Rade: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Player Too podcast. I'm your co host, Rade Stojsavljevic

Dave Leary: And I'm your co host Dave Leary. Rade, it is not just another episode, it is our forty fifth episode, and I see in honor of our forty fifth episode you've moved the sign to the left.

Rade: I I am playing with places. I don't have a lot of great options. I I thought I would like it on this side more, but I don't because I'm kind of limited. I can't move that bookcase any further because there's a a wall over there. so I think the the my screen left side is the the the way I'm gonna go with this.

Dave Leary: I see. Well, a s clearly the right answer is a new larger office so that the sign can be displayed in all its glory, because that's clearly the most important thing.

Rade: Yeah, it's about as big of an office as I'm gonna have. it's just more money to heat a place, more more to pay in taxes. Don't need to do that. All right.

Dave Leary: Fair enough, fair enough.

Rade: So this is gonna be our special episode where we're gonna do a deep dive on war dogs. so the the segment's gonna be we'll do news briefly. We're gonna do war dogs, and war dogs will also be our game of the week. So little spoiler there for everyone, if they're they're hanging out for a recommendation. It's war dogs.

Dave Leary: That's right. And I think I think this will be a lot of fun. We haven't done this before, but a a deep dive on a successful launch in a game like War Dogs will should be a pretty interesting conversation. So but let's hit some news first. A little bit of news, right?

Rade: Yeah, the big ones are the the layoffs continue at Microsoft as part of their restructuring. and this one I've got this one affected friends of mine that I've known for a long time. and it affected a studio that I was actually interviewing to join not too long ago. and so I have some some some info on that. I won't divulge any secrets or anything like that, but I have a bunch of thoughts on this, and I'm referring to the The Halo studio.

Dave Leary: Yeah, I mean this is a this is another big swath and I and I think in some ways it it's fewer people. It's it's two hundred and six seventy some. but to some extent this impacted some pretty heavy hitters and and you know, Halo is now gonna be under the control of Activision. Bethesda corporate offices will now control Obsidian. there are some clear winners, I think, in the Microsoft's table with this. Activision is a winner, King is a winner. Maybe Bethesda is a winner by bringing Obsidian under their umbrella. And there are obviously some pretty big losers in this. Arcane in in France is probably on its last legs. Halo Studios is, as I mentioned, is probably on its way out, if not fully closed. and you know, I would say that gaming fans really take a loss here because once again, despite some Some sort of think pieces on LinkedIn I've seen, which I disagree with about how this is a really smart move for Microsoft and thank God Halo is now under Activision. there are just fewer good veteran studios out there to build cool stuff for players.

Rade: I think having King take over the casual stuff, that that's logical. And they have a lot of expertise in that space. And and there's a pretty big separation between understanding the market for casual games and mobile games and more core gaming products. So like I mean that I look at that and like, all right, that kind of makes sense. Also helps that I don't think there were a lot of layoffs that that came attached to that one. The thought pieces on LinkedIn about Halo and seeing some of the gamer stuff, like frankly struck me as ghoulish. the people cheering that Activision is taking this over when, you know, hundreds of people who've worked on Halo for a long time are now unemployed. Like, I mean, that's just shit. Like, why why would yeah,

Dave Leary: Amen, brother. I'm with ya on that one.

Rade: I don't know why you would do that. I used to work at Activision a while back, but the Activision I worked at is very different. Than the Activision today. So, you know, something I said about about this on LinkedIn was like, I'm not gonna opine on whether or not Activision will do a better job with Halo than than Halo Studios or 343 did. we're gonna find out. I have no idea. I I I can say like I'm not happy with the direction Call of Duty took, but I want to talk about in general why I think. some of the things going on at Microsoft are a bad idea. So one, I think piecemealing out this restructuring or whatever you want to call it that they're doing over a long time does nothing good for the products that are going to come out of of Microsoft Game Studios. It creates uncertainty and fear and doubt among everybody who's working there. And nobody does good work in an environment. They don't do their best work in an environment like that.

Dave Leary: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, I could say that I ha have talked to some people who are within in the structure and survived the layoff though. As as you mentioned, you and I both have friends who did not. And even the survivors are are always on edge now. There has just been so much churn and it's not clear that that things are completely done yet. never knowing when the next restructuring is going to hit is not the conditions under which you do good work of any kind.

