231: Data: Older Stuff Beats Newer Stuff - What's going on? Host Crossover Chat Fall 2026

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1:01Hey everyone, welcome to the Robots Radio Host Crossover episode for the fall of 2026. We do these every quarter. I pull in different hosts from the network. Those people who are able to make this workout with their schedule when all of that. I am Tom or Robots, you might know me from shows like The Lord of the Rings, The Fallout Lordcaster, The Elder Scrolls, The Elder Scrolls, Or Retro Recall. I also run the network and I'm here with some other hosts across the network. We've got a small little group this week to discuss what it seems like is going on with games and music and movies and entertainment and how the stats seem to show us that people are going back to older things and not spending as much money on newer things. And what is going on with society? How does that affect our shows? And what are... I've got questions for the audience too. Are you seeing this as well? We're going to dive into this with our guest this week. First, we've got Lotus of Doom, my co-host on Elder Scrolls,

2:02Lorcast, but also some other shows. Lotus, welcome. Thanks for having me. It's been a while since I joined one of these quarterly ones. I've only been on a hop-all. They usually don't align too well with my schedule, but ironically enough this week it did and it's incredibly topical for my new show. I'm glad I could make it. Tell everyone what other shows you do and then we'll get into that connection in a little bit for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, you had mentioned that you host the Lorcast and I'm your co-host on the Elder Scrolls Lorcast. As well as I do the unofficial Elder Scrolls pages, Tales of Tamriel, for more Elder Scrolls related stuff. And then my most recent podcast that I just started with my buddy Vinny is called Retro Next Gen, where we kind of use retro and our nostalgic experiences to discuss modern gaming topics, which is kind of funny when you brought this up. There's like, wow, that's essentially right in line with what we're doing over at my show. And yeah, it's really going to, I feel, matter a lot in the coming years.

3:08Yeah, absolutely. It is absolutely what we're talking about in this episode right now. So that's fun. So if you want more of that stuff, check out Lotus' other show. Thanks, Lotus. And then we have Sebastian as well joining us. Sebastian, welcome. Thank you for having me again. It's awesome to be here. I am the host of the One Piece Lorcast also on the robots radio. And I am really excited to meet all, obviously, Lotus would do them. I've heard him from the podcast where he does with you a long time ago. And it's really nice to see everybody. And I'm really interested in this topic because I am the king of nostalgia. I love anything from the 90s. That is my jam or 80s. I'm an 80s go-am metal fan as well. So I'm really excited to get into this topic with you guys. Nice. We'll put some poison in the back. Now we'll get demonetized. But there you go. Welcome Sebastian. And then Austin is joining us. Also Austin, welcome back to the show. Howdy, howdy, my friends. Yes, it's me, Austin, host of the library Halo Lorecast. Talking all about Halo. But it's not just that show.

4:08Me and my team at Jumperskib, we host a lot of different shows, including Tarkov, a Halo Story stories from Waypoint, Chatternet, the Daily Halo Show. And most recently, they can in addition to the Halo Canon Halo still midnight. And it is fantastic to be here. So it sounds like you might know some things about Halo. And one or two. Am I correct about that? So yeah, if you're looking for Halo content, that's where to go. And I'm so glad that the four of us were able to get together. Three of you were able to join me. But here, let me just set this up. I'm going to set up the concept. And then we're going to break this down with some questions and some sharing of our own experience. And I really want to focus in on, whenever you're talking nostalgia, whenever you're talking old stuff versus new stuff, there's always rose-colored glasses. There's the regular responses we all have as we grow older. Where at some point in our personal history is where everything topped out. And the best music or the best games are whatever are from this period. And everybody feels the same way about that same period in their own life.

5:09So that hasn't changed. And we're all going to have some experience of that ourselves. But what seems to be changing is the data around the way people engage with things as a whole across the culture. And especially with younger people who seem to value older stuff much more than we did when we were growing up. For example, there's this article on TechSpot about steam. And I'll just quote a piece of this. Steam just posted its strongest half year ever. In the first six months of 2026, it's estimated that games sold through the platform generated a lot of things. And it's estimated that over the years, that through the platform generated 11.1 billion in gross revenue. So people are spending money on games. A record haul for the PC storefront. That figure is close to what steam generated across all of 2021. During the height of the pandemic, a year boosted by pandemic lockdowns also only 21% of that revenue comes from games released in 2026. titles and Steam's back catalog. And this seems to be one of the things that's changing, is that a larger percentage of places like Steam or online streaming services or whatever are hosting and selling more and more of the older content and that's becoming a bigger and bigger percentage as opposed to new things.

6:25We see this in music as well. I found this quote from a post on LinkedIn by somebody who works in the music industry. 73% of all streams in quarter one of 2026 came from the catalog music tracks older than 18 months. So not even like six months old tracks like we're talking a year and a half or older, which in the realm of pop music is ancient. That stuff doesn't stick around for that long, right? Books, same way, even back in 2021, nine out of the 10 top selling nonfiction books were back list books, not the new ones, not the new New York Times best sellers and that kind of stuff, which is normally the case. So here, I'm going to toss out this question. First of all, are you guys noticing this beyond just your own natural nostalgia and wanting to go back and do the things that are comfortable? Who would like to chime in? What do you think? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Let me, let me, let me actually add on a little bit of extra context here because not only do I represent that part of the Halo community that was like, yeah, I was born before Halo existed and it was really cool back then. And everyone got together and hung out and we forced Timmy to get it to and taped up to the ceiling and made all the stuff. Right. Right.

7:36We played split screen with boxes on in front of the TV. And we like the boxes. The two inches that I got to see my screen. We liked those. It's, it's, it's from that era. But at the same time, the, the fun thing that I have is that one of the things that I do is my day job is I work at a, basically what you could consider a third, like a third hand record store. So this is a place that is known for selling thousands and thousands of vinyl records along with music CDs DVDs, blue ray 4k video games, all of that. It's a massive third party experience where if you want to find something from your youth that you probably lost a long time ago, chances are we've got it. So they that old like that. Yeah. You'll walk me in. We do occasionally get stuff like that. It's really entertaining because sometimes you'll have people walk in and they got a Commodore or they got an Atari or something like that. And they'll sell it to us and then we'll buy it off of them and put it on our shelves. And then someone else who really wants to revisit those times shows up and buys that off of us. So it's a, it's a nice little way of keeping that ecosystem alive. And the fun thing is is sales are going up.

8:42There's a lot of people that especially recently, especially recently, they'll walk in and they'll be like, what's the latest PS 5 cost and we'll say $550. This is third hand used console. Right. And they'll say, OK, what's the cost of your PS 2? I'm saying 250. And they're like, whoa, whoa, that's a lot. Why? And it's like, well, it's still the largest game catalog of any console to this day still. Yeah, 40,000 games and with more demand demand just continues to go up for it. It sounds like yes. Yeah. Yes. Because it was 200 last year. Yeah. So the consoles themselves stay relevant. The media stays relevant. There's plenty of people that walk up and ask about like, oh, the neutron sucked. Can I go? Can you have the original anywhere on the shelves? I want to see that. And I'm like, yeah, I got like three of them. Yeah. Yeah. You get to experience that a whole lot more. And what the common consensus is based on that experience, why this is all relevant is there's a lot of people that have the same exact gripes. I don't want to pay for a subscription.

