Splitgate 2 Hat Controversy, Layoffs at Bend Studios, and FPS State of Play

And welcome to new episode of Digital Coffee Gaming Brew

and I'm your host Brett Deister. If you could please subscribe to this podcast

on all your favorite podcasting apps. Leave A five star review really does help with

the rankings and let me know how I am

doing. But this week we're going to be talking about well

looks like the SAG AFTRA strike is going to

be no more. We're going to be talking a little bit about Dune Awakening. I've

been playing a bunch of it, talking about

different showcases that happened last weekend that I didn't really get a chance to talk

about. It was. It wasn't bad. It

wasn't great to me. I mean there were some interesting games GOG

or good old games doing a one click mods and talk about that. We're also

going to be talking about Dungeons and Dragons, Neverwinter Nights Schedule

1 and the new update

that should be interesting as well.

We're also going to be talking about well

the Make FPS great again.

I don't really understand why there's a controversy but apparently had apologized and why you

should never apologize to the crazy lunatics. Also again,

some layoffs happening in the gaming industry just never

seems to stop. Just about every month or every other month there seems to be

something Rainbow six, Siege X Total. Talk about a little bit

about that and just some

weird things going on with Dragon Age, the Veil Guard

and just how EA is still isn't really

understanding it. Warhammer 40K, Space Marines 2

and the new sales update Mind's Eyes out and well

yeah, and then

just because let's get on with the show.

That's good. All right. I hope you're having

a great Friday and I'm gonna have an even better

weekend. But first off is the sec. AFTRA has

reached a tentative deal with video game companies regarding the interactive media contract.

Voice actors have been on strike since July 2024. The

primary issue of the strike was protection of actors from companies using

generative AI technology to replicate their voices without

compensation or consent. I think it's mostly been

specifically that which I'm never usually a bigger the

biggest fans of unions

specifically because unions usually protect the weakest

of their unions. So the people that

are usually the laziest, the people that don't really do great work, they protect those

and it doesn't really help the people that are doing great work for the most

part. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't really just depends on the union. But

from what I've seen over the years, they Usually are

slow to innovate and usually will have a tight grip on.

On innovation in general. Is this a bad

idea? No, it's not. I mean, you got to protect yourself and

your voice from generative AI because you easily copy it. And it's never

really fun to do that. So I'm not against it. It's just no

one really knew that they were still on strike because games kept on coming

out. And I'm pretty sure they would have found a way of just having like

silent protagonist again. So

have non voice actors. I don't really know. But it's good.

It's good to know. All right, moving on to

Dune Awakening. And I've been playing a bunch of it. It's actually a pretty

fun game. I'm still in the beginning ish of it. I think I'm in the

second part of it when I still have to figure out where the other

trial is. The second trial. But I've been doing a bunch.

I've been building my base. I've been making,

well, making things getting destroyed. I tried to

beat the sandstorm and that did not go well. I lost

everything. I had to rebuild everything, which wasn't the fun thing to do.

But that's the part of Dune is to not be eaten by sand worms and

to not be in the sandstorm because that thing will kill you

pretty quick. But all in all, it's a pretty fun game. It's

for the most part, pretty solo friendly. But it

seems like towards the end you have

to join a guild and players are kind of upset that it really

does prioritize larger guilds over solo or

smaller guilds. So we'll see once I eventually get to it. But

all in all, it's a pretty good game for just how built up it is

and how long it seems like it's going to take just to like do everything.

So I'm actually not disappointed with it. There are some.

A few issues I've had with jittering and just seems like

lag on the server side of it. But beyond that,

it's kind of like the give and take of MMOs and just that type of

thing. The combat is okay. I don't really like the knife fights.

They're kind of annoying. They're not really the best. To me.

The gunplay is fine. It's not terrible. It's not great.

It's just. It's just not the fun part about it. But I mean, you gotta

have combat. I just wish it was a little bit more

interactive or a little bit more. It was better in the

combat, especially the melee one because you basically just have a light and a strong

attack and that's really about it. And you kind of use the strong attack to

kill people with shields because the guns will not go through the shields.

