186: How Many A's Does It Take To Make A Hit?

Sam. Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Backlog Breakdown, a video game podcast where we seek to encourage and equip the church to engage in the medium of video games wisely and responsibly. I'm your host, Josh, and with me today, as, as always, is my co host and brother in Christ, Nate. Hey, Nate.

It's a. Me and Nate. Yeah, I'm pretty good, man.

Was that a reference to Super Mario? One of the Mario Twins?

One of the Marios, yeah.

There you go.

One is. I love that it is canonical. That it is Mario. Mario and Luigi Mario.

Yeah. From the 90s movie.

Yeah. That's where we get all of our.

Mario canon from, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm doing all right, man. We're just kind of like, you know, we're doing. But you know what? I think. I think, you know. Yeah. I think we just need to talk about how it's been. It's been since we last spoke.

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. How has it been over the course of the past few weeks? The undisclosed amount of time. We'll put this.

Undisclosed amount of time since we last spoke.

Right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, with us, it has been. It's been okay. Like, dude, I don't know. I don't know what weather has been like for you out there, but the last, like, week or two has been, like, kind of cold and wet and rainy, and it's almost very reminiscent of like, how March kind of feels. It's not as cold. Like, March kind of, like, you know, feels like March. You have, like, the, like, winter. It's like, it's. It's holding on by its fingernails, and it's like, kind of like refusing to, like, really let go. So. But it's been just, like, kind of cold and wet, and that's not fun. And then, like, the one or two nice days that we've had, like the one day do you have. And again, I don't know. I'm sure. Yeah, but, like, have you gotten, like, pollen bombed at all where, like, you go outside and there's just like, a layer of, like, pollen just over every. Like, you can see it, like, on your car.

Yeah, yeah, maybe something like that. Something similar. Yes, I understand what you're talking about.

So, yeah, like, we. The. The one day, like, we walked outside and it was like, oh, hey, it's kind of sunny. And it looked like somebody just like. Like somebody would just shook out a giant bag of dust all over our vehicles, and I was like, oh, sick. Like, there's pollen everywhere. So it's like, there's like, it's just like prime, like head cold, sinus garbage weather.

Yeah.

Which is always super fun. But no, I mean like, things are, things are pretty good. We, we actually just like as a sort of a sweeter note. It's like Megan and Byron, they're in their summer rhythm now. Byron is going to be like, we are keeping him in daycare for a few days a week just to like one, give him some extra socialization.

Sure.

And two, when he goes back to daycare, it's going to be a little easier than if like he just has like all summer off and then has to go back, you know, because he's, he's pretty attached at the hip to mom right now in a lot of ways. It's like she has to like, if she leaves to go like run errands, like, we have to like, like trick him like, hey buddy, like, go get snacks with daddy, you know, and like while we're getting the snacks, like, she kind of like shimmy's out the door, ducks out. Yeah. Because like if he sees her go, it's mama, mama, mama. You know, for the next 15 minutes.

Yeah, but, yeah, that makes sense.

But yeah. So sort of as a little bit of a really like mild kind of like summer kickoff thing, Megan had gotten me this little like stainless steel, like fire. It was like a micro fire pit can thing. Like you kind of set it up.

Okay.

Yeah. You can like burn like wood pellets or like little like little chunks of wood in it. Anyways.

Sure.

So we set that up and we roasted some marshmallows over it and.

Nice. Nice.

It was fun. Yeah, it was, was. It was pretty cool. So it's like, it's just a little guy like that. I was, I was actually talking to Megan too, and I said like, I think what I need to do with it is like, because the pellets, they burn really quickly. And I think kind of what needs to happen is like, I probably need to move to more towards a kind of a hybrid of the two where it's like I use pellets to maybe like get things kind of like started and then maybe do like, like kindling size, like take. I'm gonna look into getting something that will help me like split some of. Because I have a bunch of firewood and if I got, if I can just take some of that and like kind of like turn it into kindling. I mean, I could probably do that with like a hatchet or something, but to see if there's like something that will make. But yeah, but yeah, so we, we did like a little bit of a s' mores roast tonight on the back porch.

Nice.

It was really kind of fun, so.

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like.

What's up with you guys?

Sounds like a nice time.

No.

Well, yeah. What have we been up to? We were actually, we took a trip back down to Texas for a little while so. Funny you mentioned weather. Yeah, it was cold here in Iowa for, you know, one of the weeks that we. But now it's warmed up. Although the warm up here in Iowa is different than warming up in Texas. So it's, it's fine. I mean it's always hot there, but it was not. I was expecting like triple digit heat. You know, part of the. We're going back at the end of May. Like it was later in spring than we had kind of wanted to for that reason just because the weather. But it wasn't quite as bad as I expected. So we did have one day of triple digit heat while we were there. It is more humid there so you know, it's, it's hot. But it was not unbearable in the mornings were I was able to go out on walks before the sun was up and it was nice. So that was, that was, that was really good. So anyways, yeah, weather changed but, but we were in Texas and so it was, it was nice and warm for us. So we're, we're doing great. We had a great time just hanging out with family, you know, family we hadn't seen in a few months since the last time we were down there. So we had a great.

How long, how long does it take you guys to get down there again?

So we do it in two days. We do the bulk of the drive. Well, I'd say 2/3 of the driving the first day and then the, the second, the last third. So basically the, the first day we drove down there, we made it to North Texas about nine hours away and then we had about four hours of driving after that for the next day. So second day isn't quite as bad in same deal, a little, a little shorter first day coming back, but made it back 4 o' clock in the afternoon yesterday. So yeah, yeah, it's a good long time. But I think our kids are used to it now because they actually do really well in the car, like surprisingly well because we've, we've, we try to limit them to screen time. Only half the time that we're driving, not the whole time because once they get those things out. They're. They're locked in, man. And that makes it for an easy drive. It's just. They're also zombies. And, you know, I would be also if I was literally just staring at a screen all day long, you know, so, yeah, it's only part of my days where I stare at screens. But, no, we're doing great. And then we got a puppy today, so that's fun, too.

Yeah. I mean, he hasn't, like. Listen, I just. That naming, like, it's horrendous. But the puppy is very cute.

Mr. Barkley. Yeah.

Charles Barkley.

Yes. Yes. You know, we just love the puns. Yeah, he's a cute pup. He's still trying to figure out, you know, what is going on here. He's very skittish, you know, and our house is old and creaky, and so he's kind of just like, what is. You know, when people walk around, what is that? What is that? But already in the. In the few hours he's been here, he's. He's starting to warm up a little bit, but he's got a ways to go. I'm sure by, you know, in, like, two days, he'll be running around, peeing all over the place. It'll be great, you know, it's going.

To be so awesome.

Yeah. Just stepping in puddles all over the place.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry. Anyways, that's, you know, that's. That's how we like to start off this podcast was. And how we've been doing and talking about stepping in puddles in our own house. Not true. But now that we've caught up on what we've been into, or at least the overall idea of how we've been over the past couple weeks, let's take a little.

Now that we've discussed how it's been since we last spoke.

Right.

It's been.

Okay. Okay, you wanted that.

So now I'll give that to.

Now that we've discussed how it's been, we do have some media to report. Grab your headphones and turn up the sound.

We're here to tell you what's going down.

All right. We've watched the movie, we've binged a show, we've read a book, and we want to let you know the top.

More than one book.

Anyways.

I think it is. It is only fair, too, to let people know that we have a tentative title change for the segment. And it was actually, you know, and we've just got to, like. We already, like, privately shame Them. But like, I'm going to like, publicly shame our patrons.

Oh, ouch.

You know, we asked them for.

I like those guys, though.

I do too. I do too. And it's like, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

So public shaming ensues.

Public shaming ensues. Like we asked. We're like, hey, you know, we. We want to rename this. And they, they just. They failed me.

They had some great names, but they were all jokes.

They were all fun.

It was good fun.

Yeah, it was like. It was like. It was.

I liked it.

It was. It was funny. Except for like, you know, we, we were kind of being serious. We, We. We wanted to rename this, so. But you actually posited something that I don't hate, so.

Yeah. Yeah. Which I'm. I'm slightly surprised at.

Yeah, well, I think it's so it's like, it's on brand and it's kind of like, it just seems. But it's also. It makes sense because like, so what you said, like XP Share as. As the segment title. And you know that we all know that that's like a gaming reference to experience. And these are experiences like you experience a book or movie or music or whatever. And so like these are things that you sit down and you sort of go through. And it even works for video games because a lot of video games are very experiential in their orientation. Some of them are passive. But more often than not, like even, even movies and books and everything else, like, even though there's a passive element where you're just kind of like, you're just reading the written word, but there is like, it. You're stepping in. So it's like it. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, it was good. The. The more. The more I sit back on it and sort of like, like sit with it. So now you have to generate some AI Slop to.

Yes.

Ruin that for me too.

AI Slop is. Is certainly coming. And, And I just gotta hand it to you that I'm very surprised and very pleasantly surprised. And I appreciate that you like it so much, being that it is basically a Pokemon reference, because there's an item in Pokemon that's the experience share that you can turn on. So just, just remember that every time.

You'Re ruining this Joshua, like you're making it. You're actively making it worse. Stop while you're ahead.

So there we go. Anyways, we'll have that by the next episode, you know, so.

Yeah.

So unless we hear. Unless we get an uprising of people contacting us that we cannot stop playing that pop punk tune, you know, and that you absolutely love.

I would say even if we get just. Just clamoring at the gates, it's. No, it's like we. It has to. It has to. Like we. We must change it with. It must. It's. It's. Time is. Has passed. Yeah.

Yeah. It had its glory day in the hot sun.

Let. Let the era of experience begin.

Yeah, I like that. I like that. All right, well, speaking of which, do you want to share first?

Yeah, I can do that. I don't have tons and tons and tons on the agenda, really. Like, I gotta pull up just the best radio. I'm pulling up my notes on the notation. I did finish. Can I say that by Brena Blaine. I did sit down and actually just like, listen to the rest of the book. There are. Towards the end, there are a couple things that threw up, not flags, but like question marks where I would probably differ with her fairly significantly. And they're just some like. Okay, again, she's more broadly evangelical. She is like reformed adjacent, but.

Oh, okay.

Like, I think she probably leans towards reformedom or Calvinism, like a Calvinistic bent. But there's some positions that she holds that do not just like that. Yeah. Anyways. But mostly it's a really good book. I think it's a really good book sort of examining trauma and helping people who have experienced. Because, like, I think a lot of people have experienced church hurt, you know, and she acknowledges that and is honest about like her own experiences in that. And at the same time says, like, it's kind of like, that's still not. It's. It's. It's almost like one of those things. It's very compassionate, but it's like, it's not an excuse. Like.

Yeah.

You know, and. Or even just like sort of like. And I think like two is. It was a good. There were several things in there. I think there was like a kind of just a part of her story and it's. And again, I would just recommend people read the book because it's her story and I don't want. But like, you know, there was a part of her life where she was living in some fairly significant sin and it was addressed by church leadership in a way that I think demonstrated real wisdom and graciousness where it's like, there's this. This thing where they. The. The pastor looked at her and said, like, this is not healthy. Like, you know, I'm like, a lot of people struggle with this thing, you're not alone in this. But this is not like, he doesn't. He didn't shy away from it. He didn't say, this isn't sin or this. But he. At the same time, he looked at her and said, I'm glad you're here. Like, I would rather you be here and wrestling with this thing than just walking away from it. Like, walking away from the church. So. And I think that that was really pretty. Like, just, like, in things like that. Like. And I'm like, you know, listening that. And it was a good reminder, I think. Like, I think sometimes the church, we need to remember that, like, we're hospitals. Like, Jesus came for the sick and the lost. And the church, in some ways, yes, we are, you know, the church militant, but there also needs to be room for the broken. Like, we need to make sure that these are safe spaces for broken people. And again, not where we're so, you know, where it's not listening, oh, hey, just like, hey, live however you want. It doesn't really matter. Like, it's like, come as you are. But understand that, like, there is an expectation for grace to transform your life, you know? And I think she. That's not like, a hard needle to thread. And I think she. She overall did a really good job in sort of, again, sort of like, unpacking and wrestling with trauma and just sort of like, walking people through some of that. And. And again, there's some sticky points where it's like, there's a couple things she says that I'm like. I like. Yeah. But overall, sure, it's like. It's like. I think it's a really good book. I think it's a really. There's some good challenges and good sort of, like, exhortations in the book. I also recognize that the book probably wasn't written targeting someone like me. Like, I think this book is looking at people who are wrestling with church hurt and gotcha just. And she is kind of. She is. She's. She's inviting people to walk through her story, see, like, and look at all the trauma in her life. And, you know, and still offering, like, an encouragement and an exhortation through that.

Yeah.

