The State of Gaming - Game news from May - 2021

00:00:00Alrighty, righty, righty. Let's say hello to week 21 and the state of gaming. Today we will have all exciting news of what's happened this week and I know that Peter is really eager to get this going. I am eager and waiting. And awaiting even better news. Anyway, I thought you would say that we had 21 reasons to be happy. Because week 21 and all that. And we should. as a start mentioned that the name of this show is up in the air very much so at the moment it's not verified at all and it's not final and it's not carved in stone or any of those things it's um it's a work in progress but this episode is called the state of the game may edition and that's probably the only thing that we will have moving forwards that we'll have one of these shows every month so uh it'll be

00:00:58Hopefully around 12 each year, but you never know. But we'll do that, and in these shows we'll summarize what's happened in the world of gaming during the past month. So seeing as this is the first episode, we will do the May edition, which is, you know... The first month of the year, as we all know. First month of the year, or the only month that we care about, because the other ones are so cold and miserable in Sweden. So it's in May that the official year starts. Yeah. And to be fair, a lot of the gaming usually happens during May and June as well, because we have a lot of shows. So we should probably mention, because this is the first episode, why we are doing this in English. This is not exactly a new show. We've been doing gaming shows for quite a few years, actually, but we are native Swedish speakers, and I would say a good 95% of our shows has been in Swedish.

00:01:52But in later years, we've had some really interesting and fun guests that are situated outside of Sweden. And of course, we've done those shows in English. And therefore, we thought that it would be nice for the fans, because we hope that we have one or two out there. We thought it would be nice for them to actually have a couple of shows that focus on what we usually do on this show. And that is talk about gaming at large. Used to be a focus on the good old days, but nowadays we have new and old and current gaming. And we have a show that we have 30 minutes usually every week where we talk about what's happened. So we'll do sort of a special version of that once a month and have five weeks of content in one. And do it in English because we are reaching out to you guys out there and gals. So that's, could we say, the official version of why we're doing this?

00:02:49Would that be it? So what's the unofficial? Yeah, exactly. The unofficial version is, of course, that I want to be super famous and go to Hollywood and be rich. Yeah. Yes. Sounds good. It sounds like you're flat, right? Where is Peter? He got super famous then moved to Hollywood. Things developed real fast and he's gone now. He's gone. Anyway, we should probably, for those of you who have found this for the first time, actually introduce ourselves real. Real quick. So there's three of us. And one of my colleagues is actually the one who the Swedish show is named after. And he usually goes by the moniker of Spelfarsan, which roughly translates into Gamer Dad. And the rest of the Swedish name is And His Friends. So that's the other two people here. We're the friends. And that's me, Peter, and Linda. We're the friends. We're friends.

00:03:45And we are also friends in real life. It's not just in quotes. It's not just a business thing. We actually know each other. And we do exist in real life. Which we have touched on many times. This is just Peter's imaginary friends. Yes, I have a very vivid imagination. So it could be just me, myself and I. But hopefully I actually have a couple of friends in this show. We'll see. So we'll go right in and do this. But we have one. sort of official opening in every show. And we'll do that for you now, English style. So take it away, Linda. And it is a literal opening. It is indeed. And we also usually have a very small focus on the beverage that we're drinking in each show. And we try to keep it a bit mixed up, finding new stuff to drink. And Linda is really, really good at finding intriguing names. Weird, weird beers. Weird beers.

00:04:44It's a focus on beers, and we do like that. So what do we have? Well, this time I have a Berliner Weisse, a Swedish Berliner Weisse called Triple Berry Pie, which has a very nice picture of it, or drawing, I should say, of a pie on the can. So one of the things with having really, really good-looking cans is that obviously you can see it. So we usually try to describe it for you because, I mean, radio is better. when it's visual, right? So this is a white can with silver top and bottom and a very enticing slice of blueberry pie. And some raspberry in there. Some raspberries and some black currants. It actually looks really, really good. It actually smells really good. It smells like a cake. And we usually say that we'll give the beer of choice a grade. But we usually don't because we are, well, we kind of forget. But we try.

