We Analyze Destiny Port News and the Arc Raiders PvE Experiment

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So here's what we have lined up on this week's show for some First I want to do some quick gaming news that crossed my feed lately, including a new segment I created called the Destiny Watch.

Now that the Destiny Game is being revived and does have a future soon, I hope I will periodically check in with Bungie and see what is coming for my topic of the week.

I'm talking about the new PvE only mode that Embarkus tested all this week and of course things have not gone to plan.

I'll explain later.

I will then share my week and also have not one but two movie reviews my wife and I saw this week at the theater.

I'll give you my honest take on those at the end of the show.

If time allows, we'll answer questions or feedback from our community.

So if you do have a question for us, make sure you enter it in our podcast questions channel in our Discord community and we might read it live on the show.

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Sorry, no Uncle Scum Death this week, but I'll I'll keep the light on for him.

So if everyone's ready, let's get into it.

Hello out there.

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

All right, let's get into some gaming news first.

That just crossed my feed this week and I wanted to share it with you guys.

If you haven't heard or seen about it already, the first thing is this.

This article is from Gamesradar.com and it talks about the PvE mode in Arc Raiders.

They start off by saying Embark Studios just pulled the curtain back on why Arc Raiders is actually testing a PvE only toggle and it turns out the internal dev arguments looked identical to the Reddit post.

The studio admitted they threw the switch directly for the time crunched quote dad Gamers who are sick of getting Extraction camped after working a 40 hour week, executive producer Alexander Grandal confirmed Embark specifically targeted casual players with only a couple hours to spare.

These players consistently hit a wall of frustration from extraction campers and overgeared squads when just trying to clear objectives.

Telemetry showed friendly player matching pools were already behaving like purely cooperative lobbies.

Organically, that player segment grew steadily enough that Embark realized the player base had essentially validated the concept before an official toggle ever existed.

Embark rolled out a bare bones matchmaking toggle test rather than an over engineered separate mode from scratch.

The quick test immediately exposed gameplay cracks like loot griefing and undertuned arc encounters which Embark is using to pull live data before deciding if a permanent split makes sense.

This will be part of my topic of the week, so that is all I'm going to say on that article.

The next article is Sony is getting rid of its extended reality patents or it's all it's AR or VR Patent Intellectual Property Portfolio.

It says here and this is.

Let's see, this is Sony is selling its extended reality patents to Meta.

So it seems Meta is the place for augmented or virtual reality these days, but it's part of an apparent pullback from the virtual and augmented reality hardware market.

Industry analysts and tech reports indicate that the massive transfer signal Sony is scaling back its internal XR development to focus resources elsewhere where Meta is actively buying them up to expand its own dominant Arkansas and VR intellectual property portfolio.

A total of 419 global patents are expected to transfer from Sony to Meta.

Of these, 180 are US patents, while the remaining 239 cover regions like Japan, China, Korea and Europe.

Between June And September of 2026, Sony finalized the transfer of the first 43 US patents.

These cover information processing specific to XR applications, head mounted displays, and various styles of AR XR glasses filed by Sony between 2010 and 2022.

Notably, the deal only covers patents filed up to 2022.

It does not include the newer tech or specialized features deployed for the PlayStation VR 2 headset, which launched in 2023.

While neither Sony or nor Meta has released an official statement regarding the logic behind the transaction, the move aligns the broader pattern of Sony distancing itself from high stakes VR hardware development.

So in a nutshell, I think Sony's taking quite a hit financially these last few years, so maybe they're just trying to recoup some of that back.

That's all I can.

That's all I can figure on this, but I thought that was interesting that yeah, the PlayStation VR headsets and the way it's used in the PlayStation systems, it seems as Sony's backing off a little bit.

They do have the newer patents though, so I don't know exactly what that means.

You make your own assumptions there.

All right, the final gaming article of the week.

I just came across my feedback on my phone and I had to add it tonight.

Last minute.

200 Gigabytes before a single day.

One patch before the online mode even drops a single update.

We just got word from leaked developer benchmark builds that GTA 6 on the PS5 is clocking in north of 200 gigs.

Now to be fair, dev builds always have extra fat on them.

You've got debugging tools, uncompressed audio, all the back end stuff.

But let's not kid ourselves here.

With the level of photorealistic textures and crazy physics Rockstar is cramming into Vice City.

Experts are saying the final retail version isn't going to shrink much at all.

Think about how wild that jump is.

Back in 2008, GTA 4 was 10 gigs 10 and when GTA 5 launched in 2013, 17 gigs.

