The State of Gaming - Game news from May - 2022

00:00:00All righty then, let's say hello and welcome to the State of Gaming. It has been May and it's over, but we have a lot of good stuff to go through what has been happening this wonderful month. It's spring and now it's summer. Is it summer though? I'm looking out the window and it's raining a lot. It's debatable, but I was just about to say because you said it has been May and I was about to say it must have been May, but it's over now. oh maybe yeah just because you know whatever and also roxette damaged me for life things that happen yeah so what are we on about today for all of you new out there or old who are are hard of hearing us about say but have selective memories uh so this is the monthly news magazine format for this podcast called the state of gaming and well

00:00:59the month that just passed very fast indeed or very slow indeed we'll get back to that was may and we have some stuff from our separated lists from the swedish news corner uh we have picked the best little raisins or nuggets or whatever things you like that have like an added value that is greater than each part so now we have the english like boosted list of news for the month. And yes, we will work our way through that list in just a little bit. But before we do that, we have, well... Not bongos. No, we do not. Bongos. No. We do not have bongos. We had sort of a little something. A little treat. It wasn't the best, allegedly, but it was something. I heard it. Good. I'm glad. Once a month, this might happen.

00:01:59I think we talked about that very briefly at some point that when we get the sound cue, it's karma. We've done something right. We earned it. So this month we have been good, I guess. We may have earned it this month. Snap. And also for all of you that are new, yes, we do like that type of humor and there will be more. So, you know, brace yourselves. What do we have to drink this month? We have a... peachy bulldog pa is it pink it's pink and it has a bulldog it has a bulldog and it's peachy it's so peachy maybe maybe maybe that's her name peachy or peaches princess peach has gone dog princess peach yes i mean there's in some universe some parallel universe that character was a dog we just know probably yeah that's how that works yeah

00:02:59Anyway, do we have, yes, we do have a tasting on the way. Was it delicious? It's actually quite good. Usually I don't like the beer from the Gotlands Bryggeri, but this one was tasty. Do we have like a solid 3.4 out of 5? Yeah, around 3.4, 3.5, which is, it's good. It's not the best, but it's still, you know, it's drinkable. It will get you through the day. Yes. Or even better, through the night. Through the pod, at least. And also extra points for the cute dog on the can. Yes, we do enjoy the, I would say, fluffy animals, but that wasn't a fluffy dog, but it was a dog. It's chewy. Yes, indeed. Smallish animals we enjoy on cans. So, Oskar, what do you have? What's happening? Hard lemon. Hard lemon. That is a touch of summer, for sure. Yeah, it is. And I won't even ask if it's delicious, because I know it's delicious. And I am, myself, working on one of my more...

00:04:20ordinary drinks i was about to say but i usually have this and it's the rum and coke because it's summer i was about to say it's summer but we already stated that it's not really summer at least not today here in sweden it's very rainy um so thor god of thunder rainy spin out there or his cousin who is only the god of rain i don't think the norse cult had a god of just rain maybe that was his apprentice Thor's apprentice, his unknown apprentice, the rain man or rain girl. Rain maiden? Yeah. Rain maiden, maybe. One of his rain disciples. Yes. That sounds about right. I can see that happening. That could have been a thing. Anyway, those people have been working very much so today. But we are having these summer drinks in, I don't know,

00:05:18anticipation for what's to come hopefully and we also um you know what we can have summer inside of us so let's send it on a positive and should we as per usual just jump onto the list and work from top to bottom or do you want to be like wild and crazy and go bottom to top are we doing it before okay maybe i don't know i mean we usually say that it like old school is better And I guess classic equals old school, maybe. Very true. All right, let's go. Just say we could have been doing it. I mean, we're not afraid of danger, but let's keep it safe. We're considering danger, but we're not really willing to go down that way. We can look danger in the face and then walk away happily. So first thing on the list is