And it's just like I said, it's just one of those

things. So we'll see if they fine tune that.

But yeah, right now that's probably the weakest part is that.

All right, so Microsoft did their showcase and one of the

bigger ones was Call of duty Black Ops 7 and I am

still not really caring about it now. It's going to be in the Future in

2035 featuring David Mason as a protagonist.

Activision marketing strategy for Black Ops 7

involves minimal pre promotion aiming for a surprise

launch similar to Beyonce album drop. Look, it's

not surprise when you release the game every year. There

is no surprise. I don't really understand this. We're going to

surprise. We're going to surprise our fans. You know, would it be

a surprise skipping a year?

I mean I guess it works. But why?

But Black Ops 7 will will include a co op

campaign which was absent in Black Ops 6 and will feature

near future weapon weaponry and multiplayer with new maps.

The game will also include the next chapter of round based zombies.

The cast includes Milo as David Mason.

Got a few other actors as well. It's gonna be available

on Xbox Series XS, Xbox One, PlayStation 5,

PS4, PC and

Xbox and Battle.net and Steam as well. So

on PC through Xbox PC. So it's basically available

everywhere you can do it. Except for the switch too for whatever

reason, which I kind of find funny because usually you would

think the switch to would be on there too, but it's not. The game can

also be played on day one through the game Pass. Ultimate

RPC game Pass. The development is co effort between Tech Rear

and Raven Software. Black Ops 7

is the first back to back release in the Black Ops sub series

following Black Ops 6 launch a prior year and

I played the beta of Black Ops 6. It really didn't care for it really

didn't. It didn't really motivate me to actually want to get it.

So we'll see. And Activision claims that Black Ops 7 will

deliver the full Call of Duty experience despite

some fans perceiving it as a stopgap game.

Infinity Ward is expected to return with new Modern warfare game

in2026. So it

seems like development issues with Modern Warfare and then they just kind of

like switched them but here's the thing. If there's development

problems, skip a year. It's fine to skip a year. Like,

seriously, we don't need it every year. I

know that that's Activision's little marketing ploy, but you

don't need it every year. It's just. It's just dumb. All right, now the

one I actually am excited 4 is the blood

of the Dawn Walker. That's the dark

fantasy from the former director of the

Witcher 3. The game is set to be released in 2026,

and a special event is scheduled for June 21st

where 15 minutes of new gameplay, content and developer commentary

will be revealed. The game will include a

directional combat system that incorporates sword fighting spells and

vampiric powers. Players will explore the game world

of Val Signora, which will be will have gameplay

differences based on whether it is night or day. Interesting

narrative focus on Cohen's struggle with his identity and the choice between

saving his family or seeking

revenge. So this is the one I'm actually the

most excited about because, well, Witcher

3 was amazing when it. When it came out. It's just one of those things.

But I mean, there was

very few things I watched through all, but I watched the PC One, the

PlayStation One, the Summer Fest, and

this one. And yeah, Xbox One was probably the best one out of all of

them. But I mean, it's not really saying much, to be honest with you.

So I'm excited to see where they're going to go with this, how well this

will improve upon the Witcher 3 formula and actually how good it's going to be.

Apparently there's going to be a lot of timed objectives that you. And you're not

going to be able to finish everyone, which will make a very interesting gameplay

loop. But we'll see how they implemented it.

All right. Moving on to the outer worlds too. And it's. Well,

it's. Yeah, it's

gonna be a darker tone, apparently. Apparently they don't really want to

have it that fun tone than the first one was. And I was like, well,

that's kind of what made it charming, the first one. So

that's a little weird. It's gonna be the one of the first ones to have

the 80 price tag. But I'm pretty sure Black Ops 7 is going to

have the 80 price tag as well because it comes around the Christmas

season and Xbox wants you to get the game pass.

