[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, everyone hates the Nintendo version of TMNT and for good reason, but that intro song is still so good. Like, I forget that that's not even the theme song of like the actual show. Like I still think of it as like a turtle song too. You know, it's amazing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it was just 35 bucks, so yeaah. Okay, right, sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it kinda feels good to shoot another person with paint and like they just kinda go pop, you know, the game feel again, you know, it's kinda there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I, I love the art style. I love the music. You know, I, I think for me, a lot of it is the style. You know, uh, uh, like I just love like, like, like the Splatoon kids. I love the fact that like they have like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, DJs as like influencers, like announcing things in between, like just that whole vibe of like the city, uhm, like you just, you just never really see games like that anymore. It feels like a lost Dreamcast game, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, like made by Nintendo, um, so that's kinda why I like it. Uh, you know, and I, I was obsessed with platoon 2 for like months. I just like, it was like the only game I played for like a while when I was like, I need to grind to like get these clothes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I can, so I can get the cool shoes for my little splatoon guy and I wanna unlock the gun that shoots paint better, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I remember, I think I remember you mentioning that before. Yeah, that's awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're extremely British. And the beautiful thing about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is that different countries in that game will have different British accents depending on like different districts. So like one will be Welsh, one will be like South London. It's amazing. And so you can tell like what kind of character they would be based on their accent. And that continues in 3.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is, which is incredible. Like there's so much, they put so much thought into the localization. It's definitely like a Cowboy Bebop situation where like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think the localization is actually better than the original Japanese translation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really well done, Gabe. That's awesome. I'm obsessed with all three of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess I haven't been really in gaming, unless for the last two years, so I'd probably be...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love all you guys, you know, I've actually e-met Lucy before. She was so kind enough to bring me onto her show. So, you know, to Gerard Ralph, you know, been such long time fans of both of you. So it's been an honor to be on this podcast. Thanks so much for having me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm Jake Baldino, I do videos on game ranks like the Before You Buy and the Friday News Show and behind the scenes stuff, but I also do my own YouTube channel. I've been YouTubing for a million years now, almost as long as Gerard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think there's a lot that can be learned from the whole thing, obviously on your end and everybody that, that work there, but people on the outside looking like, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It almost answered some questions, like people were like, what does a new G4, what does G4 look like coming back? Will it work? What can it do? Like, I dunno, maybe it just shapes a little bit more like what people might know what they want going forward. Does that make sense? Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, that was so funny. I was waiting for a live stream for this thing to happen and then I refreshed it and then it was just the whole video. I was like, holy shit, it's just the video, like a regular old YouTube video. So they're still learning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh no. Oh no. I got Kanye'd. So it's an interesting thing because, alright, there's a lot. And I think people weren't expecting that. There is first the Silent Hill 2 remake, which is by Bloober.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, uh, it's, it's, I, I joke. I, like, the first one is, uh, very straightforward. It's very cool. And then the second one really goes deep on the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bleakness in a lot of interesting ways like story wise. So that's what they're doing. Bloober is on it and it's a seemingly direct collaboration with Konami. Uh, Konami seems to have like a team of like intellectual property people managing all this stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a studio that definitely has some, uh, issues. Uh, I liked Observer. Is it Observer? Yeah, Observer. I liked Observer. Layers of Fear, I thought was pretty cool. I thought Blair Witch was like wasted potential, unfortunately.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not Sniper Elite, uh, but it's like an open world thing, and I ran out of footage at the end of the video, like the timeline, like when I'm doing the outro, like, hey everybody, thanks for watching, subscribe, blah blah blah. We usually run generic footage from the game, uh, and I didn't have anything except for me driving in a jeep through the woods just running over deer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Silent Hill 2 is significant with Bloober. Uh, so it's Bloober working with, uh, original artist Masahiro Ito and, uh, the composer last name Yamaoka who is kind of making new music.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And new soundscapes for it, uh, which is interesting. And, uh, yeah, I, everybody has different opinions about Bloober, it seems. Some people have really strong opinions. The trailer I thought looked pretty cool. Uh, graphically, yeah, you could say that James looks weird. James looks really weird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The thing I'm concerned about, so like when he opened the door and you could see the first area from the game, I was like, wow, that looks incredible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm curious to see what comes of this. Uh, you know, the original isn't going away or anything like that. I think the community has done a really good job of making the old games easier to play and better because the remaster they released wasn't really that, that hot. So that's always still going to be around. But uh, yeah, that's where I'm at with that one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there's something with the, with that game that, uh, and it was, it was through the marketing, through all the imagery for it and through the pre-rendered cutscenes that they had this very distinct and unnerving feel to them from the lighting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's a little weird, it's a little like X-File-y, Twin Peaks-y, like weird stuff, uh, but I think it's really more like artsy fartsy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At least that's how I always perceived it. It always felt like it had a little bit more going on beneath the surface. It had a little bit more going on. Like, if you're comparing it to Resident Evil, like, you know, Resident Evil's like, what if the corporations made zombies? Where Silent Hill's like, isn't sex weird? You know, like, and like, and murder and cancer is horrible. Like, it's just a lot of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It does a lot more, so I think it's still good in general for this brand to come back, uh, because they have a lot of other games.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or another, you know, like people, a lot of people are tired of remakes and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They at least gave us other stuff, and that to me was promising. There's Silent Hill Townfall, which is a kind of more story, experiential thing, uh, by No Code and Annapurna.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Silent Hill Ascension, which is like just some weird live experience thing, again with big players behind it, behavior from dead, uh, dead players.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's kind of what they said that they were, their inspiration was. So yeah, there's that. But the big thing that I think is cool is just like a straight up new Silent Hill game. Uh, it's called Silent Hill F or Silent Hill Forte cause that's the symbol. Um, and that's by Neobards Entertainment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Resident Evil reverse that multiplayer thing. Uhm, but this is, this is like a whole new game. It looks like it's like 1950s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's got a character artist that I don't know who they are, uh, and also the writer is Ryukishi07, who is a famous horror scary girl book writer in Japan that people seem really excited about. I don't know who that is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, I think that looks cool. We don't really know much about that, but I think, so it's, it's really interesting. I think that they gave us like, here's a remake, here's a this, here's a that. And you know, it just makes me think about like what else, what else they're cooking up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was cool to see, like, they expanded where it makes sense. Just, just a little brief glimpse they got us, like, the fact that, like, you don't just, like, walk in the first house and shoot a man in the face. You walk in the house, it's scary, you go in the basement, you find the dead cop, you freak out, then you shoot the guy in the face. And I think that-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can we acknowledge probably the best thing and I hope it's a full, full mechanic in the game. You can parry the chainsaw with a gun. That is so sick. That was the coolest thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just like, yeah, that like we're doing that. And it made me so happy. I made this set when, when the roundhouse kick happened, I made the sound. This is a dumb reference, but in step brothers, when, when they're singing at the end and it cuts to Adam Scott and he's like crying, laughing. He's like, ha ha like that. That was me when the roundhouse kick happened. Like it was that exact feeling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm excited. I'm curious to see if the trailer showed us a lot and answered a lot of my questions, man, where I was like, are they going to go full weird? Are they going to have Mr. Small guy? Are they going to have, you know, it seems like they're going for all of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's true. Halo doesn't have uh, Toblerone or whatever the fuck his name is. Tob- Tobion?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Avengers combat here and there. I think the fact that this game relies on open world stuff, traversal and combat and none of them are really that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's really, I think it's part of the game's structure again and how that structure holds everything back and it gets in the way of everything and I think that it's like you, I felt playing it that I just got a lot of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There really, there really wasn't any, uh, you know, I was really hoping for some cool big learning moment or like massive team family moments.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I didn't get any of that and I feel like that was the whole point of the game. It's the bat family. I was so excited. The whole Batman is dead thing from a story perspective is incredibly exciting. Like that is the most big dick move they could have made and I feel like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They squandered it and I was bummed. There's a couple things though. So like I have this like weird feeling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That like, the game is definitely still gonna find its fans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think once people get it, like more people, cause we're talking kinda pre-release, I think once more people get it in their hands, I, there are people out there that like, do not underestimate how much people love Red Hood, or whoever, and they just wanna be in a world