00:06:16Sort of Swedish. Yeah, I think they're kind of Swedish still. Swedish-ish. Yes, Swedish, a touch of Sweden. Or maybe two. Anyway, Embracer Group, or just Embracer, I've actually seen both of those names floating around out there, but they started out as one dude importing games from Japan, selling it to people around Sweden through mail, I think. and for some reason that worked well enough for him to buy i think he he just bought like smaller companies to begin with and then thq went bankrupt and he had just enough cash to buy them and he rebranded his old company to thq nordic eventually and he started to re-release a lot of the ips that were part of the well package when he bought the the defunct company and i don't know exactly how embracer got to be the name that they landed on but they have merged and bought and merged again with a lot of companies so now they are i think they were valued at like billions now which is super weird it was like 14 billions or something so that's not bad for a day's work or even

00:07:44a week's work and the perk of being a very large company is that he has enough money now to buy a lot of studios and ips so they have i think around 100 plus studios now many of them indie studios for sure and some of them are at this point quite large as well and this latest news has to do with the latest acquisition um from embracer and they actually went ahead and bought 50 licenses from square enix for the small figure of 300 million dollars yeah 300 million dollars it's a steal and the weird thing is that it's kind of is yeah it is kind of a steal yeah do you think they get one of those um terra figurines also just yes complimentary i mean i if someone said Dude, do you want to have $300 million? And I had, what was it, 500 tarot statues? I would be at least thinking really hard about giving them like one. Like, okay, but only for now. And only once. Don't make a habit out of this. It won't happen again. So anyway, $300 million is obviously a lot of money, but it's still not.

00:09:13a vast amount considering what Microsoft has bought their latest acquisitions for we're talking billions when it came to Bethesda and Activision Blizzard so it's weirdly small in size comparatively and we should also mention the big licenses in this package and the biggest ones are Tomb Raider and Deus Ex and those are well known and at least when it comes to Tomb Raider, it's a big franchise and For some reason Square wasn't really happy with their Western Studios. So by doing this they've actually gotten rid of all their studios outside of Japan and They want to refocus on their home market and are even talking about starting smaller studios uh that they themselves can run in japan and also uh going into nfts and yeah blockchain blockchain yeah a lot of weird stuff to be honest so hopefully that goes nowhere and they invest in good small indie studios in japan that make well why not really good rpgs that would be yeah

00:10:34that's what they're good at so yeah i was just about to ask oscar the the little company that did the old-school jrpgs what were they called studio tokyo or what uh yeah studio talk i think it was something like that why not have like two or three more of those studios that'd be cool make it happen squeenix you have money now well more money uh also um uh embracer actually did this acquisition at the very start of the month but I think halfway through, they also said that now that we have these franchises, we will start working really, really hard on Tomb Raider to begin with. You can expect remasters and remasters, remakes and spin-offs. And Crystal Dynamics will probably be involved. They are working on a game already, but they will probably be involved. Small correction.

00:11:30tokyo rpg factory oh that's what it was well we were kind of on the right track something with tokyo based in tokyo hopefully yeah so that's that's definitely something that we will get a lot more of and yeah i think that i think both of those franchises are in better hands now than they were when squeamish had them because they didn't really know what to do with them and i'm Certainly, I'm looking forward to remakes of the old Tomb Raider games. That'd be awesome. That'd be so good. And we should also mention that all these games will be made with Unreal 5 Engine. So they will look pretty good. I think we can be certain of that. yeah i think i think i mentioned in one of our our uh swedish shows that i'm actually really looking forward to the unreal engine version of the uh from the first tomb raider game when you when you go into your home and get to train yeah for your mission the the mansion training level exactly where you get to go to her home welcome to my humble abode oh yeah she says

00:12:48well she's rich they don't really know how rich you are but now at least we can see in crispy 4k with great lightning effects i would imagine um well considering you you need to have the appropriate gear obviously but if you do it'll probably look really really good anyway we'll get back to embracer and what they are up to when we have more but at least they have new ips and they are really eagerly looking forward to do something with them another big company that we have heard rumors about throughout the month is ubisoft and yeah they had like an audit and it was rumors that someone had tried to buy them and then that rumor was shut down but resurfaced because their family stated that they weren't interested in being bought so something is definitely going on with ubisoft

00:13:45but no one really knows what it is and no one really knows who has tried to at least make them an offer it's it's very in the dark but something's going on i i'm not sure if we will get any more news until something has either been shut down completely or you will have like a headline saying that ubisoft is now owned by and there's microsoft microsoft yeah we yeah I wouldn't be surprised. Probably. But still, if they bought Ubisoft, they would have such a large market share. Yeah, they would almost have cornered the market. And I don't think they will get around the rules of trade in the US for how big of a market share you can have. That must be very close to what you're allowed to have, seeing as they already have Bethesda and Activision Blizzard now.

