The Future of Gaming: Escapism Over Politics – A Call to Developers

Welcome to a new episode of The Digital Coffee Gaming Brew, and I'm your host, Brett er. If you could please just subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting apps. It really does help. But anyways, this week I'm gonna be talking about a little bit about the ridiculous view between Elon Musks and Asthma Gold, because apparently we need to fight about who, how many hours you play a game, because that's the most important thing in 2025. Also Nvidia a MD. Have an excellent year as GPU shipments have gone up. Melos new update AMD's radio on RX nine 70 xt and the rumor prices and everything since it's not coming out until maybe. Next week, the 23rd, I think is supposedly supposed to be that, but we're not really even quite sure about that one. But we do know that NVIDIA's 5 50, 90 and 50 80 is coming out the 30th of this month. And also how a MD sees Intel's Aero Lake and why to them it's a horrible product compared to the Ryzen seven 9,000 X 3D shortages because they blame them in a way. And then also what I'm going say is the more hopeful thing of my main thing is about how game developers can start 2025 off correctly with how to make their games to their customer. I know it's a weird thing to do. Anyways, let's get on with the show. Mm, that's good. Alright, so the most ridiculous thing in 2025 so far is Elon Musk and Asma Gold going after each other. Asma Gold's claiming that Elon doesn't really, didn't really play Path of Exile Two and is just bought the account and is just playing the high level gameplay. And Elon saying I'm a top Diablo four player. And then releasing the dms and then. Just calling him names. It's all pretty stupid. Let, I'm just gonna say it bluntly. It's all pretty stupid. Both are wrong in their own separate ways. Asma Gold, who the hell cares if he bought his account or not? Dude, he makes fricking rockets and electric cars that people drive and he's gonna be doing Doge. I don't really care if he bought his game or not, who the hell cares if he bought it or not. Is it really that biggest, big controversy that he does or doesn't? And Elon, seriously, who cares if you bought your account or not? You're making rockets and electric cars in your running X. So who cares? Is this really the hill you wanna die on? Gold. Is this really the hill you wanna die on? Out of everything, it's stupid. Who cares? Y'all can just go, okay, he bought it, who cares? I'll move on to the bigger things about gaming. Like why Western developers can't actually make games for gamers. That's our biggest thing, not this. This is dumb. Anyways. Moving on to Final Fantasy Seven. Rebirth is verified or officially verified on the Steam deck, so you can actually play the game on the steam deck, which is a really good, great thing because let's be honest, steam Deck has changed the PC gaming world. Before that no one was really trying to make handheld PC devices, PC gaming devices, and now everybody's trying to make it after them. And it's great that STEAM is actually looking ahead to the, towards the future and I can't fault them for doing great things, especially with now releasing their Steam os and basically taking a bite out of. Because Windows has been top dog in the gaming scene for forever. Mac lost out because they just weren't really interested in an open ecosystem. So I'm all for, this makes Linux look a lot better. Maybe people write more programs, softwares, and everything for Linux. So I'm all for it. I think this is a great thing. And so more power to y'all. Moving on to Nvidia and a MD, and it looks like it's been an excellent year for them because GPU shipments has hit over 251 million units. That's quite a lot of units being sold and. It's no wonder because Nvidia makes some of the best GPUs in the market. I think Intel's actually doing a pretty good job of trying to ma match performance for price. I think a MD is trying to do that now. We will see with the 90 70 XT or whatever else they're gonna come out with. But with that and with the CPUs from A MD with the A PU, it's just looking like a bright future for that. I'm hoping to see the card sizes go down when they're gonna be heavily reliant, more AI type uses with DSS four and everything, but just the shipments and everything just looks great and since TSMC has now a foundry in Arizona, it looks like it's working, we should be seeing a lot better shipments and a lot faster shipments into the US instead of. Taiwan since Taiwan and China aren't really besties right now, but we're, it looks like we're gonna be probably seeing a really healthy market in the GPUs as long as Nvidia and a MD and Intel can make the price point good enough for gamers to be like, alright, I'll upgrade. Nvidia did a great job of not making it too expensive. Actually, the 50 80 is cheaper than the 40 80, but. We'll see if it's actually a really good boost. I've been seeing some murmurs that it's not as