Rade: No, in fact, what it does, and this happens everywhere I've ever seen multiple staggered layoffs happen, is it it basically it creates incentives for people to take fewer risks, do just enough not to get fired, don't put their neck out and stretch. And frankly, I think that's one of the problems the Halo series has had for a long time. This is a a 20 some odd year old franchise right now. Like when it came out, I I put it up there with with with Doom, with Battlefield, with with the GoldenEye 007 game is sort of like pivotal shifts in what was possible in the shooter space, FPS space. it's absolutely one of the greats. And one of the problems that come with that is you you lose the ability of an internal team to take risks. with franchises like that because you become the the golden goose at at the publisher and nobody wants to jeopardize that thing not doing well. So you don't take you don't have a lot of creative freedom. Compounded by that, there have been multiple leadership turnovers in that studio. Right. So it was it was bungee, then it split out, then three, four, three, and then they churned out people there. And there's just nobody had like the the Gravitas to say, hey, I'm going to do this. And I'll give you a specific example. Can you imagine a creative director saying, hey, this game's been going on for a long time? It's time to breathe some fresh air into the franchise. I want to kill the Master Chief. Do you think anybody at the company would let that person do that?

Dave Leary: No, not with the not with the weight of the business departments resting on that franchise and and having input into the direction of it. I I think that those kind of bold choices are what game fans want to see. Maybe not that specific one. There would be a a a some fan outcry, I think, if Master Chief were killed, but but it's those kind of thoughts that you want teams to be able to have and explore. So that they can figure out a path forward for a franchise that does need a breath of fresh air.

Rade: Yeah, and so I th I I think there are a lot of very talented people that have worked on that franchise for a long time, and I know some of them. And I think they were hemmed in by that constraint. I think they're also hemmed in by the constraints of like if you look at that that game, it's old enough now that the generation that was brought up on Halo is probably aged out on that style of FPS game. And there's a lot of different games right now. I don't know about you, I think you would agree with this, but as you get older, your Twitch skills decrease.

Dave Leary: Ha ha.

Rade: And so your ability to to like I could never go back and play a deathmatch, Doom, or Unreal the way I did when I was 20. Like I just I like no way. Right. So

Dave Leary: yeah. No way.

Rade: like, but I'm playing different types of FPS games. I still play them now. so I think you've got that problem where like the generation has matured and the franchise needs to go with it or it needs to appeal to a new audience. It's gotta pick one. So there's there's that challenge. I think there's a lot more competition in the space than than ever before. But I also think the other thing pinning this one in is a lot of these marquee console franchises are tied to characters, right? So I'm thinking Jack and Dexter, Ratchet and Clank, Metal Gear, with with you know with Snake and like all these things, like there's a singular character tied to that. And with shooters, like there's also mechanics. So battlefield is vehicles in large scale combat. You know, some of the other ones are are like the stealth shooters, like, and so there's both of these things are kind of pinning in what you can do with that franchise. And to your point before, if you go too far out of that, you're gonna have some fans revolt. I think you got to balance that you're not gonna please everybody, but you wanna please enough people. and maybe bring in some new people and say, Hey, that's interesting. I want to check that out. So it's a really, really hard problem, and you compound that. Every time you turn over the people making this game, which they've done so many times with this franchise.

Dave Leary: Yeah, it's a whole bunch of new people who come in and try to understand all the things that have gone before and try to wrap their heads around what the fans want. unlike a team that has grown up with the fans and kind of has has shepherded a franchise through multiple generations, you you just you lose institutional knowledge. And and I I don't think you and I have ever not emphasized that on this podcast. I I think it comes up a lot. it's one of the great costs of layoffs that doesn't get talked about. And it certainly doesn't seem to be something that the bean counters in the bowels of accounting departments are paying attention to and they think about which teams to let go.

Rade: Yeah. So, you know, we'll see. I I think there's a lot of pressure resting on whoever's gonna wind up taking over this franchise. I wish them the best of luck. I do not want to see this franchise fail. I th I I I love the go those games. They're some of my favorite shooters. this gonna be a tough one and it's gonna be a while before

Dave Leary: Well said. Yeah.

Rade: we see anything.

Dave Leary: Yeah, absolutely.

Rade: All right. I think that's the big thing for the news this week. So let's get on to something a little more fun and let's talk about war dogs.

Dave Leary: I I've been looking forward to this discussion. I I think you and I have not really had a deep dive into a game, though we spent quite a lot of podcast time on Arc Raiders when it first came out. And with sales of this game, War Dogs topping two million and a peak in currency at their launch of around 400,000, I I felt like it is a great deep dive case study for a successful launch. not without its problems, and I I want to talk about some of those. But I I think it's a good excuse for us to make War Dogs both our discussion topic and our game of the week.