00:14:45and they are themselves really big and have a lot of studios and smaller companies so yeah they're they're getting out there they're definitely one of the whales now yes if not the biggest whale really definitely they're the blue whale yes the blue whale gaming video game companies yes So we'll see. Ubisoft is up to something or someone is up to something with Ubisoft. But we don't know what and we don't know who. But we'll get back to that. Something that has happened that is on a much smaller scale when you talk about participants is Ludenaricon and the fourth edition. And we had never heard of this before. No. It was kind of cool. It's an indie gaming event focused on games with narrative in its center.

00:15:34story driven games to you know boil it down and it was held on Steam which is the first for me and I've never seen an event held like only digitally on Steam of all platforms but they did and they had 32 demos and a lot of panels talking about a lot of stuff and you and I had I think we we we gave it at least some time to listen in on the panels I don't know Smiley. It was like, it could have been a much better thing if they had stayed on topic and let the guests of the panel, you know, run the panels. But the moderators kind of stole the spotlight in many of those sessions, unfortunately. But, you know. Yeah, we both, I think, remembered one specific where they talked about detective games, where the moderator just he took over the whole show and no one got to speak at all, which was weird. Because they had a lot of interesting people there. And we wanted to hear what they thought about game design and how to drive the narrative in detective focused games. But we didn't really get to hear.

00:16:52We heard some for sure, but we would have wanted much more because it became like a 50-50 split between the mod range and like the four other guests of the panel. So that was unfortunate. But one of the really good things was that they did have a lot of demos. And I think most of them are still available to download on Steam. I'm not sure if they have their homepage for Ludenarikon 0, if that's up and running still, but I think the demos are there. So you could probably... search for the Ludonaracon listing and then search for the demos in this ordinary Steam search. So that's pretty cool. I tried some of them and they were all good and very different. So there should be something in there for everyone who's interested in narrative driven games. If you're not, I would be surprised if this is for you. But for those of you who like it, why not?

00:17:48why not check it out well if you do if you don't like it this is a good start to give it give it a chance and uh someone else is out there searching as well and that happens to be ea they want to get bought that's imagine if someone had told you that like 20 years ago or 15 or maybe 10 years ago yeah i know isn't it like weird for a company to be out there trying to get bought it's usually it's weird they should have done it before they gave up yeah they should but I mean it's a definitely a big gaming company and and the when you think about how it usually works it's the Ubisoft thing someone comes to them asking if they're interested in a merger or getting bought and in this case it's EA that are like don't you want to buy us please and

00:18:44they have talked to amazon apple disney and mbc universal uh those are the companies we know for sure that they've talked to and it all fell through but they were somewhat close with mbc universal but they couldn't agree on the structuring of the new company so yeah it's also kind of funny that they asked amazon apple and disney that have all kind of failed when they have their own gaming departments amazon even i think they fired their own staff which is weird because they have money to keep on trying but for some reason they just gave up they they got a lot of talented people in there but then they had i think two or three games that they were developing and they just gave up after like a year of development and you would think that maybe they would have been interested in buying ea but for some reason

00:19:42none of those companies really wanted to do that. I'm not sure if it was a matter of asking price or if something else came in the way. But we'll definitely, we'll probably get more information because I think EA probably has decided that they want to merge with someone or something. So we'll see. Yeah, probably. Do you think Netflix would be, I guess they don't have enough money to buy EA, but... would it be a good fit it might be i mean um they they own a lot of um ips that could be gamified i i would imagine but i i think it's like what you mentioned i don't think they have enough money to buy it's a it used to be a a company that was valued at quite a lot of money but they have issues for sure um the the sports franchise thing is under some scrutiny because of the loot box systems that they have

00:20:41and they also have a more shaky relationship with fifa than they've had for at least 20 years because fifa is now starting to look wider for companies that that can make games for them because they're greedy as well so we have two greedy companies that have to try and split the cake between them that usually ends in drama which is delicious for people like us because we have stuff to talk about, but less delicious for the companies involved. Which is so weird because it should be so easy because they'll get half the cake or whatever, but it would still mean a lot of money for both companies. Yeah. But, you know, if you have a cake, you kind of want to have another cake. That is true. Yeah. And then you want a pie. Yeah, on top of that. Yeah. And then some...