good of a boost from the 3000 series to the 4,000 series as the 4,000 series to the 5,000 series, but we'll see. We'll see what actual official ones are, but I'm not. I'm not hopeful that it's going to be as great of a leap from the 3000 to the 4,000 series as it was now, but I do think that with DSS four and with the more guessing or AI computing more frames, it's. You're not gonna have to have a BV card to play really great games at a really good, great price point. So that's what we're gonna be looking for. The future now, is that AI does have its uses and this is one of 'em that could actually help. Alright, the fourth major update in Matter lords. If you don't know, it's like the, spiritual successor of Lord of the Realms, which is way back in the nineties. I played the second one way, way long ago. Forgot about it now. Now they're adding like a new map. They're adding roads and well bridges. So you build a road, you can build a bridge 'cause there is a new map that basically has waterways and so you kinda have to have bridges to get across the map. But you have that. You also have experimental changes as well. This is just a fun game. If you count like the medieval. Side of it, but you want a different type of strategy game than age of the Empires or civilization because it's still a realtime strategy game, but it's different from age of the Empires. I like the ingenuity of it. As it being a little bit more hardcore. So if you haven't played, you can build houses or burges, and then you can actually grow things if you need to through either chickens or vegetables or something like that. So it is an interesting way of doing things. I'm still trying to figure it out to really optimize play style, but it's interesting to see like just to play a little bit and just have fun and not actually have to worry if I'm actually good at this game or not. Moving on to a MD Radi on RX nine 70 XT Looks like it'll be around the same price as the 50 70, so like 500 to five 50 area. Not really quite sure. It's supposed to be better than the 40 80 Super, but that. It doesn't gimme a lot of hope because I'm like, I don't care about this generation of GPUs. I wanna know how well you'll do with the one coming up, because that is the deal breaker of which 1:00 AM I gonna get? Am I gonna get a MD or am I gonna get Nvidia? And if you cannot keep pace with even the 50 70 right now, that is a problem. I know a MD basically. Gave up on the high end market is basically leaving it to Nvidia to dominate and continue to dominate until somebody else figures out how to actually not allow a MD, Nvidia to dominate. But I'm hoping it will keep pace with the 50 70 and maybe trade blows with the 50 80. If they can do that, then they have a, and it's. It's 500 below of 50 80. They may have a really great product on a on the handle. If they can't and is struggling to keep pace with the 50 70, then they have an issue and they'll probably have to figure it out. But like I said, we will see once they officially announced everything, which. Rumor has, it's supposed to be the 22nd of this month and then the 23rd is supposed to come out. I'm not really quite sure if that's actually the real timetable because they didn't announce anything at CES because they wanted to quote unquote have it. Its spot on the limelight. But I think they were just trying to figure out what Nvidia was gonna be doing and they got their answer. Because if he doesn't care what a MD really does, to be honest with you, they're on their own little. Trajectory or orbit by themselves doesn't really matter what the competitors do 'cause they are dominating basically the GPU market and the AI market for the most part. But it should be interesting to see when we actually get official word or official announcement of these graphics cards if they will be good or not. Now moving on to a MD accusing Intel's Arrow Lake of being a horrible product. Why you can't really buy the 9,000 x 3D quite yet, but eventually it will smooth itself out, especially with the new X 3D chips coming out, the 9 9 50 99 50 and the 9,900 X 3D coming out. So it should be interesting to see it because once when the 9,800 X 3D was announced. It was a really great product. Like people, it was, it did a really good job of being really good at gaming and not bad at content creation, not so much, but it did a really great job of that. And so it became a really great product for gamers because they saw the efficiency of it in gaming, and it's basically a solely really good gaming CPU for gamers. It still does a really good job with content creation, but mostly gaming. You did a really great job with that, so I'm not surprised that this is sold out really quickly, but apparently AMD's not happy because the product has sold out so quickly because of AMD's, Aero Lake, and just it's. Okay. CPU of it. It's just, okay. It's not great. It's not horrible as they claim. It's just okay. Does contact creation better than the a MD one, but gaming it's lacking in the gaming department. So we'll see what Intel does. 