9:45I don't want my console to remove what I purchased. Right. I digital purchasing, which is a big debate with Sony and PlayStation these days and a lot of other stuff. Yes. Yes. Yes. And and then topping all that off is usually I want to have what I own. So regardless of like, yeah, I bought this thing on GOG. So I have all the files. I can do whatever I want with it on my computer. There's something different whenever you have this tangible item, this thing that you can reach over and you just have it available to you. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which in that moment, I grab you listening. Yeah, he grabbed the Halo three box. I was just saying out of all the things to grab. Why am I not surprised that you had a hell of a meal? Yeah. With if you want to have the entire library of Halo right here in my right. So I'm looking around right now. I don't place me. I don't have anything like that nearby. I can't reach it. It's all digital. Oh no. Here I'll be more impartial. Star Wars Battlefront 2 for the PSP. Does that work better for me? There you go. There you go. Nice. Nice. Yeah. I mean, star Wars, even people even in the recent years, people are like, yes, new star wars movies. Not so good. Old ones. Hold up better.

10:55But that's we don't need to get into that path. But it sounds like you have some actual like financial evidence from working in this space, which is incredible. And it's something. This is something we discussed in the pre show. I watched a video. I think it was like, I don't know, six, eight months ago. And I have a teenage son. He's in high school. He's playing music, you know, guitar and drums and bass and that kind of thing. And he's doing a lot of the things I was doing at his age. But his friends, like the set list of songs that they're playing in the band is all covers of stuff that's up to 30 years old. And it's stuff I would have been playing. And that's weird because when I was in his shoes, we were writing new songs. And we would sometimes cover songs for fun. But it was all about writing new stuff. It was all about what the newest album is for those bands that you like or the newest band you found that you hadn't heard before. And yeah, we still enjoyed older stuff. But the difference was there was more of a focus on the new being the cool new thing.

12:04And that seems to have been the case for most living generations of people. Like from the 20th century on, that became the thing. It was all about the advancement of technology, the advancement of culture. What's the big new thing? You don't know how that's what my parents liked. I'm not into that. I'm into the next thing. And that seemed to be the primary thing. But we're starting to see that swap in fashion in the songs they're picking and a lot of other stuff. Sebastian, you work in wrestling, which is interesting because I'm sure it's I'm not super up on wrestling, but it's very popular today. And traditionally has been very popular for decades. Are you seeing similar trends in that space? Think with professional wrestling and on the more independent scene, we see this new influx of almost like ballerina style wrestling. It's all hyper choreographed. And everyone's Jim Nasten is a lot of flip stuff. And there's a lot of new ones in wrestling going on at the moment. But when you bring it down to an independent level and you're talking about the shores you do with generic family crowds. So you take your kids to go and watch the local wrestling show.

13:14The the style of wrestling is the same style and the same method of putting a match together as we would have done in the 80s and 70s. Yeah. But it is, it is that works. And you stick to that because you know how to interact with the crowd, get a reaction. And you can manipulate a crowd. And it's never changed that formula compared to what some of the newer companies like a W were doing, which is a little bit more, which is also fantastic. It's a different flavor of the same drink, but they are doing more choreographed stuff, which falls flatter amongst the casual fans, because I think that's the other thing. If you've got a hard core gamer person who's really into music specifically like progs are very specific genre of music people listen to sure. Yeah. And they will hyper fix it on that. And that's fine. Same with your hard core gamers. They'll try anything. But when you talk about casual fans of any franchise, they want an easy getting cause to go and play a game like say I'm pretty casual gamer. So if I like dark souls and the souls games freak me out.

14:21Right. Oh, I all I hear is you're going to die a million times. You're not going to you. It's I know you're going to learn and progress. But at the same point, I want a bit of casual. Yeah. Yeah. And to try hard for you, right? Like, but they see this is it. Yeah. It's so much easier to open up, you know, Madden or FIFA or Call of Duty, something where you go, I understand this already because I watched the sports or I played the sports or it's a gun. You pointed at the other guy you shoot him and you keep running around, you know, like that those seem very simple. But yeah, so it's interesting. You're seeing kind of this split in your scene, but the new stuff isn't removing the value of the old stuff because the old stuff is fulfilling that demand. Sounds like if you look at if you look at WWE, it is like your warm Sunday roast dinner if you can have big Sunday roast dinner. That's what WWE is. It gives you the same thing you know. In a different kind of way every week, you tune in, it's the you know what you get right? You're getting there's some large hero. There's a heel. There's some sort of drama between two people, right?

15:29Right. Larger than life characters that entice you in really cool like creative weird characters and that's fine and you do get that on the other scenes, but it's delivered in a more. This is nice to digest. I can understand this is very simple. I enjoy this. Whereas with the other companies, it's like we're trying to we've got to get these multiple layers of storytelling going on. This guy's friends with them, but they don't like them, but they like each other and you get these multiple layers of storyline that if you don't keep it week, you can't dip in and out because you lose the narrative. Like if you've put in a 60 70 hours into a final fantasy game, you go away for a little bit, you come back. I don't know what's going on. That happens to me all the time. Yes. That's interesting. Both of you are seeing similar and we feel it feels to me like we are on the cusp of a major cultural shift that will probably last for generations. And like you guys are seeing it in your stuff. Lotus, I know you just talked with with your buddy on your new show about this. Do you have similar stories?

16:34We do. And it's interesting because even myself, you know, I definitely play a mix of new and old game stuff. But I noticed when I, you know, and I guess I can almost speak to a little bit of the like, well, some of it's got to be that like nostalgic good feeling of like, well, I remember this in related to a time that felt good. So as a result, you kind of get that connection with the thing, even if the thing is mediocre sometimes. Right. Well, whatever. I enjoyed the time with the thing, even if the thing isn't white that great, which is where you get the rose colored glasses approach to the sense. There's a piece of that real quick. The other piece of it that always hits me funny is the things that we love the most are the things that we discovered when we hadn't developed taste yet. Yes. Right. I know it's pretty funny. I mean, think about the cartoons you loved as a child. Most of them are pretty crap. I think I'll back and actually look it through like adult eyes for quality. But there was something about it that appealed to you as a child with a child's taste.

17:40And it's funny because kind and that's a, this is the thing that's kind of interesting is and I had made the joke before the show that is like, well, yeah, it's easy to pinpoint because society already peaked it back and then. Like, sort of joking. But like, so one of the things I've been jumping back into because I had restricted time for a while. Now she's older, but when I had my daughter and I was like, cool, I need to stay up all night to make sure she stays alive. Well, my wife sleeps and then we switch roles and I sleep during the day. So like, whatever. So I would do things that were simpler. I'm not in my elaborate game, Romari of the house. I'm like sitting next to her little crib and I'm like, okay, well, what can I do? So I ended up getting some of those like portable related things. I got a game and watch and played to the original legend is Zelda Zelda to which I had never beaten. And then links awakening. And I just like machine gun through those and I was like, man, these are these are great. And but then as a side effect of enjoying the thing because they were good. They're much simpler than like the newer ones and stuff like that. But I was like, it also reminded me of like,

18:52oh, I remember when I was at my grandmother's house and like, I was just in the side room and I got an hour to play a video game before dinner or whatever. So it was like, oh, cool. I'm going to play the legend is Zelda or whatever. And I'm stuck because I don't know where I'm going in the last woods and my dad has to come in and draw a map for me so that I can get through it. And it's like, oh, okay, it comes with a nostalgic memory of a good time related to the thing that's yeah, simpler than nowadays stuff. But at the same time, it's like, well, yeah, no, it's not without its merit. The interesting thing is there's something there enough that it's drawing people in. Because if you don't have that nostalgia, you'd kind of think that it's like, well, okay, if that's all that's selling it, people wouldn't enjoy these things if they don't have that connection. Right. Like younger people who weren't there to experience that to begin with. And it turns out that it seems like younger generations are, right, which leads to believe it's like, okay, actually these things clearly did land to a degree like they had something special to them. And I feel like creativity was felt more in the past.