Rade: Yeah, for sure. so I've compiled a list of my likes, dislikes, and concerns about the game. I'm assuming you have something similar and you want to just run through it.

Dave Leary: I do have something similar, but I think we ought to begin in a a different place. I I'd like to get into the game design in a little while, but let's start out with the developer Bulkhead and their somewhat shaky history. their previous multiplayer shooter, Battalion 1944, had a lot of problems. to the extent that promised console versions that were going to be delivered at one point ended up getting killed. they had a ton of server problems out of the gate. the fans felt burned by it. support was essentially dropped after a while. I feel like Bulkhead clearly learned from that experience. And and once again, I'll reiterate: this is a good lesson in how keeping a team together has value, even one that appears to maybe not have its act together. and now they have a very successful title on their hands, which after a single rough launch day, which I think we had to talk about as well. has really had very few server issues and they pitch themselves on their website now as the next big shooter studio. And I think it's reasonable to say, hey, you guys might be able to lay claim to this. This might be something they can claim now.

Rade: Yeah, so let's talk about that last part. man, nothing good comes from labeling labeling yourself the next anything. Like

Dave Leary: Ha ha.

Rade: I I just strongly advise against that because oof

Dave Leary: That's true.

Rade: that that tends to that if they have any missteps, the community is gonna snapshot that and it's gonna become a meme. And it's it's like there's no value in doing that. but let's talk about that launch. so when they initially launched, it it blew up in a in in a scale way faster than expected. And so there were some pretty significant queue times to get into some of the servers. That's not uncommon. Like it's it's really hard to get that right.

Dave Leary: That's exactly right. And and you know, it was a little it was even a little more complex than just long queue times. They actually had had some kind of bugs in their system. Their login server and their login process got overwhelmed and they needed some emergency fixes to unblock it. As you point out, you know, live service like that and and launch days for a game that blows up larger than you expect is not as simple as fans make it out to be. Fans are always just like, Why can't you just spin up more servers? and the bottom line is hardware to run official servers is is costly. you plan and plan and plan for a launch like that. You project and project what you think your audience is going to be like. I have some direct experience with this. load is very, very hard to predict. And you know, good systems will allow you to to spin up more servers dynamically as you need, and they clearly have that part in place, but sometimes stuff just goes wrong. I think One of the ways they have recovered very gracefully from their kind of rocky launch is they were radically transparent about what was going on. there was a video that was posted by their social media team late at night fighting fires on that launch issue. And and that's a video that I I recommend everyone go take a look at. It's extremely well worth watching. there are some gripes I have about the way they they operated there, but it really is some nice raw insight into what a launch day looks like on a on a game with a heavy multiplayer component.

Rade: Yeah, so two thoughts on that. one, I I think they've recovered nicely. I think your point about how they communicated it with transparency is absolutely the right way to do that. people should look at that and and and follow that example. I do think they were afforded some grace being a a smaller dev and also being in early access. I I cannot imagine customers extending that same grace to a GTA six were it to have similar issues. at launch. They're like, you're an $80 game and a multi-billion dollar company. How did you do this? Right. Like I think they're gonna very different environments there. But in terms of of the scaling problem, there's two things that are are generally challenging at a launch, right? So, you know, obviously predicting the exact numbers and when they're gonna come in and how fast they're gonna come in is an issue, but there's always some sort of bottleneck. So it's not a matter of, well, I could just turn on more servers. You can do that sometimes within reason. today, on a lot of cloud services, availability of servers have to is harder to get than ever because these machines are being consumed for AI and for other uses. And so you actually have to reserve them ahead of time and you might not be able to get them. or the time

Dave Leary: That's right.

Rade: to get more is significantly slower than than you thought. But you also find these bottlenecks in either your database or your load balancer or something else because you architect it for a certain type of load because like look why if if i'm just taking me and and my friend to lunch do i want to go take out like an 18 wheeler to do that no but if i'm hauling a huge amount of cargo i probably do and so you you don't want to overbuild or underbuild and so getting that right is is challenging and i i i think you know they recovered pretty gracefully Gracefully, it didn't last that long and it's working now.

Dave Leary: Yeah, I I think they had about one bad day and and that day, you know, ended up with them rocking a very low score on on Steam Reviews for about a day, but but they did recover quickly. And and you know, you you mentioned the scaling issue. You know, at launch they ended up with four hundred thousand some concurrent, but now it's settled down as games do and they're they're bouncing off about half of that. maybe different as the weekends go on. I I think the game's got some staying power and we'll get into the game itself, but Th these are constant problems and and their job is not done yet, right? They're gonna have to figure out what their load looks like for the long haul. when they do an update, the load will probably spike again and and and these are just things that part of that team is going to be fully dedicated to dealing with in live operations for the forthcoming future for that title.