'cause man, they've been not doing well for the past, almost decade, I would say. Once Ryzen came out, it. It hurt them quite a bit. Before that, they were dominating. They didn't care what a MD was doing. Bulldozer was terrible. It was interesting. CPU that just did not do well. It had an arm architecture with it and so it was trying to be like, it was trying to do that before Apple and all them actually figured out how to do it well. Didn't really pan out very well, but. You live and learn, but we'll see what happens. Alright, moving on to kinda my main thing that I wanna talk about is how gaming developers, especially the Western ones, can set up for success for this year. Because the problem is that they've been taking a beating because they just haven't been making great games. Now, there have been a few kind of shiny ones. Stocker two was pretty good. Kington Deliverance too. When it comes out in February, in the beginning of February will be good. We got Final Fantasy Rebirth. That's supposed to be really good and maybe Civilization seven. Really not quite sure about that one quite yet. We have two points. I. Which one is it? Museum. That's what it was. Two Points Museum, which I find to be like an enduring thing. If you don't know. Two Points is hospital. It was the first one that came out and it was the spiritually Successor Bullfrogs theme hospital, which was a bombastic, like it wasn't a city management. It was kinda like a building management type of a game where you create rooms for specific. Weird and crazy like symptoms or diseases or whatever. And then you cure them and then you do that. And it was a fun game when theme hospital came out and then they just never did a second one, which was weird. 'cause they did. I think the next one was actually Dungeon Keeper, which was kinda like you play the bad person and they made two of those and then Bullfrog was ceased to exist. Exist almost, because EA doesn't know how to manage. I. These studios properly. I'm looking at you dice and does any of the storied ones that did a really great job before EA bought them and then it's kinda yep. You probably shouldn't be bought out by EA anyway. BioWare. Anyways, what I'm hoping is that you understand what the gamer wants. We don't wanna be lectured to, we don't. Look at Hell Divers two. Look at Kingdom Come Deliverance two. It looks like it's getting really great buzz. These are the people that said, look it. We gamers don't wanna be lectured about modern politicalness. We play games to escape, not to be bashed over the head with your weird political ideologies. Most gamers are male, so hating on males does not help your bottom line. At all, and quite a few of them are white males, including myself. So that doesn't help. So you might want to stop doing that. Maybe just maybe stop with the trans stuff because no one likes it. Gay thing, fine. I don't really care. No more pronouns, no more pride flags. No one cares about those. Make a game that lets me escape whatever it is I'm trying to escape from. If it's a fantasy game, don't have top surgery scars or bash me over the head about how to properly pronoun somebody 'cause I don't care. And plus it's a fantasy game. And you could, if you're a guy, you wanna be your girl, you can do it anyways. So it doesn't really matter. Or vice versa, it doesn't really matter. But make a game that's fun. Look at Marvel rivals versus Overwatch two. Overwatch two is we don't need six V six, it doesn't work. We're gonna go five feet five 'cause it's a lot better and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's not been great. They said they were gonna have PVE didn't happen. They had a lot of missing features from Overwatch to Overwatch two, which was weird. Then Marvel Rivals comes out and completely trounces Overwatch two in player count and still is trouncing them. Look at Delta Force. Delta Force is pretty close to a carbon copy of Battlefield 2042, but way better optimized. There's still a few issues with it, but. All in all, it's actually a really solid game. Plus with a really great extraction suitor, which Battlefield 24 2 couldn't even do. It had its own and it was terrible. Does a better job, hands down and dice. Basically made the battlefield style like genre what it is today and. The quality has gone down. People keep on saying, I wished for the old Battlefield four era, and I'm like, oh, so you wish for the game to be broken for a year and then eventually fixed. They're taking better steps now because it got T drowned so bad in 2042 that they had to step, take a step back. We look at, we need to have play tests. We need to have a longer development cycle. We need to make sure this game runs as well as we can make it run. With the time we have, and within reason, no more operators, I, everybody hates operators. Like just give us normal soldiers and just have 'em as attached like