It took a decade of online updates to turn GTA 5 into a storage monster.

GTA 6 is starting there on day one.

And here's the real kicker.

For anyone still rocking a launch PS5, you only get about 667 gigs of usable space on that drive.

One game is about to eat one third of your entire console.

So you basically got two choices.

When preloads go live, you either nuke your current rotation of games or you go buy an M2 SSD upgrade just to make room for Vice City.

I thought you guys would get a kick out of that.

That kind of blew me away.

200 Gigs is a lot.

I mean play.

I mean Destiny 2 I think topped out around 120 gigs, 135 maybe somewhere in that range.

So yeah, this is 200 gigs and it doesn't even have an online component yet.

Imagine how many gigs that's going to add.

That's just crazy.

So anyway, that is it.

On the gaming news, we do have some news to share when it comes to and when it comes to Destiny.

First I wanted to share this.

This is a this is a post on Twitter.

Okay X this is from Envy at We love you Envy.

Just the beginning.

Full D1 port into D2 port on PC.

Gotta say it runs amazingly too.

More Coming soon Luna Exe coming soon Now I Kingsley actually clarified this as well, but I want to read these comments down below here says I was able to hit the 4k quality with with 80 plus frames per second due to me having an RTX 3050 but for higher end PCs this will run smoothly.

I think I'm running a RTX 4080 in my computer.

Just an FYI since I have to put this cause have to put this because people want to claim I'm misleading or lying.

Nowhere did I say it was playable yet, nor did I say it was done.

I hate when people say things are impossible when genuinely it is so easy.

So just keep in mind the Hate Parade and other projects they love Pocket watching IG and again this is not playable yet.

Yeah and Kingsley Kingsley in fact verified that when I when I reposted this in our discord.

So the other thing is Internets.

We've heard a lot about this guy over the last few weeks.

Here he is saying that Wrath of the Machine implemented natively in Destiny 2.

Boy I bet you Sin hit the hit the roof when he heard that.

Sin has been wanting that raid to come back so badly.

But this is from IZ Internets.

A few things are there for debugging enemies appearing in front of me randomly using to debug enemy density and for an example dupe shanks.

The electricity from the generators is done and implemented.

I forgot to mention implement it and the chest will appear right when the objective changes.

All minor tweaks.

Enemies appearing randomly is just a debug feature and will be routed towards the proper spawn doors.

Also I purposely remove the the ass electricity on the screen effect.

It was genuinely epilepsy.

It was genuinely an epilepsy warning and I will come up with a replacement along with that the pickups have no timer for right now, but the whale will be changed at release.

That is mostly for debugging purposes.

Also Bungie, if you want get in contact, we'll send you native packages to go implement it in live.

Have full shader conversion package and effective conversions, weapon conversion, dead ass everything you need.

It is all done natively with minimal hooks.

I have a few model imports, word compatibility and loading rendering.

Nothing that natively affects game behavior.

Generators, spawns, combat, animations, etc.

Is all done natively and Mactics replies well how about that.

Just some info here going forward next week.

My guest co host that will be joining me next week live on our live show.

We will be talking about AI and how crazy it has become.

Just within the last month a lot of crazy stuff has been happening and it's almost like we put the gaming industry on its head right now.

And and I'm not going to go any further down the rabbit hole on this, but I just wanted to mention those two topics for our Destiny Watch.

Okay, let's get to our topic of the week.

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Later Guardians.

All right, for our Topic of the week I have to talk about Arc Raiders.

Sorry for those of you who have to drink.

So how is the embark PvE only test going in Arc Raiders?

This week Embark put on a temporary one week test for a PvE only mode in the game.

Raiders simply had to toggle their matchmaking to PvE only where no other Raiders could do damage to you, including grenades or gunfire or any other means.

Well, leave it to spiteful players to disrupt the PvE only test going on this week in Arc Raiders.

I guess it had to happen.

There are they've been There have been reports and video of Raiders in the game griefing others in the map using several actions that don't directly cause harm to other Raiders but indeed ruin their topside experience.

I saw footage of two players standing in doorways and blocking trap players from leaving a room.

I've also seen footage of a group of Raiders hovering around a downed player that was knocked down by Ark enemies, just waiting for him or her to bleed out so they can grab all of their loot.

They probably saw a legendary weapon on their back.

I don't know if you watched my video from last week, but I mentioned that the true PvP in the game was the race for loot, right?