Rade: Yeah, so you're you're familiar with free economics, right? The the the

Dave Leary: Yes.

Rade: hidden side of of things. So putting on my free economics hat, because I love that. I love behavioral economics. My degree is in economics, for anyone who didn't know. I actually think this issue helped them greatly in their success. Similar to when you're launching a piece of hardware, having it sell out and engineering your volume of production that was released and is available creates Fear of missing out and creates demand and creates awareness. The fact that the server is overloaded shows everyone else who hadn't already bought it. wow, a lot of people are playing this thing. I should take a look at it. And they recovered in 24 hours. That is like you should not intentionally do that unless you're an absolute expert, because like that could go wrong in so many ways. But when it works well, you can't buy that kind of marketing.

Dave Leary: Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, lucky and and maybe not intentional as you say, but y you know, they they appear to have been ready to respond to problems and they were ready to pull kind of all hands efforts to to get things fixed up. And I think it's worth you know, talking a little bit about their overall marketing strategy, which which, you know, as I mentioned, the video that they posted, they seem to be be pretty radically transparent about how they operate. They have also embraced and leveraged and directly interacted with a lot of the big streamers of of FPS games. they engage directly with the community. the downside from my perspective, and and maybe this is just partly the mill sim shooter space they're working in, but they do come across as an extremely old school bro-ish company. they're they're extra snarky. They're they're not shy about kind of dropping profanity to their fans. It feels a little bit old school to me, in some of their interactions, but maybe that buys them cred with the crowd that they're chasing.

Rade: I think it does. I think it it it says authentic, because it is. So I think that's good. And it's it's a foil to the sanitized corporate speak that you get from the the bigger players in the space. I also think their their CEO is pretty outspoken about posting and has gotten torched by some people. and like I listened to his whole interview about how he he Hires people specifically who are willing to work extra. And that was interpreted by some people as like, it's a crunch culture. These guys are terrible. I'm like, stop. Like you're jumping to some conclusions. Like, I get where he's coming from. Maybe there was a way to have said that a little bit differently, but like the way it was categorized is like they're grinding their team into the ground. Like, that is not what he said.

Dave Leary: I I agree with you. I mean, I think I am a a a pretty big anti crunch person and and I think the one thing that kind of rubbed me wrong in the way that he framed it was hey, I would I would not consider I I would at least take into consideration someone's anti crunch positions when I was considering whether or not to extend an offer to them. I I think combing through someone's social media looking for positions is always fraught with a little bit of peril. Yeah, you know. Just because somebody advocates against crunch as a practice does not make mean they're not a hard worker or not useful to your organization. so so I think that was one thing in there that that rubbed me a little bit the wrong way. but that said, I do think the media blew that up much larger than it was. And when you read the full interview in the full context, he's not really saying anything I fully disagree with it, except for that one bit.

Rade: No, and I and I've commented on a couple of his his posts. one of them he posted retention numbers and he calculated he did day one three and seven retention and he calculated three as the the the difference between one and three versus the cohort from one. So it like it actually went up. And I'm like, well, hold on a minute. You didn't resurrect that many number of users in this time to do that. Like that's you're just using the wrong math on that. Why did you do that?

Dave Leary: I saw your comment on that and and you were right. And I and I immediately recognized that and understood the miscalculation he'd that had been made there. you know, there's certainly no denying the game is clearly retaining pretty well, but but yeah, those numbers were a little misleading.

Rade: Yeah. And so I part of me wonders too if there isn't like we saw this ages ago when you know there was a big push towards casual games. that, you know, games like Dark Souls came out that just decided, you know what, we're the opposite of that. and there's absolutely a market for that. And and like, is that going on here? I don't know. I I think this is more likely that this is just a game that these these people really wanted to make. And it's coming across authentic and and there is an audience for it.

Dave Leary: Absolutely. Well, I would love to get into the game itself and get your impressions of this. And I want to start out by saying that I have heard the kind of shorthand description of this game as being a game that sits literally halfway between a battlefield and an arma, a hardcore military shooter. I'm not sure I fully agree with that analogy, but I'm curious for your first unvarnished take on this game.

