenix.

Thanks for hanging out with us, man.

And you want to give a shout out to anybody, Anybody in particular.

The community, your family or anybody, Whatever you want to do.

Glad to be here.

You know, it's one of those moments where as soon as you're asked, like, you have all kinds of ideas and then as soon as you're asked, mine goes blank.

Yeah, I, I don't have a very

eloquent way to pick up now.

Sorry.

Yeah, no, you're good.

Well, thanks again, man.

We appreciate you being on tonight.

You look good, man.

You look good.

I like, I like the look.

I like the beard.

Everything looks good.

Looks good.

And they have this other guy, Native Raider.

What's up, man?

Thanks for coming on tonight.

And I guess I'll see you probably tomorrow night.

We're going to do a little practice run of some arc Raider, so make sure we have our communications and not crossing wires.

And then I guess we'll be playing Saturday for Fudd's tournament.

So by the way, that's Elmer Fudd Games on Twitch, if you want to follow the whole, the, the whole contest, the whole tournament.

He's going to have a bunch of stream windows up, I'm sure of everybody that's playing.

He's got his own little discord for this tournament.

So give him some love.

Check in tomorrow night around 9 o'.

Clock.

Elmer Fudd Games, Double D, Double M, double D. And check out his stream.

And of course I'll have it streamed.

I'll have it up too, as well tomorrow night if you guys want to check it out.

So Native Raider, give us a shout out, man.

Let us know how people can reach you and listen to your podcast.

All that good stuff, man.

First off, I mean, by podcast, whatever, you know, but this tournament, bro, it'd be exciting.

Looks fun.

To be honest, we.

We got the.

The team name of Greater.

So it's a combination of Gator and Raider.

So.

Greater.

Yeah, I got to give you credit.

That was your idea.

That was your idea.

Actually, I don't.

I don't even think it was my idea, bro.

Just because I was just like Raider, Gator or something like that.

I came up with something lame.

It looks good.

And then Fudd hit me up and I think it was actually coming from sweaty.

I think sweaty actually came up with the thing.

Okay.

So yeah, man, I'm looking forward to it.

It's gonna be fun.

But you could check me out on the Blueberry Lounge podcast.

We do things there.

We record episodes, talk about gaming and talk about life.

We've recently, I guess starting this new year kind of thing changed it up to where we're, we're focusing more on life update and then gaming Update.

So it's kind of a, a split podcast of, of things we talk about life and have guests on and we had PTP on, so Admiral Nips and Fluffy Fingers last episode.

It was awesome.

And we get you on next and I'm excited for it.

So, yeah, it's gonna be fun.

Yeah, we're getting back to our, back to our groove, which is really nice and I'm looking forward to it.

I haven't posted nothing on YouTube, so I'm not even gonna shout out my YouTube.

I barely even stream anymore with Twitch or anything like that.

Life's just been crazy, so maybe eventually I'll get back around to it.

I, I, yeah, I like your new.

I like your new.

I like your new direction of your podcast.

I really do.

I like it.

You have the same problem we do of going over too long sometimes.

But hey, man, when you're having a good time, screw it.

Just have fun and sit back and chill.

Yeah, exactly, man.

And we want to do life updates first.

Talk about life and then get to giving because essentially that's more important, right?

Like let's, let's we're dads, we're this, we're that, you know, we're, we're going through stuff like let's talk that stuff out.

Then let's get to, get to the good stuff of gaming.

You know, get, get to our hobbies after.

So it's more of a priority base type of thing.

I like it, man.

I like it.

I like, I like every week.

I love hearing it, man.

Love hearing from you guys.

Thank you, man.

I appreciate it.

And Mr. Kingsley Mack, thank you sir, as usual, for being on tonight.

We appreciate you, man.

Any glad being here, but the guests were amazing.

They were really good guests tonight.

I was looking forward to the show.

It's really going to be fun.

So this is the part where I talk to you guys, our audio listeners.

Don't, don't tell them on the live show, but you guys are my favorites.

Okay, just letting you know.

Hey, I wanted to thank you for listening to the show this week.

I hope you're enjoying this new format with our various topics surrounding our gaming hobby.

