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Welcome to the verge cast. The flagship podcast of D L S I. A friend day appears. And this is the third and final episode in our many series about the future of gaming. We talked about handheld gaming and why consoles like the switch and the steam deck might just be the future of everything. We've talked about how to emulate and preserve all games and why that matters in important way.
And today we're going to talk about big games, the biggest games, games like fortnight and call of duty and road locks and mad and assassinate the kinds of games that even people who don't care about games know about. These games are so culturally important and economically outrageous that IT often feels like as those games go, so goes the whole gaming industry. But those games are changing the way that they get made IT is changing.
The way that they get sold is changing. Everything about them is changing. So we're going to try to figure out today what happens to the biggest games and what that means for all the rest of the games and for us who played them.
My colleagues from polygon, Chris plant and rush fresh taker back with me the way this is going to work as we're gna talk IT out a little bit. And then i'm going to go do some research, talk to some people and then present them with what i've discovered and see if i've learnt anything at all. Also, before we get into IT, I just want to say we've had this crazy run of many series over the last few months.
I know it's spent a lot of verda ast. I am so grateful to all of you who have listens to all these episodes and gone with me and us on these weird adventures into A I and connectivity and gaming. We ve had a ton of fun making these episodes.
I know I spent a lot. The vert cafe e is gonna mostly back to Normal now. But seriously, thank you to everyone who has sent ny emails, who has called in with thoughts on the hot line, were very grateful.
It's been incredibly fun with that. Let's just get into IT russian, Chris. Or here, here we go.
Chris, plan. Welcome back. Hey, thank you. Rush, rush. I C, welcome back.
Thank you. Thank you.
This is the third of our three episodes. It's been very fun so far. I have learned an enormous amount about the gaming world that I did not know already. And for this episode, we've kind of noodles around like the edges of what is coming for gaming in the last two. But this time, we're going to talk about like the biggest games and game makers on planet earth because we've gone through this huge transition in so much of entertainment, whether it's the way that we consume music or the way that we consume T, V. And how netflix changed the whole business of how television and movies get me in all. And what you guys have told me started in the planning process for this, is that gaming is in the middle or at the beginning of a similar transition, that the way we think about what games are and how we buy them and the biggest names of all of them is set to shift and shift fairly quickly, is rush or not? Is that a fair way of thinking about IT?
Yeah, absolutely. We're already seeing IT uh, the rise of the subscription model for game quote ownership, uh with the rise of something like game pass means that you can pay your fifteen hours a month whatever IT is for a ton of games and you don't actually end up buying any physical games. You end up just like kind of renting them in away through these services. And this has already been a huge priority for companies like microsoft, and you're going to see IT continue to increase over time.
I'm just sort of of trying to think this thing and like I think one of things that happened in hollywood is basically the whole middle fell out, right? You can either make a giant like a venger style blockbuster, or you can make a relatively small budget thing, or you can make A T V show, right? Like we figure out out how to do sort of prestige T V. But if you are in the business of making like event movies, which I would takes probably the closest thing to a triple a game in that space yeah sure.
Like a marvel, big marvel.
yeah. It's not a perfect energy, but it's close enough. There is nothing in the middle more. You either have to spend very little and hope or spend a jana amount money on super safe IP. And that's all that's left is that we're headed in video games too.
kind of though with maybe an adjustment to like the ramp in the middle. There's a lot of middle now we just watch IT is like so much middle there, you know network has a good an middle productions and they come out every week and they don't even market them and they they are not particularly good. And I used to be the u like we go to a movie theater and people had to put effort into the middle. And now the middle is just like filter.
You could like, make a cultural moment out of the middle in the past. And I think that is long gone in hollywood.
On the gaming side, the middle used to be the like, ten to twenty million hour game that took, let's say, three years to make and came out did pretty well. And activision would put out a bunch of those. E A would put out a bunch of those.
And what you're seeing is these big studios because of the expressing expenses of game making at that level, yeah, they are unwilling to do those smaller investments because they are really thinking hundreds of millions dollars into the big franchise that the outlaws of the world, the G T. S. Of the world. And they just can't afford to focus on those small potential wins because the losses can be huge given for those like mid range titles. So what you're seeing is yet the triple way, and that's paired with the like the world can obviously be very low budget up to what's say, two and three million doll games, which honestly these days is small in the way that like an N I movie at two and three million hours is small.
But then at the same time, IT also seems like some of these companies that make these huge triple I games are making fewer of them. Like I feel like, and I can't prove this, maybe you guys would definite know Better than I would, but I feel like the number of like big name games that I ve never heard of goes down every year that it's yet all games that i've been hearing about forever. It's all assassinated.
E A. Just keeps running back the same six sports games that does every year. There's like there's a something three and something four and something eleven that comes out every year. But I don't feel like there that many truly new things coming out of these giant studio anywhere. Is that true?
Yeah I I think that this connections to the middle, this happened actually before streaming. And this is the what the cold duty mass effect madam era did to tripoli is, you know, in freshman, I were starting in covering video games. IT wasn't unusual for U.
B. Soft to try a few different random things. You know, they had, there is a time where you had a new driver game, and I would played like google maps meets racing or sean White skate boarding game, where you could create rails out of light Green goo.
And there is ago, but put a mid budget game and try IT and see where IT goes, along with all the licence games. When all of duty blew up, activision IT felt like had to basically shift all of its resources behind this big bet. And they had that with guitar hero, and they had that with tony hawk e all around kind of the same time.
And as a result, everything else there are just warm enough warm bodies to make the other stuff that at least how I felt if they want to get annual releases. So they kind of created their bed and now they're having to sleep in IT. Is, is the metaphor? Is that the phrase?
Think so? Yeah.
they are now having to stick to these things because they are making a of money that they can't stop doing IT, but not so much they can like go and focus elsewhere. The other pickle that they have is now with streaming and with some of these indie developers becoming india publishers and being able to like create more these mid budget games is the general quality of video games right now is just very high.
So their fear is we have two games out the year. We really need the hit because they're going to be competitive against hundreds in. And once they do here, we need to lock people in.
And that has just created this like bad, bad after bad, bad, the making things harder and harder and harder for themselves, rather than looking at the industry and saying, hey, why don't we just do the thing that we're running from? We actually are quite powerful. Why are we not putting out twenty years, thirty games a year? Why devolve the indie publisher is out there and just wasn't acquired at any point? Is confusing to say the least.
okay. Is there a new generation of these like upstart companies trying to do that? Like Normally the way you would think that would work right as these these big companies get settled into their sort small handful of franchise like you're are describing.
And then out of that comes a bunch of new companies saying we have new ideas. We can build games faster. We have new ways of doing that.
We don't have all this to have massive companies we have to support. We can build. The next thing is that happening .
yeah I think it's happening. Um you know plant mention devolve, which is uh one of the biggest in the uh studios publishing studios in there. And I think all of that work that they have is really talent acquisition.