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you're like, there's like combat arena sections and you're cross bone men and I was really into the like just occasionally here and there of the first game, at least for most of the game. Uh, we're here, it felt a little bit more typical.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the dialogue is really good for it. It really works. Like you're in the, you're in these little like, you know, you're stealthing around and you know, some stealth games, you might want to thin out the crowd a little bit. You want to maybe headshot a couple guys quietly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really like how it ended and the whole last like section of the game just was like very emotional. All the payoffs were great. It's the first game that made me like feel something in like a minute where like I got a little like a little like little well up in my eyes. Like they, they sold it really well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh no, I uh, I'm like 50, I'm like 50-50 on it. I think I like more of it than I don't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the combat is not really good. Uh, it felt like it was kind of the game, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh wait, we should have this. Like it didn't really commit to it, so it just kind of felt awkward and out of place. And the enemies that you were shooting were like so boring and nowhere near as cool as the rest of the visual design of this world. The rest of it I thought was super cool from the standpoint of like the game telling you nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No handholding, no UI elements, not a single bit of tutorial where it's not just cause it's like I'm an elite gamer, but it's because they put you in this weird world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pretty like, you hit a brick wall with these puzzles, or you don't. Maybe you're a genius. Uhm, I hit the puzzles really, really hard. And some of them were pretty difficult. I'm also not smart. But, uh, I like the sense of accomplishment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Finishing them and couple all that with just I've always wanted a game to look like this. I've always wanted a game to have this vibe to take these art inspirations and just kind of it kind of re reignited my like art history love and like I got to just even like think about that for a second while playing the game that that made me happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's where I ended it, uh, where, like in one of my videos where, uh, you know, it's definitely for a very specific type of player and it's definitely like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yeah, that's really it. The bottom line is that I'm still gonna be thinking about this one for a minute. Like, cause you murder like an alien baby and you have like a weird monster that comes out of your vagina or do you have a vagina? I don't even know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm excited to see how the through line of the DNA continues because my favorite thing about 2018 was how it was this big departure for the games, but there was still so much of it that for me did actually


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just like the subtle references to his past, but like not doing it too much. Uh, even just to how he opens crates and how angry he is. Like there's just this through line of the vibe of the old games to the new ones.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanna play as, uh, two different polar bears. From Crash Bandicoot 2. The little one that you, the cool one that you ride. And the big one. And the big one that you, because imagine chasing Crash. That would be so much fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, this is from Lukita, who says, do any of you have a JRPG you hold dear to your heart? Oh man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's kind of, kind of like on a left field for me, but it was just like one, for me it was one of those random blockbuster finds, uh, for like the PS1 ones, uhm, and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick the bad one, but for me, Final Fantasy X is really special.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any, any of those chill vibe, like ambient, you know, environment songs, uhm, and yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, this is an easy one for me, because it kind of happened. Uh, roller drone, uh, is, is what I've always said and I'm on the record saying that in multiple videos over the years. That's kind of what I would want to make. I think I would want it to be more story-based.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Different art style, more combos, but uhm, generally,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's that type of combo, but with more storytelling. Like if you could somehow tell an incredible tale about somebody who skateboards around and uses guns, like if there could be like a real rich story with that, that's what I would try and make.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I see it rapidly changing in terms of how we consume and what we consume, uh, definitely, where there are so many things gunning for it, whether it's streaming, less physical ownership, a move to VR, all the web, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The core little, us humble little gamers who just want to cry about a little girl in a Japanese JRPG, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I do think the pandemic has been a good, uh, like strength test, or endurance test rather, for, you know, video games in a lot of ways, uh, because how


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even with all those like little ups and downs over the last like three years, even so many games releasing in like not the best quality, uhm, despite all those ups and downs like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gaming was still around, people are still playing, people are still discoursing, people are still discording. So, you like that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is, uh, we're very lucky, yeaah, they gave me a few months to, uh, well I split it up over. It's funny, so I get three months of book leave and I was like, you know, looking at the schedule, there's Zelda, there's Final Fantasy, there's Diablo, there's like E3.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then Zelda and Final Fantasy and Diablo come out. Then I'm taking the next six weeks. So I'm configuring it around that so I don't have to like, because during book leave I'm not gonna play, I'm not playing any games like during the work day. I'm just like sitting in a.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, at Bloomberg, I think a lot of mainstream news outlets, I don't know about gaming specific ones, but mainstream news outlets, they generally like when their writers are writing books, it seems as a prestigious thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there, it works out nicely. Like it's a win-win for them. And so uhm, yeaah, I mean I was lucky enough to be able to secure this. There's some like hoops you have to jump through. I won't get into all the logistics and details at Bloomberg. But uhm, but yeaah, we're super lucky to have that policy. It's a good company to work for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's different because a book isn't competing with like internet articles and in fact they can be synergistic. So for example, one of the things that I had to commit to to get book leave is putting an excerpt of my book on Bloomberg, which is, which is like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another win-win because it's like I'll get my, I'll get my book promoted for readers and also Bloomer gets some, some good content from the thing. So that's the type of thing where it's like a win-win. And also it's just like over the course of doing a reported book, which I think most, um, reporters that are


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You cultivate sources and you talk to people and you wind up hearing things that maybe don't fit in the book, but you could break news with. And so there's a lot of just kind of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Mark Bergen who wrote this great book about YouTube and another colleague, uh, who wrote a great book about Instagram. So there's a lot of just like good stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, coming from there. I actually had my boss's boss, basically the guy who runs the tech team at Bloomberg, actually published a book about Amazon that happened to come out on the same day as my last book, Press Reset, which is, which is very funny. I was like, man, I think you get, you get priority on the pecking order here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three years, it's been out. Right. Got back quickly. I actually had my first job interviews like in February of 2020 and then my next job interview or my next conversations with them were like, Oh, we can't meet in person anymore. Okay. This is a good time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Various editors who like have different levels of knowledge about the gaming industry and gaming culture and I actually find it really interesting to have to talk about stories of them and pitch them stories because you can kinda cut through


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Twitter drama and like the stuff that's kind of like assumed knowledge or assumed like, uh, you kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and long story short is that she put up this video where she was calling for a boycott and claimed she was underpaid and I did some digging and found out that she was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, as a result, and so I think, I think I've earned some trust there, which is good. But yeah, but it's actually, I find it really rewarding and satisfying to, and, and a good exercise for me to, uhm, to be able to do that. Actually, when I was leaving Kotaku, so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back in, uh, uh, at the beginning, like the end of 2019, uhm, when Kotaku's new private equity owners came in and started wrecking the place and destroyed Deadspin and, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm doing a lot of interviews for my book and every single time I always start the conversation moving like, so tell me your such and such origin story. And there's always always something interesting in there. Anyway, uhm, so I'll tell you my short version of the story. So I've always


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wanted to be a writer since I was like five years old and like writing, uh, I guess these days you would call it fan fiction, but then we didn't even know what that meant. Like in a little black and white spiral notebook, I would write about Final Fantasy characters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and in high school, I discovered journalism, wound up joining my high school paper, becoming editor in chief, and then like went on to do more reporting in college and stuff. And then after college, I went out and I was like, I'm going to go and freelance and kind of figure out what I'm going to do and, and try to pay the bills. Sorry to interrupt you. You studied journalism in college.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't study journalism, so I went to NYU and, uh, for anyone who's familiar with NYU out there, maybe a few of you, I went to a school within NYU called the Galladin School of Individualized Study, which is like a create your own major program within NYU. And so I majored in writing, technically. Right, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, uh, after I graduated, I, um, I started doing some freelance journalism, moved back in with my parents for a little bit while I was like trying to figure out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How to pay the bills, what to do with myself, as I'm sure is a common story for millennials. Uhm, and so I was out freelancing and I like wound up getting some gigs for like local journalism outlets. And I remember I was sitting in this government meeting, this local government meeting for this town near where I grew up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there are a bunch of dudes on this like podium stage thing just kinda arguing over whether a fence is allowed to be 20 feet or 30 feet in their zoning district.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and I was just like, man, I can't do this. I'm going to kill myself if I have to keep doing this and I need to find something interesting to write about. And then I was kind of like, hmm, like I, I like games. I used to in college, I like wrote a couple of reviews in exchange for free games for like some, some.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and then eventually I got my kind of in my foot in the door, which was a job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, sort of a permalance job at Wired, uhm, the gaming outlet of Wired magazine, a guy named Chris Kohler.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, who was a journalist for a long time, no longer. Uhm, he, uh, uh, hired me at Wired and essentially gave me my big break. And then from there I wound up getting more and more gigs and wound up getting the Kotaku job a couple of years later when Stephen Tottillo called me and was like, hey, we should meet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would pay uhm, people to copy edit these retail listings. And basically I would get paid $500 a week to copy edit 300 listings for that week. But I could do them all because I'm a fast reader and editor. I could do them all in 5 hours. So essentially I would spend