Rade: my first Arn Varnish take is this feels like a classic PC multiplayer shooter. It feels like what Battlefield felt like to me back when it was a PC title, before they focused primarily on console ifying it, if that's a a word. So I'm thinking back to 1942. I'm thinking back to Battlefield Desert Combat, the mod in particular. And then Battlefield Two. And after that, they it started to diverge a little bit more and putting more console friendly mechanics in it. But it reminds me of that. And mostly in a good way.

Dave Leary: Mostly in a good way. Okay, give give me a negative here before we go go through all our positives 'cause I think there are many.

Rade: all right. So one of the negatives i in a game like this is there there's Let's see, in some of the early ones, the the uner user interface in those old games was clunky. and I think that's one area where thinking of a console has improved a lot of these. And and the UI for War Dogs, I find clunky, particularly the interact that gets a nested and I have to scroll down to get into other things. How ammo is put into the clips, I think is unnecessarily cumbersome. And I don't know why they made that choice. It adds no value to me.

Dave Leary: That is that is a hundred percent in my opinion, just to just to cut in. I believe that's totally catering to the MILSIM crowd and the arma end of their fan base to have it work that way.

Rade: Yeah, I mean look, I I pick my clip, I I should and then I could throw whatever ammo I want in there. Like I it's like I don't need to go through extra steps to do that. That's just completely unnecessary in my

Dave Leary: I hope you've found the the the hotkey in the inventory that you can just hit C and it'll like it'll reload your clips for you like from yours because you wanna experience the Milsom magic, Rade.

Rade: Why do I need a hotkey? It should just be automatic. You know? I don't want to sit. I I look, I don't need to take apart, clean, and oil my gun between rounds

Dave Leary: Ha ha ha.

Rade: it in a game. Like you don't do that in War Dogs, but like there's elements of a sim that I I have no interest in in doing this. It's pure tedium. I don't want that. I

Dave Leary: Gotcha.

Rade: also like you know, it's like what killed me when we were doing somebody made this thing where you could run around in a VR game. It was like this slippery little thing. And you're like, yeah, 'cause I want to get winded and pass out while I'm I'm sprinting to an objective in in a game, like in sweat in this anyway, whatever. Aspects of it I don't like. So that's a negative to me, is I I don't think the UI is clean.

Dave Leary: Let me ask you about something that I think could be perceived as a negative, but I wonder if it's really a positive for them. this is kind of unusual in twenty twenty six to have a shooter that has, as far as I can tell, absolutely no matchmaking of any kind.

Rade: I think with a hundred people in a a a battle, I don't know if you need it. I think what's gonna happen, and we've seen this with this style of multiplayer architecture happen over time, you'll start to see segmentation of the servers. you'll you'll I mean, like almost all of them you have like a hardcore server and a noob server, and then the hardcore people go in there and farm the noob ones, and then someone moderates it eventually and it gets better. So I think you'll start to see that, you know. You you might see I don't know if they're gonna allow it, but like remember Battlefield where they would do like no vehicle ones because someone would be like,

Dave Leary: Mm-hmm.

Rade: the the plane is OP. It's on you know, whatever. And so do you wanna put that as an option? Yeah, I don't know.

Dave Leary: Yeah, I think I I think we're already starting to see a little bit of that. And it does remind me of Hell Let Loose a little bit. That you're starting to see that in some of the player player user servers. I I I it's interesting to me that the official servers don't have don't appear to be spin up, spin down things that kind of are are randomly cycled and and so I don't think there's a whole lot of permanence on that side of the aisle. And I I'm not sure they will do what you're talking about on the official servers.

Rade: Yeah, I think the smarter way that Battlefield eventually did it is they just had maps where you're like, Look, there's you're not gonna have a plane in here because like it makes no sense. You know, you're fighting inside of a ship or some sort of nonsense. Why would you have an airplane flying around?

Dave Leary: Yeah. for me, you know, there are not a lot of negatives to this game. I I think I'm having a better time with it than you, though though I think you and I would both agree Arc Raiders is probably the more polished game with a little bit maybe of a wider audience in some ways. it is, you know, a playground of chaos, so it's probably unbalanced. I think the meta's still being figured out. there's some bugs and lack of polish, some glitchy stuff, but but some of that is is fun for me. and I honestly give a lot of that stuff a pass because it's it's early access. I think there's a real core strength to this game that is is maybe not getting talked enough about, which is there is something for everyone in this game. I I think more so than Battlefield and a lot of other shooters. And and I've been recommending it to friends who I don't think are into the the hardcore Mill Sims stuff because If you're a flight sim guy, you can go fly chopper runs back and forth. If you like base building and even something like Minecraft, you could spend a whole match sitting in the base building up the base, and that's valuable to the team. If you're like me and you like Euro Truck Simulator 2, you could spend a whole match driving logistics trucks carrying pallets of crates to the front. And all of that stuff contributes to the greater effort. And It doesn't feel forced as it sometimes does in Hell Let Loose, where you have a role and you have to stick to that role. If you get bored in one minute, you can kinda just go do something else in that battlefield playground UA. A and I think that's an amazing strength of this game.