They go out, they see o here's this small indie developer that's basically we've been doing IT so low or with a team of three people, whatever, or to give them that two and three million hour budget and we like what they're doing. So we're going to alleviate that. And IT becomes a decent sized ed hit like a death store, for example, was an any game that came out uh, last year and did pretty well.
So they are kind of creating that stuff. But because the nature of the expense of larger game publishers having to make these big games, they can do that like E A can't be doing that. Uh, so they are focused instead on the battle fields of the world and and their big franchises. So there is this this divide. Into of creating new ideas, and almost all them are coming from the end side.
You also mention the test data at all in the past, being a big publisher benefit from the fact that you had an internal engine like E A. Had the suspicions. Ine, I think you be at anvil.
I was when they used for a while. I believe I is hide all know one. Those engines just are often more frustrating than unreal or unity or any of the the engines.
So you have that like so much for IT being know like loose in to you. You're actually frustrated. Your and people have to learn your new thing and then you're competing with people who have access to unreal and perfectly fine using IT.
And when they go out and hire people to work on IT, people already know how to use those engine. So it's all kind of inverted. It's actually just easier for these these smaller erm to midsize developers to work because they're not married due all these kind of massive corporate decisions. That sounds like their money savers on paper, but are not actually beneficial to the people making the games.
okay. Yeah, I later in this episode are going to do a bunch of twenty twenty four predictions about kind of where all this is going because he does seem like there are a bunch of things in other industry you can look at to see how this might change. But also gaming, we've learned, is different in a lot of ways.
And I think we're going to talk to some smart people, but also just spent some time the three of us try to figure out we're all this is going. But before I run off and chase down some smart people about where we're going cry, I want you to tell me why you wrote G, T. A. Six in our google dock in large letters.
yes. So this is the big question. This is the the huge question I have for you is gt six gona be the last mega game and i'm not in my even tripled.
I'm not going about quite grumpy. We get one of these a year may be sort of games. And yet the big publishers can help themselves from continuing to chase these dreams.
And I wonder if G, T, A, six, we will see a change after that if we've raised the cost of making games so high and the risk so high that people have learned their lesson or if the opposite will happen, which is despite all of the trouble we're seeing in the video game industry financially, if gj six will come out, IT will be a hit, and then everybody will go. Could be me. I could be that .
what's so? Okay, we explain this mean, because gt, up for good lord, like sixty five years at this point. yeah. But G T A six is like a sequel on top of equals, on top of singles. Like why is grand h ve got to six different from, say, the new call of duty, which I assume will come out once a year, every year, until, like he death of the universe yeah I mean.
you kind of said IT, they don't put them out all the time. They work on them until they are, in their opinion, just right. And they seem to know quite well, even if I don't always love every bit of their games, they sell extravagantly.
It's hard to say with dut six because we haven't seen much of that others some league game play footage that was very, very early. But there is also questions around that came on its own. There's different management in charge of this game.
Then there has been in the past, I would say, the first real shakeup of of editorial direction for this game in the entire serious lifetime. So again, we have this game that just embodies the mega budget game, and IT has its question Marks around IT. And I think a lot of where we're out right now is based off of G, G, A five success in people hoping that they can be that yeah.
I just to give a data point to that, G T, A five costs around two hundred and sixty million dollars to produce. There have been recent leagues like G, T, six leaks of about a year ago, and as part of that league e, there were some speculation that the games s development costs have overcome a billion dollars at this point. Wow.
you know, this makes me think of is right. Before the second avatara movie came out, James Cameron did an interview and said something to the effective like this movie is gna have to be the third biggest movie of all time just to break even. And it's like at some point, that's a totally and saying thing to say unless you're James Cameron, you've made the other two biggest movies of all time.
And like, I guess gtx is kind of in the same position. It's like if you are anyone other than the people who make granpa auto, you might be at your mind. But if anybody has a chance to make that worthwhile, it's probably rocks are.
it's like I thought to leave the listener's on who maybe don't follow games closely because this might sound danged. How could we see the end of tripled? And i'm not saying that there is a guarantee that, that will happen at all.
But think about the marble era in the super hero era that is coming to an end. IT is at the very top of pop culture until these increasingly big bets start to like flap, right, and you get three or four of these and suddenly they're not making money and suddenly it's a bad bet. And the market signals that are looking at other things, we have an open hammer and Barbie this, you know, summer really popping up and a lot of other movies. And that's when things start to shift. And that is a sort of shift that I am curious what I would look like in the video game industry because IT feels like your having towards some sort of change is just hard to see what IT is.
I mean, you can look at IT from a couple years ago at cyberpunk launch. Cyberpunk launched IT was a total disaster that came was enormously expensive to produce. They've since brought IT back from the edge with updates and and D, L, C, and also to stuff. The game is great now, but that was a representation of what can happen even if you throw hundreds of millions of hours of a game, you are not necessarily guaranteed to get that back if the game launches and is a disaster.
That's that's a good one. And I I like the idea of like are we still in the marvel can do no wrong era or are we in the everybodys kind of board of marvel era? And IT turns out, like you're saying, yes, you don't have to get IT wrong that many times for IT to fall apart pretty.
That's right. right? I am going to go see if I can figure out what the barbon hyper video game era is going to look like.
And then we're going to come back. We're going talk about that. We're going to do some big hot ticket, twenty twenty four predictions that are going to make everybody really angry. Thank you both. As always.
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Alright, we're back, as always, has been a few weeks through the magic of time travel in podcast editing. We're back. You can look different. I have to say you've changed since we were here last.
I've seen some things, especially you, Chris. Oh yeah. What point has seen a lot of?
So the thing we're .
here to talk about is big games. And this one is actually the most fun for me of all of the episodes that we've done because this is a topic I know essentially nothing about. So essentially, what we're going to do, as I did a bunch of research, I talked to bunch people, and I tried to, like speed, run my way through learning about the very big business of very big video games.
And I have come with some, some ideas and theories about we're all this is headed. And I want you guys to, like, check what I have come up with and sort of bring you back to reality for me. How does that out? Sounds good. Sound great.
okay.
So the way that I have framed this, because I have I have found myself unnecessarily structuring all of these things as I have gone through IT, just help IT make sense, is like if the big question is kind of where do triple a games go? I have four possible futures. I don't know which one of them I think is right, but there's kind of an analogue somewhere else in the world that could be how this goes.
And i'm just going to walk you through all of them. We're going to talk them out. But first, I have to say you guys screwed me over really badly because neither you prepared me for the idea that absolutely no one agrees on what triple a means, or what india ans or any of these terms.
And so for every single person I talk to us, like to talk about triple games. And what what do you mean when you talk about triple? I and I just like I don't know you're supposed to know the .
answer that if IT makes you feel any Better, the game awards just announced that dave, the diver was nominated for best of the year. One of five or six that were not every best in the year gave the diver was produced by a studio of eighteen people within next on, which is an enormous, enormous company and even nexon is said, yeah, it's not really an indeed studio but that kind of looks like indeed it's got like pixel graphics and stuff yeah no one knows for sure what the difference is.