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the reason I bring that up is because I think it's like really important for us all to, for people who are successful certainly, but also for people who are trying to give advice about this sort of thing to acknowledge that there is so much luck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But in my case, I mean, if I hadn't lucked out and found this gig, I would not be in the situation that I'm in. And yes, I worked hard to find gigs that I spent every single day like hustling until I found like that and many other things that I wound up doing to pay my bills. But uhm, but sometimes you just get super lucky and it's hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't been lucky enough to find that one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, well, so it started, I mean, a lot of the work that I did,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, just kind of was, was a granular build up over time. It wasn't like I decided one day like, hey man, I'm going to start investigating, uh, uh, all these companies and digging into their deep dark secrets and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and then I wound up doing a lot of, I mean, if you look back at my history at Kotaku, I mean, the website is so broken these days, I don't know how easy it is to find any stuff, but uhm, a lot of like the long form work I was doing, uhm, especially in my early days, wasn't like big exposés with lots of anonymous sources, it was kind of,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just interesting features or at least features I found interesting just based on talking to people and them using their names and just providing information in an interesting way that wasn't necessarily sensitive and then maybe some of those people would share more stuff with me down the line or put me in touch with other people and help me build and build my Rolodex. I mean it's very much like a brick by brick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can't just like start and be like, I'm gonna go out and build a skyscraper. Like you really have to put in the work. And that's something that I learned and was lucky enough to have good teachers to learn about over time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but uh, yeaah, I mean you can find a lot of my earlier Kotaku work before I really became known, uhm, for the way that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sid Meier of Civilization back in the day, I did, I wrote this piece about Peter Molyneux, which I thought was hilarious because he like started crying in the middle of an interview. Uhm, I read some big pieces. Yeaah, it was crazy. Uhm, I read some big pieces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, I read that the article opens up that if you find it, if you find Kotaku, Peter Molyneux profile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I read a big piece about like video games and violence. I read a big piece about Metacritic. A lot of stuff that like maybe


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I said, brick by brick, I think that's the best analogy because every story you do is a brick. Every person you meet


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean I think uhm, certainly a lot of people would never talk to me because I wrote something five years ago that like rubbed them the wrong way or leaked a game they were working on or whatever else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, there are a lot of, kind of, there's a lot of nuance there, right? Like the industry, the games industry isn't a model. There are a lot of different people who have a lot of different views. Uhm, and also, like, the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, yeaah, that said, I mean, I found that I meet a lot of people and some people appreciate what I do and some people don't and uhm, people respond in different ways and talk to me in different ways and yeaah, I don't know, I, I don't...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Try to worry too much about like, uhm, how, uh, how people are going to react to something or another as long as I think that I'm making the right decision I guess. Uhm, there's certainly things I regret because they like burn bridges that I didn't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That I wish I hadn't or whatever, but uhm, yeaah, I don't know. I mean, to more directly answer your question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's 20 different people who work for that game company. Uhm, I find that maybe a couple of them will never respond to me. Maybe a couple of them will and they'll say, oh, Jason, you wrote about my company once, but I still appreciated it. Or like I, I glad you wrote that thing about my company. Uhm, I was actually, I was stopped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I won't mention the specific company, but I was stopped at GDC by someone just like randomly pulled me over, pulled me aside and was like, Hey, uh, I just want to let you know, I found out about layoffs at my company because I saw it from you at Bloomberg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my company didn't say shit. So thank you for, for giving me the heads up because like I, we needed that. Uhm, and at the same time I've had people complain to me or, or just like not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wanna talk to me because of some story I did that like reported on their game before they were ready to announce it. So yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's a, you kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're doing this for long enough, you kind of can't worry too much about it in the same way that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you have to kind of detach the part of your brain that hangs out with


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, negative and scathing about a game that like maybe someone you know and like a lot worked on or, or did the marketing for or whatever, but like it's part of the job and hopefully everybody involved can be professional enough to kind of realize that and, and get past it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, leaks are especially tough because the video game industry is so...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, secrecy focused that leaks can have like all sorts of negative repercussions that you, that a reporter or even a developer or even the person leaking might never actually know about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, which is strikingly different from say Hollywood where like everybody's intentionally, agents are intentionally leaking to the press all the time and so you wonder why you're seeing this thing and it's like, oh, it's all just intentional. Whereas in games, I've never in my, what is it, 13, 14 year career never once


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've always been of two minds of it and I don't really have a straight answer to give you other than to say it's always just on a situation by situation basis, like case by case basis, situation by situation basis for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but I've always been of two minds. One mind is like reporter minded, like, hey, if there's news, it should be out there. If I hear about something, I should be reporting it. And then the other is the more empathetic, like, hey, I've heard like horror stories about things that might have happened. And because of this,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Generally land somewhere in the middle and try to kind of be judicious about what I choose to report and what I choose to chase based on what I've heard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so yeaah, I don't have a straight answer for you on like when and why and what that looks like because I don't really have hard rules. I kind of try to figure it out based on each situation. That said, uhm, I'm not really interested in reporting on leaks so much as I'm interested in reporting on things that people would not find out anyway. Uhm, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People would not find out anyway, by which I mean things that aren't going to be announced to the public. Things that are behind the scenes stories. Things that are, are, are layoffs and, and like, uhm, uh, I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People moving around and bad things happening at companies and harassment and misconduct and all sorts of stuff or behind the scenes. It doesn't even have to be bad stuff like behind the scenes details that are interesting about the development of a game, good or bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, that stuff is way more interesting to me than any sort of like, hey, this is what's happening with the new Assassin's Creed. That said, sometimes you gotta do the latter too for various reasons and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not going to say that I don't report on leaks or that I won't report on leaks again. Uhm, I just am less personally interested in those kinds of scoops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] God, it's so unfortunate because it's like, I have this, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I feel like it's the only place where I can really reach a large chunk of my audience, which I think is really unfortunate. And so something I've been doing recently is trying to, is looking at other platforms. I've been playing around with Substack and Substack Notes recently, which is pretty cool. Seems pretty interesting as a viable alternative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but there's something really depressing about the whole Twitter dependency thing because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean to zoom out a little bit more, a lot of reporters over the past decade have relied on Twitter to build their audiences because a lot of the people who come to Twitter are news junkies and they're hungry for fast news and breaking news and they're interested in following personalities and they discover


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Excuse me, they discover a lot of writers and reporters via Twitter and that has become like the most important place as a writer and reporter to build your audience and it's like to the point where if you're trying to sell a book,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, one of the things they ask you is your platform and by platform they mean how many followers do you have on this social media and that social media, right? So uhm, it's, it's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But like also both philosophically and ethically and also just practically with this like going down all the time and feeling janky constantly uhm, make you realize that like holy crap like when I'm on this website and I've spent all this time cultivating an audience on here


