State of Gaming - Triple I Initiative & Embracer Split

00:00:00Okay, let's say hello and welcome to State of Gaming. It's April. The spring is here, even if it is snowing. But anyhow, we are back for some really heartwarming gaming today. Wow. Is it snowing? Yeah, it has been snowing. And I think they also said it could be snowing, so it's not even over. So I'm not sure about that whole spring thing. That might have been a lie. I'm retconning it right away. It is a lie. It should be spring. Yeah, it should be spring. The weather gods have been letting us down. Also, we should be upfront about this, but our streak has been broken again. I think we had a good reason, but I don't remember what it was. It was good when we had it. Today it's not so good. But it's over now. To quote that fantastic song. It's a classic. It is.

00:00:58Yeah, if nothing else, it's a classic. So yeah, this is the April edition and we'll just restart the streak from here and hopefully everything will be fine. Yeah. Yeah. And before we kick off this illustrious list of things, we do have, you know, nah. Nah, that was... I had a good feeling, but then... It didn't really make a sound, actually. But that made a sound. You tasting it actually sounded... What? I think we had a little something there for... And then it went away. Elusive. Yeah, it's very elusive. But that can is very green. It is very green. Jai... Jai Alai? Yeah. Oh, I get it now. India Pale Ale. That sounds almost like... Yeah. Yeah. So this is, I think, our classic API. It also has those Indian colors from the flag. Yeah. Yeah.

00:02:00I'm guessing it's curry tasting? Not so much. They are Florida-based, so I'm guessing it's... I'm not seeing the connection anymore. No, I know. It might be that they thought they were in India. I think they did. Because they were high or something. And then they didn't bother going to India and they just said, let's make some ale instead. I don't think they bother to go anywhere. Probably not. But that is the strange thing. For example, one of the world's absolute best Indian food places is not in India. It is in London. Of course. That's kind of the... One of the best French restaurants is in Tokyo. So it's just how that goes. But where is the best Swedish restaurant? Well, over the world at...

00:02:57Your closest IKEA store. Oh, that's sad. I know, that's so sad. I hope that's not true. But if it is, good on you, IKEA, I guess. Meatballs and everything. So what are we drinking, the rest of us who aren't blessed with Indian ale? What's up today? I'm up with a Trocca Plus. Oh, that's nice. And I am back. from my white episode. I think I had that last time. So now it's back to cola with something. With options. With something. If it's going to be white outside, then... Just like with the poop, my goal is to taste the entire thing to make sure that it's still as delicious. So could you say that you're back to doing coke seriously? You know what? Why not? Taken out of context, that's really bad. That makes me look kind of like a badass. I'm back doing coke hardcore with something on the side as well. Disclaimer, I'm not admitting to anything. That makes me look cool. Street credit is everything, as they say. Anyway, having said all of that, and possibly...

00:04:19outing myself as a hardcore drug addict. It's time to move on to something that is not at all drug added. We are talking about a brand new thing anyway. And it's been happening for the first time ever. And it's called, at least for now, I'm wondering if they're going to stick to that name, but it's the Triple I Initiative. And you might be wondering, well, what the hell is that? And everyone was wondering that at some point. So I think a little... explanation of this name is in order so it's basically the very best of the indie scene therefore triple i not quadruple i which could have been the name yes it will it will be someday someday someday but not now and then you also could discuss if all of these games are actual

00:05:08indie games, Stephen. Yeah, we have mostly indie games and one who should perhaps not be, you know, we'll get to them. But yes, this is the Triple I initiative and it was a pretty solid show. It wasn't a lot of extra mumbling and talk on the side and there weren't a lot of sales pitches or ads. It was just solid trailers and talks about the games. And they had quite a few games that they had world premieres of and things like that. Of course. We will not be going through all of them because it was, I think, a 40-minute show. Many, many after, yeah. But we have some of them. And if you don't like it, well, then just go look at it yourselves, I guess. Actually, you should probably do that anyway because, as we said, there were a lot of good games. So we cherry-picked the living hell out of this show.