So some of those players have stepped that up a notch, running through the emperor rooms ahead of other players after they use their own key to open the door, usually leaving them up to fend off the the heavy arc enemies like those hydras that pop up with those nasty gun turrets, while the little loot goblin vacuums up all of the good loot ahead of everyone.

Technically not cheating, I guess, but using, let's just say not the most cooperative means.

In the normal mode, players would communicate and depend on how much they participated, would share some of the loot and be civil, you know, like it is in real life.

Well, throw all that out in PvE only because just like with cheating in the game, there's no repercussions for bad players and other than reporting the misbehavior, there's really no recourse for them.

And I don't really know what Embark can do at that time, you know, of it happening.

The social experiment, it seems, continues.

The the PvP element in the normal mode kept the tension where players would need to, you know, be more sociable and cooperative in order to not get shot by the working group together to take down, you know, big arc enemies.

Now it seems there's no risk of that in this PvE mode, so why be civil, right?

It's like pigs to the trough.

Every man for himself.

I don't think this is what Embark had in mind when putting this game together.

I've seen examples of misbehaving Raiders, throwing snitch scanners and decoy grenades at other players, trying to get them inundated with arc.

I've seen the new bull rush ability where players can sprint at another player and knock them back.

And especially when they're trying to loot areas like, you know, a leaper core or something, and then they just steal the loot out from under them.

Even, you know, if they did nothing to take down the ark.

You know, when they announced this PvE test, it did cross my mind that players would grief others in order, you know, for them to be killed by the PvE enemies.

And it seems, of course, they didn't disappoint.

But here's the good news.

Lots of players have been loving this new PvE only mode.

Some say that if Embark doesn't make it permanent, they're just not going to play the game anymore.

And I don't blame them.

Even more good news, now Embark has all of the data they need to neutralize these griefing players.

Simple little fixes that would make the Goblins go back to the other modes and behave for the door blocks, just use the function they already have in the game.

You know, where have you ever played ARC Raiders?

And you get stuck in like a crack or crevice and you can't get out.

It's like wherever you move, it just won't work.

And then after a certain amount of time, a message will pop up where you can hold, press down a button and.

And it'll literally just dislodge you and pop you out of wherever you're stuck.

It's a simple fix.

I think they could put that in the PvE only mode and it would be for any Griefers that are trying to block people from getting out of doors.

You know, just, you know, if you're leaning up against them and trying, you know, trying to run out and they're blocking you, then at, you know, after a certain amount of seconds, just have that message pop up where you can just hold and press your button and you make them invisible and you just run right through them.

That's.

That would be an easy fix for me.

I think I would.

I don't know, I just think that'd be an easy fix.

As far as the loot Goblins waiting for others to use their keys to unlock the major loot areas, just make the loot appear for the player that used the key.

Maybe they can share it, you know?

You know, if they're in a group, they can all share it together.

I can't wait for the day where a loot goblin bull rushes everyone out of the way to steal loot to only find empty lockers and containers.

I would laugh my ass off for that.

Again, I think it's a pretty simple fix.

Okay, so what about the Raiders hovering over those downed players?

Yeah, that's a little tougher to fix because there's been many times that I cannot pick up a downed player because I didn't bring any defibs with me.

So that one may come down to player integrity.

Plus, I saw one streamer run over and pick up a downed raider in the situation like that using their defib while everyone else was crouching around him and teabagging him and all that stuff.

And once he got up, once the streamer got him up, they both ran off.

All the others are kind of.

Others are just kind of surrounding him, all holding their dicks.

It was pretty embarrassing.

I would be embarrassed for you, that's for sure.

All right, so what about the lure grenades and snitch scanners?

Right?

Well, they could fix.

They could fix this in two ways.

I think the first way would be to disable them in PvE Only games, which I don't like because I have saved my own butt plenty of times from a really aggressive bombardier or a leaper that just happens to get a hold of me.

Lure grenades are really good to just buy you a time to take a breath, you know, if you have a really crazy enemy coming at you.

And these arc, you know, these arc can be dangerous.

You take.

You take them for granted and they will knock you on your butt.

Okay.

But a second option might be to disable them when there are other raiders within its proximity.

And once they're clear, they can be used again.

That would, you know, they could also get really creative and kind of grief these players back and make the arc swarm.

If you're within so many meters of another player, have the arc swarm to the thrower of the snitch scanner or the decoy grenade.

You know, if there's.

Like I said, if there's raiders in the area, I think that would be able to trigger it.

I don't know.