And so I think it's. Again, there's some. There's some flags, you know, out there, but I think it's. Overall, I think it's pretty good. In addition, I have kickback up and it's heavier, and I sort of, like, took a little bit of a break on it, but The Unseen Realm by Michael, Heiser Dr. Heiser. I'm going back to that. It's like. It's kind of like one of those things where it's. It's. It's a little redundant for me in the sense, like, he is. It's very scholastic in the sense that, like, he's kind of going down the deep dives, but it's like. It's not anything he hasn't sort of addressed. Like. And there's, like. I think there's, like, a little bit, like, there's hints of molinism sort of sprinkled throughout this a little bit. Okay. Because I don't. I. I'm. He was not reformed. I don't. I don't think.

Right.

But it's like one of those books where it's like, oh, it's kind of like I already believed all this or most of this anyways. Like. And now he's just sort of like, giving a little more of, like. It's like, sort of like the. Like, I already agreed with you, but now I'm seeing, like, the scholastic, like, the academic reasoning behind it. Like, do you know what I'm saying? It's like.

Mm.

It's like I already sort of agreed with this. I already sort of, like, held to this perspective, but now I'm seeing, like, it's not just like, there's. There's actually, like, a deep sort of scholarly examination of this as well. And so it's like, it's. You know.

Yeah.

Like, maybe it's. I don't know anyways. But I like it. It's. But it is heavy. It's kind of dry, and it's. Yeah, it's. It's scholastic, but, yeah, just. People, I just need you to start coming on over to the. The Divine Council theory. Like, we need to reject. We need to reject the Sethite position and just understand, you know, that the Nephilim and. Yeah. Anyways. But, yeah, it's. It's. Yeah. I was explaining that to somebody earlier this week, and I just. I looked at him, I said, I don't think this is essential. Like, I don't. But it's like, it is something I hold to. And I do think it is important. Like, you know, and. And sort of just. I'm not gonna. I don't want to derail too much here on this. What I would say is, as I have sort of wrestled with the enchanted worldview stuff with, like, the Divine Council position, and as I've sort of walked down this road and really thought about it and wrestled with it, I do think that it reinforces the spiritual realities of our faith that I think that the Sethite position, like, sort of allows us to retreat into a materialist position where, like, functionally we're materials. Like, oh, yeah, you have a soul, but it doesn't have any effect. Yeah, there is a spiritual realm, but it doesn't mean what. It doesn't mean that much. And what this and sort of walking through this and wrestling with this and, you know, sort of really weighing, like, sitting in this and. And weighing the arguments and the thoughts and everything else has really encouraged me to take into serious consideration the, Again, the import of the spiritual realities. Like, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, that humanity is sort of a bridge creature. Like, we are a body and a soul and we have kind of, in a manner of speaking, we. We exist in two realms and in two realities. And now we only actively can as like, we can only willfully act on the material reality. Right, sure. But, yeah, like. And Christendom makes claims about, like, spiritual realities. And so, like, this is something that I. This is a position I think helps reinforce us. And that inclination, like, yeah, I don't think it's essential. Like, I don't think, like, if you don't hold to this, you know that. But I do think it. It has been very affirming, like, in, like, very enriching in my own. So anyways, the same, like, I think it's worth going down the road and wrestling with it for yourself. And I think Heiser's work is pretty foundational to some of that. And just. And it's not like Heiser's rediscovering, like, oh, like, it's not this, like, thing where he's just like, this is. It's not the first time this. These arguments have been made in church history. It's just in a lot of ways, we lost touch with this. Like, some of this. Some of these positions have been held by the Church Fathers for hundreds of years. And it's more of like, we're sort of separated, you know, through time and space and all the other things from. From this. And so anyways, yeah, it's. It's whatever, but last. But. And last and sort of like the least important piece of media. It's still interesting. I still really like it. It's still super weird. I'm finishing up severance.

Okay.

And so, like, I'm kind of like, that's been a bit of a slow burn for me. Like, I do not understand how people can watch that show and just like, like, you know, it's like I kind of plowed through the first season pretty quickly, but even there, it's like I could watch an episode or two, and then it had to take a little bit of a break because it's. It's kind of like. It's pretty heady and a little weighty.

Okay. Like, you know, gotcha.

It's. It's like dense television. There's just a lot to chew on and.

Yeah.

Anyways. But I've been like. I picked that back up and I've kind of been watching that again, so.

Nice. Nice. That Ben Stiller, man, you know, he's crazy, dude.

Yeah, him and Adam Scott, they, they, they. Yeah, Ben Stiller, like, you know, it's like Zoolander himself.

Right, Right. Yeah. No, I. I was. I. I watched something on YouTube and it talked about. It was like. It was talking about his career in general, but then mentioned how he's doing severance. I was like, oh, wow, that's crazy.

He's like a director. Like, he's a producer, I think, and something like that. Yeah, I think he's directed an episode.

Or I believe he's directing it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, small little anecdotal, just. I'll just slip in here. You were talking about the Unseen Realm. We were listening to the Chronicles of Narnia in the car on the drive back. So only the first few chapters of the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But there's a fascinating conversation that Peter has with. With the professor, who, if, you know, Narnia's diggory. But. But he's. He's talking about how, you know, Lucy's going on and on about this. About this world that she's gone to. But Edmund says it's all a game, so how are we supposed to do that?

And.

And it's really fun. I mean, it's. It's absolutely classic. Just, you know, how, how the professors, like, what do they teach you in this. These schools? Don't, you know, anything about logic and walking through those things? But what struck me about the. That conversation was how the professor, he seems like almost this otherworldly being, which makes sense. Being diggory. You know, knowing about Narnia and all.

That stuff, knowing the, the how that story works. Yeah, there is a bit of otherworldliness to the professor.

Yeah, exactly. And. And the way that he just so nonchalantly is like. Well, it seems like either Lucy is a lunatic or she is lying straight to your face, which she's not known to do, or she's telling the truth and oh no, no, he's like, either she's a lunatic, which you can just talk to her and, and you know that she's not because that's not the way that she sees the world. It's only this one, one instance. So she's obviously not crazy and, or she's just lying straight to your face. And obviously that's not a part of her character. So then the other option is that she's telling the truth. And what struck me was just how nonchalantly he's just like, yeah, she, she stumbled into another world. And as I, it struck me this time and you know, I've read these books for years and years and again I think it's a classic kind of dialogue there. But it just struck me in light of these, these ideas of the, the divine council worldview and all that stuff of like, I probably ought to be more like that, more open to the strange phenomena that people experience being spiritual and not be so close minded of like. But no, it sounds crazy. Sure, it sounds crazy, but why do I assume that I have everything figured out? Well, that's kind of crazy.

And even some of it is like, you know, in talking to Jared, you know, I've been talking to him a little bit about this, but there's this kind of like, we want to make Christianity like kind of safe, but like, let's just like take a beat and like look at the claims. We believe that the uncreated God of the universe stepped into flesh, became a man, lived a life as a humble carpenter, like and then died and you know, paid like, you know, there's also. But he paid the debt to himself by his own power and raised himself from the grave. That is weird. Like that is inherently just bizarre. Like we believe that God became man, fully God, fully human. Right. The hypostatic union. Okay, we're right. Like that. We don't really have a framework or context for that. You know, he was to 100%. We don't know how that worked. We don't even like, even like some of the other things like the Trinity. We don't know how the Trinity works. All we know that the Father is not the Son, is not the Holy Spirit is not the Father, but they're all God and there's three persons, one essence. Like, like, yeah, weird.

How does God speak through. How does God inspire the scripture and speak through people in such a way that he still uses their personalities in order to write scripture? That's that, you know.

Yeah, he's not turning.

I can't explain all that.

He's not subverting their agency or will, but rather, like.

Right.

Like, he uses their.

Using it.

He uses it, but not in this way where he, like, turns them into a puppet. Yeah, he. He's like, no, exactly. They're. They're still themselves. And it's like. Like, it's so. Like, the claims of Christianity, they're not. And they're not irrational. They're not illogical. Like, you know, the opponents of Christendom would want to say. Of Christianity would want to say that it's like, well, okay, you know, like, I. I have things to say to them. I'm like, well, because functionally you're materialist. If it's all zeros and ones, then the most rational sort of outworking of your worldview is that none of it matters. So why are you arguing with me?

Right?

Like, go kick rocks. Like, you know, like, if it's all just delusion, then why are you arguing with me? Just allow me to have my right. Right.

Then why do you care?

But then why do you care?

Exactly.

Like, anyways, there's. There's. There's one that I get a little darker where I'm like, if you're really honest about what you believe, you know, then futility is all you can retreat into. So why aren't you suicidal? Like, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, frankly, I would be. I mean, anyways, anyway.

But, yeah, we're not trying. But it's good stuff. It's. And I think there's. There's something. There's something I always liked from that you reference that. The Chronicles of Narnia. Like, I did always like that he was like. He asked them. He's like, out of the two of them, which one is probably more likely to be a liar? And they're like, Edmund.

And he was like, yeah, definitely.

But then he also says, like. Like the. And it's kind of like the. Like, what are they teaching? But he says, like, just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible. Like.

Right.

Or just because it seems, you know, a little out of the ordinary. Yeah. Doesn't inherently make it impossible. It just makes it maybe difficult to deal to wrestle with. And I always thought, like, there was a beauty in that where it's like, a lot of people are like, yeah, like, this is. This is hard to believe, or this is hard to parse. And it's like. But that doesn't make it impossible. Just means it's. Yeah, it. It's.

Yeah, it's kind of wild. Anyways, he. He makes reference to, like, there. There are things about this house that I don't even understand, you know, kind of just like, laying it out there a little bit more. But again, it just struck me, as we were listening to it of, like, why don't I have that more of that. Of a mindset, you know, of the whole world, of the. Of all of creation? You know, my mindset is much more closed off of, oh, no, we know how things work. It's like. No, I mean, yeah, we. We have, like, by the grace of God, we know a lot of things about the created order. But I also shouldn't assume that therefore. Therefore nothing supernatural can ever happen.

It's like. Dude.

Which I don't always assume, but, you.

Know, we don't really know how the pyramids were made. There was, like a. Yeah, the propaganda. The. The rapper or whatever.

Okay.

He. He's like the. He's sort of like. He's. He's a Christian rapper, you know.

Right. Yeah, I know who he is. Yeah.

But he has a track where he's like, we don't really understand how the pyramids were made. It's like. And I think he has a line about, like, we don't even understand how yawns work. Like, you know, it's like, we. Yeah, it's like, we don't. There are a lot of things that. That science does not provide an explanation or an answer for. And so, you know, and even there.

Was another, like, rapper duo. I can't remember who it was that asked, like, how do magnets work? You know? What did they do? I don't know. Sorry. That was Insane Clown Posse. Anyways, we need to be getting on. I was like, that's a dude.

The fact that, you know, that was an icp. Like, oh, my goodness, man. How do magnets.

It became a meme.

I do.

Well. And they use much more colorful language with that as well.

Of course they do. Of course they do.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, along with that, let's get back on track. I have some experiences to share, but. And actually, you know, we're talking about books and these things, so I've got a number of books just to run through really quickly. So. But I'll give some back backstory to it. Just a little bit of that. One is that while we were in Texas, I would go on walks in the morning because I wanted to continue to get my steps in, you know, make sure that I'm doing stuff and it's hot. And I knew I would not do that when the sun was up. So I would go. I'd get up early and I'd go on a walk for, you know, 30, 45 minutes or something like that. And I would read. I took my Kindle and then I eventually changed my phone because I didn't have my Kindle charger with me. And so I knocked out a bunch of reading while we were on this trip. And primarily what I started reading about. So I talked about it. Last episode, I was reading this book that was given to me or lent to me from my pastor of leadership and emotional Sabotage by Joe Rigney. Really good book on. On leadership and. And some of the cultural things that we see nowadays and how to be a good leader in spite of some of the things that come up. But it challenged me. It was a combination of starting that book, but then also I preached the Sunday after we recorded last on discipleship, on making disciples and following after Jesus. And even through that, a combination of both of those things of leadership. I wanted to dig more into just some more resources on not necessarily leadership in general, although that's where it ended up kind of going. But if I'm going to be a good leader, it ought to start within my own household. And where I get that from is from the passages that talk about the qualifications for elders, and they talk about how you ought to manage your own household. Well, that's kind of the training ground. That's the first place where you lead. And out of that, then you can lead in these other places. I think, especially within the church. That's what we see God saying is that if you want to oversee within the church, you ought to be. You ought to have already practiced that within your own home. And so I wanted to just double down on that. So to that end, there are a few books, and they're short little books, but I read through Covenant Households by Doug Wilson. And then I read another book that I had just gotten recently. But I say book, it's like 100 pages. It's short, but it's called how to lead your family by Joel Beaky. So both of these, same idea. And then I started up a book I'm only a few chapters in, but I should. Again, it's not very big, but it's crossway. Put it out. It's called the Shepherd Leader at Home by Timothy Z. Whitmer. And so these books primarily just focus on leadership within the home. Obviously, there are some. Some outworkings of that within the world, from different places that you lead, but within your home. So, so first and foremost, with your wife and with your kids, obviously it starts within yourself, right? Leading yourself. Bless the Lord, oh, my soul. To preaching to yourself, to. To. To follow after the Lord, first and foremost. But then also leading your wife in that, leading your kids in that as well, which is encouragement towards looking towards Christ. And obviously, those relationships look different as well, but it's been a little convicting. But also, you know, it's that conviction that leads to encouragement, if that makes sense of like, okay, so now get up and go. Kind of a thing of like, yeah, I. I ought to be better at these things. You know, I default more towards, oh, my wife is a mature woman and she does follow after the Lord. And so, like, she's. She's doing good with her own, you know, Bible studies. I don't have to be, you know, checking up on her, whatever. But it's like, well, I have a responsibility as a husband to lead my wife in. And, you know, and that might look different in different times, whatever, but I ought to take that seriously. And so. So again, you need to be an.