gadgets. That's why I wish Delta Force did. I don't care about the operators. I could care less. It's weird to have operators like just normal, faceless soldiers like Battlefield used to do. And let me just pick the gadgets that I want to pick and there you go. But hero shooters, man, they're great. I love them, but sometimes they bleed over into other genres and it's it doesn't work. Stop it. I know Apex Legends was popular and it popularized like the loose shooter, hero shooter type dynamic. They did a pretty good job in the beginning and now it's lost its way. But I tell you like it's not hard western gaming developers to figure out the modern gamer. It's like the previous gamer or the older ones. It's not hard. Look at your older games. What made them fun? Player choice, good design. Good Sound. A way of. Playing a game without you monitoring what I'm saying because that's stupid. Allow me to say retard and faggot and all that other stuff, stop nannying me. I'm an adult. I'm not something and add block features and stuff. That's all you need to do. Like the reason why the golden era of gaming was when you didn't care about policing people on what they said, and that's why it got so popular. Businesses forget on why they got popular, and they basically lose it all because they can't understand why no one wants to play their game. Stop insulting your player, your customer base. Understand your customer base. Base your game around good design and make a story around that. Give player choice. The reason why Boulder's Gate three was so popular is because yes, it had gay things and trans thing, but you didn't have to be a part of it. If you didn't want to, you could completely ignore it. If you a simulation game, make it a simulation game and make it about that, can come deliverance and it's one the second one's coming out. It is a good game because it stuck to what it was and didn't try to cram in modern stuff. It was a game about dark age medieval times in Europe, and even though the press was trying to lambasted, like, why isn't there more diversity in it? Developers were like, because it's Europe. In the medieval times there wouldn't be that many black people there, there of any. Travel wasn't as convenient as it is now. Plus it was highly dangerous. So just do that. Like seriously. You don't have to push in modern politics, I don't care. I escape it. UBIs for the love of God, just make good games. Like I swear when you say it's a quadruple a game, it's gonna be a terrible game. It's gonna be awful actually. Skull and bones. Awful. Star Wars awful. You are delaying assassin screech shadows for the second or third time now. Probably gonna be awful too. I don't buy your games anymore. I think the last one was Prince of Persia, the side scholar one. That actually was good. Oh, avatar. Which isn't that good. You also had a really not bad multiplayer shooter with X Defiant, but you pulled the plug on that one. I don't know why you probably could have built it back just. Kept on doing it, but you pulled a plug on that one. For other games like Star Wars. Star Wars was bad. No one wanted to play that game. No one cared when you brought it to Steam. That's how bad it was. There was too much bad press and too much of you guys doing weird stuff, like making sure that the YouTubers you sent it to made sure that they were making positive reviews on it instead of saying, you know what, here's the game. If you like it, cool. We love positive reviews. If you don't. It's up to you. That's how you do it. But you cannot make girl boss things anymore. We don't want it. Girl bosses are annoying. Make it about trans issues. No one cares. Make it about Marxist issues or Marxist ideology. No one wants that. Make a game more con, I would say more conservative now because it's. The normal things when I was a child is now very conservative Now. Make it like that in the nineties. Look at the nineties games. Look at why they were popular. If your target audience is male, which gaming is mostly male, majority male, might want to do that. For the love of God, just make it about escapism. Make it fun. Don't make it a chore. It's all we want. Really. Like I'm giving you a blueprint for the love of God. Just use it Anyways. What do you think? Do you think I'm off base or not? Let me know in the columns below with YouTube or Spotify. 'cause apparently you could do it on Spotify too. Anyways. Thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Gaming Crew. As always, appreciate you listening and giving me feedback as well. It's always helpful. Enjoy me next week as I talk about what's going on in the gaming industry. I'm changing it up to go back to Friday, so I feel like Friday's is a good way of enjoying your weekend anyways, but enjoy your guys' weekend, play the games you wanna play. If it's hell divers, two Marvel rivals, Delta Force or whatever. Even Fortnite. Doesn't really matter to me. Anyways, have a great week, guys. See you next week later.