00:05:58And I'm just going to run through the ones I had on the list. And if you have anyone you want to add, feel free to do that. But yeah, Slay the Spire 2, Dead Cell, Risk of Rain, which is a free update, and a collab between Gearbox and Motion Twin. Dino Lords, which is, yeah, interesting. We'll get back to that. Vampire Survivors, now with Contra. Darkest Dungeon 2's free game mode. Prince of Persia the Rogue, the perhaps quadruple I game. But we'll also get back to that. Shadows of Doubt. And that's Roblox for every dollar that you have. Gestalt, Steam and Cinder. And we have Norland, which is, well, very Viking-ish. We have Broken Roads from Australia. Cat Quest 3, Hyper Light Break and Leysara Summit Kingdom, which is an awesome name. Those were the games that I sharepicked. Were there any games that you wanted to add?

00:06:57I think I had the biggest raisins on this list. I think so, yeah, because... So we should probably start with an announcement that one of these games charmed the pants out of Oscar, and he got it immediately. So my first pick was Lysara, and that was like... I didn't even know that this game should exist. This was more like... I was spotting this kind of city builder survivor game with the twist that it is uphills, literally. It's up in the, I guess, Himalayas? Must be, because it's a really tall mountain. It's a cool spin on an old idea. It's a city builder, but not just. So it's on the mountain slopes, basically. And in layers. And so you are... tasked to build a society with stains like avalanches and other cold phenomena. So it's a little bit of Frostpunk, but without the nitty-gritty dark stuff. It's more... I don't think it's a post-apocalyptic game.

00:08:15No, it isn't. It has some hazards, as we... Yeah, it could definitely be if a really huge avalanche will just drag your whole city away. So I got some feelings of populace when I was playing this. Yeah, that's a very good example. That's the exact same feeling I had. Like, you have your entire town, everything is working just fine, and then someone... I mean, hit the wrong slopes and kicked off an avalanche, and the town is gone. Yeah. So I wonder if that is something that happens often in this game. I have experienced it like once or twice, but there is a lot of other stuff like... Yeti that is going haywire, and there is other types of... Yeah, so there is a lot of region lore stuff, things that can happen. So mythical creatures of the Himalayas. Yeah, so they call them natural disasters, but stuff like that could happen, basically. That's cool. I think I like that. Does it mean anything, Leysara? I think it's just a cool name.

00:09:30Yeah. Well, it is. It is a cool name. Summit Kingdom is also a good subtitle for that game. Yeah. Very true. Yeah. Very on point. Very on point. Or on Summit. Oh, snap. Yeah. I think I might at some point get this game as well, even though I have to say that the entire Avalanche thing may be paused for a moment because that was heartbreaking. I don't want my city gone. I think maybe one game we should mention that I don't really know much about, but a lot of people will be wanting to play is Slay the Spire 2. That's a big one. And a lot of people are probably happy that the second game is soon to be here. I think it was for disclaimer, because I might be wrong. But I think most of these games will be dropping in 2024, 2025. So it's not four or five years in the future from now. It's fairly present.

00:10:28We are talking about indie games after all. We are. Well, for the most part. But yes, Slay the Spire 2 was the first game they announced, I think, and probably for a reason, because they wanted to kick off the show with a bang. And as I said, I haven't played this, but I know a lot of people like it, and I think a lot of people have been waiting for some more of Slay the Spire, because I think this is a second helping, as they say. It's more of the same, which is not always a bad thing, and in this case, probably not. Dead Cells. That's a cool game all in itself, but Risk of Rain 2. I was just thinking, do I know anything about Risk of Rain really when it comes down to this? I mean, I know what it is because it's a fairly famous franchise. But if someone said, like, what is the story of Risk of Rain? I couldn't say anything. No.