Active participant in that, like, in the sense that. Right. It's not just like this. Like, it's not like, oh, they do their thing over here. I do my thing over here. And we just kind of. It's like, no, it's like, you guys need to. We used to. Megan and I, and it's something. But we used to call them hard hat conversations. And it's kind of. It's a. It's mostly because, like, sometimes I talk really fast, and so I'd be like, where's your hard hat? But what I'm saying is that where's your heart at? You know, but the way. But yeah, the hard hat conversations where it's like, hey, where's your heart at? Like, what's going on? Like, what are you learning? What are you wrestling with? Yeah, you need to be an active participant. And like, like, it's like, yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, no, there. It's like. And just. Yeah, no, so, no, that's good. And we all need those reminders because it is like, right. The natural tendency is a sort of like, drift towards, like, just like Lone Ranger. Kind of like, I've got my little pocket over here. You've got your little pocket. And like, never shall the two shall, shall meet kind of thing. And it's like, that's. That's not. That's not what life or marriage is supposed to be. It's supposed to be like this intermingling, this kind of like. Yeah, so.

Yep. Like yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's mutual encouragement that comes out of that. Right, exactly. Yeah. So, so there's, there's that and then also leading my kids as well, so making sure we have our, our family worship times, but also sprinkling it in the conversations and all that stuff and, and thinking through like, oh, what do I want my kids to know? You know, my oldest is nine, he'll be 10 in September. And it's like, man, I only have eight more years till this kid's an adult. What should I be training him in? What does he need to know? He's a sharp kid, but what do I need to as a father instill in my son? And so that's been again convicting, also encouraging, but also just like, oh man, have I not done the, you know, whatever. It could cause you to navel gaze. But any. That's not, that's not the point. The point is to, to get up and to lead and to lead because that's what God's called you to. So and then out of that obviously there's other forms of leadership you can see in your life. Whether that's at work, whether that's, you know, friends, whatever. And I do see even now like the, just in reading some of the same concepts from different people because a lot of these books cover a lot of similar things. That's okay. Sometimes that's what I need for it to just get drilled into my head to fight against my natural tendency towards more of a hands off approach. But it's like, no, if this is a responsibility I ought to be more hands on. Not overbearing, but more hands on. So that's what I have been into. So I know we usually limit it to 3, but I didn't want to give like, oh, here's a review of each of these. No, that's fine. But these are the topics that I've been kind of, of digging into lately. The only other piece of media that I would recommend to your attention, I guess you're for your entertainment, is a movie that I watched in my parents house. It's streaming on Netflix. Liam Neeson stars in this movie called in the Land of Saints and Sinners. It is a story that you have probably heard before with different the characters but the plot is. It ends up being very simple. It kind of goes to where you think it's going to go. If you're familiar with these Types of stories. But I think it's done really well. And the setting is beautiful. It's set in Ireland. It's actually in the 70s. So while there was kind of civil war in Ireland, there's the ira, there's Northern Ireland, in Ireland. While these things are going on, main character of Liam Neeson, he used to be a. A hitman, gun for hire. And basically his past kind of catches up to him, and now he's settled, you know, in the small Irish town, and some. Some things come up and so he has to kind of rise to the occasion and figure out, you know, what he's gonna do. And it also costs some of the people around town things, and so how is he gonna work this out kind of a thing. Anyways, it's a. It's a fairly simple story. It's just well done and I liked it. It's set in Ireland, so it's beautiful. Yeah, well done. William Neeson's great. So I. I really enjoyed it. That said, it's not gonna be something that like, oh, man, this is something totally. No, you've. You've seen it before. It's just in this case, really well done. So in the Land of Saints and Sinners is a good movie. It's like half an hour long, so it does have language. Okay. They're. They're Irish.

Half an hour.

No, an hour and a half.

I thought you said. I thought you said it's half an hour long. I was like, that does not. That's what.

No, it's. It's a full length movie. I don't think it was two. Two hours. So I may be. I may be off maybe an hour 45. But, you know, it's. But it's not. It doesn't overstay its. Welcome him. It's pretty. Yeah. But good stuff. So that's what I've got that to share my experiences to share. Except that we are a video game podcast. We do like to talk about some video games. So, Nate, what video games do you want to talk about? What have you been playing?

I mean, probably to no one's surprise, Clar Obscure is still on the list. I. I beat it. But there is a. A wealth of post game, post, you know, content. And I do. I do want to get the platinum. There is like one fairly significant. There's one. Two trophies. No. One trophy that is tied to these really pretty suboptimal mini games and some platforming.

Gotcha.

Which are like. I'm just like, oh, this, like, so it's like It's. It's kind of one of those things where it's like I, I've been like, slowly kind of chewing away at some of the other things. I'm actually probably going to take a little bit of a break just because I do need to focus on. I do want to focus on some other things. You know, we. We have the Locked and Loaded list. I do want to be prioritizing some of those gameplay experiences as well. Like, there's a couple games on that, like, especially like Doom Eternal and Returnal. Like, I'm, I'm looking at both of those and I actually did fire up Returnal not too long ago and played a little bit again. I think I'm gonna go back to that, a little more in depth. But yeah, it's. It's so. It's. It's just kind of like. But like those two games in particular, like, they're games that have kind of been on my backlog for, for a while. Games I have started multiple times and haven't finished. And I'm just like, we need to be done. Like, it's like I need to like, kind of like crap or get off the pot kind of moments with these games, like, either beat them and just kind of be able to like, put them down or, or be able to speak on them, like, with some sense of finality or just like, sure, be done. Like, just abandon them and say, like, we're done. So, so that, you know, and, and you'll bring this up too. But we are, and, you know, we're one of our, you know, pending episodes here. Short, you know, in. In the somewhat immediate future is going to be on a game called Long Gone Days. It's a patron pick. It's sort of an independent RPG kind of thing. And I, I started it up. I played, you know, not a ton, like maybe the first 30 minutes of that game. It's interesting so far. It's. It's, you know. Well, we'll see. Like, I don't, I don't have enough. I don't have enough gameplay under my belt to sort of have too, too, too many strong opinions on it, but it's interesting and I think the subject matter that it's tackling, you know, is intriguing. You know, we'll see. We'll see how it sort of like, shakes out. But in addition to that, I did fire up Remnant two just to, like, I'm going back and I'm playing with Parker like there's some DLC that he had picked up based on my Recommendations. So, like, we're going back and I'm kind of like, I'm sure buying him through that and just sort of nice. And then so it's just like. And that's. That's kind of. It's just cool to go back to that game. It's fun. It's. It's a good game. It's like kind of like Destiny to Light. Ish. It's like. I don't know, it's like, kind of like. It's like Loot, Loot and shoot meets, like, over the shoulder action Y kind of with like, some little bit of like, Dark Souls vibes in it. I like the first Remnant. I think remnant 2 is just more of the same, but better. Yeah. So I. It's a game I just would recommend to anybody who even if, like, oh, this sounds pretty interesting. Well, it is interesting. It's pretty well done and it's got a pretty good gameplay loop. And so playing through that and just kind of looking at my notes here. Did dip into Split Fiction with friend of the show Micah for a little bit. Oh, we may try to, like, do an episode on that, you know, sometime this year, you know, so it's. It's cool. It's cool. I mean, if it's a. It's from. I forget the name of the studio, but Joseph Ferris is like the. The lead designer on this. And yeah, they did no Way Out. They did. Or no, I think it's called a Way Out. It Takes Two. Yeah, there was another one. There's another. Oh, Brothers. They did Brothers. And then. Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure Brothers is one of their games as well. And then, yeah, Split Fiction is the latest in that. That line. And so it's kind of. It's. It's pretty cool. It's. It's very like, if you liked It Takes Two. And full disclosure, Megan and I, we were actually talking about that we need to go back to that. But if you like it, It Takes Two. It's like that kind of leveled up. Yeah, it's good. It's just kind of looking here the other thing. And that's pretty much it as far as I've been playing. One thing I did kind of want to just sort of shout out is on Steam for free. There's a game if you are anything like me. And like, I like typing games and I'm not a great typist, so like, I have a fond sort of remember, like, I remember when, like, we used to play typing games in, like, the computer lab at School.

Right.

Anyways, so I've kind of gotten back into like typing games because I want to just become a better typist, but also I just like the games. So I. There's. There's a couple that I've picked up. You know, I bought a couple. But anyways, there's one for free from the Warhammer series. It's Warhammer 40K bolt gun. Words of Vengeance. It's free. It's free. 99. And so. So Parker put that on my radar a couple weeks back. I did pick it up. I haven't really done much of anything with it yet. I. I installed it and I. But it's like I did pick it up. I do plan on playing it.

And.

Yeah, it's like, if you like typing games, there's a free one on Steam and.

Yeah, nice.

So. But yeah, because it was free, it doesn't really get added to the backlog, so.

Sure.

Yeah. So cool.

Nice. Nice.

I will be. I'll. I'll be checking that out and probably reporting back on it. But like, yeah, it's a typing game, so.

Cool.

Where you get to shoot space demons.

Always fun. Always a good time.

Yeah, I haven't, you know, I haven't purchased anything, so just in. In looking at that, there's. It's my backlog. My beat down score hasn't changed. It's still at negative five. So. Okay, that's it.

Nice. When did you pick up Split Fiction? Have you had that one for a little while?

We. Well, and I think I sent a text to you, but like I. You basically, that's a show acquisition, so I did pick that. Like I'm not going to take points for beating that. Yeah, I did pick that up a while ago though, but it's like.

Okay, okay.

So. Yeah, I did acquire that as well, but because. Yeah, no, it's. Yeah, that's. That's fair. Like, because it just came out not too long ago, so.

Right. That's what I was thinking. And you did. I just. I just totally spaced there and forgot that. That's. Yeah, but that makes sense.

But yeah, because. Because that's a show. That's going to be an episode. Like, I just. Yeah, I wrote that off as a. An acquisition for. It's a podcast game, so.

Right, right. Sweet. Nice noise. Cool. All right, well, like you, I have played a little bit of Long Gone Days as well and I think we actually have some, some similar ideas on it as well because we're both early on in the game. It's like, okay, this is going in an interesting direction. Not like completely. Not completely new, not completely unprecedented, but interesting. So I'd like to see what it does with this prem. Because it's a. Yeah, it's an interesting. I believe the game is a. An RPG maker game, something like that. Because you can kind of tell from the.

No, it was made in Unity.

Oh, okay. Okay.

Yeah, it's. Yeah. I. When I. I actually fired up tonight just to kind of. And I was like looking at it, I was like, oh, cool. This was made in Unity.

Okay.

So like, yeah, there you go.

Yeah, yeah.

But.

But it is, you know, kind of a lower budget game. So again, that's where I'm like intrigued. I want to see, you know, where this goes. So then playing a little bit like.

That and that's really focuses interesting like mechanical wrinkle too because like there's. So there's like the RPG element, but there's also like these segments where like you're sort of doing like that. That point and click kind of like right at the very beginning, like you're right, you're sniping things and it's like, that's. I was like, I was not expecting this.

Yeah, Yeah, I wasn't expecting anything. Honestly. I had. I think I had heard somewhere that it was more of a visual novel. So that's what I was expecting. So I was like, oh, hey, you actually get to play some stuff. So anyways, I. But I. I'm intentionally kind of going blind into the game, so. So we'll see where that goes. But I. But I'm enjoying it. I know it's a short burn, so we don't really have to spend too much time on it. But we will be talking about that, like you said imminently that that'll be coming up, so that'll be a lot of fun. So that's what I'm currently playing right now. I did finish up two games though. I finished up Metal Gear Solid 2 HD. Finally beat that one. I say finally just because, you know, it's been fits and starts and things like that. And yeah, game definitely there. I, you know, did the twist, obviously, because I beat the game. But there and then afterwards I'm like, huh? What. What is even? What even is this? So there's so many things about this game. One, just like the original Metal Gear Solid, I do think I can see why it's loved for its time. And I think that time has passed. I think something that Kojima was saying with this game is still relevant today. So his critique on Society is certainly still applicable. However, I think some of the ways that he goes about making that critique were especially poignant in the era in which he made the game. And so I don't want to go too far into that. So I think some stuff kind of like, it's kind of a swing and a miss from my vantage point now in 2025, because it's so much later than when the game was originally created, which you can't knock the game for. It was made for something different. It is a little. A little mean, a little spiteful. I'm saying that he kind of does some things to his audience in particular, because he's like, oh, you want another Solid Snake game? Here's your solid Snake game is how it feels. Whereas. And I'm. I'm saying, like, I was not there, like, yes, chomping at the bit for another Solid Snake game, in which. Yeah, so. So that kind of, like, deflected for me.