00:21:33Ben and Jerry's ice cream scoops. You know how that goes and top it off with a donut and then you have a problem because, you know, that was not your donut and everyone gets upset. Nobody wants to pay for the sherry on top. Yes. Okay, enough with the pastry. Enough with the dessert. I think we all got the point here. They're greedy. Something else, though, that is sort of... We couldn't really land in a... in a feeling if it was good or bad or funny or very predictable but gearbox is uh according to themselves working on nine new games and um yeah when we talked about this in the swedish news news podcast we uh jokingly said that we have nine more borderland games to look forward to and it's kind of half jokingly because they haven't really worked on

00:22:32other IPs for a long, long time. No, it will be probably one follow-up for Tiny Tina. Tiny Tina's Wonderland 2. Yeah, that's almost a given. And then another Borderlands, of course, and then seven more. So, Oskar, what do you think they might be up to? It's a good question. Yeah. I would say that they would actually try something new. Yeah, because we were talking, like, do you remember any other big IPs that they actually own? No. No. We couldn't really think of any either. They did have the, I'm not sure if you remember those games, but they did have the Brothers in Arms IP back. Yeah. Like the World War II strategic action franchise, which was really, really good, but also very hard. But I'm not sure if they have the fan base for that anymore because a lot of the people that are probably into their stuff is the fast-paced action humor guys crowd now that like Borderlands. Yeah, but maybe they want to broaden the spectrum by adding some or test out new markets, I would say. Yeah, I'm all for that. They have earned a lot of money through the Borderlands franchise, so maybe they want to take some risks, and I'm all for that.

00:24:01Another company that at least Oscar is a big fan of is Thunderfall. And for those of you who are just thinking, I don't know what that is. It used to be two companies, Zoink and Image & Form, and they merged and created Thunderfall. I would say that that's at least a better name than Image & Form. What kind of name is that? Image & Form sounds like some guys that are into pottery. It's not a game developer studio at least, that's for sure. No, it's a bad name. So, Thunderfall is better than that, but I think Soink was a pretty good name. Yes, Soink should be there, yeah. Yeah. Oink and Soink. Oink and Soink. The brothers in arms. The little piglets of adventure. Anyway, enough with the Oinking. These guys are the masterminds behind the SteamWorld franchise.

00:24:54it's also a swedish franchise we should mention because we are patriots and all that you know whatever um they are now working on three new games simultaneously so they must have grown quite a bit in order to be able to do that and we know that one of the games will be a steam world game and oscar i think you are much more into that franchise than i am do you think that's a 2d platformer game then No, I don't think the new one will be 3D. Yes, they did mention that the new one will be 3D. And one will be a city builder and one will be a puzzle game. I'm not so sure that I hate any of the... I could get behind any of those. We know that it's quite difficult to go from 2D to 3D, especially when it comes to platform metroidvania game types. So I would say I would give them a benefit of a doubt. Yes. But I would be at least more... Are we a little cautious? Yeah, I would be actually happier if they just went... They could have explored the original SteamWorld Dig...

00:26:10concept in 2d more i would say yeah and added the more things to it so i would have preferred if they kept it in 2d actually i like 2d well i think we all do but i can see why they at least want to try this because i think the audience might be different yeah yeah we will see and the city building thing could be really cool Yeah, because they have some kind of creative ideas, I would say. We will see what type of city builder it is, but it would be kind of cool if it would be this kind of steampunk world that you build. That would be actually really cool. Like SimCity SteamWorld. Cool. I'm into that stuff. So hopefully we'll get more information soon, but three new games coming, whether we like it or not.