00:11:20Me neither. I would just go into it. There is another cool game called Heavy Rain that we should talk about instead. Yeah, exactly. I was just thinking like, yeah, I've just been taking this franchise for granted. Like, yeah, that's awesome. But I don't really know if it is. But it is a big collab and it's Gearbox and Motion Twin. And I know a lot of people have played the Risk of Rain games, but are they a post-apocalyptic thing? Or am I getting my things like really, really muddled up here? Let's say it is. Post-apocalypse. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But anyway, it's a free update, so that's always good. And hopefully a lot of people... I think Dead Cells have done a couple of these collabs already. A lot of collabs. They had one with Castlevania, for instance, and that was really good. So hopefully this is more of the same. Awesome stuff added to an already good game. Next game on the list, though, I think we all were a bit, you know, confused by and also...

00:12:16thrilled by because it's called dino lords and it's set in the medieval times and the trailer basically had the classic ingredients they had a lord they had the castle they had some peasants they had some knights and then they said the enemy have tamed the ancient creatures or something like that something like that and out of the woods burst the t-rex yes and because i was watching this trailer and i was like why is it called dino lords yeah i think a lot of people were equally confused like i don't get the oh i get it now because those dinos were pretty big and pretty mad and pretty cute i mean at least they had their like armors on and it yeah they look kind of i wonder if you could pimp your own um pink fluffy tire no no no i'm thinking chrome man

00:13:10My T-Rex chromed. I want to have it in like a tiger costume. Oh, it's like a tiger? Yes. But it's a dino. I know, but it's a dino tiger. A tiger? A tiger. You know what? I hope so too now. But this game looked bananas. And as we said in our Swedish podcast, really weird game or a great weird game. It can't escape from the weird stuff because that mix will always put it on the weird shelf, but it could still be a great game. I think it is, yeah. Or it's just a mediocre idea and someone said, hey, let's spice it up and throw in some dinosaurs. Yeah, I know. Were the dinos there from the beginning? Were they part of the concept? No. Yeah, I don't think so. Maybe this was one of those games that they had lying around, like, yeah, we don't really have a spin for this. And someone said, T-Rex? Like, no, we do. Yeah. Anyway, it's soon out there, so you can try it out for yourself. And why shouldn't you? We also had Darkest Dungeon 2, which is another great game and has a free game coming soon. So more for those who already have it and another reason for those who don't to get it.

00:14:36We had Shadows of Doubt, which I liked the style of. It was a sandbox detective game in the Roblox style. And yeah, it had a very, I don't know, crime noir feel to it. Very much so. It seemed really cozy, like this little town. It was raining. They had bartenders and they evidently had killers too. So you have to go on a hunt for a killer. I would say that... Two of the main ingredients you need to have in one of those games is rain. Definitely. Always rain. And seedy bars. Oh, definitely. Yes. If you have that, you're like 70% there. Because everything should feel kind of shady and also kind of sad. Yes. Very sad. Yeah. Life is hard. And sometimes it gets even harder. That's kind of the thing in this game. Yeah. And I like it. It's cozy. Yeah. We have many times described our definition of cozy.

00:15:34We won't jump into that now, but we mean it. We just have a little spin on it. Yes. But yeah, that one went on my list for sure. And I would say that the next one wowed me almost the most, though. We have Gestalt. Oh, yeah, baby. Steam and Cinder from Fireshine. I thought it was Shrine. But it's Shine. But it's actually Shine. Fireshine. Fireshine Games. And this game, I actually... I think I mentioned this in the Swedish episode of our podcast, that it is fronted by two YouTube characters, big YouTube characters, and it's Dex Boom, Stodger, and Jesse Cox. And I listened to Jesse Cox's stream last week, and he talked about this game, and he was very upfront with that they only lent their support and their names to this project. They haven't been a part of the team making this game, but they had...