20:01And things now have this sterile, it's got to go through to make the shareholders happy type of thing where it's like, well, you need to make it for as vast of an audience as possible. And so it dilutes it's the corporatism of things where you dive everything around it. Or I'd sand off all the jagged edges to make them rounded stuff like that. And that's how you get every single thing starts looking basically the same in a lot of ways. It's overly homogenized. Yes. And it's in a lot of aspects. You've guys have already discussed some of them and stuff like that. But like the big one, I thought it was a really funny news story. And I kind of wish we had one nearby here, but that guy who bought a pizza hut and then reverted it back to the hot style thing. He reproduced all those goofy plastic cups. And he put an arcade in and the arcade apparently costs literally a quarter. He didn't, he's like, no, it's the original price of the quarter.

21:04And they went back to the more expensive recipe for the sauce and stuff like that. And he now needs to franchise several more because he can't keep up with the demand of people going to this very specific pizza hut. Yeah. Yeah, because all the other pizza huts are gray boxes like they didn't like anything. Yeah, they've lost their that that appeal. I'm sure a large part of his audience is like the nostalgic people without a doubt our age is an older. Right, but this is funny. There's there's a time place nearby that's clearly used to be a pizza hut. And it's just been painted over right. We had a century 21. There's like that. It's like you want real estate from this weird pizza shaped building. I was like, not particularly, but I appreciate the recycling. But um, but yeah, to that point, it's just I feel like people are yearning more and more for that creativity because it shows it's almost because things are becoming so like diluted or sterile in so many aspects. When something even has a tinge of being creative, it stands out even more. So it's just as a result. It's like, okay, well if you go back to the source stuff, it really comes on a left field type of thing because it's like,

22:14how do these projects even get funded sometimes? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was a huge success back in the day to a boardroom nowadays. And you know that it's like zero chance that would happen. Like, 100% just like, nope, that's not going to that's not going to focus test well. Do you think it's like a double-edged sword though, because it like I agree with everything you're saying. Yeah. I think there's the flip side of it though is often that when we watch the brands that we like get to creative oftentimes the online responses, this isn't my thing. Like, it feels like there's like a separate demographic that's that's also saying, wait a minute, no, don't be creative. I don't want you to do that, which is still tied into the idea of I want things the way they were in the past, but still new. I feel like there's this weird thing where it's like both happen at the same time. Kind of a fine line to walk where you don't want to lose your identity while exploring something new. Right. And maybe that's the problem with taking an existing IP and trying to make it feel new as opposed to just making new things under a new IP.

23:21So we also know that corporate entities are very cautious of I mean, look at every movie in the last 10 years that's actually done well at the box office. And most of them like 90% of them are sequels. Yes. Like, well, what is going on, you know? That's the thing is you have this attachment to IP, for example, that people have this connection to exploring more with that IP, I think is good. It can go off in other directions. And I think it can work. But you need to kind of, and this is where I think it gets tricky and where really creative people thrive is you need to make it feel familiar while exploring something new. And if it feels too similar, it just kind of becomes. You say me, right, you're just copying the old thing. Or it's like we've had enough of this, right? Or if you get too weird with it, it starts becoming, okay, you're just doing this for name recognition.

24:21It's lost the sauce, so to speak. Right. And and and and and training that line seems very, very difficult. And maybe, maybe that's why we're seeing a lot of these video game remakes doing well. Look at the resident evil series. Look at the fact that a lot of time had had a, you know, it's got a big update coming out and just a few weeks. And people, the resident evils a great example, though, to your point. Yeah. Because we've gotten remakes of resident evils and new resident evils. And they're all massive successes. Right. Right. They're kind of doing exactly that. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe they're serving both audiences. It's as if if you give the audience one option, then half of your audience is going to be upset no matter what. But if you give both segments of the audience the thing that they want, then they're more tolerance of the other thing existing. And the example of this is a world of warcraft forever was just released this or just not released announced this weekend. They've been going over details as we're recording this. They're continuing with doing more details and giving us more info about it.

25:21But one of the things that they've incorporated very smartly is and what for those of you who don't know this is basically classic world of warcraft, but now expanded on horizontally with new content. And one of the features they've implemented is transmog, which you would think would be a debated thing. People who only want the classic stuff are not going to want transmog. So what they've done is they've given everyone the choice to enable or disable transmog for their entire experience, not just on their character. So if they want to run around seeing people not in transmog, then they can do that. If they want to run around seeing everybody able to transmog, then they can do that. And their experience on that platform is catered to whatever side of the audience they're in. And it doesn't affect other players and only affects their experience. And it feels like the same kind of answer like you were saying with Resident Evil. We're giving you new stuff, but we're also keeping the old stuff. So pick the one you want. It's all good.

26:21It's actually kind of funny because it is so many episodes ago. I can't even imagine to give people like a timestamp. Like, oh, we talked about it on this episode. There was a moderately at the time, controversial opinion, when the crown store in Elder Scrolls Online started to become a little more at the forefront. They dropped the subscription, which is fine because actually don't like subscription service game. So I was on board with that. But then it was just like, we're going to push this. And I was like, that's fine, whatever. But then it started to become much more elaborate with the cosmetic stuff. Everything shiny, everything's glory, everything shiny or whatever. And one of the things that not just myself, but a couple people mentioned, were like, what if there was just a way that you could disable the ability to see that? Yeah. And people were like, well, that's great. And all, but like part of the incentive to people buying these things is to show them off to other people. So if they're not going to want to downplay you seeing it. And I was like, well, I'm not buying it anyway. So I'm not your demographic.

27:22I don't know if I'm a big enough demographic to matter, but just the thought. And it's funny that after several years, apparently this is becoming a thing where I'm like, oh, weird. Okay. I guess I was a slightly bigger demographic than I thought I was. Yeah, you remember you and I having junk. Yeah, we had that conversation. I remember I remember us talking about that. And like when I saw this on the wow thing, I was like, I was like, weird. We already had that we came up with that solution for other things. Why maybe it was a good idea and maybe more people should be implementing it. Well, here, last in in Sebastian haven't had a chance to chime in. You guys have any thoughts? Anything else? Well, I was waiting for my opportunity. Yeah. It's a nice thing to go for first. Do you know I'm going to be your ampeling for a second? So yeah, go for it. I mean, all of us, we're all podcasters. That's what we do. But yeah, what do you think? Well, there's one aspect of this that I want to tackle. Because we're tackling right now from a corporate perspective. Like what is it that the people in the suits want? What is it that they're trying to get out of their favorite franchises? Because the franchise ultimately, like if you're looking at it from, let's say a halo perspective.

28:25The interesting perspective on this that I have is often that people like to think that's like, Bungie was the golden boys. They figured everything out. They knew what they were doing. Ultimately, it was the Microsoft. That was the big, bad evil guy. And you know, they had to they had to figure out how to get around them. And realistically speaking, though, it is Bungie's fault that Microsoft reacted to Halo the way that they did. Because Bungie, you could look at it one hand on like Disney channel, the underdogs and all of that. They really did everything they could to protect their own nature, their own family. But if you look at it from a corporate perspective, Bungie was according to stories that came out after their whole thing. Locking RFID. So Microsoft couldn't get into their building, preventing them from knowing what was actually happening in terms of updating the game, refusing to cooperate and cooperate with the concept of Halo becoming a franchise, actively trying to usurp the books, the potential shows, the potential movies, actively going out of their way to not do those things.