00:05:42And this one, good? Bad? Well, it really tastes like pie. Okay, so yummy, maybe. Yeah, yummy and a little sour, which of course is extra yummy. Would you say that you would like to warm it up to get it into the real? Yeah, maybe. Warm ale. Wasn't that like a thing that they did back in the days? Yeah, ish. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like back in medieval times. The meaty days. The meaty days. So we are all sporting a beverage of choice. So I am sporting, well, I'm mostly through it already, but I had rum and coke going. So I'll call that a classic. It's a staple wear. What about you, Oskar? What do you have? My glass is empty. It's not even half full. So I have already... You've been through your drink already?

00:06:39Yeah, I was thirsty, but it was hot today. Yes, in our defense, it's real hot today. It's actually summer. It is actually summer, so it's not just us drinking heavily. Not only that. Anyway, week 21. So we should mention a few of the things that actually happened just this past week. And I've found a couple, and maybe you have some more that you want to shoehorn in before we sort of go over the other four weeks of the month. But I thought one thing that was worth mentioning is that the creator of Siberia, I'm probably going to butcher this name real bad, but Benoit Sokal, maybe? Could be French? I'm not really sure. Benoit, yeah. Benoit. He's passed away at the somewhat young age of 66. Yes, very good. And Siberia is one of those series that's been around for a long, long time. And it's a third-person, mouse-driven, I guess, point-and-click, semi-realistic, semi-surrealistic adventure game in which the player must solve various puzzles. So basically an adventure game. I really like semi-surreal. Yeah, like semi-surrealistic. So it's like a little weird.

00:08:01But not totally weird. But not really weird because it's also a little realistic. It's probably one of those things that you would go, hmm, that's strange. I'm thinking that would explain like every game ever made. True. One interesting thing with Siberia is that it's the first game I played on Windows 95. Oh, it's been around for that long? 1994. Oh, that's pretty cool. Because I think they... The last of those games aren't that old. It's like... 2016, something like that? Yeah. So that is pretty amazing. So it's been around for a long time. Hopefully, it will... I'm not sure if it was him being the driving force behind the franchise, or if it's a franchise that has moved beyond him. But if it's still vibrant and good, it would be a shame if it died along with him. Anyway, I mean, it's...

00:08:57I mean, sad that it happened to him at this time, but at least we'll have his games to remember him by. Because I think those are pretty well liked over the board. For the people that are into that genre, for sure. And talking about the good old days, we have another little tidbit of news that I thought was really, really good. Because Sierra Entertainment's original creators are making something new. telling what it is but they said we're back we're making something new it will please our traditional fans i mean those were primarily like adventure point-and-click games yeah sierra is one of the most kind of uh it's a classic yeah yeah a real classic i mean correct me if i'm wrong but they're like golden age was like the 90s right when they had

00:09:54That was the golden age for point-and-click games. Yeah, because were they the ones that had... They had HeroQuest, I think, talking about good games that weren't as good as a lot of people hoped. We have Biomutant that's been released this past week. And I've read quite a few reviews and I've seen a lot of streamers, and almost everyone is not displeased, but at least not as hyped as they thought they would be. A lot of people describe this as like a double A game and not a triple A game. Yeah, I would say that it is kind of a lot of good intentions, but nothing is really what Reddit does. It's half-assed. Yeah. But that sounds a bit, it sounds worse than it is. I mean, to be fair, it's a pretty small team. They were around, I think, 15 to 20 people. So obviously it's hard to do a triple A game when you're not more than that.