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't own any of that. And one of the reasons that I've found Substack to be really appealing is because when you build up a Substack and a Substack is basically a newsletter platform, they also added this like Substack notes feature that is essentially quitter in Substack form. And one of the things I find really appealing about it is that, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You own your audience because you can see all of the emails of people who subscribe to you and you can save that file like an Excel file of all those emails and take it wherever you want. You can use that however you'd like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Without being reliant on this alternate, on this third party platform that could be owned by


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, right-wing activists all day. So yeah, it's, it's, it's really depressing and I get really sad when I think about what's, what's been happening to Twitter and I'm trying to distance myself from that platform.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, as much as I can, but it's very difficult because that's where, uh, a lot of the audience is unfortunately. Uhm, so it's gonna be a gradual process that I'm hoping.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hoping that, that there, that alternatives emerge and that things, yeah, I'm hoping there are better options.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The thing about YouTube is that like, I have two small children. I can't record videos of two small children. I can write stuff on my laptop while watching two small children. So, uh, not on the cards for me as, as fun as that would be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, uh, the fact that, I mean, we were talking about Twitter. I think Twitter has played a big role in that change because I think a lot more people are willing to be vocal about their work conditions on Twitter in a way that they weren't five or six years ago. And I think that Twitter has given people a level of power, like individual workers, a level of power that they didn't have before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, no, it's true. It's really, it's the ultimate platform if you want to be empowered or if you want to show your ass to the world. That's where, in a nutshell. Uhm, yeah, I mean, things have definitely changed a lot. Like really, really quickly, actually. Like a few years ago, there were still companies that were like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hardcore crunch culture, just like, gotta get this game out the door. And they're still crunch today, don't get me wrong. I mean, there's still people who are going through various, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Crunch has also, the definition of crunch has also changed a lot. If you talk to people who crunched in the late 90s and early 2000s, that's a world away from like crunch today. Crunch back then was like years of working seven day weeks, like to the point where you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your brain breaks, like you have memory loss. I was just talking to someone today who was talking about crunch on a game that he worked on in the 90s and he was telling me about how like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it's, it's a little too specific, I realize. But like, it's essentially, it's like people losing their brain functions. It's like not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like really unhealthy. Memory loss, divorces, like all sorts of horror stories you hear from that kind of work environment. These days, I think uhm, nobody would tolerate that kind of crunch. And when there is crunch and when it's bad, it's usually for


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A few weeks is usually for a couple of months, which is not good at all, but it's much different than it was back then. Today, even that has changed, I think, at least from what I've heard anecdotally. Uhm, was talking to someone at GDC who works for a big company that was made headlines a few years ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Possibly for me, uhm, because of crunch. And this person was like, yeaah, I mean...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't want anybody working more than 40 hours and they yell at you if you do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I actually read a story last year about Rockstar Games and how they've tried to change their culture and found some success in that, although it remains to be seen what the last year or so of development on the next Grand Theft Auto looks like. But still, I mean, even the fact that companies seem to be trying, I think, is a big difference from a few years ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of the credit belongs to workers who speak out, which I mean, I kind of see some of those stories as just me being a conduit for voices that other people are, for the voices of other people. And I think that without them speaking out and potentially risking their careers or risking their jobs,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know. I don't take credit for that or anything. Cause I always feel like I would, I'm just doing the job of telling other people's stories and it's their stories to tell and it's their workplaces to change. I mean, I was actually, I've been having this conversation with, with kind of, with readers online recently because I was talking about,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the four, which is a game I'm, I'm very interested in and excited to play. And people were like, Oh, what happened to a boycott? Which is kind of a stupid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thing to talk about in terms of me, because I've never, like, I've never...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, generally organizing your workforce is the way to make progress and make change. And while using public pressure as a way to tell a story and like get, get like, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Essentially pressure your bosses into doing the right thing. That can be a totally valid tactic and it can be very effective. It's ultimately the workers who like are going to make the change at a given company, at a given organization, whether it's Activision Blizzard or one of the companies that is known for crunch culture or whatever else. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm certainly proud of some of the work I've done and, and happy to be talking about this stuff. And it feels like a, a doing a service for people. Uhm, but ultimately I think that like the credit for any sort of change at a workplace is belongs to the workers of that workplace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I've never actually really felt like YouTubers were competition for games media. I always felt like YouTubers lived in this kind of complimentary role. Uhm, it used to annoy me when, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I've, I've since chilled about that and care much less about that these days. Because I actually, I don't think that like, like I think there's always going to be an audience for the written word and an audience for video content. And I, and sometimes there's a, like there's a Venn diagram there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I don't think that like those audiences are, are necessary. Like you're not going to convince people who like to read things to go and watch things instead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and that's something that I'm sure will hit YouTube soon enough too, which is uhm, the ad market just being dismal as heck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, whether it be game journalism or something else. I mean, I mentioned Substack. One of the other appealing things about Substack is that it's become this kind of life raft for people because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, a lot of the model on Substack is that if you're a writer and you send out a newsletter, you can get people to pay you directly for that newsletter and, and maybe you, whatever you have to offer them, they will pay you X dollars a month and, and become a subscriber essentially for your writing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, which is really appealing, uh, I think to a lot of people who aren't lucky enough or, or didn't find success in stable media jobs. Uhm, so yeaah, I mean it's super depressing, especially in the game space and I think that it's ultimately just a major economic issue and, and internet


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Issue and a tech issue and, uh, larger than that, a capitalism issue and a private equity issue and all sorts of other nonsense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and yeaah, it really depresses me. I mean, people always ask me like, hey, Jason, like, why don't you think there's more investigative reporting in the games industry? Why don't you think there's, like, been, traditionally been, like, a lot of that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Industry jobs, PR jobs are like away from the games industry entirely and it's just a nightmare of an industry to work in. Uh, so anyone out there wants to be a games journalist? I hope you hear my words here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're so persistent that they won't take no for an answer and they'll be like, you know, this is actually my calling to write about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then of course you should. Like, go pick an industry that is more stable. Go pick an industry that will let you, like, uh, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's fun to play games and talk about games and like it's a super fun industry to be part of. And to that I would say, well, there are a lot of video game industry jobs that are a lot more viable and pay a lot better than journalism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Don't do journalism unless you know, like, I want to be a reporter. I want to be a journalist and the games industry is where I want to be and that's it. I will not take no for an answer. So that's always my answer to people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I said, we have these terrible private equity owners who still run the place and who knows what they're going to do with that site. I was just trying to read a Kotaku article on my phone a couple hours ago and it's unreadable. It's like my phone suddenly like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Got set on fire in my hands and like I have 40 ads all over the place. I just couldn't even read it. Uhm, and it just, it feels like even if you're lucky enough to have one of these stable jobs with health insurance and like a decent salary, uhm, it's still not stable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and it could just disappear at any, I mean the Washington friggin post just shut down their video game, their video game section. And like, if you like, you would think you have a job at the Washington post, that's a stable place that newspaper years and years of history and legacy media, like can't do better than that. Right now while it's all gone down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, it's really just media problems. I mean to try to answer your question Jake, I think that like the one piece of advice that's a little less doom and gloom that I try to give to people always is to specialize and to try to make yourself known for one or two specific things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and I think that's super useful whether you're a YouTuber or you're...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What am I really good at? What's the beat that I'm really good at following that could potentially reach people? And how can I make that work for people?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you're lucky enough to build a little bit of an audience on there, then you could start looking into something like a sub stack or some other, uhm, sort of service where you're feeding, you're, you're feeding those readers directly with, with something that they find really interesting and that you're the best at doing that thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so like, whether it's like, I don't know, I want to be the best at breaking esports news or I want to be the best at