Yeah, no, IT IT was he was actually very funny prepping for this in the process of that happening, because there were a bunch people really mad about that. And then the flip side was, borders gate was nominated for a game of the year, and there were a bunch of the same.
But that's an india, should have also innominata an indian that worked to this whole thing about what is a triple a game, and was in, and I learned is that IT mostly doesn't matter, like in real terms, IT doesn't matter. So but for my purposes, just for today, we're going to define triple a games as like the kind of two handful of very big, very expensive games that everybody has heard of. Like people who don't play games have heard of these games, right?
That's kind of it's not a perfect definition, but that's what are going to do IT. And then india, like the opposite of that. And i'm not going to try to find IT further because I will just run into trouble and I don't need that in my life.
So that's what we're going to do. Future number one, i've named all of this is i'm very excited about the names I have for them. Future number one is what I would call the avengers future.
And basically what that would be is that we've spent the last decade or so, but really sort of phase of video games with a handful of gigantic properties that everybody loved, that just came to like completely dominate the landscape, like I went through the the most popular games of the last ten years. And I bet the two of you sitting here now could name most of them off the top of your head, right? Like, call of duty appears seventy in times on the list of ten years.
Mad is there ten times in ten years? G, T, A five, one game is there for five years. Like most of these things will not be surprising people.
So we're in this place now where there's this gigantic sort of earth shatteringly huge property that owns the world. Like it's not the perfect analogy because it's a bunch of games instead of just like the cinematic universe. They've been big for a really long time, but now there is this feeling that these things are so big and so Frankly, bad.
Now they've gotten so risk averse because they're so big and there are so expensive and they are so complicated that they're starting to crack and that eventually the events can be good forever and eventually that stops being good. And then there is time for something else. And I think one case you could make is that work like right at the end of this massive dominance of a handful properties.
And the next thing is starting to appear like called the duty modern referred three just came out, by all accounts, just a garbage fire of a game. Everybody seems to hate IT. It's still selling a lot because it's called duty, but at least so far, doesn't seem to be the success that the others were and say, okay, is this what started to happening in marvel a couple of years ago where it's like the shine is off a little bit?
People won't just do IT because it's there. Maybe this stuff is gonna start to fall often. The next phase is going to be a full of new things. What do you guys think of that?
I think you're right that I think we're starting to see the franchise that were forever easily bankable. We're starting to see them struggle and environments and and franchise like cove duty have sustained themselves, not on the old man. There's a huge campaign and there's multiple matter just on their the fact that they have a free to play mode is very popular and war zone, and that is monetized out the butt.
So that's where they are making all their money. So I think that's what you're going to start to see with those bigger franchise. I think the other struggle that these big franchise come up against, which is actually a good thing, is because there is so much we can weak out competition from smaller games that are doing cool things.
They pull time and resources and money away from people saying, oh, the sixty dollars that I spend only goes to call duty or only goes to mad and or whatever is instead they're na say, i'm going to buy three games for twenty hours each and i'm going to play those for thirty hours, forty hours, whatever is. So I actually think this is not necessarily a bad thing. What you're describing yeah to be clear.
I don't necessarily in any of these are actually bad futures like one of the things I wrote under the avenger future bullet in my notes, it's just the end of an era. Everything changes. Don't be afraid, right? Like this is not mean. It's the end of good video games. I just think it's possible I would not say it's likely, but it's possible that IT is IT is the end of a certain set of video games.
I am going to get really pianto care. I don't think IT is the end of an era at all. I think is just a continuation of an because let me know what is the sound familiar.
So there's this company called activision, and IT has the biggest game in the world, and IT stops making all of its other games and IT puts all of its resources into that game. And actually, as multon teams working on different versions, that game so they can get IT out every year, right? I'm obviously talking about tony hawks.
Sorry, actually. No, i'm talking about guitar hero await. No, I am talking about call of duty over what you know is is now at the end of its cycle with east ports.
They're closing the east ports. There are absence flows to these things. And yes, those are down.
But then fortnight is up, right? Minecraft is still dominant in those things. Yes, like fresh mentioned, they're not updating every year, but they're updating constantly. They're finding new ways to bring in cash. Just a slightly different cats and presentation.
but you would agree plant that there are way fewer triple a big releases every year like these years than they are five years ago.
for sure. But if we're going off, I I guess specifically the marvel comparison, I think doesn't work car because the marvel games, the big games continue to exist in the big games only bigger. They're are getting larger and larger.
But it's weird because on one hand, I want to agree with that there are fewer big games, but I only know if that's true anymore. There are fewer big games made by ub, soften, ea and activision. But now other teams are making big games.
We're getting pretty large size games from saga atlas. We're getting large games from remedy. We're getting even a quote in former indie studios that have a ton of money that are now making their own very large scale projects. So it's like a blind. We're watching all these different ways of engaging with games kind of blind together where yet and maybe in the past that felt like, no, there are kind of two things. There was the you play games that came out from, yeah you be soften activision or you played like deleted any games and now, yes, all of that is kind of like glowering together in the big companies are making some downloadable games and the, you know small indeed, companies are actually quite big now and making big games, and it's just getting more messy.
You're gonna really like hypothetical future number two. Yeah, chripp, i'm going to get that. I'm going to get to that one second because I think I think what you just described is a perfectly plausible version of this.
The one thing I will say for the the avengers future that we live in is just from a pure like greatest hits of gaming thing you look through. And basically, if you're not sort of a plus IP like Harry potter or star wars, if you're not A C qual that it's just those two things, that's how you succeed in video games right now. If you want na be like one of the ten or twenty biggest games, those are your only two moves right now.
And we've been on that path for a long time. You either you either make the annual sports game, you make a game based on, you know star wars or Harry potter or some other like extremely old I P, I almost said James bond because I like desperate for more James bond games. But alas, or you make a equal you we have no diablo four and resident evil four and dead island two in final fanta six hundred and fifty eight.
This is kind of what IT takes to really have a huge hit now. And i'm leading out the life service systems because we're going na get to that. But I think that is a different corner of the future of video games. But understand for these like giant titles that people pay money for that still kind of the world .
were in yeah I mean, again, success being like most amount of profit, right? Obviously, people are seeing success not only creatively but also making a tone of money relative to what they're putting in for smaller projects. Uh, you know if your game costs ten knowing hours to make, forces one hundred million hours to make and you end up making fifty million on IT, like that's a really good return so well done yeah you know again, IT is difficult to determine whether something is successful or not quickly on the like total copy sold. But I do agree that like for the best selling list one hundred percent, it's all franchise you ve always heard of.
Okay, hypothetical future number two is what I call the prestige T. V. future. And this is, I think, closer to what we've been describing, right, which is basically we're going to get a whole industry shifting away from there being kind of one big giant move, which is like make big movies, put them in theres and try to make a lot of money and towards something a little broader, a little different, the business model changes a little bit, but lets you do all kinds of different stuff.
You can start to take a list actors and make limited series and sell them. That way, you can start to make longer running T, V shows. You can make documentaries, have a come back lake.