00:10:53Then I got the news leak that they actually had outsourced quite a lot of work to other people. So they were more like 50 to 60. And then you start to talk about maybe they just didn't... I would say it was a management issue because they couldn't really cut the things that should be cut and then focus on making it great. So instead they just kept everything. And it was not really good any pieces of it. Yeah, it was a lot of things that could have been a bit more polished or a bit more defined and well made. So they had a lot of embryos for game mechanics, ideas, concepts, and they didn't follow through. To their defense, they did get bought in the middle of developing this game, THQ Nordic. It's not called that anymore because they've changed names a lot of times these past years. But the Swedish company THQ Nordic actually bought this company during production and development of this game. So maybe that impacted as well that they went from a fairly small studio to being owned by a billion dollar corporation. And maybe they wanted them to deliver the game. The game has been in development for four years, we should mention. So it's been a long run.

00:12:19On the flip side, you could say that Microsoft has bought a lot of studios and their games have been great. Sure, sure. We don't know for sure. Was this postponed or was it released? I think it actually was released not on the first date because it's been in development for a long time. But I think it came out at the last official date that they actually put down themselves. It's one of those games that probably should have been in development for maybe like half a year more. They did not learn anything from all the debacle around cyberpunk. No, they probably could have learned a bit more from that. But one of the things that a lot of people at least liked about this game is that it's gorgeous. It's an absolute gorgeous game. The environment is really, really good. And it's colorful and vibrant, although a bit empty.

00:13:13As in a lot of the, I would say a lot of AA games that have semi-open worlds have this problem where they have a very nice world to look at, but they don't have any population. There's not a lot of people in there and there's not a lot of stuff you can do. So it feels almost empty, even though it's big. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of people have had problems with. Yes, it's hard to do crowd places. It is. I mean, just... Imagine having to actually populate a really, really big world with interesting stuff. It's easy to do like 200 fetch quests and stuff like that, but it's not especially good to do that. And a lot of people have sort of moved beyond the charms of fetch questing. So if you have to do a lot of those, you have to at least make them look interesting and sound interesting. And if you can't do that, well, you might as well not do them at all. Hopefully, we should probably say.

00:14:08This is their first game. And now they have a large, large company behind them. So maybe their next game will be really, really good. And if they make a series out of this, could be nice. Biomutant 2, out in another four years. Also, the animals were kind of cute. Well, that's a big plus, I guess. Yeah. I mean, that's probably one of the big selling points that this little... I'm not sure if it's a raccoon or if you could actually make your own animal. thing but a lot of the the animals in this game are very cuddly so that's definitely a selling point i would say so they spent some time on that at least they did do they did and also i'm not sure how you guys feel about this but they have one of those gibberish languages in their game like um they mumble and like like the sims yeah it's made up yes so mumbling and then

00:15:05And that's one of the things I didn't like. So they do mumble a lot. But instead of having mumbling and subtitles, they mumble and then they have a narrator come in after that to say what the person just said. So it's an extra layer, basically. Is it like a gimmick thing? Like they think that this is a cool thing to do? Yeah, because the character mumbles something and then the narrator comes in as a... storytellers is like this guy talked about the weather but you could see in his eye that he was actually looking at your pants because it's real you know so it's him talking about the game and also about the feelings that the character had while interacting with the person in the game so it's uh it's not exactly a fourth wall but it's a the third wall maybe it's a mix between what the character in games are doing and what the

00:16:00characters are thinking so what do you think of really cheap paid npcs that they are actually humans yeah i think i actually would have liked that better this was a cool thing for about 20 minutes and then i started getting annoyed because it takes a lot of time to hear something twice and the first time you don't even have anything real because it's a made-up language so they it's one guy not saying something and then one guy saying something and then you having to listen to both of them so you know so it was One of those cool concepts that they probably should have thought about a bit more. And I actually heard that in the patch, the upcoming patch, you have the ability to disable either one of them. Okay, that's good. So you can either have the mumbling with subtitles or just the narrator and not the mumbling. So they don't really say anything that you need to know. Yeah, that's basically what it is.