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know, writing about JRPGs or whatever, something that could potentially reach a very specific audience, uhm, and then make yourself known and become reliable and become, uh, and grow fans among that audience, then I think that, that might be one viable way to do things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That should be on that. Yeah. I mean, they're like Stardew Valley YouTubers that do pretty well. There's a lot of there. I think niche and specific is a good way to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, as opposed to the more generalized, like, I'm gonna go try to do everything I can and, and become a, like a, a freelancer for years and years who's just like delivering reviews for people, which is all well and good, but like, uh, it's very difficult to pay that bills that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's very difficult to like have career growth that way, unfortunately.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I guess it's not that rare. Maybe like once or twice a year I find a game that I just want to shout about to the rooftops. And last year, for example, I found, I played this game called Case of the Golden Idol. I don't know if you guys have played that. Yes. Yes. It rules. Lucy, you know, it rules. It's so good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, similarly to, like, uhm, I don't know, uh, Lava Is You, Outer Wild, yeah, great example. And then Octopath Traveler 2 felt the same way and I was even more like, I really have to tell people about this because when Octopath Traveler 1 came out, I wrote a review for Kotaku that was basically the only review that was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's so repetitive and grindy and monotonous that it doesn't really work at the end of the day. And I don't really know what these are. It felt like the production value is just really, really, uhm, enamored people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and so for me, the person who like was, became known and like got a lot of flack for criticizing the first one to be like, holy shit, the second one is like one of the best games I've ever played. I think, uh, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I keep mentioning this because it just happened. Uhm, not only did I get to hang out with Lucy at GDC, I also


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At least six people, and this is a mix of like strangers and friends and colleagues and stuff. At least six people, I swear to God, said to me, hey, I'm playing Octopath Traveler 2 because of you. It rules. Thank you for forcing me to play this. Influencer. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it. I just wish that I didn't have to rely on Twitter to talk about this shit. Someone find me another platform. I need somewhere else to go. Substack. Everybody follow my Substack notes so I can talk there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course, anytime. Just wanna shout out, uh, of course, the TripleClick podcast, which everybody should go check out. We got some cool stuff. TripleClick, check us out, our podcast, it rules.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Me and Kirk and Kirk Hamilton and Mattie Myers do a fun little gaming podcast that will make a nice, nice compliment to your FPS.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And because we've got to keep the beard quota, uh, and Gerard is unfortunately not feeling very well. We've got the beard quota. We've got to keep, you know, we've got to keep things balanced as all things should be. We'll chat by tomorrow same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can get the under desk treadmill out. Uh, so not only are we going to be talking about, uh, all the stuff that's been happening in the world of video games over the past couple of weeks, but we also have an interview with Rafal Yaki, AKA the show runner, executive producer, I believe creator of, uh, the new hit Netflix anime, uh, made by Studio Trigger as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, gta6 for the first time rockstar was he very, very good at keeping a lid on things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Barely, but I mean they have, they have formally acknowledged the existence of GTA 6, but they have not really gone into a lot of detail about it and the fact that this leaked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They have scrubbed that shit from the internet. Like, I did a video, like, History of Grand Theft Auto, and I was talking about game changers, which is what it was called. You can't find it for love nor money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Christ, where does the time go? And like, you know, and the kind of the outpouring towards Rockstar as a result of these leaks has been kind of positive. People are commiserating with Rockstar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Twitter accounts, we will get to the insider in a minute. Bloody hell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, it was, uhm, about Jason. Oh no, no, we'll be, we'll be contacted left and right by Presnick Fox who will want to know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Story it could be gameplay it could be any number of things but people sensitivities to spoilers are very very different it goes by person by person right but like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It feels like the existence of something doesn't ruffle as many feathers as the other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pure speculation from that part. And then let's see the side of the coin where you get people excited over a leak that you've.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so then if you release stuff or leak stuff that changes the expectations of the consumer at the end of the day, then, you know, that's a conversation that the leaker doesn't have to manage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's something that like devs are going to have to and community managers and we've talked in the past about like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the things that I know we've all been watching and enjoying is Cyberpunk Edge Runners and we are gonna go to an interview that we did with, uh, Rafal Yaki, who, uh, like I said, showrunner, uh, exec producer and, uh, creator of the anime. Please enjoy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're, you're shopping around, you know, you said like 2016, 2017. When were, when did things really start to get moving with Trigger and how long has the show...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How long did it take to make a show? Like you said, I don't really have any concept of how long it takes to make an anime.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was there a moment during production? Cause obviously like there's so much back and forth. It takes so long. You're essentially working in the dark without necessarily a lot of people seeing anything. Was there a moment during production where you just saw something and you're like, oh shit, yeah, we've got something good here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and in terms of like, what can you tell us kind of like about the future? Is it hard to leave a project like, Edgerunners, obviously you're not at CDPR anymore, but like, it's come out, it's beloved, would you, if the opportunity arose, want to work on a season two of it, or are you kind of just like, moving on and doing new projects now?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Give it a try, give it a try. At the very beginning of the pandemic, I would end my work day at 5.30 and have a shower, but I would take a white claw into the shower. Shower beers, hell yeaah. Shower claw. And it just really just took the edge. And then I went over one day and there


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The only time I remember something like that being actually genuinely really good and useful was I think it was in like the second or third Tomb Raider in the reboot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so I will say right off the bat that I experienced really bad motion sickness with Scorn. Uhm, so I was kind of like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mario plus Rabbids Sparks of Hope. How do you, how long did you get to spend with it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can handle, I can deal with the rapids in the context. I can tolerate them in the context of Mario plus rapids, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other day I was at the Pinball Museum in Vegas and I played Guitar Hero for the first time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've got it downloaded, so I haven't played much else beyond, uh, Scorn, I watched Edgerunners, I've got two episodes left, uhm, and I was over the way, but boys, finally got my Steam deck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm annoyed because it's like 5 hour flight and it would have been good to have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, I'm excited, so I'm also like getting to the point where...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's right there. It's right there. Uh, plugged into my TV. Hasn't been used in months. Uh, no, my, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm at the point now, and this is what I used to do when I was a kid, and I would get Sims expansions, and hear me out, so like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My, the only PC that I had that would play The Sims was at my dad's, and I only ever went there every other weekend. So what I used to do is I used to take the, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, like the little booklets and just read them. Oh hell yeah. Just plan out what I was going to do and so very similar vibes with Steam Deck where I don't have it yet but I'm on YouTube and I'm like, what to do with your Steam Deck? Like what to get in first? Like how to put the epic game store in your Steam Deck?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, yeah, I totally agree. Phil Spencer was tweeting like, Oh, I took it to Europe and I took it to Japan and it worked really well, even on hotel wifi. And it's like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just um alright boys i think that's gonna call it with another we promised jake that we wouldn't go for three hours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, uhm, it's a somewhat long story, I guess, since I've been doing it for 30 years, but it started, uh, look, I mean, the, the Cliff's Notes version of it is I started playing a lot of games when I was a kid. My parents were great about, like, buying my brother and I, like, a lot of computers and stuff when I was young, and I, like, learned to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Type before I learned to write, I was like typing lessons when I was like four years old or something, and I just like was always kind of their computer literate. Uhm, I started playing a lot of the old adventure games.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More about how you make them. Never expected to get any response.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they actually wrote me a letter back two weeks later saying, Hey, Jeff, uhm, you know, that's awesome. You love our games. Would you be interested in being one of our beta testers for some of our upcoming adventure games? So I, first game I beta tested was a game called EcoQuest 2, the search for Cetus, which was a adventure game. And I worked on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a volunteer when I was in high school, basically tested all these games. So did that, got to really know and appreciate a lot of the developers behind the games and file bugs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I was also on CompuServe at the time, one of the early internet services.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when the games finally came out, because I had played through them, I knew all the hints and tips and tricks to, to guide people through. So I was often on the forums, you know, dropping knowledge on how to solve a lot of these games.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And from there, uh, an editor of a gaming magazine called Computer Games Strategy Plus noticed my posts and sent me an email on CompuServe saying, Hey, it seems like you know a lot about games. Would you like to write for our magazine?


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[Assistant] He had no idea I was 13 years old at the time, but I wrote my first preview of a game.


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[Assistant] Uh, when I was 13 and it was a preview of SimFarm by Will Wright, and uh, the story goes on from there.