00:16:30So much confidence in these guys because they were super talented and they had a lot of cool ideas for this game. So they were fully behind this and hoped for the very best, obviously. So we are hoping for kind of a new Castlevania in the good ones, so to speak. Oh, yeah. And it looks very good. It looks very promising. The graphics were gorgeous and it had a good feel to it. As with every game, you have to try it out for yourself. in order to know if that's true, but it looked very promising. So, yeah, I added this one to the wishlist. I added all to the wishlist. I'm just going to say it. I bought them all. I bought everything. I just do that all the time. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how this game is, because I think all the games in this kind of style, they have so high expectations, because I don't know if that's nostalgia or something, because we expect so much from these kind of games. And we're...

00:17:29I mean, those expectations aren't always met. Yeah, I am. Really, actually, that's true what you're saying. Because when someone says that their game is up to Symphony of the Night standard, then it's a big claim. Yes. Or Rondo of Blood or any of those. Those games were pretty much 99 out of 100 or even perhaps 100 out of 100. So that's going to be tough. But I have a good feeling about this one. Don't let me down. I hope they listen. Anyway, that one is on the wish list with a plus on the side, definitely. Another one that I happily added to my list was Cat Quest 3. And that trailer was disguised as a meowsy pirate. Oh, yeah, definitely. So it's a game revolving around the golden age of piracy, but with cute cats. Yes. So they can't be evil. So the only thing...

00:18:26they can try but you know so so the only thing that that game is missing is dinosaurs and it will be golden i wouldn't be surprised if there's a dinosaur in there somewhere they usually have a lot of interesting uh characters so yeah basically cat quest 3 looks like more of cat quest and for those who are enjoying that series since wave i'm not sure when the first one was released to be honest but it has to be in uh quite a few years ago uh but they have A little following, that's for sure. And a lot of people, those who like it, really like it. So I think this is just up their alley. And pirates usually, at least if we're talking about a few years ago, pirates were all rage. And I don't think they ever go out of style. It's the same with zombies. Yeah, they're like more or less hyped all the time. But sometimes they are super hyped. And there are more or less good games. So Cat Quest 3.

00:19:24Yeah, why not? And then we have Hyper Light Breaker. And I think we can all see where that game ties in. Because, yeah. So once again, I think that's just more of the same. And that's not a bad thing in this instance because the first game was pretty good. Yeah. And I saved the questionable game to last. And I'm not saying questionable because it's a game that I think sucks. But it's a game that might not be. as indie as the rest of them. And that is Prince of Persia the Rogue. Ubisoft. And the dev team behind this has nothing to do with Ubisoft in terms of ownership. But they have a partnership with Ubisoft, which is why they are able to make a Prince of Persia game. Because Ubisoft usually aren't very, you know,

00:20:18carefree about people using their IPs. None of the gaming companies are really, but they are definitely not one of the nicer ones. So first I thought these dudes will get sued. But I think Konami is kind of, because there is a lot of like the Simon's Quest HD remakes and there have been a few Megaman stuff. They usually make deals with those people. I don't think anyone would say like, yeah, feel free to use my IP for nothing. Free of charge. And anyway, Ubisoft are not that nice when, well, if we look at their track record. But this game was made by people that used to work with the Dead Cells games. I didn't remember that when we talked about this game the last, but that's why a lot of people were hyped, because these people have done a really great game, a great platforming game already. So they have the experience. And we talked about this in our Swedish episode of the podcast.

00:21:14I don't know. None of us. Well, I think, Linda, you were slightly more positive about this than me and Oscar because we didn't like the graphical choice. Yeah. Yeah. That's just a matter of taste, really. I can kind of agree with that sort of graphics. Also, I am so much missing Aladdin. So this is, for me, this is like a new one. He didn't have enough of a puffiness to his pants. Oh, no, he didn't. The clothes are all wrong and a lot of other things are, of course, all wrong. But still, it gave me some sort of a nostalgic chill. The gameplay looked pretty smooth, but the graphical show, I think you had it. The quote you had, Oskar, was this. It looked like, what did you say? Cartoon Network or something made a game. Yeah, exactly. That is true. It was a touch of Cartoon Network, yeah.