29:25So then when Bungie finally lost their contract and they moved on to do other things, Microsoft immediately latched onto the franchise as tight as it could because they wanted full control for whatever the future would become. Now this is a thing that I think has probably happened to a lot of things because as we've seen the gaming industry as well as most other industries have become much less individual. I think there are probably parallels here with Bethesda, for example. Yes. Yes. There's plenty of opportunities that you see there that are just kind of evaporating to the idea of corporatism, but that's because many other things. Microsoft now owning Bethesda is like the rumor they've done a Fallout TV show, right? It's been very successful. But Bethesda has avoided or at least delayed doing a lot of this stuff. They only put out two books for Elder Scrolls that were novels. Why aren't their Fallout or Elder Scrolls comic books? Why isn't there a TV show already? These are 30 year old series almost for Fallout. And yet they haven't capitalized on any of this. What were they doing? And this is what Microsoft wants to do now. They're pushing them to put these into every space. You see it also in Blizzard.

30:28There's like cartoons in the works and they try to movie button. They should keep trying more movies because eventually they'll be able to get a little thing that they just announced. The Diablo thing, right? So, yes. So I'm confirming that the same thing that happened with Halo seems to be kind of paralleled here with Bethesda and Microsoft as well. Yeah. And this is where things get a little bit more personal. This is where things I think is more less away from the it's less the corporate side and more just how people are interacting with the growing information. Because the thing is that as we're growing up in the early 2000s, late 90s, Internet is just becoming a thing. The centralization of information is still very much in control. You can kind of dictate and curate whatever it is you want on your feed these days. That feed is curated for you. And it becomes a whole more invasive in the fact that everything is being made at all times. If Halo were to make a movie back in the early 2000s, like a tried and then failed in the behind the scenes, that would have been sick because there was nothing like it.

31:34Now there's so many adaptations and remakes and all these things, it would probably just be lost in the noise or be ridiculed ridiculously hard. And I think a lot of that is the consumers are just tired of being marketed to advertise to constantly. And in my own personal experience, I have for the most part given up on trying to keep up with the biggest latest thing unless it's like I pick and choose my battles. So I'll watch the latest Marvel movie. I'm not watching your shows. I don't have the time to watch all of your shows. I'm going to watch your movies. I'll go to the theater because I love going to the theater regardless. But even with the theater experience, with the gaming experience, just recently, my most recent visit to the theater was watching Akita going back to theaters because it finally came back. Yeah. So that's a really old movie. My latest games that I purchased include the Assassin's Creed 4 remake, Crash and St. Trilogy. And I'm pretty sure I was, I think it was command and conquer three.

32:36Yeah. And it's like the reason why is because these are games that I knew about. But I never actually got to play them. Like I didn't get a chance to really sit down and enjoy them whenever I was growing up because you know I had no income. One of my greatest downfalls as a person is when in 2008 instead of worrying about my homework, I should have been investing in real estate. But this is the situation that we're in. Sure. Yes. So it was it was not only a less complicated time in our minds nostalgia wise, it was genuinely a less complicated time in the fact that if a game came out, if a movie came out nine times at a 10, it's a pretty all right production because it had to be in order to make it through the veil of people wanting to watch and ingest new content. Right. So with that hundreds of games that you haven't played on the Xbox 360 PS2 OG P. A. C. Games, you have so much that you missed already. Why would you want to bog your mind down with stuff that's new when there's a bunch of stuff from the past, you still have an

33:41X-plort. I think that's a mentality that a lot of people are trying to latch on to right now. Yeah, you're hitting on this idea that there is so there's there are so many options. There's there's too much to dig through. There was a time where you could go, OK, what what movies are available? These ones seems like the these seem like the best ones. I'll pick from these, whereas you can't even do that. The number of games that get released on steam every week has just continued to increase. There's thousands and thousands of new things every day. This matches advice that I give to new podcasters when they join the network. If your if your pitch for your show is people are going to want to listen to this because we are entertaining. Then you are now competing with anything else that is entertaining at all period and you don't want to have to do that. You need to focus in on your topic and be like, no, the reason while people will like my show is because I do X, Y and Z. And there aren't any other. There's nobody else really doing those well. And so now they have a reason to listen to your show specifically and you cut through all the noise.

34:41So do you think that's part of it? Do you think Sebastian? Do you think people are just too like worn out with all the options and they're just like, just give me the easy answer or something? I think I'm pretty sure I'm going to like. I think he's one of those. There is so much off on offer from so many people. And I was thinking about this when you mentioned we're going to be discussing this topic. And it brought me back to the idea of something I think you and lots of touched on many a time with the idea of with the fallout and the different people who were in development of making fallout back in the day and then New Vegas came out and that up city and and the idea of these developers, these small developers that their games were a passion project. Their games got all their love, the story right and everything didn't have massive deadlines and these big overheads going in east to be done by this point or else the games not going to get released will just scrap it. A lot of the games did have these this feeling of love about them being made and people actually cared where now it's a case and I know we you said about how it's going to affect content creators in the future and it was something you want to touch on.

35:50Yeah, the idea of that's the problem because everyone's trying to make something more out of a game instead of it just being a game you can't just get a complete game all in one nice little bundle without having to then go I need to download this I need to buy this this can only be used for streaming content this is a streamers game like I was talking to my partner the other day back onto the music idea and now people are only producing songs for tick tock right the idea that songs are only being produced for a good 30 second hook which I as a musician myself I understand the power of having a strong hook but the idea that we are completely reform your music like production angle to hooks instant hooks that you can get 30 seconds of and you are I need to listen to this song when you find the song is about a minute to two minutes long yeah it's not actually like I'm not a real soul great it's it's more of a jingle designed for tick tock yeah

36:50which with that and I'm a massive I mean fun so I'm used to a 10 minute sure like yeah yeah 10 minute epics like I like stories in my music that is who I am as a person I love to understand the tale of a story my music nowadays the like right we're talking about recent games that Austin as bought and my recent games of which we've been the metal gear solid to remaster collection because I'm a massive metal gear fan and cajima's storytelling is ridiculous super wacky sure but the idea of like he's just left Sony and that was a big thing to break and I think my Microsoft picked up his next project right because and the same with metal gear so the phantom pain and that idea that he wanted an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount money and all that's not can't get can happen right but the idea that this man was so passionate about his projects that he would leave a company to find a better deal elsewhere to produce these projects

37:51and I think we've lost that Maverick within the gaming industry that I know I'm good but I know I can produce something that people will spend hundreds of millions of pounds to play and I'm going to stick with what I've got because because my money rules the world and the idea that no no no we can find someone better these an idea of everyone's replaceable and this concept of we just need to push these games out we need to get them out by X deadline it's making everyone they should so robotic and I think we've touched on that the idea of game making has become a robotic thing you don't see a lot of guys sweating it up in a small office state called in a video game anymore well here's the thing is that the majority of those you know thousands of games that come out every month on steam are smaller indeed dev things and you really you're on kind of the nature between the difference between art and craft right so an artist is doing the thing because they love doing the thing they're doing it they're creating because they love to create and the hope is that it'll

38:57resonate with somebody out there and sometimes it resonates with lots of people and becomes extremely popular and other times most of the time it resonates with just a very very small group of people like that's that's the nature of art and because things are so competitive these days there is the focus shifted and this has been a trend over decades now where because everything's become corporatized and because everyone wants to make a living doing their art the shift is towards craft it's less about creativity and doing something new and it's more about creating a thing that you know will sell for example the novel industry fantasy novel industry was homogenized in the 1970s by I believe it was tore publishing where they basically said we will only make these paperback novels of fantasy if they have a male protagonist if they have some sort of magic if they have an expansive interesting world if they have different races that are similar to like elves and dwarves

39:57and humans and those types of things and that's the reason why for decades we ended up with a lot of just the same types of fantasy novels that were all based on this formula it wasn't Tolkien's fault it was the publishing industry it was like okay we need everything to just kind of look the same so people keep buying it and that was a switch to focusing on craft and with and you guys have touched on all this I'm piecing this all together based on everything you've said with so much competition out there if you want to make a living doing something artistic you have to keep an eye on it being craft also but when you swing that pendulum all the way to the side of craft then you're no longer creating art and so now you have tick tock songs and games that are designed to just get eyeballs on twitch streams and really don't have any or sell you know monetization stuff because they need to make money engagement metric and anything else right right and I think what you're all describing is that people feel that but the flip side of this is when you focus mostly on art you're now just rolling the dice and you're not