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[Assistant] Yes, I was, yeah, I mean, I think I made, you know, 50 bucks or something like that. It was, yeah, it was like a very small amount of money. But the thing was, what I always say about that was that it was kind of great because I was a kid in


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[Assistant] High school, so I didn't really need to make that much money. I didn't have to make a full career out of it, so I was totally happy just, you know, writing some freelance articles and I got to go down to like,


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[Assistant] Worked for anyone else, I never had to go, you know, work at a restaurant or a bar or anything like that. I was just lucky I've always done gaming stuff, but it was...


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[Assistant] The right amount of stuff at the right time, uhm, so I wasn't like coming out of college trying to be a freelance writer and figure out how to make the ends work. I was just lucky. So yea, to then, I mean, I would have paid people probably for the honor of getting to do some of the stuff I did. But yes, I did, I did get paid for my reviews.


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[Assistant] Early on, I fell in love with the idea of, like, celebrating the developers behind the games, not just the games, and all throughout high school and college, like I spent a lot of time.


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[Assistant] Visiting developers and writing about them. I did something in college with game spot called behind the games, which was like a making of.


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[Assistant] Uhm, story I did like one on the making of like the original Half-Life in 1997 at Valve and things like that. So I was focused on something different than just writing previews and reviews of games. I was much more interested in like longer form sort of journalism and stories about the people behind the games, which I think just differentiated me. I always give that advice to people when they kind of


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[Assistant] Wanna start out as a writer or someone covering games, it's like, you know, find your own unique angle on things, which I think just helps you stand out, versus just being another person who can write a review of a video game.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so that helped and then, you know, I think I've been lucky that, uh, my career has just sort of,


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[Assistant] Evolved into new mediums kind of at the right time, like I was.


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[Assistant] Writing for gaming magazines all throughout high school and college and then right out of college.


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[Assistant] I got lucky I got a break to start writing for like Entertainment Weekly and Time Magazine and that was like right when I was graduating college I remember I was actually at E3.


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[Assistant] An editor from Time came up to me and said, hey, would you be interested in, like, writing, uhm, for our magazine?


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[Assistant] And that was like a big deal for me because I was graduating college, I was gonna go to law school, and then I like started to get-


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[Assistant] All of a sudden all these opportunities to do like bigger stories, I was like, oh maybe I'll do this for a little bit. And then after that...


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[Assistant] I started to get into like on camera stuff when Victor Lucas who


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[Assistant] Canadian guy who started Electric Playground, the first sort of video game television show.


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[Assistant] Ask me to sort of host on camera and that was shortly after college too, so I just kind of moved from like print.


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[Assistant] To mainstream print, to video stuff, then to television, and then to online. So I've just been lucky that like,


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[Assistant] It hasn't really been a master plan. I've just sort of been able to kind of evolve, uhm, with sort of these new mediums. And I think that's part of why I've been successful is just I haven't kept doing the same thing. I'm always thinking about like what the next thing is.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I mean I have a long history of working on video game award shows, so I worked on the first, the first video game award show I worked on was in 1994, when again I was I think like 12 years old or something, it was uh, called Cybermania 94, uh, which was an award show for TBS that, just a family friend in Toronto was the guy producing it, so I got to write all the,


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[Assistant] I got lucky. So I was just like, yeah, my dad was like, oh yeah, my son like really knows video games. Uhm, should talk to him. So yeah, I work with them. So I got to go down to LA to that award show. It was at Universal Studios and it was hosted by the late great Leslie Nielsen from The Naked Gun and Jonathan Taylor Thomas from Home Improvement.


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[Assistant] And it was like this fun crazy night where I got to go to this show and like wear a little tuxedo and actually it made a big impact on me because


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[Assistant] It was there, and there was like, Jay Wilbur from ID accepting for Doom, or Ed Boon accepting for Mortal Kombat.


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[Assistant] And as a young kid, I thought it was like so cool that my passion and hobby had sort of become this big sort of Hollywood moment and felt really special and important. And it was cool my dad went with me.


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[Assistant] And I thought he thought it was pretty cool and interesting. Uhm, so yeaah, that was the first award show I worked on when I was a young kid. And then, there wasn't a Cybermania 95, uhm, didn't work out for them.


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[Assistant] There was always in the back of my head that games had this big moment in time and when I was growing up,


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[Assistant] The Oscars were a big deal and my family, my parents are both members of the academy and in the film industry, so it's like I was always kind of paying attention to that.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and I always wondered, like, when were games gonna get that? And so I would be, like, I got involved in the Spike Video Game Awards when they started, uhm, back in 2003 and kinda worked on those for many years, right?


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[Assistant] Uhm, uh, and then I also worked at G4 when they had the G4E award. So I kind of been involved in various forms of video game awards for many years. Uhm, and honestly, like when I was at MTV and Spike,


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[Assistant] Learned how to make a big budget, you know, award show. Uhm, and yeaah, the show is never...


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[Assistant] Exactly what I wanted it to be, but it was still cool that they were investing tons of money and making this show and I learned a lot about it. But I think to answer your question in


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[Assistant] Uh, No Man's Sky was revealed for the first time and there was some cool stuff with that. We had a big music at Grand Theft Auto concert.


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[Assistant] But that was sort of a, it was a frustrating experience to do this online show that just didn't, it didn't really, it didn't work and it wasn't really what I wanted to do. And I think coming out of that, I had the decisions like, were they going to keep trying to do that or was I going to maybe go off and do my own thing? And I just made a bet on myself in 2014 to say, hey, after doing all these award shows for


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[Assistant] You know, decades really, I think it's time to better myself and see, could I kind of build, uhm, you know, what I thought would be,


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[Assistant] Kind of a new or best version of this, streaming online and not have to work through a television network where there are just so many other.


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[Assistant] So I went to all the gaming companies and said hey, would you support me if I wanted to go off on my own and build something for Twitch and YouTube? And we started in 2014.


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[Assistant] Uh, with the Game Awards, it's crazy, this is like the ninth year of the show, so it's been, it's been big, and yeah, we're, uh, you know, I'm honored to sort of...


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[Assistant] Caring about developers and the industry and those impressions I had of.


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[Assistant] Being in Cybermania 94 and how it was so cool to have this event. So uhm, yeah, I just was lucky enough to get to build it and have really the support of everyone in the industry.


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[Assistant] I'm used to it, I think, first of all I will say like, spoiler alert.


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[Assistant] You know, the sh- yeah, where the show is like an advertisement for games, right? I mean, I think it should be something that like celebrates games and like, you know, spoiler alert, E3 is...


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[Assistant] One big advertisement for games. The Xbox showcase is a big 90 minute ad for Xbox, right? And so yeah, I mean, that's like there's no qualms about that. I think the.


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[Assistant] And the same thing like when I, you know, I, when I was a kid, like I loved going to the movies and I would like sit there through the trailers. It was one of my favorite parts of the show, right? It was like all the marketing at the beginning because you wanted to see the trailers. So I don't think that's a bad thing. Uhm, the, there's always going to be this eternal,


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[Assistant] Uhm, sort of, you know, struggle dialectic between kind of like the awards and the premieres and like what's the right balance between those things. Uhm, and yes, there's some purists, as you said, Lucy, that think the game awards should just be awards and there are other people that just want to see announcements, right? And they don't care about the awards. Uh, you know, when, when I pull people on Twitter,


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[Assistant] Awards about games, right? So people come in for the awards, but then they come for the announcements, but because they're there, then the awards get seen by tens of millions of people and these developers get recognized in front of a lot of people and there are other awards out there. They're just not seen by.


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[Assistant] Even a, you know, a sliver of the number of people that watch the game awards. So I think that the balance between the two I think is really important to have those, but we'll always never get it perfectly right.


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[Assistant] In terms of, you know, which, which way the pendulum swings and also as you said, everyone has a different opinion of sort of how that fits together. So uhm, yeah, I don't know. I think it's something we were conscious of and we think about and I, I totally, you know.


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[Assistant] After doing these award shows for as many decades as I have, I have very thick skin for all the sort of feedback and commentary on it. Uhm, and yeaah, what I'll say is award shows


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[Assistant] People rarely love award shows, like no one ever is like,


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[Assistant] I think generally, the Game Awards people like, generally like and they have, you know, they're very passionate and they care about it because it represents our medium. So yea, I would take all the feedback in, but uhm, the model works pretty well. So no, we're not gonna radically, you know, decide, hey, we're no longer doing world premieres of the show.