And I'm like, oh, fine, that's fine. I'll just not spend as much money on

Xbox games or Microsoft games. I mean it's a, it's

a pretty clear thing. I don't really care about

Call of Duty anymore. Other Worlds 2

seems interesting, but Obsidian,

one of the employees just seems to be like full on, like

woke for whatever reason even going far to say is that he will

help black people over white people and getting their

jobs because they've been oppressed, blah blah blah. But then it's like, okay, then

don't give your job to a black person. Never do it. But

it's just, it's a, it's funny hypocrisy because it is

hypocrisy. But this

should be interesting to see where this actually goes. And they said The

Outer Worlds 2 is described as a true obsidian reactive

RPG, which it's just marketing speak for. It's just our new

rpg, this weird like reactive. It's like

whatever skills and traits in the game are more significant

influencing combat, conversations and other aspects of the game. All right, so

it's leaning more into rpg. Great. Got it. That's really

what it means when it, whenever they add more identifier or

qualifiers to what they're saying. It's just, it's an Obsidian

rpg. It's not a true Obsidian. It's just an Obsidian rpg, which is

fine. They don't, they don't make terrible rpg. Well, Valve wasn't great,

but before they used to actually make really good RPGs. Now

they're, it's. It's kind of okay

now. The most interesting one out all of them was Clockwork

Revolution and this is by NXL Games and this will

in Excel Entertainment and this will probably more

than likely be the $80 games again. But the game is described as

a steampunk RPG shooter with kind of like time bending powers. So

it features gadgets and time bending powers. Yes. The

atheistic of the game is Clockwork Steampunk and includes

humor. Notable game Notable characters of the game are

referred to as the pissed off doll and the

knob. Clockwork Revolution is being developed by NXL

Entertainment with assistance from former Volition developers under the

studio name Shapeshifter Games. Volition, known as the for

the Saints Row series, was closed in 2023 due to the

poor performance of the most recent games. There is no specific release

date for Clockwork Revolution, but it will be available on game

pass from day one. The game will be released on PC and Xbox

series X and S. So no, no word on

PlayStation yet. We'll get more

updated information because we don't have that much I mean the,

the trailer we saw, I mean it was pretty good. It was probably the most

interesting out of all of them, besides the

Blood of the Dawn Breaker, which also is amazing as

well. But I'm interesting to see what this is, but it's gonna be $80. I'm

probably gonna skip it because I want to see reviews and see if

it actually will be any good. I mean, it's great that it's getting old

Volition devs, but hopefully it's the ones

that worked well with Saints Row and made the some aspects of it really

good. Because Saints Row from the last one was not very good because

there was no direction and it looks like they just infused a lot of woke

BS into it which didn't really work out in their favor because they got

closed by Embracer Group. Embracer Group has been kind of the

laughing stock of the gaming industry because of just how much they

bought and then all their deals fell through.

All right, so Good Old Games has introduced a new feature called One Click

Mods that allows users to essentially install popular mods for

certain classic games. The feature includes support mods

for games including Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, Doom 3

Fallout 4, which plans to include Sky Oblivion mod for the Elder

Scrolls 5 Skyrim in the future. GOG

announced that this feature at the PC Gaming show and provides details on its

functionality and supported mods. The One Click Mod features offers

a created list of popular mods rather than all mods available for the

game, distinguishing it from platforms like the

Nexus mods. Installation process for One Click

Mods is designed to be simple automatic through GOG's online store and

GOG Galaxy Launcher. The current list of

supporter mods includes the Sky Blivian mod, the Phobos Mod for

Doom 3, Fallout London for Fallout 4,

Horn of the Abyss for Heroes of Might and Magic three, and the

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines unofficial patch.