Rade: It I think it is a strength and I think it's also problematic. because I don't think it's well balanced right now. So logistics, especially, like where you're talking about bringing things out to forward operating bases, you get a lot of money for ferrying players into the battlefield if you're a a a helicopter pilot or or you're a a a a vehicle driver. you don't get as much bringing logistics and supplies into a fob or bringing it out to the team. And that stuff to me is just as valuable. So I think there's a balance issue that needs to be resolved there, or pretty quickly players are gonna optimize for the thing that makes them the most cash and they're not necessarily gonna do some of these other things.

Dave Leary: I'll push I'll push on you a little bit. First of all, I I think you can make more money in logistics than than you might think, particularly if you go through the effort of un actually unloading your crates and and doing all the other little bits and pieces that are involved with logistics. But I I I take your point there. I think to some extent, if anything, they need to weight the the monetary reward you get from logistics pretty highly, because otherwise I think people will be incentivized to to kind of just go out and do the fun part which is shooting at at people on the other team. and and and so there I'm okay with logistics people making more more of the in game cash than I am for other roles just because I I think you want to kind of push that side of it, don't you?

Rade: Well, you should. You don't right now. What I'm saying is the logistics is

Dave Leary: That's what you're saying, yeah.

Rade: underpaid. And I don't know if we go in y you know, you could tip people for a a revive. Do you put in tipping for a good logistics person? I mean, I hate

Dave Leary: You don't, but you ca you can tip for them taking you to the battlefield.

Rade: You can and I I abhor tipping in general. Like I think it's a stupid practice. I think, you know, you should charge the price at a at a restaurant for for what you need to pay your your people a living wage. anyway.

Dave Leary: But tipping is a wonderful mechanic in this game.

Rade: It it does work pretty well in this game. so you maybe that's the answer. couple other things I don't like. And the the first two are are related. Like time to kill is pretty short. I like I can't tell you how many times I've popped in to a spawn and just been and headshot it. And I'm like, come on. and this was a problem with Battlefield. If someone put a spawn point at the wrong place and someone could camp it, that was a huge

Dave Leary: Mm-hmm.

Rade: issue. Like at one point I remember people were shooting artillery into the spawn zones, and then you're just like, Yeah, this is great. I popped in the map before my screen even fully drew, I was dead. Wonderful, fun, great. Hope you enjoyed that. And they have some of those issues here that I think they need to work through. But the part of it that specifically bugs me is I think there's pretty poor feedback between armor and weapon type. I don't think you just because you have a helmet, if I shoot you in the face, like you should be one shot dead. If I shoot you with a 50 caliber and you have a helmet, you're dead. Like you shouldn't have a head anymore if we're talking about realism. And I don't think there's really good feedback again with the UI, but also just in general. Maybe there's a better kill cam that you could do or or something to say, yeah, look, this guy killed you because you had this thing and he had that thing and that's why. And you're like, okay. So now I understand the the the rock, paper, scissors of it. I think that needs some work.

Dave Leary: Hm. I you know, I I'm not sure I agree with everything you said there, but I certainly think they're valid critiques to make. y you know, their kill cam and their combat log does have some information about who killed you and with what. but I I I think it's fair to say these are the kinds of things I expect them to iterate heavily in early access and through different seasons of this. So

Rade: for sure. Yeah. The the other one that I don't like that I don't think they're gonna fix is just because of the style of the game and I could kind of just feel it in some of the design choices, is the weapon variation does not feel big enough to me. and I think that's a miss. And it's something I really, really applaud what they did in in Arc Raiders, and that's just not here.

Dave Leary: there's there's a real diversity of roles though, isn't isn't there? I mean

Rade: There is in roles, but like specifically, like if you just look at some of the different weapons, sure, shotgun is different than an assault rifle, but within the assault rifles, like your minutia so small. What's gonna wind up happening, and it always happens with games like this, is there's gonna be the just like the stire at one point was the best weapon in Counter-Strike if for the the assault rifles, there's going to be a best weapon on this one. And then like why even have the other ones? so I just don't think people have unlocked enough of those yet for for that meta to show up, but it's gonna happen.