This idea that by up, ending the way the business works and essentially taking that out of a couple of companies hands, you give people many more ways to make things at many different scales that make money, which I think, to some extent, like signals a big part of the end of, like these unbelievable expensive triple a games. Because that no longer is the only move is to spend an outrageous amount money, to try to make rages, amount money, and means this whole other classic stuff can start to come up. And just based on what we've been talking about, IT sounds like maybe that's a little closer to what you guys have been seeing already.
It's so tough because I so I feel we talked about this and I can't really ephod on. But like the each platform reach store is going for different things. So nan tinder is making great choice. They also make IT easy to lightship and the game's on the thing, right? But you're getting the intinded product when you go in indu. Think what you're talking about doesn't quite a line with like what I think of with SONY, which is SONY, is we are a the showcase of hardware in your living room and we're going to continue to make these seventy, eighty dollar video games that are very, very fancy in black, mister, right? And that's our brand.
What you are described and and makes a lot of sense to me for x box and as especially as a pushes on the game pass, where there becomes much more value and novelty and just pure output, the number of things that you are shipping and less on, hey, here is the one game that you're going to play for the next five years. Game x box, I think, would be much happier for you to play ten games a month than one game a month because you're playing ultimately, the product is game pass. The games are just a piece of that, right? So I can see what you're talking about.
I think that also means itself into steam. But at the end of the day, the thing that I am curious what both you and fresh think about is still the financial risk. Just making games remains very expensive.
It's much cheaper than I ever was before in terms of distribution and no engines. But IT is really risky. And I don't know how what you're describing mitigates at risk.
I mean, the risk of making a sixty hour giant open world game is unquestionably enormous. It's probably the risky thing you can do.
The risk of making a four hour narrative adventure that microsoft wants because it's a good advertisement for game pass is a lot lower like IT takes to is like kind of a great example of something that is like not that risk of in IT had some risk officiously a weird divorce game, but it's not that risky from an overall scale of the project standpoint. And I think, you know microsoft has the deep pockets that can pay for things. And if one of those fails, IT doesn't mean game pass files.
You look at red fall, that's a good example. Red fall was an an enormous project that really had a disastrous launch, came out on game pass, supposed to be like a big push for game pass. And the fact that IT like didn't sink game pass long term is telling IT how devasted microsoft is on this service. With all the other releases that we're coming up.
I will say two different things about risk. Their in relation to that, you kind of get on the head with the game pass of at all. yes.
If if microsoft has given you a contract before you start making this thing, yeah, there's deathly not that much risk there. You know you have a great thing going for you, but most developers are not going to have that. They might not even know if they should be on game pass or not.
And whether you're making a giant camera, a small game, it's all relative to you making money into the day, right? I think the other thing that I i'm just kind of bashing up against with this theory in terms like the business and where the people who the investors, the board member go is we're going to have a grandpa f TOTO. Six come out next year or the year after that.
And every board members going to say that's what I want. I want to continue getting that. That's a certain number, and i'm not going to give that because somebody released a CoOperative divorce game, I can get IT because again, to keep chasing the thing.
And so long as these big companies are tied to those boards, I don't know how the big companies get away from IT. And maybe maybe that's IT, maybe they're like doomed, like maybe you know that they are weirdly, their shareholders are this albatross with where direction of the industry is going. And I don't know yet.
One of the most sort of fascinating threats of this entire like reporting and research project was talking to people who like care about games at, like, an emotional sort of, I play games level, and those people cannot find them. Why all of these companies have stop caring about making games that are fun to play.
Because if you make games that are fun to play, people will play them and you'll more of them and everybody wins, right? And then I talk to people on the business side who are essentially like making games fun to play is like not the point. Like we're a business for here to make money.
And if we can make more money while making the game slightly less fund to play, but people still buy the game, like that becomes a harder choice than I think you would like IT to be. And like people tell the sort of halo all the time, I feel like it's like sort of economic version of this rate. Like you have bgi, which makes great games because he wants to make great games, and then he gets so big that that kind of gets crushed by its own big ness.
And its which is developers and the culture is different, that becomes about making money. And then halo just kind of like falls in on itself like a dying star over time. But I think you're right and that that tension is super real. But IT also gets to a point where eventually that's gonna turn on somebody in a really big like earth, shaking the huge way it's gonna everybody afraid. I mean.
IT IT has. I mean, halo is a great example of that. Like this is the big one of the bigger france is ever in the history video games. And because of wasn't Justin animation decisions that was part of IT, they made some like pretty scummy moniz ation decisions but also like design uh issues and technical issues and like all that stuff, you know, resulted in a major calamity for this franchise that will need to be reputed again. And that is like a total cautionary tale for all these companies.
That is like, okay, well, there's a limit to what you can do you know about the front two was another example of that and you know even cybercrime was another example that we're like, you know, they've write the ship, but I took them several years to get there, and I was an enormous risk. And I do think you will start to hear within these giant companies some push back because someone to say, hey, we need to push this out in fall of twenty twenty four, whatever is and someone is, is going to say, yeah, but remember what happened to cyber punk? Was that good for about line? Maybe you should wait six months.
And I think star fielders is representation of that. Like they delayed that game basically a full year. IT was done industry for a full year, and they spent that all on polish. And not saying that's a great game, but like curly is one of the cleanest games that but as they ever released. So I do think there is a slight sea change going on.
Yeah I maybe I compares on is not just the the proceed TV, but the end of the studio era and film making, which is like the twenty years to the fifties or it's like this, like just a handful of studios have total control. Even the the talent there is like they're good for tablets, but they are they they do not have much of us say no.
They like sign contracts with the studio and then whatever the studio tell them to do.
Yeah exactly. And the studio themselves had a lot more say in distribution and that yeah maybe we are coming out of that for games and we will see something, something to what we saw for film into six .
years and seventies. So this is film spends big fear IT, right? Is that he he wrote that email that came out in the the x box leaks over the summer, basically saying that now that the handful of big publishers don't have like that retail store shelves, distribution monopoly, everything has suddenly open and those companies have been slow to figure that out like that.
I think there's something to that theory. I think we're probably just at the beginning of that because there's more to just store shelves than. In in changing the way people find a buy games. But I do think I think you're onto something.
And at the end, that route is something like game pass, right, which changes the way we think about discovery because you don't have to buy a game before you can play IT, you can just show up and play IT. IT changes the way that can get made because they're going end up, you know, a lot of cases getting paid for how people play, not just by getting you to buy the game with by calling IT hot words. All of that feels like it's it's in the middle of like being turned on the ted right now.
Yeah, I do want to be carefully because when we say, oh, this might be the end of like the studio error, we are still in a circumstance where like a very, very small number of companies are in control of the vast majority of the generation of wealth within the games industry. Microsoft just march with with activision, uh, that is a huge percentage of the game space.
A look at how much, uh valve controls the P C gaming market and that's what are they getting thirty percent on each sale for that. I mean, effectively, that's a studio deal in a lot of ways. So you know I don't think it's that divested among.