You know what, though, too? And it's. It's. It's funny that you kind of bring this up and I. I don't, but it's like Kojima thematically. And I'm not super familiar with, like, the Metal Gear games, but are the Metal Gear Solid games. I. I know them. I played some of them. And, you know, we've talked about this before, but even with Death Stranding, it's weird how, like, he just really nails like. Like, Death Stranding was, like, almost prophetic because, like, the weird. Like, you have these people kind of living in these isolationist pods and they're not really working. You know, it's kind of like this, like. But when it happened, like, when that game came out, like, we were just coming into Covid, and all of a sudden it was like, this is a weirdly echoing sort of like, you know, and. And I've talked before about how, like, Covid sort of accelerated the more isolationist, insulatory nature. But it was like. It's like. It was like. It's weird how, like, he does really kind of. I just think it's interesting that this is a guy who manages to, like, sort of, like, catch the vibe and sort of, like, really wrestle with cultural issues in a way that. That doesn't feel super hokey, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, yeah, this is like, an interesting way to kind of, like, come at these things. So it's just like. And that's. That's something that I've noticed about him is like, he's. Because, you know, What I'm saying, like, it would be so easy to like. And we see so many games, like, sort of try to tackle, like, cultural issues, but do it in a way where they're like, oh, see, it's really a metaphor for this thing over here. And it's like, sure. But he's like. It's. He's. There's something, like, really kind of cool about his ability to do that in a way that's not as preachy, I guess, anyways.

Right. I think. I think the more preachy element kind of like, didn't hit for me because I wasn't the exact person that he was speaking to, if that makes sense. So I can get more into it. But then it would be super spoiled.

There's going to be a book club episode on it, so.

Okay, well, I think that was on three, but anyways. Yeah, so we'll see where that goes. I'd be happy to talk about it more. I will say that it does end up being a bit more messy than I wanted it to be. Hey, sounds familiar with, like, death stranding or whatever in that the game is a lot of cutscenes. My goodness, like, probably half the game is cutscenes, and then you play the other half of it. And mechanics can be frustrating because they're old. Okay, whatever. But I didn't feel like the mechanics and what the game ended up being about were super in tandem with each other necessarily, in that the long cutscene at the end of the game that kind of, like, reveals a bunch of stuff felt very out of left field to me as someone who's been, you know, playing the game for a while. So. So what I'm saying is that for me, MGS2 is a mixed bag. Okay, I understand. Yes. There are some things that are, you know, kind of prophetic that. That there is something. There's a really interesting thing that he's trying to tackle and. And doesn't necessarily give you an answer. Although the one that he does seem to give, I'm like, nope, totally disagree, bro. That's not. That's not satisfying at all. Which is. Okay, that's fine. But it. Anyways, it is. It's interesting in a number of different ways. I don't think it always lands like I would necessarily want it to. And so it's not as satisfying as I want it to be. But that's not to say that it's bad at all. It's. It's. It's a very. Well, interesting is such a lame word to say, but it is very interesting. So metal gear solid 2, finish that one up. So I do get a negative point that was on my locked and loaded list. So that's knocked off there, which is pretty awesome.

Now I'm tracking. I was like. Like I said with the middle why I'm playing it. I was like, okay, yep, now I'm tracking.

That was I. Because I have to go in order, man. I played the first one. Now you got to play the second one before you play the third. But I have the HD collect, so I can play the third sometime. Sometime. I don't know. I'm not ready yet. Maybe next year. But next game that I played through while I was in Texas is this small. Another Super Nintendo game. You know, I played Contra 3 recently, Kirby's dream Course, which is a golf game, sort of, kind of. It is. It is very interesting wrinkle on golf with Kirby powers. So you can still kind of control your ball a little bit, sort of, kind of in certain circumstances, because Kirby can use his different powers if you defeat certain monsters while you're doing golf. So it's a really cool take on golf. It's really good in that sense. The thing that I have against this game is its difficulty, because in this game, there are no mulligans, and that goes. So you play eight holes at a time with no mulligans. So if you have a bad. You know, if you A bad swing, a bad hit, then you. You've screwed yourself out of like three more hits, basically. And the game gets really difficult towards the end and. And it doesn't let you practice later holes because there are no mulligans. There's no way to go back on what you've done.

So it's just get good, scrub.

Yes, it is absolutely. Get good. Because, like, there are certain levels that seem like they can only be beaten in certain ways, which means you'd have to those levels quite often. I played this game and use save states, and that was very helpful. Save states for each hole. I didn't do it within the hole because I think that's. That's pretty lame. But I used it a lot. I started over holes a lot because you have to learn the hole in order to learn how to play it well. So I can only imagine, like, if I actually had this cartridge and played it as a kid, it would probably be one that I would know the first few holes really well because I'd play those over and over again because it is a cool game. But my goodness, the level of difficulty is Absolutely insane as you get towards the end of the game. So that's my review of Kirby's dream course. Great game, super difficult. And use rewind, use save states. You know, that's how you're gonna get through it. But that one was also on my locked and loaded list. So I get negative two for those and we'll see if by the end of the year I actually get that. Locked, locked in, loaded bonus. No pickups or anything like that. So right now I sit at. I believe it's negative 8 so far for the year. I might, that might change. I didn't exactly count it all up based on the previous week that we had. I believe I'm at negative eight. So.

Okay.

That's where I sit.

Well. Okay. Well, for folks who have been listening, if you wonder what we're talking about when we're talking about the negative five, the negative eight, this, this beat down that we're talking about, even the locked and loaded that we referen referenced, there is a meta that we run all year long called the Backlog Beatdown. There's a rule set to it. If you're interested in checking that out, you can reach out to us. You can, you know, it's posted in the 2025 Beatdown Discord, or in our Discord, there's a channel for that. The. The TLDR of it is you play games, you beat games and you, you take away points, you buy games, you add points, you want to sort of just bring the numbers down. But in addition to that, you know, so that's something to check out. Something, like I said, if you're. But yeah, if you're, if you're interested at it, in it at all. Nate is talking so pretty tonight, folks. But something else to sort of be aware of is we have a, we have a Patreon and we kind of, you know, we have heard, I think several times that, like, don't tell people then it's a tip jar. But it is kind of a glorified tip jar. It's also a way to partner with us that if you like what we're doing and you want to support us and sort of help us grow for as little as a buck a month, you can get, you get, you can partner with us, right? And so you get early and uncut access and there are perks. I guess I am burying the lead on this so hard, man here. But there are perks for joining our Patreon. Early and uncut access to each and every episode. There's a patron Exclusive podcast called the Bro Hang, AKA between two bros, AKA A thought for your Thoughts that tends to be a little more sort of just conversational, a little more freeform. Like you know, it's not as video game centric. Although you know, we still talk about video games sometimes in can be silly, it can be heavy, it's a mixed bag. So. Yeah, but also, and you heard us talk about patron game like each one of our patrons has the opportunity to suggest a topic or a game for us, us to, to. To cover and then they have the opportunity like we invite them to join us for that episode. So yeah, there's that. Yeah. And like I said, for as little as a buck a month, you also get a little more access to us through the Patreon. A little more access in our discord etc, you know, you know there's a special designation and, and server channel for the patrons, so on and so forth. Yeah. But that being said, so if you've done the sharing and the caring, you've done the rating and the reviewing and you want to go a little bit above and beyond, that's how you can do it. Last but certainly not least, we are, we, we have partnered with some of our friends and we have like a little bit of a, a podcasting network that we're part of called the Playwell Network alongside Wesley Ray, the henchin dad himself with the Retro Nim podcast. Paul Lytle AKA the techno funk boy with the Thorns of War, which is an actual play Dragonlance podcast. I got it. I feel every, every time I say all those words the right way, I get excited. And then you've got Porcho with nothing. The Wonder from down under with nothing new under the porch. We love these guys, we love that their content and we think you ought to check it out. So here's a word from one of them. Do you think that this is like a really close up shot of two small crabs or were those really big crabs? How do you know they're even real? They're imaginary crabs, simpleton. Please tell me we can go look for imaginary crabs.

Can we?

How would you look for something that's imaginary? Oh, that's the best thing to look for. War has come to Kryn. A war building for centuries as dragons and gods drift into myth and legend. This is the war that will bring an end to it all or restore what was lost for good.

Dragonlance. The Thorns of War is an actual.

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Subscribe today day.

And we're back. So tonight Josh, we're sort of changing pace a little bit. We're not going to be talking about a game in particular. We actually decided to sort of like take a little bit of a break, do something a little more topical in nature and actually just talk about like a cream.

Topical cream.

Yes. Creams can be topical, Joshua. Yes. Is not mean the same thing.

Tropical.

Not that anyway.

No, no, let's.

Now you're just being silly but I thought it would be good to just sort of. You know, I've been playing a lot of Claire obscure lately and there's always like talk of just the in like you and I, we're not strangers to this but we talk about the state of the industry and given sort of like just the, the economic uncertainty of like, like today's day and age. There's you know, for people who are pretty entrenched in the fandom, there's a lot of conversation about like the pricing of games. You know, it's like just like. And this. And again this is like the pricing of games, the pricing of hardware, etc. Like we're on the verge of Nintendo releasing, you know, we're recording this and within days the Switch 2 is going to be in the hands of the public. In fact, maybe by the time. Dare I jinx this? Maybe by the time we record you and I will both have our hands on aforementioned Switch to. But we will see. We will see. Remains to be seen. But I guess I'm kind of like, you know, one of the things we, we want to encourage people to be wise with their money, et cetera. And so we've had a number of topics, you know, just again regarding the financials and you know, all of the different factors here and you know, we don't always land in exactly the same spot but I think as a general rule you and I sort of hold to a lot of the same positions when it comes to the industry by large. And what's been interesting is though especially is like. And I think you and I have both said as much, you know, like that we have a desire for the industry to just become a little healthier because it has sort of within the last like 15 years, 10, 15 years, it's become very sort of AAA heavy where it's like, you see these games that are like. And we've seen some massive failures like Concord from, from Sony not too long ago, like.

Right.

Hundreds of million of. Of hundreds of millions of dollars invested in this game to just have it pulled off of their own storefront within two weeks. Like, I mean just.

That's crazy.

Just a massive, massive failure. But there have also been sort of like these really, like really kind of sweet and kind of incredible success stories. Right. In addition to that, like, you know, the fact is. And again, the aforementioned Claire Obscure Like 33 days after the game launched, they had 3.3 million sales, which I think is kind of fun. And that's a little like, oh, that's a little. Not auspicious, but it's like a little like kind of like, oh, this is like fun little coincidence kind of stuff, you know.

Sure, yeah.

But yeah, and then, you know, and that's made by a smaller team. I think it, you know, like 30, 40 people made the game. It's, it's coming out and it's, it's kind of everybody who's playing it is like, yeah, this is a strong contender for at least needs to be in the game of the year conversations, you know, with, with the more prestigious awards. But then in addition to that, like you had last year, last year's game of the, you know, game award game of the year was Astrobot, which now granted, that's a Sony property and it might be considered a AAA game in some sense of the word, but it was 60 people and a three year dev cycle. And they made this absolutely delightful 3D platformer that went on to sell I think two and a half million copies. I think when we were looking at it, it's like, and that's, that's no joke. Now granted, that's not like 70 million or that's not like 30 million copies, you know, like, sure, you know, the greatest game of all, the best selling game of all time is Grand Theft Auto 5. We talked about this, didn't we, not too long ago.

Yeah.

Gta.

It might have even been on a bro hang. But yeah, it's ridiculous.

I'm just gonna like Google this because.

It'S like, it is hundreds of. Yeah. 210 million copies.

210 million.

What Google AI says.

So there's that. But it's like it is, it's, it's kind of been really pretty charming to.

See.

This kind of smaller groundswell where there the. You have these projects that are I think not so ambitious, ambitiously scoped. They're, they're probably, they're a lot more sort of like I think just fiscally responsible and they're, they're releasing to great success. And again, it's not like, you know what would be absolutely wild is if astrobot had sold 10 million units. You Know what I'm saying then that we'd be like. But I mean even given that it's like again smaller team, you know, three is 60 people. A three year dev cycle. You know, that game probably cost, you know, just, I'm ballparking it, but it probably didn't cost 100 million to make and it made and it probably, you know. And again we, you and I were sort of like we were talking off mic and I sort of, I ran the numbers but it was like, you know, it's probably roughly, you know, all told, sold about 100, you know, made $150 million. You take out dev costs and say even if that's 50% or even if it's a little bit more, you know, that's still like, you know, 50, 50 million ain't nothing to sneeze at. Now when your company is operating, you know, your General revenue is 230 billion, $250 billion a year. That's yeah, that's chump change. But it's just kind of interesting. So all that being said, it's just kind of interesting that there are these smaller, more scalable things and that's they're actually really, they're succeeding in pretty high profile ways. And so I wanted to have a conversation about that and sort of what we think it could mean, what we think it, you know what I think both of us would hope it sort of portends for the industry and just sort of maybe like celebrate this for a few minutes. So that's what we're going to do.