So if you're tired of Nexus mods and their

BS about which mods are okay for you to use on your single player game,

this might be a better alternative. But it's not the best alternative. We

just need a really good alternative mod site that will just allow

just about every mod except the ones that may be illegal

or promote you to do illegal things. Maybe, but really

that's, that's really all we need. So it should be interesting to see

how well this actually does and

if it's actually worthwhile or not. I mean, this seems like a simple way of

doing it. A lot of Nexus mods can be Difficult to understand how to install

them and they may not work. So this is bridging the gap between having

mods and not having mods. So Experian Media is announced

the release of Dungeons and Dragons Neverwinter Nights

2 enhanced edition during the PC Gaming Show 2025. The

enhanced edition is based on the original game released in 2022

in 2002 by Obsidian Entertainment.

The game features smoother gameplay, refined camera controls, polished

mechanics, enhanced textures, and full controller support with new controller

specific ui. It will be available on multi

platforms for the first time, including PS5, Xbox Series S and X

and Nintendo switch doesn't say 2, it just says

Nintendo Switch. Interesting. In addition to PCs, which is Steam and

GOG, the release date is going to be set for July 15, 2025

at the $30 price tag. Not a bad old

game. It is over

20 years old. It is one of the few games that kind of.

Because at the beginning Obsidian kind of just did a lot of

what BioWare used to do and they kind of did the sequels to it. Never

know which are Nights two, the Knights of the Republic. And

so it should be interesting what they do with that. It seems like they always

had a really tight time schedule because they wanted the games out quickly and so

it never really was as good as the originals.

But the Knights of the Republic 2

did have a better story than the original one. Or that's my firm belief.

They just were on time, they were on a tight time frame and it

just didn't really work out. There are mods that kind of bring back a lot

of the cut content that from the story that actually bridges the

gap and makes it a lot better. All

right, so Schedule 1. Latest patch, which is

version 0.3.6 has been fully released. New features in this

update include items slot filters, replacement of employee beds

with lockers, and improvement in the saving system. Developer

TVGS apologized for the delay in the update, citing personal reasons including

surgery for wisdom teeth removal, university

commitments and other undisclosed issues. Fair enough.

TVGs express excitement about continuing to work on the game and mentioned

setting up a community voting system for future content updates. The

first vote will allow players to choose between three potential

updates, a police expansion, a rival cartel, or shrooms.

Hey, you know what? More power to him. I mean this is like one guy

and he has a lot of things going on and he's still trying to update

as much as he can. I'm not really, I'm not really upset about

that. I mean things happen and the dude made like a game that

beat Out a lot of AAA games in like 24 hours. I

mean it beat out of Dragon Age, the Veil Guard I'm pretty sure

beat out Assassin's Creed Shadows and just funny because it's like

one dude that created like a fun game about drugs.

Still fun. Still fun. And he's going to continue to update it. He's

continuing to make it better. I would like to see rival cartels,

even a police expansion might be interesting to do something a little. A little bit

more gameplay style to it. I mean it already it is. It is a really

good base. I will give them that. And so

that is. That's good. So

I really want to see more of that. I think having communing voting system

is helpful. I don't think always going by that religiously

kind of like still using your own like discernment between

what you actually think it needs and the community. But I do think getting

input from the community is actually really good spot.

All right, so the CEO of 1047

Games, which is the developer of Splitgate 2,

he apologized on a video

for controversy surrounding his combat. The comments and hat

Warren the Summer Game Fest

2025 hatred make

FPS great again. Which is kind of like.

It's kind of like Make America great again but without

the Donald Trump type of a thing. And he said it

was intended to be a political statement, which I didn't take it as a political

statement at all. It's a true statement. Make these. Make this genre good

again. Why? Why is that so controversial? Just because Trump said

Make America great again. Are you people this stupid? Like

seriously, can you not get your head out of your butt? Can

you not distinguish between what is political and what is not? Saying

so you want to make something great again is never a bad thing. But you're

so TDS infused that you can't even

distinguish between what is someone that just wants to make their

genre that they create a game in good and what is political.

I mean, he remarked the state of multiplayer FPS games is

tragically stale, which is true. He's not lying

about anything. He's making true statements and that they

needed something to grab attention to the event. He acknowledged the hat and associated

messages were meant to be a name expressing their desire to improve games,

which I took as never apologize to these

lunatics. You saw what they did in la. I am in the next county

south of la, which is Orange county.