So I mean, a lot of people are making money in games, don't get me wrong, but like mostly it's these like eight companies that are like doing very well. And I think you will only increase to combat what you are just talking about because the way to solve that problem of not having the store shelves is acquisition, you know, microsoft going out buying with as buying activision. You know, SONY needs to make the same sort of moves to ensure that they have these franchises I can like rise above and again. And all that does is just make IT fewer and fewer companies.
Yeah, I found one study that said the the public gaming companies like nintendo, O N E A and a few others right now have more than forty five billion dollars between them, just in cash sitting around. And obviously, if that I could about you an activision, but there's only one, activision and microsoft, I did that.
And so the the theory coming out of that was we might be in for a huge phase of consolidations and acquisition, and we're going to go from this sort of interesting splinter ing of people who can make big, good, cool, exciting games. And that might all start to get compressed again because it's gna get bit by the same handful of companies that have been doing this for really long time. I think that's very possible and I think would be a kind of bad news.
I maybe the the hesitation I have with that is like we've seen embracing group try to do that right? Like a large company be like I want to buy a thirty different things and try to run in all and IT doesn't work well. I think there is a reason that even again, going back to film studios, they have let a lot of independent creators and studios and groups make something and they go and acquire that product.
And then they like they want, they avoid the risk of like the early days of development. But too, they're not managing so many things I wouldn't be surprised to of people made the bad decision to like over, consolidate and try to get as many studios under your boundary as possible. But I at the same time I impressed by disney who keeps I feel like every other week you here gives me the needs to go out and buy a video game studio that's the best thing for disney. It's like, you know what's great for disney having control of all the different IP that everybody wants to work for, having no overhead costs and being able to set how much money you want from each .
project yeah what is that like to just to pull IT back to the, like, the T, V streaming era. That's very much how we got peak T V, right? You have all these different players looking for content.
You get into this place where like being someone who makes good things becomes an incredible advantage because you're going you have all this competition for your work and everybody y's looking for new things. And so that like you get this phase of, Frankly, too much spending on the like distributor side. But it's a huge win for the people who like, make and consume content.
So like IT all turns into a giant mass, which is what we're living through in the T. V. World right now. But there is a phase as well. Like if if that comes true, they are describing Chris, we might get a hell of a lot of really good games, really fast, which could be very exciting.
I'm so curious what number three is going to be here?
OK, do you want to hear a number three?
Yes.
I have two more, and I can't decide which which to do first. Well, just do number three right now. Normal three is what I call the iphone future.
Okay, which is that everybody starts to complain that the big thing is boring. Now everybody gets mad. And or would you look at that? IT just keeps winning.
And the part of me that thinks this might be the truth is the part of me that has talked to folks who say some of these franchise we have are just completely uncalled, that there is nothing you can do to assessments create. There's no version of assassin you can make that is so bad that people will stop playing IT or the people will stop making IT. Same for color duty.
Same for mad. Everybody is is going to keep making star wars games because it's star wars. Everybody is is going to keep making Harry potter games because the Harry potter and that world is now so big and so successful that breaking IT up, or even breaking into IT is going to be much harder than anybody reckons for. And there might be a bunch of cool folks on the outside competing for scraps. But like the winners are gonna stay the winners no matter what they .
do IT is funny that you mention assessors created at the top there. Because assessors created historically, was an annual franchise just started, you know, even office pumping them out at an insane rate. And then just recently, like you know, they release fell, hello when the x box series ecs and political launched and then had like a gap of three or four years between that and age, which just came out to like kinds type reviews.
I think that the representation of like you will be solve alizon here. There's a lot of burn out here and we can keep up with IT. IT is not necessarily the bankable franchise that at once was. So I well, I agree with you like this also create not gona go away forever. I don't think it's the like lock sale guarantee that he wants .
was yeah I think you already named halo yeah and before that we talked about tony hawk, guitar hero. Nothing's killed.
To be fair, nobody killed tony hawk. Tony hawk remains. tony.
That depends on which conspiracy there you see .
believe I could .
see that in the innocence of like, yes, certain nine p that transcend games like hug words or whenever, yeah, of course, there is going to keep making them. And once they, we know, burn through one developer to go to a different one, I could may be, I think the exception to the rule here is, yes, something like call of duty, where IT will extend long beyond its life cycle.
But all duty month for three might have been laughed off the face of metic critic warm still make a plenty of money, you know, like, so they've done the thing that I think give yourself wanted to you with a science creed, which was, hey, we need to get away from these annual games. We need to get a like living game version of this out. And we're still waiting for that with a thousands creed where so far called duty has done pretty good job of adJusting.
And and they have a history of doing this, know they had mobile call of duty games that were available. And I believe in china, south korea, japan years, years ago before they even here, I believe, had a partnership with tencent. This is things they only need to fact check, but they are aware that they have to evolve with the times.
And then yes, the core product can just kind of keep being there. It's funny talking about all the marvel stuff in the superhero era because it's not so unlike what marvel has done with comics, right? Yeah comics themselves go up and down, but they are always trying to get into film or TV or audio books or who knows what else and even if the original comics are not the top sellers, they never fully go away. Yeah I think .
that and I think one of the things for me that has been the most interesting in trying to figure out this particular future is IT feels like I do think some of these franchise are, if not too big to die, like dam hard to kill. But then there's also this thing like you talk with the life services, gaming and IT also feels like we now have this dominant generation of a handful of those games.
You have, you know rob locks and fortnight and I don't know apex legends kind of and war zone and like there probably aren't more than five of these games that essentially dominate that space. And IT also feels like those are now so entrenched that IT might be hard for someone else to commit, do IT. So maybe, I don't know, maybe, maybe that old version was like the ipod era and now the life services games are the iphone, like poised to do the next fifteen years? And maybe that's just the cycle we're in.
Now we were talking about risk, and I was saying how a sixty hour open moral R P G is a huge metal risk these days, doing a free to play high budget game in the live services space is enormously risky. IT is so hard because those games, in particular, more so than like the star fields of the world. Free to place life service games are designed to maintain the pier base.
There's no winning those games. You're always constantly giving stuff to unlock or buyer whatever IT is. Fortnight changes every other week. They are constantly trying to hold on. So you would literally have to steal players away from the other game that they're playing to have your game be successful to the point where remedy, who just put out a long way to to a critical claim, announced very recently that they were working on a multiplayer free to played live service game that is no longer free to play and more narrative focused and more driven by what they're good at. So I think companies are realizing how disasters that can be trying to jump into a space that is already pretty well dominated by a handful all players.
Yeah, the network affects of IT are just so big to me. That's the thing I can I keep thinking about us like. You not only have to get me to think a game is cool, you have to get a bunch of people I like, and then many tens of millions of strangers to also think it's cool before I can actually like do anything in IT.
But the flip side of that is the reward seems to be higher than ever, right? Like the senses, we can build this game essentially once and make money from IT forever. And that seems to be what everybody wants.