Yeah, and hopefully it is, you know, at least an encouragement to the gaming industry as a whole. Because like you said there have been a lot of kind of high profile flops lately over the past few years. It feels more so it's a combination of that. The reason it feels like like, like there's. There seems to be more studios closing the studios like kind of putting all their chips into their latest game and then having it fall apart. We talked about this in the dis Dishonored episode but Arcane with Redfall, you know, was another big one too. So you see kind of these ripple effects of these kind of really big swings and where they don't pay off and it really kind of tanks the whole studio. That doesn't seem to be as prevalent in the past. It seems to be more of a trying to play the field, not really trying everything into kind of your latest game. But also there are, it seems as though there's also other development houses or distributors or things like that, that have kind of overblown expectations as well. Well, for how well their games are going to do, I think of even, even the Final Fantasy VII remake, you know, how that, how the, the sequel to that is critically acclaimed while being at least sales wise a disappointment.

It's kind of not fair though because pretty much anything that ever comes at like, you know.

From Square Enix nowadays.

Yeah, Square Enix expectations, like unless it's like, you know, there are games that have sold like, like 10 million units and they're like, yeah, it's still underperformed.

Right, right.

Are you on drugs, my guy? You know.

Well, but that's kind of the thing is, is that they, they expect it to have this huge return based on all of the resources that they're pouring into it. So with that as the background, then we have some of these games like, like Claire Obscure that come out that didn't have a ton of lead up. I don't, I don't feel like, I mean, maybe a year, I would say, you know, of, of public just kind of like, hey, this is gonna, this is gonna come out. But it didn't seem as though it had huge marketing, I think of other indie projects. Actually, you know, game that I just picked up within the past month was Sea of Stars where you've got these kind of smaller indies, games that come out that do really well and perhaps that's mostly critically acclaim, but that critical acclaim does at least have some effect on the sales as well to where you have some really good, you have some good return on investment for these smaller projects. So I would hope that something like Claire Obscure would at least show the rest of the gaming landscape a number of things. Okay, so I don't know, I haven't played the game myself, but it is in a, a fun take on the, frankly the JRPG genre, the turn based RPGs with its own twist. So it takes kind of the core in this my understanding, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it takes the core of what people enjoy about turn based RPGs but it also adds in some real time elements to that. Or at least, you know, you're not, you're not just selecting attacks, but you actually have some button pressing to do and some timing and some challenges to do yourself. So I think, I think with that in mind, there are things that we can learn from a game like this. Well written, passionate teams, you know, or excuse me, passionate teams that make well written stories in a story based game. Not every game has to be story based but in a story based game you really kind of focus in on the things that, that your audience wants is not necessarily fidelity, not necessarily a huge runtime because it's a shorter game when it comes to JRPGs. It's not 120 hours hours. I would hope that this would at least show that there is a market for some really well done games. Even if their scope isn't absolutely enormous.

Well, I think so. I think like. And you know, I think one of the things that we need to just sort of discuss or that needs to sort of just be mentioned is. And again there's. I don't know if there's any official press on this but a lot of these bigger publishers and developers like it's not you know, and just you know, sort of like go back. CS Stars sold 250,000 units in its first couple of weeks or whatever. I didn't find much numbers on it beyond that, but I don't you know. And that was sort of a like yeah, that's more of like a cult classic kind of thing. Like the people who love their. It really loved it but. And it just. The DLC for that just came out. So you know that might be something to sort of go back and sort of check out. But that was also Sea of Stars was also available on PS plus Extra and Game Pass when it first came out. So that probably did eat into sales to some extent in addition to that though. But and that you know, full disclosure, that's. That's the other Clair Obscure is actually on Game Pass. So. And again it's probably cannibalizing some sales.

Sure.

And then you know, looking at Final Fantasy Remake is sort of what we, you know, Rebirth has not performed which is remake sequel has not performed as well. But remake sold 7 million copies which is no confusion, you know, according to some of the numbers that, that I was seeing there. So but the, the fact of the matter is is that what's, what's kind of like the way that the, the broader AAA industry is trending is. And you know and there have been sort of again these like smaller like, like stellar Blade came out last year and smaller team, smaller budget, did very, very well kind of thing. But. And even Sony's Hellblade or Helldivers. Not Hellblade Helldivers too. You know it's a thing that was Sony published or whatever but again smaller team. Now the difference is that that was a project that kind of. That had been in development a long time and I think got re rebooted but yeah, it's, it's sort of like smaller expectations and it does just mass like massive success. But these smaller scoped sort of games, like there's a pocket for them but it's not going to be like the big re, like the big sort of returns. I think it's like. And again we mentioned GTA 5 and how like you know, the, the 250 million copies, you know, and that's an outlier. But even Mario Kart, Mario Kart World's coming with the Switch 2 and I was actually talking to some friends of mine and they're like, it's kind of, that's a weird call. And I'm like, well, not really. When you look at the fact that Mario Kart Deluxe 8 Deluxe or Mario Kart Infinite or whatever it is, I don't know. But when you look at that, that's the best selling game on the Switch and it's one of the like, it's like, I think that's 50 or 60 million units.

Yeah.

So it's like it makes sense. But again, you know, and Nintendo's sort of an outlier in this anyways. Like, I think they just do a pretty good job of scoping their projects and budgeting their projects and just being. They don't seem to get go in as hard on everything. But like Sony's a big, they're kind of like the big. Well, Sony and Microsoft both do this, but they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these games. And then, you know, the thing is you need some sort of return. I mean, in fact, like you need a significant return. Like anything less than 10 million units is sort of seen as being like subpar. You know, it's like you need the massive return. So it's like you have something like the Last of Us Part one, like when it first comes out, like, you know, and again, I don't know how much that was made for, you know, then. But it's like the Last of Us, you know, part two. You, you need like, you know, they spend 250, $300 million. You know, maybe it was only 150, but it's like they're really expecting like significant returns. So like where we're talking about like Astrobot, it's like you have three years, 60 people, and maybe it cost, maybe it cost 100 million to make. And so you get like a, you get basically a 50 return on that. But it's like what happens if you blow that up to like, you know, a 50 return on. Yeah, or 150, you know what I'm saying? Like, you cover costs and then make an additional 50. Like, what happens? So it's like it makes sense to sort of chase that, you know what I'm saying? Like, that instead of like the little bites, like you go for like just the, the big monster hits, but in a market where it is becoming more and more difficult and like, you know, and that's, that's the thing. It's like in talking about Nintendo, there's been a lot of consternation about like, the pricing of, of their games going forward. Like, like, sure, there was, there was. You know, and I'm not going to weigh in on any of that conversation. Like, that's something that you and I have talked before about before. But like, you know, they. It's like you can either get the Mario Kart bundle and so you get Mario Kart for 50 bucks, or you can buy the game separately for $80. And there are a significant number of. A significant amount of people online who have expressed a, you know, substantial amount of consternation and frustration with that. And this is shortly after, you know, Sony just a few years ago, you know, was the, the one who sort of turned the pricing up to 70.

Right.

And like, it's just, it's tough because, like, things are tight and so then you have a game. And one of the other, you know, fun things about Expeditions is that it retails for 50 bucks for the base, you know, for the, the. The basic version. And so it's like, right. Just seeing those sort of wild success stories, I even think about like, I think about something like Control from Remedy now. And you know, I don't, I don't want to sort of just say like, no, Remedy hold up Remedy as model because apparently Alan Wake 2 is struggling financially.

Okay.

Alan Wake 2 has not been the financial sort of dynamo, but like Control. I think that game was made for something like essentially like US$50 million and did really well as far as sales go. So there's something in that where. And you said this that I think is. Does need to sort of be latched on is like when I look at the common thread of some of these things, like these smaller, more independent, like these. It's like there's a smaller team. There's. And there is sort of a, A really. It's. They. They are making something that it seems they actually want to make. Whereas, like. Yeah, and there's a freedom to do that because there isn't like this mat, like, you know, this massive overhead said, like where it's like, you know, these companies, they're, they're, they're, they're all sort of publicly traded and so they are sort of beholden to the investors. And so there is this sort of, there is pressure to just return on the investment. Return on the investment. Well, if you have a game that costs $250 million to make, like you need to, you need that to be a bit big, bigger success. And so you're going to shave off edges where you think it could like bite into like, you know, there might be some creative decisions where like corporate sort of steps in and says you can't do that because we, you know, that might alienate a significant. And so you get this more sterile like that might alienate a, a significant like you know, portion of the audience. So what you get is this more like sterile kind of like not as, you know, adventurous game. And. Yeah, and anyways, it's just, but it's, yeah, it's just interesting to me that I think, and I even think about the guy, like we talked about it before, we talked about split fiction like that. And it takes two smaller team, they have this vision, they execute well on it and they a massive success. And I think that I don't want to read too much into it, but I think I'm looking at it and the underlying factor is with these smaller teams, they can be a little more honest with their vision, they can sort of hold to it a little faster, but they're making things that they actually want to make where it's not like sort of death by committee, you know.

Yes, yep, yep, exactly. And, and I think, I think that's the big thing there is because on paper what you said earlier of like, oh, if I can make X amount by putting in 50 million then why not, you know, 4x that and put in 200 million then I'll get 4x my return. Like, like that is a very, for lack of a better term, corporate way of looking at it. Because what you're dealing with, I mean, just putting in more money into a piece of art. Okay, gonna be a little subjective here, does not mean that the art is going to be any better. That might work for certain games that are not trying to, you know, some of the best selling games year over year, Call of Duty are your FIFA, you know, things like that, sports games and shooters. Okay, it might work in some of those cases. I would actually, I would even take issue with that, that you're probably not having to dump a ton of money into the yearly Iterations. I think there's only so much you can do to kind of. To really make a better decision.

That's the only. What you're talking about is like the graphical fidelity is really. That's gonna be the most. That's the easy like because mechanically those games are fairly static.

Locked in.

Yeah, they're dialed in. Yeah, they're locked in. Whatever. So the sort of like the obvious knob to turn to sort of introduce something new and there will be like new gameplay modes in like Call of Duty.

Sure.

New maps and stuff like that, but it's going to be infidelity. It's going to be in, you know, visual presence. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just treating these games, you know, I think the more we hear about something modern games like for instance, this or modern game development in general, but something like Assassin's Creed that has like a thousand people on the, the payroll, you know, on the credits at the very end of the game. While. Yes, I get you want to credit everyone for their work. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but I'm just saying it doesn't take. Take a thousand people to make a really good video game. That's what I'm saying. If you want to do that, okay. But you do have to realize that you're only going. You're. You're very much limiting yourself. I think that's what you were talking about kind of.

And some of the rationale though with like the like even that, like having a thousand people like the like. So some of that is probably just like corporate bureaucratic production kind of pipelines 100%.

Yeah, yeah.

Some of that though is what, what they've done is they've sort of in order to sidestep the, the five, six, seven year long development window, they just throw more bodies at it. So like, yeah, you can turn around and every two, three years there's a new. Well, it's like pretty much every year most of the time, but there's a new Assassin's Creed. Right. That's because you have a thousand people working on this, you know, Whereas if you had like 200, it would again, it would be. But it would that that development window balloons out to again like the five, six, seven years. Right. But what happens in that too is because like the more people, it isn't just sort of this like factory automated thing where it's just like, well, the solution is we're just going to throw more bodies at it. But then you have breakdowns in communication. You have people's working in silos. You have, you know, there, There isn't sort of the ability to have a unified vision right for or. Or direction for the game. You know, that becomes much harder to maintain and corral that when you've got instead of like five moving pieces, you've got a hundred, you know, and it's like, like a hundred different teams all collaborating on this stuff. I think of an another way and it's that we sort of see some of the breakdown in this is just like the, the recent, you know, marathon. I don't know if you've seen the headlines on this, but like marathon.

Oh yeah.

The. The. The arc. The. The plagiarism stuff. And it's like, it's. It's kind of like you just had too many people. And you know, I don't as that story. I'm kind of interested to see how that story unfolds. Right. Because it's like, was this some dude who is just like fed up and just kind of did this to like basically like give. Give the higher ups kind of like a middle finger on his way out, or was this somebody who was maybe just like, who felt so like overwhelmed and just under the gun that he just was like. Do you know what I'm saying? It was just like, I'm just gonna.

Sure, yeah.