00:16:55So those are my current news. Do you have anything else you want to mention from last week? One big thing is that Unreal 5 has got into early access. Unreal Engine, that would be. So what are the rule sets for using that now? Is it still free to use for indie developers? yeah it's uh it's the usual stuff that they it's free to use and up to one million right on how big you are so the bigger you are the bigger the yeah you need to i think i'm not sure if it's unity or if it's unreal that has the cap gain at one million dollars so if you make more than one million it starts costing the thing was that uh unity was kind of like almost not really out placing Unreal Engine, but Unreal Engine nowadays have made a huge shift in comebacks. I would say that they are kind of equal those days, what you see. I have to say though that Unreal, the lightning effects in that game engine far outpaces Unity, I would say. It's much more beautiful and dynamic in those games for sure. However, Unity is easier to use.

00:18:14especially if you're starting out in game development so a lot of indie projects are using unity but a lot of triple a studios are using yeah i would say say that that if you're going for like realistic graphics and physics and stuff then i would say that it's unreal engine that you should go with definitely definitely but that's a quite a generous cap i think one million One million dollars? I might be naive here in not really understanding how much money they make, but I feel like one million dollars for an indie game is quite a lot. Oh, that's a lot of money. I would be very much surprised if, out of 100 indie games, I would be surprised if one of them actually broke the one million dollar. And I guess you can't really do Hollywood accounting as they did with Lord of the Rings. We didn't make any profit of this.

00:19:06We actually lost money. No, you didn't. I think we did. We might have. And by a weird happenstance, I just bought a new car and a house in the south of France. But, you know, things happen. Now, I would be very much surprised if a lot of indie devs went home with $1 million on their bank accounts. They probably don't. Most of them. But, yeah. Oh, I mean, Stardew Valley obviously made a house out of solid gold after he... Are Fall Guys a small indie studio? I'm not really... Fall Guys is... Yeah, they are probably... And Valorant, obviously, as well. Those are three games that came from the indie scene and basically blew everyone away. Among Us as well, I would say. That game was released for over a year before it was picked up by the streaming community and then just went big overnight. Because that game was in a horrible state when it blew up. Their network coding was a shambles.

00:20:04They were actually working on Among Us 2 when the first one blew up, and they had to go back to their old game and try to patch it up so that it wouldn't look horrible when people played it on Twitch. It must have been super weird for them to have a game become super popular overnight when they had already moved on to the sequel. But there you go. So we should focus a little bit on what's happened the other four weeks of this month. before the show ends. And well, we are almost in June, and in June we have a lot of game shows. So we should probably mention a few of those. So EA Play will be one of them. E3 Digital will be one of them. QuakeCon will be one of them. Microsoft and Bethesda will have a show at the end of June, I think. And Blizzard will not. They have officially stated that they will not be having a BlizzCon this year.

00:21:01And many a tear was not cried over that bit of news. They don't have any players anymore. Yeah, that's one of the other things that's been on the news reel for this month, that Blizzard's actually been losing players over the last couple of years. Losing quite a few, actually. Almost 30% of their player base is gone. And, yeah. Losing players but winning money. Winning quite a few money. So 30% of their player base equals about 11 million people. So it's quite a few people still logging on to their different games, for sure. And they are still making almost 10% gain annual. So, I mean, they're not exactly out in the streets begging for money just yet. But they're going down slopes. They are going down that slippery slope. By the way, here comes my before-mentioned review of the beer. Wow, vanilla. Oh, nice. Very nice. We are sort of into word-pun humor. Yeah. A little surprise. We love that stuff, so get used to it. That's just the way it is around here. So, well, Blizzard has a lot going on, and some of it good, a lot of it bad.