Dave Leary: So you're you're gonna be the bad cop today on this game, I could I could tell a little bit. So Okay,

Rade: Well I have a I have good things now that I like.

Dave Leary: good. Let me let me throw out a good thing that I bet is on your list as well. let's talk about the genius of them having three teams.

Rade: Yeah, I think that's smart. I I it's just it provides some very No, it

Dave Leary: That that's it. You got more? You got more for me there?

Rade: provides some variation. a team mechanic is just a strong thing in a game because it's gonna lead to tribalism and it's gonna lead to arguments and fighting, which is exactly what you want in a in a a shooter like this.

Dave Leary: Exactly. I I yeah, I think that's right. And I I think one of the great benefits of having three is that if one team gets too far ahead, there's a natural tendency for the other two to kind of start to gang up on them a little bit, though. To date, I have not seen the teams be quite organized enough in general to really pull that off. there is some hilarious meta that's developed around the blue team being consistently terrible for various reasons and being the being the team that you go to if if you want to just lose, which makes me want to go to it all the time, but that's just my personality.

Rade: I think a smart thing to to do here would be for the team to watch some of these metas and watch the the the forums. So I I'm specifically thinking about how that that that duck became a thing during World Cup in Mexico

Dave Leary: Mm-hmm.

Rade: and it kind of got adopted as an unofficial mascot thing. Like something like that's gonna happen here and I think if the team could incorporate that into the game, like the the players are just gonna love it.

Dave Leary: Yeah, absolutely. Give me some more of your positives. What have what have you enjoyed about your War Dogs experience?

Rade: I think the reward system is pretty good. you know, the way it works. What's surprised me is I was watching a friend of mine on Steam hit the like the little notif popped up that said he was playing and it updated in almost real time how much he was earning, which I thought, wow, I've never seen that before. That's pretty cool. so it's like, you know, what is he doing? That's ticking up pretty quickly. I want to figure that out, you know. I just think in general, like that sort of persistent, semi persistent thing that they did is just it's So far, pretty good.

Dave Leary: So are you having a good time overall?

Rade: No. I am I'm having

Dave Leary: Ha ha.

Rade: a mixed time. And so what I would describe the my game experience so far is the highs are pretty high and the lows are frustrating and make me want to walk away from the product for a while. And I suspect that'll even out at some point, but it's not again, not that dissimilar to early days battlefield for me. It that's what it's reminding me and that's what keeps pulling me back to see if it levels out. like this is not a game that I'm going to play two hours a night every night. Like I think I would I would I would bang my head against my monitor if I did this. But this is definitely one that I'm going to come back to and see how it evolves and and keep playing and probably a couple times a week.

Dave Leary: So how do you feel about their plan? And and this is this is pretty normal for this kind of game, but Arc Raiders tried to break the mold on this to just do the hard seasonal reset of your progression.

Rade: it feels unlike arc raiders, this feels unbalanced enough that I'd be okay with that. arc raiders felt pretty darn good and pretty pretty polished. And when it feels that good, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, don't take it away. so this one I'm fine with it. I I haven't gotten anything right now that I'm like, nah, I I like I worked too hard for this, I'm gonna be pissed.

Dave Leary: Fair enough, fair enough. Let's go ahead.

Rade: one other thing I like, obviously we talked about that it's stable. So like that's a good thing. But I like this game has a lot of player driven chaos in it. And I think that in the long term, that is going to be pretty good. Because if you think about some of the crazy stuff that people did in Battlefield about like I blew up my tank. I put a mine under it or a charge underneath it, blew it up to shoot it in the air so I could get to the right angle to shoot a plane out of the air with my tank. And I made a c a gif out of that thing and shared it as a clip. Like you can do that in here. I and that's pretty

Dave Leary: Yeah.

Rade: cool.

Dave Leary: Yeah, not only can you do that, but social media is covered up with it right now. And that is that's s definitely gonna help them in the marketing department as well. let's let's close this out with a couple of thoughts, some unsolicited advice that we could give to Bulkhead. What what are the risks that you would see ahead for them with this product? 'Cause cause Arc Raiders has clearly Fallen off a bit, though I think you and I would still classify it as a a s success and they have a big new update coming out soon. w what can Bulkhead do to to keep the good times rolling on the after their successful launch?