By the way, if there's a topic that you want us to talk about, submit your topic, article, video, or whatever, point of view, argument, whatever you want to write down and you can put that in our Gaming Articles for Roundtable Channel in our Discord community and let us know why you think it'd be a good topic.

And we may take it in consideration when putting our shows together each each week.

What you guys probably don't see is the special Discord DMS that we set up before we put on a live show every week where we go back and forth and talk about, you know, what everybody's bringing to the table if we think it's a good topic.

And it also gives me a chance to decide the lineup every week.

That way I can kind of make the topics flow into each other, so to speak.

So I hope you guys are seeing that extra work that we put in listening to it.

I should say every week.

Next week we have Mr. Elmer Fudd games from Just Some Gamers Podcast and the most eloquent Fluffy Fingers, MD from the Potato Thumbs podcast.

On the show we're going to discuss four more topics surrounding our gaming hobby, so I hope you guys will check it out.

We're live every Thursday night, 9pm Eastern time on my Twitch and YouTube channels.

That's Todd the Gator.

T O D D T H E G A T R All run together, no spaces.

Also check out the Arc Raiders tournament that Elmer Fudd Games will be putting on this weekend.

Native Raider and I will be participating.

You can watch the replays on my Twitch and YouTube channels as well if you want to see how things turned out.

Or you can go to Elmer Fudd Games Double M Double D on Twitch and I'm sure he'll have a replay of the entire tournament.

It's always a good time.

He always puts on a great a great show for everybody.

I was on the DPS podcast this last week and I'll announce something once Rodimus publishes the episode.

I had a lot of fun talking with those guys.

And again, thanks for the invite gentlemen to the podcast.

The top 10 lists at the end were crazy.

I love that kind of stuff.

I will be on the Blueberry Lounge podcast next week and again I'll announce something in our Discord community once that show is public as well.

A big thanks again to Arisen Phoenix and Native Raider for being our guest co hosts this week.

I had a lot of fun talking with them.

Of course.

A big shout out to my co host, Mr. Kingsley Mack, who shows up every week to hear this old man's hot takes and also to keep me back, you know, steer me back onto the road.

I tend to wander and attend to, tend to weave a little bit when I'm talking topics, so we appreciate that.

A big shout out to our Patreon community.

We're almost 100 strong now.

We have bonus content, special roles in our Discord, even private channels where you can talk with other patrons of the show and myself.

So if you're curious what's involved there, you can also join for free.

Just check it out.

It's patreon.com forward/supportguardiandowncast.

A shout out to our largest Patreon supporters, like our Dungeon Champion Patron, Deadpool 1 Merc, and our raid boss patrons, Amazing Taco King, Frostbite and Jealous.

If you enjoyed today's episode and were entertained or even.

Even if you groaned or even cry or even shook your head a little bit for from all my hot takes, be sure to give us a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

We might even mention it on the show live.

If you have some gaming friends that you think might enjoy our show, send them to guardiandowcast.com all the information's right there.

So for whatever game you're into these days, be sure to take breaks, hydrate and touch some grass.

Azura Demon.

The path to victory is long, but there's always hope.

Fight.

Thank you all so very much for listening.

And whether in life or in your game.

Hey, get your reps in later.

Guardian.

Sa.

Overtime.

Let's do this.

All right, so thank you, everybody for joining us live tonight from my YouTube, my Twitch, my robot voicing and Discord.

Thank you for enduring that.

And remember, guys, whether in life or in your game, get your reps in later.

Guardians.

Have a good one.

Later.

Goodbye.

Short and sweet.

So deadpan use.

I'm not short and sweet.

That wasn't in the show notes, bro.

Come on.

I wrote you freaking chapters.

I wrote you chapters for failed.

You're off the show.

I'm going to try my virtual camera.

Delete my audio.

We'll see if I start roboting again, okay?

Geez, man.

I don't know what's going on.

It's not just the camera because you were with audio.

It's something with the virtual.

Go back in a memory.

When you, like, switch windows on your computer, like, something gets freaked out.

Could be, could be.

Maybe the computer's trying to switch to.

I don't know what's going on.