And we don't. We never want to be associated with LA. LA

sucks, LA is terrible. You avoid LA, you go for the

day and you, you come back and you do not stay in la.

And the fact that these weirdos and

called one of them a walking fallacy, because it is because you're

like, oh, my God, he created something out of a message from Trump. He

must be a Trump supporter. Or he just really wants to make this the first

person shooter genre great again because it is very stale.

He has said nothing wrong. You guys are lunatics. You guys

are children. Grow up.

Like, seriously grow up.

Like the same Asian lady had the f

ice picture. And it's like, yeah, huh? Yeah, I know

what you are. You Marxist leftist. You just want to destroy the

country, which is another thing. But saying things that are

true, which is make FPS great again, which isn't just

Battlefield and isn't just Call of Duty and specifically Call of Duty, because

it's been stale since Modern Warfare in

the beginning. The first one, not. Not the Modern Warfare remake.

It kind of helped it a little bit, but it's been stale for a while.

Splitgate 2 is an interesting thing. The finals is

another interesting way. And we just don't play them as much because we're. Well,

we don't like change very much either.

So what he said was nothing. Of course. The same lady was like,

oh, well, the same people that you think are not

playing or the manga or whatever because

aren't playing the games. I'm like, how do you know that? Because she doesn't really

know that. She's making an assumption. It's like, stop. Like,

his statement was true. There was nothing wrong with this statement.

You are all lunatics if you cannot distinguish between two different

statements. There's a reason why

symbolism makes one thing one way and one

thing another way. But it's the same thing. You

just take it as different ways. But if you cannot

act like adults, maybe it's time to do a timeout on X.

It's. It's ridiculous. And I. I tweeted the developer,

like you should. There's nothing you should have apologized for. There's nothing

wrong you said. But he did, because I don't really know.

I mean, of course the media. Because it's always the

media that's in favor of these weird things. It's like, oh, it's got a mixed

review with 62% positive. All right, well,

Steam people don't really care as much. And it's a hodgepodge of different people. They

might actually have a problem with the game, which is fair. And because they a

problem messaging, fine. But it'll get

people. You. They'll get over it. They'll find another TDS thing

that people can get upset about. But look it, he said

nothing wrong. He did nothing wrong.

Don't apologize to lunatics.

It's one of the most masculine things you could do, bro. Don't

apologize. Own it. Because when you own

it, they lose the power. When you don't own it and you apologize, they get

it back. And that's how we got into this situation.

All right, Moving on to Bend Studios, developer of Days Gone has

reportedly lay off 30% of its workforce, which is approximately 40

employees. A little slayoff occurred five months after Sony canceled the studio's

live service project. Bend Studios is working on a new yet to be

revealed game following the cancellation of its live service offering. The canceled live service

game was one of two projects shut down by Sony in January. The

other service was Live service God of War game developed by

Blue Point. Jason Schaefer of Bloomberg reported that only

Ben Studios was affected by these layoffs. And it's

unfortunate because Days Gone was a really good game. I do not understand why Sony

does not want to make a second one of it. It was a good game.

I don't. Don't give us a remastered.

That was dumb. Stop with the remasters of games that are two years

old. That's really dumb. I'm tired of seeing

Last of Us re, re, re, re, re

Remake, slash Master. Last remake slash Master. This is the

last one. I swear. It's like, no, it's not. Stop it. And now they have

the complete edition. It's like, stop doing that.

All right, so moving on to Ubisoft has finally released

Rainbow Six Siege X. The game is available on all

platforms. PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox

Series S and X, and Amazon Luna. The

update improves graphics and adds new content. The game offers free access for

newcomers, allowing them to play with a selection of

operators and access unranked Quick match and dual

front modes without payment. Certain features such as Ranked

Playlist, Siege cup, additional operators cosmetics require payment to

unlock. The Lead Edition is one of the. It's one of the options available,

granting access to all game modes, including Rank Playlist.