I don't know how they would do that in a code, but I'm not a coder, so I couldn't tell you.

I would get.

I would love to get video footage of that especially with that new video camera they got.

Anyway, I really think that the PvE only mode is a win win for Embark.

I mean, look at the numbers.

Players come back to try the game once they've heard there's a PvE only mode.

I think they're on the opening week.

I think they had a certain amount of players, but once the PvE only week, on week two popped up, their players jumped their player counts on Steam, at least from what I can see, really jumped up.

I think 40,000 more players jumped in because there was a PvE only mode.

So I think it's a win win for Embark.

The question is, and I've heard this around certain circles, what if Embark purposely made it this simple just so people would get griefed and just leave the game?

I know that's.

That's extreme.

I know, but what if, what if they don't want to do it?

You know, I mentioned a long time ago that there was probably a reason why they didn't want to make it a.

You know, why they didn't want to make it a PvE only mode, a cooperative shooter.

Because that was Destiny's problem.

Destiny 2 had so much PvE in their game.

It was so difficult to keep enough content in front of players without them getting bored and wanting to do something else.

So I'm wondering if Embark is just indulging us that have been complaining about having a PvE only mode only for them to say, well, see, there's too much player griefing, so we can't do it.

Right.

I really hope they don't take that tact because I won't be back.

That's just pure and simple.

So.

And I love this game.

I really do.

I love this game.

So I did play it this week and I, I, for the most part, it wasn't really much different than when I play my solos in my PvE, you know, care Bear lobbies or whatever you want to call them.

So.

But here's where Embark could get really creative.

I was watching a movie called I Am Legend, you know, with Will Smith.

He's.

I mean, the gist of the movie is that he's a scientist who works on viruses.

And the irony is he's the last person on earth alive.

I mean, man, that feeling of just you and maybe your dog like in the movie Embark.

Pets.

I don't know.

I'm just saying, you know, just, just trying to stay alive from all the doom and gloom of the ark.

Enemies that invaded us decades ago, that actually how that's Actually how I play.

When I go in solo, I don't think about other raiders, just me and the Ark and just staying alive.

I really like buying into that as that lore aspect of the game.

And I know the keyboard warriors are going to be out there ready to type in the comments.

That's not the game Embark made.

And maybe, maybe they didn't, but maybe if they made a future survival game like that, a one player survival game, man, I would be all over that.

Especially if it has the same graphics and the same look as Arc Raiders does.

But what an awesome playground to survive in, right?

I mean, just a thought.

Maybe limit a match to three or other solo players so they, they, they can all decide whether they help each other or just break apart and go it alone.

But I don't know, I, I mean, just solo, just you and the ark.

Pure survival.

No one's around to pick you up.

Or maybe, maybe you'll be able to use, you know, those defibs that you have in your backpack, but for some reason you can't use them on yourself.

I mean, come on, a bar.

Personal defibs should have been a thing already, but that's something you could bring with you if you're playing it solo.

But you know, I just, I just think I know the motivation of these griefing players.

I really do.

And I was watching a video from an Arc Raiders content creator on YouTube and he, what he did is he jumped into these PvE only modes and he interviewed the players that were in there and nine of the 10 players he talked to.

And of course he could have edited this, but the basic, the basic premise of his video was what was that the people he was encountering in these PvP in these PvE only modes were PvE players.

I mean, were PvP players.

They were, they were PvP players in these game modes.

So I think, I think that might be the reason why there's a lot of griefing going on in the games.

Because when you put a PvP mindset into a PvE only game, you start to figure out how you can grief or kill other players while that actually killing them.

Right?

But I don't know.

I think, I think a bark could easily fix these little problems of the griefing that we've heard about to make a PvE only mode a lot of fun.

And for the record, after 300 plus hours of playing this game, it really is a great experience.

That is, you know, once you get rid of the Radis Norvigius, that's the scientific name for the common sewer rat that scurries around, you know, crapping and pissing everywhere and chewing everything up, chewing all your wires, all that stuff.

Sorry, I probably overshared there, but my bad.

But you know, coming from, coming from a 12 year Destiny player, Arc Raiders is really close to having an outstanding game that appeals to all kinds of different players.

And all I ask is just give players a choice.

Everyone kept on my comment section on my last video where I said it should be a permanent thing and PvE should be permanent.

In Arc Raiders I had so many people say you just, you just don't want to be play PvP.

You don't, you just don't want to.

You know, I was like, you know what, all I'm asking is just give the players a choice when they jump in to play the game.