41:00rolling a six-sided dice there's not like a one in six chance that that art succeeds you're rolling like a million-sided dice there's a one in a million chance that that art becomes profitable for you because most people who create art never make money off of it think about how many people play music they have people paint things and just barely ever make any money off of their art at all so it's this weird thing where the as an artist you're kind of in a dilemma do I do I sell my soul do I sell out and create craft or work for a company and create craft that's not really art or do I roll the dice and create art but most of it will never actually make many money but it would be really nice to make a living doing this because it's hard to make a living and most jobs suck you're right so they're kind of stuck in that in that place does it does that make sense yeah and I think as well as like I was the other game up recently that kind of goes along with that vibe is I bought the high on life two game I don't if any you played high on life yeah from like the Rick and Morty creators right right it's like a shooter

42:03with aliens and weird stuff happens and yeah it's like on a whole the actual game plays basic it's it's not like amazing will be in game but it's just so different and fun and interesting and I'm like this is this is my it's my humor like I like Rick and Morty it's like my kind of humor but it was like that kind of game made me feel it was out of left field a little bit with the way the the kind of designed it and I think same with like the Deadpool games the Deadpool games aren't great but because it's that much out of to the side of what the norm is that we kind of want to ingest it and I think there is room what you say for that creativity more so than craft but it is getting more so to I want to get paid yeah there's so many there's so many options even if you even if the perfectly creative artistic game for you was out there how do you find it right that becomes the thing like there probably is an indie creator who has made the perfect game for all four of us individually

43:05based on our talents there's probably an indie game out there that if we found it we would be like oh my god this is my favorite game ever because there are hundreds of thousands of games that have been created in the last I don't know 30 years right but how do you know that's even there right it's it's lost and unless it becomes a successful financial thing it's our showing up on websites and people talking about it online and you know being highlighted in videos by youtubers and things like that you don't even know it exists so those opportunities are seems so much less than then at least what they were because there was less competition in the past and art had more of a chance to stand out and now it's just like there's so much there often I can see that you've got that yeah yeah yeah I was going to say there's something about this there's something about the most intense thing about how this all goes down is connections and inter connectivity becomes the most important thing out of all that because excellent thing to bring up there you make all these these games and stuff how are you supposed to break through we face a very similar problem there are millions of podcasts yeah right and if you're going to make your show successful

44:10how do you do it aside from doing the the very simple setup of who is your audience how do you build for it how do you stay consistent what is that consistency what is quality right do I please myself or do I please the audience that sort of thing the thing is is that it actually goes into a very intense direction when you want to try to make something of that because what ends up being the cases this was actually a bit like a story from a company that we wanted to work with it went well and all that but initially when the conversations start we walk up and we say hey we want to do xyz how do we get to that point and that's an important first step is actually getting to the point where you can talk to these people and a lot of the time the people that you want to work with the people that are going to have impact on what you're doing so in this sense of let's say I'm an indie developer and I want to talk to a publisher the good news is they're very easy to talk to but you just have to get into that conversation and sometimes if they're a little hard to get to somebody knows them and usually there's a friend on Facebook like it takes a little bit

45:13of practice to learn how to actually get to the point where research is just a second hand skill but it is a valuable one because what this company told us to our faces when we ask how can we do something with you how can we add on to your story they said do something else now this wasn't them saying go away don't worry about us you do your own thing don't don't even ask that question of again that was prove that you can do it right once you've done that now we can continue the conversations so yeah when you do that now they're watching you now they're paying attention and they are the audience that you want because they have the audiences that you're chasing after yeah they're risk a verse this happens in the music industry now too you don't just get a record deal in fact that nobody's even they don't even have a hand heart reps out there looking for bands because there's so many options they're waiting for people to prove that they themselves can build an audience and keep and grow that audience and when you do that all of a sudden the door opens and

46:15they go okay well let's start having conversations you know those clothes that you wear on repeat like over and over and over again you know the first ones you grab after you put away the new freshly washed clothes your best to t-shirts those pants that you wear every single time that you go out somewhere nice the sweater you reach for first or in my case the linen shorts I got from Quince and yes I keep bringing these up it has been a hot summer but every single time I can wear these linen shorts I absolutely do because they're just that much cooler than other shorts and I know they're just shorts but it really does make a difference and this is what Quince does best high quality but highly functional stuff like fitted tees and polos breathable active wear premium pants high quality wardrobe staples made of things like 100% Mongolian cashmere organic cotton marina wool the clothing staples that you go back to over and over and over and over again and they're 50 to 80% less than similar brands but without compromising on any of the quality and the false comments so maybe it's a sweater maybe it's some new pants that you can go out and

47:18do like I did go to Quince and find your next fall favorites at Quince download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash rings lore get free shipping on your orders and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too that's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash rings lore at q-vc shopping is more than just checking out it's discovering something new every day start with today's special value then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love from beauty and fashion to home culinary and outdoor living shop now at qvc.com that's exactly and that's how and it it's it's part I think you're onto something here it's part of the content creator marketplace that has developed in the last 15 20 years at most like we're talking like

48:24early YouTube to now and that is that has changed the game because now there's more competition in the space and the only people that corporate places are interested in are people who can show that they can build it for themselves so it's totally flipped it's not hey you have talent we're going to invest in you it's hey you're already making money we can make you more money. Yeah yeah that's that's a good way to go about it because then you prove to yourself that you can do it prove to them you can do it and then if they fail you still have yourself to fall back on right so there is there does come a point where you have to decide is creativity for myself exclusively which is not a bad thing because there's plenty of people out there that are probably just like working a very nice humble job manager at a kfc or whatever and they write novels and are not worried about publishing those things but then there's the other people that are aspiring that are in college or in a similar situation manager at a restaurant and they're trying to get their books out there but they have a goal in mind and those two different people don't have to be enemies right

49:26right okay so we're getting close to the end of the episode what does all of this mean for content creation in general for our shows one of my perspective on this just very briefly is that because most of what our shows do is talk about established things from the past then we're kind of already on the tip of the trend and things are looking good now things are looking pretty good and for and I can talk about you know just generally my shows and and the other shows on the network if there is if if a show is doing something in this type of space talking about an IP that people already love they're doing it in a quality way then they will typically find at least on audio platforms a saturation for the number of people who are looking at the product for the product they're making another way to think of this is there is a number of people who are interested in weekly tuning into stuff about Halo for example for your shows Austin right and all of those people who are in that market space will search on whatever

50:30podcast platform for something about Halo at some point and if they find a few options they will try out those options and if one of those resonates with them and is of good enough quality then they will keep listening to that option and if you make good stuff for a very specific audience that fits what they want about something that they're already interested in then you then you will saturate that that space the difficulties are when there are a lot of other options and they never get to try yours out or when you think you're creating something of higher quality than is actually being created and you're missing you know 80% of your potential listeners because you you my front-end like this the whole time you know like then that's a problem right so what are your thoughts so what do you guys think about this does this change the way we do what we're doing as content creators does this is this I don't know where does this go any thoughts on that so it's interesting like if you have I guess if you're dealing like you