00:22:26much of it annoying to a lot of people. You've got phones, don't you? Well, we do. And hopefully Diablo 4 and Diablo 2 Remake will bring in much needed karma again. You were going to say cash. Much needed cash also, for sure. But I don't think the fans really care about that as much as karma. So aside from Blizzard doing a lot of stuff, we have one of the... standing features of this show's Swedish version is that we talk about CD Projekt and Cyberpunk and their adventure to infamy. And they've been doing some stuff this past month. One of the things they've done is that they have released a really, really huge patch and then followed that up with nothing at all. So a lot of people sort of annoyed by that because the first patch had around 200 fixes.

00:23:23But there's probably 2,000 more that they should do, and they haven't yet. They did do a little thing that annoyed a lot of people instead because they gave themselves quite a few million dollars each. Substantial bonuses that were paid out. So the CEOs got $6.3 million each because they needed it, I guess. And the devs of the game got around $5,000 to $20,000 each. I mean, it's money, sure. But this is based, as far as we could understand it, on the revenue that the game sales have brought in. So if the game had been a little bit better, then the sales would have been substantially bigger, which would have meant that the developers would have gotten much more money. They were, according to rumors, they had calculated that they should have had around $100,000 each.

00:24:20And now it landed on 5 to 20,000 instead because the game tanked after the first week of sales because shock and horror, it was horrible. Did they also calculate how big the CEO's bonuses would be? I think they actually said that this is just the standard amount that we give ourselves. Okay, so it's just a symbolic sum. Yes, a little something. for the hardworking CEOs at the top of the pyramid. Anyway, this didn't sit well with anyone, really. Well, except the CEOs, obviously. No, yeah, they'd be happy. So Cyberpunk has been... I would think that they really want them not to be, but they have been on topic ever since they got released. And we'll continue to follow it, for sure. But they are trying to steer people away from this.

00:25:13And we would say that they actually are listening because we see in the statistics that they have at least one of our shows. Yeah, yeah. So we, if you want us to tell them stuff, you know, let us know and we'll say it and they'll listen and they'll make that happen. Maybe. Maybe. Depending on how good their Swedish is. Yes. They might have a Swedish person working there though. It's not too far to Poland from here. No. Oh, yes, yes. They have this Swedish band that recorded music in Stockholm. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So we do have a connection, the Swedish connection. That sounded a little bit more important than it probably was, but, you know, I'll take it. So we don't have that much time left to go in this month's show, but we'll briefly mention that Google's little... I'm not sure...

00:26:10could call the console because people probably if you ask the man on the street could you please describe what google stadia is they would probably say what now exactly because nobody really knows because it hasn't really or it hasn't here i don't know if it's big anywhere else in the world it's it's not big in japan i'll tell you that no no it's not it's not it's not even big at google because they have during this past month Well, not just this month, but this year hasn't been a good one for Stadia because they've cancelled all of their games. And I mean all of them. 100% of their games have been cancelled. They've actually laid off all of their in-house devs and their own studio is history. It's a non-issue now. But they have issued two statements this past month that Stadia is in a great phase.

00:27:05We are super excited and we have a lot of games in the pipeline. Just you wait. The problem is that no one is waiting. No. No one actually gives a care. No one. Well, maybe. I mean, there's probably one or two people out there. But aside from those, no one really cares anymore. Nobody cares. Should we feel sorry for Mr. Jeff? I'm thinking no. I'm thinking no. Yeah. He has a lot of things going. That the day when Netflix decides to actually do something like Stadia, then it might happen. That's another thing that you just briefly mentioned, that Netflix is talking about moving into games big style. They haven't defined how. But they are basing a lot of their TV shows on video games, so they're already in the loop getting that. They are indeed. And the last one of those shows is Resident Evil.

00:28:00Yes, it is. And that's a huge news for this month, obviously, because Village is out. The Village is out. Isn't it always out? Yes. You know what I'm talking about. The Village is just out of regular, you know, living people now. And one of us here in this little pod crew has actually played the game. Yes. I mean, I really don't want to spoil anything, but Lady Dimitrescu is no more. Are you done with it? No, no. Okay. You're in the middle of it, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not really sure. Could I say that you're deep in the village? Oh, I'm so deep in the village. I'm not even in the village anymore. Or maybe now I'm back in the village again. Yes. And you are hanging out with the village people. Oh, my God. I so am. I mean, it would actually work because, I mean, this would be the modern, I guess.