Just like Destiny has always done.

If you don't want to play PvP in the game, go.

You know, if you don't want to play PvE and you're getting bored, go jump in Iron Banner.

Go jump into trials every weekend, go jump into the Crucible.

There's all kinds of different maps.

You can play all day and shoot other guardians.

You can have fun just shooting other players if that's your thing.

So I just think this is something long overdue with the Arc Raiders and the arc Raiders community I think is asking for it and they've been asking for it.

And all I can say is relating to that.

That article I read about with Embark being split themselves internally is yeah, I mean if I'm only dedicating a couple hours every night to play Arc Raiders, give me something to work towards.

I mean that's just kind of the number one rule in a looting type game is give people something to work for.

I mentioned last week in that video that you should have multiple projects you can work on.

Say you want a special couch for your, I don't know, a cool looking couch.

You could put some special design on or something, or a stereo system console or something.

You could put that actually play music in your little outposts, which they just added.

Maybe something like that, you know, make it something worthwhile that we would go collect a bunch of stuff to build these projects.

I'm telling you that that would keep me busy for so long.

The problem with I'm having with art creators right now is there's only one project and if you don't want to, if you don't care about that project, it's kind of hard to get motivated to do it sometimes just out of boredom.

I'll just work on it anyway, just so I'm working towards something.

But there's always a.

There's always a timer on it.

There's always a FOMO element.

You know, there's a timer.

You can build this project.

Get rid of those damn timers.

I know it's a live service game, but get rid of the timers.

Why do you have timers on these projects?

Have a list of projects that you can make in this game and just let us jump in and decide what we want to make.

Do we need to collect more wires to do this or, you know, maybe we need to get some more of that armor from the, from the ark enemies.

You know, maybe we have to use a lot of that to build this or whatever.

You could, you could really be creative on how you'd put these projects together.

So that's, that's my only input here.

I mean, I just think that arc Raiders is a great game.

It has so much potential.

It reminds me so much of Destiny.

I know Mick Maximo talked last week how he was impressed that I switched over to arc Raiders.

And I was so intent on playing a survival type, you know, extraction game.

And the reason I play this game is it has a lot of parallels with the Destiny 2 game, with the Destiny game, period.

It really does.

So like Destiny, I see so much potential.

And if you've listened to this show for long enough, you know, I've had some really good spin full of theories out there that really would have been great if Bungie would have acted on them.

But I don't know their situation internally.

So I, I.

All I can do is throw it out there and into the ether and hope that someone listens or hears it or someone passes it along to them or whatever and they say, hey, maybe bring it up at the next meeting, you know, when they're coming up with creative ideas.

That's all I hope for when I put those spinfoil theories out there.

But arc Raiders has so much potential, just like Destiny has.

And I really hope they embrace this PvE only part of the game.

I mean, look at Marathon.

They're, they're, they, they have totally understand that if they don't have a pve mode only then you're going to chase away all those dad gamers.

And let's face it, we make up a lot of gaming out there.

A lot of dad gamers are out there playing.

And so not just the streamers and not, not, not, not just the, you know, the kids that don't have Any jobs?

No, no.

You know, real life responsibilities that can just sit there and play for.

A lot of us are older now and keep in mind, Embark, the gaming age is aging slowly but surely.

It keeps aging and it keeps aging.

If you're going after the the third, fourth and fifth graders to play this game, I'm sorry, they're playing Roblox, they're playing Fortnite.

They're not going to come play your game.

So just keep that in mind.

I always throw everything out into the ether that maybe that Embark or someone will hear it and pass it along.

So anyway, that is my topic of the week.

Let's get into catch up real quick and then we'll call it a night right back.

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All right, let's catch up before we call it a week for the short episode of Guardian Down Round Table.

First, yes, I've been playing the PVE mode in Arc Raiders.

I've been enjoying it so far.

Now I'll be honest, I haven't really done a lot of the the new content yet.

I've been kind of just feeling things out in this PvE world.

Only I've been going to Buried City and playing other maps that I'm very acquainted with because I've heard nightmares of players running into these, the new Pendola Pass, whatever it's called, and just getting run over with arc enemies, especially those new ones you have the bully that runs around and from what I hear, it's really, really tanky.

So I have yet to experience a lot of that.

I've been, let's just say I've been busy.

I've been playing a lot of video games the last few weeks.

I've had a lot of stuff going on in my business and I just put.

I've just put Halloween permanent Halloween lights.

You know, the.

What do they call them?