51:34said we're a little more in the situation of ironically we kind of fall into this by default at least to some degree but if you're relying this on or relying on you know creating stuff as a living as well if this isn't a direction or or something that you necessarily align with it's one of those situations where you need to actually kind of analyze your situation the same way that we're analyzing the fact that things are going backwards into like a more nostalgic time do you want it actually you know stick with your vision maybe what you're doing now but if the trend is changing are you going to chase the trend to stay relevant or are you going to stick on the path that might have worked prior but if the tides have shifted are you going to fall out of mainstream interest it's kind of weird because that line like we've talked about like being on that line before and I think as as somebody who makes a full time living doing content creation I that's this is something I'm

52:39constantly aware of is I need to be keeping my audience happy but I also need to be innovating and creative at the same time without losing my soul and just I could copy a lot of other content out there and just do a soulless version of the shows that I do without a doubt but I don't want to do that that's not that wouldn't be my thing that wouldn't be me creating art so I have to balance it yeah that's sort of the thing that I feel is interesting because ironically if if this is your main avenue of creation whether it's for living or whatever and you even if you're already a success it started it essentially puts you in the same way that you're not just a creation that we're analyzing the stuff that you're currently doing because we then become almost like the product in that position another example of this is it's been known for many years now that if you create rage bait content you will grow your audience exponentially right if I just get engagement right if you and I on the Elder Scrolls lorecast talked about all the things were pissed off

53:40about every week with Bethesda our numbers would probably be higher but we would also die inside our our souls would no longer go to a theory right right like that would suck and I would hate making that because that's not the art that's not art that's just correct that's just garbage that gets it's crap right and it is funny though because exactly to that point sometimes when our takes or or a topic we have happens to also overlap with something that's we're not doing it for click baity stuff right we just happen to agree and we need to talk about it yeah right it's funny because like some of the spicy takes we have had it's like yeah this is literally just my tip most of the time it's like I would much rather be positive I don't have time to just be depressed about everything right it's not that we don't agree that there is a problem it's just not interesting to discuss it anymore because everyone else already has right so let's discuss another part of this yes yeah

54:40and it's just like I would you know and that it's not ignoring problems but it's just like I don't want to make that my focus point right necessarily and that garners its own audience or whatever but for instant gratification to the algorithm lords let's just say right if you just say a bunch of controversial stuff super quick and it's like oh well look at all of this is keep pushing this forward and a lot of people will get enticed by that like oh this look how popular this is I'll just keep doing more of this thing and then it becomes exactly like you said you just become almost like a gimmick of well you just have to be mad because you're a factory you're a mad factory who's just turning this stuff out which is which is funny because back in the day with some of the before rage bait became a thing and it was just like a couple people putting on a persona as like a joke it you know a classic angry video game never thing it's like yeah he wasn't actually mad all the time the dudes actually like pretty chill when I seen him time but that was his that was his

55:42stick like so it was supposed to be funny and it was original at the time right and then everyone later is like oh he's being literal and serious yes because people have lost nuance and it's like right and the difference is that was always his character and I thought it was kind of a parent that it was his character apparently not as much but other people you know nowadays it is it kind of just becomes like okay I don't think this is a character anymore you've been in sconce them as for so long I think you're just mad all the time now yeah the batteries of authenticity are real it's a whole we could do a whole episode about that like the persona that you are on camera is always a little bit heightened from your natural thing but because people are watching YouTube videos they assume everything they're seeing is like that's how that person is in real life right and sometimes this in fact a lot of times this not the case no or the problem is when you have a real outliers you end up finding out about you know anything in real life and I was like oh

56:43that's that's the type of person I really don't want anything to do with because it's like oh that's not that's not a funny persona that's not it's like they're just a joke and everyone thought it was an act yeah right yeah so it's it's a weird double-edged sword there where it's kind of like you know the adaptability to connect with these things but also not be like you said just kind of sold to them is a weird thing and when it comes to you know things of the past have not been a thing as a mainstream version until more recently like you said so it's just like I'm wondering if people will be able to adapt if that wasn't already something that was interesting to them yeah yeah I don't know that's a good question you bring up another example this would be somebody like doctor disrespect like pretty sure that wasn't a persona actually yeah as we've learned more about him as a person yeah he was just leaning into his worse qualities you're just playing up your what which is like okay that's what you seem to be what you're

57:43doing so yeah and it's just like that's where it gets kind of weird because it's like well sometimes you can have a really funny persona that is off the rails ridiculous but like yeah I would rather you not be a sketchball right right all right so aside from being a hate factor you're a sketchball how do you like let's go back to Sebastian and then Austin as we kind of wrap up the episode Austin or Sebastian what do you think now how does this affect content creation in the future does this does this information change your plans for how you do your show like where does this go I'm just a touch on the whole thing before you guys were speaking about is also I'm a I'm a heel in professional wrestling I'm a bad guy right and it's the idea of like I have a character so I don't talk quite this when I'm Sebastian Cloud I talk a bit like this because I'm better than everybody else and they need to understand yeah you get the will then William Regal thing sorry I used to watch wrestling I used to love wrestling as a kid so like I can only do references until the like mid 90s but William Regal is

58:44exactly the kind of gimmick is that quite classic British villain kind of style yeah I'm fancier than everyone else yes exactly I'm better than you and that is what you need to know kind of gimmick and it's the idea of the you know you back to the negative reaction I want that I want people to boom it I want people to hear me but when you actually talk to me after the show I'll sign your autographs I'm love way I'm this is me and I feel like the wrestling audience gets that because it's been so entrenched in the sport for so long that they they know when they see a heel like this is this is very similar to like the actor who played Joffrey on Game of Thrones like people get confused they see him in real life and they're like they still he's like they still hate me and he's like I'm nothing like the character that I played I was just playing a character so there's the two things he was good for his own good we should know that like the character the actors are playing are not actually the actors most of the time but also does it affect things when your audience is a wrestling audience and that is the tradition they

59:48know that like you're you're playing up a persona this isn't really you or the things you think but it's why we're not doing the podcast that try and be my most genuine self and I think that's the best thing about podcasting I think because like I said you can lose yourself to certain gimmicks and certain ways of presenting but from listening to like obviously I was to the robots radio before I joined the rocket club and obviously I've listened to you and what's talk or what and honestly just hearing you guys talk to me is like this is just the most genuine two guys having a knack about something they both love and I really found myself drawn to that to a point where I thought I would love to do this myself and when we talk about the idea of like how it would affect my podcast and everything one piece and the idea is well I'm very lucky because I came in just after they dropped the live action adaptation of one piece about to that idea one piece came out in the 90s and they just dropped a live live adaptation of that which is then generated a new wave of

1:00:49interest towards the series so when I'm doing the podcast I'm trying to accommodate four people who have come into the franchise from the new perspective of the live action and it's the same kind of with fallout and like when you did the water the rings podcast I think did you get in just before the rings of power dropped I'm much better year before the show came out I think if I'm rich it's been about four years now yeah yeah but then after that show dropped then you would have been a massive number of people looking for that kind of content and I think the way you handle it and presented it was fantastic and I think the idea that with with this kind of content it's just been open to the idea that not everybody knows it's been in this content bracket for so long and how I try and deal with it is treating people with the like spoils are everywhere for everything nowadays right I try and look at it from the point of well let's not try and

1:01:49spoil it too much but let's give them the amount of content for where they could be and the idea of the evergreen content dropping listen to bits you want to know more about and leave because I get so many people picking shoes different episodes and it's that's to me that's great I don't expect people to win it winnily follow my episodes through you know one two more ways right like if they if they went through linear you're going to build on their knowledge like just like our most of our shows right they're going to continue to be built on that knowledge and those they'll get the the references when we say well we talked about this like 10 episodes ago they'll be like oh yeah you did I remember that but they could also just pick a thing and listen to it and thank you for the compliments the the authenticity stuff and that has always been the core of what I've tried to do here and I think all of our hosts robots radio do is there's and I this is a whole other topic simply speaking being authentic is feels good right because you don't you're not playing a role you're not masking you're just being like