00:22:07For me, that's not necessarily bad, I think. They had some good shows. Yeah, sure. But it's not the classic Prince of Persia graphic. No, it isn't. It isn't. But I guess maybe Ubisoft would be really not so much agreeable. I have never liked the cel-shaded graphics. And the reason is why. It's maybe not the actual style itself. It's because they, in my opinion, destroyed Zelda when they go. Did go from there. Oh, yeah. I know. It has killed a lot of games. It has. It has. But I think the thing that really made me feel a bit, I don't know about this, was that the guy is purple. Yeah. That's an odd thing. Why is he purple? And no one mentioned anything about the purple man. Yeah. Wasn't genie purple? Yeah, the genie was blue. Yes, blue-ish purple. I don't know. So does this prince of Persia hang around with Aladdin on his free time? I'm not sure. Maybe he is the genie from Aladdin. Maybe he is. Yeah, that question, I have to follow this project only to get an answer to that question. Maybe if Aladdin and the genie had a kid. This is the kid. It might be. But I'm not sure. I didn't see.

00:23:30As we said, Ubisoft are usually pretty hard with their IPs, but Disney's even worse. Oh, yeah. I don't think they would get a slice of Aladdin without paying for it. It's a bad theory, kind of. No, no, no, no. Exactly. But yeah, we'll probably hear more about it. We will hear more about this game, and hopefully I'll get my answer. Why the purple bro in the slim pants? And yeah, and also Norland, as we said, a medieval kingdom builder. which is exactly what it sounds like, a medieval kingdom builder. But it looked pretty good. Yes. And on the whole, we liked the show, and we liked a lot of the games. And I still think you should look into the stream so you can have a look at the games that we didn't mention. And as we often remind you guys out there, if you like something, wishlist it, because it really helps small indie developers get more sales and more spotlight on Steam. Oh, yeah.

00:24:26We have something entirely different as our second topic, and that's the gaming giant known as Embracer, our Swedish flagship. Ross. Just like Ross. It used to be a gaming giant, I guess, nowadays. Yeah, well, it's a slightly smaller giant. It is. Yeah, it's still a giant, but... Yeah. So we have a couple of topics. Firstly... They sold off Gearbox in the beginning of this month. And they sold it for a whopping $460 million to Take-Two. And Take-Two owns Rockstar, for instance, if you didn't know what they usually do when they're not buying stuff from Embracer. And $460, that sounds like a lot of money. But you should remember that they bought Gearbox for $1.3 billion three years ago. Fire sale, basically, then.

00:25:23So basically, yeah. It is. I mean, it's a third? Yeah, it's a third. And I don't think they even released the game during their ownership. So that was money not well spent. Yeah, and Gearbox does not have that great of a reputation in the later years. I mean, they have. No, aside from their Borderlands games, Tiny Tina's Adventure was well-loved. It has a few years on it already, and I don't think they released a big game the last three years. The rumors had it that when they were bought by Embracer, Embracer poured in a lot and a lot of money into different projects, but then they fell on hard times and they choked off all the sponsoring. And basically, everything just grounded to a halt. And yeah, they're sold.

00:26:18Basically, they just bought something for a lot of money, spent even more money on it, and bought it for a lot or sold it for a lot less. So, you know, that's probably the best example of how not to do business. That is bad business. Yeah, it's bad business. It couldn't be worse. Which ties into the second topic with Embracer. And it's one of the most idiotic quotes I've ever heard. And it made him look like a total idiot in my world. how you basically say, I don't know anything, but please hear me out. So CEO Lars Wingefors basically said that money was so easy to get, people just threw them at me, so I could not not just take all of them and buy shit. He took all of it, he bought a lot of shit, and then he had to sell it for a lot less. Basically he said, I could get billions and billions of dollars for...