00:27:05just but there were also kind of a release schema that the the latest the the first one will be to 2023 or something like that and then it will 24 and 25 or something so i think they're probably working really hard on the 2023 release and they might just have started with the another the other game and i'm not sure how many many people work over at thunderfall but they probably have the biggest team working on the 2023 release and smaller teams working on the other projects i would imagine um anyway we're looking forward to that we also have news that gears of war might get the master chief collection treatment so all of those games might be put into a pack and have their best most beautiful looking versions and then they can sell them again for a lot of money and they really need that

00:28:00They probably want it, even if they don't need it. And I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in that franchise. So I might be one of those stupid people that think I might need that, even though I've already played them into the ground. But whatever. It might look good on the shelf. And the Master Chief Collection sold really, really well. So they know that they have the market for this. And yeah, it might also be... a good thing to put on the game pass. Yeah, for sure. Another thing that has gone really, really well is that Stardew Valley has now passed the 20 million... Well, it's hard to say because it's not a fiscal thing, but they have sold 20 million licenses, at least, for the game. And it's a doubling since... How many?

00:28:58years is four years ago yep so that's pretty good so 10 million in four years that's that's a lot of dollars even if you buy it on discount it's a it's a title you could actually buy yourself a decent farm for that price i would say i think you could buy even more than one yeah you can buy a lot of stuff for for that you could actually like buy a valley and build stardew yeah exactly for that amount you could buy stardew and valley yes anyway it's super cool and um concerned ape has kind of earned the success he's had because he created a game that he wanted to have himself and it obviously it's um based on harvest moon and he just wanted another game in that series and seeing as they didn't make one he made it themselves himself and he's now working on two games but

00:29:54main focus on the game called haunted chocolatier and we know that this will be a game with a style of starter value but it will be more action focused and it will have boss fights that we know nice so i don't know maybe it will be a more zelda-esque game which would be pretty cool and with chocolate which is haunted you know that could be a thing And with haunted stuff. Yeah. I mean, I'm all there for it. I really like the first game. And I would definitely give him the benefit of the doubt, even though this name is weird, you know. But hopefully it's a really good game. It is. Yeah, yeah. Another really, really, really big game that I was skeptical about up until the point that I tried it and I had to grudgingly agree.

00:30:51with a lot of people that it's a very well made game is genshin impact studio mihoyo and they have i think they made three billion dollars last year on genshin impact so that's a few dollars and with some of those dollars they have decided to make another game and another franchise and this new game has the I don't really remember, but it had three names starting with a Z. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I thought it was Senseless, but it was like Sen. It was three names that together, if you put them together, it just was a big snooze. And they even made fun of that themselves. So we weren't clever and we didn't take stabs at them. They actually... they actually made that joke themselves zen less zone zero yes that's the one i'm not i don't feel bad about not remembering that no it means nothing you remember the triple c's i did do that anyway they have made a trailer for those of you that are interested in everything mihoyo and it looked i have to say gradually again it looked really good so this will probably sell really well again you know as

00:32:18Genshin Impact does. It does look more like the Persona series, so it's a more mature anime style, for sure. Anyway, I will... Not at this time. I used to say that I would never play it, but I will not do that mistake again. So I will say I'll hopefully not play it. And then I might be... You'll hold off for as long as you possibly can. I'll do the old college try and stay away. But I might, you know, succumb. It might look delicious. it might it might snag me at some point you know but i'll do my best something a little bit on the fun side to to round off the list is that sega for some reason had a kind of big survey of their assets and they reached the conclusion that sonic was their most well-known and biggest brand and then there was a surprise yeah they were somewhat surprised from like

00:33:17Really? I mean, Oscar, you had a few IPs that you also enjoyed that they own. But I think we can all agree that if you ask the man on the street what Sega does, they'll probably say Sonic. Yes. Probably. That blue squirrel, he's not a whatever. He's blue, and he's fast. Yeah. But there are so many other good Sega IPs that you often miss in this discussion. But yeah, of course, Sonic is the biggest. Yeah. I wonder, because they did this survey, I wonder if they actually did it because they want to go back and revive some of their other IPs. Because they now know that Sonic is alive and well, and he doesn't really need more commercial money. to keep himself relevant because everyone still knows he's making his own movies he's making movies and there's a game i think there's a new like open world 3d game uh yeah coming out as well i'm not sure if it's next year if it's this year but he's still doing very well even though he's running all the time but he's doing well so hopefully oscar what what what ip would you like for them to to revisit yeah it's a good one