This has to get done. But any which way it cuts. And you know, granted, like, there's something in that where there's just so many moving pieces and so much that something like that was able to slip through the whole way through. And maybe it was just like a series of mistakes. But again, there's something that's like. There's a certain size where it's just like, it's just too big. There's too many cooks in the kitchen, there's too many fires to sort of manage. And you know, and again, it sort of just. It. What's. What's really been kind of refreshing is that when you have these, these smaller teams with this smaller sort of like commitment and the small. The. The more reasonable sort of like kind of thought out scope scoping of the project and just. And again this sort of a much more unified vision and direction and it's like. And people are reacting to that. It's. And it's almost sort of like the principle is like when you make a game for everyone, you're not making a game for anyone kind of of thing. It's like almost that principle can kind of be extracted from some of this.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah. I I think that's. That's the biggest thing is because I don't want to go so far as to say it might sound, up to this point, oh, only play indie games. We don't like big games. No, we. We literally just talked about, you know, how we're both excited for the switch too. I. I love my big, you know, games like Zelda. Like your Zelda's, like your Marios, you know, like the. I'm fine with having big AAA games with lots of production value in them too. However you want to. However you want to say that, you know, like huge games, whatever. I'm not against those things, but I think you hit the nail on the head there is that when you start having to dump a ton of money just into development costs of a game, then your game has to sell a certain amount to make. To recoup its investment, which means you need it to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which means you kind of. You make it more generic, essentially. You have to. In order to get people to play the game, I think. I mean, that's what free to play games do is like. I mean, can you think of an edgy free to play game? Like, they're. They're intentionally kind of the most appealing to the most amount of people, which.

Well, dude, I mean, let's sort of drag Fortnite out here and sort of like, take some potshots at it. It's a big enough bear that. But it's like. It's a game that, like, has just sort of, you know, part of the wild success has been that it's like all of the licensing for pulling in, like, all of the different, like. Like character stuff where it's like, where else can you have Spider man fight? Darth Vader fight? I don't know, Goku, you know.

Right.

And. And then there's the. The extra modes and all this other stuff. Right. And it is just like a black hole. It is just a money machine. Like, it just. Yeah, but.

Yeah, I. I didn't realize this until my oldest started playing Fortnite a bit. So he plays a little bit now and then, but Fortnite has become almost a platform. No, I mean, there's so many different kinds of games.

There's. There's a rhythm game, there's a racing game, there's. There's a LEGO module, like, where.

Which is basically Minecraft. Yeah, it's just. With Legos. Yeah. Which I, again, I just didn't realize these things. And so that is an example of going Going so far into this appealing to everyone that it is extremely blatant. And I think in a certain. I actually respect it a little bit in that, like, it is no longer, like, it is not trying to be unified vision at all. It has dropped all pretense and it is. I am all things to all people, so come play me the video game.

And it's also like. I mean, but like, even sort of the origins of Fortnite, you know, and I'm not trying to, like, bag on it. Like, I'm just like. I'm kind of like, gobsmacked by how, like, just wildly successful it has been. But, like, the original game, the save the world mode was failed. It was panned. Like, people are like, this is not very good. It's kind of weird. And so they threw in. They. They basically, dare I say it, they stole somebody else's idea and they. Yeah, they stole Pubg's model. They did it better than Pubg. They executed better. And it's like. And next thing you know, it's just Behemoth and there's a. You know what's kind of funny is like. Like, you know, I referenced Marathon. Like, Marathon's, you know, going to be an extraction style shooter, PvE, PvP, PvE game. Or. I don't know, like, it's. But there's rumors that Fortnite's got an extraction style, like, mode coming in. And I'm just like. And I think, like, the thing is, like, it's. It's just so reactionary that it can just, like, there's no room to breathe in those spaces. Like, you know, like, Fortnite's coming for you, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, but. Yeah, but again, it's like. And it is. I. I'm not saying, like, oh, it's a bad game, but it is not on the same level. Like, it is. That is a much different experience than something like Clara Obscure. Like, Claire Obscure has something to say, you know.

Yeah.

You know, even, like, you. You look at something like no Way out or Split Fiction or Sea of Stars. Like, these things all. There's like, even Astrobot, I think, think, you know, and Astrobots a little more corporate Astrobots. Thing to say is like, isn't Sony great? Like, you know, kind of like. Yeah, but like, they have something to say and they do it artfully and masterfully and you know what I'm saying? And so.

Right, right. Whereas the best. That Fortnite, although it generates tons of money, I think Fortnite in games like that but while you can have a blast playing it, and I don't want to take that away from anyone I can think of, you know, all the nights that I stayed up all, all night long playing Halo 2 with friends. I'm not trying to bash those kinds of games or modes or anything like that. Just sometimes just having fun with friends is enough. Like that's all you want.

No, Yeah.

I mean, and it's sometimes that you create memories.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

But it's not going to be any more than that is really, you know, the times that you have with your friends. I think especially with Fortnite, it's not trying to be anything. And so again, I have that ounce of respect for it because it doesn't even try and put up any pretense of like. No, because this game, this mode, what you're playing is transient. Like, it's not going to last. Like inherently come play, spend a night playing, you know, Fortnite and you'll have fun and it'll be gone. And so, you know, like, it's, it's completely, it's. It's very transient. Whereas I think the best that the medium has to offer, and again, not, not totally denigrating that because you have, you can have a great time with friends doing that. But I think the best that the medium has to offer actually has something to say or something you get to experience in the way that a great piece of literature also has something to say just by having you experience it. There's something about you experiencing a story, you experiencing elements of a very well crafted video game. That's not. Fortnite is more of the arcade, you know.

Yeah, it, like, yeah. And when I think too like. And this sort of like doubling back because one of the things we sort of touched on it and we didn't stick there too long. It's not to say that we don't respect or even enjoy the big costly spectacle, but there are problems sort of associated with that. And one of the things is red Dead Redemption 2 is. It is monstrous. It's hundreds of hours, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on that game. It's. It's rumored that over a billion dollars has actually been put into GTA 6. But like, but part of what they're doing is like they're pushing fidelity and everything else. But like, again, 250 million units sold of GTA 5. Like that game, game GTA 5.

Right.

Just, it's like, it's, it's Fortnite esque in its sort of scale. And so like there, there is capital there that can be dedicated to that. But like, the thing is like. And GTA 6 probably will not miss, you know what I'm saying? Like, GTA 6 will hit. Probably sell like 100 million units in its first year or something. Stupid insane, you know.

Sure.

But all that being said, it's like, I love the Last of Us. I'm. I'm actually really like, you know, I've been talking to Micah a little bit and like, I'm really. There's a Last of Us.

Okay.

Parts one and two, remastered collection thing that I'm. I'm really kind of like hungry to play because I like those games and you know, or I like the Last of Us. I really. I need to play the Last of Us too. Anyways. But there's like, I love that, that really like high fidelity, big spectacle stuff. Like I'm. I'm probably more of a mark for that than you are in some ways. Like, you know, like, I loved Ghost of Tsushima. Like, and, and again, that's that sort of like high end, you know, sort of like, you know, super produced, you know, like, I want that, but it's like, but there is a part of me that's just like. And it's, it's like there's a needle to be threaded there. And I think even sort of like, you know, we were talking a little bit about Assassin's Creed. I can't remember if we were talking about that before we started recording or not, but like the sort of. No, we were. Well, we did mention it because like the thousand people in the credits, you know.

Right, right.

But there's sort of a danger there. Like Assassin's Creed Shadows did really well. Right. It sold really, really well. But unfortunately, like the. What it needed to, to, to. To maintain that and sustain that. That, that, that, that. That development team size, it didn't come close to those numbers. And so there, there is almost like this like, sort of like, like diminishing returns when it comes to like sort of pursuing fidelity. And I think in some ways like Sony has kind of backed themselves into a corner because that kind of was like the thing. It's like that's one of the things that they hit. And it's like, so you're in this very like risky territory, right, where it's like sort of the high. The hallmark of your games is a super high quality, you know. You know, know production per square inch. Colin Moriarty from Last Stand Media says like, he talks about that like that Sony Games have like, you know, just like the attention to detail. The, the, the polish everything. Like when you look at those first party Sony games, like production per square inch, like he's like there's nothing else like them. But again those like those diminishing returns, like you know, it's where it's like, like you need those games because of the amount of money that you've sunk into this. You need those games to sell 10, 20, 30 million units. Whereas if you have something that's a little smaller scaled, like you can be a little more loosey goosey. And I think like I said, I want both. I just think that. And you know, I think what the really sort of interesting part is like the common thread there though is like when you look at the Last of Us parts one and to. Or when you look at like the God of War and God of War. Ragnarok. Ragnarok. Or like there is a very like the, the, the direction is very singular. Like maybe that you can get a little, like maybe a little lost in the weeds. But like, you know, the last of us is no stranger to con. The Last of us Parts 1 and 2 are no stranger to controversy. So you know, Neil Druck.

Yeah.

And Neil Druckmann helmed those. So. But I guess it's just kind of like. It's just. I think more than anything though, like the, the industry needs to diversify because again those, those diminishing returns are. I think they're starting to catch up and I think that's actually most evident in the Square Enix and Final Fantasy. You know, did we talk about it at all in one of our episodes. But the State of the Ark podcast.

No, not on the podcast. You texted me about it and so yeah, this is definitely a conversation about it. Yeah.

So this is sort of an area where they can kind of times and I think we would both recommend the State of the Ark. A few months ago at this point in time did a conversation on sort of like what final. Final Fantasy needs to do. And I, I think like they zeroed in on Final Fantasy. I think it actually would have been just more helpful sort of looking at Square Enix and what Square Enix needs to do to remain relevant.

Sure.

Or to, to kind of like you know, just like to course correct. So to speak. It's a really good episode. Don't co sign with everything they say, but I think it's a really interesting conversation if you think about it. Josh, we can find the link to that episode and throw it in the show Notes for people. But part of what they talked about is that one of the problems Final Fantasy is running into is that the Final Fantasy series starting, I'd probably say even with four and six. Well, like part of the hallmarks of these games were like the spectacle of it. Like with four, you know, you think about just like the, the set pieces and everything else and just like it maybe, maybe it wasn't like the most graphically like explosive thing that ever came off on the, on the Super Nintendo. Right. But it was.

I would actually argue that from the beginning, from the beginning it was always about Spectacle. That even the first game was trying to one up Dragon Quest. Oh yeah, it's kind of fake out. It has even as. After that, after it's kind of opening, it has a very cinematic scene where it talks about how the warriors go on to, you know, go on to search the globe for these crystals and things like that. It has Yoshitaka Amano as the, as the character designer and things like that. I, I think, I think Spectacle has always been a part of the Final Fantasy series through. Even from its inception. I think that's. That's always been at least the. And I can't think of his name off the top of my head. Was it Takahashi? I can't. I can't remember if that's correct, but I think he was always thinking that way. Obviously it's not in his hands.

Sakamoto. Yeah.

Yeah, Sakamoto. Yep, there you go. Since, you know, he, he since like nine, I think was his last one or did he. Because I don't think he did 10. Anyways, doesn't matter. I, yeah, I'd say that's actually part of Final Fantasy. I, I'd also say, and here I'm jumping the gun a little bit is that I don't know what Final Fantasy is anymore, but that's a whole other conversation.

Yeah, well, and I think that's the thing is like Final Fantasy has just been like. But starting with seven, it became really pronounced where it was this sort of like this kind of like drilling down on like just pushing like really blowing things out. And so Final Fantasy VII, you had the 3D modeling, you had all this stuff. Now, full disclosure, we've had this conversation before. I think Final Fantasy VII is a bit of a mess and people love it, but it's like, it's like got three different sort of like visual languages all jumbled together and there's like, it's kind of visually production wise, I think it's pretty incoherent. And. Or it's not. It's not.

Not cohesive.

Not cohesive. Yeah. That's a great way of putting it. So there's that. But. And then eight, you know, sort of again, it's sort of like these big. I just, I go back to. You're the best looking guy here.

Right?

That meme.

Yeah.

I just think about the Penny Arcade strip that just sticks in my head. I love that so much. But then nine and there's sort of this, sort of like this, this for the time, this really like holding to like visual fidelity and really like really leaning into that and trying to like blow that out. And again, sort of like really chasing spectacle. And then 10, 12, 13, all of the 13 games, you know, 15 and 16, you look at the, again like the effects budgets on those things and like how. And it. And again it's just. And I think for a while, okay, like you can be fine. Like when 10 comes out, when Final Fantasy 10 comes out, there is nothing like it fully voice acted, you know, the cinematics, the scale, like all of it. Say what you want about like Titus's goofy laugh. Titus, you know, however you say stupid name.

No, you were right. You had it right.

I know his name is Titus. It makes me so angry. Like, it's like I just, I hate it so much. But. And you know what I'm saying? And it's. And I think like, even with the Kingdom Hearts games, like there's a really like the production value has just been like they've just crammed it in there. But there's diminishing returns. And it's like we sort of alluded to that when we just like earlier when we're talking about how does like Final Fantasy Remake sold 7 million units. That's massive. But when you need to hit 10, 12, 15 or 20 million units, 7 is a drop in the bucket.

Yeah.

And that's, that's the trade off here. Like 7 million units. 7 million units of a game is huge.