Govies.

Govee lights around my house.

I just did the front half of the house.

Man, my legs are killing me going up and down ladders.

But my wife was a.

Was a champ.

She was.

Really helped me out this week to get those lights up and they look really good and man, oh my.

You can program each individual bulb.

You can program and do anything.

It's just amazing how.

How ornamental lights have come a long way.

I could play music to it.

I mean, you hear about these music light shows and stuff on people's houses.

I could do all that if I wanted.

But it's a pretty simple design.

I don't have any like big peaks on my house.

It's all very low roof line stuff.

So I can't show off too much.

But.

But yeah, that.

I just finished that today and man, my legs are killing me.

I've definitely popped in a leave for the night.

The Voice battle rounds are going on right now.

A lot of really talented vocalists.

This is her 30th season, by the way, and I'm telling you what, there have been vocalists that were not voted through that I think could have had a professional career.

I mean, they're all so good now.

So it used to be back in the day, you would get someone who just got so nervous that they were pitchy and cut off their dialogue and you could tell they were nervous and those would be no brainers.

They didn't make it through.

But, man, these singers have really stepped it up.

So if you never heard the.

You never watched the show, the Voice on NBC or Peacock, I guess if you have the streaming, you know, the software for that, it's really good.

The blind auditions are just fantastic.

And I watch, I watch all of them.

I. I subscribe to all the voice channels online on YouTube.

So I'll watch the ones from Australia, Denmark.

Denmark's got some great singers.

Man almighty.

There's some great rock bands that have come out of Denmark.

Let's see, of course, uk.

A lot of talent in UK as well.

New Zealand, France.

I mean, there's been a lot.

There's a.

There's.

Your voice is an international show.

It's just crazy how, how much it's really taken on kind of a life of its own in the TV world out there.

The Traders is back this week.

You know what I love about the show is it is a social experiment as I've mentioned in the past, and you just start to see what everyone's about.

You know, you kind of.

It kind of gets through those layers where you actually see what people, how people think, you know, when they're trying to figure out how to.

How to.

How to get.

Get through the house without getting voted out or murdered.

I guess that what they call it.

I'm now in three fantasy football leagues, and after a really fun winning streak in the last couple of weeks, reality kicked in.

I think Brittany beat my butt last week.

Good job, Brittany.

I think I've.

I've locked up my game this week.

I'm doing pretty good.

I think.

I think I've got this week's game wrapped up in the GDC Fantasy Football league.

But, man, it's just any given Sunday, right?

You just never know in my, in my two leagues that I'm in with my buddies in real life here, not the online version, it's hit or miss.

I'm.

I'm doing week in one of my.

I'm in really, I think second or first place in one of them.

And I had a really bad week.

The Rams, I got, you know, I've got Devonte Adams, and he did.

The Rams just didn't do really well this week, so they suffered, which meant their offense was down from a really good defense and which means all my numbers are down.

So that's the way it goes sometimes, you know.

Also, my wife and I did see not one, but two new movies this week.

The first movie I saw was called Digger, and this movie had Tom Cruise in it.

And it is by a new.

A new director, Alejandro G. Inarutiu.

I don't think I've heard of this guy before, but it's a satirical kind of dark comedy film and Tom Cruise is the main character.

He's like an.

Like an unhinged oil tycoon.

And Tom Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell.

It's.

It's the powerful head of the world's largest oil company.

And after a catastrophic oil rig explosion triggers a massive tsunami and pushes the planet toward ecological collapse, Digger embarks on a frantic and reckless mission to prove his humanity's savior.

This was very satirical.

And in fact, the first half of the movie, my wife was looking.

Giving me that look like, I am ready to leave.

It was really.

It was so over the top that it just.

It was not good.

The first half of the movie was not good.

And because I decided to stick around and I'm a big movie buff, I always try to stick around and see how things work out.

The second half of the movie kept us interested.

So Rotten Tomatoes is very split on this with the critics, 53% from critics, and I think it was 71% from the audience.

So majority of the audience at least was entertained.

I give this one three stars.

It was just okay.

It's not going to be very memorable, but I don't know, I just.

I.

The first half really, really hurt.

It hurt the score.

So for that reason, like I said, I give this one three stars.

It's just okay.

The second movie I saw was called the Social Reckoning, and this movie was what they call a biological.

I'm sorry, a biographical legal thriller film.

And it was written, directed by Aaron Sorkin, which I've watched a lot of his movies.

He's really, really good at what he does.

Starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Strong, Jeremy Allen White and Billy Magnuson, Bill Burr and Betty Gilpin as the main characters in this film.

And it really.

I mean, we saw this, like the next day after Digger, So we were really looking for something really fun or at least somewhat entertaining and engaging to watch.

I think this.

This film delivered.

Critics were a little bit better on this one.

They were at 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I think about 73% with the audience.

So audience like this one a little bit more than Digger, But Digger was very.

Was a movie that kind of either people loved or hated.

And this movie, from what I hear people, the complaints I heard about this movie was that it was just a very wordy movie, you know, didn't have a whole lot of action in it, but it really was never about the action.

This movie was about exposing a whole department within Facebook.

And it's part of the reason they changed their name to Meta, by the way, was this.

This is a real life.

This is a true story.

It's inspired by true events.

So this whistleblower was just on 60 Minutes and captured all of this proof from internal documents and stuff that Facebook was really creating and converting people, making them very.

I don't.

I'm trying to think of the word here, but the person who was the.

Frances Haugen, which was the.

The whistleblower here, she saw a video of her friend just really acting unlike she's ever acted before.

And it really turned her to be very, I don't know, extreme, like an extremist.

And she found out that it was her department that did that.

So I thought this movie was much better.

I give this one three and a half stars.

I thought it was engaging enough.

And my wife and I both enjoyed it very much.

We in fact we talked about it afterwards and it was, it was very good.

I thought it was very good.

So that is it.

As far as the catch up segment.

I do want to mention before we go tonight, we had some feedback from one of our members in our Discord community and I wanted to share that before we leave.

But let's take one more break.

Be right back.

Hey Guardians, would you like to send us a question for the show?

There's several easy ways to do it.

First, join our Discord server, Discord GG Guardian Down Roundtable.

There's a link in our show notes down below as well there's a channel the in in our Discord labeled Podcast questions where you can type in your question for the show.

So come hang out with us and we might read it out live.

Second, you can send us an email or what I really like is for you to send us a voicemail with your questionardiandowcast.com and we might play it live on the podcast.

Think of it as talking with us right on the show.

Hey, we love voicemails, so let's hear them.

Thanks for listening and later Guardian.

All right, we're back.

Before we go tonight, I wanted to mention some feedback.

This is from our good friend B. Leahy and he talks about episode 377 and he said with a great guest.

Well, that great guest was Mr. McMaximo.

He says.

I was intrigued by the discussion on inserting ads into games.

I'm waiting for the day I hear I Coruseta Zavala.

I went to the movies last night using my AMC stubs.

Hey list Movie pass.

I can watch up to four films a week in any format, in any screen and I can even reserve tickets online.

Who would say something like that?

Really belehy.

But seriously, both Todd seemed pretty set against in game ads.

It made me wonder how younger gamers perceived them.

I was curious about the age breakdown of gamers worldwide and found this data under 18, 20% of the total player base.

35 To 44 was 38% of the total player base which is the majority.

3518 To 34 excuse me, is 38% 35 to 44 14% 45 to 54 12% 55 to 64 9% and 65 and older.

So only 7%.

He talks about the data centers fact versus fiction.

McMaximo indicated a lot of negative news surrounding data centers isn't entirely accurate.

After digging into it, he's right on several points though the true impact depends heavily on local management and technology.

The Power Rates Depending on how local power rates are regulated, infrastructure costs may be absorbed by the data center operators or passed to the residential electric bills, Jobs and Taxes Data centers bring a massive influx of temporary construction jobs, but operational staffing remains low.

It's only 30 to 100 permanent roles, usually in these data centers.

While local tax revenue can be a huge boon for small towns, many communities grant long term tax breaks to win the initial construction phase.

Water and Noise Water draw depends heavily on whether the facility uses evaporative cooling versus Closed loop and air cooling systems, and continuous cooling fan noise can create a nuisance for nearby residents.

Yeah, I've heard that too.

Arc Raiders vs Destiny God Mode vs Scrounger One contrast that stuck me stuck struck me.

Moving between Destiny and Arc Raiders is the power dynamic.

In Destiny, you're practically an immortal God hero.

In Arc Raiders, you're not even a full fledged foot soldier.

You're a scrounger with a gun trying to survive.

Most games lean into the foot soldier slash underdog design because most players love the tension of a tough challenge.

Where do y' all land on this?

Do you prefer playing as an unstoppable hero or a fragile survivor?

Or do you enjoy both?