I honestly don't, so.

Oh, well, just have to deal with that, I guess.

Anyway, that's fun, guys.

I really love what we're doing here.

I really love the direction we're taking our show now because I get to dip back in the goodie bag and pull out all my favorite guests from the past, and I'm sure we'll eventually, hopefully get to everybody.

But little by little, I'm bringing back a lot of my favorite guests and talking some.

Some good mad gaming topics.

And it's been a lot of fun.

I'm really enjoying it.

So appreciate you guys getting involved and jumping in tonight.

So.

And look, under two hours, under two and a half hours.

You owe me money, Kingsley.

Yeah, I know it was.

I didn't say anything about this week.

I don't owe you any money.

So easy to get.

But I was gonna mention, even with.

Yeah, even with the audio problems, it was like a perfect length tonight, gentlemen.

Like, once it gets over two and a half, it just gets too much for me anyways.

But.

Yeah, but what was I gonna say?

Yeah, I feel like a lot of us kind of have like, a higher level view now, which is so nice.

And it's.

You think of it as, like, not, like graduating.

It's not like we're deprecating things that we talked about in the past, but it's kind of okay and good to sometimes, like, morph into other things or else you may not podcast at all.

So why not morph, right?

If you're getting.

It's better to morph and still keep a podcast going than to stop a podcast.

And.

And that's.

That's exactly kind of what I was thinking, too, when I stopped doing Guardian Hub is I wanted to morph into, like, doing something different because I didn't want to edit.

So I knew I had to move somewhere else if I was still going to be on a podcast.

Luckily, Gator adopted me.

It was perfect timing, man.

I mean, you were.

Yeah.

And you.

And here's the thing, man, you hadn't.

I never heard anything about.

You were ready to.

To take a break from me.

I know.

It just worked out perfectly because I just happened to be thinking.

I'm like, you know, I love having guest host on.

That was a lot of fun.

I love doing it.

But it was a lot of work, man.

Everybody has different schedules.

Yeah, everybody has schedules.

I was.

If.

If you didn't offer the opportunity, I might have just stopped because a lot of us were getting tired with editing and the scheduling, and I'M still okay talking about stuff.

I'm like, I'm not gonna just head it up on my own anymore.

Cause it's too much work.

Good.

I mean, very proud of what you do, Todd, because there's no way I would head up a podcast.

It's just too.

And doing it live to boot.

You know, it felt good sitting in Rodimus's, you know, bots in his Discord and just chilling and not having to worry about anything working correctly, you know, so that was fun.

But it's so fun to talk about more generalized things too.

And I love the attitude that we have where you're talking too native, like, yeah, you like Palworld, but a lot of people don't like it.

But like what you like, right?

Don't apologize.

Where even sometimes a lot of people will be like, oh, Destiny sucks.

I mean, yeah, it's okay to agree that Destiny doesn't have a lot of good stuff in it right now, but people still like Destiny.

We're never not going to say you shouldn't be playing Destiny.

You know, we're.

We're Destiny roots.

We.

We love the game.

You know, we like talking about other stuff too, so why not, right?

Why not talk about other stuff too?

With Destiny, I have.

I think I've reinstalled it and deleted it probably 40 times.

And probably 25 of those times, I didn't even play it.

I was like, yeah, I'm gonna get back on this weekend.

You know, it's like, ah, I don't have space on my Xbox.

I gotta delete it, you know?

Dude, we gotta get you a PC.

Sam.

How do you like me now?

That better?

Yeah, you're good.

See, it's something to do with Discord.

I don't understand.

No audio.

Yeah, I can't hear.

No audio.

It looks clean.

Yeah, no, I was checking his Twitch stream to make sure his frame.

No, my frames are always good.

My frames are always good on YouTube.

Nada, bro.

Can't hear you.

What?

I don't understand that.

Gotta be some kind of digital mute.

Digital detox.

No, I think we should.

I think we should show a graph.

You guys are messing with it.

You guys are messing me.

I see my icon lighting up.

You guys are messing with me.

You guys messing with me.

We'll let you know when we can't hear you.

Sudden drop in volume,

Sam.