Well, and let me go a step further is that. And I guess get why they did this, but this is not only a game with a massive budget, but it is a game with a massive budget that is part of a three part series of games with massive budgets. So when you see, oh, second installment does not give us the return we wanted. In fact, it's lower than the first installment. That does not. The. That does. If you're reading the tea leaves here, that does not spell good fortune for your third installment. You know, so this is like exponentially large Budget because of the way that they did this. And again, I understand why they did this. There was tons of hype for a Final Fantasy VII reunion. I was there. I remember when those rumors swirled for literally 10 years before it was ever announced. I get it. I understand why they did it. But it's also taken another 10 years to release so well.

And. And it's kind of like it. And it's also one of those things, though, where they have really abandoned some of those smaller initiatives where it's like, you know, and it's. It's not to like, we could. Like. I could just go after. I. It's kind of a pastime of mine to go after Square Enix because they've hurt me so, so badly where I just like, I'm like, they've. It's like, what have you done to my favorite things? You've ruined this.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm still angry about that. The Valkyrie profile thing.

Well, and so that might be a counter argument though, to what you're saying is that they should go down these smaller routes. I mean, that's what that was. And.

But it was.

And it was panned for that for not.

But it was half cooked. It was like, dude, like, it was like it was low effort and that. That's not what you want either, either. It's like do a smaller scope thing, but like. Like put the time and put the necessary budget in, you know, and it's. I think. And I guess sort of like it goes back to something that I've said here is that I think maybe not so much with Atlas, because I think they. They see a fair amount of success and they're not quite as stagnant per se in. In comparison to probably Square Enix in my estimation. But like, I think Claire Expedition 33. Claire Obscure. Expedition 33. Which. That's a mouthful of a name. That's. It's.

Yep.

But I think what it does is it. It kind of puts so. Or Square Enix on notice in particular.

Okay.

In the sense that it's like it's competing. It's sort of like it's sharing some of that same sort of headspace and sort of the circles like abuzz, so to speak. Like, you know, a lot of the hype is sort of there for it and it did it. It did it at a fraction of the budget. Like, actually, I'm just going to look up something I'm so good at typing from a mile out. 7. I want Rebirth sales. Rebirth. Come on.

Wow.

And let's sort Of. Because I think. Yeah. So Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has sold around 2 million copies now. That's from April 2020 24. But, you know, and. And again, it'd be nice if I. Why search engines are just so wildly in. In inefficient. Like, I want to know current sales numbers, but it's like, so we know that, you know, you know, a little bit after it came out, sold about 2 million units.

Okay.

And because it. It came out last year, I think around the turn of the, you know, around the beginning of the year. So. But it's like, you know, and it's probably sold more since then, but it's like you're probably looking at, you know, two or three million units, maybe three and a half million units total. And again, hopefully it's done more than that. But then, you know, one of the things about Claire Expedition. Clear, obscure. One of the things about expedition, 33. 3.3 million units in 33 days.

Yeah.

Like, and it's. It's one of those things where I'm just looking at it and I'm like, yeah, this to me, it does kind of put Square Enix on notice a little bit. It says, okay, like, we're going to kind of like in. In a way beat you in this space that you are sort of. We're sort of an undisputed champion of. And it's because we're not going to get sort of lost in the weeds and we're not going to. So. And again, it's like the design by committee kind of stuff kills a lot of that. But it's just, you know, and I guess it sort of comes back to. It's like, I want these companies. I guess what sort of all this conversation that we've had is like, what I want. Want some of these bigger companies to do is to look at these smaller success stories and say, like, oh, hey, what if we spin off 50, 60 people and we give them X amount of money and we sort of say like, you've got five years at a smaller. Like you've got a smaller clip and you know, like, you know, scope things reasonably, scope things. Well, here you're going to have a smaller budget and like, the expectations aren't going to be like, but what if you let people sort of chase their passions, you know? Yeah, like, I mean, part of the problem that, like, you know, current Bungie BioWare, you look at some of these other companies and they're, they're bleeding talent. And what it is is that a lot of the people who, who made those studios what they are? Like, who really were the visionaries and the, the behind, like the sort of the heart and soul behind this stuff they've left and the people that are there. I, I don't know if it's. They, they aren't capable of it or maybe they, they weren't allowed to, but it's like these things feel soulless, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think just kind of a case in point, especially with the Square Enix is I think of smaller kind of side games. You've got your big tent pole final fantasies. But I think, you know, teams that are plugging away on Octopath Traveler on, you know, games like that bravely default, you know, which in Octopath Traveler kind of came from the same place, like those kinds of stories. Now I don't know that they were raging successes, but I think they're really good games. So I'd like to see, I'd like to see some more of that just kind of as a case in point to what you're saying is. Yeah, I agree, I agree. That's, that's what I want to see. Again, not to take away from big, you know, big bombastic games. Big bombastic triple A games. I like those too. But I do think we're definitely running into a lot of issues when those are the things that a lot of companies say are gonna save us, you know, especially as the market just continues to grow.

Well. And we don't need to spend too much time on it. But you did send me a link to an article that talked about one writer's concerns regarding a deprofessionalization within the industry.

Yeah.

And I don't want to be snide, but I think, and I do think there is like a part where like, hey, you want a mature industry so you want seasoned designers and writers in there. But I think it's kind of one of those things where it's like, like I think if, if there, there are multiple lessons that we can and should be learning that or that the industry can and should be learning over the last 10 years. Right. You know, I think there were a, a bunch of missteps surrounding Covid. You know, it's like where these companies just assume that this growth, that that growth and that trajectory was set and it's like it's just going to keep being an onwards and upwards ramp. You know, you can say things about that. But I do think like there's kind of like this thing where it's like, I think and it's kind of, it's, it's kind of hard to like put all my, my thoughts on this one together. But the video games are really kind of hard to talk about when it, talk like when we're talking about like the development side of things for a lot of reasons because it, it's just as much art as it is sort of like technical proficiency. Like so you want good programmer like you, you know, just like you, you want efficient, seasoned programmers for developing software, right? Like, because that's, there's like a software tech side of things, but there's also like an art side. So you want seasoned writers and artists and all this other stuff. So there's sort of, it's this blending of like really high, high end tech technical cap, like precision and capability matched with sort of art that is probably only sort of. Even the only thing that comes close is probably like movie making in a lot of ways or like the music industry, right? Like the, like you need sort of like this, like this high level sort of like technical proficiency just when, when it comes to like the tech and everything involved in addition to high levels of talent and vision. But I think like part of the problem has been there's been a, like a pretty broad corporatization where it's like this stuff has been turned into like basically assembly lines. And I'm going to sound a little harsh but like maybe we don't need all that. And yeah, these people would be because the guy was like, you know, what if we lose all this institutional knowledge? And it's like that's, that is a concern. But I don't think it's just going to be like, oh, you're going to chase off all the good talent. What they're going to do is they're going to go. And again going back to Claire obscure. One of the things that's really is like he worked for Ubisoft, he was bored, he went and did his own thing.

Yeah.

And I think I'm looking at it and it's like there's like, yeah, it's like, I think there is like, hey, it's not completely invalid. Like we, we don't want to lose a lot of that institutional experience. At the same time. It was like that there was a lot like I read through that article and I was like, this feels like a lot of hand wringing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean I can link the article here on the, in the show notes in the description, all that fun stuff if you'd like to read it. Yourself. But the, the author's concern was that at PAX east, most of what he was seeing were from indie devs and for smaller devs in general. And so his concern was how that changes. One is his concern seems to be for some of the. Not middlemen, but some of the aspects of creating games that can be outsourced. And so he's saying it's a devaluation of these people, you know, because now they're not no longer a part of a dev team. They are simply, you know, a hired gun for this project. And so he's saying that this benefits either the really small teams that make it really big by making an amazing game, or it, it benefits the people who've been in the industry for a long time because then they can get the jobs they want easily simply because of the. Their repertoire. But everyone in the middle, he's saying, is, well, this changes things for them. And how are they gonna, you know, how are they gonna do this as hired guns? Is this devaluing them? To which I would say one is that, okay, the landscape changes. Like, I understand you, you have a concern about that, but landscape changes career wise in every. Everywhere. Yeah. Maybe not every other sector.

Every other sector feels these things.

Right, right.

Why shouldn't you guys?

You know, and I think there's a net positive when you have lots of smaller teams. Because I think, and I say that because we've gotten to a point where things have become so bloated. I'm not against the bigger games. It's simply that we've gotten. The norm seems to be these enormous budgets that can't be recouped and that's not healthy. And it creates kind of AI Slap the video game in. In some ways, in some ways, not.

Always, but it also sort of like if that goes unchecked, it becomes a bubble and then things just collapse. Like.

Right.

You know, and so. Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah.

Anyways, I shared that article because I thought it was a very bad take, frankly. That's. It just. It strikes me because I would have the opposite reaction if I went to a convention and I saw a ton of smaller development teams. I would be excited. Like there's lots of people out there that want to make games that are so committed to the idea of this video game that they're making that they've come to this convention that they're showing off their games. Like that's a good thing to me.

They're hungry.

Right, Exactly.

Yeah.

And instead this reaction was, oh no, like why we need to have bigger teams. We shouldn't have these smaller teams. Like, that's bad. Well, bad. Take it.

It's like I would rather have a smaller, hungrier, lean team that's like, you know, like, here's the thing. Like, you know, the term crunch gets thrown around and I recognize there are issues surrounding that that, you know, I, I'm not discounting that. Like abusive workplace. Abusive workplace practices on the behalf of management are abusive. And that's wicked and should be called out and dealt with. You know what I'm saying? But I think there's, it's like whenever you're in the arts, you know, there are room for craftsmen who are just like really good. Like, you know, in Philadelphia film. Right. It's like you have guys who are like lighting techs and they're just really good at, you know, doing that and they need to be paid. Paid well. Right. And I, I would advocate that for something within, like gaming, like, similar. But I think, and, and I don't, I don't want to read too much into this, but I think like, I think there are a lot of people who sort of, of. They aren't hungry. They're kind of like coming at this and it's like. And again, I don't think like you should have to like practically kill yourself to make a game either. So it's like, you know, I know there's a bit of a nuance, but I think there's a lot of people who sort of come at this. They want to treat it sort of like as a. Almost like sort of like 9 to 5. Kind of like I'm just gonna come in, like, do my shift and like, check out. And it's like, that's not the job. That's not the industry that you're signing up to be in. If that's what you want. Hey, United States Postal Service is hiring. UPS is hiring. FedEx is hiring, you know, whoever. Like, if that's what you want, there are other fields. It's like, it almost like, it's kind of like you want the people who are going to like, again, make sacrifices and be hungry and you know, and again, I don't, I don't want to see anybody taken advantage of or exploited or anything like that. But it's like, I think especially when it comes for. To creative endeavors, like, there needs to be a bit of edge there, like a knees.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

And I think there's something beautiful about, about limitations and how they force you to get creative in order to get around them. Not even talking about, you know, like you were, you were talking about kind of hours put in in you know, blood, sweat and tears. But I think there, there have been previous eras with that were fan that fantastic video games came out of previous eras where you had, where you had to work with much less. And I say that in terms of, of the video game, what you could do to create a video game and the amount of time that you had to create those video games was much less. And so I think, I think yeah, if you're really passionate, you'll find a way.

I was just gonna say like, you know, but yeah, I was just gonna say too like. And it almost seems like, you know, how many times, like how many times do we have these conversations about like just bloat in game games, right? You know, we've talked about Assassin's Creed. It's a, it's a franchise that is like notoriously guilty on just like, there's like, just like these games are so just polluted with extra non essential junk that doesn't really, you know. And it's. Some people love that I guess, you know. But sure, it's, it's kind of like you were talking about the beauty of like there's a beauty in sort of embracing limitation. I think one of the other things though is like you've got all this money and these people have put all this time, so everything's precious, nothing can be cut. And so then you have a game that probably should be 20 hours. But because we have to include all this other stuff. Oh, we made all this other stuff so it's got to be in there, you know, next thing you know it balloons out to 40, 50, 60, 70 hours and it didn't need to be there, you know what I'm saying?

And.

Like, and again I keep referencing Clare Obscur and again I'm, I'm obsessed with this game. But it's like to beat the game, it's like 30 hours just to play if you like Golden Path it and you just sort of like do story beats, maybe a little bit of exploring but, but I have double that easily in it because I'm just like so enchanted by the world and I sort of like I want to get in there and I want to sort of like uncover every little secret and I want to wrestle with it. And it's like that's, that's what you want. Like that's the goal. But you don't do that by sort of not drawing lines. Like you Know, by not exercising restraint, like, if you just kind of throw it all in there, eventually just. Yeah, it's just too much. I don't know.

Yeah.

But it's not to say that you can't pack things full of it. But anyways, so. Yeah, and it's. And I think sort of where you were going to is that like, you know, we think about the games that we come up. We. We came up with, that we grew up with. And you read about like the dev cycles where it's like. It's like. Like, like 30 people and it's like you've got a year.