Depending on the mood, I enjoy both A couple of fun questions for the community In Destiny's lore, how many Guardians actually exist?

In your mind, is the vanguard leading 22,000 or 200,000 of us?

The second question he has Would you buy a first person shooter with true permadeath where dying meant the game was permanently deleted, requiring you to buy a fresh copy to play again?

If so, how much would you pay for that experience?

The North America Free Trade Agreement, China and Manufacturing jobs.

He wanted to touch on that aspect of last week's show.

The discussion around job losses from NAFTA and China touches on a common narrative that's only partly true.

Research shows the primary driver of US Manufacturing job losses over the past few decades wasn't trade agreements, it was automation.

Oh yeah, I get that.

Especially with the auto industry, US Manufacturing output is actually near record highs.

We just don't employ as many people to achieve it because production has shifted to a capital intensive high tech manufacturing while labor intensive assembly moved overseas.

Always a fascinating topic to unpack.

And of course the reason the labor intensive assembly of manufacturing goes overseas is because why?

Because labor is much, much cheaper in those other countries.

So.

So there you go.

Thank you Mr. B. Leahy for for mentioning that tonight.

I wanted to mention in in as we close down the podcast tonight.

How was your week?

Did you get a chance to play the PvE test mode in Arc Raiders this past week?

I stated my opinion, but I want to hear yours.

Jump into our Discord.

Give us some feedback at Discord, GG Forward slash, Guardian Down Roundtable.

Or you can either send us a voicemail right from your phone or shoot us an email.

If you prefer the written word, just go to Guardian Downcast.

Com, that's guardian downcast.com and contact us that way.

Hey, thank you for listening to the show this week and every week with a big shout out to our super fans, our Patreon community, with members like our Dungeon Champion, Deadpool 1 Merc, which will be our guest next week on our live show, and our raid bosses, amazing Taco King, Jealous Gaming, and Frostbite.

So for whatever game you're into these days, be sure to take breaks, hydrate and touch grass.

Guardian Down Roundtable community.

We're over seven years going now.

We thank every one of you for sticking around after the Destiny fiasco and still deciding to tune in and listen to the show many, many years later.

We appreciate you all very much.

The path to victory is long, but there's always hope.

Fight.

So thank you very much for listening.

And whether in life or in your game, get your reps in later.

Guard.

Sam.

Overtime.

Let's do this.

Hello, everyone.

Elmer Fudd games here.

They say it's hip to be square, but really it's hip to be Guardian Down Round.

Round is the shape not, like, square.

I think I nailed the landing on that one.

It's a podcast.

I hope you enjoy it.

It's changed my life.

It'll change yours too.

Nice, man.

I love it.

Nailed it.

Got it.

Do.

Do that.

Do.

Do one more.

Do one more.

I love the one where you did.

You will find you.

What was it?

If you do not listen, I will find you and we'll go back behind your headboard.

Because you said guarding down cast last time, and I really wanted.

I really wanted to reuse that one, but it said Guardian down cast.

So maybe something like I can just.

I could just do a monotone Guardian, like a super.

Like, Guardian down Round table.

And you literally just like superimpose.

Oh, my God, that would be awesome.

Do that and then do.

And do.

Do the second part.

Okay.

All right.

Whenever you're ready.

Okay.

Okay.

Guardian down Round table.

Love it.

I love it.

All right.

All right.

Do you want to do a.

Do you want to do one?

A redo of that one you did last time?

I can try, dude, there was a lot of energy there.

I know, I know, I know, man.

I'm sorry.

I know it's late.

I know it's late.

All right, here we go.

Talk to me about AI again before we do it.

I'll be good to go.

Well, I think AI is the future of gaming, man.

I hate to tell you, but it's here to stay.

That's all I can tell you.

Here to stay.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Whenever you're ready, it's on.

Hey, everybody.

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

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

All right?

There needs to be some changes out here.

I swear to whatever God Kingsley believes in or doesn't believe in, I will hunt you down or someone you care about because you're too hard to find.

And you've put barriers around you, and I want to tear those down and get closer to you just so I can destroy your life.

Okay?

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

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

God.

Elmer Fudd Games, everybody.

Thank you, sir.

Awesome, Sam.

Hey, everybody.

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

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

All right?

There needs to be some changes out here.

I swear to whatever God Kingsley believes in or doesn't believe in, I will hunt you down or someone you care about because you're too hard to find.

And you've put barriers around you, and I want to tear those down and get closer to you just so I can destroy your life.

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

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

God,.

Sam,.