Rade: So I have three. and part of this is borne out ages ago. I worked on a game called Mag. It was Sony's the SOCOM team did a 256 player online shooter. So I'm familiar with some of these scale issues that you have with products. first and foremost, scaling a game that's more successful than expected is hard. And you gotta be really careful. First off, you can't let it go to your head. You have to be careful how you balance player feedback, qualitative feedback, with your data. And I hope that they're, they're, they're, they have this instrumented well and they're looking at telemetry and they're they're they're listening to what people say, backing it up where they can with data, and then applying intuition where it makes sense. So that's one thing. you have a choice at this point in the product how you want your community to go. and they need to decide what they want it to be like and they need to shape their community. Otherwise, the community will shape itself, and then you you're the slave to that and you can't do anything. Do you want it to be hardcore, toxic, a brofest? Do you want it to be a little bit more inclusive? Do you want it to be focused on realism? You want it to be focused on fun. Like all these things you kind of have to figure out. and maybe they already have. I just haven't seen what their plan is for that yet. But like, you gotta figure that out. because I have not seen good moderation in there yet. I haven't seen it gone toxic yet, but it will if it's if it's not moderated. I'll give you an example of that. My first match going in, I was on a helicopter, and somebody on an open mic was playing Senegalese rap. and I know this because I was in a car with a driver from Senegal for an hour and I I I recognized the song, and it was funny. But that's not going to be funny on my my you know my third week into the game. that's gonna be annoying. So you're gonna have to watch that. and then how they balance the economy is going to be very difficult and is gonna have influence with the type of community and the type of game that develops out of this. It's is effectively gonna shape the meta for the game. yeah.

Dave Leary: yeah, those are those are three excellent risks for them to pay attention to. I I would add a couple to your list. I think these days, as much as I don't particularly like this practice, a game like this really needs to define for its fans what its roadmap is gonna be. You don't have to necessarily affix precise dates to it, but fans wanna really understand what's coming on this game and where it's headed. And I think working through that exercise for them will help clarify some of the stuff you talked about about what kind of community they want to build and and they'll be able to get fan feedback on that, which will help them. And then finally for multiplayer shooters, and we know our grader struggle with this as well, cheaters are a plague in this kind of game. they've already seen some of it. I I saw some video of a cheat just this morning where somebody in War Dogs is able to self-revive themselves with some kind of cheat. there are are obviously some some aim bots and that sorts of things that that are very hard to get a handle on. But being pretty aggressive with that stuff and and banning cheaters and just trying to work through those problems is gonna be something that the bulkhead team will have to to stay on in order for the game to be successful.

Rade: Yeah, that that has killed the longevity of Battlefield games for me. and like what you know, when that winds up happening too often, I I I just like, nope, I'm done. I'm like I'm walking around corners and I'm instantly getting headshotted, or I watch somebody jumping around on a replay cam, headshotting three people in a row. I'm like, Nope, that's a cheater. I'm done. sucks all the enjoyment out of the game for me.

Dave Leary: I have enjoyed doing this deep dive with you, Rade, and and I hope to see you on Wardog sometime. I think it is a fine game, and I think maybe you should spend some time just soothingly driving logistics trucks across the countryside like I do.

Rade: I it it's right now it's a it's a B minus for me, with the potential to go

Dave Leary: be minus.

Rade: up. so I think it's it's I recommend it. If you ever liked classic battlefield or or PC first shooters, I think this is worth picking up. Arma never dug its its claws into me. I th that was too much of a realistic sim, too hardcore. but I I like I'm gonna give this game a chance and I'm gonna see how it develops.

Dave Leary: Drive some trucks, that's what I'm saying. This was fun. We'll do this again sometime, right?

Rade: Trucks. You well, you're a Yeah, I don't know what the next one's gonna be, but we should absolutely do this and maybe we bring in another designer. yeah.

Dave Leary: That would be a great idea. I know what we should we should deep dive Eurotruck Simulator Two next. You have no response to that, do you? Yeah, okay.

Rade: I I know. I wanna see that on John Oswald's rig. but maybe we'll bring in Adam

Dave Leary: Yes.

Rade: or an another designer friend of ours and and dive into something. might be good to do a classic retrospective as well.

Dave Leary: Sounds great. That would be fantastic. So let us know what you want to see in the comments as you hit that like and subscribe button or mash it, as the kids say these days.

Rade: Yeah, and and check out War Dogs. I I mean I think a lot of people I know that are are are watching the the the pod. I I I think they're gonna like the game, so I think it's worth a shot for them.

Dave Leary: Absolutely.

Rade: Cool. All right, see you all next week.

Dave Leary: Later.