00:27:160.4% interest. That's basically free money. I would have been an idiot if I just didn't take all of it and buy companies. Didn't they have like a CFO who was like, whoa, dude, maybe you should think about this for a second. I think the problem is that he owns 51% of the company. He didn't care about nobody's opinion. But the thing that I don't get really is that the ones, even if they were really... cheap money the ones that pour in all of this they would i would guess they had in their minds that he would transform it into something that will get a big payoff for their investments yeah yeah according to him there was a lot of hype around because this was still in the covid area when everyone was on gaming and basically they thought that this was the new like

00:28:07bonanza wave of economics and that the gaming space would grow exponentially just as it did during that period of time. So money was cheap and everyone thought that gaming would just continue to explode forever. And he just hit that wave and rode it into the concrete wall, basically. Yeah, I mean, he was also a little bit unlucky. He did stupid stuff. I mean, nobody's going to take that away from him. Yeah. Super naive. Yeah, exactly. That is a good word. He was naive. But I'm not sure that's okay for a CEO of a billion-dollar company. Not for a company that size. And also from the investment perspective, because if the first one, they really thought he would make this happen. But if you were the third guy or fourth guy that was pouring in another billion dollars, hey, what kind of resources do you have to make this happen?

00:29:05Exactly. And what do you do with it? It feels almost like a scam, even though everyone thought it would work, which is the most baffling thing. As Oskar said, the town guy who showed up with a billion dollars like, hey, I'm here now. It's like, yeah, just put it in the pile. I just bought a gearbox from 1.3 last week. We need some more money. I want to know how much money he got off of all this. I mean, him personally. But he did admit to it being a very stressful time indeed. Oh, I believe him. I believe him. But bonuses, I guess they are kind of based on some sort of profit. I can imagine that he had back-to-back meetings with really angry and stressful investors that was not that happy, I would say. Yes, but then you go home, you pour yourself a big whiskey.

00:30:04get a big bonus from your company yeah well it's done this day the big question now leading into our next topic is that will he remain the ceo for embracer having admitted to all of this and having sold off a lot of their investments already the stock is down 70 percent from last year even though it actually rebounded 20 percent in the last couple i think it was the last week actually because Our next topic is the reason why things are maybe, perhaps, well, you know, potentially looking up. And that is the breaking apart of the Embracer group. So basically, things got so bad that it wasn't feasible to hold this empire together anymore as one company. So they decided to break up the company into three new companies. And they will delist them.

00:31:00the stock from the market and they will have their own. So for those who invest it, I think they're in for some rough times because they will probably force buy back the stock at some really low price. And then they probably get some shares in one of the newer companies. But yeah. Things got diced, even though the stock went up 20% after this announcement. So that only made me very jaded because people thought like, oh, we can make some money here somewhere. But yes, anyway, we have three new companies. And I thought the naming, some of the names were pretty good. But I think I'll just read through the description and their names. And we can talk a little bit about them. So the first and the biggest one I would imagine.

00:31:48is called Middle Earth Enterprises and Friends, which is very on the nose. I think I know what they will be doing most of the time. So this company, which will be renamed from Embrace Group, so this is the big slice, basically, is described as a creative powerhouse in AAA game development and publishing that will retain ownership of Dead Island, Killing Floor, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Tomb Raider, and The Lord of the Rings IPs. So those are the biggest ones they still have, I would imagine, having sold off a handful of others. So we also have Asmodee Group, a new arm dedicated to publishing and distributing tabletop games, so physical games. The existing catalog includes established titles like Ticket to Ride, Seven Wonders, Asshole, Catan, Double, and Exploding Kittens. Oh, that's... I mean...