Now fortnight's revenue is astronomical. I you know some of the league came out as part of the epic lawsuit and like IT is staggering how much money making. But you have to keep in mind even though IT seems like you're right, you could just make one game and you know maintain IT whatever is and people's sick around that is very much not the case.
The only way you can get people stick around is by constantly changing IT, adding new maps, adding new modes, skins, whatever. IT is forever like there's no ending to that. yeah. So you really are committing to this forever tae to maintain that player base. So you know IT is not as easy as you have your smashed and then it's it's good to go, but that that also shows you how harder is to jump in to the space because people are committing to not a three year project but at twenty year project.
Chris, what do you make of all that? Are his life services? Just gonna take everything over for this next face.
Definitely won't take everything over. Everything exists at the same time. You know, IT helps to think of video games, like channels on A, T, V.
They can all be doing a different thing, you know go to in and have twenty four our news and you can have twenty four our thing. You can do another channel and it's like the weather channel. And they do the same thing every five minutes, right?
But you know why that's a fun example is because a handful of those channels pay for .
all the rest of them yeah and most people only use three or four those channels. And yet you would say that take.
do you like TV? You know? Yes, but I don't think anybody means the weather .
channel and they say like T, V, with the change seen channel.
listen, the other channels sick. The thing they do with the storm surges like .
i'm all about IT, they have no respect for human dignity. No, I think it's easy to think of video games and video game business as a monolithic force, but IT really is. It's a sports industry, is a lifestyle industry.
IT is a children's entertainment industry. IT is a grown up single player thing. IT is a means of communication. IT is all these different things. And I mean, I think that is probably the reality of everything that we're talking about.
Is all the futures that you're talking about going to be true in some capacity and they're going to overlap uh, and often conflict with each other. It'll just depend on like what are the type of games that you see as the video game industry when you go to the game developers conference in sentences go every year. They have the summits that are broken.
Apple, like the VR summit, the free to place summit, right? And the business people that that attracts are just completely different human beings. They the strategies, the typic games are making.
Everything about IT is so that you could go to one of them and think, wow, this is everything in the new walk into a room across the hall year like i'm hearing the exact opposite of everything I just heard an hour ago. And neither of them are not necessarily wrong. Well, we are in big. They were probably both wrong. But other than that, I was great.
No, I think you're right. And I think one of the actually most encouraging things I found doing all this research was that we're in kind of a weird time in the entertainment business in general. P W U C, the like accounting consul firm, they do really interesting like state of the entertainment business thing every year.
And the basic take away for, I think this years was twenty three through twenty seven. So sort of the next five years was kind of the outlook. And basically, the overarching theory is like the entertainment businesses, weird and messy.
And growth is going down in a lot of ways, except for gaming, which just against all odds, continues to grow along. Basically every access you can think of, like more people are coming into gaming. They had this fund stat that like people over forty five or one of the fastest growing groups of gamers right now, so are women.
So are Young girls, like IT at a every faction of people you can think of are increasingly gaming. And what that means is probably that like a hand full of big things get even bigger over time. Like a lot of these people are gonna shop and called duty. That's fine. But IT also doing mean just the pie gets so much bigger that is just gonna allow for a lot more things. But all of that being said, I think IT is still going to be true for a long time that a handful of companies and properties run this business in a pretty real way like call of duty is going to continue to be a bell weather for a lot of things in a way that most things are not.
Yes, I think that's right. I think we can know perfect. The grants of auto will make a lot of money, and you will be absolutely humanest and take to will be okay because of IT. We can know for a fact that ffa now E A football cover, whatever they call IT. E A sports ffc.
the worst thing to video game of all time.
Yes, it's onna. Keep E A, just to flow enough for them to continue to try to figure out how to make massive acts cell again. What is confusing is like what E A B is big as IT once was, I don't know.
Will ubi soft t be as big as that once was? I don't know. Will new players rise in their place like epic with fortnight and publishing remedy probably? So I think you're write the big differences that just who those people are might change in the same way that, you know, cap calm.
If you had asked me about this ten years ago or saga, I would be like, what are you talking me about? And if you asked me about captain and say you today, i'd like, they do no wrong. They continue to make, well, cap company has really good street right now, IT independent that can go back and forth.
Or if you told me that convey that would not put out games, or really for a while, and that bandai nam co. Would be a huge. Now none of these things were of the things I could have predicted. And yet now arguing against eldern really is anything but one of the biggest games in the world sound silly .
yeah and I think that appoints the game french as as well. You know, people didn't have much understanding of what minecraft was gonna when minecraft launched. And the fact that this is now a worldwide property that was originally made by a very, very, very small team tells you that IT is possible.
That is like the jackpot of jackpots. There's really no scenario where anyone would ever bet the like hod of that happening. But IT is possible for new franchises to get in.
There is is very, very rare. It's like a once every five years kind of thing if that. So yeah, I mean, you will see movement. But again, I you know so long you're not super high per focused on the large business side of IT.
And if you're just sitting at home and you want to play core games, but it's never been Better for that, like IT is literally so diverse and you have so many options and from a like inexpensive nature like pine games and being in the games pretty and cheap for what you're getting out of IT, like the R I S. incredible. So I think IT is kind of a great time, as you said, for the audience to really grow and become bigger and more welcoming.
Kindly tell the unfair thing about video game culture. The one, this is actually the only one, the only issue I have. I've never actually had any concerns and that's well documented that freshmen's minecraft and I can say something like I played the original bill of minecraft when I was in a forum and I say that out loud and I sound like the biggest assault and nobody thinks that's cool.
You also sound like you're two hundred years old.
I do. But if I send something like, I saw lovely boys and liverpool at a little bar down the street and they went on to become the petals people would like, holy moly, that's incredible and I don't know what that there is something there maybe it's just game history that that was still of a dark era that people like, yeah, that just means that you are around in a dark at that time. But I just know.
I think you're impressive.
Thank you. Honestly, I just wanted praise and I got IT.
I'm so proud of you. I could not I couldn't even begin to tell you.
You might think that IT doesn't work, but he does. I do feel Better.
I am. Listen, i'm proud of you. You were early. You, you were early.
What are you going to do? You were the first one. You get to be a minecraft tips.
Ter, congratulate this recording out. And then just listen to IT every morning when I wake up.
right? We need music. One more quick break. And then I have one more theory that we've kind of already talked about. And then I have some questions ons for you.
And then we're going to that here right back.
And here we have travellers in their natural habitat enjoying guaranteed four P M. Check out of fine hotels and resorts, book through mx travel and they do even see what's coming at them. We're in.
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say the best for last. Thanks to I, max platon. The lost day vacation brings yet another experience that's a powerful backing of american express terms. Apply arn american. I were back my last theory we've basically already talked about, but i'm just gonna put a couple of peces together very quickly for you.
And this is what I called the music industry theory, which is basically that instead of a radical change in content, the first thing we're going to get is a new kind of consumer product that is actually then going to back into changing all of the content. And I think the two versions of that both of us, we have talked to about a little bit are game pass and things like IT. This idea that you pay one Price for lots of games instead of buying games individually and life services games, which is just a completely different way of monetizing a game that functionally changes like you're talking about us what those games are and how they're made and maintained over time.