1:02:49Lotus and I are talking like you said we're just being ourselves saying what we think about the thing but I think people just as advice for people getting into this space they will conflate authenticity with not trying so hard sometimes because that's the other appeal of it the idea of like I want to be a twitch streamer who just plays games and people just show up and I become popular that doesn't work like you also have to be professional about doing it right you have to make sure that the sound quality is good you have to make sure that you organize the information away that's beneficial to your audience those things don't have anything to do with authenticity authenticity is saying what you believe in believing what you say and being natural and sharing those things right so like you have to do it feels like to summarize what you're saying being authentic but doing it with high quality seems to be where the real value is because nobody will mistake that as a I slop nobody's going to but it's still going to be high quality but there you get what I'm saying like but it's a real human being talking about

1:03:52real things that maybe you're going to are going to resonate with you and I think the one last thing I'm this in the idea of like the positive angle you we put on things I like there's enough negativity in the world I don't want to have someone in my ear who's just like like you said Bethesda's rubbish or like the story telling his revision like the idea of community I think he's big in podcasts and another thing I've looked about obviously robots radio is the idea of this community and like I'm trying to do that with with my podcast and I have like a few comments who are like me and my wife was listening to you showing the car and you mentioned you thanked me for the episode because I gave you suggestion and it really made my head start and I'm like because that is the connection yeah that is what that is the connection is genuine I have I take the time to read everything everyone writes to me and incorporate where I can and I think that's honestly because I remember messing you when I got my first comment and I was like and it just means it means it means so much to write people and the fact that they feel a part of it because

1:04:54so much stuff would we have like disconnected from everything feels disconnected or proxied and the idea that you can find something that you can connect to and I think that's what makes you know it like I'm that I don't make a full time with enough this I just do this because I love one piece it's the idea that it doesn't have to be robotic it doesn't have to be Mac Donald style food it's the same every single time you know what you're getting I hope that I'm all the same at Donald's is that cool I don't know but it's like you know what you're getting you go to McDonald's you know what you're getting but sometimes you want a nice steak we're a bit of you know sure yeah that's a cool sauce great you want some of different and I think I think when like back to the topic and the idea of like how are you going to flex your podcast and the sure to to to meet the current demand for people backtracking isn't I just think it's or even should be like that's part of the question too right yeah this this is it I like and I think as long as you consider it of where people are and where they're coming in to your show I think that people will

1:05:58appreciate that just on the ground of this is a real human being like you said it's a real human being talking to us about something they're clearly passionate about the leaving the negativity at the door and I can enjoy this because in every franchise we've got gatekeeping people who say things have to be a certain way and they ask me this right and it's like well no everyone can enjoy from a different place like oh you can't enjoy this because you come from the live action I thought the live action was really good and that's absolutely fine as long as you're enjoying the same thing I'm enjoying it not how we got that yeah yeah well that makes sense well said yeah yeah I the only place I've ever had to gatekeep is on places like our discord when we get people who pop in and they clearly have they do they just want to argue they clearly have a chip on their shoulder and they want to have conversations where they can just argue and yell at other people and so they're bringing in that negativity and this isn't to say that we don't have debates there are there are very respectful debates about different perspectives that happen on our discord under different channels and topics

1:06:58and show channels and all of that I absolutely welcome that from a respective standpoint but if you're just looking for rage bait and something did you get mad at and to yell at other people go anywhere else on the internet and you will find that immediately you don't need to come to our discord server for that find the not fine actually just load up Twitter like immediately you're going to find that you know read it go go find it you got it it's right there Austin what are your final thoughts on this I know that's two I always have other thoughts so whenever it comes to the kind of content that we produce the difficulty has always been trying to blend the audiences because an interesting thing from the perspective of what we've been focusing on in Halo franchise is there is a significant spike in fans that have been interacting with our show that started with Halo Infinite a game that released in 2021 Yeah as opposed to they're like the new baby fans but yet that's already five years later earlier yeah because I think anyone who was around during that golden era of the franchise is already

1:08:02listening to the show and there is a ceiling on how many people you can capture from that time that listen to podcasts that want to get that sort of thing like a lot of people who probably grew up with this stuff probably just watched the YouTube videos that were being made at the time and then just kind of left the franchise doing bigger things they're growing into like busy busy adults that don't really even think about the franchise is the big group with so there's with that being said there's always going to be this survived culture that exists around a franchise which is the difficult thing about trying to do stuff about fallout about Halo about Star Wars about pretty much any of the other shows that we have to operate is that the franchises will always be around it's just their relevancy that changes so you have to try to cater to these new audiences because for better or for worse the only way that a franchise is ever going to die out is if the generation itself dies right right would work for you're complete white balance yeah George R Martin I've been diving more into like the song of

1:09:06ice and fire lore lately in my in my late nights I want to watch something and chill out and fall asleep modes but in an interview people were lamenting some of the things that got changed in the TV show adaptations of of his stories and he would get letters from fans who said it would say things like I can't believe you change this I can't enjoy it anymore and his response in the interview was my books still exist he's like if you want that version of the story nothing happened to it go read it like that's yeah yeah like so yeah to your point yes all of the and I think this is something people are realizing is that you don't need to plug into the newest version of the thing and then treat that as your favorite version if the old version still exists out there the old version of the game the novel the movie go enjoy it didn't go anywhere it's still there right yeah right yeah this one of the crazy thing me yeah it's crazy thing to me actually there's a so giving a shadow to a content creator that I think very much especially now way past his peak but still fantastic to watch especially given that he has effectively

1:10:07bragged the gap between good old nostalgia and modern context I don't know how many of you guys watching nostalgic critic Doug Walker I should probably look it up but yeah he is he's excellent he's an excellent creator he has made so many fantastic reviews of varying nostalgia content and there was one that he did on Avatar the last airbender the movie from an M night channel on because he's a big Avatar fan it might be his number one favorite cartoon that he's ever watched and there was this you know the whole video was just him being like how could they get this so wrong how could they do this so terribly wrong how could they screw this part up how they get a change that and then at the end of the video he's like he basically creates this whole skit that has the fundamental story beat of remember the original animation still exists and it's still just as impactful as it always has been right and this is a concept that I'm now sharing with people who are you know crap it on everybody going on with the the favorite things about matter they have about halo today the subject on socials was some crazy people are working on

1:11:11porting halo five to PC they're crazy because they're stupid skilled for that and halo five is the only game that ever got a proper port to PC so it's insane and a lot of people are like why are we doing this I thought we hated this game what what what are we what are we doing this for because it's the worst game of the franchise is the hive mind all has one consensus opinion at all times like why do we treat the hive mind like that we treat corporations like that like they're a person like they are trustworthy or they broke my trust once they will break it again. No the person who made the mistake at the corporation broke your trust and maybe that is a pattern but also like they're not a human being can't don't treat them like a singular person with a singular personality. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly where I'm landing on with this like what does this mean for our shows what doesn't mean for the stuff that we did. That's exactly where I'm landing on with that like what does this mean for our shows what doesn't mean for the stuff that we do what it means to me is we make this for ourselves and for the people who want to tune in and enjoy a franchise or enjoy a story enjoy a story enjoy a they're not a human being. Don't treat them like a singular person with a singular personality. Yeah. And that's exactly where I'm landing on with this. Like, what does this mean for our shows? What doesn't mean for the stuff that we do? What it means to me is we make this for ourselves and for the people who want to tune in and enjoy a franchise or enjoy a story, enjoy a piece of