00:32:44Those are big names. And they're also developing licensed tabletop games based on The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Game of Thrones, and Star Wars. So it sounds like they have a potential to make a lot of money from... Yeah. And tabletop games is kind of in again. Yes. Oh, yeah. Maybe they can actually do something interesting there. And then as the last company, they have Coffee Stain and Friends. I actually like that name for some reason. Yeah, it's a cool name. Yeah, Coffee Stain and Friends, described as a diverse gaming entity. I hate that description, though. That will focus on indie, mid-market, and free-to-play games. Properties sitting under this new company include Deep Rock Galactic, Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, Breakfast, Teardown, and Valheim, or Valheim, as it should be called. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

00:33:37So there we have it. Three very distinct companies with their own backlogs already. And I think two of them will start their existence in 2025. And the first one is already kind of existing because it's the current embracer group that will be rebranded. So the big question now is, can they get away with it? Probably. I would say that the Lord of the Rings IPs will probably hold together. I guess the coffee stain thing, they have a solid... portfolio of interesting games. The thing is, I think they said that Asmodee Games would start off with an infusion of 500 million or something like that. I'm not sure where they're getting the money from. The 10th guy that didn't get on the train. How many employees will they have? How many people will be working for them? That's what I'm afraid of. Yeah.

00:34:35I think at their peak, they were 10,000 plus in this company or something like that. Now, not so much. No. But there's still thousands of people. Let's be honest about that. It's still a big... All of these companies will be mid-size, definitely. I think even Middle Earth Enterprise and Friends might even be a big company because those studios aren't small. Like all these AAA studios usually have like... 300 to 400 people working in them. So I would imagine that that company will have a couple of thousand employees put together. But yeah, I think this might work, but I'm not sure if they have the money. Well, let's be honest. They don't really have money right now. I mean, maybe they can create some money. Could it be worse? I guess it really all depends on what success they have with upcoming games.

00:35:30And if the market believes in this new thing, because they're still down like $6 billion in total or something like that. Well, they have the $430-something million from the... Oh, you mean from the last... Yeah, the last sale for $460 million. You know, I will give this a 50-50 chance right now. Otherwise, I would say that probably Microsoft will come in and buy up some stuff from it. I was just about to say, otherwise I can buy some of these. I think some of these IPs are worth a lot of money, but they have to do it good. They can't screw it up now because the reputation will be screwed forever. The problem is they can't milk these franchises. They have to actually make good entries. Aside from Lord of the Rings, they'll milk that one. I want Golem 2. I want Golem 5. All the DLCs, extra deluxe packages.

00:36:29The Hobbit DLC, the Wandering DLC. On the topic of Hobbit, did you see the trailer for this new Hobbit game, the Live Simulator? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure about that one either. But seeing as they've been very public about their willingness to milk the Lord of the Rings franchise, I think we are in for some bad times with perhaps... A good game or two in there in the mix. May have. That's what I'm looking for. But I think this is, it's a kind of, I don't know who, what are they trying to do? Because they are, they want to delist their. Yeah. Yeah. They delist the company and rebrand. They're basically creating a new company and they can start from scratch. Maybe they can like write off the million or billion dollar debt in some creative, you know, way. Economic. Yeah.

00:37:25Yeah, but then I'm still wondering who are they making these games for? Because they're very upfront with the fact that they're just going to milk all the money that they can from the Lord of the Rings IP. Then are they making the games for themselves, for the money? Or are they making the games for the fans or the people that will actually play these games? Because it doesn't sound like it. The sad thing about at least Embracer as they were up until now... They were very upfront that they are doing everything for their stockholders. Exactly. That's their main interest. So it's very much a business conglomerate that just happened to be active in the gaming space. It's not gamers per se. Exactly. And I think this is what's so wrong about a lot of companies, that they're not there. The people that are actually in charge don't really know what they're doing. Yeah. And that can probably explain several of the mistakes that they made as well.