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[Assistant] Uh, well sure, I think there's a little bit of that. I think it's gotten better. Uhm, you know, we think about that a lot with our show because it's another, you know, thing people slight is like, why don't you just have all the developers on stage? Why do you need these celebrities? Uhm, and you know, it's like,


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[Assistant] When I was at the Spike years, that was legendary of sort of just like booking the cast of the Jersey Shore to come out because, you know, that's the hot new show, right? And I think we were pretty deliberate with Game Awards of like if people are there, they're there for a reason because they care about games or they're in a game. And the other thing that's happening now is that


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[Assistant] There's so many of these adaptations of games, right? So like Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey last year were in the Sonic movie, which was like really cool and you know.


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[Assistant] The last of a series is coming out. There's the end of the Mario movie. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff, which involves celebrity, but in like a really legitimate way.


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[Assistant] Uhm, you know, like last year we had Keanu and Cariann for the Matrix where they were doing that cool Unreal Engine demo that came out. So, so we're gonna see, we're gonna see Chris.


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[Assistant] You know, I don't know, I haven't seen anything on that movie, right? So maybe it's gonna be great, maybe it's not, I don't know. But yea, obviously there's lots of-


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[Assistant] And you know, I don't know, like it's also, you know, I love Charles Martin, I too though, right? And it's like, you know, they have a crazy cast in that. Um, and so yeah, I, I.


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[Assistant] I don't know how it's all necessarily going to play out, and every year's different for us, but I do think you're right that, and look, I think we're guilty of that too, of sometimes having celebrities or big bands in our show and, and


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[Assistant] I will say that I don't think we need it for the viewership, but I do think it kind of creates an excitement around it. And I will say like when you know,


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[Assistant] Neil Druckmann got Game of the Year from Christopher Nolan, like he thought that was pretty cool, right? And it's sort of like sometimes these game designers, you know, respect people from other mediums and it's cool to have them there and like, you know, when Guillermo del Toro


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[Assistant] Gave out an award, it's like to the Dishonored guys last year, they were like, uh, our Deathloop guys, they were like,


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[Assistant] Super excited, and they said, said to me, I was like, Oh my God, I love to get him with the Torah. That was such meaningful for me to get that award from him. So it's like.


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[Assistant] You know, there's also that where it's like, I think it does sometimes matter to the developers that they're, the celebrities are there to honor the game creators and the games, right? We're not giving awards to celebrities. Uhm, and yeah, so I don't know, like it's, it's a constant debate. I think, you know, our show obviously has some celebrity component to it, which it probably always will.


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[Assistant] Uhm, but I don't think, to your point, I don't think there's a reliance on it. There's been a little bit of a move away from it.


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[Assistant] But then I think with all these adaptations and things like that, I think there's kind of new or interesting ways to involve talent, which is like very authentic. And also, you know,


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[Assistant] What I say, when people say like, why don't you honor the developers more? And it's like.


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[Assistant] All the awards are for game developers, really, right? And it's like, they're the people that get up on stage, get to give speeches and things like that. So there are lots of game developers in our, in our show still. Sure.


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[Assistant] Slowed us down of like the things we wanted to do, right? So like, you know, when we did


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[Assistant] Musical numbers we've tried over the years have never panned out, which we've tried to do with like, you know, cool actors and voice actors and stuff that never happened. I'd love to do more kind of production numbers around it. I'd love to, I'd love to take the show on the road, honestly.


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[Assistant] My vision is like, I'd love to do like the game awards, like live from Tokyo one year or something and like have everyone sitting there. I could just be like, so cool to have like, you know, all the devs there and, um, you know.


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[Assistant] All Nintendo, whatever, like, just, it would be really cool. So, we're not there yet, especially given the pandemic has slowed down.


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[Assistant] Asia and Europe and stuff like that and kind of make it a destination every year uhm, where we do it. So that's another thing that I think like down the road we hopefully will get to.


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[Assistant] I would, I would do Sydney, I would, like I would really love, like the Olympics are like travel around and kind of pick a destination. Like hey, Game Awards this year will be in the city and everyone will come out.


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[Assistant] Uh, well, it was, yeaah, I've been to every E3 in person, right, since I was, you know, 15 or something, I started in 1995.


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[Assistant] And yeaah, I think in 2020, before the pandemic, uhm, you know, I'd done E3, I'd done E3 Coliseum, I'd been involved in that stuff, and yeaah, there were some plans for E3 in 2020, which never came out publicly, that uhm,


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[Assistant] I just wasn't really, I didn't think it represented the industry in the right way of sort of where they were taking E3. And look, they had lost, they had a participation problem, so they had lost PlayStation, they had lost EA, they lost a lot of companies. And I think it was going into 2020, I'm like, this is the year of the PS5 and the new Xbox launch.


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[Assistant] And you know, if you're not going to have PlayStation there, it's not really an E3, especially in the launch year. And then a lot of their plans were just...


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[Assistant] Like, E3 should represent the best of our industry to the wider world, and there was just a lot of like silly stuff that they were trying to do, and I just didn't think represented the industry the right way. And again, none of that ever came out publicly because that E3 never happened, so it's hard to really like talk about it because they never announced it.


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[Assistant] I just, I just didn't, I had to make a call that I didn't think.


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[Assistant] The direction they were taking E3 was going to be right for the industry and I just put my foot, you know, put my sort of.


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[Assistant] So I just kind of made that call and then, you know, look, I didn't know what was going to happen and then COVID hit and they canceled E3 and things like that. So.


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[Assistant] Uhm, yeah, it wasn't really just one thing, it was kind of a combination of like lack of participation in E3 and the direction the event was going. Uhm, you know, I always, it's funny when like,


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[Assistant] They announce E3's back and everyone's like, wow, E3's back, you know, and it's like, E3 really wasn't E3.


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[Assistant] Amazing years, which were like, you know, big press conferences, big parties, excitement, and like that's E3, but it sort of was on this glide path to history.


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[Assistant] Um, and yeaah, they did that digitally three last year, which was just like, you know, atrocious, right? And it was just like, you know, that's like, was just not representative of the industry. So again, like I, I think I'm in a position now where I'm not trying to be arrogant about it. I just sort of like, I did not believe in what they were doing. And I was like, let me go off and I, I didn't.


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[Assistant] Even think of Summer Game Fest as a thing I was going to do, I just sort of said, hey, I'm not going to be a part of this anymore, uhm, with what it is. And yeaah, we'll see, I, they've announced that they're


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[Assistant] You know, there's an intention to do an E3 next year. Uh, you know, they didn't say anything about anyone being signed up or being a part of it or anything. Uhm, so we'll see. I mean, I've talked to them about it. I mean, we'll, you know, maybe, maybe it'll happen. Maybe it won't.


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[Assistant] Honestly, like, even if I was to somehow...


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[Assistant] Take over E3. It's like there's so much work to do there about like what is E3? Do people even want to participate in it and things like that? And just because you say something doesn't mean that people are going to show up with all their announcements, right?


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[Assistant] Uhm, and be a part of it. So there's a lot of work to be done. I tend to think the idea of what E3 was, uhm, I have such fond memories of that.


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[Assistant] And, you know, I think it's just kind of that's going to live in the past of like, that's what it is. I know it's hard for everyone to sort of break up with that idea of like everything being combined, this two, two day, three day showcase of everything. I just think the, the world has changed, even the companies.


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[Assistant] That participate in E3, it's just changed a lot, right? I mean, you know, now Microsoft, it's like,


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[Assistant] We're all about bringing the whole industry together and I think, you know, to answer your question.


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[Assistant] What I think really got my goat about E3 2020 was just the whole industry was not going to be together, uhm, at E3. And like I was proud at the Game Awards, we had that moment years ago where we had Reggie, Sean, and Phil kind of come out together on stage and be a, you know, it's like a united industry. So I'm like if they can't solve how to get everyone to come be part of E3, it's not really E3.