00:34:42Would you like them to remaster old games or do something entirely new? Oh, it depends. If we talk about Fatal Fury, I would say that I would love if they did something like what they did with Killer Instinct. And actually take that, or Mortal Kombat X and so on. Take it to keeping the true spirit, but adding the good jazz that we need. Like, make it great again. But keep the essence. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that would be super cool. I would be kind of into that. Oh, we should also mention, even though I didn't add it on the list, that we have a new Turtles game. Yeah, brother. It would be so good. It looked pretty good. I should also mention it's from the guys that did Streets of Rage 4, which was also really, really good. So they know how to do beat-em-up platforming games.

00:35:42And, yeah. Which favorite Turtle did you guys have? I remember trying to remember all of their names. I would say that it depends. If we talk about Turtle games, it has always been... Donatello, because he has the longest reach of his weapon. I was just about to say that. He had the blue stick. That was so much better than all the other weapons. But when it comes to the series, I'm getting a little bit fussy with what were actually standard. I think it was Michelangelo, but I'm not really sure anymore. Yeah. Which one was the... I think I have to... I think Raphael had like the scythe, the little three sticky things. And the nunchuck was Michelangelo, right? Yes. And Donatello had the bow. Yes. And then it was just swords left. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Swords. I didn't remember that. Katanas. Yeah. Two of them to be exact. Two of them to be double badass factor. I mean, for nothing else, it's good.

00:36:57when you try to slice those pizzas, I would imagine. Yeah, and Donatello does machining. He does, he does. Anyway, we are kind of looking forward to that because I think it'll be a good game. Hopefully you can play in COA, couch COA. Yeah, you can. Probably, and you can always play it over the internet also. Yeah, and I would be very surprised if this doesn't end up on Game Pass. Streets of Rage 4 did it on day one, so, you know. For those of you who have Game Pass, a lot of good stuff will probably keep on ending up there. Pizza time! Yes. Game pizza time. You won't get a physical pizza, so don't get your hopes up. I will order an... What do you call it? Oh my god, they had some weird... They had a lot of weird toppings on their pizza. Something with fish and peanuts. Yeah, and they also had, like, apple cores. Like, the...

00:37:53yeah exactly like eaten apples because i remember from one of the one of the i think it was one of the physical comics where they actually looked behind the couch and like under the rug like we must have some apple course somewhere we need a lot of apples because we need to have that on the they had some weird name for it but it was the pizza with the peanut butter and yeah fish and it looked delicious when it was coming out of the oven i'll give them that but i wouldn't want to slice i don't think so I'll stick to the Azteca, thank you very much. So we are kind of running out of time. So if there's anything else you want to add that has happened in the last month. Maybe a small, kind of funny thing, but a Chinese guy dropped secret military tech on Chinese tanks on the War of Tanks forum. Okay, that's pretty cool. Because he wanted to change stats on a specific tank saying that.

00:38:52this is it right he dead now i think we can i think we can all rest assure that he he got into some trouble for that but if you're one of those people that are into uh world tanks you know thank that guy everything for the record yeah exactly send kind uh thoughts for the person either languishing in prison or not languishing at all anymore Okay, that was... Why did we have to end this on a dark note? It went dark. It went so dark right now. So I will actually end it on a positive. I went out and bought Kirby and the Forgotten Lands. That's nice. And then I bought the physical amoeba of Kirby. And it's great. It's a really good game. If you're into that little dude. It doesn't say much, but he's very happy.

00:39:49And cute. Yeah, he's kind of cute. He's like a perfectly round dude that runs around and eats stuff. Yep. He has an appetite. For stars. For stars, yes. Yes. Anyway, if you are into free... Well, not really free roaming, but kind of free roaming platform games in the vein of Mario, but with a different character, this might be the game for you. And yeah, that's probably... where we'll end off for now. So I'll pass on a perfectly rounded Kirby bowl to Oscar for you to ride on with the star or whatever you do. Yeah. And I will say that I probably be because it's the end of the show. Three strikes and we are out then. So see you in a month. Bye for now.