Yeah, so it's out there hasn't

been really much of a change. I mean, there's new, there's updated

some stuff, but there really isn't much of a change. So there you

go. I don't really have much to take because I don't really play it anymore.

All right, so Trekking's Vell Guard. It's. It's

one of those games where news keeps on coming out, it's just

never good news. It just. The reason why this game was so terrible is

basically it. So the Dragon Vilgard

underwent significant production issues, including being rebooted, delayed and

renamed. We all know that. We all know it's, it's been true for a while.

It's. It's nothing new to it, but it's just kind

of funny that it happened because they were talking about how great it

was. And from a optimized standpoint, not bad.

But from anything else, not great. So EA provided

BioWare with a year and a half to overhaul the game and aim for a

broad market. Dumb, first of all, year and a half. But you're like,

go for our audience and that's all you need to hit. Because

that's how it happens. The game development was constrained by tight deadlines leading to limited

storytelling and world building opportunities. It's why it kind of feels

weird and doesn't really feel like a Dragon Age game specifically because

that's what actually has happened. It's just not great.

So Dragon Age of

Elgard missed its sales projection by over half.

And even though journalists claim it was critically,

it was a generally positive. It sits at a

69%. People do not like the companions. People

were okay with the combat and the lore was fine because it was already

built in there. But it wasn't great. It

wasn't terrible. Terrible if

you negate the companions. Because companions kind

of were the sticking point for a lot of these issues,

like the hitting me over the head with binary

genders that are non existent and pulling the Bravo.

Like all this stuff gamers hated. So even the media gets

this wrong because they're stupid. Most of them are.

YouTube ones are usually pretty solid, but the ones from the traditional media,

they just don't understand. They are completely oblivious to their

own issues that we have with them. But

my issue with this is that they didn't understand

what made Dragon Age great. And this was their issue. And they could

never understand why it made Dragon Age great because the executives and the

marketing team didn't understand the game. If you

don't understand the game, you go hire somebody that understands the game. You talk to

the audience, you talk to your customers, you figure out why

this is a good game and then you make it for that niche.

I get you want a broad audience, but you only get a broad

audience when you satisfy your hardcore audience

first. This isn't rocket science, guys. This is

marketing 101. You have a customer base.

Stop trying to say we're going to, we're going to

appeal to the broad audience. What does that mean?

They didn't understand their game. They barely understand Mass

Effect. They barely understood this one. I don't even understand why they bought this studio

anyways. They basically like ran it into a ground, effed up

everything. And then we're like, we don't know why our games aren't selling great.

Well, you hire the wrong people, you promote the wrong people and you have the

wrong marketing for it. Three things you

shouldn't do. You did all three of them.

First off, you make an RPG game for the fans, for the people that

love Dragon Age. Dragon Age Origins was great because it had that

nostalgia field of the old combat systems with great

writing, with great companions and with world building.

Then you had Dragon Age 2, not so great because you had

a short timetable, but the story was interesting

and the companions were interesting. Dragon Age Inquisition, you gave

more time. It had newer mechanics that

weren't that were okay, but not that great. And at least the world

building was still there. At least it still had some of the dark feeling of

was still there. Then you had the Veil

Guard, which basically did nothing. You changed it from

the Dread Wolf because Inquisition actually set up for

Solas to be the main bad person. Then you were like, nah, we're good with

that, we'll do something else. And it's like you already had your

story there, you just had to go with it. But

nope, a little bit more cartoony, not so

dark fantasy, more of this a high fantasy again

again. So you kind of like flip the script on it when what made

the original what people loved and you're like, look, it's still a Dragon Age game.

Everybody's like, not. It's not a Dragon Age game. Look at ea. I can

actually help you with this. I can actually tell you specifically what to do and

I probably would make a pretty successful game, at least marketing wise.