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[Assistant] I mean, I think it's, uh, absolutely, it's, it was, you know, mismanagement by ESA, but also I think it's just like not evolving the business model, right? Or sort of what E3 was. And look, it's a very difficult thing. And I, you know, I'm not here to...


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[Assistant] Cash dispersions their way. It's like, uh, you know the


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[Assistant] I saw this a lot when I was at MTV. It's just like when you're kind of a TV company trying to transition into digital, you have so much momentum around the old way of doing things. It's very hard to like, you know, completely reinvent your business. So E3 was a physical trade show and they struggled for years about like,


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[Assistant] Are consumers coming or not? Or like, you know, what is E3?


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[Assistant] When your business model is based on selling trade show boost to people, it's very hard to transition it to something new and different. And that's why I learned with Summer Game Fest is like, we're just going to do something completely different and start from scratch as like a digital first event.


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[Assistant] It's, you know, I think ESA had its absolute management challenges with how they approach the show, but also I just think like the model of it, as you said, got really costly for game companies and it's just very hard to like re- fully reboot that.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so yeaah, it's, it's sort of both those things I were sort of conflated together into a situation that just became like untenable for that kind of model of E3. And that's why I'm curious, like I don't know, like E3 next year, like, is it, is it a...


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[Assistant] Big physical show at the convention center are consumers coming like again there no answers on any of that yet I don't think they've figured it out. Uhm, but yeah, it's sort of I think a bunch of factors sort of played into it and he said the macro trends of companies being able to do their own events speak directly to their consumers.


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[Assistant] That works just fine. I think the thing that I found with my events and, you know, why people like something like the Game Awards is that


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[Assistant] Cross-pollinating the audiences and that, you know, Nintendo can speak to all their fans at a Nintendo Direct, but they're talking to, you know, if


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[Assistant] If you own a PlayStation, you're probably not watching the Nintendo Direct, right? If you don't have a Switch. Because you're watching because you're a fan of that platform.


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[Assistant] And the opportunity at some of these other events is kind of like, oh, you're going to reach other audiences and new audiences and convince, you know, other gamers that, you know, you have cool stuff for them. So again, people like us watch all the events and have all the systems.


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[Assistant] The average gamer doesn't, and I think that's sort of the opportunity of an E3 or a Game Awards or these bigger events is to kind of bring everyone together to celebrate the whole industry.


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[Assistant] It came together because E3 had fallen apart and they cancelled it. You're going to do to COVID. And I think people were like, what do we do? We don't know. So everyone kind of called me and said, Hey, can you help us? Can we figure something out? So that Summer Game Fest the first year was just about.


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[Assistant] How could we, in a launch year for a new PlayStation and Xbox, how could we?


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[Assistant] Bring the industry together in some way and I broadcast from this room actually in LA. Uhm.


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[Assistant] All summer and I was like, you know, my first hands on the PS5 DualSense here and they just dropped it off and I like, I was just.


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[Assistant] Trying to figure out like how to do something and learn how to live stream and use OBS and Twitch and all this stuff.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so it was really just me learning and just trying to kind of like create some semblance of an organizing principle that summer. And the first year was messy, right? Cause it was like events were all over the calendar and people were like, why is Summer Game Fest four months long? We want it all to be in three days. And that wasn't by design. It was just by function of like,


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[Assistant] People were at home and, you know, covid was raging, like no one could do anything. So it's like to coordinate that stuff was really difficult. And then every year we've kind of evolved it, like last year we added the big live show that we did, uhm, the kickoff.


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[Assistant] And then this year we added the play days with the sort of physical in-person aspect, um, Los Angeles for media and influencers. So the goal has just been to kind of continually evolve it.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and you know, even now we're talking about like next year, like sort of how do we continue to build on what we're doing with that model? But yeah, the thing that I think was the guiding principle was like, how can we do something that's really digital that if.


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[Assistant] It doesn't penalize you for not being in LA, and it's like if I'm a fan of video games in Stockholm, Sweden, I can watch free live streams, I can participate, I can download games, I can feel a part of this.


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[Assistant] And I think the industry overall has, we shouldn't be in a mode of like, hey, unless you can spend thousands of dollars to come to Los Angeles, you can be a part of E3. And when I did E3 for many years on like Spike TV or when I did the YouTube show,


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[Assistant] People at home are part of E3 just by watching the live stream. They didn't have to go to the show. So it's also how could you do something sort of free and accessible to everyone? And that was like the...


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[Assistant] The heart of the kind of the vision for what Summer Game Fest is going to be.


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[Assistant] Yeah, look, I mean, I think the first thing is that we have to know what is e3, right? And it's sort of like, I don't know, you know, so it's like...


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[Assistant] Can it co-exist or is it competitive? I have no idea. Like we're very set on like what we're doing with Summer Game Fest. It's been...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 100,000 person consumer event physically. So if that's what they're going to do with E3, then maybe that, you know, somehow lives alongside it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I don't know. Yeah, it's so hard. So like, we know what we're doing. I think we have to get like, some more information on like, what E3 is. I, I'm not, I think, you know, I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My view is that I want things to be compatible and I know like it's good for anyone to have sort of like dueling shows. And I've talked to the other guys at Readpop that are working on E3 now. We've had conversations and like, I think, you know, we're trying to sort of figure out what that looks like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, cause I guess for the good of the industry, it's nice to have some alignment around all that, but we're like, we're marching ahead with our plans. Cause one of the things I learned with Summer Game Fest is, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like even this year, right, E3 got cancelled again and we had a Summer Game Fest and like we are like 100% moving forward doing what we're doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, we're not waiting around for sort of, you know, any other plans, so if things work out, great, but also like, I want, I want people to be able to count on something. And that was back when, like, in 2014,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we were doing the Spike show and it was like, we weren't going to do another VGX. I was like, we have to have an award show this year. We can't not do something. And that's really like birth the game award. So I've just been a big fan of like, you need to show up and you need to do something. And we might not get it right. It might not be perfect. In Summer Game Fest, we've learned so much over the past three years about how to do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and I think sometimes people in life and in work always like want everything perfect from the get go. And it's like, no, we're gonna iterate, right? And I learned this from


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even Valve, when I was there, you know, making Half-Life, they were, well, covering and making Half-Life. It's just, you have to like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Throughout the entire game and remade it because it's like it wasn't good enough and I think that's the thing with us is like I just want to constantly keep evolving what we're doing. So, you know, we'll keep evolving Summer Game Fest and if E3 sort of factors into that, great. It's, again, the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's always like the, there's the, there's the SEO term E3 that we all use as like a short form. And then there's like the event, like what it is. Uhm, and you know, we all colloquially just call, even this summer, it's like E3. And it's like, that's fine. But the question is, what is the actual event? Or is it just a rant?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, our summer game. But no, I don't know, should it be Summer Games Fest? Do you think we may, do we mess it up? Should it have been?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not trying to think. Yeaah, I don't know. But it's not game, it's game informer, it's not games informer, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People find everything, right? That was like the first year of Summer Game Fest. New brand, everyone's like, is anyone going to show up? And it's like, yeah, everyone showed up. And it was just sort of like, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People talk very quickly on social media and figure it out, so yeaah, I'm not too worried about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am, yeaah, we're gonna be back in person, which is cool, uhm, cause we started opening that live in 2019 and we did that big live show, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Germany, where Kojima was there, and that was fun, and then the past two years have been here in LA. Uh, so we're going back to Clone, we're gonna have a big, a big, they built a huge set for us, and we're gonna have like thousands of people there live, so it'll be, I'm excited to have the fan energy there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, in person, yeaah, we'll have, like, it's a two hour show with, like, a ton of games we're showing, and actually, like, a fair number of cool announcements, and, like, it's, uh, I wasn't sure what to expect. I know a lot of the conventionalism online, I think, is like, oh, like, not that many people are going to Gamescom this year, but, like, there's actually, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fair amount of stuff that we're gonna have that's gonna be pretty cool.