00:28:57Scary version of the village people because there are werewolves and there are trolls. But where's the MC cop? Yeah. Which one of the guys is the motorcycle cop guy? Oh, no. I think she's still back in Silent Hill. That's DLC upcoming. Oh, yeah. Also, quick blurbs. Paradox, the Swedish publisher slash developer. have had a bit of an off year. They've canned, not canned, shelved their Rome game, and they've officially actually stated themselves that Europa Universalis 4 hasn't had a great year. They could have done better, and they've even stated that themselves, so we'll take their word for it. But they'll be back with new stuff, so just you wait. Hopefully that's true, because the fans deserve the very best, especially after having...

00:29:52Getting nothing. Yeah, getting nothing for a game that they've actually bought. And we've talked about this in shows before, that their games are usually slow burner. If you buy them on release, you're not really getting the game that you want. No, no, no. Three years later, it's getting good. It's very much like, watch this space. Come back in a couple of years and you'll get a good old game, but not now. So yeah, hopefully 2021 will be a better year for... Paradox, for sure. Also, we have Mass Effect Remaster, which is out, and it's been mostly well-received among fans and 50-50 among reviewers, but who really cares about those people? And also Outriders, which is a big thing for a couple of us on this podcast group. Me and Oskar have played it. You can have done. Yeah, you have played it so much that you're done, and I've played it enough to know that I liked it. And what can we say?

00:30:49It was kind of well received. It's a big old game and they have a lot of exciting new stuff in the pipeline. Yeah, I hope that it will not just be a thing that was a thing and then nothing more. Yeah, let's hope. I have still an appetite for more. So, I mean, hopefully they can deliver on that. Do we have anything else that we want to mention that made May a grand month in gaming? Yes, we definitely do. Or I mean, I think I have something that I'm really enthusiastic and happy about, but I'm not sure because there is this project revealed by Remedy together with Epic. True, true. I had forgotten about that. And this is, I don't think they've named it yet, but it's a AAA project that they're working on. And if it is Alan Wake 2, then I'm so excited. The Wakenings.

00:31:44Yes. And I just made that up. But it could be cool. That is well worth mentioning. For two reasons, obviously. Island Wake was amazing. It was the best game for a very long time. And Remedy is a really solid game developer. Yes. And they're also from Finland, our neighbor country. So we like that. I think most of us could agree on that almost all of their games have been good. Yes. Most definitely, but especially Alan Wake. Yes, and we should very briefly mention why. We love horror games. That's plain and simple. That's why we say that Alan Wake is amazing and not just a really good game, because it's a horror game. And it was well done. Yeah, and I had no expectations for that game when I started playing it, and then it just turned out to be this amazing story. It was a really good story, and it had a lot of cool mechanics as well that you had to use. Amazing.

00:32:41amazeballs for sure and so yeah we're hoping that we'll get a little news out of that i think that we'll have to do it for the month of may and the first state of game so i i'll just pass this um baseball over to oscar to take it away living like with the village people what boy are we saying I usually do this, that I have my barbecue tips nowadays, this season of the year in the Swedish version, so why not continue with that? So I would say that for today's tip, I would say that you should use lobster because it's fantastic to grill. So pull that with a bit of lemon and thyme and package it and put it on the grill. It's amazeballs. Sounds delicious. Maybe take that pie beer. that Linda showed us also. Yes, definitely. That's a tip for all you people out there in Maine. Exactly. Cool. And with that said, I would say I would hope that we will hear everyone in our world crowd next month. For sure. We'll be back. But until then, take care and have a good time. Have a good day. Bye bye. Bye bye.