Right.

And it's like get to cracking. And some of those are like what that. That was we were talking about. That was Mega Man 2. I think you. You said had. It was like they had like a year to make it and 30 people.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was. It was tiny. Huh.

And that's considered one like, that's a foundational game, right?

Yeah, it's still upheld nowadays. Yeah. It's crazy.

Sort of a pillar in design and everything else. I just think about like, you know, and I go back to it. It's like. I think about Shadow of the colossus on. On PS2, and it's like the original vision for that game was like dozens of Colossi. They ended up with like, I think like 14 or like 16 or what. I can't remember the actual number. Number. But it's like not. Not dozens, you know, and it's like. And there's a beauty and an elegance in sort of like the. The minimalism and the sort of. The restraint shown. And I think that, like. Yeah, it's just like, I. I think there's a. So there's a lot there. And like, we're kind of like. I think we're starting to like, wander a little bit of field, you know, but it's like.

Sure, yeah, there's.

There's a lot of parts of this. You know, it's just like. This is just something where I think I am hopeful and I guess where I'm kind of going with this is that I see Nintendo embracing sort of what looks like a variable pricing model, which I think is healthy. I think it's good.

Yeah.

You know, because. And on the same end I also see like, I'm hopeful that that Expedition 33 and other games like this are sort of a signal of maybe the industry returning to sort of maybe again, these. These sort of smaller, more sort of, you know, like just more narrowed, like zeroed in More focused passion project kind of things where we can maybe get some like real magic occasionally and you know. Yeah, yeah, I'm hopeful.

Right, right. Yeah, especially, especially when you see one like this do so well.

For sure.

I just wanted to clarify because I did a quick Google search here that apparently Mega Man 2, its development team at its peak consisted of six people.

Oh.

And it took 33 to make how people? In three months. Three months.

Oh, that's insane. That's.

Yeah, it is insane.

And maybe I was apparently Final Fantasy 4 or something like that.

It, it could have been. And, and part of the reason was because they wanted. They immediately started on the sequel after the first one was released because they weren't fully satisfied with the first one, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight and they didn't want Capcom to tell them to move on to something else. So they just immediately started work on two. Yeah, but again that is absolutely insane that again one of the most highly regarded video games of all time was created in three months by six people.

Yeah, that's kind of. And again I just, I do hope that things like Expedition 33, like, I hope that we get more of this and I hope they do sort of of offer sort of like they, they sort of challenge the industry to do some course correction. Like I'm, I'm. Yeah, I hope that like, I hope that Square Enix is looking at Expedition 33 and saying like what can we learn from this? You know, I'm not, I'm not opposed to like you, you making sort of like you're saying like the, like sort of being a little like. I think. Yeah, I mean there's a lot there. But I think one of the beauties is of, of that game in particular is that it, it's sort of, it's very, it's. It's very much a traditional turn based RPG while at the same time it's very much not. And I think that that's, that's fascinating because I, you know. Anyways, so.

Yeah, well, good stuff, man. I think, I think this has been a good conversation.

Yeah.

Hopefully it made a little bit of sense. Hopefully it was encouraging but I think it gives you listener at the very least.

Hopefully it was entertaining.

Yeah, yeah. And you can kind of think through some of these things yourself. You know, what do you want to see in gaming and what is the current state of games or maybe you don't care and you'll just continue playing the games, games that you love to play or just beating down your backlog that Might be helpful as well. But our time is growing short because it has been so long. I don't. I don't know. That didn't make any sense. But I think you know what I'm getting at.

We've been running our gums for a while and it's time to land the plane.

Yeah. Yeah. And before we land this plane, just a few. We do have a few final forms. The next one being our. Our weekly shout outs or episodely shout outs, bi weekly shoutouts. Those things where we just want to highlight something that's been going on in our community and give. Give a shout out. So my shout out this week is to the redeemed ronin on Discord. Because he started this trend in our Discord that was a lot of fun where he simply fed his, his. His screen name, his handle into chat, GPT into some AI slop and asked it to just create an avatar based on that without giving much detail. And it started. It just bounced around all of our Discord and that was a lot of fun to see what AI slop popped out of it. I got a nice little, nice little character out of it, which I thought was very funny. And then someone created some fanfic based on that character. And then I felt very uncomfortable but.

Because of course the degens in our Discord are going to make it weird.

Weird, right? Yes. But anyways, that. It was a fun time. I enjoyed that.

Yeah.

Thank you for sharing.

Yeah.

Nate, who do you have to shout out?

Well, John. Yeah, I just. I did want to second Jono's contribution there even. I joined in on the hygiene.

You did, you did. I mean, you made way more than anyone else. Probably a dozen different.

Well, like, and that's like, once I. It's like kind of like a rabbit hole thing. Thing. Like once I start doing that, like I, I see how like tightly I can like dial that stuff in.

Right.

And I do, I do like those tools. I also kind of resent what they do, you know, it's like. Yep, it's like I have a bit of a love hate thing with it.

Totally.

But in, in addition to that, I did want to shout out Micah, Micah Gear, solid friend of the show, patron, and just like a solid dude, you know, was able to sort of like chat with him, you know, not too long ago and just kind of like do some catching up. And it's just like one of the things that just through this show and just like online communities, like, you know, TRG back in the day, like just. I don't Want to get too into it, but it's like, I think, like, not every online relationship you. You have is, like, substantial. But, like, I think, like, I think about our friendship and how we're prim. We are Internet friends.

Yep.

Like, and it's grown to be more than just Internet friends, but, like, yeah, you know, but. And just how a lot of the guys in our community just have a deep and abiding affection for. Even though it's like, these are Internet friendships. But anyways, Mike and I were able to sort of catch up and sort of, like, chew the fat. And the other thing is, like, dude, I just. Again, one of the things that came up when we were talking was like, he does that. That video game photography stuff, and he just does, like, some of the coolest shots, like, just for sure. Like, if you guys want to see some, like, cool, like, cool stuff. And he hasn't done tons of it lately. He. He has done some, but, like, you want to see some, like, really sick, like, captures, and he, like, tweaks them and edits them and does all sorts of, like, he plays with the saturation and all. Like, he goes to town on these things. But yeah. Yeah, he's got some really great stuff out there. And so just shout out to Micah for just. Yeah, man. Making some cool virtual video game photography stuff. Like, it's pretty sick and just being a cool dude. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Sweet.

That's. That is my shout out.

Nice.

No, I. I think it is time for something else.

What. What is. What is that?

Here comes a new challenger.

That's what it is. It's a new challenge. A new challenge to face before we face this new challenger. Let's take it. Let's get a little update on. On our previous challenges from the last time that we challenged each other. So I can kind of cop out a little bit. My. My previous challenge was one that I wanted to hit by the summer, and that was to lose another ten pounds. I've since gained a little bit of weight since I was in Texas, a couple pounds. It actually was not nearly as much as I expected, but I've been.

I expected to go down there and eat all of, like, that homemade Mexican food, but, like, you didn't eat all of it. You just ate. Not all of it, some of it.

So. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Did eat a good amount. And so now that we're back looking to get back into those things, so. So that will continue. And I had intentionally kind of set that goal for the summer because I knew this trip was Coming up, all that stuff. So I'm doing okay. Need to, but need to hit that pretty hard over the next couple months.

Months.

So yeah, that's, that's the only update that I have.

Yeah.

What, what do you have?

Mine was just to, so like there, there's a few sort of like long standing challenges. I have been okay.

Yep.

Journaling with a little bit more consistency. Still not where I want to be. Like I said that that is, that is a discipline that I think has been really is always like when I do it, it is just good. It is a net positive for me. It helps order my thoughts. It helps sort of like helps me structure my days. Helps me to sort of like decompress all those things. Like it does a bunch of different ticks off a bunch of different boxes. One of the big buzzwords of the day is mental health. And when I journal, my mental health is in a much better place with, with more consistency. But I, I said I needed to generate three actionable steps or sort of consequences or like things to sort of really embrace like a health journey. And I, I think I've thought about it over the last month and so one of the things I need to do is I really need to, to emphasize sleep. I, I need to really emphasize the importance of like as a general rule getting seven to eight hours every night. Like that needs to be a priority. Like it's not to say that it's going to happen all the time, but it needs to happen most of the time and that I, I, I'm not great at that because it's like I do the dumb dad thing where it's like I'm gonna stay up till 12am you know, doom scrolling or reading this book or watching this show or whatever. And what I need to do is just say like, hey come 10 o' clock most nights go to bed, like go lay down, close your eyes. Like call it a night. So prioritize sleeping. The other one of the other things is I just do need to like count calories. I am not like, I sort of as a general rule kind of do some very loose intermittent fasting in the sense that like I only really eat within a certain window. Yeah. And I, I could probably tighten that window. But like because of the way I used to, I used to, that window used to be from 1 to 7pm But I come home a lot earlier than I used to because I don't live on the route anymore. And so I start like I usually come home and I usually eat my lunch around 10:30am, you know.

Okay.

And so I think just, it's like, I think I need to reestablish that window and I think part of it, so I need to count calories, but I also need to like, lock in and say like, nothing. As a general rule, nothing after 7pm Just like hard and fast. Unless that's when you're eating supper. And the last is I need to get back into some sort of exercise regimen, period. Especially now that my hand is sort of like mostly recovering. I need to kind of of start doing some kettlebell workouts and sort of looking at some of that. Like, kettlebell is probably going to be like my. That's probably going to be where my weight training, you know, kind of comes in nice. Because that's going to be the most successful thing for me. So those are my three things, you know, hard and fast, like, you know, pretty hard and fast lines for sleep, you know, and sort of like diet again, it's like, I don't think it needs to be like, like, but it. I do need to sort of like set my, like, figure out what I need calorically and then say like, you need to stay within this most, you know.

Yeah.

It's not to say never, but it's like, hey, you know, if you eat ice cream, okay, you know, that's X amount of calories. Like that that counts. And it's like, that's. That's the decision you made.

Right, Right. Yep. And being intentional about that. Yeah.

Yeah. And then like I said, the. The other thing is just really like getting back into the weight training and just being more. A lot more intense. Like, you know, like, and, and it doesn't have to be anything but say like three times a week. Three times a week. Do some weight training.

Yep.

Yeah. Like 15 to 20 minutes.

Right? Right. Yeah. You can start off small and that's good. I've. Yeah, I use a dumbbell. I've been doing a dumbbell workout routine that I just found on YouTube and I've just been doing that every other day so that I get a rest day and then I do it again and it's been good.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I dig that. Moving forward, a challenge that I would like to set for myself is actually we went to the library earlier today and they have their summer kind of promotional stuff going on. And so it is for, for kiddos, but there's also an adult version of the kiddos read. 20 minutes a day. If you do that for a week, then you get, you get a little bracelet With a charm, you get to add a charm. You know how they have like Crocs charms and stuff like that?

Oh, yeah.

But there's the adult version as well, going on at our library, where you finish eight books over the summer. And for each book you get a raffle ticket. They're giving away a number of different things and you can put it to whatever you want. But if you get eight books over the summer, then you get a pint glass from our local library that has their logo on it. So I'd like to hit that goal over the summer. So by the next episode, I'd like to have three books read by then. That's. That's what I'm.

Do they count audiobooks or.

I don't know. I didn't ask because I'd like to actually, like, physically read, not actually read. You know, it is, it is still no you.

Well, it is actually reading, you know, versus listening to someone else read it to you.

Yes.

So you're. It's fair to say that. It's fair to say that.

So, so they might count, but I am not going to count it because I'd like to stretch myself.

Yeah, no, that's. That'd be good. That'd be good. That's my goal, I think. I guess, sort of like mind moving forward, I guess will just be like those three things that I talked about.

Yeah.

At least seven, seven hours of sleep most nights. You know, sort of the, the, the dietary. Sort of like locking in that window calorically and temporally and then just saying like, hey, three times a week, pick up the kettlebell. Well, do more than just pick it up. Move it around sometime.

Move it down and pick it up. Yes. Yeah. Nice. Well, I like it, man. That's great. And speaking of possibly the possibility of getting at least close to seven hours of sleep. Sleep, we're gonna have to end this episode in order for you to get anywhere near that tonight. So I think, I think we've had a great time, you know.

Yeah, dude, it's been a good one.

Conversation.

Yeah. And, and, you know, listeners, if you got all the way through, Watchers, if you got all the way through, shout out to you guys and, you know, do the things. Let us know what you thought in the, the, the, the comments here or, you know, there are other ways that they can get ahold of us too, right, Josh?

That's true. Tons of ways. We're all over the Internet and you can find all those ways at our linktree, which is simply just linktree.com thebacklogbreakdown or show notes or description whatever. But linktree works too. Check it out.

Well, I think yeah, it's like it's getting late. We actually still have a bro hang to reach record and yeah, it but it's time for us to just call it a night. So until next we did the thing, Josh. Until next time. What should they do?

We did. Guys, keep beating down your backlogs and we'll keep breaking down the benefits.

Sa.