00:38:22Because they handled this in perhaps the wrong way. But anyway, we'll see what happens. We will definitely be on this or around this anyway. I only have one more thing on the list. And that is a sad and funny one at the same time. Because this game was outed by IGN before the developers themselves could out it, which is really, really bad. Seeing as they have worked on this for quite a few years and were very hyped. an event planned for it when they were going to do their big reveal. And I think two days before it, I was like, ha ha, look at this. Yeah. And then they had to just, yeah, OK, that's the game. So we're talking about the publisher Deep Silver and War Horse Studios. And they basically wanted to say, like, we have a new cool project in the making. And I have to be honest, I immediately thought, yeah, they're going to make Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, aren't they?

00:39:21And that's exactly what they're going to do. Do you think there will be dinosaurs in it? Of course not. This game was boring as all hell. I'm not even sure. This time there might not even be horses. It's just you and some walking stick and the Polish outbacks. But maybe now the developers, they have to do something that is really... Cool and unexpected that even IGN didn't get their hands on this Intel. Yeah. Thing is, though, even though we were just really mean to this game, I hated this game because it was a boring snoozefest. It just made my point about games in general that it's good to have games with a touch of realism, but games shouldn't be realistic because the real medieval times sucked and they were boring as shit.

00:40:15Because nothing usually happens. And then you die to the plague. And that was kind of kingdom come deliverance. You were a peasant in a village. Ten hours before you even got your hands on the sword. When you at least survived for ten hours, you were killed by the plague. In a boring village. I would say it's the top five most boring games I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of games. It's like super well made. It's just... Boring. But in every... I'm not sure if it's in our defense. We didn't like it. Let's be clear about that. But a lot of people really love this game. Like, a lot. It's actually one of the most hyped games in the medieval genre, so to speak. So a lot of people were super happy. I just thought of an excellent idea that Elon Musk should buy this game.

00:41:11and put it in his company that's called The Boring Company. I mean, I wouldn't have a problem with that. He could put a lot of stuff in that company. But I'm trying to have a positive spin on this. It can't be worse. Oh, yeah, it can. But can it really? Yeah, you can have a half of a walking stick and mud up to your knees. It takes 20 hours before you get that sword. Maybe you don't get it at all. You get like a... Someone must be hyped about this game since IGN was so... Yeah, so I mean something... They made something right. Wasn't it a game also where you were supposed to be able to build your own village, but the grinding to get the money was something like weeks and weeks and weeks. Are there cheat codes? No, none. The thing was, the village thing was the DLC. And there were two ways to do this. Either you had spent all the money you had earned during the main campaign on stuff, and then you were in for many, many, many, many hours of grinding in order to just build a house. If you had saved every little penny you got during the main campaign, you could buy roughly half of the village.

00:42:35And then you had to grind for many, many, many, many hours in order to buy the rest of it. Yeah. And people loved that. I was like, no. Don't make grinding the main thing in this game. But people loved it. Well, maybe it reflects their, like, life situation. I wonder if there's the same person that would 100% a Discaea game, maybe. Probably. Yeah. So I... For those who like this franchise, I can only say, like, okay, I think you're in for more of what you really love. And for people that don't, I don't think there's going to be anything here that will convert us into fans. I really don't. But I still think IGN messed this up. It's not cool for developers to sit and work on a game for four years and then some dude's like, sorry, guys. Sorry, bros. Good luck.

00:43:32that is that is not cool at all yeah that's the last thing we had on this list so we a lot of had much more than i thought would happen in this month it's usually a light gaming month but we had some stuff and as always we will be back mostly in swedish but we have english stuff we are a presence on spotify on soundcloud on youtube and perhaps on platforms we don't even know and uh To wrap this up, I'm pushing over a little slice of village to Oscar. And I would make a boring ending. No, I won't. I won't. I would end on a happy note saying that now the streak is on and we will be back next month for more of this lovely stuff. Indeed. Bye for now. Bye-bye. Bye.