But you guys, you, you, you need to like

look at your marketing team, look at your executives and be like, look at,

play our games, play our old games and

figure out what our audience is. Because that's the only way you're

gonna make successful games. If you don't understand these,

you are a bad executive and a terrible marketer.

Alright, so Mind's Eye is out. It was developed by Build

a Rocket Boy and Boyd. Is it not doing

well that I've seen a lot of YouTube videos

on it and yeah, it's not looking good. It is one

of those where I'm like that probably should

have been delayed, but it wasn't. And

so we're down with this. This is supposed to be like kind of like

a double A game of

Rockstar's Grand Theft Audio. Grand Theft Auto

Audio, Grand Theft Auto. But in the future. But it

wasn't. It has massive issues.

I don't recommend it even. I was like looking at all this stuff, I'm like,

that means game is gonna do very well and it's not. And

the main guy is like, oh, it's all the trolls and everything.

I'm like, no, you just made a bad game, dude. Like

optimize your game. Like I

heard that they had like a developers preview and you had to go

on to like zoom and you had to watch the gameplay and even then they

had to turn on God mode and it's like, oof,

that's not good. So well,

build a boy rocket could be no more. It's their own

fault. So good luck.

All right, so Warhammer 40K Space Marines 2 has sold 7 million

units to date. The game was published by Focus Entertainment. It was

developed by Saber Interactive and launched on September 9, 2024.

Focus Home announced the two that 2 million copies were sold

the day after launch. So they got an extra 5

million since that day. Sales reached 5 million

units by the end of November 2024.

And a sequel is coming of Warhammer 4K. Space Marines 3

was confirmed to be in development as of March 2025. So this is how you

make a game. They understood their audience, they understood their game, they knew

what the audience wanted and they had been successful.

It wasn't a woke version of this. It was very high

testosterone type of a game. That's what people wanted. That's why I love

the original one. This is how you do it correctly.

Did it have its issues? Of course it did. It's a game.

But it did the things it needed to do and it did

it well. When you do that, you

have good games. At least

Saber Interactive understands what players want.

Everybody else should take the lead from Saber

Interactive and figure out what their audience

wants. If you already have made an established game understand your

audience, it's not hard. It is one

of the easiest things to do.

It's just developers have lost sight of it, especially in

the big publisher sphere. They keep on going, what will appeal

to everybody? And I'm like, then you have a nothing game.

Appeal to everybody. You don't have a game. Appeal to your audience.

You have a game.

It is that simple. You don't need to Be technical,

simple about this. Very simple. What are

your priorities? What do you want to

to basically get across in your story? What do you want to

get across in your gameplay design? How do you work

on your gameplay design first and have the story match the gameplay design

and do top three things in each of these categories? Don't

do top seven, do top three.

If you can do more, fine, but do top three at least. And

then once you're done with that, then you will have,

then you'll be on track for a successful game. But know

your audience. It is the simplest thing to understand

and EA keeps missing the mark. They may

actually understand it in Battlefield. May is a

big, big May because everybody has eyes on

Battlefield 6. Everybody's skeptical about how well it's actually

going to do and how well it's going to appeal to their audience.

And so as I keep on saying, before the market is

shifting, Double A studios are probably going to be taking the lead

on new IPs, new stories and

new gameplay features. And AAA games are just going

to be mass appeal to the masses. That will be

just mediocre games that will people just like

cuz they know of the game.

Will you be successful? To a certain extent, but then it will become

stale, old and dry. I really hope

it's not going to be that way, but I think it is. So good luck

to you Microsoft. Good luck to you Ubisoft, Good luck to you ea.

And good luck to you take two because you all are just,

just aren't worth it. Not with $80 a game anymore.

So what do you think? Do you think I'm crazy or not? Let me know

in the comments below. But thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Gaming Brew. I

really do appreciate it. Please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasts.

A five star review really does help with the rankings. Let me know how I'm

doing and join me next week. Let's talk about what's going on in the gaming

industry. All right guys, stay safe. Get to the games you want to play even

if they're not the quote unquote popular ones and see you next week

later.