So I think in this case, game passes probably be the more relevant one to like us right now at this moment, because what we haven't seen is what that will mean for how games get made, whether if feel like the life services answer is just obvious, right? Like if micro transactions changed, how games got made like that, that just exists in the world. Now I don't think that's arguable anymore. But I do think the question of lake is the way that we buy and pay for games, going to change the games themselves is still kind of in the middle being sorted out.
I actually think that game has is already determining how some games get made really okay. I think it's already happening. I think there are three hour narrative games that would not exist if a pitch wasn't Green lit by microsoft and said, okay, oh, this is great.
We love what you're doing and here's this like cute little a walk through of IT and and more into IT. It's gonna to game pass. But ordinarily that three hour narrative game would really struggle on steam or another platform, and game passes the solve in the way that that kind of reaches all the people.
Chris, you were pointing during that. I'm assuming you like this theory.
I was waiting for fresh to say my game of the year from last year, pintin IT, was made within the x box family. This is an indian me. But what happened is subsidies, who has made very, very large role play games, decided, let's make a book about the sixteen th century.
And I say, a book i'm in video game, but that a halve fifteen flip, because IT was really just a game that you read a lot about. You are an illuminator. So like the person you made, like, you know, text look beautiful, a very, very back in the day.
And then there is kind of like a murder mystery that happens. IT is a slow game. IT is a deeply thoughtful game.
IT is a religious and spiritual game. IT would have never ever been made within the xbox system without game pass. And xbox made a lot of indigation where there is a huge deference between limbo and pintin. And I think xbox proving that is showing like, hey, this is something that we're looking to do inside. I think that they are doing that, and there's a lot of reasons for them to do that.
I think that is a great way to retain talent because how often in the past would be like, well, this person made all their money and now they're going to leave and go make pintin ment because they can and being able to say, hey, when you know stay here, keep you paid will hit take you are your health and turns and you can just make IT here. I think that's encouraging. I think IT also is a great way for them to test out ideas.
Playing a game like pintin, you can feel a lot of the groundwork for probably much larger games that the studio will do in the future. So IT creates, I think, a healthier ecosystem at these very large companies. Fresh mentioned really earlier in this the day of the diver at a next on being mistaken for indian game.
But I think it's telling that the next one would want to try to create something like that and have that is part of their part. Folio IT feels crap, we have to say, like as part of a portfolio. But again, and at the end of these are businesses near balancing these needs. I am more curious what this means for studios that are not owned by a major publisher though, and are I how they start designing games towards game pass, especially if they don't have a contract before they you know start work .
yeah it's worth no, I don't think there's a scenario, especially in those external cases where they don't kind of start with A A representation of what the project is going to be and pitched to microsoft and say, hey, here's what the game is. So no one starting from zero, zero to get on cam best. But I do agree, I think those pictures are altered by game has simply existing.
Yeah, it's like the the IT just always means we think about the the thing on netflix where like every netflix, many series is like two episodes long because there they're very interested in the idea of getting you to watch as long as possible because that's what success looks like. And so every every movie is thirty minutes too long. In every many series is two episodes too long.
And part of that is just a functioning for the system is right? It's the incentives. It's how people experience these things, is what gets you in the door. And I think in games that will do similarly interesting stuff just in the same way that like the APP store is another recent example of this, right?
Like the APP store changed the way that people thought about paying for games because it's pretty quickly everybody decided that you can put a seventy doll game in the APP store, whether that was a good decision historically or let us down a until the horrible roads we can debate. But then that changed bunch of games and that's we're a lot of the free to place stuff started to come from and like loop boxes started to become the thing. And IT changed apple services business.
And like you spire all all of that out of this, like one how IT monotones decision in really messy ways. IT also LED you a lot of awful, awful crap on the absa that is just designed to con you in the paying for stuff you don't actually want. And my fear for something like game pass would be that like, if not properly created, IT will turn into something like that too.
Like I think all the time about spotify thing, where there are all these White noise podcasts on spotify making a ton of money because the way that they make money is by getting you to play stuff for a long period time. And if you play a twelve hour noise podcast for eight hours, that's going to make the podcast some money even though it's just wait notes. And so that's just like it's a little way of breaking the incentive structure that I think there are gonna be ways to that in games that are gonna be ugly. And it's going to be interesting to see microsoft and others try to not let that happen.
What is good is that because you have to pay for game pass, microsoft really can't put free to play games on game pass because they are free. So at least you can avoid that. There are games on their that have moniz ation elements where you can buy scans or whatever IT is even though IT is on game pass.
Broadly speaking, that's not the case. Most of the games that are on there are like pretty full games to begin with. But I do think having that small buried entry of payment actually makes a huge difference. Apple arcade is the other representation of that were none of those games have modernization built in because they're already .
getting the money up front and both them are also retailers. So is the difference to me like netflix and amazon amazon prime, right, where netflix doesn't also sell the movies so they just try to get as much as possible within netflix. But I feel like in both the game pass in that our key case, you can have chaos, you can have thousands of options go by him. But went part of the cell of rejoining these services is the curation. You're only going to get the quote past to the best.
And I think that's right. And I think if that holds, you can lead this some very cool things. And again, is an other kind of thing that can open up lots of discovery and different avenues for doing different kind of stuff because you don't just have to bet on the stuff that you know works because you have other ways to put IT in front of people.
I think that's really cool, right? That sounds like all my theories are true. I feel great about this. I just crush this research project.
You did so well.
not proud you. I have three questions for the two of you that I have not successful ly answered in any way, shape or form by talking to people and you brought up and I want to talk about and we're going to get that to here. The first question is, is the seventy dollar Price tag for game gonna can that hold? I see people who are furious about. I see people who are like, actually, that's an undersell for what some of these games are worth like is that is that sustainable .
in the gaming industry? Certain not going to go down. It's at seventy dollars now for you, quote next games.
Obviously smaller games can be cheaper than that. But yeah that I think that will stay. Um but I also think some games, if you're gonna spend hell elderly perfect example.
I played elden ring for hundred fifty hours. Easily worth I think IT was sixty dollars when I came out, easily worth than sixty dollars. I'd pay hundred dollars and be happy so yeah I I think I IT is sustainable and so force, it's not going to come down from that.
I also think we're seeing more variety of pricing across the landscape. You know a science creed mirage didn't cost seventy dollars yeah yet. It's also a big game there is I think it's never great to have to pay more money for things. But also the pricing of video games has been a disaster for two decades. And how that has been addressed has been everything from horse armor, you to other GLC and and the studio are always trying to figure out like how are we going to make this work? The industry is a bit more financially party less than I think sometimes as people give a create for that's not to say that there are aren't ceos taking just absurd pay days and that there is a Better ways to run these businesses. But even with that, the sheer cost to make a game is just getting higher and higher in the risk associated with that is getting higher with that.