1:12:16content for themselves can make that choice very easily. And the culture that we're currently trying to fight against, I would say, all of this shows based on the people that I've talked to based on the other hosts, the other shows that I've been on here on robots is the battle against what could be described as either apathy or hatred. You can kind of pick whichever one you want. Because there's plenty of reasons to just go and enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it, go and try it. That might be why a lot of people are deciding, I'm not going to do the newest thing. I'm going to go back and try the thing that everyone told me sucked. I'm going to do that because that's what I would prefer to do. Everyone told me I held it just a second ago. Everyone told me that battlefront 2 on the PSP was trash and you shouldn't play it. You just played on Xbox or PC. I have it on Xbox and PC. I played it on PSP. It plays just fine. It's probably better than the then renegade and elite squadron. Right. And like, you make your own determinations. And because of the nature of the shows that we operate, the fundamental idea of it being that you can have

1:13:18this open concept of an opinion. Like you can have your share ideas with the hosts with each other, building an audience around that. That is a fundamental community that I think should be embraced as the years go on. And I'm hoping takes over that pop culture vibe. You know. Yeah. I think the micro communities are becoming more stronger and stronger. And when people do find their place, they're going to it. I think again, our shows are good examples. A lot of people will find our shows, find this community. And then this will be part of who they interact with. And we as hosts have to help grow that. Like Sebastian was saying, responding to their comments and thanking them on the episodes when they leave reviews and like calling names out and those kinds of things. It builds something out of, you know, that's actually real. You know. Real recognizes real. Yeah. And I think that's the point is don't get down by the people who are haters who are just upset at the world who just want to be entitled to all the free things and one thing's perfect for

1:14:22them in their way all the time. Because you create what you want to create. And also those same people tend to get upset when somebody does a new adaptation of something and forget that they could just go back and read the original, watch the original movie, play the original game. So. But I think this comes full circle because there are enough of those people doing that that seem to be skewing the data more towards that. So I don't know. I think I think we've come full circle. I don't know if we've solved everything so much as just kind of laid out all the different options and how that affects us personally. Maybe there's not a solution. Maybe maybe the solution is like just being aware of what's going on in society. And then understanding that like if you want to create art, create art. And be professional about it and it should find its audience. So maybe that's the best thing in the end. So go with that. And that's the final answer. There will never be any more conversation about this topic ever again. We solved it. It's a fair. It's a fair.

1:15:23Stand up for so much. Yes. But yeah, thank you everybody for taking the time to get together. Let's go back through and remind people who you are where they are. What stuff they can check out that you do. And we'll start with Lotus. Lotus. Thanks for joining us. Yeah. No, thank you for having me. Like I said, it's been a while since I've been able to join one of these. So this was actually a lot of fun. And it's great getting a chat with all of you kind of discussing this topic. Obviously you can find me at the Elder Scrolls Lorecast where Tom and I host that show. I have another Elder Scrolls related podcast. USPs. Tales of Tamriel. And then if this is a topic slash concept of stuff that is interesting to you, I definitely recommend checking out the new show that I just started Retro Next Gen podcast. It is now from what I've been told. Seems to be on all platforms. So it should be super easy to find if you just punch it in. And sort of the we've had this get brought up a couple times throughout the show for all of you that have taken a look at it so far. I don't expect it to be

1:16:26for everything like most of the stuff I do because I don't I'd say you're saying you're doing art for the sake of art and people like it. I'm lucky enough that I don't have to rely on this for a living. It's just a nice side effect and let's me do charity related things on the side as well. So it's I get the luxury of saying that it's like I want to make something that's enjoyable. But I can also do the thing I want to do, which is I get I guess the easy way out in that situation. But so many of you have actually checked it out way above what I kind of expected. I'm sure it's not for everybody so far. But the response that everybody's had has been very, very nice. And it's kind of a nice thing because my buddy Vinnie has been out of the creation space for a while. And he's even kind of noted. It's like, wow, this is this is people are nice. It's like it can't be. Yeah. Well people like you. I mean, you're a very personable person and people people seem to really like my act is working. No, I'm just kidding.

1:17:29That's not a surprise. But yeah, no. So I just I really appreciate it. So yeah, if you want to check out any of the other stuff with me is pretty much where you can find me. Yeah, retro next gen podcasting in for people look correct. There you go. Sebastian, thanks for taking the time. No, honestly, thank you for having me guys. It's been an absolute blast. And obviously it's first time I got to meet Lotus. Awesome to meet you. Properly fantastic and Austin. So insightful. And honestly, guys, listen to you guys talk is amazing because you're really insightful into these subjects. And I'm just I'm just a dude from the UK who does a bit of wrestling on the side and likes one piece. And I'm just really like thrilled to be part of this. And if you didn't know, I do the one piece lower cast and we talk about everything that builds the world of one piece. And like a few people have listened to one of these cross over episode episodes before and come to check us out. Thank you so much. It really means a lot. And I'm honestly genuinely blown away. I'd set a target for this year. And that was about two months ago. We smashed through that. Yeah.

1:18:31So like, honestly, I'm over the moon. And thank you, Massey. Thank you to Royal Botswira constantly helping me every hour. God send. And honestly, thank you so much. If you want to check out my personal wrestling account and check out all the wrestling stuff I do, that's it. Sebastian Cloud on Instagram. And come and check it out there. If you want to talk to me on there, you can do as well. I'm always happy to talk about wrestling. But thank you guys so much and much love from the UK. Awesome. Awesome. So glad you were able to join us and add into the conversation. It's been a lot of fun. Austin, wrap this up for us. I guess I have to go after you, but go ahead. And that's what I'll just pretend that you aren't just talking. Thank you guys so much for listening today. I really appreciate you guys for tuning in. Hi, everyone. Fantastic. I'm kidding. Jumperscape.com. You want to find anything about me or the team that I work with. If you want to get tuned into any of the shows that I do, the library, Halo Lorecast is the consistent weekly one, the daily one. I'm not on every single day, but there are plenty of other people, 14 people total that deserve to have you listening. Yes. Yes. All at the same time. You'll have no idea what's

1:19:38happening. I'd have any given time. No, it's 14 people on a cycle every day. It's a fantastic little show that we put together and it is great for a little bit of daily Halo if you want some stuff that's sprinkled all throughout different portions of the community. So it's not always the same thing every day. What's the name of it for people? It's, oh, yeah, that's Chatternet. There you go. Chatternet. Daily Halo Radio. And then if you want to tune into some of the stuff that we do, lore wise, that story is from Waypoint. And if you want to check out the most recent thing that we did that was canon for the Halo franchise that's Halo still midnight available on their YouTube channel right now. But otherwise, if you want to get connected to anything that we do, jumperscape.com is the best way to do it. You can email us, you can support us, you can join our community, whatever you want to do. Awesome. Awesome. We'll keep it up. That sounds like you guys have been doing great. And thanks for being here. My stuff real quick at the end. If you're, if you're, if you want to hear me and John from the 40k lorecast play retro games for the first time in years and have the nostalgia moments of like, what was this like back in the day? What, what movies were cool back in 1997? That kind of thing. Retro Recall is absolutely for you. And if

1:20:43you are diving into either Elder Scrolls or Fallout or Lord of the Rings, you won't know more about the lore than there's a lorecast for each of those. And you can find everything that we've talked about today at robotsradio.net. And thank you again for joining me. We will get together with another one of these. We've been doing them quarterly at the end of the year, like in the winter time frame sometime. I'm right about probably the holidays. That's usually when we do it. So other than that, whatever you're listening to this on, whatever feed this is on, we'll be going back to normal content right after this is done. So thanks for being here everybody. We'll see you next time. Robots Radio. Games. Lore. Stories. Community. Just press play. At Verbo, we understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support. So we plan for the plot twists. Every booking is automatically backed by our Verbo care

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1:22:46Before your stay, through the moments in between, and after your trip. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind. And maybe a good playlist. But we've got the peace of mind part covered.