What I would also add is go back and find copies of like the toys are us magazine from when the superintendent launched. And you will see the Prices were like pretty much in the line with the Prices we see today, sometimes even over back then. So really, game Prices have not kept up with inflation in the way that other industry is. Like movie take a .
tab though we have verge listeners. So we will recognize that is because IT is cartridge with chips inside and IT costs more to actually make them than desks. We recognize all of IT. I'm just saying I could feel I can feel people tensing their hands around their sterling wheel. I just drive right on the edge.
Companies will charge exactly what they think they can charge and still make money.
And I will say is there is really no historical precedent for that number going down. I think you're right. okay. I'm going to combine my last two questions into one question, which is, what the hell is the deal with GTA six? I, I, I have talked to so many people and done so much research on this.
And there is this thing that is happening where the news of a possible forthcoming trailer for GTA six was like, nationwide news. G T, A five is like a good game. It's very oldest, very popular ground of daughter is not like, by an order of magnitude, the biggest game on planet earth. But there is something about this game coming, we think, next year, right, twenty, twenty four, that is different. Like what is the deal with this game?
I mean, I would look to when grand theft total five came out that year. He was a guaranteed lock solid, no question about IT biggest game of the year by a mile. And it's continued to make autonomy over the course of the last decade because of moniz ation gt. Online stuff.
So maybe i'm underrating how big GTA really is.
Oh yeah, big time. There are very few games and this is applied like collide ity as well. Very few games in the world that you know for sure are going to totally dominate the sales of a given year. And G, T, S.
one of them. What if IT sucks? Because is there any remote possibility that this just like isn't a good game? It's been a long time.
Oh, sure. yeah. They've had some turn over with staff. It's certainly possible. I mean, we've seen cybercrime. Everyone was so sure that, that game was going to come out and be incredible because which I was amazing and that studio is amazing work, broadly speaking. And they came out obviously wasn't. So it's always possible, I do think, and I brought this up earlier, I do think because of the cyber punk of the world, if there was a chance that he was going to come out and be a total disaster, they would hold IT. They would not put IT out because the amount that they've already sunk into IT would not allow them to eat the amount of shift that they would have to eat if I came out with a disaster.
That's fair, Chris. I remember in one of our first conversations about this series, one of the questions you floated was what if G. T.
A six is the last triple a game? I said I I think IT won't be. But I think there is something about this moment and this game that feels, I don't know, inflections. Is that a thing like that at an inflection point? Can you be at whatever IT feels like a moment in the broader gaming world, too?
IT is because IT always is bigger. Every gt. Aging is bigger than what we thought possible.
I remember when I played G, T, A, five for the first time on the X, X, three, sixty, and I felt like the dark arts IT felt like IT should not be running on that hardware. And IT was just so grand. And scope and ambition, whether or not it's even good, it's big.
It's funny. Since we talked about that, I actually dug up in an old story it's telling that can remember that was during G J four launch, G S five launch, which was by somebody who is saying just that this is the end of triple y games that can't get me bigger than this. It's not sustainable.
We'll never see anything like this ever. And like obviously, that was not the case. That said, we are in a different point in the industry that we were in GTA five and even GTA four came out.
Everything we just discuss before this, there is more variety and more choice. There are not just a single player games. As people might forget, the G, T, A, five with online, online came later in broken and IT took a while to like IT get itself up and running.
And now either online is entirely separate game or IT IT works at the beginning. It's going to be one of the other. But when I going to see that, that happen again. So yeah, I I don't think it's the last triple I game, but I do think IT will feel different than anything that we've seen before IT.
And I also think the weight for G T A seven might be even longer because they have realized how much money they can make building a really sustainable online system with my ization built in that this feels like the launch of a life service game as much as IT is uh single power campaign where you you know, can make crimes. So yeah, it's gonna be a big deal, and it's gonna be again. And we're going to be all living with for easily a decade, if not fifteen.
Who know my dick ous G. S. theory? yes. G. S. 7。 IT is going to be the return to new york. And there are obviously working a lot about their interest in AI and generative tech.
And I don't think think they do G, T, seven unless you can go in buildings in new york, which would be just an absolute absurd idea. But I I don't know. I am curious like what the big turn is as they as we look, you know, fifteen years out from now, what are they thinking about A H R point?
We played IT. Guess what we've played that game or talking about, it's called starfield. It's got thousands of planets and you want to go .
in none of them. Well, no, no, no. I see what you forgotten know is that game was called load screen.
Yeah, i'm talking about you when you actually get to do the thing that you are promised. Then staff far really walking into the room with the wrong time and the game i'm very interested in. Maybe this is a series that we do next. That distant future of video games is where i'm really curious about what things are going to get because on top of all these other inflections on points, we are hitting a technological moment that I think is going to really change what video games look like and feel like.
I think that's right. I've heard a surprising amount of people saying generate A I is going to completely change everything about how we make and experience videos. And everybody says that about a general I and everything. So unlike I, I kind of do a lot of like patting people on the head when they say that stuff. But I think fast for a while you're probably not wrong.
I would just can see with generate A I I understand that people hear that and they might think like, oh, general, I is like creating a game that I hit the make me a good game button. I'm not talking about that. Like if you go to any these major studios, they are farming out so much work, two people who just make apples and fake blue eyes and tables that they put in their game stuff assets.
Um that is a thing that I I think will be filing that right like there are and again, whether enough that's good or evil or or whatever is a whole different thing. But IT is going to allow for scale. And in a way that I think is gonna kind of distributing at first are well.
in twenty thirty eight, the three of us gonna like a hologram revisit of this series and we're going to see what we ve got right and what we got wrong. But for now, we got to go. Thank you both for doing this.
This series has been so much fun. We're going have to in the reason to do this again. I have very much enjoy doing the city guys.
Hey, can we apply our show please if you have enjoyed stenting to rustrained tic and myself, we have a podcast called the best ees that we do every week with just in griffe mccoy of the adventures zone and my brother and my brother and me that's kind of how you said um and we also have a every other week uh spend up on the same feed called the rested where is just fresh kind of getting into the new creation of things.
So if you enjoy that, you can get that. And if you enjoy us being here um you can reach David at a new a patel at a compuserve that com. I think this is an email address and and we'll take care of from there.
I'll leave his phone number in the shown .
nuts who went two hundred cruel guy.
awesome. Thank you both. We will, we will do the skin someday when gt seven comes out.
This can be epic. Alright, that's IT for the broadcast. Thanks to Chris and rust for being here. This was super fun. I will miss you terribly and thanks to all of you as always for listening.
As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or other big games you wanted talk about, you can always email us at verge cast at the verge that com, or keep calling the hotline eight, six, six of verge one one. We have some fun hot line stuff plan between the end of the year, so keep calling in with all of your questions, thoughts and ideas. This show is produced by andrey o and liam James.
The verge cast is a verge production and part of the vox media pocket network. We're off for the rest of this week for the thanksgiving holiday, but will be back next week because there is more news. We get some fun end of the year stuff coming, all kinds of good stuff. We'll see you then rock room.
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